Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, there we go. The live stream is going. Let's get this party. Is this a party? Let's get it started, whatever it is.
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Sam:
[0:38]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, August 22nd, 2026. I am Sam Minter. Ivan Bo is not here. He was supposed to be here. Like, I was sitting down. Like, we're going to start the show at 17 UTC. It's a little after... It's 1814 UTC right now. But we were going to start the show at 17 UTC. He texted me a little bit, said, I'm running a little bit late. Can we start an hour later? So we were going to start at 18 UTC. I sat down. I was running a little bit late. I said, give me five more minutes to get everything set and ready to go. And then during those five minutes, he's like, I'm sorry. Emergency just came up. I got to bail. I know no information about the emergency. Hopefully everything's fine. But he could not do it. And I only had minutes of notice. So obviously I did not go and find a co-host or anything like that because yeah, like, it's time and I'm going to record, but I am going to shift into Sam does a solo show weekend mode, which means I'm going to do, each segment one at a time and then take a long break and then come back and do another segment. Many hours or maybe even days later, we shall see. Well, probably not days. See, I'm actually, I'm going on a trip tomorrow. Tomorrow.
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Sam:
[2:05]
| It's Saturday, Sunday night Pacific time. I'm taking red eye to Ohio where I'm going to be visiting my dad and stepmom. And at the same time that I'm visiting, my sister is visiting. My nephew is visiting. My aunt is visiting. So we're going to have a whole little family get together thing over there. And, uh, yeah, so it'll be fun. I'll be gone for just under a week. So I, I actually don't know, like next week's show might be another solo because, I think I'm actually traveling around the time that we would normally be recording next week. It would be like, if it's not, if I'm not already heading to the airport, I'd be like squeezing it in right before I headed to the airport to record. So we may have to shuffle things around. I don't know what.
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Sam:
[3:00]
| My surroundings will be like, whether I'll have a quiet space or not. I'll figure it out. But we might end up with two solo shows in a row. Anyway, there is a bunch of newsy stuff to talk about. Here's a list that I'd accumulated over the course of the week. Trump and korea trump and oman natalie harp the alaska senate florida senate aoc and woke 1.0 request from our listener bruce, bond yield stuff the uss abraham lincoln we briefly mentioned it last week but we didn't really get into it and there's more been going on the ballroom those You know, a SCOTUS, thing on the ballroom basically let them continue building while they consider it.
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Sam:
[3:51]
| And tariffs, tariffs again. We had a little thing with Canada, a little thing with beef, stuff going on. But of course, for this starting segment, I am going to do movies. I just, you know, the way I do this, so you guys know, I think I've talked about this before, but I have a list on a wiki, a personal wiki that I have up on the website. It's at wiki.applesmay.com. It's public. Anybody can see it. But where I keep track of all the movies and stuff. But in real time, when I think of something new to put on there, or when I watch something, I don't update the wiki right at that moment.
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Sam:
[4:34]
| I suppose I could. But it's kind of a pain if I'm just on my phone. It's easier to do on the computer. So if I'm just on my phone, I take a screenshot or a photo or whatever is appropriate. And then every once in a while I go through and I sit and I put in a bunch of them into the wiki. And so a few days ago, I did a month of my screenshots, which resulted in a whole bunch of new movies, TV shows, books, whatever, being added to my master list of things I might watch or read someday. But added 17 new movies because apparently you know i i got laid off at the end of october 2025 and so the time frame i did here was november 11th to december 11th of 2025 sort of logging all the movies i watched and apparently i watched 17 movies during that time which is like an acceleration right.
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Sam:
[5:33]
| And like, I wonder, I wonder what could possibly have given me more time to watch movies and stuff. So, but anyway, like, I think things slowed down again after that. I hope so, because like at doing one or two of these per show, I'm never, ever, ever going to catch up. If, like, my current rate is, like, almost 20 movies a month. And I'm only doing, what, four, yeah, eight? I don't know.
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Sam:
[6:10]
| And I already bumped it from doing one of these descriptions to two per week. And, of course, we don't always do it. So, anyway, I'm still only going to do two this time. And if I ever go above two, then it'll have to switch to, like, you know, get the bell and timer back out on me and, like, give me a two-minute cap or something. Anyway, first movie. Actually, both of these today are from the AFI movie list. Last time I mentioned Citizen Kane. That was us finishing up. I don't know if it was last time, last time. But recently, I mentioned Citizen Kane. Which was finishing up the top 100 from the 1998 rankings well as of october 15th 2025 we started the top 100 from the 2007 rankings, and number 100, falling from number 72 in the 1998, rankings, was Ben-Hur from.
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Sam:
[7:14]
| 1959. You know, and also, just to say, they did this in 1998 and they did this in 2007, and, They should have done it twice more by now. I want some updates. If we finish this top 100, we're going to have to figure out something else to do. Or we can reduce. My movie list is already broken into four pieces. It's my master big list of everything. The AFI list. A list of movies that we had in the house in physical or electronic media already, but that I hadn't watched already. Usually because my wife or my daughter had bought them at some point or in some cases just because they were legacy physical media we had from before i started keeping track like, i and i i didn't catalog every piece of physical media i had in the house there was like one shelf that i had i i added everything from that shelf anyway, and finally continuations in series that we're watching so So, like, you know, if there's a series and we've already watched the first two, then number three is automatically on the list, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, if we finish this top 100, I could just get rid of that and have it a choice of three categories.
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Sam:
[8:33]
| Or we could figure out some new, like, best movies list. Like, I don't know, the most recent Oscar winner that we haven't seen, or best picture Oscar winner. But we'd probably blow through that pretty fast too given the rate we're down so I don't know anyway Ben-Hur 1959 Charleston Charleston.
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Sam:
[8:58]
| Charlton Heston. I don't know why I want to say Charleston, but his name was not Charleston. It was Charlton. Anyway, it was adapted from an 1880 novel called Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ. And and this actually like i had not remembered seeing ben her before well i sort of had vague memories it was on the previous afi list like i said it dropped from, number 72 to 100 so i had seen it before like i don't know 30 years ago whenever i started the list, not quite 30 it was the i started soon after that list was released in 1998.
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Sam:
[9:42]
| I'm i'm ignoring my dog barking i'm I don't know if the noise removal will make it so you can't hear him, but my dog is barking in the background right now. It's kind of distracting for me, and people on the live stream may hear it. I think the noise removal I use these days is actually pretty good at getting rid of it. When I intentionally want to keep it, I actually have to move it to a separate track that doesn't do the noise removal. You don't care. Ben Hurr. One of the things that I never remember is that it's got this sort of whole religious aspect to it. And, you know, it's not just gladiators. It's gladiators in the early days of Christianity and all of this. And, you know, and the titular character Ben-Hur has a couple of encounters with Jesus and stuff. And, you know, I'm not a big fan. I am not religious and I am not a big fan of sort of this, that, that sort of genre. I think it would have been fine as just a gladiator movie, but yeah, it is what it is. And, and let me get, where, where's my usual plot summary here? Here we go. Let me give the beginning of it.
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Sam:
[11:09]
| From Wikipedia as usual. The three wise men, including Balthazar, visit Bethlehem to worship the infant Jesus. Years later, in A.D. 26 Jerusalem, Judah Ben-Hur, a wealthy Jewish prince, lives with his mother Miriam and younger sister Terza. The family's steward, Simonides, has a daughter named Esther, who was born a slave and whom Judah has not seen since they were children. As their master, Judah, who shows affection for Esther, allows her to marry a freeman and emancipates her as a wedding gift. Judah's Roman childhood friend, Messala, returns to Jerusalem as tribune and second-in-command to the new Roman governor of Judea, Valerius Gratis. He fully embraces Rome's glory and imperial power, while Judah remains devoted to his faith and to the Jewish people's freedom. Messala demands that Judah denounce potential Jewish rebels to him.
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Sam:
[12:16]
| Judah refuses, and they part as enemies. Later, Masala uses an innocuous instant, Gratis' horse being spooked by a loose roof tiling tumbling off Judah's house, to condemn Judah to the galleys, imprison Miriam and Terza, and arrest Simonides. Judah marched with other prisoners through Nazareth as a brief chance encounter with Jesus Christ, who gives him water. Just a little bit more. Imprisoned, Judah rose on Roman council Quintus Arius' flagship. During a battle, Arius' ship sinks and Judah rescues Arius. Despite the sinking, Arius is victorious. In Rome, Emperor Tiberius gives Judah to Arius as his slave. Judah becomes a champion charioteer and Arius adopts him as his son. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. It continues. Judah travels home. Judah partners with a sheik in a chariot race after not accompanying Esther to hear Jesus Christ speak. He meets with the governor, Judah and Esther.
