Ivan: Okay.
Sam: Countdown. It's tough. It's hard.
Ivan: Final countdown. Do-do-do-do-do.
Sam: Do-do-do-do-do.
Ivan: And then that song will be stuck now in your head for the next few weeks.
Sam: Well, that's important. You need to have songs stuck in my head as much as possible, right?
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Otherwise, the brains would just leak out all over the place.
Ivan: It does not have brains leaking out all over. No?
Ivan: No, no, no, no. I don't think it's a good idea to have the brains leaking all over the place.
Sam: Ah, I guess. Shall we go?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Here comes the thing thing.
Sam: Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, July 26th, 2025.
Sam: It's 2.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Menter, Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
Ivan: Hi.
Sam: Hello.
Ivan: Hi. Are we doing okay? Everything good?
Sam: It's getting better. It's doing okay. Yeah, it's been a week.
Sam: It's been a week for me. It's been a week.
Ivan: You had stuff.
Sam: I had stuff.
Ivan: And I have not heard updates on the stuff.
Sam: You have not?
Ivan: No.
Sam: Okay, well, I guess instead of doing media this week, I will do updates on my stuff.
Ivan: You shared your frustration. You shared your, I think it rose to a level of anger.
Ivan: You also did not appreciate me not agreeing completely with your assessment of the situation.
Sam: So for those folks not on the Slack, I should explain what the hell you're talking about.
Ivan: Yes, you should. Yes.
Sam: Well, there were two major events in my life this week that I will discuss.
Sam: And I will do this instead of media this week.
Ivan: I know the media is going to fall behind.
Sam: The media is going to, you know, if we had done media, I'll give you the preview
Sam: for next week. There would have been two movies.
Sam: The African Queen from 1951 and Jurassic Park 3 from 2001.
Ivan: Jurassic Park 3. I think I stopped I'm pretty sure I stopped at,
Ivan: And I don't even think I watched two entirely.
Ivan: I think that two was one of those movies that I watched pieces of.
Ivan: Back when linear TV was it, and I had all the movie channels,
Ivan: and the movie channels worked where they repeated these movies,
Ivan: you know, all the time at many hours of the day.
Ivan: So I'm sure that I flipped through and, like, watched pieces of Jurassic Park 2.
Ivan: but I was they never grabbed me enough to say hey let me DVR this thing and
Ivan: watch the whole thing or something like that right well you know since I'm.
Sam: Giving you a one week heads up you have time to watch both the African Queen
Sam: and Jurassic Park 3 before next week but also if I'm.
Ivan: Saying that I have to say you have another assignment yes I have another assignment
Ivan: which is more critical which is to try to watch Superman The new one. The new one.
Ivan: I'm going to try to see how I get this done. Maybe it's playing in the Dominican Republic.
Ivan: Because I am going to be in the Dominican Republic almost the entire week. And I know that I have.
Sam: Here's the thing. Yeah. It would be cool. Watch it in Spanish. Spanish dubbed super.
Ivan: I got to see if that's a lot of these movies now.
Sam: English with subtitles?
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: Actually that's probably actually better but yeah
Ivan: you know so i don't know that
Ivan: may be dubbed i i you know look i've
Ivan: been to see movies like
Ivan: in foreign countries like i i still remember this this you know like in spain
Ivan: in spain it was very spain had very tough laws related language and movies they
Ivan: basically almost everything in hollywood they had to be shown on a big screen
Ivan: It was very rare to be able to find any edition only with subtitles. They were all dubbed.
Ivan: at the movie theaters. I don't know if they've lightened on that,
Ivan: but it used to be very difficult.
Ivan: And there was a lot of like...
Ivan: They really promoted the local Spanish film industry, which they actually made
Ivan: a whole bunch of pretty decent films.
Ivan: But I don't know. I'm going to see. I don't know.
Ivan: It would be interesting if I go see it, then it's dubbed. That would be...
Ivan: I gotta admit, yeah, that would be something.
Ivan: I haven't watched a dubbed movie in a long time.
Sam: Uh so i i i i back to the thing we said we weren't going to talk about the media
Sam: this week right so oh i i did want to mention that the reason you have the assignment for superman,
Sam: is our loyal listener pete who has hosted the show once wants to come on and
Sam: talk to us about superman.
Ivan: I know so.
Sam: But he wants he wants both of us to have seen it so the three of us and what happened is.
Ivan: Look, I was going to get this done. I was going to go see the movie,
Ivan: but I wound up getting sick.
Ivan: So I thought my wife was going to wait to go watch the movie,
Ivan: but as I slept, I didn't realize they went to the theater and watched the movie
Ivan: without me, which I understand.
Ivan: I was out. I was not well.
Ivan: I said, look, we're going to go to a movie. They said, look,
Ivan: we'll just go to the movies.
Ivan: I think she said, hey, you okay if we go do something? I'm like, Yeah, sure. I'm okay.
Sam: Lie here okay so to the
Sam: first of my two stories so first
Sam: of all you miss you have misidentified my emotions i
Sam: never actually rose to the level of anger i very i i suppressed it well i complained
Sam: to you guys on the slack you're upset but i was upset i was more sad than angry
Sam: though i was sad and annoyed.
Ivan: I said maybe angry. I don't know.
Sam: I was annoyed. I was annoyed and I was sad, but I never actually got angry. So what happened?
Sam: The bottom line, and we can get into the details of what I did wrong,
Sam: because part of why I wasn't angry, let me rephrase.
Sam: I was angry at myself. I was not angry at others okay and this is because yes
Sam: I was angry at myself I was sad I was,
Sam: annoyed but I was not angry at others and so,
Sam: and to those listening who have no idea because they're not on the slack this
Sam: is going to be very confusing up to this point but the bottom line if you remember
Sam: a couple weeks ago it was like three weeks ago now maybe four almost it was
Sam: three like three and a half it was july 5th i bought the damn car i bought a new car on july 5th.
Ivan: Well he had to.
Sam: Okay the.
Ivan: Other car i think we did tell the story.
Sam: Yes we oh yeah we spent a whole episode on it yeah your other.
Ivan: Car like died a spectacular well yeah it died a spectacular death yes.
Sam: So anyway cars.
Ivan: For some reason have a tendency to do during his life he has a tendency to for a flare Therefore,
Ivan: the nowment of the vehicle is always, it happens in a very dramatic fashion.
Sam: I haven't yet done one of the things where one goes flying off the cliff and
Sam: then hits on the bottom and explodes.
Ivan: I would like that one not to happen, you know.
Sam: Well, I don't have to be in it.
Ivan: Fair. You can jump out. Yes. At the last, yeah. You know. Okay.
Sam: Jump out at the last minute.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Or, or, or. you know none of my none of my cars have had sunroofs but get one
Sam: with a sunroof and then you know parachute out the top while it's going down the hill.
Ivan: I thought the saturn had a sunroof no no okay.
Sam: Oh you know the corolla might have the one before the saturn.
Ivan: Yeah one of those two.
Sam: I only had for a few months right.
Ivan: Because the corolla went out in a spectacular fashion as well.
Sam: It was a multi-car collision that I was in the middle of.
Ivan: Yes. Yes.
Sam: Yes. Anyway, like the point of all this...
Sam: The point of all this is my daughter was pulling out of our driveway and hit
Sam: the corner of my brand new car.
Ivan: You know what? To be fair. Okay.
Sam: To be full disclosure. Let's be
Sam: fair because I will explain more of the scenario. But you go ahead first.
Ivan: You know, you talk about that. And, you know, oh, my God. You know,
Ivan: like it didn't happen. Look, my brother one time at our house. Okay.
Ivan: We had a. It was. It wasn't that old. It must have been maybe a year old,
Ivan: tops two years old Mercedes, okay?
Ivan: A very nice Mercedes that dad bought, okay?
Ivan: He came in thundering in his Isuzu Trooper SUV, which had very poor rear visibility.
Ivan: Because back then, these cars, obviously no rear camera, but the one thing is
Ivan: they kept mounting the spare tires in the back.
Ivan: You're mounting the spare tire in the back Limited rear visibility In a ridiculous
Ivan: way Okay My brother comes in,
Ivan: thunders into the house He had to drop something at my parents house The car
Ivan: was parked off to the side And when he went to back up He backed up real quick
Ivan: Not looking And completely broadsided The relative The pretty new Mercedes Okay,
Ivan: alright So he hit his car and he broadsided the car.
Ivan: Okay, all right. So we've had, I had
Ivan: my brother's son go visit his in-laws and they left the two-year-old inside
Ivan: this Mercedes and he popped the car out of gear on a hill and it went down a
Ivan: hill and hit a Porsche and a Corvette at the bottom of the hill.
Ivan: The kid was two years old and he managed to wreck three cars at once.
Ivan: So, precocious yes amy's hit in the scheme of things i thought i saw the video
Ivan: sam shared the video i saw what happened you know it was a tight fit it.
Sam: Was a tight fit.
Ivan: It was a tight fit i and you know let.
Sam: Me describe for a little bit the configuration here we we have what's called
Sam: a flag lot for our house, which means there's a long driveway,
Sam: and then it's sort of, well, long in the scheme of things.
Ivan: It is long. It is a relatively long driveway for most modern people.
Sam: It's like what? You've been here. It's like 50 feet or something?
Ivan: Yeah. It's a long driveway. Yeah. It constitutes for...
Sam: Yeah it's a long driveway i
Sam: mean it's not like half a mile or something but yeah half a mile but it's.
Ivan: A long driveway you're not you know it's not you're not right off the street no you have.
Sam: To know we are back from the street which it's sort of we are one of the houses
Sam: that was sort of squeezed in on the last remaining space of the development
Sam: after everything else was built so there's a little there's this driveway that
Sam: goes behind the other houses to where we are Okay.
Sam: And it's actually one of the reasons we liked this house is it wasn't directly on the street. Right.
Sam: So anyway, long, long driveway and then it expands out.
Sam: So we've got a two car garage there and then there's actually a space next to it.
Sam: That's enough. Like if everything was clear and we didn't have anything going on,
Sam: you could comfortably fit three cars there and you could could squeeze for it
Sam: if there was nothing there okay nothing of course we've got plenty of crap there okay.
Ivan: There's junk all over the place i.
Sam: Don't know.
Ivan: What it is well i say junk i mean.
Sam: So let me look at the video right let me
Sam: describe the specific judge that well i'm
Sam: not even getting to the stuff that you see on the video first there's the
Sam: other stuff that makes us park as tight as we do so first
Sam: of all brandy has this old like what is it a 1985 riata or something like Via
Sam: Criata That she's dragged It was her first car ever That she got as a teenager
Sam: We're in our 50s now Okay She's dragged this car around Ever since Okay,
Sam: It has not moved under its own power in over 15 years.
Ivan: Okay. Obviously, that car will not start, right?
Sam: So the last time we tried to start it, it did. It just needs like a jump start.
Sam: Okay. And it'll go for a very short amount of time.
Sam: It's got, there is a, it, it, I mean, look, it's been 15 years.
Sam: It may have more problems now than it did last time we tried. Okay.
Ivan: It's not wine. It didn't improve with age. I got to guarantee you that.
Sam: Right. So, like, it's just been sitting in our driveway for 15 years with a
Sam: car cover over it, right?
Sam: Now, but last time we tried to actually move it under its own power,
Sam: I figured out why it was draining the battery almost instantly every time.
Sam: It had one of these old...
Ivan: Alarm systems?
Sam: No. Do you remember the retractable radio antennas?
Ivan: Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah, the little motorized ones.
Sam: That when you turn on...
Ivan: The motor was stuck?
