Sam: Okay, the live stream is going. Let me make sure it gets published properly.
Sam: Do the live stream check. Okay, successfully posted.
Sam: We will wait for it to come over on our screen, screen, thing,
Sam: thing, and then retweet it.
Sam: You know, I'm thinking at some point I should check to see if all the automation
Sam: is in place that I can auto post to Blue Sky at this point too, because,
Sam: you know, I like my Mastodon, but it seems like all the activity from,
Sam: you know, folks I, like, follow and care about is moving over to Blue Sky.
Sam: So, like, should I set up a curmudgeon's corner Blue Sky and automate the posting
Sam: to it and all that kind of stuff and blah, blah, blah, blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: There probably is. But, you know, I managed it, but anyway, we'll worry about
Sam: that later. Anyway, the live stream is going.
Sam: I have retweeted it on Mastodon.
Sam: Of course, no one's actually watching. That makes me so sad.
Sam: Anyway, let's get this started. Here we go. Intro time.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, April 12th, 2025.
Sam: It's just after 22 UTC as I'm starting to record. I am Sam Minter.
Sam: Ivan Bo is not with me this week.
Sam: He had a death in the family, unfortunately, and so is dealing with stuff associated with that.
Sam: Not, and yeah, I, from what I understand, it was someone who was quite elderly.
Sam: So it's not completely, you know, an unexpected event, but at the same time,
Sam: that's, you know, never fun or good, no matter the age of the person.
Sam: So he is not here. I, and I didn't, you know,
Sam: all of you know how I usually, I have
Sam: a list of people who sometimes co-host and I
Sam: send out an email and sometimes we get somebody
Sam: sometimes we don't i and and sometimes
Sam: i talk with chat gpt apparently
Sam: as i did a couple weeks ago i didn't even send out an email this week honestly
Sam: i have been extremely busy at work really for a while but uh this week also
Sam: and you know i just every time i got home and thought about sending the email,
Sam: I was like, I don't know.
Sam: I, I'm, I'm, I'm burned out.
Sam: I'm exhausted. I'm ready to like, just sit and chill with Alex watching TV.
Sam: Sometimes I had more work to do at home. It was, you know, all of this kind of stuff.
Sam: And so I didn't do it. I didn't send out the email.
Sam: I was also thinking like, you know, I, I don't know, like even,
Sam: even at the times I normally record, you know, I want to retain some flexibility.
Sam: So I was just like, you know, I'll, I'll do a solo show. Haven't done one of those since October.
Sam: Might as well do one. And next time Yvonne can't make it, I will once again,
Sam: send out one of those emails to everybody and see who's available and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: I will say, though, agenda-wise, this first one, I'll do the movie review that
Sam: I didn't do last week because we ended up just talking about tariff stuff the
Sam: entire show, basically.
Sam: And then we will have a couple of other segments. The first segment, though...
Sam: Ivan may not be here, quote unquote, live, but as he has done at least once
Sam: before, maybe twice, he sent me a recording of his thoughts on stuff.
Sam: And so that'll be the second segment.
Sam: I will play what he sent me and then maybe react to it a little bit.
Sam: That segment is on the continued tariff developments and economy and stock market
Sam: and all of that kind of stuff,
Sam: which I'm sure if Yvonne was here, we'd be talking about that kind of thing anyway.
Sam: And then the third segment, I don't know.
Sam: I'll figure it out later. There are a couple things I have as potentially in
Sam: mind to talk about, but I'll worry about that then. And as usual,
Sam: when I do solo shows, I'm not going to go straight through from beginning to end.
Sam: I'm going to record one segment and then I'm going to do other stuff for a while.
Sam: I do have more stuff for my day job to do over the weekend. So I'm going to do some of that.
Sam: It is April 12th and I haven't even started our taxes yet. And they are due
Sam: on the 15th, which is very soon.
Sam: So I'm probably going to try to do some of that over the weekend too.
Sam: Although, you know, you know, I could wing it and just do it on the 15th anyway.
Sam: So that, that, yeah, I, you guys don't care about logistics,
Sam: but anyway, uh, and I don't know, like, yeah, I I'm hoping the stuff that's kept me swamped at work.
Sam: The, the last of three major deliverables that I had is actually due this Monday.
Sam: I'm finishing it up over the weekend. It's pretty close. I just hopefully have
Sam: to tie up some final, like, you know, make, make some revisions based on some
Sam: feedback I've gotten and be done.
Sam: So I will be very glad to be done with that and then figure out what I'm doing next at work.
Sam: But anyway, movie, I'll just jump straight to that.
Sam: And I thought about doing two movies this time, but then I don't really want to.
Sam: So, you know, there are enough movies in the backlog that I really should be
Sam: doing two movies every week to catch up. I'm not.
Sam: So, and I only every few months, like, write down all the movies that Alex and I have watched.
Sam: And so I haven't done that since January.
Sam: It's now April, which means once again, when I sit down to do it,
Sam: it's going to take me hours to do it because it's not just here's the ones I
Sam: watch, but also here's the ones that I've I what I do.
Sam: I've mentioned this on a show before, but I'm going to mention it again because why not?
Sam: When I finish a movie watching with Alex, I sort of take a screenshot showing
Sam: that, you know, we were watching the credits to indicate, okay, finish that movie.
Sam: And of course, we watch every second of the credits. And if you don't, you're a monster.
Sam: You know, you need to pay proper appreciation to all the people who made that movie.
Sam: And also, if you haven't watched every second of the movie from the beginning
Sam: to the end, you have not watched that movie.
Sam: You've missed it and and you know you
Sam: should be using those utensils those
Sam: whatever that hardware was from a clockwork orange to
Sam: make sure you don't blink too because you know you're missing a big chunk of
Sam: the movie just from blinking so yeah i don't wear the things on my eyes when
Sam: i watch movies maybe maybe i should but yeah no any anyway what was i saying
Sam: oh yes i take the screenshot to we're finishing the movie.
Sam: But also whenever I hear about any movie like that might be interesting or TV
Sam: show or book, I basically take a photo or a screenshot to indicate that.
Sam: So like if I actually like see it like on a screen or something,
Sam: I'll take a picture of whatever I see.
Sam: If it's something that I heard of and then I'll look it up on Wikipedia or IMDb
Sam: or whatever and take a screenshot out of that.
Sam: Anyway, so when I go through this stuff, I'm basically going through everything
Sam: on my camera roll since the last time I did it,
Sam: looking for the photos or screenshots that indicate either I finished a movie
Sam: book or TV show or that, hey, here's a new movie book or TV show that you might be interested in.
Sam: And then I put them on a wiki page on my website and build up the list that we pick from.
Sam: I don't know what the point of sharing that was this time. Anyway,
Sam: it's always we're falling behind.
Sam: It's going to take me hours and hours to catch up. And I'm pretty sure Alex
Sam: and I have been averaging more than two movies a week or certainly more than one.
Sam: Maybe more than two. Maybe not more than two. Probably right around two. It varies.
Sam: It varies up and down by month. And what's going on, like, certainly there are
Sam: some months that have less than one per week.
Sam: But there are some months that have a lot more than one per week typically those tend to be like.
Sam: Holiday areas like i'm looking at last november we
Sam: watched a lot of movies last november but there were a bunch like concentrated
Sam: around the holiday at the end of november so we were just taking the time to
Sam: do that there were a bunch in december too but they were less I don't know.
Sam: I don't even know what I'm saying.
Sam: Anyway, the movie this time to talk about is Psych the Movie.
Sam: So this was a, so first of all, by the fact that it has the movie,
Sam: you probably already know it is related to something called Psych that was not a movie.
Sam: And that's the the tv show psych
Sam: and uh let me i'm gonna
Sam: check when i watched that the actual
Sam: the actual tv show psych i finished watching in 2015 i started it before i was
Sam: keeping track like religiously of everything we were watching but i i finished it in 2015.
Sam: There was a the tv show psych was on
Sam: the air from 2016 to 2014 which indicates
Sam: like i finished it right around the time it actually
Sam: finished i think this is one of those shows where we were well i finished in
Sam: 2015 so we were a little behind but like we we were watching the show while
Sam: it was actually on the air and while they were still making new episodes and
Sam: it was one of the shows that the family sort of usually watch together.
Sam: But anyway, it was on from 2006 to 2014.
Sam: There were 120 episodes over the course of eight seasons. The basic...
Sam: Premise of the tv show was you
Sam: know there's this there's this guy sean spencer
Sam: he's his dad is a cop or
Sam: a retired cop something like that and he basically
Sam: sets up a a private
Sam: detective agency with the notion
Sam: that he is a psychic detective now the
Sam: show goes into really what it is is he just has a
Sam: really really good photographic memory and
Sam: ability to like sense patterns and all
Sam: of that kind of stuff and he just plays it off
Sam: as being psychic and that that
Sam: was the premise of the show went for eight seasons it's a it's a dramedy i guess
Sam: it's it's like part like police procedural because he works with the police
Sam: a lot and and solves crimes and blah blah blah so you you have sort of the detective
Sam: crime-fighting police thing going on.
Sam: And you've got some dramatic elements that occur, and there's what are his interpersonal
Sam: interactions with his best friend, Gus.
Sam: And, oh, I should mention, Sean Spencer's played by James Roday.
Sam: Gus is played by Dulé Hill, who is also famously in the West Wing.
Sam: He's been in other things afterwards.
Sam: Anyway, it's mostly a comedy, you know, it's, so it's not, it's not to be taken seriously.
Sam: I don't remember if I actively reviewed the show here on the podcast,
Sam: uh, since it was way back in 2015. And I'm not sure we were regularly doing
Sam: that at that point, but I would give it a thumbs up.
Sam: I enjoyed the TV series.
Sam: It was a fun show. this psych
Sam: the movie is a a
Sam: tv movie that uh was in 2017 so
Sam: three years after the show ended which
Sam: basically picked up the adventures of you know all the main characters and what
Sam: happened next and so first of all i'll give the thumbs up for the show itself
Sam: good show watch it i will give a thumbs up for Psych the Movie as well.
Sam: But two things. One, it is really a continuation of the show.
Sam: Like, you don't come in cold to Psych the Movie.
Sam: You watch it if you've finished watching the TV show and now you want to continue.
Sam: Because they've actually made three TV movies afterwards.
Sam: Words it's so there was psych the movie then psych two lassie come home and
Sam: then psych three this is gus those were in 2017 2020 and 2021 um,
Sam: Alex and I actually just recently watched Psych 2, but it won't come up on our
Sam: list for a long time. So I'm just talking about Psych the movie for now.