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Sam:
[13:25]
| It continues. And honestly, remembering this, I'm realizing I'm mixing it up a little bit in my head with another gladiator movie as well. But, you know, whatever. Like, this is—oh, Spartacus. Like, we watch Spartacus sometime after this, and, like, they're melding together in my head. But, no, Ben-Hur is Ben-Hur, and Spartacus is Spartacus. And I guess he's more a charioteer than a gladiator. But, you know, same idea, same idea. Anyway, like, you know... Fundamentally, I know it was a fundamental part of it, but I don't know. I didn't gain much from sort of the religious undertones of it. They were fine. They were fine. They're just not my thing. And.
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Sam:
[14:26]
| The main thing for all of these old movies like this is, actually at this point watching him is realizing when they have like crowd scenes and things like that, there were real crowds!
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Sam:
[14:43]
| You know, there was no, this is 1959. There was no CGI. There was no fake crowd. Well, there were ways to do fake crowds, but there were lots of real people. There were lots and lots of real people. Effects were all practical. And you can just see the epic scale of everything. In a way that when you have sort of masses of CGI crowds swelling in a battle scene or something, it's just not the same thing. And like when people are battling, they're actually battling, you know? I mean, not actually battling. It's not like real swords. They're not actually dying on screen. And sometimes you can see mistakes in the battles. Like, you know, people fighting and it's like, oh, they did not actually make contact there on that hit. Or, you know, the sword clearly went behind them, not actually in them or whatever, you know. Or, you know, I guess they had the collapsible swords. They had all kinds of different ways of making it look good. But the point is, it actually looks really good.
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Sam:
[15:58]
| You know when you go back and watch these old epic scale Hollywood productions you.
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Sam:
[16:09]
| They do a good job. It looks great. And it looks sort of gritty and realistic in a way that modern productions often don't. And obviously there are reasons, yeah, there are economic reasons to not do it that way these days. But it's good to watch. So I'm going to give it a thumbs up. You know.
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Sam:
[16:38]
| I don't disagree with them dropping it down a few points from 1998 to 2007. You know, it's fine. Next up, also from the AFI list, and this one was a new addition to the AFI list that was not in the 1998 list, but was in the 2007 list. The original Toy Story from 1995. I think we briefly talked about this when Yvonne went and saw the most recent one the Toy Story 5 I think I've only ever seen 1, 2, and 3 but I think.
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Sam:
[17:18]
| Yeah, it was a plot. You guys all know, right? Toys get lost. Toys get found. Things happen. Anyway, in a world where toys are sentient but pretend to be lifeless around humans, a group of toys led by Sheriff Woody are preparing to move to a new house with their young owner, Andy Davis, and his family. During the party for Andy's sixth birthday, the toys, including Mr. Potato Head, Slinky Dog, Rex, Ham, and Bo Peep, become concerned that Andy might receive a new toy that will replace them. Andy receives a Buzz Lightyear action figure who believes that he is an actual space ranger and does not know that he is a toy. Buzz impresses the others with his electronic features and becomes Andy's new favorite toy, provoking Woody's jealousy.
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Sam:
[18:12]
| Two days before the move, Andy's family plans to have dinner at Pizza Planet. To ensure Andy brings him instead of Buzz, Woody tries to trap Buzz behind Andy's desk, but accidentally knocks him out the window. Believing Woody murdered Buzz, the other toys rebel against Woody until Andy takes him into the car, with Buzz following. When the car stops at a gas station, Buzz furiously confronts Woody. The two fight, fall out of the car, and are left behind, but then manage to hitch a ride on a Pizza Planet delivery truck. At Pizza Planet, Buzz mistakes a claw machine for a rocket and climbs in, pursued by Woody. Sid Phillips, Andy's sadistic next-door neighbor Grabs Woody and Buzz with the claw And takes them to his house, Where they encounter his mutant toys Made from parts of toys Sid has destroyed, Dot dot dot It continues, they have adventures It ends the way you think it would end.
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Sam:
[19:13]
| Look, it's a classic. It's good. It holds up. You know, the CGI in here, as groundbreaking as it was at the time, is definitely dated by today's standards. But the story holds up anyway. And you like the characters, and you like the voice actors, and, you know, it's a good movie. And as usual for Pixar, and this was Pixar's first, you know, full-length feature, but their first few, they had a run where every single one really was great and hit it out of the park. You can argue that later on, it's sort of become more hit and miss, but their first few years, they had a really impressive record, and Toy Story started it all. And Toy Story may be one again that I think is on this AFI list. First of all, remember, you know where it was it did it was out before the 1998 list but it wasn't ranked on the 98 1998 list because it was still pretty new, by the 2007 list it was ranked but i still.
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Sam:
[20:27]
| Looking at this from the perspective of 2026 does it like like like my comments about Citizen Kane, does it make the list on its own merits or more for its historical significance and its groundbreakingness, which AFI does say is part of their criteria? And I think maybe that, you know, its position as the first, full-length blockbuster computer animated movie is probably a big part of the reason why it made the top 100, because it's a good movie, but it's a top 100. I don't know, but it was fine. It was good. Thumbs up. So two thumbs up for the two movies today.
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Sam:
[21:15]
| The next thing on the list, which I'm not going to do today, even though I could take advantage of Yvonne not being here and like power through a few more. But the next couple, we've got the 2002 Spider-Man. Oh, I have to save that for Yvonne because he'll always go into his rant on superheroes and how there are too many actors playing them and blah, blah, blah. And we got to hear that again because we haven't heard it enough. And then next is Godzilla Raids Again from 1955. So, and then after that, a TV show, The Orble, finished up The Orble. Anyway, that's it. We're going to take a break. And, you know...
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Sam:
[21:58]
| The next one is supposed to be an Apple dream, and I had not had time to prep it before the show. But because I'm going to do this like segmented over segments, I will make sure I prep it before we kick off the next segment. So I'm just going to sign off by signing off here for this segment and say, see you after this or whatever. And we'll have it ready and insert it through the magic of editing and time travel. Well, not really time travel. It'd be nice if it was time travel. I guess it is time travel into the future. For me, because I'll be doing it later. I mean, I'm traveling at the normal speed into the future. And for you guys, I guess it's time travel because you're listening to words from the past. You don't usually think of it as time travel when you do that, but it kind of is, sort of. Or maybe it's more like watching or listening to the past. I don't know. Is watching an old newsreel time travel? Sort of. Okay, we'll be back after this.
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Break:
[23:17]
| Is that some sort of building and the top was higher than the bottom i know that sounds like it's normally true but, it was one of these buildings where the ground is sloped so at the bottom of the building the ground floor is low and the upper building is upper floor but, anyway i was meeting someone there who is going to be doing something.
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Break:
[23:38]
| And it is rapidly leaving in my mind what in the world for, but i knew they were going to be meeting my dad at the bottom because my dad was coming to see me but, this person was going to be meeting them and I guess bringing them to me and I was explaining to them something, about what was involved in that but then a third person came and said oh we're gonna go, but instead of going down through the building to meet him and bring him up we were going to go around the building and down on the sidewalk. So the three of us went down on the sidewalk to get my dad. And then we got him. And then there was something with like white pillars and some arches. And I guess my dad was happy that we were there, but then there were pillows and arches. And then someone came through the room, and I woke up, and I froze so that they wouldn't see me. And I waited for them to come through again. And then they left. And by that time, I had forgotten most of the details. And what I said might not even be right or something.
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Sam:
[25:05]
| Okay, we are back. That was Apple Dream 11, which actually has been heard here on this podcast before, but it's probably been a while. So, you know, whatever. It's the one that came up there. I now have 74 Apple dreams that have been published on TikTok. And each time I roll one of these, I pick one to 74 random. And some of them I've already used. And some of them I haven't. If I haven't used it already, I have to like go and strip the audio from it and put it where I can use it on the podcast, blah, blah, blah. Because of course, on TikTok, they're video.
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Sam:
[25:41]
| In this case, 11 came up, and it turned out I have the audio already in a folder, so I didn't have to do that. So extra step avoided. Okay, now, we are, as predicted, I took a while. It is now the next day. It is Sunday, August 23rd, about 21.15 UTC. It'll be 21.15 in like 30 seconds. Anyway, I'm only going to do one more segment today, not two more segments. And because I got to run to the airport later today. I mean, at the moment, I've still got quite a few hours before I need to leave for the airport, but I have to finish getting this podcast out and then I have to pack. And then I probably want to take a shower before I go and get on a plane with other people. And I told my son I'd watch like one more TV show with him if there was time. So I want to do all those things. So I've got stuff to do. So I want to just wrap this sucker up. And what I'm going to do.
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Sam:
[26:36]
| I'm going to just do a lightning round of all of the more serious topics that I had here and.
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Sam:
[26:49]
| You know, just talk for a few minutes on each of them. I will probably end up going down a rat hole on at least one, but that's the plan. That's the plan. And then I'll wrap it up and.