Sam: The motor was stuck.
Ivan: Well, that's an easy fix, actually. You could just pop up, pull the fuse.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, what was happening was every time the car turned
Sam: on, the stupid antenna would just go, and it would just stay,
Sam: and it would completely drain the battery, no matter what else you did.
Ivan: Eventually, yeah, eventually it'll drain the battery. Sure.
Sam: Because for whatever reason, it would keep trying to retract the damn thing
Sam: after you turned off the car.
Ivan: Those things are prone to break. Yeah. Okay.
Sam: So it would keep going. Anyway, so it hasn't moved under its own power in 15 years.
Sam: The last time it came home, it was towed home.
Sam: Okay? And...
Sam: Because it had actually, it was a long story. Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Sam: It was towed home the last time it came home.
Sam: And the tow truck driver couldn't get it all that close to the edge of the driveway.
Sam: So it's basically taking up a space and a half of what it should.
Sam: There's like, between it and the edge of the driveway, there's like six feet.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: So like it could have been over further, which would make it far more comfortable
Sam: for the other two cars that are there.
Sam: Now we actually have three cars right now that are actually like moving.
Sam: So it'd be nice if that thing wasn't there and we had three others.
Sam: Now, there is a place we could have put that car that's further back next to
Sam: our house, but we filled that with a giant storage container because we've completely
Sam: filled our both our garage and our house with junk.
Sam: So we've got this storage container that we pay like a couple hundred dollars
Sam: a month to have there. Plus, we have a full garage.
Sam: Plus, we have a full house. So we couldn't put the car where the storage container is.
Sam: So the red car was there. And I've been telling Brandy for the entire,
Sam: like the last time it was put there was, I don't know, 10 years ago.
Sam: No, no, not even. It was only six years or so. Like the last time it moved under
Sam: its own power was 15 years, but I told you the story was complicated.
Sam: It left and came back, not under its own power at one point.
Sam: But anyway, the, I've been telling her ever since it was parked there,
Sam: we should pop the sucker into neutral and,
Sam: and push it out and back so that we can move it six feet over and make a lot
Sam: more room for the other cars that would be that.
Ivan: Would be a great idea yeah.
Sam: But but we've never done that we we've never done that in part because she's
Sam: like you know if we're gonna do that she says something with riatas you can't
Sam: just pop them into neutral i i don't know like she wanted to actually start
Sam: the car again i don't know if she's right or not but she is probably nothing
Sam: i may be even misremembering it.
Sam: But anyway, there was always an excuse for why we weren't going to...
Ivan: It's a 1980s Riatta.
Sam: Well, they only made the cars for three years.
Ivan: But they're not... Did I recall? They don't have one of these newfangled electronic lectures.
Sam: Well, the Riatta's had a bunch of electronic crap that was ahead of their time.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, yes, it did. Especially on the dashboard.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the transmission, as far as I remember,
Ivan: in the engine, they were pretty much normal, standard, substandard GM stuff of that era. You know,
Ivan: any transmissions, even from, you know, now you've got all these like cars with
Ivan: like push button transmissions and other stuff, okay, which are a standard modern thing right now.
Ivan: you know you get these things where you got buttons levers
Ivan: and whatever that are that send electronic signals but you know nobody not even
Ivan: mercedes like any of those they were you know they they were back then they
Ivan: were still just a little you know lever mechanically actuating something they
Ivan: they you know that wasn't right.
Sam: Right so anyway bottom line there was.
Ivan: Always an excuse.
Sam: For why we didn't move it over so so the remaining space in the driveway was
Sam: less than it was anyway, but it's been that way almost the entire time we've lived here.
Sam: And, and now at this point, by the way, this, the six feet that I mentioned
Sam: that are there, we've of course filled that with crumb, you know, at the moment, you know,
Sam: there's, there's like stuff that
Sam: is destined for the dump, but hasn't gone there yet and stuff like that.
Sam: And, you know, like we've got all kinds of old stuff that, you know,
Sam: Randy and I are ready to get rid of, but we need to do it in a sneaky way because
Sam: alex is going to get upset if we get rid of it there's there's stuff that nobody
Sam: wants but is too bulky to like put in the the trash bin so we have to figure
Sam: out the right way to get rid of it you know all this kind of crap right so and
Sam: and of course that's been there forever too,
Sam: you know so yvonne's making all kinds of faces i.
Ivan: I i would like to strap like the storage thing and whatever on top of a rocket
Ivan: and just launch it into the sun while you guys are sleeping and Then have you
Ivan: mad at me for a year or something, whatever. I don't care.
Sam: You know, that's probably where the curmudgeon's corner tapes are. From college.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. But, and see, here's the, that's the problem with all this stuff is it's
Sam: 75% trash, but the trash is all mixed in with the 25% that's not.
Sam: And so you have to actually go through each item one by one to like, see what's going on.
Sam: Anyway. Anyway, and I'm ready to get rid of 75% of it. But anyway,
Sam: the point is, so there was constrained space for that.
Sam: But it's been like that almost the entire time we've lived here.
Sam: We've parked two cars there in the front.
Sam: Usually, my wife parks in the spot that's closest to straight ahead from the
Sam: driveway, and I park in the one that's closest to the house.
Sam: The one that's closest to the house requires you to sort of shimmy to the right and around.
Sam: because, you know, like I said, it's the narrow driveway and then it expands out.
Sam: And when I say it expands out, there's like bushes and stuff. Okay.
Sam: There's like, there's actually rocks at one point, but like for the,
Sam: the rocks are further back.
Sam: Mainly what you have to worry about is the bushes. I've only actually scraped
Sam: a rock once, you know, but Yvonne's making more faces.
Sam: anyway so what's happened
Sam: though the last month or two is
Sam: my my my wife was gone
Sam: for a while like on various trips and i parked her car
Sam: at the airport so the other two spaces were
Sam: open my and when i was at work
Sam: the both spaces were open my daughter has
Sam: you know an old pontiac aztec and so
Sam: she wanted she is preparing
Sam: to go to the east coast to
Sam: live at least a year with her her grandmother okay and so she wanted to load
Sam: up the car with all her stuff yes she's driving cross-country in an ancient
Sam: pontiac aztec too so you know there are all kinds of things that could go wrong there.
Sam: That'll probably be a different story for a different day. More faces for me, Fawn.
Sam: So anyway, she backed her car up to the garage so she could easily load her
Sam: stuff into the back of the car from the garage.
Sam: And so her car had basically been there for most of the last month.
Sam: So when I got my new car, for the first few days, I did not park there at all
Sam: because I was like, that space is kind of tight between where she parked and the Riata.
Sam: And I was like, yeah, so I parked on the street a lot.
Sam: And then finally, I was like, I want to actually try charging my car at home.
Sam: I want to park in the garage.
Sam: Not in the garage. That would be impossible. It's full. But I want to park in
Sam: the driveway in front of the garage.
Sam: And so I actually tried going in. The first time I did it, I got in there,
Sam: and then I was like, you know, that's a little too close to her.
Sam: I'm not going to do that. So I backed out because I was, like,
Sam: thinking it's a little tight.
Sam: It's tight. And the second time, though, I was like, screw it. I'm going to try.
Sam: Okay. So I got in there. I got as close to the Riata as I possibly could.
Sam: And I also scooched forward as close as I could to the actual garage.
Sam: And, you know, I was close enough to the Riata so that, like,
Sam: I was squeezing out of the car door to get out, okay?
Sam: And then I, you know, I got the charger going and I plugged it in and all this
Sam: kind of stuff and it worked.
Sam: And so I did this for several days in a row without incidents.
Sam: Okay. And so I'm like, oh, okay, this is going well. It's, it's,
Sam: it, it works. It's no problem in my head.
Sam: She was leaving and coming back most days, but I don't think she actually was.
Ivan: She actually didn't, huh?
Sam: No, I don't think she had, I think she'd been there the entire time had not moved.
Sam: Cause also, oh, by the way, the way she'd backed in gave even less space than
Sam: there sometimes otherwise would have been. Okay.
Sam: Cause she wasn't like hugging up against the house or anything either.
Sam: And when she had backed in, I hadn't been there. So like, anyway,
Sam: but when, when I parked each time I sort of got out, I looked,
Sam: I assessed the situation and I was like, God, there's room to get out. You can get out.
Sam: The instant where this happened, two
Sam: things were different than most
Sam: of the other times one i wasn't always charging this time i was charging so
Sam: you not only had my car you had the you got the cable sticking out yeah you
Sam: have the cable sticking out and it was on the side towards her car and two and
Sam: this was my fatal flaw above all else,
Sam: i like i i was getting really excited the new car has the little like warning
Sam: indicator on how close you are to what you're about to park in front of,
Sam: and it sort of has a yellow and then a red.
Ivan: Red.
Sam: Red when you're really close, yellow when you're like at a normal distance. I stopped at the yellow.
Sam: with, instead of pushing all the way up to the red, that probably made six inches
Sam: of difference, maybe a foot of difference.
Sam: And that would have been all she would have needed to easily miss.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And I was like, yellow is good enough. There's been no problem.
Sam: I've been parking here for days now, you know, there's been a yellow.
Sam: And then I got out, I looked, it looked fine.
Sam: That looked like there was plenty of space. And also, of course,
Sam: in my head, I'm thinking if she has any sort of problem, if it's too tight for
Sam: her, she'll call me and I'll just move it.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, because I'm not thinking like...
Ivan: She might be overly confident or... Right. Not really gauge it. It was...
Sam: It was very tight. Like I looked...
Ivan: I will say this. If it were me...
Sam: Oh, I should add... Wait, let me add one more thing that I did not take into account.
Sam: my wife moved a bunch of flower pots
Sam: into the driveway on the
Sam: more difficult on the other side that probably took another
Sam: six inches off the available space on her left i was parked on her right there's
Sam: another six inches taken away on the left and so anyway sorry sorry i'll tell
Sam: the rest of the story say what you were going to say about your own all i.
Ivan: Was going to say is that i I've had these situations like my wife has been concerned
Ivan: about being too tight, getting it, the car into say our garage.
Ivan: So I know my wife, especially knowing it was a new car.
Ivan: She would have been like, immediately.
Ivan: I'm like, Oh shit, I'm not chancing this. I'm like, let me call up.
Ivan: you know, I'm going to guess that she was just a little bit more like, yeah, it's fine.
Sam: Yeah, I feel confident that let alone, like, I've said on the curmudgeon's corner
Sam: slack, well, first of all, I should have moved forward a couple inches,
Sam: giving her a little bit more room.
Sam: But I've said, you know, I was like, I'm confident I could have made it.
Sam: Now, I might be full of shit, you know, but I was like, I'm confident I could have made it.
Sam: But Honestly, I'm confident she would have made it if I had so much as said,
Sam: be careful of my car when you leave. That's all it would have happened.
Ivan: She would have probably given it more thought. I think it's probably one of
Ivan: those things that, you know what? Different configuration, different car.
Ivan: She didn't. It just didn't. Like, I'll get out. It's fine.
Sam: Yeah. Well, the thing is, what she said is she didn't realize the charger was
Sam: there first, and that gave extra space.
Sam: Like at first, so when she actually pulled that out.
Ivan: You know, about what I could understand.
Sam: She pulled out, she hit the charger cable, and then at first she thought she'd
Sam: only hit the charger cable, right?
Sam: But if you look at the marks on the car, it's clear she hit the actual front bumper of the car too.