Sam: So one, it really is a continuation.
Sam: And you would never watch this if you had not watched the show.
Sam: They're essentially just long episodes of the TV show.
Sam: I mean and that's
Sam: fine it's good i liked it i am giving it a
Sam: thumbs up i will also say that even
Sam: by the end of the tv
Sam: show sort of a lot of the shtick that
Sam: is the main sort of comedy the
Sam: show was based on was starting
Sam: to wear a little thin i mean there's
Sam: only so many times the characters can
Sam: sort of essentially play out
Sam: the same types of jokes that are centered around how they interact and the fact
Sam: that he's like pretending to be a psychic i think in the movies they actually
Sam: really play that down and sort of it's much more just him you know using his skills,
Sam: but you know.
Sam: It's still, it's still fun. It's still good. I mean, I, you know,
Sam: it sounds, it may sound like I'm wishy-washy and sort of leaning towards the
Sam: sideways rather than the thumbs up, but I'll still give it a thumbs up.
Sam: I think they're fun characters. It's a fun little adventure.
Sam: They, they do their thing, but yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's really just more of the TV show.
Sam: Like if you like the TV show, definitely watch the movies. If you haven't watched
Sam: the TV show, don't watch the movie unless you go watch the show and then like it.
Sam: I mean, it's really that simple.
Sam: And, you know, the other thing actually, like, and I admit, I was thinking this
Sam: more as we, like I said, we recently watched the second of the movies and that's
Sam: fresher in my mind than the first.
Sam: But i think
Sam: this was true even in the first movie another part of
Sam: it is just the characters sean sean and gus the two main characters is also
Sam: like his girlfriend and and a few other people but like sean and gus the two
Sam: main characters when this started out you know it they were,
Sam: I don't know how old the actors were actually, but my impression was these are
Sam: characters in their twenties, maybe they're late twenties, but they're,
Sam: they're in their twenties. They're still young kids.
Sam: And the sort of goofiness is like, okay, it's fine.
Sam: They're kid kids, you know, as a, as a person in my fifties,
Sam: I could call people in their twenties kids.
Sam: Yeah. Yeah. But.
Sam: It was sort of like, oh, yeah, they're goofy. They're young.
Sam: It's fine. They're playing around. By the time we get to the movies, they're older.
Sam: They look older. They're in a later stage of their lives.
Sam: And it's like, okay, shouldn't they have grown up a little bit?
Sam: They're still acting like they were a decade earlier.
Sam: Shouldn't they just grow up a tad? And I
Sam: know like the whole premise of the show and later the things is around how they're
Sam: goofy with each other and how they're how they're goofy with the stuff that
Sam: they're interacting with as they go about and solve the crimes and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But but still it's like it's
Sam: one of the act your age a little bit i mean
Sam: even in their 20s they weren't really acting their age
Sam: they're mean but you know you you kind of like can understand it
Sam: when they're older in the movies and i guess to some extent even in the later
Sam: seasons but like it really it starts to like be okay come on dude you're clearly
Sam: if you're not already 40 you're close and,
Sam: and you're still acting like a kid and really,
Sam: you know, so let, let, let me see how old these, these characters act,
Sam: well, the actors actually are right now.
Sam: And the, the, the movie I'm looking at was 2017. So that's.
Sam: 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. God, that was eight years ago already.
Sam: So subtract eight.
Sam: James Roday is currently 49.
Sam: So he would have already been 41 at that point.
Sam: Dulé Hill also 49. So yeah, they were over 40 in Psych the Movie.
Sam: And they're still running around acting like, you know, with the maturity of
Sam: college kids, you know, their characters were out of college.
Sam: They were, you know, but so mid, let's call it mid twenties.
Sam: Let's see, how old would they have been when this thing was originally,
Sam: when the TV show started? 2006.
Sam: When was, when was he born? 76.
Sam: So 86, 96, 06. So he was 30.
Sam: They were both 30 when this thing started out, probably playing people in their mid to late 20s.
Sam: And, and it's just, yeah, it's, it's, it's just less convincing when they're
Sam: like in their early 40s instead, sort of playing things the same way as they did. I don't know.
Sam: But I mean, it's still funny just to be clear.
Sam: It's still funny. It still works. I still kind of care about these characters
Sam: to some degree, especially when they're like getting in and out of relationships
Sam: and how, you know, is the, what's going to happen there and blah, blah, blah. Yeah.
Sam: But not in a serious, it's not even like a romantic comedy where you like get caught up in that.
Sam: It's just that those kinds of things are sort of side issues and they make jokes
Sam: out of that too and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: But anyway, the plot of this one, just to give you a little bit from the Wikipedia summary.
Sam: So at the very end of the series, they all moved to San Francisco.
Sam: In the series, they were in, where were they?
Sam: Somewhere in Southern California I forget the town oh Santa Barbara they were
Sam: supposed to be in Santa Barbara.
Sam: Anyway at the end of the series they move to San Francisco,
Sam: and you know Sean and Gus show up anyway to find out who shot his girlfriend's
Sam: partner she was on the san francisco pd she moved there
Sam: blah blah blah they yeah and there's a
Sam: mysterious organization and she wants
Sam: to solve the crime as you know and and and without them and then they got they
Sam: decide they need sean's help because of course they do sean wants to finally
Sam: get married to juliet he was she was his girlfriend in the last half of the
Sam: series and And, you know,
Sam: there was a will they, won't they at the beginning of the series.
Sam: And, but he doesn't want to until he can find his grandmother's ring that he
Sam: wants to use for the proposal.
Sam: And, you know, he ends up being in, you know, comedy ensues, adventure ensues.
Sam: He gets in trouble with criminals as he's trying to track down the ring.
Sam: And as they are trying to track down the killer of his partner's,
Sam: the killer of his girlfriend's police partner.
Sam: Or did he die? Or was he just shot? I don't remember.
Sam: Anyway, and of course all this stuff comes together and hijinks ensue.
Sam: Thumbs up if you've watched the show and liked the show.
Sam: If you haven't watched the show, go check out the show. I give it a thumbs up too.
Sam: With a tad of, like most of these long-running shows, the quality slowly goes
Sam: down over the course of the history of the show.
Sam: And I think that continues with the movies.
Sam: But they're still good. And if you end up as a fan of the show,
Sam: you will want to watch the movies, too.
Sam: We haven't watched the last movie, the third movie yet.
Sam: Although apparently they want to make more there is a fourth one so they've
Sam: done three of these movies there's a fourth one in development the producer says they want to do,
Sam: five, six, and seven as well before they're done.
Sam: But, okay, come on. I'm already complaining about by the time we get to psych
Sam: the movie, let alone two or three, that they are too old to play their characters.
Sam: Well, I mean, without the characters growing up. I mean, I don't know.
Sam: If they actually grew up, you'd change the character of the whole series.
Sam: I don't know. I feel like they're diminishing returns in this series as we go on.
Sam: Anyway, you got my ideas. You got my thoughts.
Sam: That's it for now. The next movie, by the way, that I don't feel like talking
Sam: about right now, I feel like we can talk about this with Yvonne here, is Chinatown from 1974.
Sam: Very, very different vibe than Psych the Movie.
Sam: Yeah more serious movie got academy
Sam: award nominations we watched it because it's on that
Sam: afi list of the hundred movies of the first
Sam: hundred years blah blah blah very different
Sam: vibe anyway i'll wait to talk about that next time and yeah maybe one of these
Sam: days when there's maybe we'll just do an all media show one week i don't know
Sam: to to try to catch up on these things And Yvonne could contribute sometimes.
Sam: You know he watches stuff.
Sam: He just only very occasionally decides to talk about it on the show.
Sam: So, you know, it is what it is. Okay, we are going to take our first break.
Sam: And for you, it'll be a couple minutes while the break plays.
Sam: For me, it'll probably be many hours, because I've got that other work to do.
Sam: I want to watch some more TV or movies with Alex.
Sam: I've got some personal projects I want to work on. I probably should do some laundry.
Sam: And did I mention the work I have to do for my actual job? I need to do some
Sam: of that. Oh, and taxes. I mentioned that. I don't want to do any of these.
Sam: You know, I want to just sit down and work on my other personal projects.
Sam: Like, I've got a couple, like, projects I'm working on that I'd like to do that
Sam: I haven't had a lot of time to do in the last month. I'd like to just spend some time on those.
Sam: I'd like to alternate between working on those things and watching TV with my son.
Sam: You know i don't want to do taxes i don't
Sam: want to do the work for work you know laundry okay
Sam: i i will be honest i actually kind of
Sam: enjoy doing the laundry because you
Sam: know this this aside from putting the machine there's
Sam: like putting stuff away the sort sorting stuff like
Sam: i sort the dirty stuff into like is it my stuff is
Sam: it alex's stuff is it brandy's stuff etc is
Sam: it like sheets and towels i i i do the sorting i
Sam: don't sort by color i sort by who it
Sam: belongs to sort of i enjoy
Sam: like because i i can put my headphones on i can
Sam: put on music or a podcast or whatever and i
Sam: sort of am doing something semi-physical for like
Sam: an hour while i do that kind of stuff and i
Sam: have fun doing that i i don't you know so i wouldn't mind right it's the same
Sam: thing like when i do some cleaning stuff i mean i can dishes cleaning stuff
Sam: like that i haven't i haven't done a bunch as much of that as i would like lately
Sam: just like i haven't done as much with my personal projects as i would like.
Sam: Because of being swamped with the work for work stuff the the one i haven't
Sam: ignored is the sitting and doing stuff with alex stuff mainly watching tv but
Sam: also sometimes playing computer games sometimes doing other stuff.
Sam: We've been doing that. But also, finally, I'm hungry. I did have a snack earlier
Sam: today, but I am hungry again.
Sam: And so there will be food. There will be food.
Sam: So if you are also hungry, feel free to pause the podcast, go get food, and then come back.
Sam: Or you can actually listen to the podcast and eat it at the same time.
Sam: It's hard for me to eat and record the podcast
Sam: at the same time a couple
Sam: times i've had i've been hungry and i've
Sam: had food here while i'm recording but then i realize
Sam: i can't really eat and talk at the same time efficiently for the podcast and
Sam: so that doesn't work anyway i said there'd be a break here's the break and then
Sam: when we come back the next segment will be basically me playing what yvonne
Sam: had to say about tariffs and everything,
Sam: and then me reacting to that.
