Automated Transcript
Ivan:
[0:08]
| We are the curmudgeons Doing a live stream I am a lone curmudgeon Because Sam's computer shit the bed, I can't sing worth a damn I am on live stream I hate being alone on the live stream I need to get back here Nothing I just said rhymes It's why I'm not an artist Please, for the love of God Can you get Sam to fix his shit?
|
Sam:
[1:35]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, September 6th, 2025. It is just before 1630 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Entry, Yvonne Bose here again. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:49]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[1:51]
| Hi.
|
Ivan:
[1:51]
| Greetings.
|
Sam:
[1:54]
| Yeah, so as usual, we'll do a butt first with non-newsy stuff, and then we'll move into newsy stuff as the show proceeds. I will start out by saying I promised something last week when you were out that I have not yet completed, which was a time lapse of my wife, son, and I moving her old Buick Riata over six feet to the left. Yeah so i i started to put that together from the the video clips from our ring camera but i haven't finished so i i have not put that out yet but i will i will i will eventually now i say that but but.
|
Ivan:
[2:34]
| But but it's been done but it was done.
|
Sam:
[2:36]
| It was done without without any destruction without any destruction it was done before last week's show actually i mentioned it and it said I was going to do a time lapse. But yeah, and I say that I will produce this time lapse. But you should keep in mind, there was once a snowstorm here in Seattle, in the Seattle area, that produced like, you know, a couple feet of snow or whatever. And it took like, over a month for all the snow to melt away. And I started building a time lapse of that whole snowstorm from the Abelcam. And I called it Snow Lapse.
|
Ivan:
[3:16]
| Snow Lapse? Okay.
|
Sam:
[3:18]
| And I am still theoretically working on the Snow Lapse video. It has been at least a decade since that snowstorm. I have not finished it yet. But, you know, but eventually I'll put it out.
|
Ivan:
[3:31]
| Look, at least I will say that you're consistent.
|
Sam:
[3:35]
| There you go. But yes. So anyway, and I think I also, by the way, I'm going back and forth, whether I just include the moving of the car or I also include the reason for the moving of the car, which was that we we filled up a whole bunch of dumpster bags versus full of trash. That needed to be taken away and we needed to like make room for you know they were supposed to come in with a like a truck and pick up the things and we needed to make sure they had room to come in and get them so there's also the putting out of the bins the filling of the bins and the taking away of the bins i could include that in the time lapse too so of course my my regular but first is going to be a couple movies as it usually is these days to try to like move that stuff along. What do you got, Yvonne? Did you have a good Labor Day? Did you have a good long weekend thing?
|
Ivan:
[4:33]
| Well, I mean, it turned out fine, even though it started with some of the slack, you know, that I had this blowout at my attire on my car on the highway at night on Thursday. Which, one of the things that's just really irritating is that because a lot of new cars don't have spare tires. Probably yours doesn't. I'm going to guess.
|
Sam:
[5:00]
| No. It does not.
|
Ivan:
[5:04]
| It's one of the things that's really irritating. That shit doesn't work. I already tried that once. Shit doesn't work. I don't understand how they're going to go away. That shit only works if you've got a minor puncture, like you've got a nail, slow leak, whatever. But anything else beyond that doesn't matter. And the one thing is that, for safety reasons, This has happened to me For whatever reason Twice in the last three years And, My choice has been If it happens on the highway Especially on the highways here in South Florida Where they have made the shoulders A lot smaller than they used to be, Meaning that if you get off the road You really have very little margin for safety On both occasions I have decided that I will drive that tire, As is until I manage to get off an exit and onto a safe place to park. Okay?
|
Sam:
[6:02]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[6:03]
| There is no way that I will stand on the side of the road, especially since on both occasions, I immediately knew the tire was not repairable. It's not replaceable. I can't do anything. All I'm going to do is just sit on the side of the road to wait for a fucking troll truck, and I might as well sit on a nice, safe place, Instead of In an unsafe location So I dragged it To the turnpike stop I left the car It was at night No towing it to anywhere, I took an Uber home I left it there overnight And then the next day I came to get the car with me, I mean, I called actually roadside from Volvo. They have roadside, whatever. They towed it to the dealer and they put a new tire on it. This is really the only thing. I mean, the tire was like shredded to bits. So that was the one thing that I was trying to take care of. And there was like a concert. I was going to some other stuff. But then the other thing that has been keeping us super busy is, as I've mentioned here, that I was doing all this work to try to claim Spanish citizenship. Okay.
|
Sam:
[7:11]
| Right, yes.
|
Ivan:
[7:13]
| Which has been quite time-consuming in the sense of gathering all the required documents, okay? But the key document that in order to do this, which has been a document that I've been chasing for months, and I had asked my mom to get it. It's like, look, we needed her grandfather's birth certificate, okay? Because he was the one that was born in Spain and moved over to Puerto Rico in the early 1900s, or late 1800s.
|
Ivan:
[7:48]
| And the thing is that, well, I mean, you needed to get this birth certificate in Spain. Okay. And I'm like, well, I mean, I guess, or unless it was in my grandmother's paperwork or something. And i i said mom you need to get that birth certificate okay so but asking her sister or whatever come to find out that my my cousin one of my first cousins had also figured out decided that they wanted to claim citizenship but they had an edge on me they knew the the the the.
|
Ivan:
[8:26]
| Spanish consul in puerto rico because there is a consulate for spain and puerto rico okay and she knew the guy so she asked him for help to get the birth certificate and lo and behold we were able to get that birth certificate okay which is just i i i shared a clip of it it's just one of these i mean it the birth certificate isn't a birth certificate they put they put all of these in books, where they registered the births. I guess at some point, the government of Spain, as many governments, they digitized a lot of these records, so you could make them searchable, you had the copies, and we were able to get that. But then, you have to get all this documented trail to show, okay, great. That's your great-grandfather. You gotta get your grandmother's birth certificate, and then you gotta get your mother's birth certificate. You gotta show the trail of how every person is connected to.
|
Sam:
[9:24]
| The ones before.
|
Ivan:
[9:25]
| Right, to the one that was born in Spain. There's also a thing that Spain had passed a law, recognizing that a lot of people in between the late 1800s and up until the dictatorship of Franco that were Spanish citizens were stripped of their citizenship for various reasons, okay? And that included everybody that lived in Puerto Rico. when the U.S. Invaded Puerto Rico because the U.S. Was invaded. It was a bloodless invasion, but it was still an invasion. And they took over the Spanish-American War and the treaty that ensued. They had taken possession of Cuba, the Philippines, and Puerto Rico. One of the things that happened is that for some reason, in the treaties, Puerto Ricans wound up stateless in a certain way. Nobody recognized Puerto Rican citizenship There was such a thing, existed between 1898 and 1914. But it was useless. You couldn't really travel with it.
|
Ivan:
[10:35]
| And then at some point in the U.S. they said, okay, we'll allow, in between that time period, we'll allow Puerto Ricans to go and they can go to mainland U.S. and be naturalized. Okay? We could do that. But that was complicated. Okay? Now, for some reason, Cuba and the Philippines And I guess because there were, Puerto Rico was a lot smaller. Puerto Rico had like, I'm not even sure if it had a million people back then. Cuba and the Philippines were way bigger. Those, that was pretty clear what it was. I believe that there were, you know, they were colonies. There were countries. They had a citizenship, okay, that was Cuban or Filipino citizenship established. So Puerto Rico was the one that was a little bit in flux. And I think also in part was because there was a time period where Puerto Rico was kind of like treated to an extent like a province of Spain. So people in Puerto Rico were Spanish citizens. But look, after the war, Spain stripped everybody that was there, the Spanish citizenship. Even if you were born in Spain and you were you had your residence in Puerto Rico you lost your citizenship period okay nice so that created a situation that.
|
Ivan:
[12:04]
| Eventually, Congress debated this for a long time for racist reasons. They said, no, we can't make that a state. But I will say that given the time to their defense, they were actually, they said, you know what? They were completely leaning. We need to give them just citizenship. The hell with it. Okay? It's not that many people, really. This solves the problem. Right now, they can't travel. They don't have citizenship. ship so puerto ricans this this whole situation congress kept dallying around for some reason they didn't get to it they wanted to do it before world war one i i do think in part because they they needed people okay so uh you know what a war but they didn't get around to granting, puerto rican citizenship until like 1917 and it was under the jones act and the one thing about about that is that borrowing and citizenship, and this has been a point of debate, it's just for a virtual that we by a law passed, okay, which in theory, some have discussed, also means, could mean that you could, by, eliminating the law, then we no longer would be citizens, okay?
|
Sam:
[13:25]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[13:27]
| And this is a tricky thing, and this has been discussed. I'll tell you that I don't know So, you know, given the current state of things, nothing would be shocking at this point of some kind of like craziness that happens. So, the Spanish government several years ago, in recognition of the turmoil that happened in that period where Spain endured quite an extended period of instability, the late 1800s through until the end of the Franco dictatorship, passed a law that allowed people that were stripped of, you know, and relatives of them, that were stripped of their citizenship from Spain to reclaim. Okay and you know the process basically you need to do this filing with documents where you show, your, you know, uh, your familiar relationship, you know, how, how it connects it and, and submit it. There is a deadline to submit that is October 20th of this year.
|
Sam:
[14:35]
| Oh yeah. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[14:37]
| So now the thing is that.
|
Sam:
[14:38]
| So you're running right up against the deadline here.
|
Ivan:
[14:40]
| Well, here's the good news.
|
Sam:
[14:41]
| The thing is the deadline set like years ago.
|
Ivan:
[14:44]
| Yeah. It was like set a couple of years ago. Yeah. But here's the thing that they, they had a deadline to do it last year. They extended it one year, but, okay, to be, I had looked into this and was like, I wasn't really that motivated to do so. But, given the recent electoral events, then I did become far more interested in this. But then the thing is that I had sent this to my family, and now everybody in my family wants to claim this as well. So all of a sudden, it's just a blizzard of paperwork in order to get all the documents to do this right now.
|
Ivan:
[15:32]
| I mean at least but the one most important one, was my great grandfather's birth certificate which thankfully my cousin who had had I have a lot of cousins but only one of them had the brilliant idea the same idea as me to do so but they also had one edge that I did not have is that they actually do the Spanish consul so they were able to procure that birth certificate Which I Which I think is mentioning These are books man It's just Books they kept and they scanned And they registered It's just crazy But right now basically I've got that All of my siblings And as far as I can tell Almost all of my nephews Are submitting this They want to submit their applications All of them. I, all of them. And, and look.
|
Sam:
[16:36]
| And so are you helping all of them or are they just, or is everybody doing their own?
|
Ivan:
[16:40]
| Now the first thing that I, the first, no, no, no, I am helping all of them. The thing is that the first thing I have to do, it was important that the first thing to do, which I just spent the other day and I, I got confirmation that it was successfully submitted. I was to set my mom's. So I got that done. and I do have a confirmation that it was properly submitted before the deadline and so forth. They said on the site that if for some reason you submitted something, a document that needs correction or something, then by virtue of just submitting it, they will give you time. If you say, hey, you didn't submit this right, you need to correct this, you have time to do that. So just by putting it in before the deadline, that gives you that. Eventually they will review the documents. They will set you up to have an appointment at the spanish consulate to review and then you know you can get the citizenship awarded the one thing there's no residency requirement for this either you don't have to uh and and there's and it can be a dual citizenship also as well, so so it seems pretty straightforward right now but yeah but it's but but it was complicated to get all the.
