Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Shall we jump in?
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| Yes. Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:27]
| Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, October 4th, 2025. It's just a couple minutes before 14.30 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Mentor, Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[0:41]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[0:43]
| You sound enthused as usual.
|
Ivan:
[0:48]
| Well, no, I am worse. And I'll explain why. Well, I'm not—I need surgery.
|
Sam:
[0:57]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[0:58]
| And this week, the pain that I've been experiencing has gotten markedly worse. That's not good. No, it's not good. I probably did it to myself.
|
Ivan:
[1:14]
| Look, I... Well, in order to find a doctor who could figure out very quickly what the hell my problem was, because I got a little bit frustrated with the doctors I've been seeing here. Well, my brother, my sister-in-law's a doctor and her office is right by another doctor's office who pretty much was the right person to see for what my problem was. And so last Friday, you know, I called my brother who works at the same hospital. He's a pharmacist, not a doctor, but he knows his stuff as well. I said, you know, I got this going on. What do I do? And he said, hang on, because he, aside from being a pharmacist, most of his time is spent managing the office at my sister-in-law's doctor's office. And anybody who's been a doctor now with all the paperwork and insurance and shit and whatever goes on, you need somebody that can do that. And so he's the guy that does that for their practice. So he walked over there and called me back. Well, they can see you on Monday.
|
Ivan:
[2:23]
| Right. And I'm like, okay, so, but, okay, this is in Texas. So I had to fly to Texas on, on Sunday to go get looked at. And the doctor, after doing the physical examination, was able to figure out that, yeah, you don't have a muscle strain. You don't have the particulitis. What you have is a hernia. I'm now realizing that this had been there for a while. I had some minor discomfort in the past that I had put off as soreness.
|
Sam:
[2:57]
| You'd blown it off.
|
Ivan:
[2:58]
| Well, I put it. No, I thought I was just sore.
|
Sam:
[3:01]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[3:02]
| You know, I thought it was just something temporary. You know, I work out a lot. And so I just thought, no, you know, muscles get sore and you get some pain that must be just it. And it went and it came and it went away. So it didn't stay there permanently. But since July, it started permanently. OK, it didn't go. That's what that's how I wound up to the doctor, because I started getting pain and it started not going away.
|
Ivan:
[3:28]
| But look i had to fly to texas and back for that i i went on sunday i came back monday night and you know my brother doesn't live in dallas or houston where there's a direct flight i had to fly to i had to change planes to get where they live so it was basically six hours going there six hours going back i mean i got i got home on monday like at two in the morning, 2 30 in the morning and then but okay i also had to go to guiana now look i i have to say i always looked at the map and i thought guiana was closer because i knew it was right right by venezuela and i've been to caracas before and it's like it's less than three hours well no guiana is okay, is really much further out. Another thing is, I mistakenly thought it was on the Caribbean Sea. It is past Trinidad. It is on the Atlantic coast. So it is that much further out. It's closer to five hours to get there.
|
Sam:
[4:36]
| Okay. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[4:37]
| And I had to go on a Wednesday night, five hours there, and then came back yesterday, five hours back. While I was there, I started getting, the pain started getting worse because I spent 10 hours on a fucking airplane round trip. Plus, let me just say this. Look, Guyana right now is experiencing a huge growth spurt. Guyana for many, many decades was even poorer than Haiti. Okay? In the Americas. It was the poorest country in the Americas for an extended period of time. but.
|
Ivan:
[5:18]
| But Venezuela's stupidity has been Guyana's gain because what happened is as Venezuela destroyed their oil production and economy, you know, some guys at ExxonMobil figured out, you know what, they're bordering Venezuela, right? There's got to be oil there. And lo and behold, in 2015, they found it. And they found a huge amount of it. Um, and so their economy right now is booming. Listen, you know, I started doing my, my research as I go over there and I'm meeting with a customer, you know, do you realize that right now Guyana has like almost like the highest GDP per person in the Americas right now?
|
Sam:
[6:09]
| I had no such realization.
|
Ivan:
[6:13]
| Exactly. No, neither did I. It's like shit like that that all of a sudden I realized, holy shit. I mean, they are basically, money is flooding in there, and the economy is the fastest growing right now in the Americas. Like, literally, like, it's been growing in recent years. Of course, it started from such a low base, so it makes it happen, but it's been growing like 50% a year. You know, crazy numbers like this.
|
Sam:
[6:39]
| Okay?
|
Ivan:
[6:40]
| And so, but, but, but.
|
Sam:
[6:43]
| But, yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[6:45]
| Listen, being that they were at the poorest state, their infrastructure is still, you know, that shows that they are still, you know, one of the poorest. The airport is, right now, it takes an hour to go from the international airport to downtown, to the city. Okay? It's an hour drive.
|
Sam:
[7:10]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[7:10]
| The road is about the worst road that I've had to traverse over a long distance. I'm not saying it is the worst, but it matches the worst. Well, after you've been on a five-hour ride, you got to take a one-hour ride in a very bumpy road. In a car that is more made to be resistant to getting damaged rather than for passenger comfort, back and forth, that didn't help either.
|
Sam:
[7:47]
| In a body that's already sore.
|
Ivan:
[7:49]
| In a body that's already having problems, that was not helpful. I will say this one thing. The people in Guyana, everybody that I met with, was incredibly pleasant and lovely. And I will take any of them over most of the MAGA idiots that we have here. I will ship them. I don't know. I will make out. Listen, I will quickly trade for them in a heartbeat.
|
Sam:
[8:17]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[8:18]
| Okay. No questions asked. You know. By the way, one also interesting tidbit. They are fanatics for KFC. Listen.
|
Sam:
[8:29]
| For KFC.
|
Ivan:
[8:30]
| KFC. Look, Sam, I'm talking insanity fanatics. I went and I drove through, passed a couple of KFCs and they had drive-thrus.
|
Sam:
[8:41]
| So you had some. This is the country.
|
Ivan:
[8:42]
| No, I did not. No, no. I passed by the drive-thrus. No, no, no. I just saw the drive-thrus. Look, I wasn't there long enough. I mean, I think I only.
|
Sam:
[8:49]
| Was- Because I was going to ask for the comparison between their KFC and our KFC.
|
Ivan:
[8:52]
| No, what they told me, here's what they told me. The guy told me that. Now, remember another thing, another interesting tidbit about Guyana. Things that I felt, but look, I hadn't visited the country before. So I started reading up. I wanted to know about the culture, economy. You know, I don't like going to a place without...
|
Sam:
[9:10]
| You don't want to go in cold.
|
Ivan:
[9:11]
| No, no, no, no. I want to find out everything I can about, you know, what's happened and so forth and so on. And I, you know, I hadn't really dug into it a lot. Largest population is of Indian descent.
|
Sam:
[9:23]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[9:23]
| All right. The second is African slaves.
|
Sam:
[9:27]
| Just to be clear, indigenous Americans, not like...
|
Ivan:
[9:30]
| No, no, no. No, India.
|
Sam:
[9:32]
| Oh, India. Okay. From India. Largest population overall?
|
Ivan:
[9:38]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[9:39]
| Like greater than?
|
Ivan:
[9:40]
| Yes. Than everything else.
|
Sam:
[9:42]
| Wow.
|
Ivan:
[9:42]
| Okay. And I'll explain why. Okay. This is what happened. Okay. You know, so it's people from India. Okay. That move to, move there. Okay. You know, descendants of African slaves. And the last one are the indigenous. Okay. That's the smallest set. Okay. So what happened is that when...
|
Sam:
[10:06]
| I'm confirming this, and absolutely, it's like 40% Indian, 29% African, 20% mixed, 11% indigenous, and then trivial portions of European and Chinese.
|
Ivan:
[10:21]
| Yes. And so here's how this happened, okay? Okay, first, you know, there's gold and other, you know, valuable things in Guyana, okay? It was a British column. They abolished slavery, right? So what did the British at the time decide to solve? How did they decide to solve the problem? Indentured servitude. Okay. They brought in Indians that they put on indentured servitude contracts that wanted to get out of India, put them on a contract, shipped them to Guyana, and that's how they were replacing the slave labor.
|
Sam:
[10:56]
| Okay, then.
|
Ivan:
[10:57]
| And that's how, and by the way, that is why I had been to a few ex-British colonies, like Jamaica. I can't remember what other, which other island I went to. I think it was maybe in the Caymans, I experienced this, where I met a lot of people Indian descent. And I was like, why did, you know, why the Indians? And this is the reason the British in the 1800s decided to, when they abolished slavery, that they replaced it with indentured servitude. And many brought many Indians because India was a colony and many wanted to leave.
|
Sam:
[11:31]
| Of course, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[11:31]
| Yeah, of course. And they, and they, and it was like, because the indenture servitude, the one thing about it is they were like, hey, it ends. Because the contracts had a fixed definition of time. It wasn't like forever.
|
Sam:
[11:42]
| It wasn't like slavery where your kids are going to get sold as well.
|
Ivan:
[11:46]
| No, it was like, it was a period of time. And then after the period of time and then you, whatever. And so a lot of them took the deal.
|
Sam:
[11:53]
| Just to be clear, generally speaking, those contracts were set up in such a way that they kind of trapped you anyway.
|
Ivan:
[12:01]
| Oh, yeah, they tried to – yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[12:03]
| It was like – It was very hard to actually get out of those under the theoretical terms.
|
Ivan:
[12:09]
| Because they would add debt to it and then you owed more and so then it would file on so it would add more time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the vision was like, hey, the contract ended. And in many cases, even though they trapped him, eventually they ended and it didn't carry on to the next generation and so forth. So therefore, but so that's how, so that was the, so that's the thing, which is why, you know, also it's like number one sport is cricket. It's also another thing, but, but, you know, but like, so, so the, the guy that I was speaking to who took me around, who's also of Indian descent, explained to me that the thing about the KFC. Well, he believes that basically they take whatever the herbs and spices they send, and they basically double them up.