Sam: And then the third segment will be whatever I feel like after that. Okay, here we go.
Sam: Okay, we are back. And like I said, yeah, it's the next day for me.
Sam: I didn't do it in the evening.
Sam: I did other things. I'm behind on the stuff I have to do this weekend,
Sam: but that's okay. That's okay.
Sam: I'm about to play the recording Yvonne sent me to talk about his thoughts on tariffs.
Sam: Just to place this in time for you, Yvonne recorded this after Trump added the
Sam: 90-day pause on every country except China.
Sam: But before, he also announced that he was exempting consumer electronics,
Sam: like phones and computers and stuff.
Sam: Now, as I am recording this, I just saw that on one of the morning shows,
Sam: one of Trump's advisors, one of the Sunday morning morning shows,
Sam: that is, one of Trump's advisors said, well, that's probably only temporary.
Sam: We'll be bringing back tariffs on computers and electronics and semiconductors
Sam: and all that kind of stuff.
Sam: We just have to, you know, we're going to figure out a new form.
Sam: They'll be back in like a month or so. That was a Lutnick.
Sam: The quote was correct. That's right.
Sam: Semiconductors and pharmaceuticals will have a tariff model in order to encourage
Sam: them to reshore in response to the host, Jonathan Karl on ABC's This Week saying,
Sam: so you're saying that the big tariffs on things like smartphones and tariffs,
Sam: all those phones, iPhones built in China, that none of those tariffs are, are temporary,
Sam: that those tariffs are temporarily off, but they're going to be coming right
Sam: back on in another form in a month or so.
Sam: There you go. And you can tell my age because I almost said this week with David
Sam: Brinkley, but it has been a long time since David Brinkley hosted that show.
Sam: Anyway, let's, let's, let's go to the Yvonne clip.
Sam: I'm going to hit the button, see how this works. Here we go.
Sam: I'm hoping that folks on the live stream will actually see the video, not just the audio.
Sam: But of course, if you're listening to the audio version later,
Sam: it's all audio anyway, so it doesn't really matter. Here you go.
Ivan: Hello, curmudgeons. Sorry I'm not on this week, but unfortunately,
Ivan: I had a death in the family, and this made it that I had to play cancel on Sam,
Ivan: but I, given the turmoil of this week, I did not want to leave the guys without.
Ivan: I think if any of you have followed on the Slack, you know that I have been
Ivan: very actively sharing what the hell is going on like right now.
Ivan: But let me give you the big highlights this week.
Ivan: One of the first things is that Trump caved and Trump caved because he was scared.
Ivan: They scared him. And the main reason why he caved on the tariffs after these
Ivan: rounds of Trump saying he's got all the cards, set all these tariffs, set them sky high,
Ivan: stock markets kept just plummeting.
Ivan: Even after he went he said that he's suspending the tariffs there's something
Ivan: that's happening that's a very bad sign which is that bond yields,
Ivan: have soared and they continue to soar even with the expectation of a recession
Ivan: right now that's a very bad sign.
Ivan: The two main reasons why this is probably happening is that number one you've
Ivan: had a lot of people that must have had margin calls and the most liquid things
Ivan: that they can sell on a margin call.
Ivan: You have to sell what's unfortunately valuable.
Ivan: I unfortunately lived through one of these a long time ago.
Ivan: So you get a margin call. It's usually because your dodgiest investments are
Ivan: the ones that really took the worst beating.
Ivan: So in order to cover for that, you have to sell the best stuff you've got.
Ivan: And so in many cases, what that means to hedge funds is they got to sell treasuries.
Ivan: So that's causing that to go up. But A lot of information really indicates that
Ivan: both Japan and China have been dumping bonds.
Ivan: And they're doing this in retaliation. I have no doubt that they're doing this in retaliation.
Ivan: Trump kept going out there talking about how he's holding all the cards,
Ivan: blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada.
Ivan: It's complete horse shit. As a U.S.
Ivan: Imports goods we pay in dollars, they in turn buy a lot of treasuries.
Ivan: And that money flow has happened like that for decades.
Ivan: And the reason why a lot of people want to do that also is because the U.S.
Ivan: Is a good place, has been historically a good place to invest money,
Ivan: has been a safe haven to invest money.
Ivan: People want money in the United States because they expect stable government.
Ivan: They expect stable monetary policies.
Ivan: They don't expect arbitrary changes. And unfortunately, Trump has come in and broken that.
Ivan: He has severely broken the faith that people have in the U.S.
Ivan: Dollar and U.S.
Ivan: Treasury bonds. And so that's why you're seeing a situation that I don't remember
Ivan: ever seeing in my lifetime, which is stocks are getting dumped.
Ivan: You're not seeing the race to safety as going to treasuries.
Ivan: They're going somewhere else. the money's
Ivan: going somewhere else one thing that has taken a
Ivan: lot of that money is hold i think
Ivan: i probably mentioned i know on the slack i mentioned
Ivan: this but in february i did
Ivan: sell a substantial part of my holdings in the stock market and bought gold precisely
Ivan: because i feared something like this and also because another guy that's smarter
Ivan: than all of us, as time has become more obvious,
Ivan: was a whole courting cash and had sold a lot of his stocks. And that's Warren Buffett.
Ivan: And that guy doesn't take such a decision lightly.
Ivan: He was reading the room better than any of us. And he thought a lot of this was very possible.
Ivan: And so Berkshire Hathaway is holding around $400 billion in cash and equivalents.
Ivan: You know, he's the only guy that's up in the year.
Ivan: Everybody else, top 10 richest people are down. They're down a lot.
Ivan: We are in a uncharted territory situation here right now.
Ivan: Where the tariffs, not all the tariffs are the one.
Ivan: Many of them are still in place. You've got a lot of small businesses that are
Ivan: trying to clear merchandise at customs now from China, and they can't afford to.
Ivan: The tariffs are so steep that you're having people not being able to afford
Ivan: the shit they ordered months ago.
Ivan: So this is a difficult situation for many, and nobody is coming to the rescue
Ivan: of these small businesses right now.
Ivan: And when a lot of this merchandise will get through, if it gets through,
Ivan: it's going to push up inflation. There's no way around it.
Ivan: So we are right now in a situation that is,
Ivan: I've never lived through my lifetime where I saw just somebody dispurposely
Ivan: trashing a good economy.
Ivan: And that's what Donald Trump just did. And the pain of this is not all here yet, not even remotely.
Ivan: We're going to get a lot more pain as the months progress even if some deal is cut like right now,
Ivan: he didn't suspend all the tariffs not only one he said that he's going to negotiate 70 deals with,
Ivan: deals with 70 countries in like 90 days that is an insane amount of deals to
Ivan: cut in 90 days most of the trade deals that were in place that we had up to
Ivan: now were the byproduct of years and years and years of negotiation.
Ivan: And so all of a sudden trying to cut 70 deals in like 90 days seems completely nuts.
Ivan: So look, every indicator right now for the economy is bad.
Ivan: There are no good indicators, consumer sentiment, interest rates.
Ivan: They're not looking good.
Ivan: Trump's approval ratings in tandem are collapsing like right now.
Ivan: Congress hasn't done anything. I'm wondering when, when the breaking point is going to be,
Ivan: I think at some point, if this continues, there will be a breaking point because
Ivan: one of the things, you know, people are talking about authoritarians and how they handle things.
Ivan: Look, the two best examples I can give, Putin and Hitler, one of the things
Ivan: they did was like prop up the economy as they took control.
Ivan: That was, that was key.
Ivan: I mean, Putin went and in his first decade really improved Russian economy.
Ivan: So did Hitler coming out of World War II.
Ivan: That's how you, that's how you make sure that your supporters are on board.
Ivan: But Trump instead went and like inside 90 days, not even 90 days.
Ivan: You know, kneecap the economy.
Ivan: Just kneecap the economy for no good fucking reason whatsoever.
Ivan: And that pain, the worst of the pain, is going to hit his supporters.
Ivan: Already his supporters on the Wall Street, all of them, most of them realize
Ivan: that he is a complete idiot that cannot be trusted.
Ivan: That's a fact. Whether they're saying it out loud, that's a different thing,
Ivan: but Most of them have to come to that conclusion.
Ivan: And as the pain of this self-inflicted wound starts reaching everybody,
Ivan: this will cause a lot of people to get really angry.
Ivan: A lot of his supporters get really angry.
Ivan: That's when we see whether this starts having a significant effect on whether
Ivan: Congress acts to basically take control of the situation at some point.
Ivan: I mean, it's just one of those things where right now you got Congress then.
Ivan: Just acquiescing at every turn to the lunacy of this administration.
Ivan: They're pushing this economy to the breaking point. I mean, forget about all
Ivan: the other things that they're doing in terms of... I mean, I'm not even going to discuss that.
Ivan: They keep doing all these things that are wrecking every other institution,
Ivan: you know, undermining science, undermining our bilateral security agreements.
Ivan: Undermining the health of the average American.
Ivan: Just so many things. But it's going to be... This is not... This is bad.
Ivan: This is bad. And just rolling back...
Ivan: There was a relief rally this week, to some extent, about him pushing back some
Ivan: stuff that hasn't translated into the bond market.
Ivan: And I think that is the key benchmark.
Ivan: I think American companies, to some extent, the global ones,
Ivan: because they sell so much outside the U.S.,
Ivan: I mean, in the case of Apple, for example, more than 60% of revenue comes out
Ivan: of the U.S., they probably aren't taking the total brunt of some of the stuff.
Ivan: And the dollar devaluing in terms of like, hey, if you're selling Europe,
Ivan: well, that increases the value of what you sell overseas.
Ivan: So that's beneficial in certain ways for the profit or loss of the companies.
Ivan: Now, the other thing is the Chinese are really, really pissed,
Ivan: and they've decided that they're unlike before where, you know,
Ivan: they were allowing Trump to be a bully.
Ivan: I think that one thing that's broken this cycle like right now is the fact that
Ivan: they they stood up and said, fuck, you know, and I had hoped that other people
Ivan: had been taking a harder stance against them.
Ivan: These things. But we'll see what happens.
Ivan: They said they're going to negotiate. I don't know when that's going to happen,
Ivan: but hopefully we'll talk to you guys soon next week. Okay. All right. Take care, guys. Bye.
Sam: Okay. So there was Ivan on the tariffs.