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Sam:
[27:05]
| I'll try to actually get this podcast out before I leave for an airport too. Although I was thinking, you know, I, I could do it on the plane. Although, you know, I might want to sleep. It's one of those red eyes. I might want to sleep. That would be fun. That would be exciting. I don't know. We'll see. I usually sleep a little bit on overnight plane flights, but not a lot. Yeah. So who knows? We'll see. Okay.
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Sam:
[27:30]
| These first few, like, first is Trump in Korea. This week, he had the thing where, you know, he reduced in scope military exercises with the South Koreans because he said he would cancel them if he could, but it was too late to cancel them, so he was reducing them in scope. And he said that's because he didn't want to antagonize his good friends in North Korea. And also implied that part of the reason for this was South Korea wasn't helping enough in Iran. Even though, you know, North Korea is helping the Iranians in Iran, it's just... And look, the next thing, they go sort of hand-in-hand, is Trump and Oman, where he threatened Oman, said they shouldn't be trying to negotiate separately with Iran and they're not cooperating enough. And, you know, he threatened to attack a man, which is Amman, Amman, which is, you know, been an ally of the U.S. for a while. We've had bases there. We've had arrangements with them. We've had whatever.
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Sam:
[28:39]
| All of this stuff is just different aspects of the same thing, which applies, you know, further down this list, I have tariffs again. And there were two examples of tariffs. One was the Canadian stuff and one was the beef stuff. But it applies, you know, Canada too. And basically everywhere in Trump II's foreign policy. I mean, there were aspects of this in Trump 1 as well, but it's so much more exaggerated in Trump 2, where he's just blustering his way through. His mindset is so transactional, he can't look at anything more than a week or two out. He just assumes that if he bullies, he'll get his way. Even though more and more and more you're seeing it just it just plain not work, even in places where it seemingly has worked for him in the past where he was able to just shove his way through and get some sort of deal folks on the other side of these are are now going no you know it's.
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Sam:
[29:50]
| Because first of all this is not a way to make friends he doesn't care about making friends he He cares about getting his way in the short term and not only getting his way in the short term, just looking good in the short term. He cares more about the optics than the actual result, which is why so many people were able to, quote unquote, make deals with him where they were essentially just restating the status quo, but making it seem like a Trump win or making really minor adjustments around the edge that nobody actually cared about. But you let clump, clump, let clump, let Trump claim the win.
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Sam:
[30:31]
| But the problem is he has shown himself over and over and over again at this point that even if you do make one of these deals with him, he'll renege on a whim at any random moment for any random reason. Anything he quote-unquote agrees to isn't, I was going to say, worth the paper it's written on, but half the time Trump's whole deal is it doesn't get written down. Or gets written down, but he's ignoring the right. Like that whole thing with the memorandum of understanding with the Iranians. Like it was clear fairly early on that what was actually written down didn't really matter to the Trump side of the, it was just, it was like, well, yeah, that's what it says, but that's not what we meant. Well, that's why you write things down. But.
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Sam:
[31:33]
| The whole history of this has shown it's completely worthless to even try to do these negotiations with Donald Trump. And why you're seeing more and more folks walk away. The latest was the Canadians walked away. They were trying to make a deal with Donald Trump to avoid his latest 50% tariff threats. But apparently within the last 24 to 48 hours, the Americans upped what they were asking for. There's been some mixed reporting on what exactly was being asked for. Apparently there was like some fake version of what the Americans were asking for that was circulating on the internet. But that's not the real one. And then there's been some it's unclear as I record this exactly what additional the Americans were asking for. But the the Canadians were like, we can't we can't do this. And just walked away. And, you know, I've said for a while that it seems like, honestly, the rational thing to do, not just for like countries like Iran, but like basically every country on the planet, is to, the rational thing to do would be to say, look, there's no point in talking to the Americans about anything.
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Sam:
[32:54]
| As long as Donald Trump is there. So we'll do our best to react to whatever Donald Trump does in the way that protects ourselves as best we can, and we'll resume actual negotiations once there's a new president. And whether that's, you know, whether that's a Republican or a Democrat, whether it's another, you know, MAGA type person or whether it's a Democrat again, you know, there's practically no point. Now, I recognize that that's a maximal position that's actually really hard for a real-world leader to take. You know, so you do some nominal stuff, but you shouldn't expect anything real out of it. You sort of go in with the assumption that anything here is just show for the moment. And obviously, I guess that also means you can't agree to anything substantial that you concede because, the assumption has to be that they'll try to hold you to whatever you agree to, but not hold themselves to whatever they agree to.
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Sam:
[34:17]
| So you basically play a stalling game and try to maintain the status quo as best you can until you have somebody reasonable to negotiate with. But the problem is in the meantime, you know.
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Sam:
[34:35]
| The destruction of American reputation worldwide, you know, is nearly complete at this point. I mean... Not that it was necessarily great. I mean, the U.S. has a mixed history in terms of how it deals with other countries, especially countries.
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Sam:
[35:00]
| That were not historically seen as quote-unquote equals. You know, we're not outside of the G8 or whatever. A very mixed record. But even so, it's like, now what do you do? And also, I think in Trump one, a good part of the world was willing to sort of, and honestly, a lot of us here thought, okay, this is an aberration. Once he's gone, we'll get back to normal. But now that we have Trump two, how can you reasonably assume that? Even if the next president elected is sort of a normal person.
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Sam:
[35:46]
| That tries to act above board and do things the right way, and I'm not denying the possibility that you could get a Republican to act that way. I mean, it doesn't look right now like the Republican Party is going to be reclaimed by normie Republicans anytime soon. But, I mean, it could happen. You know, this, you know.
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Sam:
[36:12]
| If you'd had Jeb Bush instead of Donald Trump, none of this, we wouldn't, none of this would have happened. You know, but anyway.
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Sam:
[36:23]
| And nobody can, even with the Democrat in place, everybody's got to be like, well, it's nice that they're acting normal again right now, but we've got to assume they're going to go crazy again in a couple of years. So we can't make any permanent deal. We can't rely on anything. We have to defend ourselves from that level of uncertainty. So i don't know it's frustrating and you look at it and it's you know we got two and a quarter years left of this nonsense, probably well i i keep saying i i don't know if trump's actually going to make through his term due to health or other reasons probably most likely health, honestly even jd vance could start repairing this like if he took over next year sometime, but only within limits again because how can anybody trust that we won't go crazy again okay next up speaking of going crazy natalie harp yeah, so there have been whisperings about this woman going back months and months and months. But it sort of blew out into the open in the last week where everyone was talking about it.
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Sam:
[37:51]
| So she is an aide to the president. She was known, going back to the campaign, as the human printer. Because one of her duties, apparently she helps with social media and stuff. But one of her duties, she followed the president around with a little portable printer. And when she found news articles that were positive towards him, she would print out the articles. So he could read them. You know, read the positive articles. that were saying great things about him and how wonderful he was and how people loved him. Not, just to be clear, because this is the way Donald Trump works in general. He doesn't read, well, he doesn't read. I could just stop there. But he doesn't care or want to know about the stuff that is negative. So what he is fed is a media diet of people saying how wonderful he is. And that was part of her job. And I guess she does other things, too. There's some video clips of her.
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Sam:
[38:56]
| You know, literally being the one typing out the Truth Social post while he, sort of dictates it. Stuff like that. The rumors that people have been saying, which as far as I can see, there's no actual evidence of whatsoever. But which increasingly have been out there in the rumor sphere. Is that she also kind of acts as a nurse to him in terms of, like, you know, people have been saying for a long time that Donald Trump has to wear adult diapers and they have to be changed periodically. And.
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Sam:
[39:39]
| So the rumor is she's the one carrying around the diaper bag with spares and helping with those kinds of situations. Again though i don't know that i necessarily believe that is it within the realm of possibility sure it's within the realm of possibility but i feel like when you hear things like that, it is more likely than not that it is make it is people making things up, that it's just people saying, hey, what's the most embarrassing possible spin we could put on this? Let's try this. Let's say that Donald Trump needs diapers and that Natalie Harp is the one carrying around the diaper bag and helping change him when he needs it. But, my default going in position is it's probably made up BS.
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Sam:
[40:41]
| And the left is just as willing to make up things that feed their desired sort of point of view as the right is. And, you know, this is why having, you know, there are many things that I criticize sort of big media about being too timid on. But I think they're valuable in terms of, hey, look, they're not reporting stuff like this. That is nothing but rank speculation. Now, if some actual reporter who follows Donald Trump around actually knows this to be true, and they are not reporting it, I would consider that a big problem. Because I think they should be reporting that kind of thing. you know, screw like you know privacy and decency and whatever like no that's important it's health information that i think is worthy of being out there if true, but if assuming that's not the case then you know the right thing to do is not, to do yet not to report this as truth i mean and i guess i'm, feeding the speculation by mentioning this at all but I am sort of throwing in that I don't actually think I believe it.