|
Ivan:
[13:01]
| So that's the KFC local. Basically, it is the same, except if you remember herbs and spices, it's doubled up on herbs and spices. Okay. okay and and the sam the drive-through the car lines there were like 15 20 cars long 25 it was they would wrap around the block okay it was like it was worse than any lines that i've seen a chick-fil-a which i i don't see them like having those lines anymore i realize they're not they're not as you know but yeah it was like kind of like that was crazy so i i saw that so that was like the one thing that that stood out uh now you got me wanting some kfc i know kfc is good but like i said he we both said yeah but i'm like you know i haven't eaten in a while because i'm like you know we're trying to you know it's it's just but but it's it's i mean i i i like it so so anyway so it it was it was just quite interesting but it's also i mean you can see obviously how the i mean, the poverty that, you know, it's starting to, like, be... Covered up to some way, but, but man, I mean, you could see how.
|
Sam:
[14:15]
| But it's still there. Yeah. Because generally speaking, when you have sort of the kind of rapid growth you're talking about, it is not evenly distributed.
|
Ivan:
[14:24]
| It isn't, but it is being distributed. I will say that you can tell that's why so many people are like, one thing they were talking about was that right now, a country that had very few cars, that right now they're basically registering about 3,000 new cars a month. And this is so even they are extremely taxed as well. And they are building a new highway to the airport. Okay. All right. That is not finished yet. They did build this new airport, which is, it's gotta be one of the smallest airports I've been to outside of being in a, one of these Caribbean Island airports.
|
Ivan:
[15:00]
| Okay. um it is one of the smallest international airports that that i've ever been to it's pretty new and shiny it's a little bit of a it's a little bit of a wonky design but hey it's it's nice and clean it's got food it's got gates it's air conditioned it's you know i mean you know it looks it looks decent it's a the design is it's a little bit weird because the gates don't actually have the waiting areas there there is like this general and actually the signage if they put now that i know the the drill i know how to maneuver it but they didn't have signs there that explain this there's this general waiting area that is on the first floor and then when your flight gets called you go up to a second level and you walk over to the gate and then you go in but there isn't a waiting area at the gate itself ah right okay so so that was a little bit like confusing at first because I.
|
Ivan:
[16:02]
| They need to the only thing they really the only thing that was missing was really the signage to make it clear but it was you know nice clean good the security is better than a lot of other airports I've seen I'll tell you what they had a good, equipment and things and stuff and whatever. And the hotel was new and shiny. Another very interesting thing. They asked me, what about the beaches? And I'm like, well, no beaches.
|
Sam:
[16:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[16:31]
| And the reason is, at first, I thought I looked at the water and I'm like, is that mud or is it pollution? And I'm like, I've been, but I've been to places that have rivers and waters that are very polluted and it's a lot of times very obvious from the smell you know it's just you know like in brazil specifically i remember that you know you'd get to these polluted waterways and the stench from the water is just yeah god it's awful that's the one that i remember most specifically but that wasn't that's not it at all it's not it's not pollution either it what happens is that they get runoff from major rivers going there including the amazon and that runoff actually is carrying quite a lot of mud, like a lot of mud. Like, it's just, but a lot of mud because these are very powerful rivers that are sending there. So all the water, like literally, when you go and look at it, looks like mud. And if you went and it's the, actually, it is the muddiest coast in the world is that I figured, because I looked at it and I'm like, is that mud? And so I had to look at it. That looks like mud. That was my thought. And I looked it up that Guyana has the muddiest water coast anywhere. Basically, if you went into the water like, yo, let me go to the beach. Let me take a dip. You'd come out and you're like basically caked in mud. Not exactly really the best beachgoing experience.
|
Sam:
[18:01]
| At least a different experience.
|
Ivan:
[18:02]
| It would be quite a different one. It's not like you're going to come out polluted. It's just you're going to be covered in mud. I mean, I know some people that like being covered in mud. I've seen this. Okay, you know, but mud fights or whatever. I'm not one that likes to go get covered in mud.
|
Sam:
[18:16]
| Yeah, no, it's never appealed to me either.
|
Ivan:
[18:19]
| Yeah, I saw these people at camp going to get into mud fights in the mud, and I'm like, ah, no, thank you.
|
Sam:
[18:26]
| Yeah, no, no.
|
Ivan:
[18:28]
| I'm out. Thank you.
|
Sam:
[18:29]
| Okay, so...
|
Ivan:
[18:30]
| So anyway, so yes, all of this travel and getting to know... Look, I will say, quite a cool experience. Okay, all right. I don't know, I didn't look into... is there any way to like get some proper tourism, like to get to know like the country? I didn't go, I didn't get, get time to research, to go into research it. But what I will say is that despite the fact that, you know, poor, whatever, there's not a lot of hotels. I mean, the hotel that I stayed at was, was a nice hotel, but, but it's not like a five-star hotel, but the rate was for a five-star hotel. It was like $500 a night. And I was like, geez, okay. So, so, Man, the people are so lovely. I really had a great time. That really was, you know, that was the positive of my experience. You know, it's like, it's just quite a lovely group of people. I really liked, you know, being there.
|
Sam:
[19:29]
| Now, before I do my but first segment, and once again, I've forgotten the agenda at the beginning of the show. We're doing our but first where we sort of talk about personal stuff, movies, whatever. And then we'll get into the news in the next segment.
|
Ivan:
[19:41]
| Oh, I am scheduled for surgery on November 5th.
|
Sam:
[19:44]
| That's what I was going to ask is what's your date? So you got a while yet. That's like a month away.
|
Ivan:
[19:49]
| I have a while.
|
Sam:
[19:51]
| And it's getting worse. So that's not a good combination.
|
Ivan:
[19:54]
| Well, the one thing is I think I made it worse this week. I'm going to go to rest.
|
Sam:
[20:01]
| That seems like a good idea.
|
Ivan:
[20:03]
| You know, I'm going to give it by I'm going to rest. I will say that it's a good another good thing is that I got an I got my a new chair for my office and I will say that I've noticed that sitting in the air on chair makes a big difference where I when I'm sitting here I'm actually not experiencing pain at all. OK, so that's that's a big that's a big plus apparently about getting the new chair. So so probably being at home and not sitting on some random thing and sitting on an airplane for you know 10 hours i i literally sat over 20 hours on a plane this week probably not the best smartest thing probably not but you know i had no i had no many other choices look i i planned this meeting with these guys i'd been working on this it had been.
|
Ivan:
[20:58]
| For months. It was just, it was months and months. I probably, I started talking to this customer in, started talking directly to them. I'd been sending trading messages or whatever, but really, really nitty gritty in March. Okay. And we had set up for our first in-person meeting now. And very close to getting, you know, this deal completed. And I met with their, it was with their CIO and their CEO. And I'm like, I can't blow this damn meeting off. After it's been set up for so long. I got to suck it up and do this. So, you know, I did. And it was, I know that I've paid, but I'm like, it was worth it in the sense of, it was a great meeting with them. It was nice to see the country. You know, the only thing we ever hear about Guyana is like Jim Jones. I mean, basically, if you ask anybody.
|
Sam:
[21:54]
| If they know anything about the country. I made a Kool-Aid joke as soon as Yvonne mentioned it.
|
Ivan:
[21:58]
| It's the only, it's the only, I mean, the first, you say that name and that's the first thing that comes to anybody's mind. And I'm really glad to be able now to not have that as my first thought when we talk about the country of Guyana. And I'm very happy about that.
|
Sam:
[22:14]
| Okay. So I'll do my stuff real quick. So first of all, I am going to do movies and I'm not going to let this be the whole thing, but I'm also traveling. Anybody who's watching our video live stream will notice I have a different background.
|
Ivan:
[22:28]
| Your background looks very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very different. Definitely doesn't look like your house.
|
Sam:
[22:36]
| I'm at an Airbnb in Toronto. I'm visiting my sister. I have a nephew who is now six months old that I'm visiting for the first time. So that's very nice. Get to hold the baby and like play with it. It's old enough. so it like is a you know it's interactive a little bit it's not just sleeping all the time and crying you know it does a little bit of stuff but it's not yet a toddler so we're still in that middle zone but you can.
|
Ivan:
[23:05]
| Hold it you can hold the baby.
|
Sam:
[23:06]
| You can hold the baby you can sort of bounce it you can like yeah yeah yeah it's like looking at you it's old enough it's like laughing and Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[23:16]
| It's great time. Yes.
|
Sam:
[23:18]
| So having a lot of fun also getting to chat with my sister and have a couple of conversations with her husband for really the first time I met him like for five minutes at the wedding, you know, but otherwise have not had a time to like sit down and really chat with him or anything. So I've done that a little bit. So it's a lot of fun. And I was traveling. I was, I was a little bit, you know, for, yeah, I don't travel that often. And we also had this government shutdown going on. So I was worried, like, am I going to have like massive TSA delays? Am I going to have, you know, issues with customs, whatever. And I'll just say that there was a delay. The plane itself was delayed more than four hours, but it was a, it was a mechanical issue.
|
Ivan:
[24:01]
| What hour line did you fly in? Alaska? Air Canada?
|
Sam:
[24:04]
| This way was Air Canada. I'm going back on Alaska. But, you know, there was a mechanical issue. The plane that was, like, it was a plane that was coming, it was just going back and forth between Toronto and Seattle, right? So it hadn't left Toronto yet because there was some sort of mechanical issue. Turns out they switched out the plane because they'd already, like, boarded people onto the plane and they were taxing and they had to bring them back to the gate and pull them all off. and find another plane and all that kind of stuff. And so it was like four hours late for that. But like, you know, going through security in Seattle was incredibly quick. It was just minutes. Like I got through the whole thing. Like, you know, we have that clear thing, but I was like, I didn't even bother to try to figure it out because the line was going so fast and everything. And I haven't been through U.S. customs heading back yet. That'll be when I head back. And they're the ones who are being assholes right now. But like.