Sam: So, you know, this is his expertise more than it is mine, but I'll add a couple
Sam: of thoughts anyway, before we break and move on to something else. First of all,
Sam: This, I think, absolutely is an indication of a, you know, a true Trump back off.
Sam: And we have seen, this is not the first one.
Sam: There have been a number of situations where when something has gotten a significant
Sam: amount of negative pushback, Trump has actually backed off or his administration has backed off.
Sam: You know, there, there were more minor examples, like, you know,
Sam: even things like, Hey, the bathrooms closed at national parks and stuff.
Sam: They figured out a way to back that out.
Sam: There were some other policy changes that, you know, people were like,
Sam: this is really stupid. This is dumb.
Sam: And things that were getting universal mocking, not the things that,
Sam: you know, your usual suspect Democrats would complain about because they want that. They love that.
Sam: All the better. All the better if all of the blue politicians are upset and
Sam: Democrats are freaking out.
Sam: But the things that were causing everybody to go, wait, what?
Sam: What are you doing? They have backed off on a number of those things.
Sam: Before this, most of them have been smaller items, though.
Sam: They have been things that, you know, you had to be, you might notice if you
Sam: paid attention to that particular thing, but they weren't big headline grabbing backoffs.
Sam: They were sort of little incremental things. This is, I think the first one that's really big.
Sam: And, you know, up until like the day before Trump backed off a bit on this,
Sam: he was saying, no, we're not backing off. This is what we want.
Sam: And there was back and forth with various people of his spokespeople not quite
Sam: being coherent on their messaging, but some saying that there was going to be
Sam: negotiations, some saying there were not, and this is just how it is.
Sam: We're clearly now on the, we're making negotiations. But here's the thing too.
Sam: Yvonne and I had said last week that,
Sam: look, yeah, we talked a bit about the worst case scenarios if this just like stuck,
Sam: but we said the most likely scenario was Trump would claim some sort of minor
Sam: concession as a huge win and use it to declare victory and back off.
Sam: Here's the thing there wasn't
Sam: even that fig leaf this time the closest to what he said was he was keeping
Sam: the tariffs on for countries that had retaliated specifically China I noticed
Sam: there were there were some EU retaliation too that apparently got ignored but,
Sam: You know, we're keeping the, keeping the tariffs on for the countries that retaliated
Sam: and for everybody else, we're backing off.
Sam: Now they didn't back off completely. They kept like the 10% minimums across
Sam: the board everywhere. They kept like previous tariff increases.
Sam: This was just like on some of the new reciprocal, quote unquote, reciprocal.
Sam: We talked last week how it's not really a reciprocal tariff,
Sam: but there was no wind to claim.
Sam: It was, it was a straight up back off. It was a, we're going to,
Sam: we're not going to do this. We're going to push another 90 days.
Sam: And, and this, this matches what he did earlier with, you know.
Sam: Canada, Mexico, et cetera.
Sam: Remember before those things, he, the deadline has been announced a couple of
Sam: times and then they moved it at the last minute and then they moved it in the last minute.
Sam: Some of them are in effect now to be clear, I think.
Sam: But they and this time
Sam: it was sort of allowed to go into effect and then
Sam: pulled back but you know it was such a short time it was unclear how
Sam: many people actually paid things by the time they backed off again but this
Sam: was a this was a straight off back off and the only the other thing that i think
Sam: is important there's been reports like the biggest guy pushing for this tariff
Sam: approach within the administration was Navarro.
Sam: And it appears his role has been diminished.
Sam: You know, the drama inside the Trump administration was significant here.
Sam: We have sort of the rift with Musk over this.
Sam: Like Musk clearly did not want the tariffs and he was vocal about it and was
Sam: talking about how stupid Navarro was and how he hoped President Trump would
Sam: reconsider and all this kind of stuff.
Sam: But that was not the only one.
Sam: This was something that clearly was producing divisions within the administration
Sam: between the people who were like, trust Trump,
Sam: which was the official line, versus people who were like, I'm not so sure about this.
Sam: And then we have this further back off on electronics and then the reversal
Sam: of that from the Sunday morning shows that I mentioned right before playing
Sam: the Yvonne clip that those might be back,
Sam: Which leads to Yvonne's comment about, look, we had a relief rally when some
Sam: of these things were backed off, but then things started going down again in the markets.
Sam: And as he said, the bond markets have still been acting weird because completely
Sam: aside from the specific tariff policies that are being put on, taken off,
Sam: put on, taken off, adjusted, the point is the unpredictability and the lack
Sam: of a coherent plan that anyone can discern.
Sam: Like, I've listened to a bunch of people, you know, financial expert type folks
Sam: being interviewed about this.
Sam: And as far as I can tell, even on the otherwise Trump supporting side of things.
Sam: Nobody can articulate a coherent, workable plan for what they're really trying to accomplish.
Sam: And how it will be accomplished and what kind of timeframes it will be accomplished
Sam: in and how, you know, how this would all work.
Sam: I mean, as Yvonne and I mentioned before, like, okay, look, they keep talking
Sam: about reshoring various manufacturing.
Sam: Now there's some problematic things about how, even if you do that,
Sam: you're potentially replacing, you know, high skill, high-paid jobs with lower-skill
Sam: low-payer jobs, which is that what you really want to do.
Sam: But assuming you want to do that, there's still the question of,
Sam: okay, if we're going to build up.
Sam: American manufacturing capabilities again and try to bring them back to how
Sam: they were 50 years ago or 100 years ago or whatever the goal is.
Sam: The tariffs aren't enough, especially erratic tariffs like this,
Sam: because at the bare minimum,
Sam: you have to convince companies to undergo this long-term investment to turn
Sam: that ship around and say, okay, I guess the international investments aren't
Sam: coming back. We're going to have to do something.
Sam: Maybe there's an opportunity here. but we're talking years and years of investments
Sam: to build factories and set that up and get that moving and figure out what's
Sam: going on and you know huge dollar amounts associated with that too,
Sam: so certainly no one's going to do it if they don't believe that what's going
Sam: on is going to last more than a few days before it changes again it has to be
Sam: not it has to be stable on the time frame of years,
Sam: maybe decades, like for them to really, really and truly believe it.
Sam: Or there has to be substantial governmental guidance and funding and all this
Sam: other stuff to sort of kickstart it.
Sam: And there's absolutely no interest from the Trump administration on doing that kind of stuff.
Sam: You know, and they're dismantling the kind of thing, the things along those
Sam: lines that were already in place under the previous administrations as so how how is instead.
Sam: You're you're just threatening the price increases and
Sam: that's it and you're not even threatening
Sam: that consistently because of all you know all of the back and forth and there'll
Sam: be a delay and then we'll figure this out and then it'll be back and then nobody
Sam: knows what to believe other than this is uncertain and this is bad.
Sam: And so, yeah, we're still way, the market's still way down from where it was.
Sam: Consumer sentiment is plummeting.
Sam: Expectation of inflation is rising rapidly.
Sam: You know, Yvonne had mentioned that within a few weeks, we should actually start
Sam: seeing the inflation in our day-to-day lives when we go to the store.
Sam: The back-off this week may delay how obvious that is or when that is to some degree.
Sam: And maybe he ends up delaying it indefinitely.
Sam: And so he freaked out the Wall Street people, but Main Street's not going to
Sam: see the effects right away. Maybe.
Sam: But these things have a tendency to get out of control.
Sam: And so we'll see. Tariffs are still up. from where they were.
Sam: They're just not catastrophically up now that he's backed off.
Sam: And even with China, even with China, with the additional back off of consumer
Sam: electronics, this will be less impactful. I'm not going to say not impactful.
Sam: Like there's a lot of things that China puts out there that are not consumer electronics.
Sam: And there was actually a good table. I shared it on our curmudgeons corner Slack I'll see you next time.
Sam: But let's see if I can get you guys a reference to it.
Sam: Okay, this was from the New York Times. Published on April 12th,
Sam: or updated on April 12th anyway.
Sam: How much are tariffs on Chinese goods? It's trickier than you think.
Sam: Because everybody keeps talking about a top-line number. you know,
Sam: with it's going to be, you know, 145% tariffs or whatever on, on China.
Sam: But in fact, it's, I mean, first you said 125, then 145, then it all,
Sam: because people were trying to figure out how to add up the previous tariffs
Sam: and the new tariffs and whatever.
Sam: Anyway, but it's actually more complicated because it's different depending
Sam: on which goods you're talking about and their components of it.
Sam: This New York Times article breaks it down. Look, there's a standard base rate.
Sam: Apparently, there's a 3.4% average, again, depending on the type of goods.
Sam: So there's a base rate that was already in place worldwide before Donald Trump's second term.
Sam: There were some pre-2025 term tariffs, some of which were introduced by Trump and kept on by Biden.
Sam: Some were even increased by Biden that vary based on product, country, etc.
Sam: And then even within Trump's term so far, there's different sets of tariffs.
Sam: He's done tariffs on steel, tariffs on aluminum, tariffs on car parts.
Sam: Then we had the fentanyl tariffs, and then finally the reciprocal tariffs.
Sam: And they're all different, and they're all different by country,
Sam: and they're all different buy type of goods.
Sam: So specifically on China, this article points out that the range,
Sam: apparently the highest tariffs out there are on syringes and needles from China.
Sam: And the total of all of those things is a 245% tariff on syringes and needles
Sam: from China, apparently.
Sam: Going down some of the list, lithium-ion batteries, 173%.
Sam: Squid, 170%. Wool sweaters, 169%.
Sam: Plastic dishes, 159%. And then there's a whole bunch of other things.
Sam: And goes down at the bottom few metal furniture
Sam: 70 percent door hinges
Sam: for cars 67 percent laptops
Sam: only 20 percent and apparently children's books zero percent apparently and
Sam: i did not know this but like most children's books sold in the united states
Sam: are imports from china who knew i guess if you're in the children's books industry
Sam: you probably knew or if you,
Sam: have a child and have taken the time to read the front of the book where it
Sam: gives you all that information maybe you do i didn't know but apparently there's
Sam: an exemption for educational materials and children's books falls in that category
Sam: and zero percent on those but.
Sam: Here's the thing like electronics i i was worried i am hanging on to a really old,
Sam: iphone 12 pro max i've mentioned this on the show before last couple of cycles.
Sam: Is is the new phone that's out there significantly
Sam: nicer than my current phone yes is it
Sam: old enough to upgrade absolutely they're on the 16s
Sam: now this is a 12 that's four cycles old i used
Sam: to update every two or three right originally
Sam: it was every other i i got every other then i sort of
Sam: expanded to three and then this one stretched to four
Sam: now it's getting up to you know if i
Sam: wait till the 17 it'll be five years because i.
