Sam: Welcome get the stream gun being very corporate today you are yeah i see your.
Sam: Sponsorships okay let me do this,
Sam: okay blah blah,
Sam: and then do that. Okay, shall we just dump in or are there any preliminaries?
Ivan: Not that I can think of right now.
Sam: Okay, here we go.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, January 25th, 2025.
Sam: It is just after 18 UTC as we're starting to record.
Sam: I'm Sam and Trayvon Boas here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hello.
Sam: It is a day. So we're going to do our usual.
Ivan: No, really?
Sam: I know it is a day.
Ivan: A day.
Sam: A day.
Ivan: Not the day. Not the day. Not D day.
Sam: A day. A day. Okay. Tomorrow will be B day.
Ivan: Okay. So this is the way we're starting this. Okay, good. All right.
Sam: Very good.
Ivan: We've got everything in order. Okay, great. Great.
Sam: Okay, we're going to do our usual but first with random things to talk about.
Sam: And then our two more serious segments after that.
Sam: But, you know, nothing's happened this week, has it? It's going to be boring.
Ivan: I mean, how much of real true substance happened?
Ivan: There is a number of things of true substance, yes.
Ivan: But there is a lot more smoke than actual substance so yeah a lot of stuff happened
Ivan: yes I mean I think we're finally going to get to the bottom of who killed JFK,
Ivan: You know, stuff like that, you know, stuff like that, very critical, critical, critical.
Sam: OK, well, we'll get to the newsy stuff in the next segment. But you got any
Sam: anything that non newsy, non less serious, whatever that you want to talk about, Dave?
Sam: I know I have I have something on my agenda. I have two things on my agenda, actually.
Ivan: You have two things. Wow.
Sam: Two things.
Ivan: Well, you know, I'm sitting here opening mail. OK. Yes.
Ivan: And I, you know, I still.
Sam: Physical mail, to be clear.
Ivan: Physical mail.
Sam: We talked about email last week.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This week I'm back on the subject of physical mail.
Ivan: You know, and one of the things about physical mail, you know,
Ivan: I still regularly check it.
Ivan: You know, not the way that I used to check it, I will admit.
Ivan: I used to be somebody that made sure that I got the mail every day.
Ivan: You know, that was very important. And the mail had a lot more stuff.
Ivan: One of the big things that used to come in the mail, which is why I checked
Ivan: it every day, was like magazines and stuff.
Ivan: You know, so where you were going to read stuff, you know, but what the hell is going on?
Ivan: You know, I mean, those came in the mail, especially when I lived in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: It was like tougher to get those on the newsstand. You could,
Ivan: but there were not as many stores, especially around where I lived, to go get those.
Ivan: So you want to get the magazines in the mail, okay? All right.
Ivan: That's very, very critical. I remember that for a while, we also got the Wall
Ivan: Street Journal sent through the mail. It didn't print it in Puerto Rico.
Ivan: And that arrived usually like about four or five days after the day at print.
Ivan: Still a lot, you know, the daily news stuff, maybe not as relevant.
Ivan: As some of the, you know, more like analysis on other things that whatnot, but still pick that up.
Ivan: Had a guy that at our store that his number one job, literally his main job
Ivan: was to go to the post office to get the mail.
Ivan: There are two jobs that he had. Okay.
Ivan: Go to the post office and get the mail.
Sam: Okay. Yeah.
Ivan: Then go to the bank and deposit money because we ran a retail store and we got every day, lots of cash.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: I mean, you know, we, we had to, you had to go to the bank every day.
Sam: You had to go physically deal with the cash.
Ivan: Yes. There was, it was literally, I mean, even back in the day,
Ivan: thousands of dollars every day.
Ivan: I mean, on a, on a very, very busy day, I will say probably like one of the
Ivan: busiest days, it could exceed $20,000 in cash.
Sam: Right. And just to be clear, we're not talking crazy numbers.
Sam: This is just you have a store and people are coming in and buying stuff throughout the day.
Sam: I mean, this is what happens. This is what happens.
Ivan: You know.
Sam: And like you said, back in the day, most of this was cash.
Ivan: Like today- Most of it was cash. It was so rare that people paid with a credit card at our store.
Ivan: People pay with a credit card more often at the travel agency.
Ivan: And even that wasn't the preponderance of it. But in the 80s.
Sam: Whereas today, cash has to be the exception, even at most stores.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Hell, there are stores now that don't even want to take cash.
Ivan: But every day, Marcial was the name of the guy. Rest in peace.
Ivan: Old guy. Okay. He was old when I knew it was little. I mean,
Ivan: he had been a guy that, you know, we talk about immigrants and labor.
Ivan: He had, when Puerto Rico went through a very tough economic period in the 50s,
Ivan: he had emigrated to the U.S.
Ivan: And had worked the steel mills in Allentown, okay, for many years.
Ivan: Then he worked as not
Ivan: the driver because he couldn't really drive but as
Ivan: the as the sidekick for an ambulance
Ivan: driver service where they would go you know pick
Ivan: up paramedics where he wasn't really a paramedic he was just the the driver's
Ivan: sidekick okay basically okay and so he would he would run the sirens he would
Ivan: do the flash the lights he would do that stuff and then at some At some point, he retired,
Ivan: okay, and my grandfather knew him, and he was kind of bored puttering around.
Ivan: He had been divorced. He had kids, but they didn't live in Puerto Rico,
Ivan: and he moved back to our small town in Puerto Rico, very tiny town.
Ivan: And my grandfather basically gave him, you know, his odd job was go to a post
Ivan: office every day, go to the bank every day.
Ivan: And to be clear, there is a reason why that was a job that took hours every day.
Ivan: This wasn't just a two minute run. OK, the the post office where,
Ivan: you know, we got most of our mail delivered. We had a P.O. box.
Ivan: If any items that couldn't fit inside the P.O. box, you would have to make a
Ivan: line at the counter to pick up all this stuff.
Ivan: And because we got so much stuff, he would have to go over there and pick up
Ivan: the stuff, and then he would walk back, and then he would go and pick up the
Ivan: money and then go to the bank.
Ivan: And look, going to the bank, there was a big line.
Ivan: I mean, this whole thing took an entire morning.
Ivan: Okay literally to get this shit
Ivan: done every day okay and and
Ivan: then by the way he would run and get me breakfast which that was great okay by
Ivan: the way because i liked it you know he would bring me my perfect cheese sandwich
Ivan: with with uh with my with my with my
Ivan: little cup of coffee you know with back then i
Ivan: drank it with milk i don't drink with milk but a perfectly made
Ivan: cup of coffee with milk was great all of a sudden i get i guess
Ivan: i got i got money in the bank and i get my
Ivan: i get my breakfast which is fantastic that was always very nice
Ivan: by the way he got pissed off if i asked somebody
Ivan: else to go get my breakfast okay that
Ivan: was his job okay nobody takes
Ivan: my job here and i'm sitting over here and
Ivan: opening opening the mail and i realize that back then because we got
Ivan: so much of it yes yeah yeah well you know because the courier but what is the
Ivan: reason it reminded me about the guy is because of the mail well we have these
Ivan: you know i have these little these little things that I would insert at the
Ivan: end of each letter envelope in order to quickly yeah I had these letter well
Ivan: you got the ones that are like a knife,
Ivan: not the letter openers but there are ones that were like a little like curved
Ivan: that had a little like blade in it you would just insert it and you could open
Ivan: and you needed that shit and when you're opening in a day.
Ivan: 40, 50 letters you know every damn day you need one of those damn letter openers
Ivan: to go through all this shit okay,
Ivan: um you know so so yeah i mean i'm like
Ivan: right now realize that i'm opening this stuff and i'm like i'm kind of like
Ivan: wishing i had a letter opener right now you know but but but i don't have a
Ivan: letter opener and and the volume of mail i get i mean i literally i i go now
Ivan: that it's like once a week uh it's not a lot okay let me let.
Sam: Wait let me let me tell you because you will be amused by this because of course
Sam: like everything else i log this electronically i'm i'm showing the people on the screen.
Sam: But, but so here, here, here's what I got. First of all, you caught me at a
Sam: good time. It has only been a,
Sam: one week, four days and 16 hours since the last time I've checked my mailbox.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Okay. But to be clear, the last time it had been over six weeks and they had
Sam: put a little note in it that said, your mailbox is full.
Sam: You had to go to the post office, which they do like if, you know,
Sam: if it gets full and which happens to us once or twice a year.
Sam: And so I did have to go to to post office and, you know, pick up a large bin
Sam: of mail that had accumulated.
Sam: And I actually had to go to the post office twice. Cause like what you were
Sam: saying about lines at the post office, still true, actually.
Ivan: Like I went to the employees now.
Sam: So I went like the day that I was supposed to go to Olympia to witness my wife's
Sam: swearing in, like, I was like, I'll go to the post office on the way.
Sam: And it was like, you know, 9am or something. And I had to be there by noon and
Sam: it's like a two hour drive to get there, whatever.
Sam: So I went to the post office. I got there. There was a long line.
Sam: I'm like, okay, I can wait in line. It'll move pretty quickly.
Sam: It did not move pretty quickly.
Ivan: It was a lot of people shipping parses is what I.
Sam: There's a lot of people shipping partial. That's the most that by far that seems
Sam: to be the biggest activity.
Sam: And, but it was going really, really slowly. And so I got, I wasted about 20 minutes in line.
Sam: And then I was like, I was looking at ways. I was looking at the amount of time
Sam: it would take me to get to where I was going. And I was like,
Sam: I can't, I gotta, I gotta bail.
Sam: So I bailed out of the line. I went, and then I came back the next day.
Sam: And when I had more time and I waited in line, I got my mail and it was a big, big package.
Sam: But the point I wanted to make further is that it seems like,
Sam: okay, six weeks, one time.
Sam: Right now it's like a little, almost two weeks since last time you checked your
Sam: mailbox. That's not too bad. But see, here's the thing.
Sam: In our entryway, I have set up a whole set of bins to contain the mail.
Sam: So I have a bin for Brandy, a bin for me, a bin for her campaign stuff,
Sam: a bin for Alex, a bin for Amy.
Ivan: So you open the front door of your house and you have mail bins.
Ivan: I mean, this feels like the time when I worked at HP where I had a mail slot for me.
Sam: Exactly. Exactly like that. Except they're bigger than the mail slots you typically
Sam: have. what I actually have, these are, these are the, it's the kind of container
Sam: that's built for like shoes and stuff.
Sam: So they're the size of shoe boxes. They have little doors on the front.
Sam: I have labels on them, all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: And so whenever I do get the mail, I sort them into these bins.
Sam: And then I have sort of reminder tasks that I occasionally do to actually go
Sam: through the bins and deal with whatever's inside.
Sam: So how long do you think it's been since I have looked at my own personal bin
Sam: to sort through and find and go through my stuff and see if there's anything
Sam: important, throw away the stuff that's not important?
Ivan: A year.
Sam: Not quite that bad right now. 41 weeks.
Ivan: Close.
Sam: Specifically 40 weeks, six days, and 23 hours. Yeah.
Ivan: Yeah. So so about 10 months.
Sam: It was April 13th. It was April 13th. The last time it happened.
Sam: The last time we've sat down and gone through Brandy's email. 62 weeks.
Ivan: You mean mail, mail.
Sam: Mail, mail, not email. 662 weeks, four days, 16 hours.
Ivan: Okay, but if the notice is like, say, for example, I just pulled up a W-2,
Ivan: okay, which for something that my wife's doing, that they don't send an electronic W-2, for example.
Sam: So here's what would happen.
Ivan: Do you pull that stuff out first?
Sam: No, but I don't even look at it. I only look at the name. I don't look at the sender.
Sam: I don't look at anything about it whatsoever. So if there was something important
Sam: in there, like a jury duty summons, or I'm being sued, or what,
Sam: I guess you have to do some of those things in person.
Sam: But if it was something important, like your house will be torn down by bulldozers
Sam: in five weeks if you don't respond.
Ivan: Unless you don't respond to this notice.
Sam: I would not know. I would not know.
Ivan: That's great, Sam.
Sam: Now, here's the thing. The, yes.
Sam: So what would happen in that case is when we sat down to do our taxes,
Sam: if we recognized that something was missing, I would go look for that missing
Sam: thing. But I would not find out.
Ivan: Of course, here's the rub in this.
Ivan: You might not know that something came in for your taxes, okay?
Ivan: That may be in there. That sometimes happens because you didn't expect it. It was something new.
Ivan: Something changed. And so, you know, you get one of those. Like,
Ivan: you get a letter that you owe the money.
Sam: Well, yes. Yes. And as you know, that particular thing with the IRS has caught
Sam: us before. But, you know.
Sam: You know so i'll eventually look at okay but here's another one while we're
Sam: talking about this yeah i also have on my little thing that i note how long
Sam: do you think it's been since i've listened to my voicemail.
Ivan: Oh fuck well i think well do you okay probably.
Sam: Or looked at i have that's barely or have you looked at it.
Ivan: And just read the transcripts.
Sam: No oh fuck you.
Ivan: Don't even but do that. So, so a year.
Sam: 88, at least 88 weeks.
Ivan: So almost two years. Okay.
Sam: It was May 15th, 2023 is the last time I've done that.
Sam: And when I do it, I only usually listen to a month of voicemail.
Sam: So I won't be catching up anytime soon.
Sam: Maybe next time I'll do more than a month, you know?
Sam: So I will, which of course I will listen to the old ones first.
Sam: I'm not going I have to go in order.
Ivan: Right. Yeah, of course. Those are more important right now. Yes.
Ivan: If two years ago they said that, hey, we're late delivering your pizza.
Ivan: Okay. That is definitely more important than any message that you've got like that. Yes. Of course.
Sam: Exactly. And so that is the plan. Yeah. Voicemails.
Sam: Now now to be clear if i am expecting
Sam: a call that is different i will look and and i will sometimes read the thing
Sam: if it's that or if it's a recognized thing where i like i'm like oh this is
Sam: from somebody that i know well.
Ivan: I i'm guessing that if i called you because i don't call you anymore okay.
Sam: All right.
Ivan: That if i called you would be like shit what the fuck is going on let me pick up the phone.
Sam: Yes, I mean, I will generally pick up the phone from, if the voicemail is,
Sam: not the voicemail, if I see the caller ID, it's someone I know,
Sam: is like a human being, and I know them, I will generally pick up.
Sam: I have it set so unknown numbers go straight to voicemail, it doesn't even ring the phone.