|
Ivan:
[25:07]
| Well, make sure that you, and this is advice for anybody, that if you don't have a global entry, okay, there is the mobile passport control app, okay, that what you do is once you land, it lets you like do the punch in the information. So that way they scan with the code. It expedites that process.
|
Sam:
[25:30]
| Okay. so like u.s has one of those too i did one of those for canada but like u.s has one yes but but all i was gonna say is like canadian customs look took like 10 seconds yeah i i did that little app and then you know you had to go to a kiosk and confirm that what you'd done on the app was correct and i was like yes and i suppose if you hadn't done it on the app you could do the whole thing at the kiosk, but like I'd done it on the app. So I, and then like, you know, you, you go up to the little guy and you know, the last time I went to Canada, when I went up to the little guy, they, they asked me some questions, not a lot of questions, but they asked me like, you know, 30 seconds worth of, why are you here? What are you about this time? It was like, okay, good. Have a nice time. No, no questions at all. Just waved me through.
|
Ivan:
[26:19]
| Well, I will say I have global entry. So right now, basically, the process is I walk up to a kiosk, scans my face. I don't even pull out my passport. And then I walk past a person who confirms that they have a picture of me and they call my name and I go. So that's pretty much it. That's all it involves. Not even filling out a form. Going to Guyana. So usually when I go to a country that I haven't been to, I try to look up whether there's anything to fill out for entry. Okay. For some reason on the American Airlines app, it didn't show that there was an entry form. In some countries, I've been to either you get a paper form when you get there. Most of them have them electronic like right now. But I try to look up, hey, is there any form to fill out? It didn't say anything on the app. When I get there, I go and they have these automated kiosks that are now, Dominican Republic has these for departure control, where you put your passport, it scans it. And when it does, it looks up to see if you filled out your form, confirms, and whatever.
|
Sam:
[27:21]
| So I didn't want to get into all this detail. My only point on this before dropping in movies.
|
Ivan:
[27:27]
| But here's the thing. What happened when I got there? Look, it didn't say anything about any form. And I've been to countries where right now they're not requiring forms. I want to get to go over there, put my passport on the thing. It's rejecting me. Well, you got to fill out the form. I'm like, oh, I have no form. So I had to go try to fill it out. And by the way, the CAPTCHA on this form, I don't know what the hell. The worst CAPTCHA in history. I literally had to type it, I think, for entry and exit. I kept typing it. Like, I did it more than 10 times. It kept regretting my CAPTCHA. Do you realize how annoying it is? All the capital letter, a small letter. I hate these things.
|
Sam:
[28:09]
| Okay, fine. Can I move on now?
|
Ivan:
[28:13]
| You can move on.
|
Sam:
[28:13]
| My entire point was just like, I was worried because of the governmental shutdown, there would be delays. There were none for me.
|
Ivan:
[28:20]
| No.
|
Sam:
[28:20]
| There were none. Everything was smooth and rapid and, you know, aside from the mechanical delay on the plane, which cost me four hours. But luckily, I got the notification of that before I left home. So, like, you know, I wasn't stuck at the airport that whole time.
|
Ivan:
[28:40]
| That's good. Yeah. That's always good.
|
Sam:
[28:42]
| You know when.
|
Ivan:
[28:43]
| I get the notification that my flight's been canceled and i haven't made it to the airport i'm like oh good.
|
Sam:
[28:47]
| Yeah and like you know and honestly i needed the extra time to get ready like i i i was hurrying to try to rush and get out the door i got the notification that it was first it was delayed one hour and then later they delayed it another three hours and so as soon as i got the it's delayed one hour i went from like rushing to get everything ready to I'm going to take my time. I'm just going to relax. I'll do this slowly. I'm not going to worry about it. And then, you know, Anyway, so I ended up getting to the airport minutes before my original flight would have left. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[29:30]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[29:30]
| You know, so now, but my behavior had changed. Like if my flight was still.
|
Ivan:
[29:36]
| You weren't stressed out in a rush.
|
Sam:
[29:38]
| Yeah. Like if it was leaving at the time it was supposed to leave, I would have gotten out the door a lot quicker. You know, I just took my time. Anyway, no more travel adventures. We've had enough travel adventures, so I could go blow by blow with more travel stuff, including some interesting stories. But I will skip that, because instead, it's been a couple weeks since I did movies, so I'm going to do at least one. At least one, damn it.
|
Ivan:
[30:12]
| All right, we need to do a movie. Okay.
|
Sam:
[30:14]
| Okay. The movie Dark Days from the year 2000. this is not one that anybody is likely to have really heard of probably okay.
|
Ivan:
[30:25]
| Good yeah i'm like what the hell i don't know what the hell this is okay.
|
Sam:
[30:28]
| It is a because it is a documentary that and you know yeah documentaries are often you know big box office blockbusters right you know yes yes people are just running number one.
|
Ivan:
[30:43]
| Movie uh number one movies of all time i think top five, like grossing is all documentaries.
|
Sam:
[30:48]
| Yes, exactly. So no, this was a small little movie. It was about homeless people in Manhattan, you know? And so specifically it was, it was released in 2000, but it was shot in the mid 1990s. It, it was a lot of the people who sort of specifically it was focusing on people who were living in old Amtrak tunnels that were not.
|
Sam:
[31:20]
| And some of them were not in active use, others, you know, the tunnels in use, but there's places off to the side where there's room, you know, it's not like every single space is taken up by the train. And so it follows basically a community of homeless people there and sort of the, they'd built themselves like make two shelters and little houses like within the tunnels where they lived. But there were, you know, people who, you know, there were some that lived by themselves in their little things. There were people who lived as roommates. They had populated their little shelters with, you know, furniture and appliances and things that they'd, like, scavenged from elsewhere. And it follows their story up through the point where, you know, Amtrak basically kicks them all out because they're going to start using the tunnel again or whatever. And you know and obviously these people have various levels of issues there's drug addiction issues their mental health issues there are other things going on you know some of them are more sympathetic than others but you you know you get to know them as like you know look these are human beings.
|
Sam:
[32:46]
| They're down on their luck for various reasons. They've got various issues they're working through, but they have lives. They talk about their families a little bit. They talk about how they got down there. Some of them talk about how, yes, they had opportunities to go elsewhere, but they chose to be there and here's why. And you feel for these people when their living space gets destroyed and things like that so you know it's i'll give it a thumbs up i mean obviously this is not you know you're sort of.
|
Ivan:
[33:22]
| It's not a comedy it is not a comedy oh my god you gotta be kidding me so you weren't laughing your ass off to this entire movie i wasn't.
|
Sam:
[33:31]
| Laughing my ass off.
|
Ivan:
[33:33]
| So you're you're not like you know so you're not like some maga head that would have been just watching this and watching these people suffer and going, ah, look at those losers!
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| Yeah, exactly. I mean, and, you know, look, it's also not, you know...
|
Ivan:
[33:49]
| Sam, the problem is they don't have bootstraps, Sam.
|
Sam:
[33:54]
| Yeah, they're not picking themselves up by their bootstraps.
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| They don't have boot... And it's this whole thing where we've moved away from boots and some people don't have bootstraps anymore, Sam. I'm telling you.
|
Sam:
[34:05]
| That's right. But you just can't do the same thing with sneakers.
|
Ivan:
[34:08]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[34:09]
| No. But I was going to say, it's also not the type. Like, there's some documentaries that are narrator heavy, where the narrator talks you through the story. If there was a narrator here, I barely even remember them. It was, you know, basically, I think there was an interviewer, but even the interviewer, you didn't hear very much. You basically heard these people speaking in their own voices about their own lives, you know. And so it was powerful in that way. It apparently did win a few awards, won a Sundance Award for, you know, cinematography, documentary, etc. Won South by Southwest Film Award as well, a few others. Anyway, thumbs up. I liked it. You know, if you're in a in the mood for a more serious documentary, I mean, it is, it was 1990s that it was filmed. So this isn't current, per se. I mean, that was, it's a long time ago now, right? You know, but, but it was still good. And I think most of the problems that they're highlighting probably have not changed all that much, you know, in the subsequent 20 years.
|
Ivan:
[35:22]
| Hell, some right now, especially under this administration, has gotten worse.
|
Sam:
[35:26]
| Yeah, I mean, these are not problems we have solved.
|
Ivan:
[35:30]
| No, no, we got, you know, we have so many places right now, especially in, I mean, even in democratic states, we're trying to make homelessness like illegal.
|
Sam:
[35:41]
| Well, I mean, this is one of the fundamental problems is that in a lot of policy making to deal with homelessness, they're not really dealing with homelessness. They're trying to make it so that quote unquote regular people don't see it.
|
Ivan:
[36:00]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[36:01]
| You know, they want to make it less visible. They don't want to actually solve the problem because so their policies are dealing with like, oh, let's go every every few weeks. Let's clean up the homeless encampments or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[36:14]
| And not actually addressing, hey, guys, why are you homeless? How can we help you to try to get you out of homelessness? Okay. And look, in some cases, by the way, it's not like there are many cases where you can provide help. But also, by the way, there's a lot of people that are actually voluntarily homeless as well. They're trying to live off the grid. They don't want to be.
|
Sam:
[36:36]
| Although very often that is tied with mental illness as well. So they're.
|
Ivan:
[36:40]
| Yes, but.
|
Sam:
[36:40]
| Not always, not always.
|
Ivan:
[36:42]
| Yeah, but the thing is, it is, it is, but the problem is, again, it used to be in the old days. What did we do with people that we considered mentally ill? Exactly. And so that it's, it's one of those things where if, if.
|
Sam:
[36:56]
| There is a fundamental thing that back.
|
Ivan:
[36:58]
| It gets very.
