Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Who is it?
|
Ivan:
[0:02]
| Idi Amin.
|
Sam:
[0:03]
| Oh, okay. Well, that makes sense, then. Let's see, it's starting up. Okay. I think we're going.
|
Ivan:
[0:14]
| You're smiling.
|
Sam:
[0:17]
| Job, job, job, job, job. Okay. Any preliminaries, or should I hit the button?
|
Ivan:
[0:25]
| No, I'll just hit the button.
|
Sam:
[0:27]
| Hit the button. Okay. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, June 20th, 2026. It's just before 1730 UTC. I am Sam Minter and Yvonne Bowes here. Hello, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:02]
| Hi. Hello. How are you? Hey, did you take a dip in the reflecting pool this week or something? Did you go to D.C. to go take advantage of the beautiful new pool?
|
Sam:
[1:14]
| I did not. But I've considered looking for similar locations nearby just so that I could, you know, take in the ambiance.
|
Ivan:
[1:25]
| Somebody was mocking it. There was a Star Trek The Next Generation episode that was actually kind of shitty. But it had to do, there was this black blobs that all of a sudden went and like killed people. And I believe that that.
|
Sam:
[1:41]
| This is the, oh, so spoilers. This is the one where Tasha Yar dies.
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Ivan:
[1:45]
| Exactly. That's it. And so somebody was mocking that that was like, you know, like that, you'd look like the wrapped in that stuff.
|
Sam:
[1:56]
| The blobby thing.
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Ivan:
[1:57]
| Yeah. If you go into the pool. Yeah. Kind of a thing. It's, you know. Yeah. I have taken care of pools. Not recent time. Well, actually, that's a lie. I was dealing with a community pool for a while. We had to do a number of things to get it fixed. But, when I was younger, we had a—you went to our house in Puerto Rico. We had a massive pool. I don't know if you remember, but our pool was—.
|
Sam:
[2:27]
| I remember there was a pool. Yeah. But our pool was— I remember there were dogs as well.
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Ivan:
[2:34]
| And there were dogs. Yeah. Our pool was, listen, compared to most home pools, and I think it also has to do with older pools in general, we used to be deeper, okay? But I think, I've come to the conclusion, I think, because of insurance risk and other things, they made them that they don't make them as deep. Because our pool was like, at the deepest point, was over 12 feet deep. Okay?
|
Sam:
[3:02]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[3:02]
| And you go to a new house.
|
Sam:
[3:04]
| That doesn't sound like horribly deep. Like, I would expect that in a pool.
|
Ivan:
[3:07]
| For a home pool. Okay. Actually, for a new home pool right now.
|
Sam:
[3:10]
| They don't do that anymore.
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Ivan:
[3:11]
| You'd be hard-trust to find one over six feet. Okay?
|
Sam:
[3:14]
| Oh, wow.
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Ivan:
[3:15]
| Yeah. And one of the things is that insurance companies don't like... It used to be people put diving boards on the pools.
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Sam:
[3:22]
| They don't want you diving.
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Ivan:
[3:23]
| They don't want you fucking putting diving boards in home pools.
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Sam:
[3:27]
| Because somebody will dive improperly, hurt themselves.
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Ivan:
[3:31]
| Yep.
|
Sam:
[3:33]
| And sometimes... The biggest danger... The surprising part, the biggest danger of diving is when you dive into the shallow end, thinking it's the deep end.
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Ivan:
[3:44]
| Correct. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[3:45]
| You know.
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Ivan:
[3:46]
| That's bad.
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Sam:
[3:47]
| So making it all shallow.
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Ivan:
[3:50]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[3:50]
| I guess you just know.
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Ivan:
[3:51]
| No, they don't. They don't. They don't. Man, they won't allow you to put a diving board in the home pool anymore.
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Sam:
[3:56]
| Well, you can dive into a pool without a diving board.
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Ivan:
[3:59]
| Yeah, but they won't allow a diving board. Believe me, a diving board does help make your dive go down a lot more.
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Sam:
[4:05]
| Oh, of course, of course.
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Ivan:
[4:07]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[4:07]
| Of course.
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Ivan:
[4:08]
| You know, so they don't allow that and stuff. So like our pool, like a typical pool now is like 20,000, 30,000 gallons, okay, around there. Our pool was like 80,000 gallons, okay?
|
Sam:
[4:24]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[4:25]
| Which is, you would find like that kind of like that many gallons right now like at a resort pool. You won't find it at a home pool, okay? But I took care of that pool for many years because we had hired some people to do it. They were doing a really bad job. The water was green very often, which, as you can see, is not a very appealing color for, you know, natural, you know, actually an artificial body of water. Okay. That's supposed to look clear.
|
Sam:
[4:53]
| You kind of expect brown or green in like if you're in a pond.
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Ivan:
[4:58]
| Exactly. Not in a pool. Okay. And so...
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Ivan:
[5:02]
| I started taking care of it, and the way I took care of it, you know, I was very good at making sure it was not green, okay? I, you know, I knew how to calibrate the chemicals. You actually, you know, look, you have this, like, little, like, it looks like a little home science kit, okay? Where I would like take water samples, I would like put some chemicals in it, and it would tell me the levels of the pH levels, the chlorine levels, and I would go and I'm like, okay, so I got to add this much, and I got to add this, whatever. So I would do that regularly and make sure the pool filtering system was working. And the one thing that I did back then, which worked very well, even though it was not computerized, was that I got a little pool robot, okay? To clean the pool. Okay, so that way I wouldn't have to have a pool guy come in all the time, you know, to do it. The robot took care of it, okay? And honestly, you doing it by yourself by hand, I would do it, I had done it. It's, man, in that big, if it was a smaller pool, it might not have been that bad. But because our pool was that big, that was a lot of work to try to use a hand because you get this vacuum that pretty much connects to the pool filter. You have this thing, you have this stick, and you have to go. And, like, basically, you know, you go, like, mopping the floor of the pool, basically, to suck up all the stuff.