|
Ivan:
[17:54]
| Documents just straightened out and the forms that you had to fill out I always have to remember also that dates, you remember that the US convention for writing down a date is not the same as the rest of the world, and I kept the one thing is that just remembering that I gotta I have to write, I'm used to, well I'm actually used to it the one thing is that i think i came up with a website that it was like you know i i was like okay look i'm doing this in spanish so i have to put day month year not the other way and then for some reason the damn website was trying to do it one one place where i didn't expect that to be needed it tried to do it the reverse and i'm like what the fuck why are you rejecting my date you idiot. I was like, why are you asking for it in English format? By then I realized it was just the format. It's just like, But you have to just, it's just a, it was.
|
Sam:
[19:00]
| It's a problem. It's a long, involved, convoluted process.
|
Ivan:
[19:04]
| Then things, for example, look, I'm sitting down with my mom. My mom doesn't know how to write an email.
|
Sam:
[19:12]
| She should use Chapman GPT.
|
Ivan:
[19:14]
| But here's the one thing. Well, no, she doesn't know. Come on, she wouldn't. Here's the interesting thing. I think it's more refusal than anything else. I will tell you this. It's not, it's not that she can't. it says she doesn't want to because i remember when we were listen when we were growing up we had we had compute you know we had a computer system at the pharmacy to process like prescriptions and everything and like our account you know a customer accounts or whatever she used that perfectly without a problem okay all right there's this freaking idm you know whatever right whatever, yeah and it's like it's it was this is you know and she used one of these like mainframe type terminals? She used that perfectly fine. I just don't think she wants it. All of a sudden, to her, me making copies and scanning documents seemed like magic. My father, by the way, who has all this gadget to do this, basically every time he has to scan a document, has to call me to figure out how to scan a document. He doesn't understand how to scan a document yet. He will call me, so how How do you do this? Oh, God, look, you see the thing, the image. Okay, place it, you know, where it says. You see how it's got the stuff written? That means that direction up. And that might bother, damn it. I'll tell you something he did. He bought a combination printer, scanner, copier thing that he has.
|
Sam:
[20:43]
| That's our common, yes.
|
Ivan:
[20:45]
| Yeah, that's our common, okay? That works pretty decently, except for one thing. It doesn't do double-sided scanning. And I find that quite irritating, okay? Can I be honest? That's just asinine, okay? Why would you have a printer that can do double-sided printing, but not double-sided scanning? I mean, that's just asinine with that thing. Here's another thing I discovered, okay? All right? By doing this all on my father's place. My dad has a laptop, an iPad, an iMac. You know, he doesn't buy shit. He doesn't know how to use most of it. But he just has it all, okay? I realized that I went to use his iMac that was directly connected to the scanner, okay, to do this. Number one thing that's a little bit perturbing is that for some reason the app for Yandex, the Russian search engine, is installed on there. I had removed it already several times. I don't know why he keeps reinstalling. Who keeps doing this? So that's very perturbing, okay, all right? And I removed it before, Sam. I know that I went and I removed this. And I'm like, why the fuck is this thing? Why is Yandex back on? Okay.
|
Ivan:
[22:03]
| But then, you know, I did use it. Scan some documents on it. Because for some reason, originally, I couldn't. I was under. My father, for whatever reason, has two Wi-Fi networks. I don't understand why. So I couldn't connect. I couldn't. At first, I was on the wrong Wi-Fi network that my computer or my iPad couldn't find. the damn multifunction. Then I realized I'm in the wrong Wi-Fi. I had to switch over. But before I did that, I used the iMac. But I realized something, Sam. That iMac, I'm shocked. It works pretty... Even though it's got the rushing thing or whatever, I was like, all of a sudden, I scanned and I looked at the interface. It seems like a very old macOS interface. This isn't recent. I'm like, how old is this thing? I did realize, I opened the about This is a 2014 iMac that somehow still runs. You see, I had a couple of iMacs dating to that day that died on, father's, which has been on continuously, he does not shut it off. It's a 2014 iMac. So it's 11 years old. And by the way, it still works pretty reasonably well.
|
Ivan:
[23:18]
| I get stuff, and it's not like it was a crawling to a slope or whatever. No, I was able to scan the documents, airdrop them, do whatever. And I'm like, holy shit, this thing works.
|
Ivan:
[23:30]
| But my mom was like totally like completely like shocked at my skills of doing this there's another thing also i submitted this to the site but the file sizes have to be under one megabyte yeah and i'm like fuck me i scanned all of these i say hey they have to be person i think it said in some place scan them in full color okay scan them in full color okay great well and i'm like well oh but they can't be over one megabyte. I'm like, god damn it. You want high quality and then you're trying to get me to shrink the size like 70-80% people. Make up your damn mind. Okay? Whoever designed this damn site. Anyway, after going through all that, shrinking the files, using the 10 plus year old technology, impressing my mom with my ability to fill out a PDF without actually printing it. My mom actually had to send some letters to my to my aunt to have her go and be able to go to the office of Puerto Rico that has the, it's called the demographic registry. Okay. All right. That's the actual title of Puerto Rico. That's where they have birth certificates, you know, marriage licenses, all records of all that stuff. My mom wrote the letter by hand because she doesn't, that's a good, she didn't know how else to do it. She wrote it by hand now. Now I will admit she wrote it by hand now. She didn't know how to send it. So I have to have my nephew go Dude, go over there Take a picture of that letter.
|
Ivan:
[25:00]
| And somehow Send it to my cousin Who was able to print it and then give it to my mom's sister Who also doesn't know how to use any technology Of course So she can go over there and do this So anyway, this has been, A little bit of an ordeal And then I got all my brothers calling me Hey, how do you fill out this shit? Fine, look, listen Now I got this barrage of people Like all of them Asking for help to do this But you know, It's still The one thing underlying Me doing this Is a sense of anger Right, Because of why the hell I'm doing it.
|
Sam:
[25:41]
| Yes, because of everything going on, let's just put it that way. You know, let me ask, before we move on to my movies and stuff, obviously the purpose of having this Spanish citizenship, which in turn gives you EU citizenship, right, is to give a potential escape route if things get really bad yes you know what what what what is thinking through this what kind of things would actually trigger you saying fuck this i'm out you're moving to europe i.
|
Ivan:
[26:26]
| Think the key the key has to do with protections for money because there are certain laws that give my son certain protections.
|
Ivan:
[26:41]
| And also there is a whole bunch of funding that has been available to kids with autism that comes from the federal government, state government, et cetera, and so forth. I mean, RFP Jr. has openly expressed his disdain for people with autism, saying that they're a burden on everybody and so forth and so on. And society, in general.
|
Ivan:
[27:07]
| And you keep getting all these wacko funding cuts just to give tax cuts to rich individuals. I mean, to the wealthier people. Which, by the way, includes me in a certain sense. But you know what? The tax does not make up for the loss of benefits that my son would get. It doesn't at all and so I'm worried about, protections I'm worried I mean what are the things I'm worried about what he might do to people of Puerto Rican to Steve Miller and his minions start getting fucking ideas of what they might do to people of Puerto Rican that have citizenship by virtue of something like how we have it for example yeah these guys have been making every damn move and what the hell the Supreme Court starts doing you know but I think that the number one thing is my concern about what programs and protections that my son can have in the future. And I know that in the EU, especially in certain countries, and across the EU, there are a lot more protections and programs.
|
Sam:
[28:14]
| It does vary a lot by country.
|
Ivan:
[28:17]
| I've heard complaints about France.
|
Sam:
[28:18]
| For instance.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| But, for example, I know that the Dutch, for example, have been experimenting with, for example, building these villages. That basically were, you know what? These people need to live in a place where they have certain protections so they can be more independent, where it's not like we're confining them to an institution. No, we're going to build a village to where they can go shop. They can go do stuff. they have everything that they have inside a perimeter where all protections that they need just to make sure that they, have services and we made sure that they're not exposed to like an environment where they could get hurt that they could live like comfortably you know but but given giving them the independence to you know be on their own so they can go to the, grocery store they can go to do stuff they can do whatever they have all of these things but also have an extra layer of protection for folks.
|
Sam:
[29:21]
| And all this, of course, depends on the support level that's needed, which varies highly.
|
Ivan:
[29:27]
| Exactly. Because it's something to give people, hey, let's give people independence, but let's also give them, because they can do stuff independently, the concern is, hey, you want them to do it independently, but you also have them to have some additional layer of protection to them. It's this kind of middle ground. They're also trying to do that with older people and other stuff or whatever. Or, you know, say, you know, because one of the things that they do in the U.S., hey, we stuff them in our nursing home, and they're stuck in this fucking place, in this one building, with very little, like, you know, very little stuff to do, right? Kind of like, it's very depressing, okay, the way that this is set up. But, you know, you go and you change that into a situation where, well, no, they're not stuck in a fucking building. You're you're placed in a in a community where you have all the benefits you know all the benefits of living in a community like sometimes like a yeah you know i'm not gonna gosh it's a terrible example you think of places like the villages for example like that where people go to retire but but kind of like similar hey you've got like the towel you get the whatever but then you add all this all this layer of protection around them so we know hey we know that we're making sure that we're keeping them safe at the same time. And you have the resources to keep people safe, which I think is a great idea. My wife had an idea of a similar concept like that, but she kept thinking about building something like that in the U.S.
|
Sam:
[30:54]
| Bottom line, your trigger that would be like, I got to get the hell out, would be if some of the protections and benefits that exist right now for you and your son start getting withdrawn.
|
Ivan:
[31:09]
| Yeah, absolutely. Now, one thing that I do have, thankfully, is the flexibility in going to Spain. And I know that it is that, well, look, I can speak the language. And so the one thing is that I also can probably get transferred to a job with my company there as well.
|
Sam:
[31:30]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[31:31]
| You know, because I don't think it'd be really practical for me to be working the Caribbean from Europe. So that that would be a little bit more more complicated but but i but i but i could get a a job you know in in in a similar thing you know doing that in in europe and you know with with the company and i wouldn't lose a number of things and benefits that i that i have as being part of the company and i mean it gives it listen i i'm doing this because you know my wife was like well to remove it to Spain? Like, no, we're not doing that right now, but you know what? I feel so uncomfortable right now. I want to have a plan B. Okay?
|
Sam:
[32:15]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[32:16]
| We need to have a... This is bad enough that there needs to be a plan B in place. Period.
|
Sam:
[32:22]
| Yeah. Okay. Well, that like, we didn't really stay light and frothy for that first segment. Got a little serious, but you know, anything else before I do movies?
|
Ivan:
[32:36]
| No, let's go to movies.
|
Sam:
[32:38]
| Okay, so two movies this time that were watched. We're still, this first one, November 30th of 2024, and then the second one will be December 1st of 2024 when I watched these originally. The first one is once again going through AFI's list of movies down to number 15 on the 1998 list. 100 years 100 movies list and that is the original 1977 star wars okay which obviously i have seen before and i'm actually like we're going through the star wars franchise in order and we are past that at this point we like you know but but you know went back to watch the 1977 original okay Hey.
|
Ivan:
[33:30]
| Question. Question. I don't even know if this is possible. If you want to watch Star Wars right now, can you find the original, original one instead of the one with all the edits?