|
Sam:
[36:59]
| Going back to the 80s, I think it was during the Reagan administration where they sort of decided, you know, We're going to move away from this installation, institutionalization approach and we're going to let people out but the problem is they didn't replace it with anything to like actually help these people right um you know so and i i generally like there's a place for inpatient care for the mentally ill but there's if you're not and but it was overused it was massively in.
|
Ivan:
[37:32]
| Many cases it was involuntary.
|
Sam:
[37:34]
| Which is also the problem because it gets into the way that the way that institutionalization worked there were many people locked up that shouldn't have been that could have been living good lives on the outside with the proper care right um and the problem is that didn't exist and you know like you said that it was sort of hide people away as well you didn't want them visible but then when they moved away from that, the right, there was nothing there to replace it. There was nothing there to serve those people. And so you ended up with lots of people on the street and you add economic stress, you add drug issues, you add all this. But yeah, the, the, yes, it seems trivially like, like duh, that for all of these sorts of problems, the real way to deal with them is to find the root causes and deal with root causes, not to try to deal with the symptoms, but a significant portion of our political world just doesn't like the idea of preventative stuff, of dealing with root causes, of we don't want to give people help that don't deserve it, you know, all this kind of stuff. Whereas in a number of places, like compared to other countries, compared to places where there have been limited scale testing, you know, the best solution is, to homelessness is give people homes get.
|
Ivan:
[39:00]
| Out of town.
|
Sam:
[39:01]
| You know no and wait nah.
|
Ivan:
[39:04]
| Nah come on that.
|
Sam:
[39:06]
| Can't be right you start with that with no conditions and then you deal with like oh let's help their drug issues let's help their mental health there wait wait but in the meantime you give them some place to live wait really and not just like some packed shelter with like a million people but you give them private place they have.
|
Ivan:
[39:24]
| You give them a you give the homeless a place to live what kind of fucking psychopathic communist are you you bastard.
|
Sam:
[39:30]
| But the thing is we're gonna.
|
Ivan:
[39:32]
| Have you to have to send you to one of these new like magary education camps.
|
Sam:
[39:36]
| Well but the thing is with all of this it's also you can't just give them a place to stay either you have to also back it up with the other supports that they need to in order to make that successful and and and then And yes, there are underlying problems with the cost of housing and all kinds of other health care. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[39:55]
| Health care. The fuck are you talking about? That's also, you know, that's only for the rich, Sam. What the hell are you talking about, man? Listen, the Republic. Listen, the GOP policy right now is that if you show up to an ER and you're dying and if you can't prove that you're a citizen, we take you out. We fuck them. We let you die. Well, actually, as a matter of fact, we don't want other people to see you. Will roll you out to the dumpster and we'll just put you right.
|
Sam:
[40:19]
| Put you right in.
|
Ivan:
[40:20]
| There for you to die and that's it you know that way you know the other people don't get to see your carcass.
|
Sam:
[40:26]
| Yes because we can't leave that out yeah no.
|
Ivan:
[40:29]
| No no no no no no can't bother the other people.
|
Sam:
[40:32]
| You know but yeah i don't know i and one and and the thing is like i promise i'll move on shortly but people even the people who are like i don't want to spend all this money dealing with like cleaning up the homeless camps and all this stuff, if you do the math or they say, I don't want to give them a house, that's expensive. It's less expensive than what we're doing now.
|
Ivan:
[40:56]
| Right?
|
Sam:
[40:57]
| Like the preventative stuff costs less than dealing with the problem after it exists. You know, even if it seems like, oh, you're giving them a free house. Why don't I get a free house? You know, whatever. It's like, you know.
|
Ivan:
[41:14]
| And universal basic stuff is so many people are so against it. And it's like one of the one of the things is like most of the universal basic stuff. You know, Puerto Rico, there is a lot of public housing and a lot of people do live in public housing. OK, now Puerto Rico has a lot of people that are in the lower end of the income spectrum. That's just that's just a reality. But, you know, well, why do they get a free house? Look, the free houses are not bad. OK, they're decent. OK, but the reality is that if you can actually afford a house, you probably want to buy something else that isn't really the public house. But at the same time, you know, you want to give those people at a basic house something that is decent, clean, good, safe. OK, you know, it's not, you know, it's not a tent full of holes.
|
Ivan:
[42:03]
| You want to, you know, you want to give something that's basic but good. And these people complaining about, well, why don't I get a free house? Well, honestly, if you're making more money, you probably don't want the basic house. Okay? And I'm like, why the hell is it so bad in a nation and so much of the world that is so rich? It's such a fucking problem. To give those in the lower part of the income spectrum the basics to live instead of then going and complaining, oh my God, look at those homeless people over there driving me crazy. And I'm like, well, you know, listen, you want to complain about them, but then at the same time, you don't want them to get the basic shit. Decide what the fuck you want, asshole.
|
Sam:
[42:55]
| Yeah, anyway, I mean, let's be clear. It's a hard problem. It's not like there's a magical solution.
|
Ivan:
[43:02]
| It is a very hard problem, but just making it criminal and illegal isn't the fucking solution.
|
Sam:
[43:09]
| Right. Okay. Normally, I try to do two movies, but I talked about the other thing. So I'm back to never catching up unless I do two movies a week, but we will save Spider-Verse.
|
Ivan:
[43:21]
| Next week, we will get back to two. as a matter of fact, I'll even let you next week, we'll go to three.
|
Sam:
[43:28]
| Ooh, three. Oh, amazing. You know, when one of these days, when you're out, maybe I'll just do an all-movies episode.
|
Ivan:
[43:38]
| Ah, do the all-movie review. Listen, here's the thing.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| But the problem is, I like bouncing them off you, because you have an opinion on them, too. Me just saying thumbs up, thumbs down, so I'm sideways. I mean, I could go through the whole damn list in ten minutes.
|
Ivan:
[43:51]
| Well, you can bring back the... Well, I may be too sick to do one soon. Okay. Not sick, but God bless you. You can bring back Chad GPT to see what he thinks about the movies. You know, the most agreeable idiot in history, you know, let him come in and like, and just nicely agree to everything.
|
Sam:
[44:15]
| Yeah. No, we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll get to working on that. No, if I do three next week, the three will be Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse from 2023, The Bridge on the River Kwai from 1957, and Hairspray from 1988. So, that would be the... But, let's take a break, and then we'll actually talk about the news of the week. So, back after this. Okay, we're back already. That was the short one.
|
Ivan:
[45:03]
| Oh, awesome.
|
Sam:
[45:05]
| I think Alex made that recording of me in the car once. I don't know. It's many years old at this point. He had this little app that you can record like that and then add various vocal elements and all kinds of things and distort it in various ways. This is the undistorted version. There are some, you know, maybe we'll get one of the distorted versions one time where it's like a robot voice or something. Yeah. That'd be cool. Right. Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[45:32]
| That'd be awesome.
|
Sam:
[45:33]
| Yes. Okay. So where shall we start Yvonne? We've had like, you know, stuff, I guess.
|
Ivan:
[45:42]
| The shutdown.
|
Sam:
[45:43]
| Oh, the shutdown. Right. Yes. Yes. We did have that. So what we are shut down. I mentioned, I was worried that that would impact my travels, but it did not. What do you got? Like, you know, we've, There seems to be much less concern about this shutdown than the last few times we had shutdown drama.
|
Ivan:
[46:09]
| Well, let's be clear about this. At this point right now, shutting down the government to me seems like a good idea. Can I be honest? With the federal government that we have, it seems that for the most part, against its citizens and the world, why the fuck do I want it open right now? I mean, how is that helping us in any way, shape, or form?
|
Sam:
[46:37]
| Well, at least theoretically, there are a lot of services that help people potentially that will go away or be delayed or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| Listen, we're getting paid Social Security, okay? It's not going away. It's not like Medicare and Medicaid benefits right now are being stopped, okay? Now, if you need a new enrollment or you need to change your Social Security or something, yes, that is a problem. But like I said, this government spends every fucking day thinking of ways to fuck us. Every goddamn waking moment, everything that comes out from them is, hey, we figured out a new way to screw you. I mean, literally, Trump posted some AI video showing him as the, whatchamacallit, the Grim Reaper, with all his accomplices going after America. What the, I mean, who wants this government open? Me, right now, I am like, fuck this shit. Keep it closed as long as possible so they can stop fucking with us.
|
Sam:
[47:40]
| Well, I'll say the thing is, though, and this is one of the reasons Schumer didn't allow this to happen back at the beginning of the year, was this offers the opportunity for the Trump administration to effectively change the facts on the ground to permanently shut down even more stuff.
|
Ivan:
[48:03]
| Listen, here's the thing about this right now. Exactly. Like, what are you talking about? Like, like, like, like what? Like it was stopping them all? It was open? They don't care. And so... Look, one thing about this is public opinion is totally running against the Republicans about this. They are not winning, even though they've tried to message more on this.
|
Sam:
[48:29]
| To be clear, when you look at the polls on this, the biggest category is we blame everybody.
|
Ivan:
[48:36]
| No, no, no. The biggest category is not sure, which is not blame everybody. That's two very different things. Because you've got a big block of the country that we've discussed this before. I have no idea that it's even happening. so you can't count those people in the only people you could really look at are the ones that that that that are looking at it and say hey who are you blaming and if you take that group, almost north of 65 percent blame the republicans so i cannot go and like think about the fucking people that basically and blissfully have their head in the sand and have no idea what the hell is going on by the way and which Which is, by the way, quite a large number of people.
|
Sam:
[49:21]
| So I'm looking for those numbers because I looked at, I remember seeing who the numbers, I don't know. I thought the numbers for people who had an opinion were actually bigger than I expected. And I remember that. In the Washington Post one.
|
Ivan:
[49:42]
| It was like 52, 30-something, and like 20-some-odd percent had no clue.