Sam: But she thought what had happened is she'd hung
Sam: up on the charger and it had bent and
Sam: scraped against the rest of the car and you
Sam: know of course you see like
Sam: once she hit there's like some back and forth to try to get out of it you know
Sam: if you look at and and the video wasn't at a great angle it's it's actually
Sam: coincidental like the one video that would have had a good angle like the motion
Sam: detection didn't actually start until after the impact, which made the video
Sam: from that one kind of useless.
Sam: The video from the other one was a camera that we normally have pointed at our
Sam: porch, but we had had pointed at some other stuff for random reasons.
Sam: We were watching some wildlife and stuff, you know, and so we,
Sam: it was, it just happened to be randomly positioned in a way that it caught sort
Sam: of the edge of her car while this was happening.
Sam: So you can see what was happening, but the but
Sam: anyway yeah so in the
Sam: end it wasn't there are two first
Sam: of all the charger itself the you know luck you know one of the important things
Sam: that's a smart thing with these chargers and other things they are intentionally
Sam: designed so like if you drive away while they're still plugged in,
Sam: they'll, like, snap off.
Ivan: It snaps off. Yeah, okay.
Sam: Right? You know, the end part. Well, actually, the car.
Ivan: And I guess, because the car is actually not supposed, you know, like, I can't, like,
Ivan: I can't.
Sam: No, I know. It won't even start if it's plugged in.
Ivan: Correct.
Sam: So let me further expound out.
Sam: If someone hits the charger, like happened here, the tip is designed to break off.
Ivan: To break off.
Sam: So that you don't, like, damage the entire charger assembly.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know. So the tip was sort of, it wasn't completely broken off, but it was all loose.
Sam: Okay. When I got to look at it. So the actual charge cable for the trickle charger
Sam: was clearly, like, had damage.
Sam: And then there were scrapes and bruises in the back right quadrant of the car. Okay?
Sam: And, look, I've told people, you know, look, if this had happened to my Subaru,
Sam: I wouldn't have even noticed. You know?
Ivan: You notice it because it's a brand new car.
Sam: I notice it because it's a brand new car. Like, on a 15-year-old car,
Sam: it's got all kinds of bumps and bruises, showing its history over the years.
Sam: And at a certain point, you are like, you know, even more major damage than
Sam: that. You're like, it's not worth fixing.
Ivan: Bottom line it now, okay? Is it damage? Because, listen, the bruises were minor, okay? I will say.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: I probably, I mean, it seemed. No damage to the charge port or any of that?
Sam: Well, let me put it this way. I have not had it yet looked at professionally.
Sam: The charge port works fine.
Ivan: Okay, so it works fine. So all you need is a new cable.
Sam: Well, I hammered the cable back together, too. It works fine, too.
Ivan: Okay. You know...
Sam: Well, and I say hammer, but what I actually mean is I hit it against something.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And it's not back all the way. It's back almost all the way.
Ivan: I'm sorry.
Ivan: You know, in the interest of electrical safety.
Sam: Not catching fire?
Ivan: Fire. Fucking get a new fucking cable.
Sam: Well, I was thinking I might get another one anyway, just so I can have them in multiple locations.
Ivan: Okay, let's not use the cable that was damaged. Okay?
Ivan: You know, because the next thing, look, I actually met this guy.
Ivan: There's a story, if you look this up, on, you can search this on,
Ivan: on on in google there is a guy in north carolina many years ago whose house
Ivan: entire house went on fire because of an issue with a chevy bolt and the charging
Ivan: system okay and this is an issue that these don't happen as much as they have this is why they.
Sam: Won't let them park chevy bolts in my parking garage at work there's.
Ivan: A right which that's still yeah but even though that's that's not an issue anymore
Ivan: yeah and this wasn't a bolt with a b it was the volt with the v yeah yeah I'm sorry, the hybrid.
Ivan: Well, well, bolt, bolt, bolt, fucking, you know.
Sam: Bolt, bolt, whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ivan: And so he had one of these, and it caught, it burned down his entire house.
Ivan: It burned all his possessions, okay?
Ivan: This was in the news. GM actually, apparently the blame was somewhere in the
Ivan: middle of, like, they had one, they had put one of these, like,
Ivan: wall chargers that was made by Siemens, and there's something with the battery.
Ivan: Listen, they could not ascertain the final fall.
Ivan: Bottom line is the GM actually paid for, gave him a set of new cars because
Ivan: all his cars worked on Chris.
Ivan: And had to do a very large settlement to recover that.
Ivan: But it took a long, I mean, he told me it was just the worst experience of his
Ivan: life because literally he lost all his possessions. Ever.
Sam: Right. Right.
Ivan: And the whole entire house went up in fire.
Ivan: And it was a very big, nice house that this guy had.
Ivan: And he fucking lost everything. He was just telling me how he was just...
Ivan: I had to go shop at Walmart for clothes and shit and stuff right away and stay
Ivan: at my relatives or whatever because I didn't have anything.
Sam: So what you're saying is taking the little plastic piece that bent and just
Sam: shoving it back into place probably isn't enough?
Ivan: No. Could you please?
Sam: It's almost back in place, and it works.
Ivan: Please get a new cable. Please. Please. Please. Please.
Sam: I'll take about it, Evon. So let me say,
Sam: Brandy has the responsibility, because I said I would probably not be in the
Sam: emotionally right place to do it, of determining exactly what we need to or
Sam: don't need to do with regard.
Sam: since this is a lease, like, do we have to fix stuff?
Ivan: No, didn't you get the wear and tear thing?
Sam: Yeah, yeah. So that probably... That is the way that the wear and tear.
Sam: You don't have to do anything. Anyway, she is figuring that out.
Sam: She's talking to her people. Here's the bottom line.
Sam: Here's the bottom line on my emotional state and everything else.
Sam: I was really upset for like 24 to 48 hours, okay? But then a wave of peace came over me.
Ivan: Because?
Sam: Because fundamentally, this released me from having to worry about it.
Ivan: Keep it again. Perfect. Now you already put some damage into it.
Ivan: So, my God, what the hell?
Sam: Exactly. Like, for the first few weeks I had it, I was being super careful.
Sam: I was thinking about it all the time. I was like, oh, my God.
Sam: like this you know i touched the wall and there's a stain where my finger touched
Sam: it i'm gonna have to figure out how to clean it now i'm like oh what the hell
Sam: i don't care oh it's it's you know i i i perfection has.
Ivan: Been broken and so therefore now whatever.
Sam: Exactly the perfection has been broken so now nothing matters you know now okay do you remember.
Ivan: That it's a lease.
Sam: Okay so.
Ivan: You can't okay Okay, so you can't just treat it like shit.
Sam: I was going to say, now the rats are welcome back in.
Ivan: Yeah, no, no, no. Okay.
Sam: No?
Ivan: What I will say is that a scrape like that, somebody... And actually,
Ivan: I think it happened. It happened... No, it didn't happen at this hotel.
Ivan: We were at a hotel in my wife's SUV many years ago.
Ivan: And somebody scraped the bumper in the parking garage.
Ivan: I got to the car and I'm like, what the fuck? Somebody, you know,
Ivan: pulling out of the garage Went and scraped the bumper Now, I buffed it And,
Ivan: You could see that it had been damaged, but it wasn't a big deal.
Ivan: It wasn't a hole. It wasn't anything. It was just whatever.
Ivan: I returned the lease. As a matter of fact, when I returned the vehicle,
Ivan: now it was pretty much perfect in every other way except for that.
Sam: And they just counted it as normal wear and tear.
Ivan: Yes.
Sam: Yeah. There's one little spot where it looks like instead of just a scrape,
Sam: there's like a piece of metal that's like chipped or bent or something.
Sam: but like it's one little tiny spot for the most part it's a few little scrapes
Sam: and you know i keep thinking you may remember there's a bit in cars 2 do you
Sam: remember this from the movie cars 2.
Ivan: Which part i just recently saw it but no what.
Sam: So the mater is put up is like in the plane he's been recruited by the spies
Sam: yeah yeah yeah and they offer to fix his dents oh yeah that's And he says no,
Sam: because the dents and scrapes are sort of his memories of a life well lived.
Ivan: Yes. Yes.
Sam: And so I'm like, you know, that's maybe that's it's time for that attitude.
Sam: I was thinking, like, maybe it would be a few months before I had that attitude about this car.
Sam: But, you know, whatever, you know, it's it's time for the Mater attitude.
Sam: It's it's it is now actually my car.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Like, this is distinct from every other one of these cars on the road now.
Ivan: Okay, look, okay. I understand about the, you know, we all are dense and bruises
Ivan: or whatever the marks, but it's not crazy I'm getting more stuff. Okay.
Sam: All right.
Ivan: You don't need to be, you know, like a clockwork with every inch of it.
Sam: Well, you know, I, you know,
Sam: but at the same time, you know, look, I still look at it and I'm still a little
Sam: annoyed, to be honest, like when I walk by it,
Sam: but I'm trying very hard to, you know, for the most part, the wave of peace
Sam: has indeed come over me. I've gotten over it.
Sam: But even from the very beginning, right. I was like, it was an accident.
Sam: It's not the worst thing in the world. I'm not going to get mad.
Sam: You know, I'm sad. I'm upset, but I'm not going to get mad. I forgive her.
Sam: I forgive me. Cause again, like there's so many things I could have done to avoid it as well.
Ivan: So listen, cars get dense. And that kind of dent is something that actually
Ivan: a debt repair guy could come over and fix.
Ivan: actually probably nobody would notice so i i as long as there's no other damage
Ivan: you just need a new cable and like yeah you can get a dent guy to go and like
Ivan: if you wanted to go to it they actually come on site they do it yeah.
Sam: No i like i said i'm gonna let brandy take care of that entirely i have off outsourced that she.
Ivan: Will decide what if anything needs.
Sam: To be done.
Ivan: All Right. So aside from your vehicle, you also this week had something.
Sam: Second story. And there is more to this that I've not yet told on the curmudgeon's
Sam: corner slack that looks bad for me.
Ivan: Oh, God. OK.
Sam: Anyway, so Tuesday morning, I leave for work.
Sam: I drive, you know, I drive to work as I am driving to work. I'm like, my legs are really cold.
Sam: i get to work i i like
Sam: i'm you know as i do when i
Sam: get to work i i have an officially assigned seat but i never sit there so the
Sam: first thing i do is go wander around look for a place to sit that i like want
Sam: to sit and do my work because i find all the comfy places to sit but as i'm
Sam: doing so i'm like i am freezing i am absolutely freezing and it's july.
Ivan: So it's not it's not.
Sam: It's july There is air conditioning in the building, but I'm like,
Sam: I'm pretty sure they have not set the air conditioning to like 55 or something. Okay.
Sam: But I am absolutely freezing. And I realized pretty quickly,
Sam: this feels like I have a fever.
Sam: And I also like was just sort of starting to feel a little wobbly.
Sam: So I'm like, this is not good.
Sam: I was supposed to have a meeting with somebody in person coming up.
Sam: The first thing I did was I messaged them and said, hey, look,
Sam: I feel like I'm starting to get sick.
Sam: I'm going to schedule this as a video conference instead, and I'm going to find
Sam: some conference room to talk to you just so I don't expose you to whatever it is.
Sam: But I still had half an hour till the meeting.
Sam: But so I was going to wait till after the meeting, but I was like, no, I have time.
Sam: There was a drugstore right across the way from my office. I went there.
Sam: I bought a thermometer, a fever thermometer, and I bought a COVID test. So first thing I did.
Ivan: I mean, you suspected COVID already at that moment.
Sam: Well, yeah, of course. Like, high fever. I also had a bit of a cough.
Sam: But honestly, I'd been nursing a bit of a cough for like a month. Okay.
Sam: But it was just a low grade. And, you know, you and I have talked about,
Sam: like, I cough all the time.