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| Not. So there have been people who have reconstructed it, and you can find this online, where people have meticulously gone back and done the best through all of the available materials and tried to reconstruct the original. The original original is very hard to find. Like, I remember just a few months ago, somewhere in Europe, there was a showing of an original 35mm print in a theater.
|
Ivan:
[34:16]
| Oh, wow.
|
Sam:
[34:17]
| Like, somebody that had been, like...
|
Ivan:
[34:20]
| Yeah, somebody had the print.
|
Sam:
[34:22]
| Somebody had the print, kept it in cold storage, it was in good condition, whatever. They apparently, I think, did it legally. They got permission. For the most part, George Lucas has done everything humanly possible to prevent the original version from being re-released in an accessible form. His notion is that the versions he re-released are the real version of Star Wars. That's what he wanted all along. He just couldn't do it with the technologies.
|
Ivan:
[34:55]
| Yeah, with the technology at the time.
|
Sam:
[34:56]
| Yeah okay you know but of course a lot of people are like you know the 1977 version as released in the theaters that's what won all the awards that's what got everybody excited originally you know and we don't need you like retroactively re-adding a cgi job of the hut for instance right like that i did at one point right what wasn't even really a great job of the hot, although they've, they've subsequently changed it multiple times to make it better over time. But, and, and so like there are sort of fan enthusiast groups who have done various forms of reconstructions. If you Google it, you can find, you can find these people, you can find articles about what they've done. I mean, literally there's like, there's people who have spent years of their lives and, meticulously getting the best possible available source material and reconstructing that original movie, plus trying to do some non-destructive, make it seem like the quality is consistent even though they're getting it from different sources, whatever.
|
Sam:
[36:11]
| And apparently some of these are really, really well done. I mean, it's like professional quality, re-edited, back together, back how the original is. But George Lucas does not make it easy. And Disney doesn't make it easy. Because this was one of George Lucas's conditions to fail to Disney.
|
Sam:
[36:29]
| That the original never be released, right? Now, you know, who knows if there's some, like, loophole that after George Lucas passes away, they can do something. And obviously, the average person who wants to go watch Star Wars not only wouldn't care, but would probably prefer the newer versions to the older versions. Like, if you remember, like, I remember watching when Star Wars was on TV, like, you know, in the 80s or whatever, and they would re-put, you could see the little rectangles around the spaceship because the black levels weren't quite right. Because they were calibrated for the theater. But then when you put them on the TV screen, you could see the thing.
|
Sam:
[37:21]
| And some of that stuff, you could see if you paid close attention even in the theaters, even originally. I mean, it was good for the 1970s, but it wasn't perfect, you know, and we do have better technology now. And a lot of things that Lucas did in the reissues improved quality in various ways, improved lighting. I mean, I think the things that people object to are the... Let's add a completely new CGI animal in the background of this scene that trips over its feet and does some comic relief that is actually distracting from what was happening in the scene. Because there are a few of those where he just added stuff. I mean, George Lucas is really into the technology, and he likes showing off the technology, and he likes, you know, oh, we can do this.
|
Ivan:
[38:08]
| I mean, he was a guy that founded Industrial Light and Magic, okay? You know, I mean, it was basically the powerhouse for special effects in Hollywood for a long time and CGI and all of this shit. So, yeah, I mean, he really liked this shit. It's not it. This isn't just, you know, because he wanted to improve the movie. He really, really liked the technology. And I'm sure in his head, it's like you said, it was like, damn it. That's how I wanted it to look back then. But the technology didn't exist.
|
Sam:
[38:37]
| Right. And look, you know, it's been said over and over again. Like the, this is the part of the movie making experience that George Lucas is really into.
|
Ivan:
[38:46]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[38:47]
| Like the story and the writing and all that kind of stuff. Basically the best movies are the ones where George Lucas had the least to do with that part of things. You know, I mean, there's, you can go find, you can go find things that go into the detail of the original, the editing of the original Star Wars, for instance. And the first cut was crap. George Lucas's wife fixed it. Like she, she is the one who re edited the story to make it good. She took out some parts that were crap. She reordered it. She fixed the pacing. She did all kinds of like, the original star Wars was a good movie because of George Lucas's wife, ex-wife at this point, not because of him. Empire Strikes Back had a different director, you know, the, the, you know, and when, when he got back in full control and did a lot of the writing and everything for the prequels, everybody was like, the writing here is crap. You know, it's all wooden and whatever, and you've taken the life out of it. Yeah. So, and people will argue about those things, but anyway original star wars i have to give it a thumbs up oh in terms of which version i watched i did watch whatever the newest latest and greatest streaming version on okay on disney yeah yeah you were not.
|
Ivan:
[40:08]
| Yeah you weren't being picky you went okay i want to watch.
|
Sam:
[40:11]
| I mean you know and honestly i've got copies of this see i've got copies of this on blu-ray i have probably more than one over the years but i still like when it was time to watch it i'm just like you know disney plus come on you know i'm not gonna like go through the pain in the ass of getting the physical copy here you know we'll just watch it and you know but bottom line thumbs up it's star wars what what the hell can you say you know it's the original star wars that started the whole thing it deserves most of the accolades some some of the modifications for the new version i do think were detracted i mentioned the job of the hut scene and there was a you know I mentioned this sort of creature in the background and Tatooine. Like I could have done without those, but for the most part, good movie. I mean, it's star Wars, you know? And yeah. Any, any additional thoughts on star Wars from your side?
|
Ivan:
[41:10]
| I'm sure I watched the last two years and I give it a thumbs up. It looked good. I mean, you know, yeah. I mean, it's still, still, still works. My son really loves at Disney all the Star Wars stuff. Yeah. They've got a couple of rides. There is one that was an older one that they have updated massively called Star Tours, which he likes very much. And like Smuggler's Run, Rise of the Resistance. The entire village they've got. You know, you've got regularly like Star Wars characters walking through stormtroopers and others, whatever and whatnot. But it is pretty cool, everything they did over there for Star Wars.
|
Sam:
[41:52]
| And every once in a while, Anakin comes in and massacres the younglings.
|
Ivan:
[41:56]
| Yes. Yeah, that's always fun.
|
Sam:
[41:58]
| Yeah. Okay, next up. Next up. Let's get this done and over with.
|
Ivan:
[42:03]
| Next. Next. Next.
|
Sam:
[42:06]
| Those of you listening to audio don't know, but we had like a half hour of technical difficulties.
|
Ivan:
[42:11]
| So we're like, let's get this thing done. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sam's computer decided to, you know, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| Completely crap out on me. Yes, yes. Anyway, we are over that now and moving on. But I actually have to take my wife to the airport immediately after we finish recording. She's going to Europe again for some conference. She's like getting tours of how they run ports in Europe and stuff.
|
Ivan:
[42:39]
| Anyway, she's okay. All right. Well, you started saying the word. She's getting tears out of you, run porn, what the hell is going on? What are these, what are these, what are we doing?
|
Sam:
[42:49]
| Ports.
|
Ivan:
[42:50]
| Ports.
|
Sam:
[42:51]
| P-O-R-T, like the place where ships come in and unload cargo.
|
Ivan:
[42:54]
| I mean, look, that could be something, listen, as much as it's funny, it could be something that is actually a regulatory standpoint. If you think about it, and now it's in Europe, so, you know.
|
Sam:
[43:06]
| Yeah, she's the vice chair of the transportation committee, so this is directly in her Oh.
|
Ivan:
[43:10]
| So it's transportation. Okay. Fair enough.
|
Sam:
[43:12]
| Yeah. Anyway. December 1st, 2024, I saw the Wicked in the movie theater. Wicked Part 1.
|
Ivan:
[43:26]
| Can I read?
|
Sam:
[43:27]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[43:28]
| I don't even know what the hell Wicked's about. I know that I've heard about it. I've heard people raving about it. I have. I had no interest. And honestly My interest is so low That I Aside from the title And aside from that A lot of people liked it Yes No clue what else.
|
Sam:
[43:51]
| Okay, so let me give you the background. First of all, have you heard of the Wizard of Oz?
|
Ivan:
[43:56]
| Oh, yes. That I've watched. Did you see that they did this Wizard of Oz thing at Sphere?
|
Sam:
[44:04]
| At Sphere, yes, I did. I have not seen that, so I won't talk about it. Well, of course, now that you've brought it up, they expanded it with AI so that it fills the whole Sphere. It's more immersive. It's an immersive experience as well, so that if there's stuff coming at you and there's things in the volume with you. And it's shorter than the original movie. They cut like half an hour out of it. But there have been mixed reviews from that of some people who absolutely love it and some people who are like, they butchered the original. It's AI slop, et cetera. So, but, you know, whatever. Anyway, you've heard it. The original Wizard of Oz It was first a book by L. Frank Baum, and then, of course, there's the classic movie from, I believe, 1939?
|
Ivan:
[44:56]
| Is it that old?
|
Sam:
[44:59]
| Yeah. Okay. Now I have to bring it up. Wikipedia. Okay. The 1939. Yes. And the novel was 1900. Um and there were actually like movie adaptations before the 1939 version even but obviously they're not as famous the wicked was first a a book and let me make sure i have give you the correct information for it. It is a novel from Gregory Maguire from 1995. The basic conceit of the novel is to retell the story of The Wizard of Oz, but from the Wicked Witch's perspective. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[45:52]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[45:54]
| Interesting. That is the fundamental thing. Now, I actually read the book years and years ago, too. And here's the thing. The book itself is very dark, very twisted, very, let's say, adult. Like, it involves, like, weird orgy sex scenes and stuff like that. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[46:22]
| Between, like— I mean, the book, Wicked.
|
Sam:
[46:23]
| The book, Wicked, yes. Yeah. It involves weird orgy sex scenes with animals and stuff, okay? You know, because, of course, The Wizard of Oz has talking animals, right? So they are part of this. And just generally is very... It is a serious, like, mindfuck kind of a book, okay? There's a lot of stuff going on it. It's very political. It's very, you know, there's a lot going on there. But then there was a musical on Broadway made out of it.
|
Ivan:
[47:05]
| Correct. Yeah, that I forget.
|
Sam:
[47:07]
| It takes away all of that stuff, okay?
|
Ivan:
[47:10]
| None of the orgies.
|
Sam:
[47:11]
| None of the orgies. None of the, like, really weird, perverted stuff. Like that that gets like extracted it was it it's been on broadway for many many years now i mean it's still there as far as i know is it yeah anyway i actually my myself brandy and our daughter amy saw saw it with the original cast on broadway um and and liked it way back then that was in the early 2000s and basically it's it's still the the the fundamental conceit is the same you're telling the story of the wizard of oz but it's the backstory of the wicked witch so like and i say telling the story of the wizard of oz but it's actually starts way before the events of the wizard of oz and continues after the end of the events of wizard of oz a little bit like it basically ends at the same time as the wizard of oz but as a little bit more um and so you you basically you have the backstory of the wicked witch and the good witch going to college together, like before long before the wizard of oz happens so.