|
Sam:
[49:50]
| No, I'm pulling it up right now. Da-da-da-da-da. So they actually... Interesting. They didn't give an option for both in this poll. I'm looking at the Washington Post poll. The biggest number was 47% Trump. The second biggest was 30% Democrats. And then it was 23% not sure. So not sure was actually the smallest.
|
Ivan:
[50:19]
| But you see, the thing is that when you look at between when you take out the not sure, when you look at that, when you look at that group, because that's the group that's actually paying attention. Okay?
|
Sam:
[50:28]
| Well, yeah, but even, but not sure was actually relatively small. So even without that, it's 50-30, you know, so.
|
Ivan:
[50:35]
| No, but what I say, it's bad enough either way, but it's worth, but I'm saying, the group that's looking at it, the vast majority of it, blames the Republicans.
|
Sam:
[50:46]
| Yes, that's clear regardless. It's almost 50%, even with the not-sures in the mix. And let's see what, Let's see one more. Let's see. It's the same one. Same one. Washington Post is the only real one. Here we go. Let's see. Did we have? Yeah. Not sure is the middle category. They didn't offer a both, which is interesting. If they had offered a both, I suspect a significant chunk would have gone to both. But, you know, OK, we got not. But but regardless, they are getting the blame for the moment, Which is interesting because if you listen to press reports on this, like I've listened to the TV news talking heads and a few other folks, there was most of the narrative has been around how the Republicans seem to be doing better on messaging. The poll does not match that.
|
Ivan:
[51:43]
| No, it doesn't. But but that's you know what? It's this whole thing how we live in all these people and, you know, that we follow the the pundits in the world that they live in. Right. OK. Whereas. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They've got the messaging. They've got the messaging. And even like, you know. Which is why even some of the people that are inside, some people, the Democratic strategist complaining, why are they not only fighting about this and not everything else? And I'm like, Jesus Christ, look, in a world where messaging is so difficult, either you stick doing this very simple and binary, OK, or it risks being this walk debate that 90 plus percent of the people don't fucking pay attention to. Well, because the details just get lost.
|
Sam:
[52:39]
| And especially here, we're talking a budgetary debate. We're talking about things where some of the issues that people are talking about most are, you know, changing, undoing some changes to the rules about tax credits that happened in the the big, beautiful bill a few months ago.
|
Ivan:
[52:59]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:59]
| You know, and or or rescissions like ask a random person on the street, what the hell is a rescission? Yeah, come on. You know, this is not going to be, and I think this is absolutely one of those cases where, I mean, I looked at the breakdown. I have the breakdown up now. You know, we mentioned the overall numbers. Overall was 47% blame Republicans, 30% blame Democrats, 23% unsure. But if you break it up, you know, among Republicans, 67% Democrat blame the Democrats. Among Democrats, 87% blame the Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[53:41]
| You see that even the Republicans are not, I mean, are down a little bit.
|
Sam:
[53:46]
| And their number that grows is the not sure, really. 8% of Republicans blame Republicans. So that's, you know, not bad. But the independent group, though, it's 50 to 22 blaming the Republicans. It's overwhelming. It's overwhelming among the independents.
|
Ivan:
[54:09]
| Listen, how can Trump go around and literally proclaim himself? self. Dictator. Because in that one video that he showed, he basically was saying how Congress is irrelevant. I rule everything. He said that, right? And so you want to turn around and blame the Democrats for it being shutting down when you are just claiming that you run everything. Dude, Okay, decide. Okay.
|
Sam:
[54:34]
| Which one are you? They do this all the time, though. Like, you know, oh, Biden, you know, has lost his mind and is completely ineffective. Oh, but oh, he's so dangerous. You can't let him be in charge. You know, you know, this this sort of dual messaging where on the one hand something is irrelevant, but on the other hand, it's incredibly dangerous is commonplace.
|
Ivan:
[55:06]
| Yeah, I get that. But but but it's very difficult when you've been hammering to people how you are the. Have control of everything and have everything in the palm of your hand and then try to claim yourself helpless to the Democrats. Is very difficult. You know, once you've been pounding that message for, I don't know how long, very difficult to do. Okay?
|
Sam:
[55:30]
| Oh, and so let's move to where we think this is going.
|
Ivan:
[55:35]
| So I think we're looking at the longest shutdown we've ever had. I really do at this point.
|
Sam:
[55:41]
| The record right now was in Trump's first administration. It was 35 days.
|
Ivan:
[55:46]
| Oh, this is going to go longer.
|
Sam:
[55:48]
| Yeah. Well, right now, there's no motion on it on any side to do anything like everybody's sort of digging in their heels. And a lot of people and look, there are folks in the Republican coalition who agree with what you said at the beginning with, well, we like it shut down. Let's just leave it. You know, this proves what do we really need and what do we not need? And the president actually has a lot of authority to declare that certain things are needed and have to continue. You know, the counter argument is, you know, do we really want to let Donald Trump be the one deciding that? But as you said, he's been deciding that anyway. So, you know, last time, the 35 day, and I was reminded of this. I haven't double checked it, but the 35 day shutdown, if you remember, was, It ended when the Democrats retook the House. Like it was right at the end of the term. So the stalemate did not resolve itself by the two sides coming to a better deal or whatever. There was actually a change in power that enabled them to do something that they would not do earlier. Now, at this point, we're a year and a quarter. And election's a year away. Yeah. Yeah, we're more than a year away from the election and add a couple months before they actually take power.
|
Ivan:
[57:13]
| Listen, but this is one thing where critical services are continuing, but problems will pile up. Look, I realize that a lot of things are going to pile up. Like, as I mentioned, for example, hey, if you just turn 65, you won't apply for Social Security. That gets problematic right now. You can't go to an office. You can't make changes. You can't get somebody died. You can't, like, register that. They're talking about flood insurance, for example, how right now you can't obtain it. You can't get it's complicates so many different things and processes. I think you can't even apply for passports right now. For example, you can't even get passports. It's there are so many things that start getting complicated that that it's it's you know, they start piling up at some point. I'm assuming something's going to happen because here's here's the thing. I don't think, well, I didn't, listen, I don't think that a large group of Republicans really wanted to take away health care from a large port of constituents either. They're just right now being jerk offs to be jerk.
|
Sam:
[58:20]
| Or triple the prices and things like that that are happening.
|
Ivan:
[58:23]
| Exactly. They didn't really want this. Okay. Yeah. They didn't want this. Okay. So I think that right now, they're being stubborn just to show spine, but at some point, they're going to want to do something too, because they don't want to fuck their constituents that badly, as much as they try to sometimes. But they don't want to do it so evidently.
|
Sam:
[58:50]
| And they still don't want to cross Donald Trump. Nobody wants to be the first one to cross Donald Trump, right?
|
Ivan:
[59:00]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[59:00]
| And now, even as is, like we had a couple Democrats in the Senate cross over Fetterman and I forget who the other one was.
|
Ivan:
[59:09]
| I don't know what the hell. But listen, I don't want to count like anything about what the hell's going on in Fetterman's brain at this moment, given all everything we've heard around his staff, how he seems to be basically losing his marbles. OK, so I don't know. I discount that other people I'll consider. But I don't I don't consider like saying, oh, well, Fetterman decided to do this as something indicative of anything at this point.
|
Sam:
[59:32]
| Right. So I'm just checking. The Democrats that voted for it were John Fetterman, Catherine Cortez Masto from Nevada, and Angus King, who's technically an independent, but who caucuses with the Democrats. Those were the three.
|
Ivan:
[59:49]
| Right. That's it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[59:51]
| And so you need a few more to reach the threshold. You need quite a few more. I don't like three, four, four, five. Yeah, somewhere around that ballpark. You need 60 votes. And so you already have three Republicans plus those three, that's six. You need four more. You need four more. But I don't know. I don't know who's going to get weak in the knees first. I think it depends a lot on the specifics of what pain does end up accumulating in the way you've mentioned, and who is most sensitive to that pain, what states is it affecting, all that kind of stuff. You also honestly have to not discount the possibility at this point of Donald Trump just reopening whatever he feels like, regardless of the rules. Say, oh, this particular thing is causing pain. OK, executive order reopening that and and essentially leaving it officially shut down indefinitely, but turning things on one by one as they feel as they feel like they cause pain to the Republicans.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:05]
| But, you know, I mean, that is obviously a possibility and given where SCOTUS is right now that basically decided that we are a monarchy at this point. I'm like, I'm not, you know, I don't I'm not holding my breath about them, you know, doing anything to push back on this administration.
|
Sam:
[1:01:25]
| Right. And so. Yeah, so if I had to bet, I think you're right. This probably will go past 35 days. And I don't know. Like, I would not be surprised by any of the three options we talked about. You know, Democrats capitulating, Republicans capitulating, Donald Trump just pushing through and not giving a damn about it at all. You know, any one of those three options.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:53]
| Or just Donald Trump changing his mind, which has happened before. And by the way, he changed his mind and all of a sudden made it sold everybody. Like, he made a great deal and, like, convinced everybody that it was like he was right. This is what he wanted all along.
|
Sam:
[1:02:04]
| Oh, yes. And, yes, now that you mention it, I mean, I would have fit that into the Republicans capitulate category. But you're absolutely right.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:15]
| This is not capitulating. This is him saying, I made a great deal and it's what I wanted all along. And, you know, finally, I got the Democrats to do what I wanted. And so, therefore, we have this great deal, even though what he's doing is just what the Democrats wanted. And he will sell it like it was his.
|
Sam:
[1:02:31]
| Yes. Yes. This is his genius. I mean, in so many ways, he's a moron. But this is his genius.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:40]
| That is his superpower. Yes. That is totally his absolute superpower and genius. That he will completely change his mind on something. And then tell everybody it was his idea and then convince everybody it's such a great deal that he negotiated. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:02:57]
| Yes, even though he's actually just giving the other side exactly what they wanted.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:02]
| Yes, taking the complete other side of what he wanted like 30 days before.