Ivan: Yes, you do.
Sam: There's always something going on. Allergies.
Ivan: You always have to cough. I mean, it's like, I don't. Yeah.
Sam: And so, so like I, I pretty much dismissed the cough and wasn't paying attention
Sam: to it, but I wasn't dismissing the fever because I felt like crap all of a sudden,
Sam: like within the space of two hours, I went from feeling fine to feeling like
Sam: I wanted, really, really wanted to lie down.
Sam: Anyway, I got the new fever thermometer. I took my temperature 102 right away.
Sam: Like, I think the first time I took it, it was 101.9 or something,
Sam: but then I took it again, like five minutes later and it was 102.2.
Sam: And so I'm like, crap. Then I took the COVID test.
Sam: And I will mention at this point in the story, and I will come back to this later.
Sam: Like, it wasn't, like, when I went to the store, they had a whole bunch of COVID tests on the shelf.
Sam: But none of them were the brand that I usually used at home.
Sam: So I was like, oh, what the hell? They're all different ones.
Sam: I'll just get the cheapest one.
Sam: And I got the cheapest one, which was like the Walgreens store brand or whatever.
Sam: And so when I took the test, it was a little bit different.
Sam: The ones that the government was sending out and stuff had a little cartridge, and you get the liquid,
Sam: and you dip your swab in the liquid, and then you put three drops in the little
Sam: hole, and then it comes out and whatever.
Sam: and it has a nice little area that shows you your results and it's all clearly labeled and stuff.
Sam: This one had the look, you know, you put the swab into the liquid,
Sam: but then it just had a test strip that you just drop in the liquid. Okay.
Sam: And the instructions on the box, I'm showing the camera for those of you who are watching video.
Sam: This is the box of the test. The very last step is read your results and it's
Sam: got a little thing and it's got an arrow pointing at a line. So I'm like, okay.
Sam: So it's not like the other ones. It's just if the blue line shows up, you're positive.
Sam: So great. The blue line showed up. I'm like, so I'm positive.
Sam: So I then immediately, like I finished the meeting I had with the guy.
Sam: Then I immediately went about like, you know, telling the people at work,
Sam: you know, hey, I got COVID. I'm going home.
Sam: you know i i sort of gave a last couple pieces of information of something i
Sam: was active actively working on and i tried to remember everybody who i'd seen
Sam: in person the previous day and all that kind of stuff to let them know hey maybe
Sam: you should get tested all that kind of stuff i'm going home,
Sam: i went home i did one more
Sam: little thing for work and got yelled at by one of my co-workers for
Sam: like why the hell are you working go lie down or whatever right i'm
Sam: like don't don't worry i'm about to i just
Sam: wanted to get that one last thing out because it was on my mind and
Sam: then i i you know i was at the point like by the time i got home i was like
Sam: i'm glad i didn't live any further from home and it wasn't rush hour when i
Sam: was going home because like i did not want to be driving even that like half
Sam: hour let alone the hour and a half it sometimes is at rush hour right,
Sam: And so, you know, after that one email, I lay down, I went to sleep.
Sam: Basically, I was out for 16 hours.
Ivan: Jesus.
Sam: Okay. Now, it wasn't actually 16 hours. I was basically, I was in bed for almost all of the 16 hours.
Sam: I woke up a few times. I went to
Sam: the bathroom, but like just going to the bathroom and stuff, I was dizzy.
Sam: I was like, by the time I got back to the bed from the bathroom,
Sam: I was like wiped out just by the effort of like getting up, going to the bathroom and coming back.
Sam: And so I basically went back each time, like a couple of times I was like,
Sam: let me try to like do something a little bit more.
Sam: Let me, I'm going to read or I'm going to do the, no, none of the times did it work at all.
Sam: Basically every time I gave up and went back to sleep.
Sam: And so the majority, not even the majority, almost all of that 16 hours,
Sam: I was asleep, maybe two to three hours of it.
Sam: I was in bed, but not asleep, but basically 16 hours in bed when that was finally
Sam: over that, that was from like early Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning.
Sam: When I finally woke up Wednesday morning though, the fever was gone.
Ivan: Well, there you go.
Sam: And I was feeling better, better already. Now I was not feeling a hundred percent,
Sam: but I was already feeling a lot better.
Sam: And I was like, huh, this is interesting.
Sam: Wednesday though. I was like, I'm not, I'm not even opening anything work related.
Sam: I'm just doing my own stuff I took it easy I you know I brought my laptop to
Sam: bed and I did a handful of things on my laptop at bed but I basically stayed
Sam: isolated from the family and
Sam: relaxed for Wednesday but by the end of Wednesday I was sort of like okay.
Sam: It's kind of clear that this is getting better fast like every hour felt better
Sam: than the hour before so I was like Thursday, I'll work from home a little,
Sam: you know, a partial day. Friday, I'll work from home completely.
Sam: As it is Thursday, I, I got up, I did my own stuff. I was sort of still, still no fever.
Sam: Like Wednesday, I had no fever. Thursday, I had no fever, but I still felt kind of icky.
Sam: But like Thursday, I actually got to my desk in my office at work and I did
Sam: a bunch of stuff at my desk and I ate a little bit more.
Sam: And, you know, I think one time Alex wanted some food. So I,
Sam: I went to like a McDonald's drive-thru forum or something.
Sam: I wore the mask so that I wouldn't infect anybody at the McDonald's,
Sam: but you know, so I was a little bit more active Thursday.
Sam: And theoretically I thought I'd do my own things Thursday morning and then work Thursday afternoon.
Sam: In actuality, I didn't log into work till like three 34 o'clock.
Sam: And I just checked in on, I just checked in and said, hey, I'm feeling better.
Sam: I'll be working from home tomorrow, and I'll be in the office Monday. And then...
Sam: Right around the time that I was going to message them that on Thursday,
Sam: I'm like, you know, and by the way, oh, I forgot to mention the weekend before all this happened.
Sam: My dad was in town. My stepmom was in town. My aunt was in town.
Sam: And we all had dinner together.
Sam: Oh, nice. With my mom as well. So, like.
Ivan: Did any of them get sick?
Sam: So, wait. Let me just say. So we all, I think, I don't think any one of those
Sam: people was under 80. Okay.
Sam: Like, no, wait, maybe my aunt, I'm not sure how old she is. She's younger than
Sam: my dad. My dad is the oldest sibling.
Sam: So she might be, but you know, so anyway, so 70s and 80s, you know,
Sam: and so I'm all like worried about this.
Sam: I've, I've notified everybody I was in contact with, you know,
Sam: be careful, take precautions. You might want to take a COVID test,
Sam: all of that kind of stuff.
Sam: They all said they were feeling fine so far.
Sam: But anyway, when I was letting work, I know I'd be back because I had told myself
Sam: I wouldn't, I would start working from home, but I wouldn't go back into the
Sam: office till I actually had a negative COVID test.
Sam: And so then, so I took another COVID test on Thursday afternoon,
Sam: but this time I used one of the ones I had at home.
Sam: That was the brand I'm familiar with.
Ivan: Uh-huh.
Sam: And? Negative completely.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And which immediately struck me as odd because the other times I've had COVID
Sam: or known other people to have COVID, it's even after they stop having symptoms,
Sam: it takes a while for the rapid COVID tests to actually show a negative result.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: Okay. Not like two days later. So I'm like, wait a second.
Ivan: How long did you have COVID for then?
Sam: Well, here's the thing. Or the test. Did you not read the jargon?
Sam: Yeah, the directions on the box of the COVID test.
Sam: We just have a little diagram that says wait for results with a little arrow pointing at a blue line.
Sam: I had not opened the actual detailed instructions for the test,
Sam: which I am now waving around.
Sam: which showed that actually on this particular model, there is in fact both a
Sam: control and treatment line, just like the fancier tests I'd used in the past.
Sam: The box says nothing about that, but the detailed instructions say that for
Sam: this particular COVID test, there is a second line that is pink that shows up if you're positive.
Sam: So I was never COVID positive to begin with.
Sam: So whatever I had was not COVID.
Ivan: Okay, so you were sick, but it wasn't COVID.
Sam: Yes.
Ivan: Maybe in the flu. I mean.
Sam: You had something a couple weeks ago. I did not have the digestive stuff you had.
Ivan: No, no, no. I had a cold virus, you know, thing. The digestive stuff happened
Ivan: to be coincidental. That was not.
Sam: Oh, and I got the Paxlovid prescription and everything. Like, I started on Paxlovid.
Sam: I have now stopped because it turns out it wasn't COVID.
Ivan: But okay so you had some other virus obviously i mean you i feel dumb.
Sam: Because i sort of notified everybody i had covid but even if i didn't have covid
Sam: i obviously had something they could have caught the.
Ivan: Something listen listen you what what you
Ivan: have the one thing is even if it wasn't covid what you had was bad i mean you
Ivan: had 102 fever that's not that's not a low fee that's not a little fever okay
Ivan: right so you know okay so it wasn't covet but obviously you did come down with
Ivan: something something you know.
Sam: I don't know maybe maybe i was infected with something not contagious maybe
Sam: i like maybe i stepped on a nail and have typhus or no not typhus.
Ivan: Tetanus tetanus or.
Sam: Something maybe i have rabies,
Sam: I did not pick up the bat like my mom did, but, you know, I don't know.
Sam: Maybe something bit me while I was asleep.
Ivan: Maybe it's related to the car. Who knows?
Sam: Yeah, I don't know. Maybe something internal broke and it'll become more obvious
Sam: again later. I don't know.
Sam: Anyway, but yeah, I mean, but also, mercifully, it was really short.
Sam: I mean, like, I have a little bit of a sore throat still. I have a little bit of a cough.
Sam: My head felt stuffy for a couple days. But the fever only lasted like 20 hours. It was less than a day.
Ivan: Well, it was, whatever it was, it was bad. Because, I mean, you spent 16 hours
Ivan: sleeping straight. That's bad.
Ivan: You must have been feeling really bad.
Ivan: So, okay, but you're feeling better?
Sam: I'm feeling better. Like I said, I still have it.
Ivan: Nobody else got sick.
Sam: At least nobody who's reported it back to me yet.
Ivan: And so this is good news.
Sam: Yeah. So it's good news. I mean, I still have a scratchy throat.
Sam: My voice may sound a little bit weird. I don't know. I don't know if you noticed,
Sam: but I feel like my voice is a little weird right now.
Sam: But, you know, but I'm basically feeling better.
Sam: I still have a stuffy head. But also, you know, part of that,
Sam: like because I was sick and not quite myself, I forgot to take my regular allergy meds, too.
Ivan: Well, that doesn't help.
Sam: You know, so I need to go and take them and, you know. But anyway. Okay.
Sam: Well, that's that. We, we've now spent a whole hour on me again.
Ivan: Let's just i'm not gonna talk about anything let's just take a break.
Sam: And then we'll talk news we'll we'll take a break and then we'll talk news uh
Sam: okay back after this the randomly chosen break this time is this one that originally
Sam: debuted in 2021 here it is.
Break: You're supposed to say do do do do
Break: do alex emzela alex
Break: emzela is awesome its videos are fun and
Break: today once again we have one
Break: of our most loyal subscribers here to tell you
Break: how awesome alex emzela is i'd say
Break: on a rate from one to ten alex emzela is awesome
Break: at i don't know 37 82
Break: he's pretty radical his videos
Break: are phenomenal they're full of creativity and
Break: they're so funny and exciting to
Break: watch wow what happened to your voice then
Break: amy was that dad pretending to be you because the audio was distorted when it
Break: really wasn't because i told him to yes good job on remembering dad do do do okay.