|
Ivan:
[48:25]
| Are they kind of like bending the timeline as well, Because, you know, the book was written in 1900. I mean, is this like a modernized thing? I mean, in terms of it's not really taking place, you know, I guess in the time frame of the original.
|
Sam:
[48:44]
| There's nothing in it. There's nothing in it that where the time frame is indicated that matters. Like, like it is so much about the witches and the wizard and all of that kind of stuff that like the only place, like if you think about the wizard. Of Oz, the only place where the time in the real world matters is to Dorothy, because it's sort of set in the Dust Bowl, Great Depression era before she goes to Oz. Okay. In the movie, of course.
|
Ivan:
[49:17]
| In the movie, because in the book, obviously, that was born.
|
Sam:
[49:19]
| The book was 1900. We had to have some of those events.
|
Ivan:
[49:22]
| Right, right, right. So that was, yeah, even that was modified. Okay.
|
Sam:
[49:26]
| But but yeah but in the the musical and the movie like dorothy plays so little apart it's like an almost incidental thing and she's in the second half we'll see like but like for the most part it doesn't matter you never see like the real world it's all right place in oz exactly yeah okay okay and and so like fundamentally like it's a really really interesting take because it recontextualizes the events so first of all you try you learn about the witch's motivations why she was doing what she was doing the fact that you know it may, maybe she's not really evil. Maybe she had good reasons for everything she was doing, and she's just misunderstood, and blah, blah, blah.
|
Sam:
[50:26]
| There's a whole subplot. The wizard was subjugating the talking animals, and this is why the witch was sort of rising up in rebellion to defend the animals, and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, bottom line, musical was great. I like the fact that we actually saw the original cast, although apparently all the subsequent casts have been good too in various ways the movie version was split into two parts part one came out last year part two is coming out this year in November I believe, and basically the cast here like the original it was what? Christian let's see where's the musical Oh, my God.
|
Sam:
[51:15]
| Just making sure. Okay, the original musical with the cast that we saw was Kristen Chenoweth as Galinda, which is the good witch, and Idina Mazel as Elphaba, which is the bad witch. The movie version has Cynthia Erivo and Arianda Grande as the two main characters. And, you know, obviously there are a bunch of things you can do in a movie that you can't do in a stage play. It was really good. I enjoyed it. I mean, the source material was good, and they did a really good implementation of converting it into a movie. It was a lot of fun.
|
Sam:
[51:53]
| We went with—Brandy was also, I think, in Europe, or at least on some trip when we did—no, she was in Pennsylvania. Anyway, she was gone when we did this. So my son, my daughter, and my mom and I watched this in the theaters. I enjoyed it a lot. My mom's main feedback was it was too loud. You know, obviously it is a musical. So if you do not like musicals in general, you're going to have the same feelings about this one. They sing all the time. You know, it's the whole point of the thing. There are a bunch of famous songs. But thumbs up, really good version of this. I'm actually intending to watch part two in the theaters when it comes out, too. It's a lot of fun. and yeah like uh you you said you you have no interest whatsoever blah blah blah i'd say like if you if if you generally hate music movie musicals then you're gonna hate this too because it's a movie that's.
|
Ivan:
[52:53]
| The problem i'm not big on musicals i don't really like movie musicals so this is why i was pretty sure that i'm just like i i i don't remember now i remember that it was the musical, but like I said, I, you know, you mentioned it, and I was struggling, I forgot about the musical.
|
Sam:
[53:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[53:14]
| I will say this, I like more a musical than a movie musical.
|
Sam:
[53:22]
| Like, like, if you're going to the theater.
|
Ivan:
[53:24]
| If I go to the theater, I find that way more enjoyable than watching a movie that's made out of the musical.
|
Sam:
[53:32]
| Right. okay i don't know why that.
|
Ivan:
[53:35]
| Is but i find it irritating in a movie and i find it cool like when i'm watching it being.
|
Sam:
[53:40]
| Performed and i'll say it for movie it is not my favorite genre at all like i i do find like lots of lots of music lots of movie musicals i can find like what the hell is the point of this right but there there are a few classics i mean the original Wizard of Oz movie was a musical.
|
Ivan:
[54:01]
| I mean, I guess Grease was a musical. I like that.
|
Sam:
[54:04]
| Grease was a musical. Yeah, I haven't seen Grease.
|
Ivan:
[54:06]
| A movie musical.
|
Sam:
[54:09]
| Grease isn't on this list.
|
Ivan:
[54:10]
| Yeah, Grease was a movie musical.
|
Sam:
[54:11]
| Why isn't this, Yeah, Grease is not on this list. So I've not seen Grease.
|
Ivan:
[54:18]
| You've never watched Grease?
|
Sam:
[54:20]
| No, I've seen clips.
|
Ivan:
[54:23]
| Well, obviously, I mean, everybody has seen clips, but you've not watched them. Well, Grease was a movie musical.
|
Sam:
[54:29]
| Yes, I know that much. And I will make sure it is added to my list. Well, here's the thing. Movie musicals to me are the kind where there are a lot of bad ones, but there are a handful of really good ones and I think this fits into that category.
|
Ivan:
[54:47]
| Okay, okay so that could be it. You know, fair. My wife would probably I'm not even sure if she's watched it I don't know, but I know this would be completely up my wife's alley. You start with the witches, number one, which for some reason right now, she everything that she's watching on TV is around witches, demons, things I don't know it's like, it's like you know like with me with like air disasters law and order to her it's like you know i don't know demons and then witches and.
|
Sam:
[55:25]
| Then you know werewolves.
|
Ivan:
[55:28]
| That's all she watches.
|
Sam:
[55:29]
| Yeah my wife's into those things too we should get them together yeah no but like the fundamental the the thing that gets me from the very beginning and i like this genre in general is sort of the take a character from a well-known story and reconceptualize the.
|
Sam:
[55:49]
| Story around them i think that's a genre i like because it's an interesting sort of mental exercise as well like what like this is the this is the bad guy in the story right in in the original wizard of oz the witch is just like evil and bad and there's not much thought actually given to her character beyond evil and bad right wants to hurt people wants to do whatever and this like expands that out and really makes it make sense to the point where once you've watched this you sort of think like oh this is what really happened you know it forget what they showed in an original movie that's that's obviously just dorothy propaganda or whatever this is like this is what's really going on this is this is the scenario the witch was wronged you know anyway thumbs up thumbs up to star wars thumbs up to wicked let's let's take our break.
|
Sam:
[57:05]
| What do you want real quick? We're running behind because we had our def... I want to get done here. I don't know what you want from this. Two curmudgeons corner from Alex. What two curmudgeons corner for Alex? I don't know. Alex has handed me...
|
Ivan:
[57:28]
| Note.
|
Sam:
[57:29]
| A note with a list of how to actually make money from curmudgeons corner okay, so here is his list.
|
Ivan:
[57:42]
| He starts with corn but we do it on only fans curmudgeons.
|
Sam:
[57:47]
| Corner with you and I as the main I'm sure that will I.
|
Ivan:
[57:56]
| Think people will probably pay for us to stop.
|
Sam:
[57:59]
| I think you're probably right. Okay. Number one, Abel's May Passport required to listen.
|
Ivan:
[58:07]
| Yeah, that's definitely going to make us profitable. Well, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[58:11]
| Number two, become millionaire.
|
Ivan:
[58:14]
| Yeah, sure.
|
Sam:
[58:16]
| Number three, number three, the white noise Christmas special.
|
Ivan:
[58:22]
| Now, that I like. That I like. Okay. Okay. Okay.
|
Sam:
[58:28]
| Yeah. It's not bad. Number four, the Apple FNAF brand deal. So, Apple FNAF is that game I'm working on.
|
Ivan:
[58:37]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[58:39]
| Number five, no swearing.
|
Ivan:
[58:42]
| Oh, fuck that.
|
Sam:
[58:43]
| We've tried and failed so many times. Well, we've tried to reduce it. We've never tried to eliminate it.
|
Ivan:
[58:48]
| It's not going to work.
|
Sam:
[58:49]
| It doesn't work. number six tiktok exclusives maybe maybe next and i'm losing count because he only had bullets and i was adding the numbers and i can't count this high true binary clock brand deal for anybody who has not seen it on applesmay.com i have a true binary clock that is like you know those things you can buy like binary clocks that try to do all the numbers in binary and it's just a bunch of dots that light up but my problem is they convert all the digits to binary so like if you have like you know the the time right now of you.
|
Ivan:
[59:31]
| Know but it doesn't i mean date and time or just the time.
|
Sam:
[59:35]
| No it's just a well the ones you can buy right now like if you you can go out and buy binary clocks all over the place and like they do like if it is 12 56 they will have the binary for one the binary for two the binary for five the binary for six and that's the display but i've always had a problem with this that if you're actually going to do binary time you should divide the day up in a binary way so half days quarter days eighth days etc so on my website there if you go to abosmay.com and then click on true binary clock. There is a four by four grid, each of which is a little ball that lights up or does not. Based on dividing the time in the way that I said. The 16th one is just a little bit over a second, if I remember right, or maybe it's just a little bit under a second, but it's close to a second. And the first one is a half day, you know, half day, quarter day, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, all the way down. And so this gives you a little display that's a true binary clock. And yeah, I've toyed around over the years with the idea of building a physical one of these, but I don't have the right skills.
|
Sam:
[1:00:54]
| So now maybe AI could tell me how to now. So I could just have ChatGPT, like give me the schematics for a proper true binary clock that I can send to some like place in China and have them make millions of them for me and sell them.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:10]
| Aha. Okay, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:01:13]
| Anyway, that brand deal. Oh, and then here we go. Spinoff TV show.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:18]
| What's been off TV show?
|
Sam:
[1:01:19]
| Well we do have their live stream yeah but it's not quite the same we gotta sell us to like.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:24]
| I don't know i guess we don't sell it to like the networks anymore we gotta sell it to like what netflix apple tv.
|
Sam:
[1:01:29]
| And this would not just be like a video version of the podcast it would have to be like a scripted sitcom or something about how we create the podcast i'm.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:40]
| Sure that'll like you know light the ratings on fire.
|
Sam:
[1:01:44]
| And his very last item on how to make money off curmudgeons corner. Not make horrible podcast.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:54]
| Ah, well, okay.
|
Sam:
[1:01:56]
| Okay, let's take a break. We will come back and do some serious stuff until I have to get out of here to take my wife to the airport. This will probably end up, once we take out, Like when I edit this and we don't include the half hour of technical difficulties that folks on the live stream would see, this may be short. We'll see. Whatever. It doesn't matter. We're good enough. Here we go. What? No, that was bad. Bye. Okay, two other quick things to mention before we hit the serious stuff. One, while we were recording this first segment, I have a big glass of water to drink while I have this. And while we were recording this segment...
|
Ivan:
[1:03:20]
| I bet I used to pour it over your head, but okay.