Sam: Keep telling myself well it's it's it's working it's it's
Sam: doing everything i need it to i i don't really
Sam: have a justification to replace it like unless it
Sam: breaks but i was
Sam: still thinking five years is a long time
Sam: when the 17s come around i'll get
Sam: a new one because it is feeling a
Sam: little slow now a little sluggish there's some
Sam: like i've been like minecraft over the
Sam: last couple weeks has had a special event associated
Sam: with the movie and so alex has been asking me
Sam: to play along with him and i have been and i've noticed
Sam: i've been like it's been a little sluggish the the
Sam: latest versions of minecraft on this thing compared to
Sam: how he has it on you know so i'm
Sam: like okay mate you know seven and and
Sam: i was thinking like have i made a mistake in waiting for the 17s because if
Sam: if the full weight and force of all these chinese tariffs come on you know am
Sam: i going to be talking double the price for an iphone maybe i should rush out
Sam: and get a 16 now before that happens.
Sam: And then, you know, they've been exempted. Well, I mean, it's still going to,
Sam: apparently, things like smartphones are still on the hook for a 20% tariff from
Sam: the fentanyl stuff, but not the others anymore.
Sam: At least until maybe they bring them back in a month from now.
Sam: So I'm like, okay, I don't have to rush out and get that 16.
Sam: I can stick to my plan, replace it when it breaks and or when the 17s come out.
Sam: But there's lots of other stuff too you know
Sam: we we we get get lots of stuff from china i i don't know if you folks have noticed
Sam: we get lots of stuff from china i i i once remember people pointing out and
Sam: and maybe it i'm sure it was slightly exaggerated but they basically said look,
Sam: everything walmart sells is from china that's the secret to their pricing you know their,
Sam: So this is going to still affect people, but maybe less than it was,
Sam: and maybe there'll be more backing off.
Sam: I i think the key is you know yvonne mentioned
Sam: what's the breaking point and i think
Sam: the important part to remember here is i think trump himself breaks and backs
Sam: off before things get to the point where anyone else would break against him
Sam: you know we were sort of talking in the context of like,
Sam: okay, when will Congress have had enough and we get enough Republican senators and representatives,
Sam: including the leadership in both of those bodies for them to actually overtly
Sam: go against Donald Trump and do something like restrict his powers on tariffs or something.
Sam: The answer is it would have to be so incredibly disastrously bad that they felt
Sam: there absolutely was no other choice.
Sam: And they were not just ditching Donald Trump over this one issue.
Sam: They were ditching him over everything.
Sam: In that kind of scenario, maybe we are also talking like Vance in the cabinet
Sam: trying to do the 25th or something.
Sam: But in that scenario, or impeachment into Congress with Republicans on board.
Sam: But like, honestly, I can't really imagine those scenarios.
Sam: Congress has been like, congressional Republicans gave up a long time ago. They made their deal.
Sam: And then we've had more elections where more intensely MAGA politicians have
Sam: been elected over the last eight years.
Sam: So that's going to be hard. The cabinet was chosen completely based on loyalty.
Sam: And so, yeah, no, no. But what I think would happen is if you even started seeing
Sam: things tilting in that direction, Donald Trump himself backs off.
Sam: And that's exactly what happened this last week.
Sam: You had a number of congressional Republicans signing on and saying,
Sam: yes, they would support legislation restricting presidential power around tariffs.
Sam: It wasn't enough yet to actually move anything, but it was non-zero. There were a handful.
Sam: And they were speaking out about it. And there were even more that were publicly
Sam: expressing their uncertainty about what was going on.
Sam: And then you had the bond stuff that Donald Trump, Donald Trump,
Sam: that, that Yvonne mentioned.
Sam: And you had more and more indications that all of the economic indicators were
Sam: going bad fast. I heard someone say, Donald Trump is okay with a recession.
Sam: He thinks maybe a recession is okay, and that we can do that,
Sam: and he can move on beyond that,
Sam: and that maybe it's even necessary to accomplish his goals, but that he's not
Sam: okay with the depression.
Sam: And of course it's a fuzzy boundary between
Sam: the terms but basically there's a difference between
Sam: hey we're going to have some economic
Sam: times that are a little bit rougher than we would like for a couple quarters and
Sam: then we're going to bounce back versus you send
Sam: the entire country into an economic spiral where there's
Sam: mass destruction and it lasts years and
Sam: so donald got scared donald backed off
Sam: apparently he's you know wasn't
Sam: done backing off because a few days later there was the electronics thing
Sam: and i just saw a note too
Sam: that you know the headline was the electronics but apparently there's more to
Sam: it than that and there's maybe some additional back off in other areas too yeah
Sam: and maybe don't maybe he wasn't expecting all of these effects he made some
Sam: comments about, I forget the word he used.
Sam: It was a funny, unusual word about how people were getting queasy about things
Sam: and how people were reacting to this.
Sam: And so he had to back off a little bit. He actually admitted that he had to
Sam: back off because people were reacting to it in a bad way.
Sam: And I think that's important. I mean, it does indicate that there is still some degree of,
Sam: okay, Donald Trump will react to the public and the markets thinking that what he's doing is bad.
Sam: And that's why you had that sort of relief rally when that was first announced.
Sam: It's good that there is that reaction. It's better than a president who will
Sam: continue on no matter what as the country descends into chaos,
Sam: but only a little better.
Sam: Because we still know he's erratic. We still know that all of this,
Sam: you can't, there is no certainty.
Sam: The things that are missing here are, A,
Sam: no sense that this is actually part of a coherent plan that would work, and two,
Sam: no sense that there'll be any stability that it won't be something completely
Sam: different in five minutes or a week or a month.
Sam: So you can't plan on anything because it
Sam: always seems like and like you know the markets
Sam: were apparently finally learning this lesson this last week or two but this
Sam: has been the case in all of the other policy areas since inauguration day i
Sam: mean hell last term too this is it's all brand new.
Sam: It seems to be intensified this time, but everything just seems to be,
Sam: what's Donald Trump feel like doing today? What are his whims?
Sam: In his last administration, we had the adults in the room trying to slow things
Sam: down. This time, we really don't.
Sam: Donald Trump wakes up in the morning, decides he's going to do something crazy,
Sam: and there's executive orders on the table
Sam: that afternoon around the crazy thing and
Sam: then it happens and then there's reaction to
Sam: it and then if the reaction is bad maybe he
Sam: drops maybe maybe he backs off maybe
Sam: he changes it maybe he adjusts it maybe he doesn't but it all depends on what
Sam: he feels like that moment and as usual who's the last people that were talking
Sam: in his ear very chaotic very unpredictable which results in typically very negative results in the end.
Sam: And frankly, it's like, you know, for the most part, I think the things that
Sam: Donald Trump wants to do are bad anyway.
Sam: But frankly, even if we had in place somebody who I agreed with on everything
Sam: policy-wise, this kind of chaos would still be negative.
Sam: Add to it that everything he wants practically is bad to begin with,
Sam: and it makes it so much worse.
Sam: But anyway, I think that's enough on that.
Sam: I'm going to take another break. Break, break, break, break,
Sam: break, break, break, break, break, break, break.
Sam: And then when we come back, I will talk about something else.
Sam: I think, you know, that's my list.
Sam: I mean, I'm going to leave it open a little bit because, you know.
Sam: Something new may come up while I'm taking this break since I'm going to go off and do other things.
Sam: I'm, I'm, I'm going down, I'm traveling to Olympia to visit my wife for lunch
Sam: and to sign some papers we need to sign on something.
Sam: And so I'll, I'll be gone quite a few hours before the next version of this.
Sam: So who knows, there could be like big breaking news to talk about
Sam: that does everything but my my
Sam: gut right now is that what i will want to talk about is
Sam: the court case with that guy who
Sam: was mistakenly sent to el salvador the supreme court
Sam: ruled on that the administration is still hemming and hawing about trying to
Sam: get him back and that leads more generally into conversations about trump versus
Sam: the courts and all of this kind of stuff and And it leads into the conversation
Sam: about sort of people being disappeared in general.
Sam: So that's probably going to be my next topic.
Sam: Absent major breaking news or something else just coming up that's not major,
Sam: but I decide I want to talk about it.
Sam: But you will know in minutes. I won't know for hours, at least.
Sam: Anyway here's another breaky break break break thing break break break go blah blah blah break,
Sam: And we are back and it is hours later, as I said, it would be,
Sam: and I'm still behind on all the other stuff I need to get done tonight in my,
Sam: it's, it's, it's now Monday UTC just after four and to, and here in the Seattle
Sam: area, that means it's just after 9.00 PM on Sunday evening.
Sam: And aside from the before I go
Sam: to bed tonight I've got some stuff for work I got
Sam: to get done and I've got to get this podcast
Sam: done and out the door and I'm running out of
Sam: hours and so I'm getting stressed about
Sam: it so so do I dare say
Sam: I'm going to try to wrap this up shortly and not
Sam: like talk for a long time because whenever I say that
Sam: I end up talking even longer and that's probably not
Sam: what i want to be doing anyway we
Sam: are not nothing else breaking news came
Sam: up so i'm going to talk about what i said i was going to talk about which is
Sam: the case of let's see what's tilmar armando abrigo garcia is the guy's name
Sam: i looked it up to to be sure that i got it right Because usually I would just say the guy,
Sam: because I am so bad at names.
Sam: Anyway, he was mistakenly removed.
Sam: I'm not even going to say deported, because as many people have pointed out, that implies a process.
Sam: He was removed to the prison in El Salvador, which even the government admits
Sam: was a mistake, because there was a judge's order saying, no,
Sam: he should not be removed.
Sam: Now, the latest filing has them, DOJ is sort of being like, well,
Sam: yeah, but there was that order, but we don't think it was valid anymore, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: Bottom line, here's the thing here.
Sam: DOJ, they picked the guy up, they stuck him on a plane, they sent him to El Salvador.
Sam: Then they're like, oops, apparently we shouldn't have done that.
Sam: And then, of course, we got lawsuits going back and forth.
Sam: The judge was basically like, bring him back. And they appealed that.
Sam: They said, well, he's not ours anymore.
Sam: You know, this went all the way up to SCOTUS.
Sam: SCOTUS responded, basically saying, yeah, you got to do what the lower court judge said.
Sam: Sort of. There were some questions about wording.