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| There are also rumors that he's having an affair with her. Also just that kind of rumor. But what we do know that was reported this week and put out, and somebody within the administration is obviously leaking this stuff on purpose, but apparently she is absolutely obsessed with this man, like in an unhealthy way. A couple of letters were published this week where, you know, basically her writing, these obsequious letters about how important he is and how the only thing that matters to her, is how she looks in his eyes and how she can serve him better and apologizing, for any mistakes she might have made. And apparently she gets very upset when she is not right there with him. The latest reason this is all coming up now is initially, apparently, when he made that escape on, the catering truck from Air Force One, initially she was not going to be amongst the people that went with him on, the double super secret plane and instead was going to be on Air Force One.
|
Sam:
[43:27]
| The second, the original Air Force One where all the reporters were, not the fake Qatari Air Force One that they weren't going to take because it had no protections. Anyway, apparently she figured out she was being left behind and started throwing a massive fit and ended up being taken with the president. And also this week it's come out that apparently they have rectified this now and she does now have a security clearance but for the first year, not only were they slow getting her a security clearance because apparently the trump white house has been notoriously slow about getting all kinds of people's security clearances, but she outright refused to even start the process by filling out the requisite forms, ever. And it wasn't that no one asked her. Apparently she was asked multiple times and she basically just said, no, I'm not going to do that.
|
Sam:
[44:26]
| And nevertheless, she's been one of the people with the closest access to the president of anybody else in the entirety of his second term. This is, you know, I've heard lots of interviews with people in previous administrations, both Republican and Democrat, talking about how they couldn't even imagine this happening. How all of the previous administrations took security clearances seriously. Seriously, if you were a close aide to the president, you damn sure had one in a timely fashion. And if there was any problem with that, you'd be out of there.
|
Sam:
[45:08]
| And once again, this is, you know, the Trump administration doesn't care about any of this.
|
Sam:
[45:14]
| All of the, look, and I will fully admit, like, if I was dropped in the middle of the environment, that environment, I am pretty sure I would also be frustrated, by all the rules and regulations and policies and procedures that are there. But what you have to remember with something like the executive branch of the United States is everything there has been built up for a reason. There is some scenario that happened sometime in the past that is the reason that that procedure exists.
|
Sam:
[45:54]
| And in some cases, you can be like, well, you know, they were paranoid, you know, or look, they were defending against something that was a real issue in the 1960s. But it's been a while since the 1960s. Things change. You need to revise those procedures. You don't want to be moribund under, you know, ways of doing things that you don't want to be in a situation where why do we do this? Well, no one knows. It's because the last people did it this way. Okay, I understand. You want to review things periodically and adjust them as needed. But just tossing them all out without thinking about it isn't the right way to do that. It's just, you know, doing, and clearly, this is also, by the way, look, the way these letters make her look.
|
Sam:
[46:45]
| This is a textbook case of, she's a stalker. She is mentally unstable. This is the kind of person you would want to keep away from the president. Because you never know. You're going to snap or something. She's going to feel rejected and she's going to snap and she's going to do something you don't want her to do or whatever. But of course the problem is she's exactly the kind of person that Donald Trump wants around him. Someone who thinks he's god who thinks he's amazing and incredible and whose only thought ever in their mind is what can they do to please him, and so you know even if they're not having an.
|
Sam:
[47:40]
| Take all that out. She's still probably not the kind of person that, in theory, in like a general mode of thinking about presidents and the people who are close to them, she is not someone you would want there. But she's exactly who somebody like Donald Trump would want. With his narcissistic disorder, whatever he has, she's exactly what he wants. And she validates him all the time. I mean, going back to the printing out positive articles, but I'm sure her general attitude just adds to that. And of course, it doesn't hurt that she bears some passing similarities to Ivanka. I mean, people are like, she's an Ivanka clone. She's not an Ivanka clone. You know, but they're both blonde, young women, and Ivanka seems to have kind of moved on this administration. She's not around like she was the first administration. You know, the first administration, she had a formal role. She was right there in the White House. She is not anymore. So you know he needed a replacement i guess i i don't know actually it seems like ivanka's role was actually significantly more substantial than natalie harb's role is but i don't know.
|
Sam:
[49:01]
| And the thing with all of this going back you know to a general theme is like, this is now like okay this is we're gonna move on to the next crazy story in like five minutes.
|
Sam:
[49:15]
| Any one of the things, like, practically every day, there is a news story that if it had happened in any other presidency prior to Donald Trump, it would have dominated the news for weeks and weeks and weeks, maybe months, and could well have taken down a presidency. And to quote J.D. Vance, if Watergate happened today, it would be a one-day news story.
|
Sam:
[49:51]
| Of course, J.D. Vance said that to try to minimize, well, water grate wasn't that big a deal. Whereas the actual lesson to be learned here is, oh my goodness, this administration is so much worse than anything we've ever seen in the past. With everything. With corruption. With incompetence. With, you know, personal issues. Everything. thing. And, you know, it just goes and disappears. I don't know. I don't know if the Natalie Harp thing will have a little bit more legs. I mean, it's already had a little bit more legs. People have been talking about it for about a week now. And, you know, in terms of Donald Trump stories, at this point, that's a lot. Because normally we would have moved on already like a day later. I mean, there are some, you know, there are things that would have been big enough to bring down a presidency that have happened in the last month that we have not even mentioned on the show because, you know, they get overcome by the next news cycle so fast.
|
Sam:
[51:08]
| We had some elections next week. What am I even talking about? We had more primary elections. I guess rather than speak about them individually, like we had some stuff in Alaska, we had some stuff in Florida. I think there were a few other points. Let me just speak more generally. I think...
|
Sam:
[51:30]
| We're continuing to see a picture that looks very good for the Democrats overall. You know, we had Alaska happen, and it's looking like the Democrat has an advantage for Alaska Senate, you know, that we had the primaries happen and blah, blah, blah. It's, you know, runoffs and things. Anyway, Florida was a little—here I am going through one at a time anyway. Anyway, Florida, the one thing that was interesting is that this was one—first of all, it had been, like, I'm not sure if there even was a primary poll. Like, Vindman was expected to win here, and he's sort of a centrist Democrat known from Trump's first impeachment. His twin brother is already in the House of Representatives. He was running for Senate here and was widely expected to win. And he put in a lot of, there was a lot of money put behind him. And in an upset, a progressive who had recently aligned themselves with the DSA, what was her name? Nixon? I actually just got one of these annoying texts. Angie Nixon. Yes, I got a fundraising text from her earlier today. You know, quick tangent.
|
Sam:
[52:54]
| At this point, I am just absolutely, any text I get from anybody, no matter what, if it's got an unsubscribe, I'm doing the unsubscribe to it. Like, I'm old-fashioned, but I consider all of this spam. And if I specifically interacted with you and gave you money and clicked a box when I gave you money saying I was open to communications from you, then okay, fine. But absent that, no. And I used to work in the anti-spam world for email, and it was a little bit of SMS stuff I did sort of towards the end of that. And I am well aware that when Congress made anti-spam laws, which have been fairly toothless anyway. I get tons of spam all the time anyway. But when they wrote anti-spam laws, they specifically exempted the politicians. Okay.
|
Sam:
[53:59]
| Which is annoying because they buy and sell lists to each other all the time, all the freaking time. So what happens is if you ever, ever give money to any politician for any reason, you will suddenly be on the mailing list for practically every politician on that same side of the line. You know, you give money to one Democrat, you're on the list for all Democrats. You give money to one Republican, you're on the list for all Republicans.
|
Sam:
[54:34]
| Somehow, I've gotten like MAGA texts recently. So at some point they got their wires crossed, which is lovely. I must have, I don't know. They might have got my name from that one time like, you know, 15 years ago where I participated in the Republican primary process. I don't know. Or the caucus process here in Washington State and even like, you know, was a what do you call them? Precinct committee officer. I was a Republican precinct committee officer. I've told that story before. It was a mistake. Okay? I was trying to, do the thing where you influence from the inside and at least like for years I did the thing where whichever, party process was more interesting that cycle I would participate in so if there was nothing going on on the Democratic side I would participate in the Republican side and figured I could just like vote for the least objectionable Republican and that would at least help something, no, it is worthless and stupid. I mean, I'll take that back. It was interesting to observe the process and go to some of the Republican events, but it did nothing but proved to me that I didn't want to do that anymore. Anyway, stupid mailing list sharing and blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[56:04]
| The whole industry is built on that. As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't be able to do that. Anyway, Angie Nixon won. She's, like I said, recently associated herself with the DSA. Florida was not considered to be a competitive race anyway. It was not one of the ones that seemed like it was up for grabs. Let's see if I can pull up any any 2026 polling for that. This is. Yeah, like the there haven't been many, but like Moody versus Nixon. I guess Moody is the Republican candidate here. The Republicans up like 10 percent. Would Vindman have done slightly better? I think most people think he probably would have done slightly better as a... A more moderate opponent. Because people have said, you know, these DSA candidates can win, but in deeply blue places. And I guess we'll find out in the Al-Sayed case whether one can win in a more purple area too. He's ahead in most recent polls there. Michigan? Is it Michigan?