|
Sam:
[1:03:22]
| Oh, yeah, sometimes. But my son comes in here, and he has apparently purchased himself a package of something that he's over there opening. And then he comes, and it's a light. He shows me a light. He flashes it in my face while I'm trying to record. I'm like, you're distracting me. I'm trying to listen to Yvonne stop this. But then he starts dropping these into my cup of water. It turns out he bought a whole bunch of waterproof LED light things that have a remote control so you can change the colors, you can change whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:05]
| Okay, Sam, wait, wait. Were these cleaned before you put them in your water?
|
Sam:
[1:04:11]
| I probably not. He dropped them in there, and I drank out of it anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:19]
| Can you please not drink that water? Donnelly knows what chemicals coated those fucking little lights.
|
Sam:
[1:04:26]
| Well, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:27]
| Try to avoid that.
|
Sam:
[1:04:29]
| Maybe he bought food-safe versions. I don't know, because you could see wanting to do this in drinks, in restaurants.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:35]
| Yeah, and I have seen that, yeah. But, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:04:39]
| Or maybe he bought the kind that are meant for fish ponds or something. I don't know, but like. You know, I was still thirsty. Anyway, I have this glass full. Oh, he's showing me the thing. Is it food safe? Mini submersible LED lights, table centerpieces. They're probably not food safe.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:00]
| No!
|
Sam:
[1:05:01]
| Da-da-da. Great for the centerpiece, vase, pond, swimming, cool fish tanks. It does mention ice buckets, but you're not supposed to eat that ice probably. Yeah so but you know I'm sure they weren't that dirty as I'm drinking it also it doesn't taste great, well it tastes about the same as it did before also there have been here in pacific northwest just over the last 24 48 hours forest fires not in my immediate area but close enough that it's been smoky.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:42]
| That's not good so.
|
Sam:
[1:05:43]
| Like it's actually cleared up a little bit today but yesterday afternoon it was really bad like it was like when i was driving home from work there was a point where it felt like I went into a wall of smoke.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:57]
| Nice.
|
Sam:
[1:05:58]
| And then it was just like you could feel it when you breathed. You couldn't see very far. Visibility was bad. And, yeah, so there have been some fires in British Columbia where the smoke has been making over here, and apparently within the last 48 hours there's also been a big fire in eastern Washington that's been contributing to it. But I'm not sure if it's the same one where ICE picked up some of the firemen a few, like last week sometime. There was a big deal. That was a story there where ICE raided the team of firemen who were actively combating the fire and arrested several of them and took them away. Which moves us on to the regular serious topics.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:45]
| Well, we already talked about immigration earlier. Well, I guess we need to revisit it a little bit.
|
Sam:
[1:06:52]
| We can talk about the Hyundai plant, maybe.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:55]
| Yeah, that's what I... Well, it goes together with the whole jobs report. Hey, Sam, what did you hear about the jobs report for the last three months?
|
Sam:
[1:07:03]
| I heard that it sucked again, even though apparently we're now... We fired the person who gave us the bad numbers, so I don't understand why we would have another bad one.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:12]
| By the way, the first thing that happened is something that I don't recall ever having happened. and as the jobs report was going to be released all of a sudden they said oh oh oh we got in the way because we got some technical difficulties and I was like, Wait, what? Which was suspicious in and of its stuff. Okay, I was like, oh, technical difficulties? What, Trump doesn't like the number?
|
Sam:
[1:07:37]
| Right, that's the technical difficulty you'd think, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:42]
| Yeah, they released the number, and there were more downward revisions for the previous monthly numbers.
|
Sam:
[1:07:49]
| Including making one of them negative.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:52]
| Negative, yeah. So, I mean, look, the uncertainty right now related to tariff policies is causing people to cause investments. I mean, there is no way that you as a company are confident in going and spending and investing money in a whole bunch of projects because of all the uncertainty he has created over the tariffs. Even if, say even if they were legal, say take the legal issue out of the equation, which is also another problem.
|
Sam:
[1:08:40]
| Yes, because courts, the lower courts at this level. Have said that these tariffs are illegal, it's stayed pending appeal, and it will undoubtedly go to SCOTUS.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:49]
| Well, no, the appeal, you know, well, first you have the lower court and sentence invalid. The appeal was, you know, affirmed the lower court. The administration is right now, that decision has 30 days. They've appealed to Supreme Court, like right now. The bottom line is that they've lost at both levels, and it's been pretty much unanimous that there is, you know, There is no, you know, the law does not support this administration doing this. Okay, but take the legal, put the legal aside. The entire construct of these tariffs and the capriciousness of them and how they have changed and how they are, you know, how they, they, they see, even when you think they're set, they keep changing.
|
Sam:
[1:09:43]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:43]
| You know, because he'll wake up one day and say he wants to stick this country with this, stick this country with that. We're going to negotiate this. The fact that there are no treaties.
|
Sam:
[1:09:52]
| I mean, there were some changes with what, was it Japan even this week?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:57]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:09:58]
| There was some deal where things were. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:02]
| There's constant changes. I mean, there's been negotiations going on with Canada and Mexico. So the one thing is that Trump reeled, well, all these executives want certainty. And I'm like, you bet your fucking ass they do, because if you're going to make a decision to shift manufacturing from point A to point B at some point, have to spend billions or billions of dollars on it. You're not, first of all, doing that investment takes years for you to get that manufacturing set up. And you're not going to commit right now billions to do something that three months from now you're going to fucking change again so basically anybody who's an investor just say.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:54]
| I'm not going to invest in anything and the action that they're doing is right now first, is that there's a whole bunch of pricing uncertainty and a whole bunch of companies are a little bit leery of passing all the, Prices increases to see through, simply because if later change your mind, it goes back, then I just raise the prices, I'm going to lower them. You don't want to be doing that. You don't want to be changing prices back and forth the whole damn time, okay? Because that's going to hurt people. But then you've got this whole, there are going to be some looming shortages, okay? One thing that I've heard right now is that especially with European vehicles okay this is the one where I've heard this specifically alright you got you know ships take 30 days 60 days or you know 30 days I think from Europe to make it over here usually you know from the moment you float it on the ship went over here offload it whatever okay and then quit custom all of a sudden you heard that the courts wanted to invalidate the tariffs okay at 30 days I think you just ship a ship usually will have a couple hundred million dollars worth of cars on.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:07]
| A tariff's 25%. Hey, in 30 days, they make this go away. What would you do? Would you pay the $50 million right now to offload them now, extra $50 million, or would you dock the ship? Throw anchor in the ship and say, listen guys, you stay out there until we figure out what the fuck is going on. Yeah, hold off!
|
Sam:
[1:12:31]
| As long as you can. If there's so much as a rumor that it's going to change, yeah i mean event you know eventually you're gonna have to land them you're not gonna keep them there years but.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:44]
| They're not gonna keep the years but they sure sell to stay there months and here's the one thing the thing is that as a supply chain is supply chain is something that it's like you get the effect of you ever seen these videos where they show the impact of a slowdown in traffic and how it flows all the way back.
|
Sam:
[1:13:06]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:07]
| You stop that ship for 30 days, that translates and bring it and bring it on the wave. It's really, the disruptions have this ripple effect. Okay? Because you're stopping this machinery that was designed for decades, not just now, to be this machine that just, you know picked up ship delivered on time you know all of these items and all of a sudden you're fucking putting it telling it to break and stop and break and go and break oh we break break break oh no no accelerating it doesn't this thing must not design for this okay so i mean that's one issue so you've got that issue with suppliers it's not like.
|
Sam:
[1:13:56]
| We don't even have recent examples of this. We had that We had COVID, and we had that time like the thing was stuck in the Suez Canal.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:04]
| The Suez, yeah?
|
Sam:
[1:14:06]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:06]
| So, you know, so you've got a lot of companies that all of a sudden are like, what the hell? We also had this buildup of inventories, okay? Which people, what are they doing? They're right now playing a waiting game. They're playing a waiting game, and if your profits are, and if your costs are higher because you've got to buy certain things, your profits are going to be squeezed you're going to start, you're not going to be invested. You're going to start cutting. I shared a video that was like from a meeting of farmers in Arkansas with congressmen and senators, them explaining how the tariffs right now have completely dried up their export market. For certain products. How, like, right now, especially for the soybean market, U.S. Was one of the largest exporters of soybeans. Soybean exporters are getting completely killed because China put these retaliatory tariffs on U.S. Soybeans, so that market is completely dried up. They're buying them now from Brazil. They're not buying them from us. A whole bunch of farmers...
|
Sam:
[1:15:14]
| They're complaining.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:15]
| It's not just they're complaining. farmers are are are getting killed financially and there's a reason that basically yeah yeah and and many of them have said that basically to some the only option they've got is to take out federal government handouts so we've replaced right now we have killed a massive export of the united states to be replaced by government handouts i mean what the fuck is well.
|
Sam:
[1:15:42]
| And to be clear this is one of the complaints as well is apparently the big beautiful bill did include some support for farmers but that won't kick in till next year.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:54]
| And so.
|
Sam:
[1:15:55]
| There are a bunch of farmers who would be like that's going to be too late i'm not going to be able to make it.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:00]
| Till yeah we're going to be bankrupt by then yeah but it's also some support i mean we literally just you know there was an article in bloomberg basically recently the headline was how trump has basically made it that the rest of the world doesn't want to buy U.S. agricultural products.
|
Sam:
[1:16:17]
| Right. Look, the whole tariff infrastructure is fundamentally hostile to trade. That's the bottom line. It's intentional. I mean, that's Trump's stated goal is he.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:38]
| Thinks every time we American farming was one of the most efficient machines out there and profitable. We, you know, and so all of a sudden you've made it that we're more expensive than everybody else.
|
Sam:
[1:16:55]
| I mean, Trump's ideal vision of the world is that every country is self-contained and doesn't trade at all. You know, and so.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:07]
| Well, actually, no, Trump wants the mercantilist one. Trump wants, he wants every equation to be a winner. Mercantilism is that you export it as much and you import it as little as possible. That was the basic philosophy, and that's the one that he wants.