Ivan: We
Sam: Are we are back back back back back back back back back back okay i i i dominated.
Ivan: That first segment so you.
Sam: You you get to pick here.
Ivan: Okay so let's talk about hold on um do.
Sam: Leave inappropriate inappropriate interference.
Ivan: Uh you're something i've been staring at as recording the podcast and not looking
Ivan: very happy for quite a while what he's at the beginning of the show but anyway.
Sam: Oh, also, I should mention, while we were talking about the car,
Sam: my daughter came in gesticulating wildly about it.
Sam: And I actually, like, muted my microphone while Yvonne was talking so I could
Sam: hear her for a little bit.
Sam: Now, Yvonne was still talking.
Sam: As it turned out, she started to say, you were talking about the car and blah,
Sam: blah, blah. I just, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And I don't even remember everything she said when she walked in.
Sam: But I should, if I'd known that she was going to talk about that,
Sam: I should have just left the mic on and let her tell her side of the story. Good point.
Sam: But I didn't, and then she left. You know, she is preparing to leave,
Sam: so I thought she was actually going to tell me that she was ready to drive away
Sam: on her road trip to Pennsylvania.
Sam: but no she was just like I guess excited and interested that we were talking
Sam: about the instant where she hit my car and was maybe perhaps a little nervous
Sam: about what I would say I hope I was fair to her.
Ivan: You were fair you were very fair you were very fair I think,
Ivan: so
Sam: Anyway I dominated.
Ivan: The first half the rest is.
Sam: All you let.
Ivan: Me ask you a question what you shared earlier this week the these um quotes
Ivan: from the hunter biden interview oh yes yes now i did not watch the full interview
Ivan: but i've watched a whole bunch of clips i.
Sam: I also have only seen clips.
Ivan: Okay damn it so neither of us have
Ivan: seen the whole interview but i will say
Ivan: that from the clips that i watched hunter biden sounds basically if you if you
Ivan: had sat me in that chair and asked me about joe biden he basically sounded almost
Ivan: exactly like me if you would take if i if i read his words,
Ivan: If I took the transcript of what I heard of him saying and I read it in my voice,
Ivan: you would believe I authored that stuff.
Sam: Okay, wait a second. We have to, at this point, insert,
Sam: like, we're going to play the clip, the first clip I shared of Hunter Biden,
Sam: because I think everybody here will instantly agree with what Yvonne just said.
Sam: And enjoy this clip from Hunter Biden. I just have to find it real quick.
Sam: Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. It's a couple days ago now. Here we go.
Sam: okay here it is we will
Sam: go play this video in full again
Sam: this is not the entire podcast he was on wait wait we need this is one minute
Sam: and this is just under two minutes of of hunter biden out of what I think was
Sam: like a one-hour podcast or something. I've seen a whole bunch of different clips of it.
Sam: You've got this clip. You've got another clip where he's actually going on at
Sam: length between the difference between regular cocaine and crack cocaine and
Sam: how they feel different and how you make them different and all kinds of stuff like that.
Sam: So he talks about that stuff too. Like this guy has a history.
Sam: But anyway, here we go. This is the first clip I saw, and a lot of them have this feeling.
Hunter Biden: We sit here and we talk about the one guy, the one guy, because there's a clear
Hunter Biden: legal path to being able to get him back.
Hunter Biden: What about all those other people? Am I not supposed to feel for someone?
Hunter Biden: Am I going to be like all these Democrats say, you have to talk about and realize
Hunter Biden: that people are really upset about illegal immigration.
Hunter Biden: Fuck you. How do you think your hotel room gets cleaned? How do you think you
Hunter Biden: got food on your fucking table? Who do you think washes your dishes?
Hunter Biden: Who do you think does your fucking garden? Who do you think is here by the fucking
Hunter Biden: sheer fucking just grit and will that they figured out a way to get here because
Hunter Biden: they thought that they could give themselves and their family a better chance?
Hunter Biden: And he's somehow convinced all of us that these people are the fucking criminals?
Hunter Biden: White men in America are 45 more times likely to commit a fucking violent crime
Hunter Biden: than an immigrant. And the media says, well, you got David Axelrod and,
Hunter Biden: you know, Rahm fucking Emanuel was so fucking smart Rahm Emanuel.
Hunter Biden: He said, we got to understand that these people are really mad and we got to
Hunter Biden: appeal to these white voters.
Hunter Biden: Well, the only people that fucking
Hunter Biden: appealed to those fucking white voters was Joe Biden, 81 years old.
Hunter Biden: And he got 81 million votes. And he did because not because he appeased their
Hunter Biden: fucking Trumpian sense, but because he challenged it.
Hunter Biden: And he said, you can be an 81-year-old Catholic from fucking Scranton that doesn't
Hunter Biden: understand it, but still has empathy for transgender people and immigrants.
Hunter Biden: Then nobody said, oh, Joe Biden's going to turn us into a socialist state,
Hunter Biden: no matter how much they said it.
Hunter Biden: But these guys think that we need to run away from all values in order for us to lead.
Hunter Biden: I say, fuck you. How are we getting those people back from fucking El Salvador?
Hunter Biden: Because I'll tell you what, if I became president in two years from now or four
Hunter Biden: years from now or three years from now, I would pick up the phone and call the
Hunter Biden: fucking president of El Salvador and say, you either fucking send them back
Hunter Biden: or I'm going to fucking invade.
Hunter Biden: It's a fucking crime what they're doing.
Sam: Okay. That's one clip of a whole bunch of stuff.
Sam: It sounded a lot like that. And, you know, it generated quite a little furor
Sam: of people saying, I mean, what
Sam: I posted on it is like, this is the kind of fucking energy we need. Yeah.
Ivan: Oh, by the way, I'll say one thing. One is, I will say this.
Ivan: Hunter cares about his death.
Sam: Yeah.
Ivan: Okay? Hunter really cares about his death. And, you know, in trying to embarrass
Ivan: Joe, they actually reduced some messages that he left his son,
Ivan: where somehow it's supposed to be embarrassing because Joe is showing that he
Ivan: loves his son, even though he knows he's got a lot of flaws that he's got.
Ivan: You know, I mean, with applause and all, he loves them.
Ivan: So that's the first thing that came across to me.
Ivan: And the one thing is that, look, I'm not Joe Biden's son, but I'll tell you something.
Ivan: To me, Joe Biden is a person that I really appreciate very much.
Ivan: And he talked the same way that I got angry about people talking shit about him.
Ivan: There's another clip that was also talking about, you know, ripping George Clooney
Ivan: for the bullshit letter and all the shit that happened, like, whatever.
Ivan: And, you know, what Hunter said is basically exactly what I said.
Ivan: Yeah, so Joe was getting old? Uh-huh.
Ivan: And? The fuck is your point? He's still ten times more competent than the idiot
Ivan: that we just voted into there.
Ivan: That also has got anything to do with anything.
Sam: He also talked as well about how much he loved Kamala, how good a job she did,
Sam: and how she's like a member of the family, and they have all due respect for
Sam: her, et cetera, et cetera, and that she was put in a bad position.
Sam: And all of these people who went after Joe, I think he went after Nancy Pelosi,
Sam: too, were like, you know, they undermined him, and then they undermined her.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know.
Ivan: They all did.
Sam: And he's like, because, you know, he's like, Nancy Pelosi and those folks,
Sam: they didn't want Kamala Harris.
Ivan: No.
Sam: They wanted anybody else. He's like, I don't know what they want.
Sam: They want some crazy open convention bullshit.
Sam: Right. But like, you know, they didn't want her.
Sam: And they were not happy. And blah, blah, blah. And, you know,
Sam: he said fuck quite a few more times.
Ivan: And the other thing was that the one thing that he said also was that one difference
Ivan: is the Republicans, they just, how they all fall in line to whatever the fuck.
Ivan: And that then, but then we did
Ivan: exactly what all these people were doing against, you know, Joe and Kamal.
Ivan: At a moment that we desperately needed people not to be doing that.
Sam: Yeah. And the thing is, again, just with his reaction, though,
Sam: his raw reaction, I mean, I joked under curmudgeon's corner slack,
Sam: AOC hunter ticket for 2028.
Sam: And look, it was a joke. You know, hunter has lots of baggage.
Ivan: But a lot of hunter has lots of baggage.
Sam: A lot of baggage. However, you know, what I also said on the Slack,
Sam: and I'm just going to read it right off the Slack since I brought that part
Sam: of the Slack up anyway, was seriously, that kind of energy is what is needed,
Sam: including the swearing sometimes.
Sam: I'm getting more and more pissed off with the existing leadership and old guard folks.
Sam: It is time for dozens of them to just get the hell out of the way.
Sam: And no, it's not just the age, although that is part of it to be sure,
Sam: but more than that, it's the energy and the attitude and the willingness to
Sam: defend the right position, no matter what,
Sam: without preemptively compromising on anything where the polls are wishy-washy.
Sam: Have a fucking moral position and defend it and convince others you are right
Sam: and the other side is wrong and fucking fight and be fucking angry.
Sam: you know and this is what the
Sam: base is hankering for this is what most democrats
Sam: are hankering for and and the the the
Sam: leadership is still sort of in the mode oh we're going to treat this as all
Sam: normal politics we'll talk about the economy and we'll talk about like policy
Sam: x and we we're still going to work with the republicans wherever we can and
Sam: blah blah blah and that is so frustrating at this point.
Sam: And look, I understand the motivations. And in some cases, as you know,
Sam: maybe at the local level, maybe at the state level, in some cases that makes sense.
Sam: You know, because not all of the locals things are as screwed up,
Sam: but certainly at the national level no this
Sam: is not your the world of politics from 50 years ago where you know the example
Sam: people always bring up is ronald reagan and tip o'neill fight like hell and
Sam: then go have drinks together right that is gone that's.
Ivan: Gone that's gone.
Sam: And and and the where where you like
Sam: find all of these things you can work together on and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: No, the Republican side went scorched earth starting when Obama won.
Sam: I mean, they were already heading in that direction with Newt Gingrich and the
Sam: Clinton administration, but they went all in when Obama won.
Sam: And you can't react to this by doing everything with,
Sam: oh, well, we're going to be the grownups and we're going to follow the rules
Sam: and we're going to do everything in the polite and civil way and we're going
Sam: to go and we're going to shake their hands and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: No, I'm sorry. The time for that is done. The time for that may come again at some point,
Sam: but not while we have this Donald Trump-dominated Republican Party that has
Sam: clearly got a massive authoritarian bent,
Sam: is trying to take on all sorts of additional powers, has a Supreme Court behind them.
Sam: So Supreme Court, Congress, the presidency, all moving in the direction of consolidating
Sam: power and doing what I consider anyway to be damaged everywhere they go.
Sam: This is not the time for that kind of like polite reconciliation and stuff.
Sam: No, this is the time to realize it's a life and death battle and treat it like that.
Sam: And at the very least, be showing that anger. And I realize some of it is performative only.
Sam: And it's like, well, what good will being angry do? Well, you know,
Sam: look, when you're in a situation where you don't have any of the levers of power,
Sam: it's the demonstrative,
Sam: performative stuff that gives people an idea of your character and what you
Sam: want and what's important to you.
Sam: And so if you just go along with like, well, you know, we're just going to lay
Sam: back, let them hurt themselves until it's our turn again.
Sam: If you act like that, you're not going to get another turn.
Ivan: No, I know And the one thing is that they haven't even learned From the fact
Ivan: that if you Go to what the Republicans did When they were not in power That got them back to power,
Ivan: It's block everything Exactly You don't work with They didn't work with Obama
Ivan: They tried to block Every single thing He tried to do Including all the way up to Even when he was.