Sam: The original judge said, effectuate the return.
Sam: And SCOTUS basically sent it
Sam: back and was like, well, you have to specify what you mean by effectuate.
Sam: And, you know, and they use the word facilitate in their own order,
Sam: like facilitate the return. So what the hell does that really mean?
Sam: So they remanded it back to the lower court.
Sam: And then, you know, the judge is like, hey, tell me what you have done.
Sam: Because before this order was stayed, he'd already made an order that they needed
Sam: to do what they had in their ability to get this guy back.
Sam: And so he just wanted a status on where is the guy and what have you done so far?
Sam: And when this first went back, they're like, we don't know. We have no information.
Sam: We have no information at all.
Sam: The judge was really pissed by this.
Sam: The DOJ was like, hey, we'll give you an update Tuesday.
Sam: The judge is like, no, I want an update every single day before 5 p.m.
Sam: Every single day, over the weekend, etc.
Sam: Tell us what's going on.
Sam: Basically, I expect to see some motion here.
Sam: So the government's first update on Saturday basically said,
Sam: we've confirmed the guy is alive and at that prison. And that's basically all it said.
Sam: Nothing about anything they're doing, nothing like that.
Sam: Their update Sunday basically said we have no update beyond what we had yesterday.
Sam: The point eight of it, I'm looking at the legal document that was filed.
Sam: I have reviewed the declaration of Mr. Michael Kozak, which was filed in this
Sam: case yesterday, April 12, 2025.
Sam: It is my understanding that defendants have no updates for the court beyond
Sam: what was provided yesterday.
Sam: As I said, though, they put in some caveats. Section 7 here.
Sam: On March 15, 2025, Abrego Garcia, a native and citizen of El Salvador,
Sam: was removed to El Salvador pursuant to Title VIII of the United States Code.
Sam: Although Abrego Garcia has an order of removal issued by an immigration judge,
Sam: I understand that he should not have been removed to El Salvador because the
Sam: immigration judge, had also granted Abrego Garcia withholding of removal to El Salvador.
Sam: However, I also understand that Abrego Garcia is no longer eligible for withholding
Sam: of removal because of his membership in MS-13, which is now a designated foreign
Sam: terrorist organization.
Sam: And apparently there was proceedings in 2019 where an immigration judge upheld
Sam: a decision not to grant bond because of a determination about MS-13. Yeah.
Sam: His current lawyers say he absolutely had no involvement with MS-13 or any of these other gangs, etc.
Sam: The authority they supposedly pulled him over wasn't MS-13 related anyway,
Sam: but I think the current judge has asked for some evidence and none has been supplied so far.
Sam: So anyway, the key here is they, look, SCOTUS, the ruling was nine to zero. It was unanimous.
Sam: So a lot of the early coverage was about how, look, this is SCOTUS slapping this down.
Sam: This cannot happen. This is not okay. They have to do something about it.
Sam: As additional people looked at it more carefully, they started to say,
Sam: okay, but some of the language here is wishy-washy.
Sam: This allows a whole bunch of areas where the government can equivocate.
Sam: It isn't directly demanding, bring this guy back.
Sam: There's lots of wiggle room still left. And so there are a lot of things the government could do.
Sam: And so far, they've been stalling.
Sam: So people have said, like, is this the one, is this the one where the Trump
Sam: administration will decide to directly violate a Supreme Court order?
Sam: And it looks like, no, probably not.
Sam: You know, because SCOTUS has given them wiggle room.
Sam: It's given them wiggle room in interpretation of exactly what they said.
Sam: It's given them a process that may take time. So they'll have time to go back
Sam: and forth and back and forth and probably back up to SCOTUS again.
Sam: If the judge decides to hold them in contempt, that'll get appealed,
Sam: that'll go up, you know, and so not yet.
Sam: And also this is one where, you know, well, in a normal administration,
Sam: they would probably decide, you know, this isn't the one to fight.
Sam: Like we admit it, There was a mistake that was sort of admitted.
Sam: Yeah, this isn't one of the ones where they're like, yeah, we definitely want whatever.
Sam: There was an admitted mistake, like go to the bat on one where there is no admitted
Sam: mistake. And it's just a question of what's the president's authority.
Sam: But we shall see. It's still playing out.
Sam: And the key to all of these,
Sam: because there was also a set where the
Sam: more general evacuation of mostly Venezuelans based on this emergency authority
Sam: thing that the president is claiming there is an invasion by this gang,
Sam: not MS-13, but the other one, I forget the name, whatever. Yeah.
Sam: The courts did say that for these removals, you have to give notice and you
Sam: have to give them a chance to file, you know, do a habeas appeal.
Sam: And there's, sorry, there's so many of these. And I may be getting some of them mungled together.
Sam: You've got the Venezuelan gang removals.
Sam: You've got this one guy who was sent by mistake to El Salvador.
Sam: You've also got these miscellaneous random people who are being,
Sam: who are getting their visas revoked.
Sam: Like there was that graduate student whose visa was revoked and she is now in
Sam: detention in like Louisiana or somewhere because apparently,
Sam: you know, and they're not giving lots of information on why.
Sam: But the only thing people can find is she signed on to a pro-Palestinian, not pro-Hamas,
Sam: pro-Palestinian, anti-the-way the Israelis were handling their policies.
Sam: Incursion into gaza editorial in the school newspaper and she was she was removed as well.
Sam: So far we do have scoda saying look there has to
Sam: be some ability to you know
Sam: for these people to file their habeas petitions and
Sam: there needs to be a process there needs to be notification they
Sam: need for the visa removals there needs to be notification you
Sam: can't just like the the one grad student they
Sam: revoked the visa but didn't tell her and then
Sam: just yanked her off the streets like there
Sam: are other people who are getting notified like if your visa is revoked and you're
Sam: given like 10 days to leave the country or whatever then at the very least you
Sam: have the opportunity to actually leave the country under your own power you
Sam: know put your affairs in order buy a plane ticket go home,
Sam: You know, I say that like it's easy. It sometimes might not be.
Sam: But in the case of like, you know, a graduate student who is here for school, it might be possible.
Sam: It's not going to be good. It's not going to be what they planned for.
Sam: It's not going to be what they wanted, but at least something, right?
Sam: But in every one of these rulings that's gone to SCOTUS so far,
Sam: from what I understand, they've done the same thing.
Sam: They've done these sort of, Even when they're ruling against the administration,
Sam: they are ruling against the administration in a way that still gives a lot of
Sam: wiggle room, doesn't give the people who are targets of these things a whole lot of options.
Sam: Like even in the Habeas case, for instance, they ruled that they have to make
Sam: the appeal in the jurisdiction where they've been taken.
Sam: And the administration is intentionally taking them to facilities in jurisdictions
Sam: that are less friendly to those kinds of appeals.
Sam: And they're not necessarily requiring like timeframes and things like that.
Sam: So like there's the possibility that like, you know, someone gets picked up
Sam: and yes, they have the right to do the petition, but it's not a requirement.
Sam: So they have to know they have the right.
Sam: They have to find a lawyer who will do it for them and have to do this quickly.
Sam: And so there are a lot of wiggle room.
Sam: There's lots of wiggle room. That's the right way to say it.
Sam: So they're ruling against the administration, but they're trying.
Sam: It seems very clear to me that
Sam: Roberts and a couple other of the conservative Supreme Court justices are very
Sam: much trying to avoid the possibility of actually getting to that confrontation
Sam: where they flat out tell Donald Trump,
Sam: no, you may not do this at all. undo what you have done.
Sam: Because, of course, there's always the possibility that Donald Trump and his
Sam: administration will just decide that now is the time to ignore it.
Sam: So they're trying in all of these
Sam: rulings to provide enough
Sam: leeway so that the
Sam: process can be kicked a little further down the road so
Sam: that more loopholes can be found so
Sam: they can at least delay that final
Sam: confrontation where they might push donald trump into a corner and on this one
Sam: with the guy whose name i've already forgotten so you have it up kilmara garcia
Sam: skipping the names in the middle for now.
Sam: It, you know, this is one case where it,
Sam: it was nine to zero, but I've seen a lot of speculation that this was probably
Sam: sort of a heavily negotiated nine to zero position. It was, it was released unsigned.
Sam: So it's not actually like, you know, they have the option of signing them and producing.
Sam: And as an unsigned, there's the possibility that nobody wanted to go on the
Sam: record objecting, but they were willing to sort of go along with it.
Sam: And so the speculation is that John Roberts basically negotiated a back and forth and was like,
Sam: how can we soften this enough so that even Thomas and Alito are willing to let this go out?
Sam: And so you ended up with what you had rather than something that could have been stronger.
Sam: And again, all in terms of avoiding that final confrontation where you push the issue completely.
Sam: Or, you know, avoiding at least delaying.
Sam: It seems like eventually you're going to get there. Now, the other thing they
Sam: could slap them down for, by the way, is the president's supposed to obey the lower courts, too.
Sam: If you have an issue, appeal it. But in the meantime, you're supposed to be obeying them.
Sam: And in this particular example, I mean, one of the reasons,
Sam: you know, the lawyers for Garcia have officially put in their notice that they
Sam: want to have the judge ask DOJ why they shouldn't be held in contempt,
Sam: because from everything we can see,
Sam: they have been ignoring that judge's orders.
Sam: Even in the time period before there was a stay or whatever,
Sam: they're different terms at different
Sam: stages of the process, and I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know them.
Sam: But there was a period of time when the order was in effect before it was appealed,
Sam: before it was stayed, where, you know, the judge had said, bring him back.
Sam: And, you know, one of the things SCOTUS could have done here or in some of these
Sam: other cases is slapped the government for not obeying the lower courts while this was under appeal.
Sam: And I think this applies to some of the other cases too.
Sam: They've been, they've been sort of the DOJ's approach has been to sort of.
Sam: Do things that could reasonably be interpreted as ignoring judicial orders from
Sam: lower courts while pending appeal, even in the absence of stays and the equivalent.
Sam: They argue that that has not happened, but there's a good argument that it has.
Sam: The other example was the Venezuelans being sent to El Salvador.
Sam: Including some after the judge gave a verbal order saying, don't do this anymore.
Sam: And if their planes in the air, turn them around.
Sam: They did not turn around the planes in the air.
Sam: And there was another plane that took off afterwards, but they say on that one,
Sam: they had other reasons besides the order that was in question for what the judge had done.