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:25]
| Which is...
|
Sam:
[1:17:25]
| Yeah, I was oversimplifying. He thinks exports are okay. Yes. But he wants no imports. He wants to be completely self-sufficient. But the thing is, doesn't work that way as you have just pointed out like if if you are hostile to the imports people are going to be hostile to your imports and then the exports dry up and and you know there's certain areas where you know we're at an advantage there's certain areas where we're not but all of this just works to shut things down and and and it's like all of the people who knew what the hell they were talking about, told you this was going to happen. But Donald Trump has his thing for tariffs. And just in general, even if you were stable about it, even if you just said, oh, okay, we're going to have high tariffs across the board, that's it, no negotiation, no changes, whatever. But add on top of that the instability and uncertainty that you've been talking about, then it just becomes harder and harder. Now, obviously, some countries sort of scrambled to like, hey, what can we give to make this 15% instead of 35% or whatever? And a few of them have made these deals. And in many cases.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:50]
| As we've talked about here before- The problem is that those deals are not final. They're not treaty.
|
Sam:
[1:18:55]
| They're all they're all handshakes they're they're all letters of intent we don't and most of the most of them deal right and most of them we've talked about before not only are they just letters of intent or verbal agreements or whatever but in many of the cases the countries have only conceded to things they were doing anyway yeah they're they're just saying like oh yeah we'll do this and are relying on the fact that Trump and his people either don't know or don't care that that was the plan anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:29]
| And then, well, I think I'll give you an example of a plan. Donald Trump was taking credit for the massive Hyundai manufacturing plant, which the immigration rated this week.
|
Sam:
[1:19:42]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:42]
| Which is a complex that when in full operation is going to employ 8,500 people. So, you know, you take a multiplier effect, usually of jobs or something like that. It's like minimum, minimum for such a large investment in factory, minimum three times. usually way more, okay, for a factory of that size.
|
Sam:
[1:20:03]
| Just to be clear, the multiplier you're talking about is, you know, there's the people employed by the factory itself, but then, okay, you need restaurants where they can eat lunch. You need a place.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:13]
| Houses, restaurants, shopping for clothes, purchasing of supplies, maintenance, you know, everything that goes around, all the inputs that go into the factory and the tax, The taxes, the sales tax multiplier, I mean, it's just so much, okay? You know, a factory with that kind of investment and that many jobs generates such a crazy multiplier effect around it, okay? From everything, okay? From the moment of the manufacturing to all the property taxes to all, I mean, everything. Even if you give them a waiver in property taxes Still, you know, all those employees Have to get houses, have to get fed Have to, you know, will shop for clothes Will buy everything around there It is such a huge multiplier effect Okay, and these fuckers go in there Because the thing is.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:11]
| All of these are meant to be, they're for show. Because if immigration had an issue with visas for a lot of people there, they could have called the manager and said, hey, we've got these violations, we need to discuss how these visas are being handed. But no, what do they want to do? They want to show a force and they show up and they arrest all these people.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:38]
| Arrested hundreds of them, including a whole bunch of executives traveling on business from Korea, as many of us do, when something is being manufactured or something or whatever. I remember when I used to go to HB's factory, say, in Mexico, for example, and we would go and have discussions about inventory and stuff and whatever we're talking about, how stuff is being stored. All that kind of stuff, which is what usually somebody from headquarters goes to do at the operation over there. And, you know, when you're setting up a factory of that size, you're going to need a lot of people from corporate to make sure it's being executed the way that you had planned out for it to be executed, okay? And so, but, you know, they were saying that some people maybe had been overstaying some visas. This was, you know, this was something that somebody could have just shown up and said, hey, we've got concerns about these people. We need to discuss what the hell is going on here. Why are these people, these are, are the most part just minor violations. But by the way, Americans incur on a regular basis probably on some business trips and overseas assignments.
|
Sam:
[1:22:50]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:51]
| Okay? And so my whole thing is you guys want to start this cycle where other countries are retaliating and it's just arresting like U.S. Business travelers because of some minor bullshit violation. Is this what we're doing? This is what we're fucking doing now. Yeah, I mean, this is going to start a cycle that is just, you know, really dangerous. But one thing that I think is why I brought this up in terms of, and we're talking about what happened with jobs and investment, is that Trump was trying to take credit for this plant, as I mentioned earlier. This plant happened because of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act. That's why this plant is occurring. It has nothing to do with fucking Trump. This investment had started years. The reality is that the President of Russia put incentives on electric cars. This entire facility is dedicated on building electric cars. They're building Ioniq 5s, Ioniq 6s. They're building batteries. They're going to be selling batteries. This whole thing is focused on everything related to in-phase production. Not one fucking iota having to do with anything that Trump did. Construction started years ago. It's already producing cars. It had nothing to do with fucking Trump. He started trying to take credit. You see, this is a white terror student bullshit. No, no. Not one fucking thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:20]
| But it highlights how long what I'm saying is how long it takes for somebody to set a policy and for companies to invest in how it works. And that's why the IRA, that's why the... We're doing what the fuck Trump is saying, and Trump is going right now destroying those jobs. He's literally going and destroying those jobs, which is why job derasure right now isn't like shit, because he is destroying that. He's destroying trade while not offering anything to replace it, other than drill baby drill. Oh, wait, and better. Hey, to the sectors that do the immigrant work, because we're tired of most of these poor people is ripping away the people that they need. So they don't have what is in this article from Bloomberg this week also, that mass deportations are creating a workforce crisis because they are creating a workforce crisis. Where the fuck we need jobs? OK, because, you know, with the number of deportations, one of the things that is happening right now is that, you know, we've got the shortage of farmers all of a sudden for the stuff that is like fresh fruits, vegetable stuff. That is the stuff that comes to our tables.
|
Sam:
[1:25:46]
| Well, I was going to say that the immigration.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:49]
| Crops are rotting. Yeah. California and Texas, crops are rotting in the fields for a lack of workers to pick them. So you're creating food. Do you realize how fucking incompetent you have to be to create food inflation at the same time as you're killing your agricultural exports? It takes fucking skill to beat this fucking fucker.
|
Sam:
[1:26:16]
| Well, and going back to Hyundai for a little bit and sort of detaining people who are here on business trips, like, if you're looking for foreign investment in the country, this is a great way to discourage that.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:28]
| Too.
|
Sam:
[1:26:29]
| You know, like...
|
Ivan:
[1:26:30]
| Everything you were doing, raising up the fucking bullshit that you were saying!
|
Sam:
[1:26:38]
| Yes it's all a a continuous theme of all of this stuff is i mean you've said this before, like if you take some of what they say they're trying to do at face value then they're still really stupid right in terms of like this is not a good way to achieve the things you say you're trying to achieve.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:04]
| Nope.
|
Sam:
[1:27:05]
| And you start thinking, well, then are they, is their actual goal actually just to destroy everything? Because, or are they really dumb enough to think that what they're doing will have these great positive effects and it doesn't?
|
Ivan:
[1:27:24]
| No, I do think that Trump is stupid it or not to believe that what he's doing, will somehow, because you know, we talked about that he's been able to in so many cases force things to happen you know, regardless of anything, to just bend reality to his will. He thinks that somehow he's going to be able to bend his reality. The reality is that you talk about, well, has he bent reality to his will? Listen, for the most part, all he's done is survive. All he's ever done. It's just about survival. It's shuck jiving and getting attention to himself as a narcissist, which everything that he does, does that. And to have the attention and to be able to appear successful is more important than success itself. So what does that mean? I will say that I'm going to create the greatest academy ever. As long as he can tell this bullshit To his followers and they believe it He doesn't care if it's real Because it's just like Oh I'm going to build the greatest hotel ever Even though it's shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:36]
| I'm going to make Oh my casinos and my golf courses are wonderful Whatever Even though they are Tappy, crappy And lose money constantly Because he figures out Some way that somebody bails him out Every time Somebody bailed him out, man Every fucking time And his last biggest bailout Was fucking winning the presidency again.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:03]
| Yes The voters bailed the motherfucker out Just since he was on the brink, His father bailed him out. The banks bailed him out. Banks repeatedly bailed him out. And then Republican voters came along and did it again.
|
Sam:
[1:29:21]
| Okay. I want to lightning round through a few other things because for those of you not on the live stream, we just last another 10 minutes to technical difficulties. All on my end. I don't know what the hell is up with my computer. It keeps like crashing. Like, and nothing's different than it was, like, yesterday. I don't know. But anyway, so the Venezuelan boat that we blew up.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:49]
| We committed a war crime, Sam. We went out. It said a drunk boat. How do we know that was a drunk boat? How do we know anything about that fucking boat? Listen, we just went out there. Sorry. And even if it was, I mean, I'm sorry under the international rules of maritime law, you just don't have the right to just go and blow up a boat for no reason whatsoever.
|
Sam:
[1:30:16]
| You can intercept it. You can detain it. You can give it warnings. But no, you can't just blow it up. The administration says they have radio intercepts and all kinds of other stuff. But like you said, it doesn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:30]
| It doesn't matter. It doesn't get the right to just shoot them out of the water.
|
Sam:
[1:30:33]
| And apparently at the Pentagon, there were all kinds of discussions about like, this was not okay. This was a war crime. There was no justification. And then there was an after-the-fact scramble to try to come up with a legal justification for this. And the memo they put out, I think this was the notification to Congress they had to make, basically just said, we did it under the president's Article II powers. That's it. It didn't say anything else beyond that. Which is not—.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:07]
| That doesn't negate that it's a war crime!
|
Sam:
[1:31:10]
| Well, and it's not within the Article 2 powers, theoretically. I mean, the stance of this administration— The right.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:18]
| To declare war?
|
Sam:
[1:31:19]
| Well, the stance of this administration is basically that the president can do anything. That is their stated— Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:26]
| Well, yeah, well, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:27]
| That is their stated opinion, is that there are absolutely no limits on presidential power. The president can do whatever the hell they want. And that's basically what they said in their justification for this. Now—, And here's our fundamental problem. Like, okay, let's say this was clearly illegal. Who's going to do something about it?
|
Ivan:
[1:31:50]
| Not the Supreme Court, not Congress.
|
Sam:
[1:31:53]
| Yeah, nobody. Let's bring them up in charges in the ICC? No.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:01]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:32:02]
| Nobody's going to pay attention to that either. You know, this is yet another—this is—the Trump administration, systematically, over the course of the presidency so far, has been taking more and more and more steps to just say, okay, we're going to do it. Who the fuck's going to stop us? Like their their fundamental mindset and we've talked about this before i talked about this a little last week as well but the the is that there is no conception whatsoever in this administration of oh let's check if this is legal or not and then we'll do it no it's we will do what we want.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:51]
| And then try to justify it whatever way well or.
|
Sam:
[1:32:54]
| Not even like then we'll see if somebody tries to stop us that.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:58]
| That of.
|
Sam:
[1:32:59]
| Course they'll take us to court.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:00]
| Yeah and and okay yeah but the courts are slow and and and in many cases the courts of you know the supreme court is ruled on their side it goes and reminds me of the issue that you know we didn't put in the in here but the harvard decision that came this week and the one thing that that happened in that the one thing that i forgot to so to point out was that in the decision basically the the the judges went and and scolded the Supreme Court, okay, by the way, and in which they said, you know, because you remember that they said recently that the Supreme Court had written an opinion, something about lower court, you know, defying our orders. And they went, you know, this just ripped back and says, she acknowledged that, quoting from this article from MSNBC, you know, still called so, Judge and Harbour's case calls Justice Grisham's comments unhelpful and unnecessary. She acknowledged that, like, lower court judges that justices are doing their best to resolve complex issues quickly. Given this, however, she wrote, it's unhelpful and unnecessary to criticize this report for defying the Supreme Court when they are working to find the right answer in a rapidly involving doctrinal landscape. They must grapple with both the existing president and interim guidance from the Supreme Court that appears to set that president aside without much explanation or consensus.
|
Sam:
[1:34:18]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:19]
| Basically, you guys are wiping your ass with the doctrine that has ruled our courts forever and then you guys are giving a shit because we can't follow it when you guys just decide to fucking to say, oh, yeah, Trump did it. It's right. And you're saying we need to follow you when you don't give us any fucking explanation. Why?