|
Sam:
[57:25]
| Minnesota? Now I have to look. You know, if I had actual working memory, that would be a good thing sometimes. Michigan. Yes, I was right. Anyway.
|
Sam:
[57:39]
| So it's interesting to see Democrats feel that way. And I think it's one of these cases where, again, I don't know, is it like the Democrats are more willing to go directly for like, hey, this is the direction we really want to go in. And we feel, you know, we want somebody who will fight. We want somebody who's a little bit more radical.
|
Sam:
[58:08]
| We don't like the centrist vibe. But we're willing to go there in this point because we don't think we're going to win this race anyway. I mean, there are two scenarios, right? There's the states that are so blue, that you feel there's no risk. And there's states that are so red you feel there's no risk because you're going to lose anyway, right? Right. It's I think Michigan was a much more high risk scenario where it's purple and it's on the edge and it could potentially go either way and it's competitive. And so at that point, do you start doing the, trying to outthink yourself of like, OK, let me not just vote for if I'm in a Democratic primary, let me not just vote for the Democrat that I agree with the most on policy issues. Let me vote based on who I think can beat the Republican. So it's not just, you know, whose views do I align with most closely? It's who will, who can I stand that I also think has the best shot of winning?
|
Sam:
[59:17]
| Which is a different kind of equation. Because then instead of, you know, saying, you know, I, I like this one the best. This is the one I agree with the most. I'm going with them. Instead of that, I am first filtering the field by eliminating anybody I feel that is completely unacceptable no matter what. And then of the remaining ones, I am not deciding based on who I agree with the most because I filtered out the people I just, I could not support no matter what. I am deciding amongst the remaining candidates based on who will win. And it's a different kind of thought process. And so it's interesting. And who knows?
|
Sam:
[1:00:12]
| It's the kind of environment where you could see shockers. I mean, Nixon here won over Vindman out of the blue. No one was really expecting it. And again, I mentioned there were not really polls of this race. So, you know, and we had, you know, recently in Michigan and Minnesota, I believe, we had big poll misses. And people have pointed out, okay, primary polls are different. They're not very good to begin with. You know, people say the general election polls aren't good to begin with, but the primary polls are much worse. People don't know how to model them properly. They're wrong a lot, but I don't know. We're seeing some big moves, like in the places where we've had special elections. The Democrats have been overperforming by a lot. We just had another one of those this week in Pennsylvania's, well, a state Senate race in Pennsylvania in Butler County, and where the Democrat won for the first time, I think since 1999, something like that, late 90s. And where they were, it wasn't expected, you know, it was expected to be a safe Republican seat they want anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:01:30]
| And you're seeing a bunch of those. So we'll see when we get to the general election. I would still be cautious. Like even with where we are on poll, even if you sort of trust the polls naively, the Democrats are still just competitive for the Senate. They're not favored for the Senate. It's like, even the most optimistic views of that, I think, have it at about a toss-up for Senate control. And then you have to keep in mind things like, you know, what's Fetterman going to do? Are we going to have a situation where the Democrats have a bare majority, but Fetterman screws them over, over and over and over again on certain types of issues? Maybe but even if you trust the polls naively you have that kind of scenario.
|
Sam:
[1:02:33]
| But I keep looking at presidential elections. I have not done a deep dive into senatorial elections. But over the last few presidential cycles, from my own electiongraphs.com analysis, polls have consistently been underestimating Republican support. Consistently. Over and over and over again. And, you know, people always say, yeah, well, the errors might be the other direction this time. They might be. They could clearly be. And you would think that after several years in a row of underestimating Republicans, pollsters would be figuring out what they got wrong and trying to compensate in the other direction. So maybe they're underestimating Democrats now. But I'll tell you, I'll believe it. Well, I was going to say, I'll believe it when I see it. But Democrats have been overperforming the polls in some of these special elections and such, but very light polling. Special elections are weird. I'm not—my going-in assumption, until proven otherwise, is going to be polls are still underestimating the Republicans.
|
Sam:
[1:03:52]
| Now, I hope to be proven otherwise. And, you know, this November, have Democrats not only win the House, win the Senate, but do so in overwhelming margins to an extent that the polling did not predict. That would be awesome. I'd be glad for that. But until proven otherwise, I'm going to assume that the polls are underestimating the Republicans, which means if they're showing a toss-up, assume the Republican is going to win. And again, part of this, I just have the general philosophy for most of life, not just for this kind of stuff, but like.
|
Sam:
[1:04:36]
| Prepare for and expect for the worst case scenario and then be surprised by the best case scenario and, you know, happy surprise. Yay, it did great. As opposed to if you start assuming the best case scenario, first of all, you're very likely to be surprised on the downside and have things come out worse for you. But also it you don't want to have the level of complacency that comes from people saying oh we're ahead we're good i'd say that's a good part of what happened in 2016, you got a lot of democrats who felt like it was such a shoe-in that hillary clinton would win that they didn't bother to show up, or they made a statement with their votes that they wouldn't have necessarily if they thought it was close.
|
Sam:
[1:05:33]
| And I'm going to keep doing this forever. You know, median of the people who gave odds in 2016, the median result was like a 14% chance of Donald Trump winning. And people have a tendency of rounding odds to zero, 50%, or 100%. That's not how it works. It's not either a coin toss or a sure thing either way. 14% is roughly like rolling a one on a six-sided die. It's not quite exactly, but it's close enough.
|
Sam:
[1:06:14]
| And so, yes, it's more likely to go the other way, but you should not be surprised at all. And people were shocked and surprised. And I said that was the median result. There were some that had it more, some that had it less. But it was the median of people who were giving odds back then. I did not give odds in that cycle. I started doing that in 2020. But anyway, best bet, assume the worst, act as if it's the worst in terms of like, yeah, You have to mobilize, you have to go all out, you have to do the work, and then hopefully you overperform. Okay. You know, maybe I'm not going to get through this whole list. We had a request from Bruce for AOC and Woke 1.0. I think, first of all, Tempest in a Teapot, this was badly reported. The quote that went around was AOC saying, Woke 1.0 was crazy, wasn't it? But in actuality, if you listen to the whole soundbite, she was quoting another politician who had said that, and she goes on, if you listen to the next 30 seconds after that, to basically defend the ideas behind Woke 1.0.
|
Sam:
[1:07:36]
| I think some of the conversation around this has just generally been bad. First of all, the time frame people refer to as woke 1.0 is generally speaking the time period around the George Floyd incident.
|
Sam:
[1:07:55]
| And a lot fundamentally like the the word woke as it first started going around on black twitter is basically being aware of systematic injustices specifically systematic racism, and systemic i should say not systematic systemic and how even if you don't have, people intentionally, consciously, vocally being directly racist, there are still effects of that on society. And that there are things baked in through the history that still have an ongoing effect. And that was the original meaning of it. And then, you know, the right wing got a hold of it and they made it a caricature of itself and they sort of aligned it to all of the sort of tendency of certain people on the left to, police language and make sure everybody was saying things the right way. And no, you have to, you know, this is the right viewpoint and this is the only right viewpoint. And if anybody deviates from that, then they're evil and need to be excommunicated and stuff like that. Which I think is, you know, there are people out there like that. They were always sort of a vocal, annoying minority. But of course, they become the poster children.
|
Sam:
[1:09:24]
| And get amplified. But I think the general point of quote-unquote wokeness in whatever distorted form it is from the original at this point is simply, like, respect where other people are coming from and understand, you know, it's basically empathy again. It's basically being aware of the struggles that people are going through, And how your own actions might Unintentionally most likely have some sort of impact on that And work to make yourself better And that's all positive.
|
Sam:
[1:10:10]
| When it becomes scolding That's annoying and I think counterproductive, because if you want people who are currently unaware of such things to become aware and to start caring about such things, yelling at them does not accomplish that. In fact, it accomplishes the opposite, and it makes them dig in. There are ways to sort of broaden people's minds and expose them to things scolding them and chastising them and telling them they're bad because they used the wrong word to describe something, ain't it?
|
Sam:
[1:10:53]
| And that's where you can sort of get to the woke one is crazy mindset. And I think AOC, you know, through the rest of her comments, probably does actually agree with that general notion, because you can even see over the course of her history, her maturing a lot.
|
Sam:
[1:11:16]
| In terms of recognizing how to navigate the world in such a way, and the world of politics, the world of Congress, in a more productive way. You know, when she first came on board, she was very strident. She was very argumentative. She took on Speaker Pelosi directly. I think Speaker Pelosi still resents that to this day, ex-Speaker Pelosi at this point. But I think she sort of figured out the way things work.