Sam: So that one they could go ahead and do. So there are arguments,
Sam: there are arguments, but it clearly, you know,
Sam: the approach is to at the very least go right up to the line of defying the order,
Sam: but I think in many cases, arguably going over the line and just saying, well,
Sam: we'll appeal it and basically ignoring it until it gets to SCOTUS.
Sam: And now this is, we've got the first couple of things at SCOTUS and we'll see how they go.
Sam: This Kilmer-Garcia case is the one that's furthest along and is most direct at this point.
Sam: And so far, you know, the order is to, you know, facilitate the return of this guy.
Sam: So far, their official, like, every day at 5 p.m. notices have basically said, we can't.
Sam: You know, they've said he is now in the custody of the El Salvadorans and there's nothing we can do.
Sam: Well, we're paying El Salvador to hold him.
Sam: Have we asked them not to? Are they going to ask him not to?
Sam: I suspect that this will, well, there are a couple possibilities.
Sam: The president of El Salvador is actually coming to visit Donald Trump tomorrow,
Sam: the next day, or early this week, early this coming week.
Sam: He could just bring the guy on the plane with him. Say, here you go.
Sam: Here's the guy. And done.
Sam: Over. We move on. and we deal with a bunch of these other cases,
Sam: but they get this one off the table.
Sam: And then by the way, they could, they could still deport the guy.
Sam: Apparently the, the order was just, he couldn't go to El Salvador.
Sam: They could send him somewhere else.
Sam: They, they could follow the actual processes to try to do this right and get this guy removed.
Sam: But for the moment, bring him back. So one possibility is that,
Sam: you know, hey, they bring him back on this plane.
Sam: Donald Trump says, hey, we did what the court says. Here's your guy, whatever.
Sam: And then maybe they try again later.
Sam: Or we go right into the defiance where we get these daily updates and every
Sam: daily update is just we have no update.
Sam: And then what does the court do?
Sam: And then if the lower court does try to hold somebody in contempt or issue further
Sam: orders or anything like that,
Sam: you know they're going to be appealed again, and they'll make their way up the
Sam: chain and eventually to SCOTUS again, and then SCOTUS will have to say something else.
Sam: They can play this game a long time.
Sam: And if the administration wants to play the game where they just keep running
Sam: this up and down the court saying,
Sam: I didn't understand what you said, or I couldn't do anything,
Sam: And then it goes through the process.
Sam: This cycle can continue a long time, especially if SCOTUS wants to play the game.
Sam: If SCOTUS wants to play the game of giving them that wiggle room.
Sam: Then, you know, that is what it is. Now, if SCOTUS at some point puts down their
Sam: foot and gives an order with no wiggle room, then we'll see what happens.
Sam: But it's still murkier.
Sam: Murkier is a good word. I was going to say muddier, murkier.
Sam: I was starting to mix them up.
Sam: Anyway, the situation is not 100% clear cut yet in sort of that fully legal way.
Sam: I think in terms of, is the administration effectively saying we don't care what the courts say?
Sam: Yes, because they are consistently doing things that previous court precedent has said is not allowed.
Sam: They are consistently pushing to the edge of the interpretation of every order they get.
Sam: Sometimes I think beyond, but that'll go through the legal process, you know, and basically.
Sam: Whether or not we sort of get that, there's that situation where there's absolutely no question.
Sam: Supreme court said X, Trump did not X.
Sam: I'm not sure, but I think effectively we're there anyway, because the end result
Sam: of all this is the court said, first of all, the court said this guy should not be deported.
Sam: They deported him anyway, or sorry, removed, not deported.
Sam: They removed him anyway. Now, then they admitted it was a mistake.
Sam: They shouldn't have done that. They didn't mean to do that. Then the court said, bring him back.
Sam: They are not bringing him back so far, And there's no evidence that they've
Sam: made any serious attempts.
Sam: I mean, this is one of those situations where, I mean, come on.
Sam: Donald Trump calls up the president of El Salvador and says,
Sam: I want him back yesterday.
Sam: And unless he's back safe and sound, X, Y, Z happens. Would the guy be given back?
Sam: Yes. Unless he's already dead. But they say he's not. They say he's still alive.
Sam: I don't know if you can hear my dog barking or not. If you can, I apologize.
Sam: I'm not going to take the time to deal with it this time because I don't have the time.
Sam: The automatic editing tools will either remove it or it won't. That's all I can say.
Sam: Anyway, the only other thing I want to say before wrapping this up is...
Sam: The mere fact that we are now talking about the scenarios where people are being
Sam: quote-unquote removed without notice,
Sam: without due process, even though the court has said we need to allow some due
Sam: process, is incredibly disturbing and everyone should be worried about this.
Sam: And yes, they're trying to say they're doing this on, you know, these are gang members.
Sam: Well, apparently their evidence is really, really flimsy. And there are certainly
Sam: people who have been picked up who do not appear to actually have been gang members.
Sam: And then they're like, well, and they're all illegal, of course.
Sam: They don't, they're all here when they shouldn't be. But the thing is,
Sam: if you don't have sufficient processes and protections in place so that someone
Sam: can dispute that and say, no,
Sam: I'm not a gang member or no, I actually am legal or even no,
Sam: you know, really, I'm a citizen.
Sam: Unless you have those processes in place, it's guaranteed at some point,
Sam: you know, and I think it's actually already happened.
Sam: Innocent people are caught up and you don't have the processes to deal with that.
Sam: And if you don't have the processes to deal with that, what's to stop them from
Sam: doing it intentionally? This guy was a mistake.
Sam: What's to stop them the very next time from picking up an actual U.S.
Sam: Citizen that they're upset about something. They don't want to bother taking
Sam: them through the normal legal process.
Sam: You know, arrest them, indict them, take them to court, have a trial,
Sam: have them convicted, then decide on sentencing.
Sam: You know, they don't want to do all that. They just want to get rid of somebody.
Sam: So send them to the notorious prison in El Salvador that's known for human rights abuses. Awesome.
Sam: Or even short of that, picking them up and putting them in the detention centers
Sam: that they've got scattered throughout the country now.
Sam: Everything that weakens the processes
Sam: that are in place to protect the
Sam: innocent against these kinds of things endangers everybody and they try to position
Sam: it again as like oh these are dangerous people whatever and so people don't
Sam: have sympathy because oh they're dangerous people their gang members, let them, let them rot,
Sam: let them be sent out.
Sam: We, the key to all of this. And like, look, not everything is about process.
Sam: Like there, you know, but process is actually important.
Sam: Process is what protects everyone from arbitrary actions by the government.
Sam: So you want those processes in place and yeah, it slows things down. Yeah.
Sam: But that's good. I don't know. Like, I think a lot of people are willing to
Sam: say, well, you know, if, if the government says they're bad,
Sam: then let's get rid of them. What's the big deal? They're bad.
Sam: The problem is trusting the,
Sam: trusting like ICE or DHS or the FBI, any of these to make those determinations by themselves.
Sam: You want checks and balances. You want to make them prove it.
Sam: You know, and if they don't have to prove it, then it's not just going to be
Sam: the bad people. It could be anybody.
Sam: That's the whole point of all this stuff. And now, you know,
Sam: we're having people disappeared.
Sam: That is not something that should be happening in this country. But it is.
Sam: And the question is not what did these people do and do they deserve it?
Sam: It's just a fundamental, this should not be happening, period, end of story.
Sam: If they actually have done a criminal act, then deal with that with the mechanisms
Sam: that are set up for people who do criminal acts.
Sam: If they have indeed violated immigration laws and are here without the proper paperwork,
Sam: then there are processes for that too that you should deal with and go through
Sam: all the steps and make sure you've done it all properly,
Sam: including all the mechanisms for them to appeal and take it up and down the
Sam: chain and prove it or whatever.
Sam: And even then, you do it humanely.
Sam: I would typically default to like letting most of these people stay,
Sam: you know, unless there is a real problem.
Sam: Like, you know, I, Yvonne, myself, our listener, Bruce, when he's co-hosted
Sam: a few times have all said we're, we're essentially in favor of open borders.
Sam: Like, you know, often like, you know, Democrats and liberals are put in a position of sort of deny.
Sam: Oh no, no, no. We do believe in a secure border.
Sam: Just not like, yeah. Okay. Secure border. Fine.
Sam: But fundamentally, the default should be freedom of movement.
Sam: People should be able to go where they want to go, live where they want to live.
Sam: There should be a really good reason to stop that.
Sam: Not just because we've reached our quota from people from your country or we
Sam: don't like brown people or whatever.
Sam: No, no. But, but even assuming all the laws are in place, you need to like follow
Sam: the processes that are defined and,
Sam: and the processes are there for good reason. We shouldn't be getting rid of them.
Sam: We need to have people have the ability to dispute whatever you're doing to
Sam: them and have it go through an appropriate process.
Sam: We should not just have people being picked up off the street and sent off to.
Sam: Notorious foreign prisons just no it's ridiculous it's horrible,
Sam: it's good to see the courts pushing back on it some even if it's not quite as
Sam: strong as it could be and we'll see how it continues to play out but it's a
Sam: very dangerous process precedent.
Sam: Because the more power you give the executive to do things on their own without
Sam: judicial processes to check them, the more dangerous it is to everybody.
Sam: Just as a universal principle, not just on immigration, but on everything.
Sam: You know, the founders, when they set up checks and balances,
Sam: that was actually kind of important.
Sam: And I know it's frustrating to everybody that it slows things down when you're
Sam: trying to accomplish X, Y, or Z, because there's so many choke points and so
Sam: many places to sort of stop things and slow them down and whatever.
Sam: And I'm sometimes frustrated by those too.
Sam: But there's good reason to have checks and balances and to not have sort of
Sam: an ultimate concentration of power in the president to do whatever the hell they want.
Sam: And the Trump administration's whole theory, this unitary executive theory,
Sam: is all about giving the president close to unlimited power.
Sam: And it's a really, really bad idea. even
Sam: if it's a president you agree with let alone
Sam: if it's a president you disagree with but you know
Sam: i wouldn't want joe biden or obama
Sam: to have that level of power either or harris
Sam: if she had won no you just
Sam: don't want that kind of accumulation of power so and
Sam: so yeah that's happening okay with that
Sam: let me wrap it up i've probably spent too much
Sam: time anyway oh what
Sam: do we say hopefully yvonne will be back next week go to curmudgeons-corner.com
Sam: see all our stuff you can see all the ways to contact us a link to our youtube
Sam: where the unedited video live streams of this podcast lives.