|
Sam:
[1:34:40]
| Well, and Kavanaugh this week as well, I forget what forum he said this in, but he was quoted as saying, well, the reason we do a bunch of these things on the shadow docket without a lot of explanation, is we can't get five justices to agree on an explanation.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:57]
| Then you fuckers shouldn't be doing it if you guys can't come to a consensus to explaining it. Jesus fucking Christ, If that isn't the clearest signal of how fucked up whatever you're deciding is, what is?
|
Sam:
[1:35:12]
| Right. And so, yeah. And the problem with the Trump approach of do it and then see who stops us is that even when the courts do rule against them, like you said, it takes a long time. And they can change the facts on the ground in such a way that by the time the court finally gets around to giving a definitive answer and it goes through all the goddamn appeals and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, it doesn't matter anymore because the facts on the ground have already changed. And we'll see. Well, by the way.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:50]
| This is a Kilmar Obrego, by the way, with all deporters in general, has not been deported yet.
|
Sam:
[1:35:55]
| Not yet. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:57]
| They keep threatening it, but they haven't done it.
|
Sam:
[1:36:01]
| Now, and there have been talks now of three different places that he could be going. And apparently his lawyers have—.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:09]
| Here's the problem. They're all retaliatory. This is all just fucking like— No.
|
Sam:
[1:36:12]
| They're all retaliatory. But also, apparently, the government has been trying to get him to admit to some of these things he's accused of. I've been guilty in exchange for a better place to be deported to.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:29]
| Fuck you guys.
|
Sam:
[1:36:31]
| You know, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:32]
| It's such horseshit, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:36:35]
| With, with these kinds of things, frankly, like it's, it's actually surprising to me that with, I mean, obviously this won't work for every case everywhere, but for some of these high visibility cases, I'm surprised that some random nice country hasn't just come in and said, we'll give him asylum. Not only that, we'll give him asylum. We'll take care of him. Like, let's get this taken care of.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:01]
| I believe he talks about that, but it hasn't happened yet. I mean, but yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:37:05]
| And some rich guy says we'll bankroll you.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:09]
| He's married to his mountain. He doesn't want to.
|
Sam:
[1:37:12]
| I know he wants to stay here.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:13]
| He wants to go home.
|
Sam:
[1:37:15]
| I know he wants to go home.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:16]
| He wants to go home.
|
Sam:
[1:37:18]
| But, you know, you give the right billionaire says, look, we'll give you a nice salary. to go live in Spain.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:26]
| Listen, you asked me about earlier about what would motivate me to move. You know, the other day I was going around. I love where I live. I don't want to go.
|
Sam:
[1:37:34]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:35]
| I don't want to go. My friends are here. My family is here. Whatever the hell is here. But I may be forced to go because there is no choice. But I don't want to go.
|
Sam:
[1:37:49]
| Yeah. Okay. Back to the lightning round here. Trump is alive. Despite all the rumors. And he seems to...
|
Ivan:
[1:37:57]
| But listen, listen, listen.
|
Sam:
[1:37:59]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:59]
| Trump must have been seriously hurt. Something had to happen. There is no way he stayed out for that many days where all of a sudden he was going to sleep early where all of a sudden people were sending out true social messages on his behalf unless something happened. Okay? And it's something that they wanted to make sure that nobody noticed.
|
Sam:
[1:38:21]
| I think the most reasonable explanation that accounts for all of the various things that have been talked about is that he had some sort of medical procedure that was serious enough that he had to recover for it, but not so serious that he had to be like sent to Walter Reed for it. It was something that they could do at the White House.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:42]
| Listen, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No, know who it is. It probably was serious enough to go to fucking the hospital. But by doing so, That would have created even more rumors. So what do you probably say? Fuck you. You guys are doing it here.
|
Sam:
[1:38:59]
| Right. Okay. Yeah, I can see that. And look, like the White House, you know, has some medical facilities. Yeah. You know, it is set up so that it can be an emergency bunker and blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:13]
| Blah, blah, blah. They needed, you know, in that case, you know. Listen, he's built a, he wants to build a goddamn ballroom. He built a fucking, you know, he cemented over the Rose Garden. Listen, he did all of this shit, I'm sure. But he probably had him build a fucking OR if he needed it.
|
Sam:
[1:39:31]
| Oh, I'm sure there was already one.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:34]
| No, but he probably, like, if they needed more shit, they probably brought it. Bring it, whatever the fuck you need.
|
Sam:
[1:39:39]
| Yeah, probably. I mean, like, but in the end, though, I think, you know, it was some sort of, I'm guessing. This is guess and speculation. There was some sort of medical procedure he had to do that sort of had him not in great shape for a few days while he recovered. He is clearly sort of back to normal at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:01]
| Now, there is one thing that we didn't mention. You know, so Trump's alive, okay? All right? So, you know, hopefully he'll be dancing. But anyway, but not right now. But, you know, aside from that, another quick hit to mention related to these interventions in cities and so forth and so on. And there's been a lot of threats and talk about Chicago or whatever. And now that hasn't happened yet, because I do know, you know, by the way, I saw some not so guarded, you know, statements from Governor Pritzker that basically he said he was going to deploy law enforcement to kind of like counter if they if they tried to like send in troops. Okay basically to force almost a standoff which is what i've been saying for months that they should do i'm like look let's state state policists right now are almost as militarized i'm not sure that even more militarized are a national guard hey you know what tell them hey they're in violation of the law if they do if they move in and they do something illegal arrest fuck that shit blockade them you got more of them anyway they're gonna send you know a few hundred you know, cartoon crayons. We'll deploy a thousand state police. What's wrong with you guys? See what the fuck you guys do. What are you going to do?
|
Sam:
[1:41:10]
| We'll see. I mean, it will be...
|
Ivan:
[1:41:13]
| But right now, they haven't done anything. Okay, but...
|
Sam:
[1:41:15]
| Nothing's done yet. But Trump has been posting about it again today.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:19]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what? Like, right now, that's been like... It almost sounds like his... Right now, he's starting to sound like his tradies. Okay? All right.
|
Sam:
[1:41:26]
| Well, at one point in the last couple days, he even said, well, we've been talking about Chicago, but maybe we'll do New Orleans instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:33]
| Now you're going to go to... Exactly. It sounded like a trade deal. But anyway, aside from that, the one thing that's been happening, you know, you know, ICE enforcement, you know, is far more arbitrary than arresting people sending them to the police. I don't know if you've noticed.
|
Sam:
[1:41:47]
| But...
|
Ivan:
[1:41:47]
| Wait, wait, wait. That's not the point. The point is that right now, in D.C., you know, they've done this takeover, whatever, and they've been trying to send people to criminal charges. Well, guess what? The grand jury's... Which, by the way, as somebody said, a grand jury usually will fucking, and like even indict a ham sandwich.
|
Sam:
[1:42:03]
| Okay? Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:04]
| They've been rejecting all the fucking indictments. They've been like, just fuck all of you. You know, so in numbers you've never seen ever. The graduates are saying, all of them are saying, this is not a criminal case, fuck you. So they're having this issue where, yes, on that side of the equation, they can go like whatever, but they keep trying to like force criminal charges and a whole bunch of stuff and all grand juries are just all no billing.
|
Sam:
[1:42:30]
| Yeah. There have been like six of them so far, and that's really unheard of for this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:37]
| That's unprecedented. Okay. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:42:39]
| Yes. but like you said like what there is they're making the show out of the dealing with criminals but the actual effect of almost all of these actions has been almost all the immigration side almost all like grabbing people for not having their papers and and sending them off to these detention camps or whatever, it's still I mentioned last week one of the problems here is it's becoming they're doing so much of it so consistently that people are starting to become numb to it you know and oh yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:21]
| Listen that's what happens in dictatorial society it's like.
|
Sam:
[1:43:24]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:26]
| But people well but people become numb in the sense also that they stop being intimidated by it, too, in the other way. Okay? They just don't give a shit anymore. Okay? The people are trying to intimidate at some point. I mean, intimidation only works at a certain point. At one point, you're just like, oh, fucking whatever. You know? I mean, you know, how much intimidation can you shove down somebody's throat? It just is what it is, you know, it's just at some point that that now, of course, the one thing that they keep trying to do is trying to amp it up every time.
|
Sam:
[1:44:01]
| OK, well, it almost feels like they they've been hoping at every turn that at some point this turns violent. At some point, the peaceful protests turn violent. At some point, somebody this becomes an all out shooting thing, you know, where somebody is resisting and blah, blah, blah, because they want to like escalate further. It hasn't happened so far, which I think is actually a good thing, but it almost seems like the administration is just looking for the excuse to escalate whereby they can, you know, make this even worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:37]
| And so far they feel.
|
Sam:
[1:44:39]
| And so far they feel. Okay, next lightning round.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:43]
| How did RFK Jr. do in Congress? A lot of truth You know, told You know, he was You know, used science And all that stuff, Obviously not We got a fucking heroin addict In charge of health and human services That doesn't know anything about anything, Sam He has no clue about nothing Everything is just some kind of Conjecture and bullshit That he pulls out of his ass Whenever it suits him Now autism is caused by Tylenol.
|
Sam:
[1:45:16]
| So on the Tylenol thing, just to be clear, there was a paper last year and a new one last month that does talk about a correlation, but I've listened to a few people sort of go through, like, why this isn't what people think it is. So there is apparently a minor correlation between Tylenol use in pregnant women and autism in the kids. But there are dozens and dozens of confounding factors that are not accounted for in this study. There's a question here at the most fundamental level. Is it the Tylenol they took or is it whatever symptoms they were having that caused them to take the Tylenol?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:01]
| Take the Tylenol.
|
Sam:
[1:46:02]
| You know, like they had a fever and they took a Tylenol. Maybe that has something to do with it. There are all kinds of confounding factors. There are all kinds of reasons.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:12]
| It's just the whole thing. You use the keyword that always got caught on in statistics that is the bane of our existence. For most human beings that don't understand, correlation. Because correlation is not causation. It's the first fucking thing you get taught in damn fucking statistics.
|
Sam:
[1:46:34]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:35]
| And just because there is some fucking correlation, it doesn't mean most of the time what the fuck you think it means.
|
Sam:
[1:46:43]
| Yeah and look as i've listened to some of the people talking about this they're like at the very most what has been here so far is like okay maybe we could study a little bit more along this Tylenol.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:57]
| Direction hey sam do you know that but for the most part but for the most part.
|
Sam:
[1:47:01]
| It was it's like there has not been any causal relationship found.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:06]
| There's no mechanism let me tell you something i saw a study i think i think there's a study probably there is one somewhere that found that as temperatures get really hot and people drink a lot more water okay yes that apparently there's a correlation with how much what water they're drinking and heat stroke so water.
|
Sam:
[1:47:26]
| Causes heat stroke.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:27]
| It must be the water it's causing the heat stroke i mean they're drinking all that fucking water and all of a sudden they're they're getting heat stroke? Sam, what the fuck?
|
Sam:
[1:47:36]
| But, yes. And look, there are so many problems with how RFK approaches all these things, it's hard to even start. Listen, there's so many problems.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:46]
| There's no many problems. No, there's a basic problem. He doesn't believe in science.