|
Sam:
[1:11:48]
| And, you know, she's been working with Hakeem Jeffries on certain things. And she supported Biden in 2024, because that was the way to win. At least, you know, once it became clear he was going to be the nominee. And she worked all out for that. And during the Biden administration, she, at certain key points, backed down and went with the flow in order to get things done, even if it wasn't 100% of what she wanted. Now, there are people to AOC's left who now think she is a traitor because of all of that. I think it's more simply a matter of learning the ropes, of maturing a little bit, and becoming a good, very formidable politician. Her communication skills are excellent.
|
Sam:
[1:12:48]
| She knows how to make a point. She knows how to navigate modern media. So you know she's not one of these folks who's still like hey i'm gonna go on the sunday shows and that's all i have to do or i'm gonna talk to the new york times no, But you mix that with a dose of practicality and a dose of realism, and she's very formal. You know, there's lots of talk about her running for Senate in New York and or running for president. We'll see how that goes. I think it's sort of like the time is ripe to strike. It was just sort of just like Barack Obama. You know, people were like, he has to put in his time and wait his turn. And to a certain degree, you know, yeah, you know, that would be nice. Get a little bit more experience under the belt. But at the same time, there's certain timing where if it's going to happen.
|
Sam:
[1:13:53]
| Then you got to do it while you're hot. And she's hot right now. And I don't mean physically. You know, I talked about, like, her political star is still rising. It hasn't peaked yet. You know, and so now might be the time for both. You know, I think she might have a better shot at Senate than the presidency. I'd have to check some polling on that.
|
Sam:
[1:14:22]
| But whatever she's going to try, sooner. Or she could decide that the way she wants to go is to stay in the house and, you know, Take on Jeffries for leader at some point, you know? And again, it might not be there yet. I think that would actually take longer to get there. You might need the right composition of the House in order to do that. Something like the president or Senate, it would be possible to sort of do a coup sooner. Because, you know, you have to get the public behind you rather than a set of already elected people. And it's a different dynamic. For president, like some of the preliminary polling that I've seen, and this is mostly national. I did make some progress on electiongraphs.com for 2028, but not ready yet. Not ready yet. I haven't started feeding in real polls, but just from some of the national polls of the major Democrats that have been considered, she actually currently does worse against J.D. Vance than any of the others, I think against Rubio as well. So you know going back to that whole if you're voting based on who has the best shot in the general for president, aoc is probably not your person right now.
|
Sam:
[1:15:51]
| But we'll see how all that goes i think it's it's very interesting watching her and watching her progression and i think you know This woke 1.0 stuff, even if the comments were misrepresented somewhat in the reporting, I still think it goes to her favor because positioning herself as, look, I'm not one of the crazies. I may be on the left side of the Democratic Party, but I'm not one of the crazies. And I don't think she is one of the crazies at this point. I think she has mellowed, and she is further left than quite a lot of the Democratic Party. But she's not one of the crazies. You know, so we shall see. Okay, you know what? I said I'd only do one, but I think I will take a break. But I am just going to take a break and then keep right on going and finish the sakura. So here's a break and then I will continue with just a handful of more topics and then wrap this sucker up here we go.
|
Break:
[1:17:05]
| Okie dokie here it comes, it's just my internet being stupid my internet being stupid is a new song we will make do, you believe, come on i'm tired what's wrong i'm i'm really tired you you you it's it's amazing, show on the road there's a road, there's a road oh my god there's a road.
|
Sam:
[1:18:11]
| Okay, I'm back. So next on the list was bond yield stuff. But I'll tell you, I put that on the list to ask Yvonne about it. I will save it for now. There was a lot of talk this week about bond yields and the Fed and the economy and inflation and all this kind of stuff. I will leave that for a week where we have Yvonne to weigh in, because it is not my area at all. And I'd love to hear what he has to say about it. There was some talk on the Commudgeons Core Slack if you were on there, but yeah, we'll save that for another week. Next up, the USS Abraham Lincoln. We briefly mentioned last week that we had people starving on an aircraft carrier. And, you know, there were at least one person, maybe two, that tried to jump overboard because they were so depressed by the situation there. The main new part of this, first of all, it is on the way home. It's being relieved by another carrier that had been stationed in the North China Sea, which, of course, makes you think, OK, well.
|
Sam:
[1:19:23]
| What are you leaving up in the North China Sea? Also, interestingly, that carrier group is only coming with two of its support craft rather than three because the third one had an electrical issue, and was without power for a couple weeks and so is going in for repairs. So this all says great stuff about our readiness. But the main new thing that came out this week, which some people had speculated on already, We'd heard for months, that the degree of damage caused by the Iranians to U.S. bases, in this area was more than had been publicly reported, and that the damage was actually severe. And there was enough reporting that we actually were fairly sure of that. It wasn't like the DOD was specifically coming out with public reports of exactly how much damage there was, but I think it was well known at this point that there was significant damage all across the region, to American bases and infrastructure.
|
Sam:
[1:20:28]
| But what came out specifically this week is that part of that was that the specific logistics supply base that was used as the hub for, resupplying American positions throughout the entire region, meaning things like this aircraft carrier, but also other bases, other places where troops are stationed, etc..
|
Sam:
[1:20:57]
| Was essentially completely destroyed by the Iranians in the opening days of the war. And so for resupplying the Abraham Lincoln and other ships in the area who are apparently in just as bad shape or potentially worse than the Abraham Lincoln, they couldn't use that base at all for resupply. And instead, we're having to reroute all of the supplies through Diego Garcia, which is in the middle of the Indian Ocean, which is a lot further away. And apparently the pipeline is just narrower. So they were able to get less supplies to the regions.
|
Sam:
[1:21:41]
| And we've also, you know, had reports that the depletion rate of other armaments, was far worse than has been reported to. I mean, we'd heard before, again, we'd heard these things before. We'd heard that, you know, a significant portion of the anti-aircraft, you know, missiles like Patriots and other things was significantly depleted. A new report came out this week that apparently, I guess, medium-range missiles or whatever, we've used 90% of what was available. And so basically, our presence in that whole part of the world is significantly degraded at this point. We talk about, oh, well, we've degraded the Iranian military. Well, we've degraded our own as well. And they've degraded. So both things. One, they did a significant amount of damage to us that was mostly unreported, or if it was reported, was not given a level of prominence.
|
Sam:
[1:22:49]
| And also, we've just depleted ourselves by using stuff up. And so as Donald Trump keeps, you know, as we keep veering back and forth between threats and non-threats, and we're going to negotiate, we're not going to negotiate, we're going to bomb them to the Stone Age. Meanwhile, our ability to actually do any of these things is actually significantly diminished from what it was before this all started.
|
Sam:
[1:23:17]
| Which points again to the fundamental problem with this whole engagement, which was it was done with the assumption on day one that we would do one limited engagement a few days long, the Iranian government would collapse and then give us everything we wanted, and it would be over. There was no preparation or planning for anything that was long term. There just wasn't. The situation was ignored. And I say ignored, not thought of, because apparently quite a few people did warn them. They were just ignored. So that's where we are. So, ballroom.
|
Sam:
[1:24:09]
| SCOTUS has allowed construction on the new ballroom, the above ground portion, not the underground part, which was never, no court tried to stop the underground security complex that they're also building at the same time, but the above ground area. Scotish specifically chief justice roberts allowed that to continue while they wait for the supreme court to hear the full case and make a decision on it, but what's happening over and over and over again here, in this particular case in others too but in this particular case, is that this means facts on the ground can be created. You know, apparently there are reports that 60% of the work for the ballroom is already done, actually. And you end up with the courts in a very different position at the end.
|
Sam:
[1:25:14]
| If comparing, can you say, okay, stop construction until Congress can weigh in and decide what to do here? Versus, there's a building here. What are you going to do about it? Is the court going to order them to tear it down? Chances are no. Is the court going to order some sort of slap on the wrist fine? I don't know who pays what to who. Is the court going to just say, you shouldn't have done it, but oh well, it's done. Honestly, that seems like maybe it's the most likely output at this point. Well, unless the court, the 6-3 court at this time actually does decide, you know, unitary executive, they can do whatever they want. It was all good. Which is within the realm of possibility. The lower courts have not gone that direction. But this would not be the first time that the Supreme Court says, you know, screw the lower court, screw previous precedent, this is fine. In the meantime, construction continues. and you know.
|
Sam:
[1:26:26]
| I don't know. And I think all of this points again to a problem with the speed of our processes. I mean, ideally in this scenario, the courts should have been able to stop this, before the first bulldozer started in on the old East Wing. The fact that the East Wing was actually demolished before anything really started happening in the courts is a fundamental failure in and of itself. The fact that we are many, many, many months later and construction has been going on in the meantime is also a failure, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:27:10]
| And as much as I agree with those folks who are like, hey, you know, President AOC or whoever, on their first day, you know, in 2029, one of the first executive orders is, tear it all down. Tear down anything built during the Trump administration. You know, put it back how it was. As much as that, you know, feels good and they could, you know, people would probably line up to like help with the sledgehammers. I'm not sure that's actually the right thing to do. Like, if it's actually built, if it's actually there and there isn't a problem with it. I say, and there isn't a problem with it. I mean, Trump administration is known for shoddy work. I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if whatever they build is crap and has, like, fundamental structural issues or something and it has to be torn down. But assuming it's, like, workable, do we want to waste even more money tearing the damn thing down? You probably at least want to spend the money to get rid of the gold. It'll undoubtedly be all over the damn thing.