Ivan: You know, that makes sense. i i i mean i you
Ivan: know yeah i mean right now with the with the scourge of
Ivan: unknown number you know so much bullshit
Ivan: calls like yeah i mean like i answered the
Ivan: phone today i usually do that but i i answered a
Ivan: call today because i left my son at a singing class and i was working out and
Ivan: i saw that a call came in from a phone in the right area code okay and i'm like
Ivan: wondering hey is everything okay let you pick up the phone i found some fucking
Ivan: realtor trying to fucking like I don't know, trying to get me.
Ivan: There's a thing that keeps happening. They keep calling me to see if I sell my parents' house.
Ivan: I mean, just regularly. They just fucking keep calling me about it.
Ivan: I'm like, Jesus fucking Christ, stay the fuck away from me. I don't want to
Ivan: sell a fucking house. Just leave me alone.
Sam: Yeah, so I will, like, if I'm expecting something or otherwise see a phone call
Sam: come in that I haven't picked up but was from a recognized number,
Sam: I will go scan the voicemail and maybe in that situation.
Sam: Look at the transcript maybe you know and i have accidentally i have accidentally
Sam: hit play a couple times and heard part of a message and i'm like oh shit i'm
Sam: hearing it out of order no no.
Ivan: No no you're like abort abort abort abort.
Sam: Exactly now uh alex
Sam: brought up a few things on my tracking list that so
Sam: the it is it has apparently been 66 weeks six days and 20 minutes since i worked
Sam: on abel arcade which is a project for him except i worked on it last night didn't
Sam: i so i i can mark this i can mark this oh so here we go reset to now well i
Sam: should reset it to last night right,
Sam: okay i should reset it to last night i did it around midnight last night so here we go here we go.
Sam: I'm setting this set to now, and then I'm moving it back to midnight.
Sam: So boom, boom. Okay. So Apple Arcade has now been 10 hours since I last worked on that.
Sam: And it's been eight weeks, five days, and 18 hours since I last worked.
Sam: It did an Apple dream, a new Apple dream.
Sam: And the other one that came up, oh, I have a thing like,
Sam: You know, for those techies out here, you'll appreciate this.
Sam: I've been trying to, abblesmay.com, which I've had forever, is still on network
Sam: solutions as a provider, okay?
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And I want to move it on to DreamHost, where I have everything else that I have for consistency.
Sam: And I want to then add SSL to it. Because at this point, like from some browsers,
Sam: you go to applesmay.com, you get a warning just because it doesn't have SSL on it.
Sam: And yeah, and it makes it easier for me to do that. If I have it with my hosting
Sam: company, I can just hit the button, have it done.
Sam: I'm not, I know there are ways I could do it anyway, but like it becomes like a one click thing.
Sam: If I, if I have everything done at my hosting provider.
Sam: And so i've tried to do this a
Sam: couple of times and failed because you
Sam: know i mentioned i was having email problems and some things not getting through some
Sam: things disappearing etc one of those things i tried to
Sam: do was have network solutions unlock
Sam: the domain so i could move it and they send you on an authentication thing
Sam: and like sometimes i haven't even been able to get logged in there because
Sam: i don't get the authentication sometimes i've logged in and then
Sam: they're supposed to send me an email and one time i
Sam: i i had i used to have ablesmay.site as
Sam: well okay okay and i decided to test moving the domain using ablesmay.site i
Sam: started the process and they say okay we'll send you a code on your email within
Sam: the next three days which by the way is ridiculous it should be fucking instant
Sam: okay they'll send it to you within that that really.
Ivan: Makes no sense yeah.
Sam: So I did that.
Sam: And then I, you know, I'm not going to sit there in front of my computer for
Sam: three days waiting for the email.
Sam: So I went off and did other things and I completely forgot about it.
Sam: When I went back and looked weeks later, they had sent me the code.
Sam: Then a few days later, they had, I got a notice that said, so-and-so is trying
Sam: to move your domain was that you will assume it is unless you click this button to say it's not.
Sam: And then a few days later saying your domain has been successfully transferred. It was not to me.
Sam: Someone stole applesmay.site from me.
Sam: And it is now like, you know, out there. One of those things where you can buy it back if you want.
Sam: Now, I didn't actually use applesmay.site for anything. It was just a redirect to applesmay.com.
Sam: But it made me really nervous about doing it with applesmay.com to make sure
Sam: I was at a time where I was going to be paying attention carefully to my email.
Sam: Right day, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And make sure nothing like that happened. And the last time I did it,
Sam: I didn't get an email after a couple of days and I was like,
Sam: screw it. And I relocked it and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And so I haven't tried it again. Anyway, the last, since the last time I tried
Sam: to deal with that 86 weeks.
Sam: So eventually i'll i'll look at it again
Sam: i figure at this point like if i'm gonna do it i need to like call them and
Sam: do it through like you know whatever i don't know how i have to do it with a
Sam: person on the line or a chat or something to like i don't know anyway i got
Sam: off on a real tangent there sorry about that yeah.
Ivan: That that had nothing to do.
Sam: With my with.
Ivan: My with with my with anything I had started talking about.
Sam: Well, I talked about how long it is between times I checked.
Ivan: It takes you to review things.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Yes. Okay. All right. Great. Beautiful. All right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: So up to your subject.
Sam: Okay. I had two things, both of which are not that long, I presume.
Sam: Of course, you know, poison words whenever I say that.
Sam: But uh number one number
Sam: one is i mentioned on the show a couple weeks
Sam: ago that i my chair
Sam: was having issues yeah okay and so last week it actually just broke completely
Sam: nice like now i i presume like realistically what happened loose screws got
Sam: looser and looser and fell out And then, like,
Sam: you know, then it sort of started coming apart. Like, the back is a thing that happens.
Ivan: I mean, you know, that is a thing that happens.
Sam: So, yeah, so I theoretically, I probably could have, like, tried to,
Sam: like, find the screws, screw it back together, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But I'd been complaining on here about it anyway.
Sam: I, you know, I had complained on the show that it was getting uncomfortable
Sam: that, you know, etc, etc, etc.
Sam: I mean, I was complaining that it was loose as well. But like,
Sam: yeah, I could have tightened that.
Sam: But it was getting uncomfortable and just like starting to look ratty already.
Sam: And it was less than a year old. And I was like, I cheaped out on this chair.
Sam: Let's get the better one. You and I talked about it. You, you looked at Costco
Sam: and we're like, look, this chair looks fine. It's $160 chair on Costco.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. And I was ready to order it.
Sam: And my wife was like, well, do you want to like see it in person at first?
Sam: You know, can we go, should we go to Costco? And I like the website.
Ivan: You're going to, wait, wait, you're going to go to a store.
Sam: I know.
Ivan: Try something.
Sam: I know. And I was like, well, the website doesn't even say they have it in stock at the local store.
Sam: So why would we do that? And she's like, oh, let's go. And so we went. We went in person.
Sam: It turns out they did have it in stock. Okay, great. They did not have a display
Sam: model. So I could not try it.
Ivan: Oh, yeah. Because they do sometimes have some screwed in so you can sit on it.
Ivan: But they will have it in a box.
Sam: Yeah. They just had it in a box. They did not have a display model.
Sam: But then she was like so do you just
Sam: want to get it since we're here and like the if i bought it online it would
Sam: have been like three to four days until it arrived and like it's it's right
Sam: there in front of me i'm like right okay let's buy it so okay i bought i bought the damn chair okay took,
Sam: Well, wait, wait, this is a more important stuff.
Sam: I put the box right next to the box for the arcade cabinet that Alex gave me four to five years ago.
Sam: That has not yet been assembled. And so I immediately was like,
Sam: well, I guess this is where it's going to sit for the next five years.
Sam: Because I have to assemble it.
Sam: So nothing's ever going to happen here.
Sam: Now, to be fair, when I set up the whole office last April or May or whenever
Sam: it was, I assembled the table. I assembled the chair.
Sam: I did the whole thing because it was like a major project I had taken time off
Sam: to get all the new stuff set up but this time I hadn't done any of that but,
Sam: my son Alex came to the rescue I told him that I would pay him to build the chair.
Sam: He agreed he actually negotiated a bit there was something else he wanted there
Sam: was something he wanted other than money,
Sam: okay and so i agree i agreed to whatever the
Sam: other thing was i don't even remember what it was but i agreed to it
Sam: and i my conditions were basically he had to assemble the damn chair on his
Sam: own i didn't really have to do anything i i ended up helping at one or two little
Sam: spots where like he'd lost a screw and i helped find it or he wanted me to like oh my god well heaven.
Ivan: Forbid that you could help him find a screw. My God, what the hell has Earth
Ivan: come to, for God's sake, Sam?
Sam: I know. It was, and a couple times I held the camera for him because,
Sam: of course, he wanted to video.
Ivan: Oh, my God. Wow.
Sam: Oh, oh, oh. He is giving me a screenshot of what the deal was for it.
Sam: For the entire duration of the chair construction, I needed to either be the
Sam: camera person or be playing Beat Saber on the Oculus.
Ivan: Okay, so what did you choose?
Sam: I alternated. I alternated.
Ivan: Oh, okay.
Sam: All right. And by the time of chair completion, at least 30 minutes of each
Sam: must have been completed unless chair took less than 45 minutes.
Sam: So there you go. I did that.
Ivan: That's pretty good.
Sam: And I ended up giving them the cash too. as well
Sam: because he built the whole chair he built the
Sam: whole chair he built it efficiently he built it well it's
Sam: all done i am sitting in it right now it is okay what's your my by the way take
Sam: on the chair this is the 160 costco chair so okay we had talked about like look
Sam: there there are many chairs that are a lot more than that there are some chairs that are cheaper.
Sam: I was thinking move up my previous chair that didn't even last a year was about 60 or 70 bucks.
Sam: I forget in that, in that range, this one is, was one 60 plus change.
Sam: I think it is clearly sturdier and more comfortable than the previous chair,
Sam: even when the previous chair was brand new.
Ivan: Okay. Well, so you made the right call.
Sam: Will it last much more than a year? I don't know. we'll find out but certainly
Sam: at the beginning usually you know.
Ivan: The great thing uh costco items are are made to be they test them.
Sam: For durability and that kind of stuff the actual brand it's a lazy boy yeah
Sam: so it's it's a known brand it's not like kazizzle coup.com whatever no name
Sam: random series of letters like many quote-unquote brands are that are just imported
Sam: you know, Asian stuff from wherever.
Sam: Now this is an actual known brand name. Now, of course, I'm sure it's still
Sam: made in some Asian factory somewhere, but you get the brand name that supposedly
Sam: is doing some quality control, both Lazy Boy and Costco, presumably.
Ivan: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Sam: Okay, now that's that for that.
Sam: One final thing that I promised we would do for this week is our Patreon stuff,
Sam: which I will mention at the end of the show.
Sam: But for the last couple of weeks, I've been saying, you know,
Sam: several people increased their Patreon contributions.
Sam: And I would look up what our official levels were and what they deserve for this.
Sam: So just to review all of our levels which i never do at the end of the show,
Sam: for one dollar a month on patreon we will
Sam: mention you and thank you in the first show we record after the pledge we didn't
Sam: quite make the first show but oops then we have that's the patron level then
Sam: we have the slacker level which is we will mention you and thank you and invite
Sam: you to join the curmudgeon's corner slack. We always say that's at $2 a month.
Sam: At $5 a month, it's everything that I've already mentioned, plus we ring the bell.
Sam: At $10 a month, it's everything I've mentioned previously, plus a postcard signed by the hosts.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Okay. So, by the way, we do have a new Patreon member, right?
Sam: Yeah, we have several. So let me go through this.
Ivan: We have several. Okay. So wait, wait. I got the bill ready. Hold on.
Sam: You got the bill. I'm going to go through the whole list and we'll give each
Sam: person everything they deserve. I have just a minute.
Ivan: I'm going to give these bastards everything they deserve.
Sam: Exactly. No, at $20 a month, that's when you get a mug.
Sam: And then nobody has ever done this. But at the $50 a month level,
Sam: we invite you to record a 30 to 90 second audio clip that we will play on the
Sam: show, subject to our censorship,
Sam: if you do something like we don't.
Ivan: I mean, I don't know, like a Nazi salute, basically. I mean,
Ivan: because otherwise, yeah.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. And so those are the tiers that we have right now.
Sam: And so here is the list. So first of all, oh, and by the way,
Sam: several people out there have mugs who are not patrons because I also,
Sam: for the last few years, I didn't do this at the very beginning of the show.
Sam: We didn't even have Patreon. We didn't have mugs. We didn't have anything.
Sam: But for the last few years, if somebody has guest hosted on the show, I've also given them.
Ivan: They got, right.
Sam: Or if we interview them on the show, like either way, they get a mug as a prize for doing that.
Sam: So Pete, for instance, already had a mug.
Sam: Yes, you can bell Pete, sure. But Pete mentioned that the mug is staring at
Sam: him and he feels guilty for not having contributed to us.
Sam: But also, he doesn't like Patreon.
Sam: So he instead wanted to know if there was another way to give us money.
Sam: And what I did was point him at the fact that Election Graphs has a tip jar
Sam: that's just based on PayPal and is a one-time only thing.
Sam: It's not a recurring thing. because for election graphs, I didn't feel right
Sam: doing recurring because the site's only active like a couple of years and then
Sam: it's dormant a couple of years and blah, blah.
Sam: I'd have to turn things on and off and it would be stupid. Anyway, I'm not sure.
Sam: So he donated through PayPal. So thank you very much.
Sam: And since it's not a monthly number, it's hard to determine exactly what he deserves here.
Sam: But mentioning him for sure, Yvonne has done the bell. I will do some bell too.
Sam: There we go. Bells from both of us.
Ivan: Bells!
Sam: I figure, Yvonne, that Pete also deserves a card.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: All right. You know, this will be, I still have this.
Sam: This has sat on a shelf for years and years and years, and we have never sent one.
Sam: But we have curmudgeons corner postcards.
Ivan: As a matter of fact, oh, you got the postcards, not the business cards.
Sam: Not the business cards.
Ivan: A postcard. Okay. Send it. Send it. Send it.
Sam: So what I was going to do, actually, Vaughn, and the next person on the list
Sam: gets this too is i was going to sign it then mail them to you and then you can
Sam: mail them to the people okay all right and then so we can both sign them and we can i.
Ivan: I like this plan okay yeah yeah.
Sam: Yeah sure so i i will try to do this soon i'm putting it on my desk so i don't
Sam: forget so anyway pete thank you for your contribution yes bells.