|
Sam:
[1:03:06]
| Well, this ties into the stuff we've talked about happening again and again on tariffs with other countries promising to do what they already did and getting credit for it as the massive new deal that was Donald Trump forced through because of the tariffs.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:21]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:23]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:24]
| You forgot that scenario, huh?
|
Sam:
[1:03:28]
| I mean, well, I, like I said, I was counting it as Republicans capitulate, but it's not, but it's fun in a way that's not, you know, well, it is, but it's not, it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:39]
| But it isn't because if you listen, because if you make everybody else believe, and if your people believe that it's your, you made a deal and it's not seen what scenario is the other guys capitulate and everybody sees you're a loser. The other one is you you make it seem like you won, even though you lost and all your constituents believe you won.
|
Sam:
[1:04:01]
| Well, yeah, this is I mean, I'm having flashbacks to the Mueller report. No obstruction, no collusion.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:07]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:04:08]
| That's that's what Barr said, like Ed, for like the two weeks before he released the actual report. So that's what stuck in everybody's head. No obstruction, no collusion. Even though the actual report showed lots of obstruction and lots of collusion.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:24]
| That's exactly right.
|
Sam:
[1:04:25]
| It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:27]
| It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I came in last place. I won. I won. You walk up to the podium. By the way, Donald Trump has done this kind of like literally in even before he was president. OK, I mean, we're he he would he actually David Tepper, I think, is the one that said this, that he showed up to fundraising events, okay, to charitable events where he had not donated a single dime. And he showed up up there like he was some major contributor to help get this thing over the top, blah, blah, blah, showed up there, whatever, and he had not given a dime.
|
Sam:
[1:05:07]
| Right. Okay. Let's take a break. And when we come back, I'll pick the topic for the rest of the time. And I will start with the speech from the generals and then move on to sort of going along with what we've just been talking about, sort of Donald Trump's mental state and stuff. Anyway. Yes, yes. Okay, here we go. We'll be back after this. He just posted a new video, like, a few weeks ago, by the way. Like, he's down, he's only posting, like, a few a year now, and there's still ones that he originally recorded when he was seven years old. He's now 16, by the way. But, yeah, there's a new video out. There's a new video out. So, check it out.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:34]
| Hey, Sam, before we go into the speech, Charles, just a brief mention.
|
Sam:
[1:06:38]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:39]
| What about that coin, huh?
|
Sam:
[1:06:42]
| Oh, yes. Well, you know, when he first mentioned the coin with Donald Trump's name on it, I got excited for a second because maybe it was minting the coin.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:51]
| Oh, the super coin.
|
Sam:
[1:06:52]
| You know, the super coin. And, you know, I would almost accept a Donald Trump coin if they actually did the super coin idea. Because, like, it's just so disruptive and cool an idea. But, you know, no, it's a $1 commemorative coin, apparently.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:10]
| Um so i i i did read and apparently the law is that you can't have a coin as a somebody leader unless they are living person okay so so here's the deal i'm willing that has been the.
|
Sam:
[1:07:21]
| Law for like 140 years or.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:23]
| Something so here's the deal i propose i'm good with a coin if you're promising me that he's going to die like tonight or something we can go ahead with listen if you're If you promise me that he's going to be dead by Monday, I, man, go ahead, make the coin. No problem. Make the coin. Yeah. That's a trade I'm willing to make right now. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:07:51]
| Yeah. So, but, but, but like, honestly, just by natural causes.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:55]
| By the way. Okay. That's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[1:07:57]
| Yes. Yes. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:58]
| You know, he has a heart attack or something. I mean, that cholesterol can't be helped. You know, those kinds of things.
|
Sam:
[1:08:03]
| You are not calling for anything that would necessitate a secret service visit.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:07]
| No, no, no. I'm just, you know, just, just, just, just, you know, if that, I mean, they're playing to admit the coin because they think he's i'm thinking hey they're a bit to the coin because they think he's gonna be dead soon he's seriously ill we don't know that's why they're planning for the coin sam that's the new speculation since apparently he's not posting i i heard again that he's been like a little bit like he's been missing for.
|
Sam:
[1:08:27]
| A couple days again yeah uh well and we'll get to that in a second but yeah no uh.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:32]
| He's getting one of those like just remember you remember the artificial heart guy the the the many you know it was the name but he's getting an artificial heart.
|
Sam:
[1:08:41]
| Dick Cheney.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:42]
| Well, Dick Cheney got one, right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:08:45]
| Well, he didn't get an artificial heart, but he had like a...
|
Ivan:
[1:08:48]
| He got a... This ventricular assist thing, whatever it's called.
|
Sam:
[1:08:53]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:54]
| It's basically an artificial heart, basically, because it's too close to work.
|
Sam:
[1:08:59]
| Anyway, just to finish up the coin thing, it is absolutely true that there is a law that says you cannot have a living person on a coin, and they are apparently 90% of the way through the planning process to release a coin with Donald Trump's face on it. Absent your scenario, this is a clear violation of the law, but so is, you know, 80% of the stuff the Trump administration has been doing. And, you know, no one, it's just, it's, it is what it is. Because, like, the mechanisms aren't in place to effectively actually stop a rogue president who just says, I don't give a fuck. I'm going to do what I want to do. Which is unfortunate, or at least I shouldn't say the mechanisms don't exist.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:47]
| They exist, but nobody wants to use them. The Republicans control Congress, and they basically have said, eh, he can be lawless. We're good.
|
Sam:
[1:09:58]
| And you've got a Supreme Court that is very sympathetic to the idea that the president can do anything they want.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:05]
| So you've got the three branches, the two branches that are supposed to do oversight, basically abdicating their role.
|
Sam:
[1:10:15]
| I mean, the lower courts have been repeatedly going against Donald Trump over and over and over again on many issues. But there's just no level of confidence that when it finally gets to SCOTUS, SCOTUS won't just say, OK, fine, you can do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:29]
| He can do whatever you want.
|
Sam:
[1:10:31]
| And Donald Trump has taken the position that until SCOTUS says no, he's pretty much going to keep going. You know, and, and, you know, even, and honestly, we still have that question. If SCOTUS absolutely says no to something that he cares about. What happens? I mean, we actually had that example from the Garcia in El Salvador. So the Supreme Court actually told him, get him home right away. And it took him like two months.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:02]
| Yeah, well, he delayed it, but he finally did it, is the thing that even though he dragged his feet, they wound up doing it. So.
|
Sam:
[1:11:09]
| Yes. Although, yeah, they did drag their feet.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:13]
| But they wound up doing it at the end.
|
Sam:
[1:11:17]
| So far, so far, when pushes come to shove in the end, Donald Trump and his administration have always backed down from the ultimate confrontations. And not only that, like we've talked about taco with the tariffs, whenever something seems to be getting unpopular, he has backed off as well, you know, because in the end he wants to be loved and he wants people to be like excited about it when, and, you know, it seems his people hide a lot of things from him. But when he gets a whiff.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:49]
| Did the generals laugh and love him when he was given the speech?
|
Sam:
[1:11:53]
| Yeah, let's move on. Let's move on to the generals.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:56]
| So they love. OK, so my key question, did the generals, you know, clap and love what he was when he was given the speech?
|
Sam:
[1:12:03]
| Well, first of all, let's just level set this with the the protocol that generals and other military folks are supposed to follow anyway. Is that they are non-political, and so they shouldn't clap at something like this. No, no, I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:21]
| I know, but I guess he was expecting that, right?
|
Sam:
[1:12:27]
| He specifically said at the beginning, I know you're not supposed to, but feel free to clap if you want to, and stuff like that. And no, nobody clapped. Nobody clapped, nobody hooted and hollered. He was giving, and this is both Hegseth and Trump, were hoping for some positive reactions. They got the generals and admirals basically sitting on their hands.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:50]
| Which is what they should be doing! Which I'm proud of them for doing so, by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:12:55]
| Which is what they should be doing. And just to be clear, first of all, this type of audience, bring in all the generals that exist into one room, has not happened before.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:08]
| Doesn't happen!
|
Sam:
[1:13:10]
| But speaking more generally in front of military audiences, the military audiences can get animated and hoop and holler and stuff when presidents give speeches and the speeches are wholeheartedly like, hey, we're going to support the troops. We're doing a good effort. America is great. Blah, blah, blah. You know, it's things that are somewhat universal where they're just, you know, they're visiting troops in Afghanistan and they're talking about supporting the effort and how important the work they do is and stuff like that. Okay. In those cases, the military is fully allowed to like clap and express appreciation, all of that kind of stuff. But what Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are doing here are, and they really were too different. I don't want to lump them in together. because they had different purposes and were doing different things. But they're fundamentally, especially to Donald Trump's speech.
|
Sam:
[1:14:05]
| It's like 100, well, especially, they were both. They were both 100% political issues that are controversial in politics today, pushing their view, talking about Democrats' evil, et cetera, et cetera. This is exactly the kind of thing where Protocol says the military should sit on their hands, and they did. And a lot of the, you know, it took a few hours for the feedback to start coming in, sort of anonymous generals talking to reporters and such. The feedback is universally that, like...
|
Sam:
[1:14:41]
| The vast majority of people in that audience were disturbed by the speeches and upset by the speeches, not support. I mean, obviously, there's some there's some proportion that would be supportive, but the vast majority were not. They were upset by this. They were like, this is not the kinds of conversations where we should be having. They didn't like being lectured by Hegseth on what it means to be a warrior.
|
Sam:
[1:15:08]
| The feedback on Donald Trump was things like, after the first five minutes I stopped taking notes because it was just incoherent and rambling and it made no sense. Standard Trump speech. The Hegseth stuff was all anti-woke anti-trans, anti-woman, like we don't we want to restore, and pro-war pro-war crimes I guess like pro-war crimes yeah that was.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:39]
| Very clear yes.
|
Sam:
[1:15:40]
| Yeah it's like we don't want any of these rules that tell you how to behave we just want you to kill people kill people and break things you know I.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:52]
| This hexathetic is arranged I I've never heard anybody in military leadership in my as an adult, that I as I remember talk to generals like this.