Sam: Explicitly enacting policies that had been recommended by the Republicans a couple years.
Ivan: Earlier. Right. They would go and vote against them right afterwards.
Sam: I mean, remember, Obamacare was based on Romneycare from Massachusetts.
Sam: It was a Republican plan.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: Anyway. Yeah, so like,
Sam: Seeing the Hunter Biden interview clips was honestly just refreshing.
Sam: It's like, my God, like somebody who's willing to actually like say things and
Sam: not be like parsing their words super carefully and blah, blah, blah.
Sam: And look, he's not the only one. We've said good things about AOC before.
Sam: We've said good things about Governor Walz before. There are a handful of others.
Sam: You know, even what's his name from California is doing better than he was before
Sam: on some of those things, although I still don't like him.
Sam: But, you know, but the people,
Sam: I don't know, this whole establishment guard that's still remnants of Clinton
Sam: and Obama and Biden are just stuck in these old ways. And it's really frustrating.
Ivan: Yeah i know um well one
Ivan: other guy that has been doing that who flipped who flipped the script on this
Ivan: is also gotta remember news i said the guy in california wow okay i heard okay
Ivan: i heard it differently okay but all right so you said uh what's his name wall so i didn't hear okay i.
Sam: I mentioned walls and.
Ivan: Then i mentioned.
Sam: The guy in california whose name i can't remember.
Ivan: Who is He's doing better than he was before. Okay.
Ivan: I couldn't remember his name. Okay, Newsome. Newsome.
Sam: Newsome.
Ivan: I'm bringing it in. All right. So anything else on that? Okay.
Ivan: All right. I picked that one. Now it's your turn.
Sam: No, no, no, no. I did the whole first hour. The whole second hour is yours.
Sam: It's all you for the rest of the show.
Ivan: All right. So let's talk about now. What about... Okay. Hey,
Ivan: Trump visited the Fed. Did you see these clips?
Sam: Yes, I have seen a few clips. Well, I've seen mainly the one clip of him and
Sam: Powell going back and forth and Powell correcting him on when a certain building
Sam: was built and all that. That's what you're talking about, right?
Ivan: Well, that was one. I mean, it was just the whole thing. And actually,
Ivan: I did share a story about what's happened since he went over there.
Ivan: Because he went over there basically on this whole thing about inspecting the
Ivan: construction, blah, blah, blah, and the project and whatever,
Ivan: because they're saying it's just a scam, blah, blah, blah, because it's costing,
Ivan: I mean, it's an expensive project.
Ivan: It's costing two and a half billion dollars. It is well over budget,
Ivan: you know, the construction. But this stupid building is so old.
Ivan: It's 100 years old. It's a pain in my ass.
Ivan: You know, his money isn't even coming out of the federal budget because his
Ivan: money's coming out of the, you know, the money that the Federal Reserve makes.
Ivan: Period. Okay, yeah. We'll do this. So his money isn't even coming out of that.
Ivan: But the one thing that I saw was that apparently after the whole thing,
Ivan: all of a sudden, for whatever reason, I'm not sure what Powell said to him,
Ivan: But all of a sudden, he started saying all these flattering things about Powell.
Ivan: And it appears that what I read was that Powell went and started giving him
Ivan: compliments about the economy.
Ivan: Okay? And the thing is about Trump, we've seen historically,
Ivan: flattery gets you everywhere with it.
Sam: Everywhere.
Ivan: It's just, you know, you just flatter him. And so, so apparently Powell,
Ivan: instead of being, he did correct them on the shit that he was reading wrong.
Ivan: The one, the one stat that he said is because, I mean, Trump even had apparently
Ivan: a sheet of paper that he pulled out in the middle of the conversation.
Ivan: We're talking about how much the refurbished cost that he's saying is 3.1 billion.
Ivan: Powell's like saying, no, it's not that. And he was including costs of construction
Ivan: of another building that I completed years ago. Okay. All right.
Ivan: That was like $600 billion.
Sam: During Trump's first term. in infinity.
Ivan: Right, exactly. So it's like, no,
Ivan: that's not in you. But then apparently he started just lobbing some compliments
Ivan: at him or whatever, and then all of a sudden he's been talking good about Powell
Ivan: all of a sudden after the fucking visit.
Ivan: He started saying nice things about him. So,
Ivan: I don't know. And he said, no, and I think, look, The Federal Reserve has said
Ivan: that once, you know, it becomes clear what the hell is going on,
Ivan: that they planned on cutting rates at some point.
Ivan: But look, the tariff, it's all, it's really dependent on these fucking tariffs.
Ivan: This is the main driver that's causing any, you know, hell, the Fed probably
Ivan: would have cut rates already if it wasn't for the damn tariffs.
Ivan: That's just the reality. But the tariffs threw so much uncertainty into this.
Ivan: And by the way, data is starting to show how this inflation is just seeping into places. Okay.
Ivan: Well, GM went and said, yeah, because that's the way it is.
Ivan: GM basically said the last quarter, tariffs cost $1.1 billion.
Ivan: Stellantis, which, you know, owns Chrysler. They said it cost them $2 billion Okay,
Ivan: So the costs are mounting. And look, what?
Ivan: Does everybody think that the companies are going to become all of a sudden
Ivan: benevolent and, like, going to suck up all these losses?
Ivan: What do you think? You think they're not going to pass on these costs?
Ivan: I kept seeing this week also all these clips that people are sharing on TikTok
Ivan: and something, whatever, talking about how grocery prices are sore,
Ivan: how people are getting really hammered with grocery prices and talking about
Ivan: any supermarket, Walmart,
Ivan: people bitching about, Publix in Florida, which I guess that happens a lot.
Ivan: But they're talking about that. And that's one of the key data points that,
Ivan: you know, Powell and the Fed have to consider.
Ivan: I, look, I don't know. I've been hearing about a lot of people talking about grocery prices.
Ivan: I find it hard-pressed to find data to back that up. Okay, at this point.
Ivan: I even looked at our grocery expenses for the last, like, four years,
Ivan: they're kind of like around the same average.
Ivan: We do buy groceries and buy house. Okay.
Ivan: You know, and cook, you know, the kitchen, you know, I don't know if you're
Ivan: familiar with that process.
Sam: But anyway, the other members of my family are, I would ditch the kitchen in a second.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So just to try to clarify how that works anyway,
Ivan: you know, because I went and But I'm like, but listen, there are a lot of things
Ivan: that are showing pricing pressure.
Ivan: Parts costs, automakers are showing it.
Ivan: It's just seeping in all different places. But look, a lot of deals haven't been closed on this.
Ivan: We still don't have, as all the announcements that he did on tariff deals this
Ivan: week, Everybody on the other side of the table keeps saying,
Ivan: well, we really didn't sign that or promise whatever the heck it was,
Ivan: as more information came out on the Japan deal.
Ivan: I don't know if you saw that the Japanese were basically almost like denying
Ivan: half the shit that he said, as usual with every fucking announcement that he makes.
Ivan: So, we still got, listen, we still got this clock ticking on this.
Ivan: But, again, there are signs in a lot of different places. People are reporting this about groceries.
Ivan: I mean, I'll minimize it. Maybe it's just not stuff I bought. Okay?
Ivan: So, there's a lot of people complaining about grocery prices going up.
Ivan: I mean, it may be that the kind of shopping that I do is not impacted by it.
Ivan: but there certainly are a lot of people that are saying that maybe there are regional.
Sam: Differences or something.
Ivan: Going on regional differences yeah yeah i can believe that too that they're
Ivan: regional differences yeah because a lot of produce and a whole bunch of other
Ivan: stuff is sourced far more locally than than than than than remotely so it could
Ivan: be that i you know it could be the chain i,
Ivan: buy the stuff, I don't know.
Ivan: But there are a lot of people that are being very vocal about their grocery price costs soaring.
Ivan: And, you know, this is the kind of shit that ate up Biden's administration.
Sam: Yeah. People wouldn't pay attention to anything else but eggs. Eggs.
Ivan: Yeah.
Ivan: It's just going to the supermarket and it's costing you 20, 30,
Ivan: 40% more. I mean, that really hits people hard. Very hard.
Sam: So I'm just bringing up eggprices.org, national data, just to check eggs specifically.
Sam: And yet we're still nowhere near where we were in like March.
Sam: The high in the last year was at the beginning of March. End of February,
Sam: beginning of March, it was up to $8.17 a dozen at its high.
Sam: It had gotten down as low as $2.52 a dozen.
Ivan: Okay.
Sam: And even on July 4th, it was $2.56 a gallon still.
Sam: Not a gallon. You don't buy eggs in gallons.
Ivan: That would be interesting to buy the eggs in gallons. I mean,
Ivan: I guess you could just crack them all open, just, you know, put a gallon of eggs.
Sam: Just in the last few weeks, since July 4th, it's gone from 2.56 to 3.37 in the last few weeks.
Sam: You know, it's still, like I said, nowhere near where it was in March.
Sam: But there is an upward swing in the last few weeks, and that's just eggs, obviously.
Ivan: Right, right, right, right.
Sam: Well, wait, wait. they have a leader board and a lower board,
Sam: you want to guess where in the country has the, wait, these aren't,
Sam: yeah, those can't be current, those are the highest high prices,
Sam: that's stupid okay, I'm not even going to bother with them, because that's like
Sam: back in March what is the, let me just, yeah, no, no, no, it's not,
Sam: it's not helpful damn it, okay, because it has like,
Sam: California is the highest. Virginia is the lowest prices. No,
Sam: South Dakota is the lowest prices of eggs.
Sam: But these are clearly have to have been when the average was eight,
Sam: not the current average. So whatever.
Ivan: Okay. So two more things that I'm going to talk about after this.
Ivan: Number one, I'm just going to briefly mention it's net approval and Epstein. Okay. All right.
Sam: Okay.
Ivan: All right. So I recently checked and Trump's net approval is at the lowest of his administration.
Ivan: It had actually climbed back up a little bit, like for some reason after it
Ivan: had like collapsed like quickly at the beginning.
Ivan: And it climbed up a little bit. But then it's it is like taken a nosedive and
Ivan: it's a nosedive across every area, whether it's the economy,
Ivan: the immigration, whatever.
Ivan: Whatever subject you've got Trump is
Ivan: underwater Ratings wise across the
Ivan: board There was one group that was like Really like
Ivan: I mean That was
Ivan: really well it caught my eye You know young people There was approval Ratings
Ivan: like in February where it Showed like he had Like only like 22% disapproval
Ivan: Amongst young people back In February for some reason In the latest surveys.
Ivan: Disapproval amongst young people 70 something percent I mean it went from 22
Ivan: percent it's up 50 points his disapproval rating amongst young people okay it's
Ivan: just a bonkers you know swing but I'm still bonkers that,
Ivan: in February like he was only at 22 percent disapproval I'm like what the fuck
Ivan: are these people watching what are they how, you know, what are they,
Ivan: what are they consuming?
Ivan: What, you know, where are they getting their information from? Because holy shit.
Ivan: But yeah, the swing has been hard.
Sam: One important thing to remember is just, and I mentioned this the other week,
Sam: when we're talking about young people,
Sam: you got to remember that a lot of them, his first term was before they were
Sam: old enough to be paying attention to politics.
Ivan: Yeah, I keep forgetting that most people, unlike you and me,
Ivan: before 18, which we were like junkies for this shit, okay, even as teenagers,
Ivan: they have no fucking clue about what the fuck is going on. They couldn't care less.