Ivan: Bells are ringing.
Sam: And we'll get you a card and then greg increased his his level,
Sam: i'm like trying to hit my bell and missing there we go and so at his new level
Sam: he also gets a bell and a card so there we go and we'll send the card for you
Sam: too bob increased his level No, no, sorry.
Sam: Yeah, I put this in the wrong thing.
Sam: Bob, at his new level, gets just a mention and a bell. No card sword.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Bob, no card. I know you're broken up about this.
Ivan: Yeah, I know. He's right down, my God. He's going to tear down one of the rooms
Ivan: in his new house, like right now, because of this. Yes.
Sam: Okay, now next, Ed has joined for the first time. Ah!
Sam: Ed actually already has a mug for two reasons. One.
Ivan: He's co-hosted.
Sam: Well, he hosted. He has hosted. So he has a mug from that.
Sam: But also his son-in-law, John, at one point also contributed to our Patreon,
Sam: but asked that his mug be sent to Ed.
Ivan: Ah, okay. Okay.
Sam: But Ed, his current level gets a mention and a bell.
Sam: Yeah. But he has said, he told us on the curmudgeon's corner slack that his wife has stolen his mug.
Sam: And he would like a mug of his own.
Ivan: Oh!
Sam: And also, specifically, he requested that we give him a version of the mug similar
Sam: to the I Hate Curmudgeon's Corner mug that we once gave my son Alex.
Ivan: I like this idea. It's great. Good, good. Yes. Yes, yes.
Sam: So I will try to make that happen. I believe Alex has said that I should not
Sam: send one that's actually identical
Sam: to his mug. because that was a unique one-off, but I will do something.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: I'll do something along those lines. And then we have Nick also is a brand new member.
Sam: And I mentioned, you know, you gave him extra. At his level,
Sam: he's only supposed to be mentioned. No bell.
Sam: You know, but Nick, I will bell you too.
Ivan: There you go. Yes, yes, we're getting bell, bell, bell, bell, bell.
Sam: You know, Nick actually, to get back to what I mentioned last week about like
Sam: email being a slog, Nick actually joined back in August and I didn't notice
Sam: until I went looking at Patreon to find out all this information today.
Sam: So I apologize, Nick, for not noticing for months and months and months that
Sam: we had a new patron because I just have not slogged through the email to find that.
Sam: And they did send an email telling me about you, but I didn't notice until now. So I feel bad.
Sam: Anyway, Nick has, we've mentioned Nick and he has been invited to the Comendance Core Slack.
Sam: And then finally, someone else did something that I didn't even know was possible.
Sam: They joined our Patreon, but without any donation at all. They left it at a zero cash level.
Sam: And that would be my mom who joined in August.
Sam: Alright but okay but I'll still mention her I'll still mention her in theory
Sam: according to the levels we set up I'll get one ring I'll.
Ivan: Get you one.
Sam: There you go according to our Patreon levels at one dollar you're only supposed
Sam: to be mentioned and at zero nothing but you know hey it's my mom it's your mom
Sam: here's the bell here I'll.
Ivan: Do one ping.
Sam: Okay there you go And that, I believe, is it.
Sam: If anybody out there has actually increased their Patreon or joined for the
Sam: first time that I did not notice, please let me know. This also changes my joke.
Sam: For years, I've said I make 15 bucks a month off the Patreon.
Sam: We are now up to $26.80 a month.
Sam: And of course that split between yvonne and i technically although i've i've
Sam: stopped keeping track i i i should start again but i apologize yvonne that's
Sam: okay we got the uh i mean we are.
Ivan: Incurring a few more expenses but.
Sam: The reality is we are spending more than 26 and 80 cents a month on the podcast anyway.
Sam: So whatever, but you know, Hey, that's it.
Sam: And if anybody does want to join it, that $50 a month level or higher to get
Sam: an audio clip on the show, you know, feel free, you know?
Sam: Okay. And that is more than enough of that.
Sam: We will now take a break and which, which break am I supposed to play?
Sam: I have my little notes here. Break 8!
Sam: Which is this one. Okay, we're going to take a break and we will be back and
Sam: then we'll start talking the actual news. Back after this.
Ivan: News!
Sam: News.
Ivan: News!
Ivan: Alex and the.
Sam: Okay, we are back.
Ivan: So I'm going to, I'm going to, by the way, I think You were talking about the
Ivan: domains just before we go into the heavy subjects.
Ivan: I think I'm going to buy the domain. I hate Alex Emzala.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: I'm going to link it to that.
Sam: There you go. I hate AlexEmzala.com. Excellent.
Sam: I've actually been buying more domains lately because
Sam: I've had a few ideas for things I want to do and
Sam: i've bought domains for them none of them
Sam: are ready to like launch or do anything i mean we've met i
Sam: mentioned on the show this apple fnaf game that alec
Sam: oh yeah yeah yeah so i bought i bought a domain for that there's nothing there
Sam: yet like it's it's just the hosting company's placeholder i have there's nothing
Sam: there at all but like i have that i have another project that I've just started
Sam: working on that I bought a domain for.
Sam: I've got some placeholder text up there, but I'm not ready to share quite yet. You know, so...
Sam: Anyway, I've been like at this point, there's some I got for my wife.
Sam: I've I've bought like some some name domains for like, you know,
Sam: for my daughter and myself that aren't used for anything yet as well.
Sam: I don't know. Whenever I've thought of something, I've been like,
Sam: OK, I'll go. It's 10 bucks a year.
Sam: I can pay 10 bucks a year for random idea domain.
Sam: And if I never do anything with it. Oh, well, if I do something with it.
Ivan: Yeah. 10 bucks a year is fine. I mean, you know, if you were telling me it's
Ivan: like, you know, you know, a lot more than that, then yeah, no,
Ivan: but 10 bucks a year. Yeah, whatever. I mean, you know, who knows?
Ivan: Maybe you pick the domain that's the jackpot.
Sam: Yeah, exactly. Now, and there are two ways to go jackpot, right?
Sam: One is that you actually do something with the domain yourself and the other.
Ivan: Somebody needs it.
Sam: Somebody needs it.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was thinking. Yeah.
Sam: Yeah. And it's like, no, I had it first. Pay me $8 billion and I'll give it to you.
Ivan: I love that number. Eight billion. Yes. Very, very good and specific. Yes.
Sam: Yes. So, you know, at some point I should go through and at least put a placeholder
Sam: page on every domain I have.
Sam: But I haven't done that. So.
Ivan: No.
Sam: Okay, Yvonne. All right. News. You go first. Obviously, this was,
Sam: as I said at the beginning.
Ivan: I mean. yeah i think the thing is that there's a lot of things in here.
Sam: And uh i don't know if each one wait
Sam: this is exactly the point like
Sam: this is this is this whole
Sam: shock and awe thing that there is
Sam: and and this was a a feature of
Sam: the first trump administration first that there's
Sam: so much random them shit every single
Sam: day practically that it's impossible to
Sam: keep track of it all and it all sort of washes over you this is
Sam: steve bannon's flood the zone of shit with shit but
Sam: and in this case some of it is just verbal posturing and some of it now is actual
Sam: executive orders and actual things happening and blah blah blah and it's all
Sam: mixed together but there's so many things any one of which you could potentially
Sam: get outraged about but there's so much what the thing is.
Ivan: That that's what they're trying to do right i mean they're trying to get us
Ivan: to be just totally outraged that that is the that is the point of this you know so.
Sam: Well but which is on the one hand they want you the flip side they want you
Sam: outraged and bubbling and incoherent and oh, look at there being evil.
Sam: But the opposite of that is if you just ignore it and be like,
Sam: oh, whatever, then you're just letting the bad stuff happen.
Ivan: Like letting the butt stuff happen like letting it happen
Ivan: like that like we have any choice right but exactly because
Ivan: there you know because there are things that stuff can be done about there are
Ivan: things that stuff can't be done can't you can't okay so like you know for example
Ivan: this whole thing with the border and a whole bunch of the stuff that he's announced
Ivan: i mean like he shut down CBP1,
Ivan: the app that was put in place for asylum applications,
Ivan: which, by the way, just only makes this entire thing harder.
Ivan: This is the thing about this. These are counterproductive.
Sam: It was actually taking an illegal motive, like people crossing the border without
Sam: authorization and then applying for asylum, which actually technically is legal, actually.
Sam: I should correct myself like what applying for asylum is legal in that.
Ivan: Sense correct you get to the border post and and you apply and you apply for asylum yeah but.
Sam: In this case with the app it was
Sam: completely like regularizing it making it fully 100 like legal you would.
Ivan: Show up at a border crossing.
Sam: With an appointment.
Ivan: Exactly instead of like you know it made it that it actually stopped reduce
Ivan: the number of illegal border crossings okay right by by giving people an avenue
Ivan: to not have to do that and many of those were rejected supporting.
Sam: A legal mechanism of immigration to be clear asylum is legal.
Ivan: Exactly and many of those wired by international law yeah and and many of those
Ivan: were rejected and right people were sent back it's not like it was some automatic
Ivan: thing It just gave them a process to do that.
Ivan: So going and doing that is just, you know, idiotic.
Ivan: It really actually, but well, idiotic from the standpoint of you want to tackle
Ivan: the immigration problem.
Ivan: Because the reality is that as everything that these guys do.
Ivan: It's all straw man. Most of it. I mean, 90% of it, they make up straw man to attack.
Ivan: Or they claim victory when even they haven't done anything.
Ivan: So it's like, first thing this week, ah, the deportation flights are finally starting.
Ivan: The Biden administration has been doing deportation flights.
Ivan: And not just that they've been doing it. They amped up that number over the last few years.
Ivan: And they're claiming, oh, you see, now we started them.
Ivan: So it's claiming victory for something that already happened,
Ivan: which is standard operating procedure.
Ivan: I mean, it's totally what we expect from these guys, which is why, I don't know, man.
Ivan: And, I mean, so much of this stuff is, is there stuff that is really hurting
Ivan: people? Of course there is.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: You know, I mean, you had this entire thing where all these career people in
Ivan: government all of a sudden just got fired.
Sam: Yeah. High-level career people who are, you know, I'm sure low-level career
Sam: people are getting fired too.
Sam: But they the one was they they are dismissing all of the anybody involved in
Sam: DEI in any way, shape or form is being dismissed, but also a variety of high
Sam: level people at various organizations.
Sam: And in last night, a whole bunch of inspector generals.
Ivan: And by the way, a lot of those are going to wind up in the courts,
Ivan: you know, and by the way, they'll probably lose, which is the other thing,
Ivan: you know. But he wants to do it anyway, because that's the impact that he wants to do.
Sam: Well, there are a lot of things, and some of these we may talk about in more
Sam: detail, some of them we won't.
Sam: But the other is the birthright citizenship executive order,
Sam: which went to court and was suspended instantaneously.
Sam: But that was the expectation.
Sam: They want to get that out into discussion. They want to force the legal issue.
Sam: They want to get it to SCOTUS.
Sam: You know, so it's not like they expected that to actually stick immediately.
Sam: In many cases, they are they want the lawsuit.
Ivan: Yeah, so I mean, the thing is that.
Ivan: Well, let's talk about why people voted for him, right? Okay.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: How's the price of eggs doing, Sam?
Sam: I've heard it's up.
Ivan: Yes, it's way up. As a matter of fact, it's at a record.
Sam: Well, and I've heard that part of this was...
Ivan: Bird flu.
Sam: Bird flu. But also, by the way, all bulletins from CDC have been stopped.
Sam: So we don't know anything new about bird flu, other than it was growing rapidly.
Sam: As of the last week of the Biden presidency.
Ivan: Well, if you don't track it.
Sam: You know, we have no idea.
Ivan: It's not happening. If you don't track it, it's not happening. Right. So, so yeah.
Ivan: So you've got that. I mean, it's like, you know, look, he declassified the JFK assassination files.
Sam: Well, he made an order to do so. The agency in charge has some amount of time
Sam: to come up with a plan and then to do it.
Sam: But, and by the way, This is the remaining like small portion,
Sam: like 97%, I believe is the number of these files were already released in the past.
Sam: There's a little tiny one or two, 3% that were still being held back.
Sam: So he'll be releasing the remainder of those.
Ivan: You know, and by the way.
Sam: Judging, judging from previous releases, that isn't so much bombshell new revelations
Sam: about those assassinations that's in those three.
Sam: Well, we don't know what's in the 3%, obviously. But from previous releases,
Sam: it hasn't been big new revelations.
Sam: It's just been private citizens whose names were redacted have died.
Sam: And so now it can be released without the redaction.
Ivan: Yeah, but it's just, I don't know, man.
Ivan: Look, what do we gain right now by...
Ivan: Going through a lot of this look these guys are already
Ivan: starting to fight against each
Ivan: other um i mean in in like open warfare you know doge already started as as
Ivan: quickly as doge came together doge is hemorrhaging people as quickly as it got
Ivan: put together all right from.
Sam: Recent reporting in the last few days reducing the scope of what it's looking at as well.
Ivan: Right. Because already, you know, it's just, you know, they basically got told
Ivan: you, you fuckers are idiots.
Ivan: You can't do what the fuck you're doing. You're out of your minds.
Ivan: I honestly look, what is the, if all of this high level noise that does impact
Ivan: certain individuals, a number of people badly, it's like the whole trans thing, right?
Ivan: Look, these people have made Trans people, the evil scourge of the earth.
Ivan: They're banning, they want to ban them as being athletes. And then,
Ivan: you know, there was a recent data that's showing, okay, great.
Ivan: How many athletes are we talking about in the NCAA that among the thousands,
Ivan: tens of thousands that are, that are really impacted by all of this horse shit
Ivan: they're talking about? You want to know the number? Take a guess.
Sam: I forget. It's like, it's like 40 or something out of the entire tens of thousands.
Ivan: 10. 10. 10.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: 10. They've literally, you know, taken to creating this entire fucking straw
Ivan: man of vilifying this evil scourge for ten fucking people!
Sam: But also, like you mentioned, like things they're trying to do,
Sam: they're already taking action.
Ivan: But they're using, my point is that they're using this in order to,
Ivan: what is it that they really want to do?
Ivan: Look, the Republicans are, this is our moment for more tax cuts.
Ivan: This is our moment to, to really, you know, cut Medicaid.
Ivan: This is our moment to really, you know, you know, eliminate all this regulation that we hate. Okay.
Ivan: You know, this is, this is what they're really, you know, what,
Ivan: what, what is the, what is really the, the, the main crux of what we're trying
Ivan: to do and using the smokescreen at the top for this.