|
Sam:
[1:28:27]
| But, and try, try to minimize it, make it as good as possible. But I'm not sure you really are going to tear down the whole thing. And, and, you know, and even if you do tear down the whole thing, I'm not sure that the right thing to do is to like rebuild the East wing exactly the way it was. You're going to want to put something better than what was there before. Even if it's not this monstrosity. But, you know, probably you do need to let Congress weigh in. Given the state that actually exists on the ground, whenever we get there, what does Congress actually want to do? You know, I don't think you, I don't know. It's a disastrous mess, just like everything else. Okay, tariffs. We mentioned the tariffs in regard to what I was talking about with Korea and Oman and Trump foreign policy in general. I think this is just another—the Canada thing is just another example of that. The beef thing, the biggest—.
|
Sam:
[1:29:31]
| Annoying thing about this is Trump eliminating or reducing the tariffs on beef to help with the price of beef, when all along he's been saying that tariffs don't raise prices, that if tariffs, if tariffs don't raise prices, how does eliminating them reduce prices? Come on, people. And it's like, well, oh, but the other countries pay the tariffs, right? No.
|
Sam:
[1:29:58]
| And the cognitive disconnect here is still just so annoying. And, you know, it's hard to do the counter, you know, like, where would we be if none of these things had happened? I don't know. I said, you know, things could certainly be a lot worse. Things are not the worst possible case scenario that when Trump started putting on tariffs on everything, people were saying could happen. We're not at that worst case scenario because he kept going back and forth and working and manipulating and changing and these didn't tend to stick. And this actually matched some predictions that Yvonne and I made right at the beginning, saying, you know, it is not going to be flat out here. These are the tariffs that exist. It's all going to be about leverage to he's going to be making individual one off deals with individual companies for exemptions and individual countries. And don't watch the the top line tariff. Watch the exemptions. And I think that's a lot of what's happened here. And a lot of it has been taco with, again, Trump. Putting something in place and then backing off later and declaring victory.
|
Sam:
[1:31:13]
| With some sort of nominal concession that doesn't really matter. And he gets the optics of declaring victory on something without any actual substantial improvement and arguably some worsening, but not necessarily the worst case worsening.
|
Sam:
[1:31:31]
| But it's hard to know. If none of this had happened, where would we be? I suspect we'd be better off. But can you prove that? No. You can never prove the counterfactual what would have happened if you hadn't. There's all kinds of confounding variables. There's all kinds of things. It's hard. But you can say that a lot of metrics have moved in the wrong direction, since Trump took office. We have made more money off tariffs. You can't say we didn't. The question is, is that balanced by other things? And, you know, and how is that not a tax increase? Of course it's a tax increase. It's just a tax increase on a certain type of person, regular retail purchasers, that Yvonne doesn't really care about. Anyway, one last thing. Then I'm shutting up.
|
Sam:
[1:32:30]
| This morning, a few hours before I started recording this second and third part of the podcast, there was reporting that Speaker Jeffries had a meeting with Jared Kushner on, how, assuming the Democrats take control of at least the House and maybe the Senate after this election, how they might find some common ground and some things to work together on in the coming term of Congress. Now, putting the best possible spin on this would be like, okay, look, of course, regardless, there's certain things that are going to have to get done. You know, you can't not talk to the opposition. It's good to feel them out, get a sense of where they are, and talking doesn't hurt. And maybe there are some areas of agreement that some work could get done on. But the optics of this are just horrible. And I think, once again, show that the current leadership and that this reporting was all about Jeffries. So, you know, who knows what Schumer's thinking or doing about this? But.
|
Sam:
[1:33:54]
| This is out of touch with what rank-and-file Democrats want right now. We don't want to be hearing about, making things normal again and working with the Republicans. We want to be hearing fight. You know, and look.
|
Sam:
[1:34:17]
| In an ideal world, I would love to be in a situation where you would have Republicans and Democrats work together on the areas, where they do agree and where some sort of reasonable compromise can be made and that we're not in a, you know, it's us or them view and there are certain things you can push through. But look, even in the last few months, we had that housing bill go through. The bipartisan housing bill went through. Donald Trump didn't like it. He wouldn't sign it, but he let it go through. He didn't veto it because there was actually enough support that if he did veto it, it would have a serious chance of being overridden. And that would look even worse for him. So he didn't do that.
|
Sam:
[1:35:04]
| So there are areas where the parties can work together, and there's a place for talking about that kind of thing. But Jeffrey's talking to Jared Kushner right now? No, come on. If that conversation happened at all, it should essentially have been Jeffrey saying, be ready for the subpoenas. Be ready for us to go after you with everything we've got. Now, I recognize there's a big push that says, look, we're talking about winning elections right now. And over and over and over again, people are letting us know. I hate quoting him because he's an asshole and wrong about a lot of things these days. But to quote Carville from decades ago, it's the economy, stupid. People are caring about affordability, about cost of living, same thing, you know, and, you know, the traditional pocketbook issues, and they want to know that you're going to do something about that.
|
Sam:
[1:36:15]
| And there are lots of folks who are just tired of Republican versus Democrat, of anti-Trump stuff. And so I'm not saying from a political point of view to try to win 2026 or 2028, the right thing to do is to focus on, we're going to nail all these bastards to the wall for what they've done the last few years. However, that should still be a core principle that you're not letting go of. Because, frankly, I think there's a very strong argument to be made that you have Donald Trump in office today because you didn't properly deal with him in 2021.
|
Sam:
[1:37:08]
| And frankly, there's an argument to be made that, you know, previous— like, you could go back to Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon And the fact that Nixon got away with it emboldened even Trump 1, because a whole part of their agenda in both Trump and Trump 2 is to undo the post-Watergate reforms that reigned the president back in. I don't know what Jeffries was thinking. I think this is ridiculous. Like again back channel communications on maybe there are a few things we can do to get along, fine i guess and and i and look they didn't make it public it's not like they had this meeting in public on both of their agendas had reporters there no no this was, this was leaked but i I wouldn't have high-level contacts of that sort. Not right now. And if there were such, it'd be like, if we win, we're following our agenda as best we can. And that agenda, by the way, includes holding people accountable for wrongdoing they've done during this administration.
|
Sam:
[1:38:31]
| I don't necessarily disagree with the focus on the economic stuff. I think some of the connection that can be made there, and some Democrats have started to do this somewhat successfully, is tying the economic interests to the corruption and saying, they don't give a damn that your prices are rising and in the meantime they are doing all of these corrupt things to bring money to themselves and their friends.
|
Sam:
[1:39:02]
| I think that is a legitimate way to make that connection that has been working well for some Democrats. I think we should probably double down on that. And that does give you the end to, we will hold people accountable for this corruption once we get in. That's a legitimate line. One thing I think the Democrats need to be careful about, though, is on affordability. And I've heard some Democrats say, practically in these words, that when we get in, we'll help with affordability, we'll bring prices down. Don't make promises you can't keep. Okay? Even if you bring inflation back to nominal targets, prices still go up. And prices going down, deflation, has its own set of problems that tend to go with that. And when you start talking about like, well, okay, but we can talk about, you know, the relative, you know, inflation versus salary rises and for the balance between them and we'll get more complicated. People don't get all that. We've shown time after time after time.
|
Sam:
[1:40:22]
| There are lots of people thinking about actual prices, and unless they actually go down, they're like, well, they're still up. And it takes years for people to get used to the quote-unquote new price after something has gone up. And they're still annoyed that the prices now are more than they remember five years ago, even once the increase has leveled off, for a number of years. Eventually, they get used to it. But it takes a long time. And we've noted the pattern over and over and over again for decades now, of Republicans coming in and systematically ruining the economy because they do things that favor corporations and rich folks, etc.
|
Sam:
[1:41:17]
| And those people are thrilled and happy at the benefits they're getting, but those benefits come at the expense of a much larger swath of people. And then the Democrats get voted in because that sort of starts to become obvious that there's something wrong towards the end of the Republican term. And then the Democrats start to fix it. And then it's starting to come around eventually in a few years later. And the voters are like, well, things still suck. You didn't fix it fast enough. We'll go back to Republicans. Rinse and repeat. And if the Democrats have to be really careful about promising things they can't deliver. And I think this is, you know, something that's happened in previous elections, to be sure, where, look, the general voter doesn't recognize the difference between when politicians are out giving their their stump speech and all the things that they would like to do. That list is often, you know, a directional vision of where we would like to take things. If we had complete control and could do whatever we wanted to, in 10 years, in 15 years, we'll get you to this directional vision.