|
Sam:
[1:47:51]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:51]
| That's it.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| And also, I will add to that something aligned with what you said earlier. He's a eugenicist as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:00]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:48:01]
| He doesn't believe in science, but also, very much so, he believes in survival of the fittest. And if you have some problem, you should die. And like you were saying earlier, he doesn't believe that—the whole thing with this autism thing, it's all couched in, like oh this is a massive tragedy that like.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:24]
| This is horrible this yes the.
|
Sam:
[1:48:26]
| These people have been ruined in some way and.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:29]
| Yeah you.
|
Sam:
[1:48:30]
| Know and no no.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:32]
| Yeah not.
|
Sam:
[1:48:33]
| At all you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:35]
| And i gotta be honest if his style of eugenics causes us to create people like him fuck this shit man because you know he is a walking talking example of how if you tell me about if i want to design eugenics I sure as hell don't want him to come out looking like fucking RFK Jr., I'll tell you that.
|
Sam:
[1:48:54]
| Well, yeah, I mean, fundamentally, if you look at problems that you don't want in a population, he's full of them.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:00]
| He's full of them! If you're going to play, you said it. The first motherfucker we should have eliminated is you, you stupid...
|
Sam:
[1:49:07]
| But yeah, like, he doesn't understand the science, and he's fundamentally coming from a viewpoint that devalues life in the first place.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:19]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:49:19]
| And, yeah. And the thing is that was interesting about these hearings were the Republicans were going after him too. It wasn't just the Democrats.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:32]
| And, you know, the layup that the Republicans have in order to show that they have even one little look on the fucking spine is to fucking go and, damn it, you know, we call it, oh, God, impeach this son of a bitch.
|
Sam:
[1:49:51]
| Well, in the United States.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:55]
| 80% of Americans, 80% of Americans still believe in vaccinations. 8-0, okay? All right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:05]
| Now, unfortunately, a lot of them really need to be 90-plus in order to be as effective as they could be. But yes, yes, still.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:12]
| But with all the horseshit.
|
Sam:
[1:50:14]
| I know, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:16]
| Even still, over 60% of Republicans support vaccinations, even if they say maybe the COVID one. No, the rest, they do. They don't want polio. They don't want measles. They don't want most of this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:50:31]
| You know, I saw someone, this is social media, so who knows, it was probably made up, but someone saying that they were talking to someone who was explaining why they didn't trust vaccinations and why they didn't get their kid vaccinated. And they're like, you know, half the diseases they want me to vaccinate the kid for, I've never even heard of.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:51]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:50:52]
| And it's like, there's a reason you haven't heard of these diseases.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:56]
| There's a reason, you asshole. There's a whole damn reason why, you stupid shit.
|
Sam:
[1:51:01]
| Yeah. And, you know, part of what was going on in this hearing was he was like, oh, I'm not, anybody can still get their vaccinations. I'm not denying anybody anything.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:12]
| Oh, he's caused, he's making it more difficult. He's causing insurance companies that can find a way to deny them. He's forcing people to go and have to get prescription. I'm sorry, the vaccination. This is bullshit. He is, no, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:51:27]
| And what I was saying is even short of impeachment, if if the Republicans could apply pressure right to I mean, Donald Trump, Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:38]
| That's the reason why he got off and fired a CDC lady, because Bill Cassidy called him and fucking like laid him a new one over the shit that he was trying to do. And that's the reason why they wound up firing her so they have been already at this point because it's fortunate. But by the way, those motherfucking Republicans, you know what the thing is? They voted to confirm that bastard. Who's not even a fucking real Republican anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:52:04]
| And look, part of it is like, yeah, especially these two doctors who, you know, Republican doctors are like, well, he promised us. Oh, come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:13]
| You fucking idiot. I mean, what kind of fucking, I mean, yeah, keep talking that to yourself.
|
Sam:
[1:52:21]
| Here's the thing with Donald Trump. He has shown in the past that if somebody is embarrassing him and making him look bad, he will fire them. So the question is, can this be constructed in such a way that RFK Jr. Becomes just an out-and-out embarrassment to Donald Trump among his own base?
|
Ivan:
[1:52:42]
| I sure, that's what we need. You know what we need? We need to get Laura Loomer on board.
|
Sam:
[1:52:50]
| There you go. Okay. One more. One more. The Epstein victims coming out and speaking and talking about things. Look, the—, This has not gone away yet as much as Trump wanted. We do not have the file. Well, some have been released, but the some that were released were almost all in the public domain anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:11]
| Yeah, they released the shit that we already have. They did what our trade partners do to us. They gave us the shit that we already had.
|
Sam:
[1:53:20]
| Now, supposedly, there's still more coming, et cetera, et cetera, but look, there's this been, the whole thing on Congress trying to vote, there's this, discharge petition where the Democrats plus a handful of Republicans, including like Marjorie Taylor Greene, for God's sake, and a few others who are to push this resolution to demand a full disclosure. Now, I want to state right out front, like people have been talking about this discharge petition, like even if this thing passed, it would have force of law. No, this is just a resolution asking the administration to do something. So even if they pass it, he can still ignore it. But it's still significant that you've got, they haven't got enough Republicans yet. They've got like three or four Republicans on board and they need like four more or something like that. I forget the exact numbers, but they need a few more in order to pass this thing out of the house.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:22]
| And hey sam sam but yes but but but speaker johnson ah yes i.
|
Sam:
[1:54:29]
| Was gonna bring this up next yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:30]
| That trump was the incited yes he was the informant he he was in there trying to bring truth and justice to everybody that's that's why he was friends of epstein well.
|
Sam:
[1:54:47]
| This is actually interesting. Like, people immediately pointed out, This thing is not a get out of jail free card, because if, in fact, he was an FBI informant, it means he knew something. If he knew something, he was probably involved. Like the whole thing, they typically when you offer an informant status. And by the way, there have been rumors about Trump being an informant for other things going back decades and decades as well. Like, you know, but, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:55:26]
| Basically, like, did the FBI catch Donald Trump doing something and then offered him a deal to roll up on Epstein instead? Who knows? We don't know. This is speculation out of a single comment from Johnson, but basically saying that Trump, don't worry about all this. Trump told me he was an FBI informant, which, like, I don't know that he was supposed to say that. Who knows? And meanwhile, wow, the victims themselves have said they're going to compile their own list. And people have asked, well, why haven't they named names to begin with? It's because if they come out independent, they could be sued out of existence. They're talking about rich, famous, influential people that potentially they could name.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:17]
| It's not that simple.
|
Sam:
[1:56:18]
| And if they just came out and said, oh yeah, they raped me, without having the level of evidence required to actually bring a criminal case. And remember, like, that sweetheart deal in Florida from decades ago potentially said they weren't going after any of these co-conspirators.
|
Sam:
[1:56:38]
| So there are all kinds of things here. So, but they're talking about giving the list to the Congress people and, like, Marjorie Taylor Greene and these others are like, I'll read them on the floor, you know, because then they have speech and debate immunity and they can give that but some of them have have said specifically though no one's accusing you donald trump why don't you just out put this out but i don't know all of these other things coming together at the very least even if donald trump wasn't involved directly and i think we've had all kinds of anecdotal stuff about him liking underage kids himself over the years, even if he wasn't like guilty of that, it certainly seems like he was one of the facilitators. And, and this is, or at least knew something. And that's one of the things when you listen to the victims talk this week, which they haven't really talked as much when, when they are asked what they want out of the files, it's something very different than what you hear otherwise. Like everywhere else you're hearing, we want more of the men. Like we want the rich, famous people who are probably also raping children. Right. But when you listen to the victims, what they're, they're at, we want to know the story behind the sweetheart deal in Florida.
|
Sam:
[1:57:59]
| Why did he get that deal? Who are the people who helped him there? They seem to concentrate mostly on, yeah, the main perpetrators were, you know, Maxwell and Epstein. Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:15]
| Yeah, Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:58:17]
| But, But there are lots of people who helped them get away with it. Those are the people that I want to hear about. And so the victims talked less about other people who were committing abuse themselves as to apparently circles of people who were enabling this behavior. Now, there probably were other people actually participating as well. We know about Prince Andrew. Some other names have been out there. So who knows? but like it's the point is it's not going away okay all.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:50]
| Right we gotta wrap this up.
|
Sam:
[1:58:51]
| We gotta wrap this up because we had yet another crash of my computer i don't know what the hell is going on with that plus yvonne's been on the wrong microphone this whole time so he sounded like crap you know and and i gotta take my wife to the airport although she says she's not actually ready yet so oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:07]
| Okay well that's good.
|
Sam:
[1:59:08]
| So so instead we're like we'll try to get her ready and then and see if we even get to our plane on time. You know, so better stuff. Okay. Thank you for being here. You know the deal. Curmudgeons-corner.com. I see all our stuff, all our transcripts, all our old shows, all the ways to contact us, and of course a link to our Patreon where you can go and give us money at various levels. We'll send you a postcard, we'll send you a mug, we'll mention you on the show, we'll ring a bell, all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more or if you just ask us, we will invite you to the Conventions Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of our listeners, are chatting throughout the week and sharing links and all that kind of stuff. So, Yvonne, how about one highlight from the Slack this week that we have not talked about on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:59:57]
| Well, I guess I'll mention, because we've got to wrap this up quick, you know, Tesla sales, again, reported in Europe. They're not recovering. You know, a lot of people are just speculating, well, the Model Y, the new model, whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Listen, people in Europe basically have said, fuck you, Tesla, in droves. They used to dominate that market. And in the Washington Post, it came out that in Germany, which is one of the biggest markets for Tesla, They are down I think it was Across Tesla they dropped 33.6% In Germany it was even worse They dropped 75%.
|
Sam:
[2:00:49]
| And they're having declines here too, right?
|
Ivan:
[2:00:53]
| Yes, yes, yes. But it's more, it's worse in Europe. They were, they, I mean, let's put it this way. Market share last year in Germany for Tesla was 11% of all, of all vehicle. This is not just electric, of all vehicles registered in Germany. Okay. All right. Think about that. It's the entire market. Okay. I mean, in the U S the entire battery electric vehicle market is around that. So imagine the penetration in Germany where there are 11% of all cars. Through three quarters this year, they're down to 3.4%. I mean, that is just a brutal beating that they have taken. And they basically ceded market to now Volkswagen, BMW, and BYD. And so they're just getting destroyed. And in response to that, the Tesla board, recognizing how bad a job Elon Musk has done, they have decided to award a massive new payout for him that if it comes to fruition he could potentially they use this valuation model Black-Scholes in order to value these based on future projections whatever the fun or whatnot it's magical but it still is the estimation based on that model it estimated it could be worth up to one trillion dollars okay, Bail up for us.
|
Sam:
[2:02:16]
| Baby Ah, yes Okay, with that, I think we need to be done Thank you everybody for joining us Yeah, okay, Have a great week, have a good time Stay safe.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:31]
| Goodbye Bye Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:03:03]
| Thank you. okay we'll see how this goes depending on what of my stuff got saved and where and what this is going to be a joy to edit okay we'll talk to you later hitting hitting stop bye Bye.
| |
|