Ivan: I'm going to tell you, you know, one thing about immigration and all the the
Ivan: shit that they're doing for show,
Ivan: because, you know, we already had this idiotic fight already about this where
Ivan: a couple of weeks ago that has started a big crack between Elon Musk and his
Ivan: ilk and the the the other, you know, the MAGA people.
Ivan: I mean, Steve Bannon has basically said that, you know, fuck Elon Musk,
Ivan: because Elon Musk is pro-immigration.
Ivan: And, you know, he has basically said, you know, fuck you.
Ivan: And so because, you know, now he's come out that he's pro-immigration.
Ivan: And by the way, I guarantee you one thing, that Elon Musk will convince Trump
Ivan: not to cut anything related to his companies that will hurt him.
Ivan: Specifically, all these, you know, all these incentives for electric cars.
Ivan: This is just, you know, there is, I mean, no way in all hell that that guy will
Ivan: go and torpedo his fucking biggest investment by doing that.
Sam: Well, specifically on that, Elon himself has been one of the biggest advocates
Sam: for getting rid of the subsidies.
Ivan: Yeah, that's right. But the reality is that there is, again,
Ivan: there is the, hey, I am for, you know, controlling the border and getting rid
Ivan: of all these fucking people.
Ivan: Then when you ask them, well, but not my immigrants.
Ivan: So this is the whole thing where he's been talking about, yeah,
Ivan: yeah, yeah, fuck the incentives, fuck the incentives, rah, rah, rah, until he's CFO.
Ivan: I'm sure his CFOs are already grabbed by the ear and said, listen,
Ivan: motherfucker, we're not, we can't afford, you know, we're, we're spending,
Ivan: we have capital outlays next year of $15 billion.
Ivan: Okay. All right. We, our cashflow is $15 billion. You can't take 10 billion
Ivan: out of our cashflow. You lunatic.
Sam: Yes. What, what, what he's of course said is that it will hurt the other car companies more. So.
Ivan: No, it won't. That's the problem. No, it won't.
Ivan: Anyway that's I'm just saying no that's what he says but this is but again Sam
Ivan: what they say versus what they do do okay fuck the immigrants blah blah blah
Ivan: fuck the immigrants no no no don't touch my immigrants,
Ivan: I mean Trump himself oh yeah we got all these immigrants at my clubs no we're not getting rid of those,
Ivan: right Jesus Christ and by the way I keep being just stunned by the lack of so many people still at,
Ivan: at national levels that still don't get that the winning strategy that they
Ivan: really, really had. It's all this homophobia.
Ivan: That was the number one thing that they did.
Ivan: It really staggers me. By the way, why do you think they keep saying it?
Ivan: Why do you think you got people arguing about bathrooms in the Capitol?
Ivan: All of this shit.
Sam: Because unfortunately it works.
Ivan: Yes well i right they know
Ivan: it works and how many how many people that are liberal that are blind to the
Ivan: fucking fact because because okay you're like thinking well it's inconceivable
Ivan: it could be it could be that no it is you idiots number one thing that cuts across every group,
Ivan: is that transphobia?
Sam: Number one. The key elements were that and general homophobia as well.
Sam: Trans specifically, but general homophobia.
Sam: And then the anti-immigration stuff was cutting across, and then finally the thing is.
Ivan: The thing is that.
Sam: One cuts The combination is important of those three things because each of
Sam: them get slightly different slices of beef.
Ivan: But just anti-immigrant wouldn't have done it, is my point.
Ivan: And by the way, you could have done it just anti-gay and transphobia and not
Ivan: anti-immigrant, and that would have done it too.
Ivan: Does that add to it? Yes.
Sam: But I'm telling you right now. I'm not sure. I don't think any one of those things will work.
Ivan: I'm going to tell you. I'm going to tell you. Let me tell you why.
Ivan: No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no.
Ivan: Let me tell you why. Because the anti-immigrant thing has been there,
Ivan: and that had never peeled off as many Hispanics as they did this time.
Ivan: And the way that they got them was with that. Okay?
Ivan: And that's what people don't get. Why did Hispanic support rise so much from the other times?
Ivan: Because the anti-immigrant stuff was there. But the anti-immigrant stuff maybe
Ivan: got you 20%, 30%, you know, of that. Didn't get you 45%. Okay?
Ivan: It's, you know, that's the thing. It's that huge gain is all based on that.
Ivan: And when people finally get their head out of their ass about it,
Ivan: maybe they'll understand why the fuck that was so effective.
Sam: Well, I mean, I don't know that this is fruitful,
Sam: but I think we're in the same situation as 2016, where it was so damn close
Sam: in the end that any one of dozens of factors could have made it go the other way. And I think.
Ivan: But it's just that was a decisive one. You know, the thing is that I have been
Ivan: spending so much time talking to people recently, but I've been traveling that
Ivan: much and seeing the entire attitude about this around.
Ivan: And I realize how much people like really missed how that issue was so potent to people.
Ivan: When I keep hearing it mentioned over and over again.
Sam: Like when you buy Hispanics. Okay. Buy Hispanics.
Sam: I hear you buy Hispanics. When you look at the overall polling across everybody,
Sam: it was one of the top three, but it wasn't the overwhelming one.
Ivan: But Sam, it goes back to, you know what, the Republicans for...
Ivan: Going back to H.W. Bush, have been so good at finding what the issue is that
Ivan: people, maybe they won't admit, but that they do have a prejudice against.
Ivan: Okay. And maybe, you know, and I'm not saying that not all of them will admit,
Ivan: but a significant portion of them, they know that underlying,
Ivan: even if they say, oh, yeah, we're for this, right?
Sam: Even if they say it's eggs.
Ivan: Exactly. That's right. that that will, that underneath gets them.
Ivan: It's the whole, you know, how they used that rate, that, that,
Ivan: the racism. Okay. All right.
Ivan: I guess black specifically that, because that was the primary driver that,
Ivan: that the Republicans used to use for an extremely long time.
Ivan: Okay. To get the white vote to be so solid for them. Okay.
Ivan: It's that underlying racism. Okay. All right.
Ivan: That is there and they know that people would sit at a dinner table and whatever
Ivan: and they wouldn't admit it but these people knew that that was latent and it's
Ivan: the same thing with this these guys have been the masters at exploiting latent prejudice,
Ivan: this is their fucking winning card every time and we keep underestimating it.
Sam: Well and underestimating the amount of that that exists in society too.
Ivan: Correct yes we keep that's exactly
Ivan: we keep underestimating how much there is in society nah
Ivan: come on how many people really hate all the gay trans people a lot more than
Ivan: we that we think damn it that's the answer by the way african-americans kept
Ivan: telling this to us for 30 40 for 30 years they kept telling this to us for 30 fucking years, okay?
Ivan: And we were like, nah, come on. It can't be that bad for, you know,
Ivan: I'll say I stopped saying that a long time ago.
Ivan: But for a period of time, I was
Ivan: like, oh, come on. We've made a lot of progress. It's not that bad still.
Ivan: I mean, it's we've gotten better. It's still not. It's not that bad. No, no, come on.
Ivan: And I'm like, I realized, no, they're fucking right. 100% right.
Ivan: Well, listen, the DEI shit.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: The fucking DEI shit, okay? I mean, that's another one that's like,
Ivan: you know, that's another, you know, racial card right there.
Ivan: You know, you can buy the transphobia, the DEI, the bot.
Ivan: I mean, it's all one fucking hate package.
Ivan: You know, let me tell you.
Ivan: I don't know what the right answer to that, but my point about this,
Ivan: going back to what's been going on this week, is that this is where they're focused on.
Ivan: This is what they're focused on, and they've been focused on at the high level, at fanning that flame.
Ivan: Well, underneath, you've got these guys in Congress that are planning on these
Ivan: massive regulatory cutbacks and tax hikes.
Ivan: Trump is saying that he declared an energy emergency, which sounds to me also
Ivan: like he also declared infrastructure weak many times in the past.
Ivan: I'm not sure what energy emergency he is talking about because production for energy in the U.S.
Ivan: Is at an all-time high of all sorts.
Sam: Wait, wait, wait. I want to answer that question because he actually specifically
Sam: tied that to his AI initiative as well.
Sam: Because he said in order to build out all the AI stuff he wants to build and support- No.
Ivan: You need more energy.
Sam: You need more energy. You need like 50% more energy than the all-time highs
Sam: we have right now. So it's not that we're not at an all-time high.
Sam: It's that to build out all of this AI stuff, we need to like double the energy.
Ivan: That's true. And they're going to go to Texas. And here's the one thing.
Ivan: In Texas, the number one fastest growing energy has been clean energy.
Ivan: Wind, solar, anything that is clean energy. You want to know why?
Sam: But wait, isn't he outlawing that? Didn't he say no more windmills?
Sam: I don't think there was an executive order.
Ivan: I don't think he can outlaw windmills. However, the reason is it doesn't matter about outlawing it.
Ivan: It's cheaper is the whole point.
Ivan: That's the reason. Listen, Texas is a deregulated energy market,
Ivan: and all the clean energy sources are cheaper than all the other ones,
Ivan: which is why they had been on a tear growing like crazy.
Ivan: And then the Texas government all of a sudden realized, oh, shit,
Ivan: they're growing so fast. Maybe we need to stop them.
Ivan: Because, and everybody's like, but wait, it's meeting our energy needs and it's
Ivan: cheaper. What the fuck is your problem?
Sam: So wait, Yvonne, you've got this wrong.
Ivan: Okay, I got this wrong.
Sam: The purpose of energy policy is not cheap energy for the population to support things.
Sam: It is to make sure the stock prices of the oil companies and other fossil fuel companies go up.
Ivan: This is where i get confused it has nothing to do with energy with actual energy it has everything to.
Sam: Do with exxon.
Ivan: That's this is where i always get confused i know i i always i i lose the plot
Ivan: i get i got lost yeah okay well that that explains that okay yes now.
Sam: Of course all these companies could have pivoted to just being general energy
Sam: companies decades ago and they decided.
Ivan: Not to. A number of them are to a certain extent.
Sam: To a certain degree. There was apparently in the 1980s like several of the big
Sam: ones made big moves in that direction
Sam: and then decided it wasn't cost effective and way curtailed that.
Ivan: But some are now, and even like one of the things I was just seeing like right
Ivan: now that there is this effort in Europe more specifically about e-fuels which are okay, these are,
Ivan: e-fuels is these are basically something that is a clean liquid fuel to replace gasoline.
Sam: Cleaner. As long as it's carbon-based, it's not clean.
Ivan: It's not totally carbon-based. It basically,
Ivan: it's, okay, so are made by, e-fuels are made by combining renewable electricity,
Ivan: water, and carbon when electricity is sourced from excess renewable energy,
Ivan: and the carbon comes from waste CO2.
Ivan: So it is something that definitely reduces the carbon output of existing gasoline-burning vehicles by a lot.
Ivan: Okay, it's not zero emissions.
Ivan: But it definitely is something that very quickly, if you were able to scale doing those.
Ivan: And there are a number of European companies that are pushing on this, like right now.
Ivan: And also because you can use it to replace, like, in one of the places where
Ivan: you have the bigger problems, it's just like airplanes and that kind of stuff.
Ivan: You know, where if you're able to do that, then you can get clean energy up there.
Ivan: But my whole point is, going back to this stupid administration and what the
Ivan: fuck they're doing, the whole point is that they, you know...
Ivan: They keep doing this entire smokescreen of all this shit like over there in
Ivan: order to be able to help their big corporate donors and themselves to make money.
Ivan: Did you buy that Trump coin?
Sam: I have not bought the Trump coin.
Ivan: What about the Melania coin?
Sam: I suck. I have not. And I didn't buy DJT either.
Sam: I'm just not. i i have i have not properly playing this administration monetarily.
Ivan: Well well by the way yeah well good news
Ivan: is that you're not properly played as administration because apparently so
Ivan: like the trump coin came out and then the melania coin
Ivan: came out and then immediately after the the melania
Ivan: coin came out the trump coin dropped like 80 percent people
Ivan: lost about 40 billion dollars apparently but
Ivan: you know the people left caught holding the bag basically just just you know
Ivan: they did the traditional pump and dump they got they got caught holding the
Ivan: bag and now a whole bunch of crypto people are pissed off at at trump because
Ivan: because they each has basically screwed them,
Ivan: i would never do that what are
Ivan: you talking about i i know i know i know i it must be it must you know,
Ivan: it can't be true now. I know.
Ivan: So I just think that this week has been just this entire thing where also Trump
Ivan: is basking in the number one thing that he wanted, which is attention.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Now he's got the world's attention.
Sam: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.
Ivan: Now it's like, I mean...
Ivan: He has the world's attention. Everything that he says moves markets.
Sam: I was watching last night. I watched the most recent Frontline,
Sam: which came out on the 21st, the day after the inauguration.
Sam: And it was about Donald Trump's comeback.
Sam: So it basically reviewed Donald Trump's entire life, but with emphasizing all
Sam: of the times he's come back from failure.
Sam: The most recent of which was the most recent election. And one of the things
Sam: that one of his former aides, I forget which one was talking about,
Sam: or no, maybe it was one of the Fox news people, whatever.
Sam: Somebody was talking about exactly what you just said about it is all about dominating attention.
Sam: And like with everything else
Sam: going on i mean he wants to be a winner he can't
Sam: conceive of himself as a loser but he absolutely positively
Sam: wants to dominate attention at all times and his whole thing for the first administration
Sam: which he is reprising from the second administration is he runs it as a tv show
Sam: it is all about like what is the plot of today's episode and how are we going to get attention today?
Sam: It is not about what are we going to achieve?
Sam: It is not about governing. It is about how can we drive the media cycle this
Sam: day, this week, this whatever.
Sam: And, you know, and it is all about driving that attention.
Sam: And in the meantime, by the way, you know, a lot of things do happen.
Sam: I mean, we talked about this before, how often the flashy thing that's getting
Sam: all the attention isn't necessarily the most impactful thing. Thank you.
Sam: You know, so, you know, he will, we will have Elon giving a hit.
Ivan: Well, like the judges. Look, the judges. Yeah.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: The last time around. Very clear. That wasn't the one thing that he was talking
Ivan: about all the time. But damn it, you know what?
Ivan: The damage that, that the long-term,
Ivan: you know, implications that all those judges that they ram through.
Sam: Yeah. Not just SOTUS, but at all levels.
Ivan: At all levels. At all levels. Yeah. I mean, that's a clear example right there.