Sam: You can see our transcripts. You can see our archive of old shows.
Sam: All of that fun and exciting stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff.
Sam: I have still not put a link to TikTok.
Sam: TikTok is still out there. You know, when I first started putting out the TikTok
Sam: clips, They were routinely getting hundreds and hundreds of views.
Sam: The last few weeks, they've gotten very few views.
Sam: If they continue to get very few views because the TikTok algorithm is burying
Sam: them or whatever, I might stop.
Sam: I mean, I think they're kind of fun, so I've enjoyed doing it so far,
Sam: but it also takes time. I had been specifically...
Sam: Cutting down on activities I do to get this podcast out after recording it.
Sam: I am doing much less manual editing than I used to do.
Sam: I'm basically just throwing it through some automated tools and saying,
Sam: whatever it does, it does. That's fine.
Sam: There are only a handful of things. I mean, the last time I mentioned Yvonne
Sam: was like coughing all the time, like constantly, the automatic tools actually
Sam: got rid of most of the coughs,
Sam: not all of them, a couple snuck through, but I listened to that show or most
Sam: of that show since I put it out.
Sam: And I can tell you for sure, most of the coughs were taken out by the automated
Sam: tools. So I'm like, good.
Sam: That leaves one less thing I need to like note down and manually remove.
Sam: I'll just let the automation handle it. And if it misses one or two every once in a while, whatever.
Sam: Like, so I'd cut down a lot of the stuff I did. I used to do all kinds of manual
Sam: stuff. I don't do that anymore.
Sam: I'm just like, you know, the automation will cut out big gaps,
Sam: the automation will cut out, you know, the filler words.
Sam: I almost used some filler words,
Sam: but then they would be cut out and the sentence wouldn't make sense.
Sam: You know, it does this stuff. And like,
Sam: so I saved a lot of time, but then I added the time back by doing these stupid
Sam: TikToks where, yes, the Riverside program gives us suggested TikToks,
Sam: but I watch all its suggestions and pick the ones I like.
Sam: And I've even started editing the ones I like a little bit because they often
Sam: don't start or end at a place I like.
Sam: So I end up extending them a little bit to make it go to a natural endpoint.
Sam: And by the time I've done all that, I've taken a whole bunch of time generating
Sam: the stupid TikToks. So yeah, so we'll see.
Sam: We'll see. But they are kind of fun.
Sam: I don't know. But if nobody's watching them,
Sam: Then, oh, well, and also, even when people were watching them and commenting
Sam: on them and stuff, I'm not convinced that they ended up like deciding to subscribe to the podcast.
Sam: So what's the point then? You know? Anyway, you could all, I did not,
Sam: I have not linked to the TikTok, but I do link to the Patreon where I,
Sam: where you can give us money at various levels.
Sam: We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard.
Sam: We will send you a mug. I still owe several of you stuff.
Sam: Pete, Greg, and Ed, I still owe stuff to you. I have not forgotten.
Sam: I have a note here. As I mentioned, the last of my three big deadlines for work
Sam: is coming up in, oh God, 11 hours from the moment I'm recording this.
Sam: So after that, hopefully things will relax a little bit and I'll be able to
Sam: take care of that next weekend or something.
Sam: I also have to do my taxes.
Sam: Yeah, it's it's Sunday night.
Sam: Taxes are due Tuesday. Haven't even started to look at it yet.
Sam: My wife was going to start looking at it because I was busy,
Sam: but I don't think she's had a chance either.
Sam: So I guess that's what I'm doing Monday night. We shall see.
Sam: Anyway, I've been busy. I apologize. I will eventually get to your stuff.
Sam: Anyway, and at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, you will get invited
Sam: to our Curmudgeons Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and various other folks
Sam: are chatting throughout the entire week.
Sam: It's a lot of fun. Please join us.
Sam: You know, the more the merrier. We would love to have you.
Sam: So, talk to us. So, a highlight from there.
Sam: Here's one that I shared and then Ivan found some more information on after the fact.
Sam: There was a car in Indonesia who was following their GPS somewhere,
Sam: and their GPS took them onto an unfinished bridge.
Sam: Now, apparently there were, you know, cones and barriers and whatever,
Sam: but the guy, like, I don't know, didn't think they were for him and went right past them.
Sam: Ended up flying off the edge of the unfinished bridge, landing on a roadway below, and was fine.
Sam: His passenger said, they're never riding with that driver again.
Sam: And apparently the driver was worried that his car was totaled.
Sam: There's video of this. There's video of the car going off the bridge.
Sam: If you Google driver shoots off unfinished bridge while following map on phone,
Sam: You will probably find the video.
Sam: And yeah, Ed commented on the curmudgeons corner slack.
Sam: Are you saying I need to not only watch the map, read my mail,
Sam: text friends, and listen to the news? I also need to look out the window of
Sam: the car to see where it is going.
Sam: Just how multifunctional must I be?
Sam: And I agree. Because I am one who would follow the stupid GPS.
Sam: I have indeed in the past gotten in trouble by following the stupid GPS and getting stuck places.
Sam: So I will specifically point you to one of them.
Sam: If you go to abulsme.com, A-B-U-L-S-M-E.com, which is my blog,
Sam: which I haven't posted to in years now,
Sam: since 2022, when my dog Miley passed away, when I posted about that. That's the last post.
Sam: But if instead you look at the navigation and go to random trips and then pick
Sam: the trip for, which one was it?
Sam: 2002 Q2, Grantsville, Nevada, USA.
Sam: You will find on day three of that trip.
Sam: I followed the GPS onto a dirt road and ended up stuck in the mud in my rental
Sam: vehicle and could not get it out.
Sam: I don't even know if I had a cell phone at that time, but I didn't have coverage
Sam: in any case. It was out in the middle of nowhere.
Sam: I pitched a tent and slept the night out there.
Sam: It was very cold. I did not have the proper equipment for the temperature it was.
Sam: Now, I did not die, obviously.
Sam: I did not get significantly hurt or anything like that, but it was very cold.
Sam: But I spent the night, and then in the morning, I walked back to the main road.
Sam: That wasn't that far from the main road. a road that actually like had occasional
Sam: rare traffic as opposed to this dirt road.
Sam: I, I put like a shirt on a post to get, to maybe get people's attention and
Sam: then just started walking to try to find somebody.
Sam: And I eventually, you know, found, I forget if they found me.
Sam: No i yes i found them i found i i found a a ranch and you know got up to talk
Sam: to them and you know basically some cowboys you know actual like ranch hands
Sam: on an actual like nevada ranch.
Sam: Rescued me. They brought their truck. They brought stuff so they could pull me out of the ditch.
Sam: And they pulled the vehicle out of the ditch, or the washed-out part of Muddy
Sam: Road, whatever is the right name for it, and rescued me. So anyway,
Sam: there are pictures and the full story on the website that I just gave.
Sam: So go check it out because I did not fly off a bridge, but I did get myself in trouble.
Sam: And if the circumstances had
Sam: been just a bit different, it might not have worked out as well as it did.
Sam: There have been other cases of people who have gotten stuck on a back road in
Sam: the middle of a snowstorm and people have died.
Sam: So I would like to think that now, more than 20 years after this particular
Sam: adventure, I would be a bit more cautious.
Sam: Also with current technology if i was going to do a trip like that again,
Sam: where i knew i was going to be going on back roads
Sam: in the middle of nowhere you can well now
Sam: now even the current iphones not my iphone 12 but the current iphones can do
Sam: an emergency satellite call so i would definitely make sure i had equipment
Sam: like that if not one of those other sort of dedicated emergency beacon things
Sam: that you can use to call for help,
Sam: if you are out of service and, you know,
Sam: whatever, that also are satellite-based, you can guarantee I would have all
Sam: that stuff if I was going to do an adventure like that again. Anyway.
Sam: Or maybe I would be like, this road doesn't look safe. Maybe I shouldn't go there right now.
Sam: Maybe, I don't know. You know, but fundamentally though, like that little adventure
Sam: was what made the trip for me.
Sam: Like the rest of that trip was fun too.
Sam: But that one day getting stuck, that is the story I remember and the story I will tell.
Sam: And like when I was doing those random trips back in the early 2000s,
Sam: that was what was fun to me was the unplanned nature of them and the fact that
Sam: I was making it up day by day and would have little adventures.
Sam: Although it is nice to have adventures that are, you know, safe.
Sam: Yeah. Anyway, this is not the only one where I got into a little bit of trouble.
Sam: Hell, elsewhere on this exact same Nevada vacation. No, no, no,
Sam: it was a different vacation.
Sam: Yeah, there was the one to Mariposa, California, I think also included me getting
Sam: in trouble almost running out of gas or something.
Sam: Maybe that was Grantsville too.
Sam: Actually, this is a theme. there there
Sam: was one to lac lac menuane
Sam: quebec anyway look there's several of these where
Sam: i've gotten in trouble maybe it's
Sam: good i stopped doing these at some point i would like to
Sam: do them again the next one is supposed to be the next
Sam: one that has been the next one for decades now is
Sam: to chichoban in quintana rue mexico it'd be
Sam: nice to do that again uh that's just north
Sam: of the belize border but yeah like
Sam: i got in trouble in a lot of these i had never like but like getting my car
Sam: stuck almost running out of gas in a place that would have been like i would
Sam: have been stranded if i had run out of gas you know getting yeah i think there
Sam: was more than one time i got my car stuck.
Sam: I had a car damaged in one of them, but they were fun.
Sam: Anyway, I've talked long enough. Thank you for joining us for yet another Curve of Scorn, or me.
Sam: Like I said, hopefully Yvonne will be back next week and we'll be back to normal.
Sam: And yeah, thank you. Have a good week. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah,
Sam: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Goodbye.
Sam: Okay. For those of you who stay past the credits or those of you on the live
Sam: stream, I'm going to hit stop now.
Sam: I don't know why I leave these things in. Sometimes they're funny,
Sam: but sometimes it's just like, okay, he's hitting stop. What's the point of leaving that in?
Sam: But like you know it gives a little character i
Sam: don't i don't know like usually i only keep the
Sam: intros or outros well i started out only keeping
Sam: the intros and outros if they were funny in some way now i sort of leave them
Sam: in even if they're not in a lot of cases or at least some of them i i do cut
Sam: some stuff out of them sometimes but anyway if you're still here why goodbye for real Well,
Sam: Alex used to say that a lot on some of his videos on alexamzilla.com.
Sam: Anyway, hitting stop now. Goodbye, folks.