|
Sam:
[1:16:08]
| Yeah. And even if you actually hear actual military people talking about their jobs, like, they don't, with very few exceptions that probably should be run out of the rail, they don't talk about the kill people and break things with pride. They recognize that it's part of their profession as a necessity, but it's all about professionalism and being able to do what's necessary and not what's more than necessary and we want to use our power to achieve the political goals but we want to do so carefully they really care about things like rules of engagement and trying to avoid the civilian casualties when possible now, They could, you know, they could be a lot more careful than there are. You know, there have been a lot of unnecessary deaths in U.S. military engagements. I mean, we don't quite we don't quite reach Israeli levels.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:15]
| But the one thing is that the primary mission is is, you know, and I see this in a lot of places is defending is defending the country.
|
Sam:
[1:17:25]
| OK, and that's the primary. Exactly. I've seen a number of retired folks commenting, the oath is to support the Constitution.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:36]
| The Constitution, exactly, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:17:37]
| And these fucking jokers are undermining it.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:17:42]
| You know, and so they are not happy about this. I, you know, I've even started, started to see some things on TikTok about like, you know, military folks starting to talk about the possibility of a military coup at some point. Now, I think this is not a likely scenario, but even the fact that you've got a few people sort of starting to murmur about those kinds of options indicate how much these people feel actually feel disrespected by this nonsense.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:18]
| I mean, that's the thing. I think that's the key thing. That whole event was totally disrespectful to the entire military leadership of the United States. That's the one thing that it was.
|
Sam:
[1:18:35]
| Everything from the call everybody in for something that could have been a memo, to the the things you're actually saying i mean and the fact that part of donald trump's speech involved you know oh and prepare to use the american cities as training grounds we're gonna you know be be prepared for that and if you don't like it resign now you know and this is you know So like I said, the culture in the military for many, many decades now is we are a professional organization. We live by standards. We're not just thugs that go out and kill people. You know, yes, of course, it's the military. They kill people. They break things. Yes, that's part of what they do. But the whole ethos is around service and professionalism and doing things by the rules and all of this kind of stuff and honor. And this is not respecting any of that. And part of it, of course, is like, you know, Trump and Hegseth don't actually think any of what I just mentioned is valuable at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:53]
| By the way, and I'm pretty confident that most of those guys that got to be general had zero respect for, even though Hegseth was in the military. I wasn't sure he was. He was.
|
Sam:
[1:20:04]
| Military.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:04]
| He was in the military, but he wasn't exactly. He didn't really make it that far. And it's something that I read some people mentioning. It's this is how far a mediocre guy gets in the military. You know, that was the thinking that I heard around some people. And so, so these guys knowing when that's the mindset of these guys and they realize that they got the mediocre guy who you basically like, you know, the reason he's not there is because he was mediocre and now is the head of them. You know, I know that I've been in those kind of situations in corporate when that happens. Let me tell you something. The rest of the people that were there looking at this guy, they're all like, this fucking loser is the only thing.
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| And this is a different scenario, by the way, than a civilian who's never been in the military at all, but has other experience.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:57]
| Exactly. Yes, absolutely.
|
Sam:
[1:21:00]
| Yeah, this is worse.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:01]
| This is way worse.
|
Sam:
[1:21:02]
| And he's coming in and lecturing them, and he's, you know- When they know.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:08]
| He was mediocre.
|
Sam:
[1:21:10]
| You know, and a lot of these things, like the administration has been so hostile to like women in the military at all, for instance, let alone trans people that they've been absolutely hostile to, but women more generally.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:22]
| Oh my God.
|
Sam:
[1:21:23]
| Now, and look, there is still, you know, the military hadn't fully succeeded in transforming to be fully open to women in all places anyway, but it's moved on quite a bit from where it was 20, 25 years ago. Like there were there were women in significant command positions there are women in various combat positions celebrated the culture has moved on the culture you know it is certainly not perfect but they're trying to drag it back 40 years you know and and with with all of the or more and with all of this kind of stuff when you you don't let's say you did legitimately want to change the culture. This is not the way you do it successfully.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:12]
| No, not at all.
|
Sam:
[1:22:14]
| You know, I mean, just, just like we're, we're talking about, you know, first the military integrated, you know, integrated, not non-white people into the military. Then they started accepting women in non-combat roles and eventually some combat roles and, and, and trans people more recently and gay people more recently, you know, and, you know, this has happened over the course of quite a few years and it's the, it hasn't been easy. The, the, the cultural change has been slow and it is imperfect and it hadn't finished yet, but it had gotten to the point where you can't just snap your fingers and undo it. And, you know, what they're doing, I just, I mean, on the one hand, you know, I hate what they're trying to do, but at the same time, I'm glad they're as bad at it as they are, you know, because it makes it more likely that it will be easier to reverse some of this stuff once they're gone.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:24]
| So i.
|
Sam:
[1:23:25]
| Don't know i i have some more to talk about uh about donald trump specifically any more about these speeches before i.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:31]
| Now move on okay oh can i say one thing wait yeah go ahead let's just you're going to talk about donald trump you said oh can i am i my regular reminder fuck donald trump.
|
Sam:
[1:23:45]
| Oh okay yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:46]
| Yeah i just wanted to make sure that was clear in the program i don't want to forget to.
|
Sam:
[1:23:51]
| Of course not. No, no. Can't forget that. No. So, look, we've talked about Trump's health before. We've talked about Trump's mental health before. I think it's time to do so again. I i mentioned how like generals were off the record quoted as saying they stopped taking notes because it made no sense and it was just rambling and going nowhere if you listened to donald trump's speech here and i did not listen to a lot of it i listened to i listened to.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:25]
| None of it i just read what it is i i like i said before i have a visceral.
|
Sam:
[1:24:30]
| Problem to hearing his voice and I want.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:35]
| To like fucking like, like, like throw shit at it or something. So I have to turn it off.
|
Sam:
[1:24:40]
| So let me start with, first of all, yes, it was rambling and incoherent. He's, he's often rambling and incoherent, but it does seem like it's getting worse. But also he just physically sounded like shit again. Like you remember a few weeks ago we were all talking about, oh, he's been missing for a week. Where'd he go? Blah, blah, blah. Something clearly happened. And then he showed up again. And fine, but he once again sounds like shit. Like, he was very, very low energy. His voice was a monotone most of the time. It was somewhat gravelly. He did not sound well. And so the speculation's not going to go away. I mean, I still think, like, more so than anything else, like if something really acute happens I still believe we will hear about that relatively quickly like if something, wrapped no, no way they will hide it as much as possible they will absolutely hide as much as possible but what I mean by something really acute is like if it's serious enough he has to get rushed to the hospital like we will know about that they will not be able to hide it, absolutely I.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:01]
| Think I mean But listen, I think that they are geared up to even hide that because if, listen, I think speculation is that last time he had to have some kind of procedure, which is why he was like.
|
Sam:
[1:26:16]
| Really like, but they might have been able to do it at the White House.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:19]
| Yeah, but, but I think that they bulked up what they could do at the White House precisely so they can hide whatever the fuck is going on with this guy. So even if he has something major, that they could do it and hide it as much as possible. I've never seen a president, you know, listen, we've had presidents wear the health condition or whatever, they tried to hide it. Sam, this guy's been wearing makeup to hide shit, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:26:41]
| Well, he's been wearing makeup for decades.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:44]
| No, no, no, but he's been wearing makeup to also hide now, like, actual...
|
Sam:
[1:26:47]
| Yes, I know, when he put the stuff on his hands and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:50]
| Yeah, he's been hiding medical, you know, things that are actual physical ailments. He was wearing makeup because he likes to look orange for some fucking reason. I'm talking about wearing makeup in order to hide signs of some physical issues, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:27:06]
| So what I was saying, though, is I think, like, I hear what you're saying. I still think if there was something really acute, they would be incapable of hiding it for very long. But I think what we're seeing is just regular, gradual decline associated with aging, both on his mental state and on his physical state. And it's not a dramatic, like, one day he's like this, the next day he's so much worse. But it's just gradual decline and he's got better days and he's got worse days and you know and that's going to continue to happen but i also feel like i think we're seeing increasing evidence of him being significantly checked out a lot of the time uh in terms of you know like look you you talked about him posting the Grim Reaper meme. A few days earlier, he posted this med bed thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:08]
| Oh, yeah, that's right.
|
Sam:
[1:28:11]
| So for those who don't know or didn't follow this, first of all, I didn't know this, but apparently this is an ongoing conspiracy theory on the right, that the government secretly has developed med beds using alien technology Yeah. Over the last couple of decades. And these are basically beds that you can put a person in and they will heal everything. They will. By the way, this is.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:40]
| Okay. As far as I can tell, these people watched the movie Elysium too, too, too many times. And you need to add that to your list if it's not on there.
|
Sam:
[1:28:48]
| I'm adding, I'm going to.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:49]
| Okay. All right. This is, this seems to be Elysium to give you the, the gist, the main thing is a movie in a, in a future where earth is like, so contaminated that people are living on space stations and like the president and like all those people are living there. And the space stations have these med beds where, where people can get instantly healed of any condition, but only the, the elite people, the, the chosen people, the bed beds actually DNA scan you. And so they won't give you, if you're not a citizen, they won't give you the healing stuff. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:29:23]
| Okay. Yeah. So, so that, so that.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:25]
| So I think, I think these assholes. basically watched that movie too many times.