Sam: Yeah, absolutely. And so even now in this week, I was going to say we have people
Sam: all going crazy about Elon giving the Nazi salute.
Sam: And I mean, my God, Elon gave the Nazi salute.
Sam: But does that actually have an impact on anything directly? No.
Ivan: No, you know, it just continues to reduce Musk's popularity,
Ivan: which probably Trump is happy because I'm sure he hates that Trump,
Ivan: that Musk getting more attention than him.
Sam: Well, and like you said, I was just using that as one example,
Sam: but there's also like, oh,
Sam: we're sending people on the deportation flights again, but that's actually not
Sam: a change yet at this point, but he's going for the attention of it.
Sam: Meanwhile some of the all of these firings
Sam: up and down the federal government that has
Sam: gotten some attention but that's probably more impactful in the long run because
Sam: he is systematic and by the way all of this stuff despite all the denials like
Sam: something like 60 70 percent of what we've seen in this first week is straight
Sam: out of project 2025 you know it was laid out in detail there so So all of the like, oh,
Sam: that wasn't Donald Trump. There's nothing to do. Whatever. Fuck you.
Sam: Yeah. But the, the, the, the firings are all about decimating from top to bottom
Sam: in the federal government,
Sam: all of the institutional protections against misusing those institutions.
Sam: They've, he fired all the inspector generals yesterday or all but one or two.
Sam: And those specifically are watchdogs that are intended to be independent overview
Sam: to make sure agencies are doing what they're supposed to do in the way they're
Sam: supposed to do it. All those folks are gone, going to be replaced by loyalists.
Sam: Threw out a bunch of people at DOJ, career people, not political appointees
Sam: who were, like, for instance, I think he got rid of almost everybody at the
Sam: Civil Rights Department, you know, and halted all those prosecutions.
Sam: Et cetera, et cetera. And I just saw a quote. Where was this quote? Charlie Kirk.
Sam: This was actually a few days ago, but after inauguration.
Sam: Let this be a warning to any federal official that delays or doesn't listen
Sam: to the president's orders. It won't end well for you. Don't get cute.
Sam: Do your job and listen to orders. and this is you know now really do your job
Sam: actually like done correctly your job.
Ivan: Is counter to listening to orders.
Sam: Well yeah do your job actually involves pushing
Sam: back when the orders are back right correct yeah exactly
Sam: you know but that's not that's not the vision here
Sam: the vision here is loyalty and
Sam: pure 100 obey immediately do what you're told or else and and that that's The
Sam: purges that are happening are to make sure the entire federal government is
Sam: aligned from top to bottom from day one to implement the MAGA agenda without complaint,
Sam: even for the illegal things.
Sam: So, for instance, just the firing of the attorney generals, by the way,
Sam: and this is where the attorney inspector generals, which, Yvonne,
Sam: you mentioned there are going to be lawsuits on a lot of these.
Sam: Well, apparently, the law actually required 30-day notice to get rid of these people.
Ivan: That's exactly right. Two Congress, yes.
Sam: There was no notice given. So that act of firing itself was probably- Was illegal.
Sam: But who's going to do anything about it? Nobody.
Sam: There's nobody in any sort of...
Ivan: Well, I mean, yeah, it's very difficult to...
Sam: There will be lawsuits, like you said. There'll be lawsuits on this.
Ivan: But there is nothing to do immediately that it's going to fix it.
Sam: Well, but even like you said, though, the courts are full of Trump sympathizers
Sam: at this point, including SCOTUS.
Sam: Now, sometimes they will push back anyway.
Ivan: But listen...
Sam: But a lot of these things will go further than you think they would because of that.
Ivan: No, no, I agree with that. But the reality is that in many cases already in
Ivan: the past, even when things have been egregiously,
Ivan: across the law, for the most part, not in all cases, okay, the courts have for
Ivan: the most part sided on the part of the law, even like a lot of his appointees,
Ivan: which is to his chagrin, by the way. But I'll give you an example.
Sam: This particular one, the 30 days notice to Congress before you can fire something, fire somebody.
Sam: One of the things the current court seems to be you know have a majority for
Sam: is very strong executive powers that should not be limited by congress so a
Sam: law that says you have to notify congress is exactly the kind of thing that
Sam: i'd say there's at least a 50
Sam: chance that they're going to say is unconstitutional when it gets to them.
Ivan: I i hear it but but again the thing is I don't in many of these cases like this one for example,
Ivan: What the remedy that may be obtained is probably – it's not that these people
Ivan: are going to be instituted back.
Ivan: It's not that the administration is going to go to jail for it. It's none of that.
Ivan: Probably some civil – some payment to them.
Ivan: They'll get money for violation of the – because they were fired illegally, but that's about it.
Ivan: You're right in the sense that they're basically taking the attitude,
Ivan: which, by the way, in some cases, depending on what country.
Ivan: I've been in contractual situations where the penalty is worth it.
Ivan: What the fuck's the penalty?
Sam: The penalty is worth it.
Ivan: And I'm just like, fuck it, do it, whatever. We'll pay the ticket and get the fuck out of here.
Ivan: And that's the attitude that I think that they are taking right now,
Ivan: where in many of these cases.
Sam: We have specifically criticized the Democrats in some cases for not being aggressive like that.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: Do the thing and take it to court. Don't just say, oh, well,
Sam: this is unconstitutional.
Ivan: Oh, this is illegal, so we're not going to do it. And I'm like,
Ivan: at this point, like right now, we're at a point where you have to be more aggressive than that.
Sam: You have to fight.
Ivan: The other side, because the other side isn't playing by those rules.
Ivan: You can't be in a game where the other side is ignoring the rules completely
Ivan: and you trying to play by the rules completely.
Ivan: I'm not saying to be- Which.
Sam: By the way, just simply at the inaugural, there's a lot of criticism just for
Sam: Democrats going along and playing the game and being like, oh,
Sam: we'll do this. It is nice and civil.
Sam: We'll laugh and we'll shake their hands and we'll attend and blah,
Sam: blah, blah. and saying, you know, well, you spent months...
Ivan: To be fair, the lip reader read that Obama walked up to W, okay,
Ivan: and basically said, how do we stop this shit?
Ivan: And W just exploded laughing. I mean, because he's like...
Ivan: Because, how do we stop this shit? Look, listen, I'm okay with...
Ivan: Listen, I get about opposing doing whatever.
Ivan: But the problem is that that wasn't the moment.
Sam: Well, yeah, but.
Ivan: The moment was when we should have when Biden should have packed the court,
Ivan: fucked up, you know, fucked up, the whatchamacallit, the filibuster,
Ivan: filibuster, that kind of shit.
Ivan: But but also, but on the flip side, OK, look, in Biden's defense,
Ivan: I will say myself that I agreed with Biden's approach. I thought that maybe
Ivan: that would be the best way to get things back to some kind of normalcy.
Ivan: I'm going to say it. I thought that his approach, I agree with his approach.
Ivan: The fact that it didn't work now, I realize that, you know,
Ivan: I mean, we can't whatever we're doing right now has to be an all bets are off fucking.
Sam: Well, here's the thing.
Ivan: The thing is, is.
Sam: Is at the start of the Biden presidency, I was pushing for all bets are off.
Sam: I was like, make states, pack the court, do all this stuff right now,
Sam: kill the filibuster, do a whole bunch of stuff. But the problem was you were.
Ivan: But I wasn't.
Sam: No, I know. I know you weren't. But the problem was even for first of all, Biden did not.
Sam: The rest of the Democrats weren't there anyway.
Sam: Like there, he could not, you know, you had at least Manchin and Sinema,
Sam: but probably four or five more Democrats who didn't want to go along with any of that agenda anyway.
Sam: And so like, even if Biden had been pushing it, it would not have gone there.
Sam: But yeah, I feel like the moment for timidity and let's act like everything
Sam: is normal has long since passed.
Sam: And so Democrats need to be aggressive. So I'm, I am actually a little,
Sam: now, would I have attended the inauguration as Biden? Yes, I would have.
Sam: But, you know, I feel like there's a lot of the Democratic approach so far has
Sam: not, I mean, there's a question of what the hell they can do.
Ivan: No, right now, at this moment, there's not much you can do.
Ivan: But the approach going forward has to be a complete change of what the fuck the approach is.
Ivan: This has to be like, you know, this has, right now, bottom line,
Ivan: the approach has to be scorched earth. Fuck this shit. Okay.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: But not today. But I'm telling you, it's not today.
Ivan: And I'm going to tell you why. Because right now, you're going to go scorched
Ivan: earth. You're going to be exhausted by the time that you actually need to go
Ivan: scorched earth. So you can't do it like right now.
Ivan: You can't sustain scorched earth nonstop. Okay. All right. Unless you're a psychopath. Okay.
Ivan: And that's a problem. OK, because only the psychopaths can sustain that a long time.
Ivan: And actually, eventually they go and blow up, too. But speaking of blowing up.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Trump in California.
Ivan: The trees are loaded with water. They suck that water on the ground.
Ivan: It's called management of the floor.
Ivan: Also, Trump in California, apparently there's a big valve.
Sam: Yes, we know about the valve. Yes.
Ivan: There's a valve. Apparently there's a valve, Sam.
Sam: He's been talking about this valve and spigot for months, and it has not stopped.
Sam: He's still talking about it today.
Ivan: We need to open the valve. This is the whole problem.
Ivan: Do we go and drive around and find a valve maybe that's what we should do we
Ivan: should go out you know like one of those random trips we're going to take a
Ivan: car we're going to rent an SUV and we're going to go and try to find the California valve.
Sam: There we go yes let's find that.
Ivan: I mean let's find the California valve we're going to go drive it around we're
Ivan: going to be looking through places yeah we're going to go find a valve i.
Sam: Saw someone speculating that
Sam: the reason that donald trump thinks that there's a valve that will take.
Ivan: Stuff from like.
Sam: Oregon and go down to california is exactly because california is lower than oregon on a map.
Ivan: Yeah so gravity yes yes yes yeah yeah you know water flows only north to south.
Sam: There was, yes, speaking of that, there was another good article.
Sam: I shared this on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack. Let me find it real quick.
Sam: But of someone pointing out just the,
Sam: Not all the evil stuff, but all the stupid stuff that is also back now that we have Donald Trump.
Sam: I'm going to find this. Give me a second.
Ivan: Oh, it was. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the one about him just being an idiot.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hold on.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: Oh, here we go. It was an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
Sam: Trump Returns and So Does His Astounding Ignorance by Dana Milbank, posted on January 24th.
Sam: And it just goes through the list
Sam: of just absolutely moronic things that indicate he has no freaking idea.
Ivan: About anything.
Sam: About anything.
Ivan: Anything. Anything.
Ivan: Look, here is, listen, let me be straight up on this. Why he has succeeded.
Ivan: There is one thing that he has succeeded going back to the 70s and 80s.
Ivan: He is a good con man.
Sam: Yes. He has an instinctual notion of how to influence people in a way that he
Sam: wants. He will understand their weaknesses.
Sam: He will understand the things he cares about. Like you said before,
Sam: he will understand what prejudices you can work on.
Sam: All of this stuff to move things in a direction he wants.
Sam: Now, what that direction is that he wants is almost always his pocketbook. Yes.
Sam: Or otherwise, attention to him.
Ivan: Attention to him and money. Attention to him, money.
Sam: Yes. Yeah.
Ivan: That's it. Yeah.
Sam: You've solved Donald Trump. And –,
Sam: I think he does have direct antipathy and hatred for a few groups.
Ivan: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, oh, totally. Absolutely.
Ivan: Yes, he does have. He hates Puerto Ricans. I know that for sure.
Ivan: He said that. It's been documented many, many times.
Ivan: So that's why he wanted to sell us to Denmark, which I fucking look.
Ivan: I will say again, Denmark, look.
Sam: You're ready for that trade.
Ivan: Look, guys, I'm willing to make a deal.
Ivan: I'm willing to make a deal Believe me I will take,
Ivan: If we If Puerto Rico becomes part of the EU And we're in Denmark I'll probably move back to Puerto Rico,
Ivan: I'm not kidding Okay I will probably move back to Puerto Rico Very soon afterwards,
Ivan: You know It's because you're all about the Danish's,
Ivan: Yes I love the Danish's Actually those are good but I like their butter more
Ivan: ah okay look that lure pack let me tell you something that's some serious shit okay so,
Ivan: so yeah I mean it's yes as long as it feeds his prejudices get some attention
Ivan: and you know gets money in his pocket all aligned.
Sam: Okay let's do this this let's take another break real quick and then i do want to get into two specific,
Sam: trump actions and talk a little bit more about those and those are going to
Sam: be the january 6 pardons and the anti-dei moves across the federal government
Sam: and but yeah let's let's take a break and then we'll get into those and then
Sam: we'll wrap this sucker up so here is the break,
Sam: Okay, we are back. So let me start January 6th pardons. We haven't even mentioned them.
Sam: One of the things here is that.
Ivan: I mean, it's one of those things that I'm just like.
Sam: Well, yeah, I mean, every single thing on this list.
Sam: I mean, Trump has not done anything, not a single thing in this first week that
Sam: he is not completely telegraphed throughout the last four years.
Sam: Like he has said he would
Sam: do all of this kind of stuff on the january 6th
Sam: pardon specifically though up until the
Sam: day before the inauguration people in his orbit were saying we will be careful
Sam: we will look at each case individually we will do this we'll like vance was
Sam: on the sunday morning shows the day before the inauguration saying that of course
Sam: we wouldn't pardon the violent ones,
Sam: and okay so.
Ivan: So i mean.
Sam: I mean so by the way there's an abort part of the story is apparently they were
Sam: trying to go through case by case with donald trump and talk about this and
Sam: they were talking about they're doing the research and figuring out what was okay.
Ivan: Read can't read.
Sam: A comic book yes yes so here's they were they were having the meeting with Donald
Sam: Trump trying to decide who would get nothing, who would get a commutation,
Sam: who would get a pardon, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Trump got sick of this right away. And the direct quote is, fuck it, release them all.
Ivan: That makes total sense. You see, the thing is that instead of going one by one,
Ivan: if they really wanted to do that, they should have already said,
Ivan: okay, these are the violent ones, these are the violent ones, these would know.
Ivan: These, good, okay? Already haven't done it. And then he would have been like, okay, fine.
Ivan: But you want to go through him like one by one. I mean, you know,
Ivan: the guy that has the attention span of a fucking squirrel.