|
Sam:
[1:42:46]
| And look, there is a place for those directional visions. That's how you inspire people about where you want to go. But a lot of voters take those as direct promises of what they should see happen, before the next election.
|
Sam:
[1:43:01]
| And in reality, first of all, we have split government very often. You know, you have the House, but you don't have the Senate. You have the House and Senate, but you don't have the presidency. You have the House, Senate, and presidency, but you don't have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. You know, you have all of these kinds of things that keep you from actually implementing things where you may try to do the things you promised, but are unable to actually deliver because of structural impediments. Or you get past all of that, and the Supreme Court undoes it, right? You know, you have—first of all, you have that, and the general public doesn't understand. Because we—I don't think we've ever been good at it, but I think there's demonstrable evidence that we've done worse in the last couple of generations of actually, teaching the basics of, like, how government works. And so we've got lots of adults at this point. I think we probably always had lots of adults at this point, but we have even more, I think, at this point, who just fundamentally have no idea how this stuff works.
|
Sam:
[1:44:17]
| And so they vote for somebody, and then it doesn't happen. And then because of these structural impediments, and they don't know who to blame. They blame the people who promised, as far as they can tell. They promised, you know, you're going to get X, Y, Z, Q. We're going to fix affordability for you. We're going to give you, you know, free health care. We're going to give you this. We're going to give you, you know, we're going to get the U.S. out of foreign policy integraments. We'll get whatever, whatever. They're going to not understand what's actually possible and what's not.
|
Sam:
[1:44:50]
| And then sometimes, you know, they wanted to get out of Afghanistan. Joe Biden got out of Afghanistan. And then people were still upset because of how he got out of Afghanistan, right? So there's some cases where you can't win no matter what. But then also, even if you do everything, the Affordable Care Act, well, that's not everything, but the Affordable Care Act is one perfect example of the fact that, hey, things take time anyway. Even if you push through the policy agenda that you had before.
|
Sam:
[1:45:21]
| Things don't happen in the snap of a finger. It takes years for everything to get fully implemented. And again, Yvonne and I, one of our recurring themes has been like, delayed reaction stuff where some policy happens, but people don't feel it for years and years later, by which time, their mental connection between cause and effect is broken because they, whether it's credit or blame, generally speaking, the credit or blame happens to who's in power when they start feeling it, not who is in power at the moment the policy change happened. And so you got all this. So I think Democrats have a fine line to try to figure out. First of all, yes, you have to emphasize the pocketbook issues because it looks like that's what the general public cares most about right now.
|
Sam:
[1:46:24]
| But second, I don't think you can ignore taking this administration to account and properly having consequences for the fact that they have systematically broken, so much of, you know, the institutional safeguards that this country supposedly had. While not making people think you only care about process because people don't care about process. And people don't like the institutions, so they don't like to hear defending the institutions. You have to worry about, like, building something new to replace it. But there has to be some sort of accountability. And in the case of the Democrats, you also can't throw people under the bus. You can't just, for instance, say, oh, well, you know, we're not going to worry about the rights of trans people, because that might hurt us a little bit in the polls with certain groups of people. You can change what you emphasize, but you can't just, like, say, oh, never mind. You know, bathroom bills are fine or whatever, or let's just go along with them on, you know, on trans sports or whatever. You can't throw people under the bus either.
|
Sam:
[1:47:51]
| You have to have strong convictions on things and stick to them. And I've said before, you also can't be making policy decisions based on reading the polls. You probably should.
|
Sam:
[1:48:07]
| Make some messaging decisions and what you're going to emphasize based on the polls. But you can't be making the policy decisions based on the polls. That is, you know, nobody's going to respect that. Okay, I went a lot farther than I intended to. And I got to get this together and pack. I've got, let's see, what is, I've got about three hours until I should be in the car on the way to the airport. So I got to get, I got to get hurrying and do the other stuff I need to do. So I'll just wrap up. Thanks everybody for listening to yet another Commudgeons Corner. I apologize for being without Yvonne. Like I said at the beginning, he had something come up unexpectedly at the very, very last moment. And at the moment, I don't know what we'll do next week. There will be a show. I'll guarantee you there will be a show. How long it is, whether it's both me and Yvonne, or whether it's just me, or, you know, I don't know, it could be another full-length show like this time. It could just be me recording 15 minutes or something to make sure we're not missing anything, but there will be something.
|
Sam:
[1:49:26]
| I guess unless my plane crashes or something. You never know. But I hope that doesn't happen. Anyway, thanks everybody for joining us. curmudgeons-corner.com Go to the website, see all the ways to contact us.
|
Sam:
[1:49:41]
| See transcripts of old episodes. Listen to our archives. All this kind of stuff. And of course there's a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at different levels. We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We will send you a mug. I still owe Emily her replacement mug. I'll remember someday. I promise, Emily, you'll get a replacement mug. And yeah, and at $2 a month or more, or if you ask nicely and we feel like it at the moment, we will invite you to our convention course Slack where Yvonne and I and a variety of our listeners are chatting throughout the week. Let me give a, you know, it's a great place. More of you should join us more often. Even the people who are already there, some of you should be there more often. There's always a core group of people who are there every day, and then there are people that just check in every once in a while. It'd be nice if you, every once in a while, people graduated to everyday people, you know? Anyway, what's a highlight from this week? Oh, I'll mention one. I shared a story from the straight times, the straight times of a Chinese movie. Oh, no, I didn't want to go to a TikTok.
|
Sam:
[1:51:02]
| I'll just give it a high level summary. Apparently, so yeah, it wasn't straight. It was a link to a TikTok from the Straight Times, not an article. Anyway, there was a movie that a mother and son pairing made in the Chinese marketplace. Computer animated, done on a shoestring budget. I think it was a few hundred dollars, they said. It took them several years in their spare time to make it. They actually got it done and released in a few theaters. It did horribly. It made like a couple thousand dollars in box office, which I guess if they only put a couple hundred dollars into it, it's not that bad. But the thing is, it became viral for how bad it was.
|
Sam:
[1:51:50]
| It was outdated animation. It was low-quality animation. They did their own voice acting. They did their own music. And apparently, it was just comically bad. It's called Niu Lai, N-I-U space L-A-I. And but it started going viral for how bad it was people were sharing clips online and then in its like third or fourth week out, they started getting tons of people going to it because it was so bad and watching it because it was so bad and apparently it's now doing decently at the Chinese box office, just from people coming to watch how bad it is and make fun of it and laugh.
|
Sam:
[1:52:39]
| Which I think is great. The other part of it is no AI. It was, you know, all hand done in like relatively older animation tools. And, you know, so people are liking that, hey, it's not AI slop, it's human slop. It's still slop, but it's funny based on how bad it was. And, you know, I've mentioned on the show before that there is a difference here. There are certain things that are just bad, are bad and are not enjoyable at all because they're just painful to watch, they're cringe-inducing, they're unpleasant, they don't achieve what they want to achieve at all. But there is this category of so bad it's good where it is so bad it is funny and it is enjoyable and, it's fun to mock it as you watch and apparently this is in that category and i have of course added it to my long master list of movies i want to watch someday, and we'll see anyway it's got But like, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:53:55]
| Google it, search it on your favorite video app. There are tons of clips of it online. And it does indeed look horrible, but it does look like that kind of horrible that you could enjoy watching at least for a little while. There's also a certain tolerance for that kind of thing. It's, it's, you know, some things might be amusing to watch because they're so bad for five minutes, but don't, by the time it's an hour, it's painful. Other ones can sustain a good, good hour and a half, two hour, you know, movie, you know? Anyway, and Alex and I have certainly watched movies of that category before. We just watched another old King Kong movie the other day. And our review of King Kong Escapes from the 1950s will have to wait for another time. But, you know, I'm thinking of it in this context for a reason. Anyway, I don't know if you guys can hear the dog or not. I mentioned earlier in the show, I've got noise canceling that sometimes remove some of that remove, doesn't remove some of it. And sometimes I pause anyway, just to be sure I'm not pausing. I'm just keeping going while for me here, there's lots and lots of barking in the background.
|
Sam:
[1:55:15]
| If you hear it, then great. If you don't hear it, well, just know that I'm hearing a barking dog right now. And yeah, maybe in the future, I'll, I don't know. I'll see if I can hear the dog. And that will inform my decisions on whether or not to bother pausing in the future when the dog is barking. Also, there's like other, the post-processing that I do has, started offering a beta of a new mode that removes even more background sounds and makes it sound more like you're in a studio. I might try that sometime. Maybe this week, maybe next. No, probably not this week. Some week when I'm not in a hurry And so I have time to do multiple versions and pick which one I like. Anyway, I don't know. Goodbye, folks. Have a great week. Stay safe. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Sam:
[1:56:37]
| Okay, that went way longer than I expected. I'm hitting stop now on the live stream, and I'll go try to slap this thing together, get packed, and go. Bye, folks.
| |
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