Ivan: And I'm sure that in the first term, they knew nothing.
Sam: Right. And yeah, we're talking, what, subtract eight years, someone who was
Sam: 18 and just barely old enough to vote was 10.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, you know, and OK, fine. A 20 year old was 12, but still, you know.
Ivan: Yeah. OK. Yeah.
Sam: Now, that's the beginning of his term, not the end of his term.
Sam: So you have to track less to remember the end of his term.
Sam: Now, two things I will point out on the approval rating before we move on.
Sam: one is i did find one chart that has the comparison to eight years ago to 2017
Sam: he is almost exactly at the same net approval as he was eight years ago.
Ivan: Basically he is shitty the first term and he's just as shitty now it's not like he improved with age.
Sam: Yeah at least as of yeah the chart i have the comparison only goes through July
Sam: 21st, but that's at The Economist.
Sam: The other thing I'll note is Nate Silver's net approval graph actually has him
Sam: bottoming out on July 22nd, and he's up a bit from there now.
Ivan: Oh, so he's up a bit. Well, that's the last time I checked. Yeah,
Ivan: to July 22nd. Oh, he climbed up a little bit? Okay.
Sam: Yeah. On July 22nd, he hit a new all-time low, negative 10.3%.
Sam: He's now back up to negative eight.
Ivan: What the fuck polls get? Some of these garbage polls.
Ivan: Listen, every time that these guys, these guys see that it hits that low number,
Ivan: Sam, all of a sudden they do this dump of like these garbage polls. Okay.
Ivan: All right. Just to try to prop up the number.
Sam: It's all I have to do. All I have to say is let me remind you that last two
Sam: election cycles for the general election, the polls that we slagged as the junk
Sam: polls ended up getting it right.
Ivan: Here's but here here's here's the thing though the one guy that has been the
Ivan: most accurate that i kept thinking was crazy but data has shown has been the
Ivan: most accurate has been atlas intel yeah these guys i remember you.
Sam: Spent quite a lot of time slagging on them yeah.
Ivan: And and i and and then they turned out to be absolutely right.
Ivan: And so I'm going to give them credit and I, you know, eat my words about that.
Ivan: They still have a negative 11%. Okay.
Ivan: And then all of a sudden you get Trafalgar, which, you know, at plus two,
Ivan: RMG Research at plus two, which came out like right after he hit that bottom,
Ivan: all of a sudden Trafalgar, who, by the way, has admitted directly that he puts
Ivan: his finger on the fucking polls. Okay.
Ivan: I mean, he said this himself as a plus two.
Ivan: So, so yeah, so that's, that's why the average like bumped up.
Ivan: You got a couple of those guys coming in and well, we gotta,
Ivan: you know, we gotta, we gotta tip the, you know, we gotta, we gotta put some pressure on this.
Ivan: This is not looking good. We don't, we don't like these numbers.
Sam: Yes. Anyway. Yeah.
Ivan: So.
Sam: Okay. Next. You said Epstein.
Ivan: We're going to close it. Yeah. We got to talk about Epstein.
Ivan: I mean, we haven't talked about Epstein. So, Sam, have we gotten the files?
Sam: No, we have not gotten the files. We did get this little drawing.
Sam: That was since last episode, wasn't it? The little drawing from the book.
Ivan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the entire Epstein thing.
Ivan: dating back to I think we actually did talk.
Sam: About that last time. I don't know.
Ivan: But look, the entire Epstein thing, going back all the way to the 2000s.
Ivan: Oh, by the way, I did mention, you know, because he was able to get a plea deal in the 2000s.
Ivan: I hate calling it the odds. I don't want to call it that.
Sam: The odds. The zeros?
Ivan: The zeros.
Sam: The 20s.
Ivan: I don't know. Anyway, I don't like any of those terms.
Ivan: I don't know. Anyway, I'm good with the 20s. The 20s sound good,
Ivan: but of course the 20s, I keep thinking of the 1920s.
Sam: Whereas it's now.
Ivan: It's now. Right. Okay, so look.
Ivan: The guys that started this entire conspiracy around Epstein and the client list
Ivan: and the pedophile ring and all of this other stuff or whatever.
Ivan: Well, I mean, Epstein is a documented pedophile that had a ring that basically trafficked people.
Ivan: He is one guy that got arrested for this.
Ivan: Of course, he died all of a sudden. And so we did talk about,
Ivan: I believe, about the missing minutes.
Sam: Yes, we absolutely talked about that.
Ivan: We talked about the missing minutes. But now, okay, this week,
Ivan: you know, Trump has been trying to deflect attention from anything related to Epstein.
Ivan: Tulsi comes out and basically accuses Obama of treason this week.
Sam: Which by the way, let me just say, like they've been going on about this study
Sam: that showed there was no Russian interference in counting votes in the actual
Sam: election machines and stuff like that and showing how,
Sam: well, they knew this, but then they did all this with Russian interference,
Sam: intentionally conflating these two entirely different things.
Sam: We all knew that there was, There was an investigation at the very beginning
Sam: about whether or not the actual mechanics of elections were interfered with,
Sam: and the conclusion was no, and everybody agreed it was no,
Sam: and all of the other investigations were not about that at all.
Sam: They were about influence operations and things like that.
Ivan: Right, and nothing to deal with nothing.
Sam: Two completely different things. Go ahead. Anyway, but of course Obama— Well.
Ivan: Tulsi has shown herself to be a very able tool for the Republicans, hasn't she?
Sam: Well, also, this was Tulsi getting back in Trump's good graces.
Sam: She had been sort of on the outs for some of the things she'd said on Iran.
Sam: And so she needed something to make him happy, and apparently it worked.
Ivan: Yeah, apparently. You know, so that's, you know, so. But now,
Ivan: of course, you know, we've got the whole.
Ivan: This whole thing, to try to deflect attention from the Epstein files,
Ivan: which apparently, I guess we're never getting these, huh?
Ivan: I mean, I don't... And then, so...
Ivan: They offered immunity to... Listen, here's the problem.
Ivan: The problem is that the ones that really were harping on, this is a lie,
Ivan: this is a fraud, this is a conspiracy, to hide the deep state,
Ivan: theedophile ring, blah, blah, blah.
Ivan: We're the QAnon right-wing Republicans in MAGA.
Ivan: These are the guys that love this conspiracy, that believed it,
Ivan: and that pushed it. Okay? That was their thing.
Ivan: Now, their guys are in power, the guy that was supposed to bring down the deep
Ivan: state to do all the stuff.
Ivan: And lo and behold, by the way, he's not releasing a damn thing.
Ivan: Then you've got the drumbeat of news where you've got the Wall Street Journal
Ivan: going and reporting, Hey, number one, we know that he was in the files.
Ivan: he already got told in may that he was in the files
Ivan: okay and then their second story that they they
Ivan: released this week which i can't remember exactly but they but they had
Ivan: two stories that basically were you
Ivan: know torpedoing you know all the
Ivan: assertions that they were making to the point that trump is suing rupert murdoch
Ivan: over these stories okay which is hilarious one of the things but the drumbeat
Ivan: doesn't stop because they they keep trying to deflect you know shuck and chime
Ivan: on this thing but they don't release any of it.
Sam: Well here's the thing like the
Sam: rational thing to say here like because
Sam: i was going to say they'll never they shouldn't actually probably release the
Sam: files in their entirety because the whole doj thing right is if you've got evidence
Sam: and material but it's not enough to actually charge somebody because you don't
Sam: think you'd win a conviction,
Sam: then that's supposed to stay secret because you don't have, somebody doesn't
Sam: have the opportunity to defend themselves in court.
Sam: So you're just slandering people with evidence that you yourself admit isn't
Sam: enough to convict them, right?
Ivan: Yeah, but they promised to release everything, Sam.
Sam: I know, I know, I know. But the other thing is, I know, but the other thing is.
Ivan: Listen, Pam Bondy sent out all these binders. Remember the damn binders?
Sam: I remember the binders. But look, here's the thing. From Donald Trump's point of view,
Sam: assuming there is, in fact, nothing in there that would convict him,
Sam: the natural correct thing to do was, well, of course I'm in the files.
Sam: I was his friend for 15 years.
Sam: There's already public information of me and his address book and various things
Sam: like that. We hung out together.
Sam: I didn't know about his activities. And as soon as I found out about him,
Sam: I dumped him. But of course I'm in the files. because he knew me.
Sam: End of story. Well, not end of story, but the thing is, like,
Sam: the key is, like, they're making a big deal out of he was in the files.
Sam: We all knew that. We knew that for decades.
Sam: You know, well, maybe not decades, but you know what I mean.
Ivan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But listen.
Sam: The question is, is he incriminated on anything?
Sam: And the problem is his behavior is 100% like, oh, it's not that just there's
Sam: something innocuous in his files.
Sam: Like, if there's something innocuous in his files that just mentioned Donald
Sam: Trump, then, of course, he could say something like what I said.
Sam: But if what's in there looks bad, that's a whole other story.
Sam: If all of this is so innocent.
Ivan: Then why the hell did somebody go and, like, interview Ghislaine Maxwell and give her immunity?
Ivan: And go and ask her questions for two fucking days! What the hell is going on?
Sam: Yes. So here is what's going on right now. They gave some form of immunity,
Sam: probably limited immunity for anything she mentions during her conversations,
Sam: in order to talk about 100 specific people they wanted to ask about.
Sam: Now, here's the thing. If there's no list, where exactly did this 100 people come from?
Sam: Now, of course, they were saying there's no client list.
Sam: This list could be something else or generated from anyway. But,
Sam: you know, and and so the question like the the the speculation and I'm going
Sam: to say there's no proof of any of this.
Sam: This is all speculation. The speculation is they are offering Maxwell a deal
Sam: in the hopes that she will incriminate a whole bunch of Democrats the way the
Sam: conspiracy theory has always wanted,
Sam: while not saying a damn thing about Trump, or even better,
Sam: specifically saying Trump was never involved, or any other Republicans for that matter.
Sam: so we can come out of here with a list of by the way okay okay wait but you.
Ivan: Understand that I heard that she's the man like a pardon.
Sam: Well she her lawyer said they would be very interested in a pardon but so far
Sam: she's only gotten some immunity now immunity is a lot like.
Ivan: Well no she's in jail.
Sam: Listen I know she's already in jail she's been in.
Ivan: Jail for 20 fucking years Sam.
Sam: I know listen listen Listen.
Ivan: If I'm in jail for 20 fucking years and I'm about to deal with people like in
Ivan: these situations, OK, the fuck am I getting for fucking immunity?
Ivan: Wait, because no, no, no, because I'm helping you. You want me to help you and I'm not getting shit?
Sam: Well, because the other thing is presumably.
Ivan: Because you're not going to put me in jail for another 20 fucking years.
Sam: Here's the thing with Maxwell, too. She repeatedly, over and over and over again,
Sam: refused plea deals earlier.
Ivan: Right!
Sam: Because she maintained her 100% innocence from beginning to end of this process.
Sam: She was still maintaining her innocence right now, as far as I am aware.
Ivan: So then how the hell would she have any incriminating evidence if she's so fucking innocent?
Ivan: This is what I don't understand about this whole fucking thing.
Sam: Yeah. Well, I mean, that's the question, obviously, right? Like,
Sam: is she now admitting that she was actually involved in stuff or at the very
Sam: least knew stuff that she could have told authorities?
Sam: Now, depending on her situation, she might be able to claim that she knew stuff,
Sam: but was not involved and was in danger of her own life.
Sam: So she couldn't cooperate, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't know.
Sam: It's all speculation at this point. And sort of the question is like,
Sam: well, what's actually going on? What kind of deal are they offering her?