Sam: I think they weren't even actually at the point of going through one by one,
Sam: but just trying to tell him what would be involved in looking at all of the cases.
Ivan: You needed to have, one of the things that I have noticed with him that works
Ivan: is presenting him fair complete.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: You know, you already presented to him and it's like, look, this is what you
Ivan: asked. It's good. Whatever. Got done. Fuck it.
Sam: Right. And the thing here is, now he did commute a small number of them who
Sam: were mostly proud boys, definitely violent.
Sam: But there's a total of, I believe it was almost 1,600.
Sam: I think it was 1,582 or something like people out of this.
Sam: Of which like 600 were violent in some way shape or form and something like
Sam: 200 had inflicted serious injuries on police officers you know and and so all all you know and look,
Sam: And there are interviews with a bunch of these people as they're being released
Sam: that are, for the most part, completely unrepentant.
Sam: There's this one grandmother who made the news because she's like,
Sam: I don't want the pardon. I'm refusing the pardon because I'm guilty and I now
Sam: realize what I did was wrong and I deserve to be punished.
Ivan: Probably the rare, rare exception.
Sam: Yeah, this is one out of almost 1600. okay
Sam: and i don't know if that if if actually
Sam: like rejecting a pardon is even legally a thing like
Sam: you can say you don't want it all you want but it's it's
Sam: in legal force and it can't be undone you know
Sam: but in any case most of
Sam: these people completely under repentance saying they would do it again the the
Sam: q anon shaman or whoever he was the guy who was wearing the horns and the face
Sam: makeup and all whatever his quote is was like whoa i'm gonna go buy some guns you know so.
Ivan: Sounds i mean.
Sam: And and lots of lots of these people came
Sam: out essentially swearing their allegiance to donald
Sam: trump and saying they'd do it all over again the second he asked you
Sam: know um and they're ready to
Sam: fight there's a couple of them came out and said that it's now time for our
Sam: revenge and our vengeance and we need to be going after all of those people
Sam: who investigated us yeah so so i i don't know look maybe it'll come to nothing
Sam: but like these folks are dangerous oh.
Ivan: No these folks are individually dangerous i mean and i and i get that but also
Ivan: you know they're they're also aligned with the biggest blowhard in the history of mankind.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: And look, for, you know, I'm just like, you know, I mean, yeah, sure.
Ivan: Listen, a few of them already have managed to get themselves arrested again.
Sam: Oh, I know. It didn't take a, it didn't take a.
Ivan: It didn't take a, like, you know.
Sam: I heard of one. Is there more than one now?
Ivan: I heard of two that I recall right now. But come on, they haven't been out of
Ivan: 24 hours. You're already getting arrested.
Ivan: I mean, what the fuck? I mean.
Sam: And there's a lot of legal disentangling to be done.
Sam: So, for instance, there was one case I heard of who someone who.
Sam: Had gone to jail, was out, but had an ankle monitor, and then destroyed the
Sam: ankle monitor and went on the run for a couple of days, and then was caught
Sam: again, and got additional,
Sam: sentencing for trying to evade the sentence.
Sam: They're now in court trying to argue whether or not the additional sentence
Sam: from getting rid of the ankle monitor was also pardoned, or only their actual
Sam: activities on January 6th.
Ivan: Gotta love these people. I mean, you know.
Sam: You know.
Ivan: Nothing but the best people, Sam. Nothing but the best people.
Sam: Nothing but the best. But, you know.
Sam: Yeah. I was going to mention Officer Fanone, who has been on talking about how
Sam: him and his family are getting death threats.
Ivan: All the time is that the guy that said to go fuck that uh you would tell him
Ivan: to go fuck themselves on cnn live yes.
Sam: It was that was him.
Ivan: Great um but by the way i don't know they've been harassing his mom is there
Ivan: a way is there a place to donate money to to like get him like protection just
Ivan: gotta be somewhere because we we gotta promote that because these guys i'm sorry
Ivan: one thing that i that i am for is like there's a number of these people and
Ivan: they're i don't know somebody probably.
Sam: Is they're probably.
Ivan: There we gotta we we gotta like you know fuck Whatever the fuck one of these
Ivan: people need to be defended against these clowns, I'm like, I'm all for fucking
Ivan: like, you know, making sure that they need to get whatever the fuck help they need.
Ivan: Well, because I'm going to let these assholes let them be intimidated.
Sam: Fanon was mentioning in an interview that after the pardons,
Sam: because of the volume of death threats against him and his family,
Sam: him, his ex-wife, his children, his mother, all getting threats,
Sam: all getting physically harassed, like people showing up at his mom's house and
Sam: throwing shit at her, literally, threw a bag of shit at her, this kind of stuff.
Sam: And things are more violent than that, two death threats all the time.
Sam: He went to try to go to court immediately after the pardons to get like restraining
Sam: orders or whatever put in place and was basically told that it would be a long, complex process.
Sam: He would have to individually serve notice to every specific person he was worried
Sam: about and that even then it would only be a limited time frame.
Sam: Like that was covered and then they'd be free again.
Sam: And, and so he's like, what do I do? What do I do?
Sam: You know, and he's not the only one, obviously.
Sam: And he, and in his case, like this, this is general, by the way,
Sam: like absolutely anybody on the anti-Trump side who was prominent,
Sam: especially people who testified in front of the January 6th committee.
Sam: This has been true of their lives ever since
Sam: they testified but in the
Sam: case of finone and others he specifically got like
Sam: he was beaten on the day of he was
Sam: tased he had a heart attack on the scene he had traumatic brain injury on the
Sam: scene all this kind of stuff some of the people released are the specific people
Sam: who did that to him you know and you know so anyway like But again,
Sam: I have heard multiple people express surprise that were like,
Sam: well, we expected him to pardon people, but we thought that he was going to
Sam: be careful about the violent versus not violent, whatever.
Sam: And it's like, no, people, come on.
Sam: Of course he was going to do this. It would have been the surprise if he'd been more measured.
Sam: He is paying off the people who supported him. He is getting them out.
Sam: He is, to some degree, getting sort of a small reserve army to call upon again in the future.
Sam: And, duh, of course.
Sam: And like you were saying, Yvonne, like, really, you are going to expect Donald
Sam: Trump to sift through the subtleties of 1,600 different cases and make a nuanced decision?
Ivan: By the way, I am sharing this. There is a recent GoFundMe that is verified.
Ivan: That is, it just started recently. I'm going to put it on our Slack.
Ivan: Furfanone, yes, I am about to donate money right now to help him.
Ivan: So yeah, if you guys, you know, a pony up and give this guy some money because
Ivan: he definitely needs the support from people.
Sam: And to be clear, though, it's not just him. He's one of the ones that's most vocal.
Ivan: But yeah, he's one of the ones that has been most targeted. So yeah,
Ivan: I mean, but you know, look, whatever you can do to help this guy. Yeah, go.
Sam: And for people not on the GoFundMe, I'll just read it out.
Sam: It's GoFundMe.com slash F slash support hyphen hero hyphen Michael hyphen Fanon
Sam: hyphen and hyphen his hyphen family.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: There you go. And you said this is properly verified and everything.
Ivan: Yes. I just double checked it. Yes.
Sam: Yeah. So anyway. So yeah, there, there, there, there we go. Yeah.
Ivan: Oh, it's a, it's a, it's going to be a long four years.
Sam: Okay. So the other, the other thing in our last few minutes is to just talk about the DEI stuff.
Sam: Cause you know, we had a nice discussion on the Slack, by the way,
Sam: of DEI. So for those of you not on the Slack, you're missing out. You should check it out.
Sam: But basically what Donald Trump has done is immediately suspended anybody,
Sam: anywhere in the federal government doing anything related to DEI.
Sam: But also, and for the moment, they are on paid leave and their departments have
Sam: been instructed to figure out the right way to actually fire them.
Sam: But they also put out a notice to all federal agencies.
Sam: And it was a different notice at each agency, but they basically were the same,
Sam: telling people that sometimes people try to do DEI under other names and to
Sam: please, if you see any of this happening, report it.
Sam: And they gave an email and a phone number and blah, blah, blah,
Sam: which apparently- Let me ask a question.
Ivan: Did they explain what they mean by DEI?
Sam: I could get up one of these particular notices. I don't think so.
Sam: But basically, look, what they're actually targeting is actually far wider.
Sam: I've seen reports that they're also like shutting down all affinity groups.
Sam: Like if you have like, yes, that is correct.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Like, you know, women engineers working at NASA or something.
Sam: Sorry. No, you're done. You can't have that group anymore.
Sam: And all of this kind of stuff, because basically, look, and Yvonne,
Sam: I'll let you in a second, because you did it well on our Slack.
Sam: But, and I have another pointer to somebody else who did it well, but the,
Sam: What they mean by DEI quite clearly, regardless of what it really is,
Sam: what they mean quite clearly is hiring anybody who's not a straight white male.
Ivan: That's right.
Sam: You know, well, if, you know, basically that's what should be there.
Sam: And if you're not that, then you're a DEI hire. You're a DEI hire. You're a woman.
Ivan: You're black. You're a minority. You're Hispanic. panic, you're a DEI hire.
Sam: And look, they mischaracterize routinely.
Sam: And this is like, like you said, it's all about finding people's prejudices and exploiting them.
Sam: They've tried to characterize this as, you know, the DEI stuff,
Sam: by the way, and you can have an argument on affirmative action,
Sam: affirmative action too, but this isn't even old school.
Ivan: This is not affirmative action.
Sam: But they mischaracterize it from top to bottom as hiring unqualified people
Sam: just because of their race or ethnicity in order to be woke.
Sam: And that's how they characterize everything.
Ivan: And it's got, it isn't. I mean, the main thrust of diversity,
Ivan: equity, and inclusion, as it's clearly spelled out,
Ivan: is to root out one of the biggest problems that happens in hiring processes,
Ivan: which is that qualified candidates that are of groups outside of,
Ivan: you know, say you're a white manager.
Ivan: And so you get like a whole bunch of like, you wind up hiring amongst your friends and,
Ivan: And maybe all the people that you know are only, and I'll go,
Ivan: I'll give a more different example, bring an example to myself,
Ivan: a white Hispanic, okay, all right, I went to business school,
Ivan: okay, the number of women that were in business school was very small,
Ivan: okay, so one of the things that would happen, and I almost, all the people I
Ivan: knew exclusively for those jobs were men, okay?
Ivan: The thing about it is, okay, when you're going to go do an interview process
Ivan: is to make sure you're not just interviewing your fucking white male friends.
Ivan: It's to go and say, hey, let's make sure that we source a diverse candidate
Ivan: pool of people so you're not just looking at your old boy network and you interview across the board,
Ivan: all sorts of, you know, a good subset.
Ivan: To make sure that you are being inclusive of who you're being hiring to make the final selection.
Ivan: And one of the things that I did, especially, actually more relevant,
Ivan: in tech sales, I will say, which this was the one that was more important.
Ivan: Is that by doing that, because so many of the people historically,
Ivan: tech sales, extremely male dominated. Okay? Very much.
Ivan: You know, so we sourced a whole bunch of female candidates. Okay?
Ivan: And, you know, we wound up picking up a whole bunch of female candidates because
Ivan: when we sourced those female candidates, we found, holy shit,
Ivan: these are some very qualified women that probably, if we didn't spend the time
Ivan: looking for them, we wouldn't have hired, okay?
Ivan: And, by the way, they turned out to be the best fucking salespeople consistently.
Ivan: And if it wasn't that we went and, like, made that pool purposely,
Ivan: you know, bigger to give them a chance to interview for the job,
Ivan: then you wouldn't have done it.
Ivan: Because, man, I remember one thing that kept happening, especially recruiters and HR suck.
Ivan: Okay, and almost every company, they're terrible. The new systems that they
Ivan: have for apical tracking or whatever.
Ivan: Look, man, I honestly, me as a manager, got so frustrated because what I got through them was shit.
Ivan: I got so, such a stream of like limited pool of bad applicants, not qualified.
Ivan: And I'm just like, don't have the qualifications.
Ivan: And I saw how so many managers would get frustrated because they would post a job.
Ivan: They're like, okay, they're doing their job. Most managers, by the way,
Ivan: hate doing the hiring process.
Ivan: My experience, 90% of the people, they got an open job, stays open a long time.
Ivan: They're like, oh my God, I got to interview people. I got to do this.
Ivan: I got to whatever. I don't have the time for this horseshit.
Ivan: So I will wind up getting like a couple of bullshit candidates.
Ivan: And I'm like, okay, look, give me the whole fucking stack of resumes.
Ivan: I want to see who that fuck is being filtered by this stupid system. Okay.
Ivan: And all of a sudden I kept seeing a lot of more qualified people.
Ivan: The stupid system kept rejecting.
Ivan: And I'm just like, what the fuck? So no, I'd start putting, okay,
Ivan: let's put together a pool of people.
Ivan: Look, you got these people, you got, and all of a sudden you wind up with a diverse pool of people.
Ivan: You wind up interviewing and all of a sudden you're like, holy shit,
Ivan: look at these people and stupid systems left out.
Ivan: The recruiters kept bringing me shit when inside those resumes,
Ivan: there was a stack of very qualified people, diverse people.
Ivan: And you had a pool to choose.
Ivan: And, you know, you wind up with a team that is diverse.
Ivan: You wound up looking at candidates who you didn't consider. You wind up hiring
Ivan: people that many times wind up surprising you.
Ivan: You know, like I said, 15 years ago, stereotype all the tech salespeople are
Ivan: women. Man, you know what? Such a horseshit stereotype.
Ivan: I mean, it's like so many of them are great. But it was a stereotype back then.
Ivan: It was like it was a male-dominated profession. Okay.
Sam: You said women, but yeah.
Ivan: Yeah, but it was, yeah, no. But it's like it was such a male-dominated profession.
Ivan: And, you know, getting them in the door to be presented, qualified,
Ivan: whereas before we didn't bring them to the table.
Ivan: And that's the whole thing about the EI. It's to bring qualified people to the
Ivan: table to get a look. that you get a diverse look.
Ivan: Not that you hire, because they're thinking more about a front of an action
Ivan: in the old way where they're in some places where there are,
Ivan: oh, well, we have to have quotas.
Ivan: And that's not what this is doing. But they frame it as that.
Sam: And it's more than that too. It's not just hiring. It's also post-hire,
Sam: making sure the environment isn't exclusionary, making sure that people understand
Sam: the diversity of people out there.
Ivan: Yeah, once you get them in the door, exactly. That you're not,
Ivan: you know, like, I mean, totally, 100%.