|
Sam:
[1:29:31]
| So yes the idea is it can heal anything like from you've got a cold cancer somebody chopped so cancer somebody chopped off your arm it will regrow it and even d8 and even de-aging like yeah oh you don't you don't you don't like being in your 50s anymore okay try out your 20s again you know whatever but and and part of the conspiracy of course, is the government has this, but is hiding it from people. So Donald Trump posted an AI generated fake newscast of somebody talking about the new initiative that Donald Trump was announcing that included video of a fake Donald Trump talking about how they were starting to roll out the MedBed program and it would be available to people. And it wasn't going to be available to everybody all at once, but they were going to sign up and there's a way and blah, blah, blah. And he just posted it. Like, it's like, okay. And the question is, did he see this online and just think, oh, this is cool. And it's like, oh, I don't remember announcing this, but okay, I guess I did repost Or what? You know, and they did take it down a few hours later. Like, it was taken down.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:55]
| Oh, they did take it down.
|
Sam:
[1:30:56]
| Which is apparently relatively rare for Donald Trump to take down his social media posts. But they did remove this one after a little while. And just generally speaking, I mean, his unhinged things that he posts on Truth Social seemingly get more unhinged and more unrelated to reality.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:20]
| They're nuts.
|
Sam:
[1:31:20]
| Which is hard because they were already bad.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| Right. But yes, it has escalated in insanity. I mean, it's like, I mean, I am like right now. I realized that I was so busy the last few days that I stopped really reading a lot of media because I, unfortunately, because how much I, you know, actually I was busy and I was having a good time because I, by the way, I realized that my favorite part of, of this job is actually visiting customers. Okay. I've known that before.
|
Sam:
[1:31:50]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:50]
| And I'm like, damn it. I'm like over there. Honestly, I was having a great time. So I wasn't reading any of this. And all of a sudden, after I got busy late yesterday, I started catching up on some of this shit and I opened it and I'm like looking at some of these posts and some of the posts that he was posting. I don't know, a few of the another on the hinge stuff. And I'm like, what in fucking hell? It's just it's in there and they are worse.
|
Sam:
[1:32:16]
| Yes. And I and, you know, and I think there's a lot of. Well, here's the one quote from a couple of days ago. And of course, you'll say like it was a mistake, whatever. But Representative Dean from Pennsylvania confronted Johnson, Speaker Johnson, in the hallways at the Capitol. And this got caught on camera. And she started out by saying, the president is unhinged. He is unwell. And he's pleading for Johnson to like, do something about this. Johnson's answer, his immediate answer before he moved on to other things was, a lot of folks on your side are too. Too.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:59]
| Are too.
|
Sam:
[1:33:02]
| You know, and yes, look, I mean, some people have started talking about, like, Pritzker's calling for the 25th Amendment. Of course, no one's going to listen to Pritzker, right? You know, this is like the 25th Amendment has to be the vice president and a majority of the cabinet. And by the way, even after they declare it, the president just has to submit a letter to Congress. The president has if the president submits a letter to Congress saying, no, never mind, I'm fine. Then Congress has to weigh in and it has to be a two thirds majority. So like the 25th Amendment is really, really hard. You know, I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:42]
| It's basically about as hard. Close to as hard as impeachment, basically.
|
Sam:
[1:33:46]
| Yeah. And basically, like, if the president himself disagrees, it's impossible. Like, for all intents and purposes, it's impossible. Like, it... It's a workable mechanism if the president is in a coma, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:03]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:34:05]
| But if the president is around and disagrees and doesn't think it should, or if the president agrees. Like, you know, we've had a number of occasions now where the president's going into surgery and they sign a letter themselves invoking the 25th to hand over power while they're in surgery. You know, that kind of thing. But it is not a workable mechanism in a situation where the president actively does not agree with being removed. You know, it just isn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:37]
| So anybody talking about that— I mean, it is if everybody—if Congress—it's evident to everybody— If everyone agreed.
|
Sam:
[1:34:43]
| If everybody agrees.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:44]
| But given the.
|
Sam:
[1:34:45]
| Current state of affairs—, is to get Vance to take over. And so, of course, they're going to pull the trigger at some point. I don't buy it. I don't buy it. Like, if the opportunity arises, do I think Vance would, you know, grab it? Of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:07]
| Oh, Vance is a grifter, of course. I mean, if the opportunity arises, like you said, if he's in a coma, fuck, man, Vance is getting that shit signed like yesterday. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:35:21]
| Right. But yeah, no, I think a far more likely scenario is like what you were, they'll hide it. They'll hide it. I mean, they'll trot him out when they need to, and the rest of the government will work around him. I think we've got increasing evidence at this point that that's what's happening anyway, that he's not really engaged, except every once in a while on an issue that he really wants to be. I mean, hell, to some degree, this was true even in his first term, but I think it's much more so true now. There are a couple of issues where he's engaged and cares, but for everything else, the people around him are running things, you know, and depending on the, depending on the subject matter, it's a different person. Like on anything immigration, it's Miller, you know and there may be other people in other areas whatever but he's basically you know that they're they're deciding on the policy they're deciding what to do one of the things that was reported out of the meeting that he had with the democratic leaders over the over the shutdown last week was that they went to him and were like look there are all these things that are going to happen with health care that people's premiums are going to go up people are going to be kicked off it's you know, result of the big beautiful bill and we want to make sure that doesn't happen.
|
Sam:
[1:36:46]
| And then... Apparently his response was, I've never heard any of that. That, that can't be true. You know, that's the, you know, whatever. And, and also, by the way, oh, I, I, I think this happened after our last show when he was sending troops into Portland and he finally talked, like he talked to the governor, the governor of Oregon and the governor of Oregon. And he was like, Portland's not like that. Portland's, there's nothing going on. We don't need you. And he's like, but I saw it on TV. And, and, and she's like, but it's not, it's old stuff, whatever. And he's like, are you telling me that what I see on TV isn't true?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:35]
| I'm like that general that they saw that put his fans in his face, which I think, you know, basically just, just, just It's channeled all of us.
|
Sam:
[1:37:45]
| I mean, because it seems clear. Like the Portland thing. There's been other reporting as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:52]
| What's going on in Portland? What the fuck is going on?
|
Sam:
[1:37:55]
| The reporting on that seems to be that what actually happened is there was no long-term planning on this. Nobody on his team expected it. He saw a report on Fox News where they mixed in coverage from the year 2000.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:09]
| The thing that happened, right, what happened years ago. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:38:12]
| Which, by the way, even in 2000, it was one event that happened on one block one time.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:18]
| In one block.
|
Sam:
[1:38:19]
| Where somebody burnt a car or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:21]
| Yes, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:22]
| And so he saw that footage. And then the next morning he started tweeting out or truth socialing out, we're going into Portland with everything. And then after that, his team scrambled to figure out how to actually do it. Now, there's some reports that some of that planning with the team that did not end up happening was they were going to send in the 82nd Airborne. You know, they were like not just like National Guard. They were going to send in like elite troops and all this kind of stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:55]
| Yes. OK. Donald Trump is a psychopath. Yes. Bottom line. Yes. There's after after careful analysis of all the information we've got, Donald Trump is a deluded psychopath. Okay, there you go.
|
Sam:
[1:39:10]
| And I think specifically, he's been, he's had serious mental health issues basically his entire life, but now they are being aggravated by age. They are getting aggravated by age and getting worse. And stress, yeah. Yeah. So, okay. With that, let's wrap it up. The usual, go to curmudgeons-corner.com and see all our stuff. Stuff. You can see our archives. You can see all the ways to contact us. Transcripts of shows. All kinds of cool stuff. I still have not added a link to TikTok there, so if you want to see TikTok, go there. The most recent thing on there, I need to post more. I'm still way behind i'm like a month behind the most recent thing on tiktok is the clip of me talking about the trip i took where you know i went on a carnival ride with a date and threw up and the people below us were screaming in horror as the as the vomit rained down from above on their heads, we are so good at setting up sam.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:14]
| On a date i i contributed to setting up sam on that date and Let's just say that I think it went quite well, honestly. You know, it did. As I said, there were a few speed bumps. We had 30 years of stories out of this. Yes, I would say that I proclaim it a success in the end. Even, let's see, it was the vomiting, the horse thing, the horses, the horse allergies at the ER. I mean, you know, there was, you know, there was some action going on, enjoyable for Sam. Everything included all in one event. And I'm like, damn it, you know, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:58]
| Yeah. So anyway, that's the last thing on the TikTok is a clip from the show from about a month ago. Anyway, that is that. Importantly, there's a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels. We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. we'll send you a mug all that kind of stuff or at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you to curmudgeon's corner slack where yvonne and i and a bunch of listeners are chatting throughout the week so yvonne fuck oh i caught him by surprise i caught him by surprise filibuster filibuster we we need we need a something we shared on the curmudgeon's corner slack and talked about that was so exciting and so interesting that it will compel people to immediately want to join our Slack and get in touch with us to make that happen. So have I filibustered long enough, Yvonne? No, no.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:53]
| Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. OK. All right. Story this week on the under random. QAnon Shaman says he's rightful president, sues Trump for 40 trillion dollars. OK.
|
Sam:
[1:42:09]
| In a reasonable amount.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:11]
| Yes, of course. In a rambling complaint, Jacob Chansley claims DJs are spies, and the NSA stole his work for Batman movie and more. I mean, yes, damn it. This is so fitting to 2025. And he sued him for 40 trillion dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:42:33]
| 40 trillion.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:34]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:42:35]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:36]
| Get get get on collecting that moment right away, buddy. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:42:41]
| And now that the med beds are out, you know, he'll be able to enjoy this 40 trillion over many.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:46]
| Many years. Forever. There you go.
|
Sam:
[1:42:50]
| OK, with that, let's wrap it up. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Stay safe. Have a good week, and we will see you again next time. I will be hopefully back in the Seattle area, and Yvonne will hopefully continue to be well enough to participate.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:09]
| Yes, I hope so.
|
Sam:
[1:43:11]
| Okay. Thanks, everybody. Here comes the music. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:17]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:43:48]
| Okay, hitting stop. See you later, Yvonne. Feel better. Rest.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:51]
| Ugh. Thank you. Okay. Bye.
| |
|