Sam: Now, frankly, if Trump pardons her, what's the base really going to think about that?
Sam: Now, if he pardons her.
Ivan: Then I mean, listen, I think the world's brain is going to explode.
Sam: Well, here's the thing. Like, his base might be okay with that trade as long
Sam: as it comes with serious implications for a whole bunch of prominent Democrats.
Sam: Like, if the deal was, say, Bill Clinton was their fucking babies,
Sam: and she provides a little bit of evidence that shows that, oh,
Sam: yeah, maybe Bill Clinton was, maybe not babies, you know what I mean.
Sam: then, you know, if she can deliver Bill Clinton's head on a platter,
Sam: a lot of the base might be fine with that trade.
Ivan: Listen, if the files in any way, shape, or form had that in them already,
Ivan: what the f- You think that this wouldn't have already been given?
Ivan: This is my whole thing.
Ivan: If this was what was in there, they would already burned every fucking democrat
Ivan: in that list they would already burn him.
Sam: Because they had a chance already in his first yes yeah
Sam: and and if trump was
Sam: in it the biden administration had a chance right now here's the thing and i
Sam: said this last week and i said this last week before what i think is the the
Sam: reality is the that all of this stuff probably has a lot of stuff that isn't
Sam: That just isn't quite solid enough.
Sam: It might look bad, but it's not solid enough to prove a damn thing.
Sam: Now, her testimony might be something that pushed something over the edge where
Sam: you take some fuzzy picture and she's like, yeah, that really was Bill Clinton.
Sam: You know, I don't know. Now, here's the other thing.
Ivan: But here's the thing.
Ivan: Look, any deal that she makes right now is going to be so tainted so badly.
Sam: Oh, yeah. From a legal point of view. The question is— From a legal point of view.
Sam: I think at this point, like, if they had had stuff that could result in actual
Sam: convictions, I agree with you completely. I think it would have.
Ivan: Been used by— But if they had stuff that was just going to have been an insinuation,
Ivan: why wouldn't they have used it already?
Sam: That's my point. That's the thing. Well, the, the, yeah, I mean,
Sam: the Democrats, here's the thing.
Sam: In Trump's last term, there were still people in charge that thought that was wrong to do.
Ivan: Right now.
Sam: No, I know. Yeah, no. Right now.
Ivan: What's stopping them right now? There's nothing stopping them right now.
Sam: The only thing that must be stopping them is that there really is something
Sam: about Trump in there, too.
Ivan: Yeah, that's it.
Sam: And you know, people can...
Ivan: And there's no way to fucking like, you know...
Sam: Disentangle it.
Ivan: Exactly.
Sam: It was Trump and Clinton together with the underage girls.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: It was a menage a trois, Trump-Clinton underage girl sandwich.
Ivan: There you go.
Sam: That must be it.
Ivan: Oh, God.
Sam: No, look, here's the thing too. like i
Sam: keep seeing videos of online of
Sam: sort of people talking
Sam: about republicans being like well why do
Sam: you why are you why are you democrats so hot on releasing it what if bill clinton's
Sam: in it and of course all the democrats are like the same answer we give all the
Sam: time if if any prominent democrats are in it and you can show that they were
Sam: definitely involved nail them to the fucking wall.
Sam: They deserve everything that's coming to them.
Sam: You know, I'm sorry.
Sam: No sacred cows. Like, you know, it doesn't matter who the Democrat is.
Sam: If they were involved in Epstein's little playground with, you know,
Sam: underage girls who were, well, even if they were completely voluntary,
Sam: right? They're underage, they can't consent.
Sam: But there's lots of evidence it wasn't completely voluntary.
Sam: They were being, they were being drugged. They were being all kinds of stuff.
Sam: This is a completely evil situation.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: If there are any prominent Democrats in it, I don't care who they are or what their history is.
Sam: Nail them.
Ivan: Nail them to the wall.
Sam: Absolutely.
Ivan: All right, well, listen. I got to wrap it up. Okay. So, let's wrap this thing up.
Ivan: Okay, so, I don't know. End credits.
Sam: You going to do the end credits this time? Go for it.
Ivan: No, I'm not mentally prepared for that. I'm mentally preparing myself to find
Ivan: my assignment for the end.
Sam: Okay, well, I will do the rest while you find that. Go to curmudgeons-corner.com.
Sam: You can find all our information. You can find transcripts of our shows.
Sam: You can find our archives with all the old shows.
Sam: You can find all the ways to contact us. We love to be contacted.
Sam: I will mention that I have neglected to post on TikTok for like several weeks now.
Sam: This week I was going to do like, I was going to catch up, but then I was sick.
Sam: Yeah, I'll probably catch up at some point. I could just skip some episodes,
Sam: but I figure I should actually catch up and post things from those old episodes.
Sam: I don't know. Eventually I'll catch up.
Sam: and of course there is a link to our patreon where you
Sam: can give us money and at various levels on the patreon we
Sam: will send you a postcard which by the way i have
Sam: filled out i i've finished my part of the postcards i have sent the postcards
Sam: that are owed to yvonne i put them in the mailbox like yesterday or today or
Sam: something and so they are on the way to yvonne at which point yvonne has to
Sam: answer his bit and then actually send them out to the due recipients.
Sam: I also finally got, I ordered the mug for Todd who co-hosted a while ago.
Sam: So my part of everything I owe
Sam: for the, for the curmudgeons corner bonus gifts is done for the moment.
Sam: But yeah, for various levels on the Patreon, we will give you a postcard.
Sam: We will give you a mug. We will ring bells.
Sam: We will mention you on the show, all of this kind of stuff. It's lots of fun.
Sam: And importantly, oh, and you also get a mug if you actually co-host the show.
Sam: So anybody out there, you know, and then, yeah,
Sam: at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask, you will be, you will be invited
Sam: to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack where Yvonne and I and a bunch of listeners
Sam: spend the week chatting with each other, sharing links, talking about the news,
Sam: talking about whatever.
Sam: As it was mentioned, I talked all about what happened to my car on the Slack.
Sam: I talked about being sick on the Slack, which of course, means most of our loyal
Sam: listeners, the whole first half of the show was a retread. Sorry, guys.
Sam: Anyway, but so, Yvonne, what is one highlight from the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack
Sam: this week that we have not mentioned on the show?
Ivan: An American, okay, anti-woke dad who fled with family to Russia, sent to war zone.
Ivan: An American father who moved to Russia to avoid LGBTQ plus indoctrination for
Ivan: his kids is being sent to the front line in Ukraine despite being assured he
Ivan: would serve in a non-combat role.
Ivan: Derek Hoffman, 46, feels he's being thrown to the wolves and being told that
Ivan: his job in the military would be as a correspondent or as a welder,
Ivan: his wife Deanna said in a recorded interview.
Ivan: Sam, are we feeling sad for the anti-woke dad who decided to move to Russia
Ivan: and to join the military and is now being sent to the front line in Ukraine?
Ivan: Any tears you have for him?
Sam: I have a hard time generating those tears.
Sam: And the other thing is, this is not the first one of these stories I have read
Sam: about people who've gone to Russia to escape the horrible United States,
Sam: you know, woke mind virus and end up discovering that things are actually pretty bad for them there.
Ivan: Yeah, no shit, people, huh? So Russia kind of sucks? Film at 11.
Ivan: Let me tell you something. I went to Moscow. And let me tell you something.
Ivan: I realized very quickly, I don't want to fucking live here.
Sam: I saw one a few weeks ago for somebody who did the exact same thing, but they weren't white.
Sam: And then it talked about how, oh my God, it was so racist there.
Sam: And they had such a horrible time because no one would treat them well because they weren't white.
Ivan: Right.
Sam: You know, and...
Ivan: Like literally no one.
Sam: They figured that stuff would be better there than here. I mean,
Sam: I'm not saying it's great here, but...
Ivan: It's not like that.
Sam: And, yeah, and there was another religious family that went there.
Ivan: I've mentioned to you how sometimes, you know, because we talk about racism
Ivan: openly and we got over here, that sometimes we're, you know,
Ivan: we're oblivious to how bad the racism is over and bad in other places.
Ivan: But even places that criticize the U.S. And, yeah, it is like that. Yes. In many places.
Sam: Yeah. I mean, it varies highly based on where you're talking about.
Sam: But, you know, as bad as some things sometimes seem here and as much as they
Sam: seem to be getting worse recently,
Sam: there are lots of places in the world that are a lot worse for racial minorities,
Sam: for religious minorities,
Sam: for LGBTQ people. LGBTQ people, yeah.
Sam: You know, we're not perfect. We're not great. There are lots of things we could do better.
Sam: And we are backsliding these last few years. But there are lots of places.
Ivan: There's a lot of places that is much worse. so anyway all right yeah.
Sam: So you know yeah there
Sam: there's so many stories of maga
Sam: types that are getting the consequences of their choice and this guy who went
Sam: to russia who's getting the consequences of his choice and you know does at
Sam: some point there is the oh man,
Sam: it's sad that they were stupid, but oh, come on. No.
Ivan: I mean, you know.
Sam: You should have known better. I'm sorry. Now I have seen another flavor of this,
Sam: of people who are actually actively apologizing for their previous support of MAGA and saying,
Sam: you know, I'm sorry I was slow.
Sam: i'm sorry i was stupid but i now i realize what a big mistake i've made and
Sam: i'm gonna work to i don't know make up for it i don't know and i on one side
Sam: i'm like too fucking late asshole but at the same time i'm like,
Sam: At a certain point, once people admit they're a mistake and are actively working
Sam: to do better, okay, now I can let you back into the fold.
Ivan: Yeah, you got to give them some—I mean, you need to receive them.
Ivan: I mean, you can't just reject those people that are openly admitting that they
Ivan: fucked up and they were wrong.
Sam: As long as you are defending your previous choices, I'm sorry.
Ivan: No, I don't want.
Sam: Yeah, fuck you. But if you are genuinely acknowledge that you screwed up and
Sam: you did wrong and you're starting to understand why you did wrong and you're apologizing for it.
Ivan: I'm good with that. I'm, you know, yeah.
Sam: Yeah. And they don't have to be like an AOC, like progressive either.
Sam: No, they just have. They can actually still, I've always been fine with the
Sam: never Trumpers, you know?
Sam: Yeah. There is a such thing as a principled conservative who I disagree with
Sam: on lots of stuff, but isn't evil. Right.
Ivan: Yeah.
Sam: You know? So, I don't know. Okay, I think that's it, Mr. Bowe.
Sam: It's time to hit the closing music.
Sam: Thanks, everybody, for joining us. As usual, stay safe.
Sam: have fun, not too much fun, you know, have a good whatever. There's no holiday.
Sam: There's nothing special going on this week, I don't think, right?
Ivan: Not maybe here. Puerto Rico actually has a holiday on Friday and a holiday on Monday.
Sam: Oh, well, there you go. Is that where you are now, Mr. Bo?
Ivan: No, I'm in Orlando.
Sam: Oh, you're in Orlando. Okay. Yeah, I was wondering because you clearly weren't at home.
Ivan: Yeah, no.
Sam: Okay. there must be some like special mickey mouse holiday yeah.
Ivan: That's it yeah no it's school is starting like soon so therefore.
Sam: Back to disney yeah okay okay anyway have everyone have a good time have a safe
Sam: time and we'll see you next time i said time a lot we'll see you again bye bye,
Sam: Okay, that's it. Hitting stop. All right.
Ivan: All right.
Sam: Have a good week, Mr. Bro. Bye.
Ivan: All right. Bye. Bye. It's a stop.