Ivan: That, you know, people have so many different needs.
Ivan: They come from so many different backgrounds. Make sure that you're respectful of all of those things.
Ivan: You know, I mean, it's so important, you know.
Ivan: And I know that I remember when I was, like, younger, coming into a career,
Ivan: that probably a lot, we did probably a lot more things that were some people,
Ivan: for example, having a happy hour, okay?
Ivan: Bringing people alcohol. There's a number of people that don't drink.
Sam: Right?
Ivan: And they don't feel comfortable with that environment as that being the only
Ivan: social type of interaction that there is for the group, for example.
Ivan: I mean, if you don't drink, you'll wind up feeling uncomfortable.
Ivan: And so making sure that you
Ivan: bring people together to do something that that isn't the only social event
Ivan: that the the events that the company's having aren't just alcohol you know booze
Ivan: fests is important right for example and it's something that 20 plus years ago
Ivan: we didn't give a shit about that's inclusion well.
Sam: Yeah 20 20 plus years ago it wasn't just like you know you you go out and drinks
Sam: you know you go do drinks at the strip club, you know?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Correct.
Ivan: And, you know, drag the women along.
Ivan: Some that didn't want to go. Some wanted to go. But some that didn't want to
Ivan: go. And they felt like this is, you know.
Sam: And by the way, some that didn't want to go but felt like they had to act like they did want to go.
Ivan: Exactly. Yeah. I'm saying this because I've been invited to strip clubs by women.
Ivan: So that's not told yet. I'm sorry to tell you that that doesn't work that way.
Sam: I understand. I'm just saying.
Ivan: But at a work environment.
Sam: If you're doing that, the whole thing about the work environment.
Ivan: The people feel pressured. Yes, they don't feel like they have freedom of decision.
Sam: Yes, there's a reason they call it mandatory fun.
Sam: Because people don't feel like they really have the option to opt out.
Sam: I mean, maybe even they technically could opt out, but then they feel like if
Sam: they do, there will be negative consequences to them. maybe not explicit negative
Sam: consequences, but if you're not in the club, you're not going to get some sort of benefits.
Sam: People aren't going to think about you as much people, you know, all this kind of stuff.
Sam: And, uh, so DEI includes all that kind of stuff too.
Sam: It includes like being sensitive to, Oh, this guy has these particular rigid
Sam: religious restrictions that you should think of.
Ivan: Correct. Yeah.
Sam: No, this, this person.
Ivan: Oh, it's not just Merry Christmas, motherfucker. You know, for example.
Sam: This person was a vet who has PTSD. And so maybe don't go dropping things around
Sam: him or you're sneaking up behind.
Ivan: Let's not go to a gun range for fun.
Sam: You know, like there are all kinds of things. And basically, it's really all about,
Sam: hey, let's be thoughtful and actively try to combat our own internal unspoken
Sam: prejudices and make sure we're being fair.
Sam: And so that is anathema to the current Republican Party.
Ivan: A hundred percent, a hundred percent, you know, totally a hundred percent.
Ivan: And it's a thing of like letting, letting the team really be to a lot of times,
Ivan: like within reason, be the driver of what the, the activities that,
Ivan: that are being done and so forth and make sure that they, you know,
Ivan: that you carefully consider that,
Ivan: that, you know, they, they are, you know, they, you know, that they are inclusive. Okay.
Ivan: And it's something that I flat out, I know 20 plus years ago,
Ivan: we couldn't give two flying fucks about.
Ivan: And and I worked in an environment that many times that maybe,
Ivan: you know, I know that the women I work with know that more because they've known me for this long.
Ivan: They know that they weren't being pressured into it. But it was that wasn't
Ivan: like their favorite. That wasn't what they really wanted to go to.
Ivan: OK. And, you know, because it was almost all of our friends.
Ivan: But they were like, yes, I prefer to do something else.
Ivan: But but we know that you were like, OK, well, you know, but that was the learning experience.
Sam: Well, that's the whole thing with this kind of thing as well.
Sam: It is in many cases, and this applies not for all of these groups and all of these sensitivities,
Sam: it's not necessarily something that the person is going to say no to or even
Sam: immediately be offended by,
Sam: but it sort of wears them down over time because they're being asked to do something
Sam: or the whole microaggression thing, right?
Sam: You're constantly over time doing small little things that none of them on their
Sam: own are necessarily like a big deal.
Sam: But when you add them all up, are creating an environment that is hostile.
Ivan: Yes. And the one thing is that thankfully we didn't have, you know,
Ivan: the only reason I know is because most of these people that I work with like
Ivan: early in my career are friends to this day.
Ivan: That I know at least, thank God, we didn't have an environment of microaggressions,
Ivan: but we did things that for the people that didn't, that weren't,
Ivan: knew us very well, they just weren't inclusive, okay?
Ivan: It made it that, you know, that new members, they didn't, it's uncomfortable.
Ivan: So, you know, but you learn, you evolve, and those are the things that you learn now.
Ivan: And that's the whole, but it's the whole point about the DEI. It's to teach...
Ivan: About this stuff. It's not about hiring some unqualified minority.
Ivan: It has nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do with it.
Ivan: But the GOP has weaponized it into hiring unqualified minorities.
Sam: Right. But to be fair, that's the wrong way to say it.
Sam: You're absolutely right. It's weaponized about hiring unqualified people.
Sam: But also, even if it was just about what we just said about like being sensitive
Sam: to other people's needs and concerns.
Sam: That's like weak, woke bullshit, right?
Ivan: Yes. That's weak, woke bullshit. Yes.
Sam: You know? And so the other thing to point out is over and over again,
Sam: people have found out when they've really looked into this,
Sam: that when you are inclusive and when you get a wider variety of people, Okay.
Sam: Sorry, tangent. I have to say this too. Another thing that people do all the
Sam: time is talk about like this candidate is a diverse candidate and stuff like
Sam: that drives me absolutely nuts.
Ivan: It is the first candidate. It's like, it's not a diverse candidate or candidate
Ivan: pools that you make that are diverse. It's not a.
Sam: Yes. Yeah. Because people have effectively, that is changing the word diverse
Sam: into meaning minority that's getting some privilege.
Sam: Which is not what it is at all. The point of diversity is diversity in the group
Sam: of people you're looking at.
Sam: It's basically saying diversity is a strength.
Sam: The wider variety of people you have working on things, which,
Sam: yes, includes race, includes ethnicity,
Sam: includes gender, includes sexual orientation, but also, by the way,
Sam: includes like type of education, you know?
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Yes. What job history prior to the current job, like veterans versus civilians,
Sam: people who, you know, do you have people that at one time in their life actually did work retail jobs?
Sam: Or do you only have like trust fund people who jumped straight into college in a high paying job?
Sam: Yeah. You know, there's a difference.
Ivan: Very much so.
Sam: You know, all of this kind of stuff matters and it is not, you do not have, you know,
Sam: this person is diverse. This person does that.
Sam: No, it's, you are looking for diversity in your overall group of people.
Sam: And the reason why, which is what I was about to say before that tangent,
Sam: is that time after time, after time, people who have looked carefully into it
Sam: have found that you get better results with the diverse group.
Ivan: Oh, a hundred percent.
Sam: Because they are bringing in perspectives that
Sam: you do not have if you have sort of this homogenous
Sam: you're all straight white guys yeah you
Sam: know or or even for that matter if you're homogenous anything else or like anything
Sam: else yeah you know like it does not serve you to have a group that has the in
Sam: entirely the same viewpoint entirely the same background, entirely,
Sam: the more variety you get, the better your results in the end,
Sam: because you look at things in those different ways, you get to hash out the results, etc.
Sam: Assuming, by the way, the diversity itself is not enough, you also have to have a environment,
Sam: that is trusting enough that all of those people actually get a say and can
Sam: express themselves and you can actually have those conversations.
Ivan: Well, I think that's the most important.
Sam: If you have the diversity, but then you have a top-down, like what we were saying
Sam: with, you know, just obey orders mentality, then none of that helps at all anyway.
Ivan: Well, that part is the crucial part of that,
Ivan: is to have the environment that really fosters that
Ivan: open communication amongst people and that is is a good working environment
Ivan: okay and so i i i now i have had the the the great fortune of for the most part working in pretty,
Ivan: diverse environments, you know, for most of my career.
Ivan: And I, you know, many times I think, especially when I started working,
Ivan: you know, I think especially that diversity,
Ivan: opened my eyes about when I was younger about some preconceptions that I had
Ivan: that were misplaced about who knows what or whatever.
Ivan: And very quickly, when you have a group like that is good, it dissolves that
Ivan: so quickly that it makes it that you work so much better.
Ivan: And I think that that is the huge value of that in terms of...
Ivan: Getting people get over some pre-held stereotype that they have about a group
Ivan: of people. I'll give you a great example of one.
Sam: I forgot earlier.
Ivan: You heard that.
Sam: I forgot when I was listing things earlier, country of origin,
Sam: language. There's so many different things you can think of.
Ivan: Yeah. I remember, look, one of the best examples.
Ivan: And this is something that got thrown around so much when I was younger.
Ivan: Yeah, you've been lazy Mexicans, lazy Mexicans, lazy Mexicans,
Ivan: Mexicans are so fucking late.
Ivan: You know, you hurt growing up. I'm sure you heard talk about how the Mexicans are so lazy.
Sam: Right? Yeah.
Ivan: So so I mean, I'd heard about this. I never worked with Mexicans,
Ivan: but it's something that gets told in your head.
Ivan: So you think I think first time I'm going to go to a business trip to Mexico
Ivan: City, I'm expecting people knock off work early. You're not going to be that hardcore, whatever.
Ivan: Listen went to the hp mexico
Ivan: office first time is in the summer of 97 internship those
Ivan: fuckers got there at eight in the morning on the dot and they at the 8 p.m at
Ivan: night that office was still packed with people barely anybody had left i've
Ivan: never seen it i've never seen an office with people working their ass off more
Ivan: than at that office literally packed at 8 p.m,
Ivan: and i was like holy fuck how could people say that these people are lazy where the fuck,
Ivan: could i mean and and it's just one of those things that quickly showed me how,
Ivan: a stereotype just gets thrown around about people that's just complete bullshit
Ivan: right and that was a real eye opener for me i'll tell you that one and i was
Ivan: like that really to me i was like I learned from that one.
Ivan: Anything you heard about any country, about anybody, how it works and their
Ivan: work culture, just throw it in the garbage because it's just bullshit.
Ivan: Immediately that was like in the dustbin immediately.
Sam: Yes. Yeah. I mean, and the reality is, and this is true generally when doing
Sam: group comparisons is the difference between individuals swamps,
Sam: any sort of global difference anyway,
Sam: you know, if, if you, and the global differences are usually tiny, minor, random,
Sam: like, or due to something other than, you know,
Sam: like the pernicious thing is people assume it's sort
Sam: of like any differences you see are due to some internalized
Sam: well let's put it right out people think it's
Sam: genetic people think it's like oh this yeah group is dumb
Sam: this ethnic group is smart this ethnic
Sam: group is lazy this or whatever and it's not and the reality is any differences
Sam: like that have ever been looked at tend to first be swamped by individual differences
Sam: so are not meaningful at all when you're looking at individuals that you're interacting with.
Sam: And second, have readily explainable alternate explanations related to infrastructure,
Sam: education, previous bias,
Sam: you know, people, all kinds of opportunities that weren't available,
Sam: all kinds of other things, as opposed to being like, this group has some property
Sam: that just doesn't seem to really exist so.
Ivan: Well what listen i i think that one of the things that i you know is one of
Ivan: the most difficult ones to explain to people in the,
Ivan: in management positions in the U S that had never worked outside the U S they
Ivan: kept thinking that sales outside the U S of product A, B or C.
Ivan: Oh my, well, it's so different over there. You guys don't understand.
Ivan: And I'm like, it is the biggest utter bullshit there.
Ivan: What are the realities is about the last 21st century is that the differences
Ivan: really between the, the knowledge of the products, the sales process,
Ivan: the transaction, whatever,
Ivan: are actually far less than what the people are.
Ivan: That the interactions and how people work and how they buy products across the
Ivan: globe are far more similar, especially than you will ever believe.
Ivan: And that the differences in terms of sometimes just local work culture have
Ivan: sometimes to do just with like laws and certain things or just how,
Ivan: you know, Well, like in the EU, for example, they're far more strict about working hours.
Ivan: Okay? People staying late.
Ivan: In the Netherlands, if you stayed late, they actually would put a monitor on
Ivan: you for health and wellness to make sure that they put this very cumbersome
Ivan: one in order to make sure that you were okay at your desk,
Ivan: that nothing happened, okay? All right?
Ivan: Because they just didn't want you to stay working late, you know?
Ivan: You know the work day's done go go go right
Ivan: so so but if you did well well then you know we've got
Ivan: some you know some cumbersome monitor
Ivan: to make sure we're gonna check on you yes not unlike the
Ivan: u.s where i can't remember where the hell it was i think it was a wells fargo
Ivan: or some other company where the lady died it was dead for like four yeah they
Ivan: didn't notice for three or four days now over there they're like no no we're
Ivan: gonna put a monitor make sure that you're safe and if you haven't exited by
Ivan: a certain time security's coming around so so those are more to the different things,
Ivan: but my thing is that things are far more similar than they are different.
Ivan: And that's the reality. So anyway, all right. We've beaten everything to death.
Sam: I just want to wrap up in a couple of ways. One, I had mentioned another person
Sam: who had summarized the DEI stuff nicely, I thought.
Sam: Christy Coulter, who was once a guest on this show a few years back.
Sam: K-R-I-S-T-I Coulter. C-O-U-L-T-E-R.
Sam: Made a Facebook post yesterday, I think it was.
Sam: Anyway, it's public. It's available to the web.
Ivan: Basically what I was saying, that people keep confusing affirmative action.
Ivan: It says here, I think a lot of people have DEI confused with affirmative action,
Ivan: but they have largely separate things.
Ivan: When you think quotas, preferential, higher, and legal mandates,
Ivan: you're thinking about AA.
Sam: But her post goes on for quite a bit and goes into a lot of detail on a bunch
Sam: of different things. Very articulate, very well done.
Sam: I mean, she is a writer, so of course it is.
Ivan: A writer who writes always.
Sam: Yeah, she is, but worth reading, go, go search for it.
Sam: And yeah, so that, and then also just finally the, in terms of the DEI stuff,
Sam: actually helping and helping with good results.
Sam: You know, I was thinking on the one hand for, you know, to Donald Trump and
Sam: the feds, you know, okay, well getting rid of this, they'll eventually regret
Sam: it because not as good results. But then I realized, no, no, no.
Sam: Because again, they're not looking for the best results out of these agencies.
Sam: A, they don't want the agencies to succeed anyway. They don't believe in most of these agencies.
Sam: Maybe Department of Defense is an exception or whatever.
Sam: But even there, again, this is the difference in culture. The culture is the culture of obeying.
Sam: The measurement is not, do you get the best results on some sort of objective scale?
Sam: The measure is did you
Sam: jump as quickly and as
Sam: high as the boss told you to that's it that's the only measure and on that scale
Sam: having a bunch of clones who agree with you 100 percent probably is the best
Sam: way to get that result look.
Ivan: The one thing is but again it's not even results it's like whether you could,
Ivan: convince them that you actually did something that you didn't even do look,
Ivan: it's the entire smoke and mirrors thing,
Ivan: it's not about facts or substance,
Ivan: It's about how you can bullshit and whether your bullshit is believable.
Sam: Well, yeah, but in the specific case of people working for you in the workflow,
Sam: in the workforce, in the federal workforce, one of Trump's biggest frustrations
Sam: in his first term was he would say,
Sam: I want X, Y, Z to happen, and it wouldn't happen because of institutional inertia and resistance.
Ivan: And he wants to blow through that. Yeah, but here's what I'm trying to tell you, okay, all right.
Ivan: One of the things that I'm realizing as we're going through this is that,
Ivan: Sam, it doesn't even matter that you did it or not.
Sam: I know, I know.
Ivan: No, no, no. Exactly. Because the reality is, I've experienced in corporate America,
Ivan: how many times have I seen people that got promoted, not because they actually did anything,
Ivan: but because they sold very well that they did something that wasn't done.
Ivan: So in order to succeed in this administration, the problem is that to these
Ivan: people, the truth is a problem.
Ivan: Because you get told to do something.
Ivan: What you get told to do is impossible to do, right?
Ivan: So you report back that, okay, I told them to do this, right? Okay.
Ivan: You know, I told them to open the valve.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Okay. Mr. President, we couldn't open the valve. Trump gets pissed.
Ivan: Well, no, you can't do that. What you have to do is, sir, the valve's been opened.
Sam: We're good.
Ivan: You could go ahead and tell people the valves been open and the problem's been
Ivan: solved okay right and you do something else to whatever to make it like smoke
Ivan: and beer or whatever this is where we get into trouble sam because so much of
Ivan: what he asked for is impossible to do,
Ivan: so it turns you into just basically just having to see how well you can lie yes.
Sam: Impossible and or obviously destructive and or whatever. But yeah, you're right.
Ivan: But so many of them are impossible too, Sam.
Sam: Yeah, no.
Ivan: Hey, I want you to get rid of like 10 million people by next week.
Ivan: Okay, you can't get rid of 10 million people by next week.
Ivan: But maybe you can convince them.
Ivan: Send him a whole bunch of pictures of some loaded planes and places with a whole bunch of people.
Ivan: And you're like, Donald, we're getting the job done. Look at this. Look at this.
Sam: Well, and the one thing that we can say is that this last election proved all that works.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: It's the impression that matters, not the reality.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: You know and god help you if you're still you.
Ivan: Tell the truth.
Sam: Yeah if you tell the truth if you're still stuck on
Sam: like i want to pick the policy that's
Sam: going to have the actual best result and oh by the way it's going to take 10
Sam: to 15 years for the results to happen i mean if you if you're working to make
Sam: those things happen great but you can't you have to sell it on the illusion
Sam: anyway it's like yes it's.
Ivan: That that's the problem sam this is the situation where they're where they're
Ivan: in it doesn't fucking listen the many like i said you know they have to just
Ivan: become complete and utter bullshit artists.
Sam: Well and the thing is at this
Sam: point the best you can hope for is the
Sam: bullshit artist that's still behind the scenes
Sam: wants to do something that's useful as opposed to the bullshit artist who actually
Sam: just wants to enrich themselves and that's it you know i don't know i i feel
Sam: like there's still some folks on the democratic side of things who are trying
Sam: to be honest and do the right thing but i worry that it doesn't work,
Sam: you know that well.
Ivan: I i do think look why and i we we need to wrap up at some.
Sam: Point is getting like.
Ivan: A log out or log. But what I had said to you, what I had said on Slack this
Ivan: week is that you need to, listen, the change has to be a change in mentality
Ivan: towards, like I said earlier about scorched earth.
Ivan: You need to go, listen, you need to pull the Roosevelt,
Ivan: Franklin D. Roosevelt plan, which what the thing about that Roosevelt did that
Ivan: was very effective was that A, he was constantly battling Congress.
Ivan: He was constantly, you know, he was, if you're going back into government,
Ivan: you have to constantly be bending the envelope, try to pack the courts, try to do this.
Ivan: I don't give a shit that they reversed it. You have to go scorched earth like
Ivan: that and you have to brand it because believe it or not that fucker hey the
Ivan: new deal fuck we still remember that damn name yep you need you know you need
Ivan: a 21st century new deal not just is what you need the package not.
Sam: Just quietly do the thing and no one knows it was you.
Ivan: Exactly you need to do the 21st century new deal that's what you need to put
Ivan: you need to brand it and you need to sell it and you need to say,
Ivan: hey, this is what we're doing.
Ivan: And then you need to be aggressive and you need to say, fuck,
Ivan: you know, fuck, fuck, work with them, whatever we're going to do,
Ivan: whatever the fuck it takes. Okay. And you sell it that way.
Sam: Yes. Agreed. Agreed. Agreed. And I will add one thing that is just of the various
Sam: Democrats over the, since the election, only one of them has really stood out to me in terms of,
Sam: seeming to do this the right way in terms of the communication.
Ivan: Which is?
Sam: AOC.
Ivan: I was going to say exactly. The only one. She's the only one that gets it.
Ivan: Motherfucker, she's the only one that gets it. Son of a fucking bitch.
Ivan: She's the only one that gets it.
Sam: Yeah, I mean, I look at Hakeem Jeffries and his speeches and stuff and I'm like, oh, come on.
Ivan: No. No, she's the only one that gets it. She's the only one that gets it.
Sam: And like, you know, Yvonne and I both, when she first came on the scene,
Sam: was like, ah, she's naive. She's naive.
Sam: She's not doing this the right way. She's causing more problems than she's worth.
Sam: She has matured so fucking much.
Sam: And right now she runs circles around anybody else.
Ivan: Around all of them. All of them.
Sam: Because she knows how to message in such a way that she's making the right point.
Sam: Like you've got so many Democrats right now who are in a stupor who are like,
Sam: oh, the lesson out of this election is we have to move right.
Sam: We have to become more conservative to get the people in the middle.
Ivan: No, no, no. And it's not about moving right or left. It's about being aggressive
Ivan: with your fucking message.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Packaging it and selling it the right way.
Sam: The right answer to this is, oh, we can be aggressive to immigrants too.
Sam: We can deport more people.
Sam: No, this is not the right way. And yeah, she's the only one.
Sam: She's the only one right now.
Ivan: She's the only one. She's the only fucking one. Everybody else is failing the test.
Sam: And they're not taking advantage of that either.
Sam: Like they're, they're threatened by her. And so, you know, they,
Sam: it's the wrong approach.
Sam: Like they should be taking her and saying, damn, you're good.
Sam: Let's go in front of more people more.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: And give you more responsibilities. Yeah. Yes. You are the face of the new democratic party.
Sam: And look, honestly, on some things, she's more left than I am.
Sam: And I would not agree with her on an issue by issue basis on everything.
Sam: But God damn it. She knows how to get the message across and none of these other jackasses do.
Ivan: But, but this goes the one thing she gets me in the direction I want to go.
Ivan: No, you know, okay. I, I'm not, I don't, I don't need to agree with somebody on everybody.
Ivan: I didn't agree with Biden on everything either, but he can't get me going in the direction.
Ivan: I want to go. She gets me in the fucking direction. I want to go. And that's good.
Ivan: That's, that's more than good enough for me. That's good for,
Ivan: that's great for me. Okay. All right. that's what I want to do.
Sam: Yeah, there was an interview with Jon Stewart in the last couple of days.
Sam: I have only seen clips from it. I have not spent the time to watch the whole
Sam: thing and I feel like I need to fix that.
Sam: But I will, if you just Google Jon Stewart and AOC, you will find it.
Sam: It's from the weekly show with Jon Stewart podcast.
Sam: I'm going to put it into Cummudgeons Corner Slack as well.
Sam: And yeah it it is one of many things she's posting on her own tiktoks and youtubes
Sam: and stuff like that all the time as well she's just good pay attention she is
Sam: she is a rising star if the democrats don't fuck it up and intentionally screw
Sam: her she's i i don't know which.
Ivan: Direction listen listen we need we people we need to stand we need to more forcefully
Ivan: more of us need to stand behind her and support her,
Ivan: to go there that's what we need to do we need to stand up and we need to fucking
Ivan: say this is this this is the direction that we need to go stop with the fucking bullshit yeah period.
Sam: Like I've said before, either House leadership moving to the Senate or even
Sam: moving to the executive side and running for president,
Sam: I don't know what she's going to do, but the Democrats make a mistake in not
Sam: using her for everything they can. Okay.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: We're done.
Ivan: Wrap it up.
Sam: Go to curmudgeons-corner.com. You can find our archives. You can find all the ways to contact us.
Sam: You can find a link to our Patreon. I talked a lot about Patreon earlier in
Sam: the day, so I won't like repeat it all, but go there to give us money and at various levels,
Sam: we'll send you stuff and at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask,
Sam: we will invite you to the curmudgeon's quarter slack where,
Sam: you know, earlier I mentioned Nick was getting his invite.
Sam: He is now actually on the slack.
Sam: He has joined while we've been recording here and is on there now.
Sam: So come in and you should join us too.
Sam: Ask. The more the merrier. It's a lot of fun in there.
Sam: Yvonne and I and a bunch of our listeners are chatting throughout the week,
Sam: sharing links, all that sort of stuff.
Sam: Yvonne, do you want to, do you have one to highlight for today that we have not talked about?
Ivan: Oh, fuck me.
Ivan: Well, I ha I was very happy to report on, on,
Ivan: on, on the random channel on Slack that with the new changes,
Ivan: in the in the algorithm at facebook i'm getting really the recommendations that okay really,
Ivan: need and so all of a sudden i'm scrolling through and
Ivan: i get this recommendation that says a title
Ivan: your relations ukrainian women know
Ivan: how to take care of men and some picture of some attractive blonde girl my family
Ivan: rations for like com for men 50 plus ukrainian women and a little fire logo
Ivan: on the side so uh excellent i i suck is getting you know this is straightening,
Ivan: definitely has the house straight in order.
Sam: Indeed oh by the
Sam: blue sky by the way um i'm not going to talk about this topic in whole but like
Sam: i had put on the list a couple weeks ago of their their follow problem i i have
Sam: been inundated in blue sky and apparently a whole bunch of other people have too oh.
Ivan: Uh sex bots.
Sam: Yes sex bots following like well yeah presumably oh yeah random accounts with
Sam: like i mean i was getting hundreds of these damn things and and just i'm.
Ivan: Not that popular.
Sam: And look well see the thing was on all of my socials lately i'd had a policy
Sam: that if someone followed me that had more followers than i did i would follow
Sam: them back just sight unseen i would follow oh god so i was doing that with some
Sam: of you so you basically You basically.
Ivan: Filled your feed with porn.
Sam: Well, my feed is all like, they weren't actually posting, so they weren't showing up in my feed.
Sam: They would try to DM me and be like, hello, handsome.
Ivan: Oh, okay. So you were being DMed. Oh, so no, no, exactly. So you're being flooded
Ivan: with poor DMs. Okay, great.
Sam: And so I eventually, I gave up my strategy, which had worked on other socials just fine.
Sam: And I unfollowed everybody I followed like that.
Sam: And I'm like, fuck it. I'm not following anybody again, like for that,
Sam: because they followed me.
Sam: Like, I'll go back to my other strategy of only following people who I see a
Sam: post from them that seems interesting. And that's it.
Ivan: I don't have a lot of followers. Here's the interesting thing.
Ivan: Blue Sky says I have 31 followers.
Ivan: Follow that. Can't pronounce followers.
Ivan: But for some reason, when I look at the list, I only see one,
Ivan: two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 on the list,
Ivan: even though it says I have 31 followers.
Ivan: I, so I don't know what the hell that means. Out of those...
Ivan: One seems to be selling gold.
Sam: Oh, good. Good.
Ivan: Yeah, I know. I know. I know. Pete, I'm going to I'm going to for I'm going
Ivan: to have him connect with you so you can buy some gold.
Ivan: Another one that says lovely and caring. But actually, that one doesn't seem
Ivan: like that. That one doesn't seem like porn.
Ivan: But this one here, D Rose, am looking am period space looking for a man who
Ivan: is emotionally mature, ready for a real relationship and values deep conversations.
Ivan: Someone who's comfortable being himself, who knows how to laugh at life and
Ivan: isn't afraid to take chances when it comes to love.
Ivan: I mean, that sounds and let me and I.
Sam: Right.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And I'm seeing her pictures and.
Ivan: Well, OK. All right. Let me not go into the pictures right now.
Sam: OK.
Ivan: OK. Let me see. Sarah Morgan follows me. I see the picture looks provocative,
Ivan: but maybe she's just a person.
Ivan: I don't know. she doesn't have to say anything i mean
Ivan: possible i mean i don't know i mean but but those are the only ones that that
Ivan: really like stood out to be that are like like that the rest are you know look
Ivan: like normal things but the one thing i don't understand why the hell this thing
Ivan: got 31 followers my list only shows 11 what are the other 20 you know anonymously counting.
Sam: Is hard for computers it's one of the things.
Ivan: That well that is that is a problem
Ivan: yet they haven't quite mastered yet That's why we're working on AI.
Sam: Exactly.
Ivan: And once we got the AI, then we'll be able to count.
Sam: That's right. That's right. So, yeah.
Ivan: Okay. All right.
Sam: Okay, we are done. Thanks, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curmudgeon's
Sam: Corner. Tell your friends, all that kind of stuff.
Sam: And stay safe. Have a good week. We'll see you next time. Goodbye.
Ivan: Bye.
Sam: Okay, hit and stop. Later, Ivan.
Ivan: All right, let's see. Save. Thank you.