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Ivan:
[6:29]
| Doing it by hand in that big a pool, that was tiring.
|
Sam:
[6:33]
| Okay?
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Ivan:
[6:34]
| I was like, no, there's got to be a better solution. So, I got these. They sold these little robots all of a sudden, like, sometime in the mid-'80s. And it was not computerized. I don't know how easy. It worked, but it was very good at going through the whole pool. Somehow it created this random pattern that just eventually— And it just did it. And it just did it, and it worked.
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Sam:
[6:56]
| And I'm sure at this point they've got much more sophisticated ones.
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Ivan:
[7:01]
| Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now they shit—I mean, I think they got it. You control them with an app on your phone and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now it's, you know, eons more sophisticated than that. That was entirely a mechanical device that did this. The motor ran just on the suction of the pool filter, okay? That's what actually made it run. So, you know, but, you know, this thing of bringing in a guy that looks like a character from, an evil character from a Batman movie, which as you guys know, I don't like the fucking Batman movies. But he looks like, it's not even from, no, not from a Batman movie. From the TV show. From the 60s TV show. Yes! Yes! From the old TV show! It's the kind of guy that you expect when they show the bad guys in the old TV show with Adam West. That's who you expect to show him. And that's the guy they hired to do the reflecting polls.
|
Sam:
[8:05]
| Yes, who apparently has a long and sordid history of criminality and fraud and whatever. in real life.
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Ivan:
[8:14]
| Yes. In real life. Yes. Yes.
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Sam:
[8:18]
| He was apparently involved in all kinds of scams.
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Ivan:
[8:21]
| Yes! Makes sense.
|
Sam:
[8:24]
| And he's a neighbor of Donald Trump's. He lives near Mar-a-Lago.
|
Ivan:
[8:28]
| Of course! And it's just... By the way, one of the funniest things, somebody was showing a video of the workers talking about how they were doing the coding. And they talked about, this is what you do with concrete floors over and over. Those reflecting pools are not concrete. Okay they're granite and it's a very different surface far more porous.
|
Sam:
[8:53]
| Okay and also by the way apparently intentionally porous, the desire was actually that the water would seep through underneath that's and would be continuously replaced replenished as a way so that's why it would stay clean, yeah that's one of the ways it stayed clean and what they did was.
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Ivan:
[9:15]
| Completely defeat the purpose of that.
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Sam:
[9:18]
| Yes. And by the way.
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Ivan:
[9:21]
| The granite is not a... I found it's like with those kind of stone surfaces also a problem, which is something that's happening, they're not very good for paint to stick on them.
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Sam:
[9:36]
| Again, because you're not supposed to paint them.
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Ivan:
[9:40]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[9:42]
| They're supposed to... The surface was chosen for its properties.
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Ivan:
[9:48]
| Correct.
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Sam:
[9:50]
| Yes. So they're having fun with that. I just, you know, a few minutes before.
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Ivan:
[9:59]
| I will tell you something that I was able to defeat almost all the algae problems I ever had with our pool. Okay. Occasionally I would have a bout of it. If me doing the chemicals and whatever didn't, I didn't get, I actually, I had a very good, the place that I went to for pool supplies, okay, is one of the bigger ones that I think is actually the biggest one that was in San Juan. I just had to go there because the guys at the store, unlike other places where I would go, nobody at the store knew, they just knew how to sell me stuff. They had no idea about the pools. If I had questions of like, they were like, hey, bring us a water sample. We'll go through it and we'll try to figure out what the best course of action to get, to get your pool back up and running. So I would go over there and I would talk to the guys, oh, you know what? This is what this is. You need to, let's add this, and then now we'll get the pool clear back up, and voila, it usually works.
|
Sam:
[10:58]
| Well, here's the... Yes.
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Ivan:
[11:00]
| Yeah. No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[11:03]
| Go ahead. Two things I was going to say. One was just, now, the reflecting pool apparently has had algae issues for its entire existence, and it is something that is a known issue. However, apparently what Trump has done has made it worse.
|
Ivan:
[11:21]
| It's made it way worse. Yes.
|
Sam:
[11:23]
| It has made it way worse. And, you know, and so they, I don't know. So they're trying to remediate it and they are remediating it in ways that in turn make things even worse. Like, for instance, apparently what they were doing to try to get rid of the algae, they were dumping hydrogen peroxide in, which in turn was damaging the paint that they just put on. So big chunks of the paint were coming loose and floating around which as you said they might have done anyway because the surface was not meant to be painted.
|
Ivan:
[11:54]
| Not meant for it yep.
|
Sam:
[11:55]
| Yep and so and all of this of course is because we had a you know a a no bid contract given to a crony to do something that just said do this without, you know completely bypassing all the normal steps that usually would happen to validate, is this a good idea? Will it work? Are the experts and scientists agreed that this makes sense? How about the architects? How about the National Park people who know about this system and the history of the system and why it was designed the way it was and blah, blah, blah. No, you don't consult any of those people.
|
Ivan:
[12:39]
| Which brings the issue, of course, of you were talking about Air Force One now and supposedly this.
|
Sam:
[12:46]
| Before we move on, I was going to say right before we started recording, I did see a relevant TikTok idiot, idiot, idiot, video, idiot.
|
Ivan:
[12:57]
| Oh, okay.
|
Sam:
[12:58]
| A TikTok video that, you know, I will, I will play here. At the time, I didn't think it was good enough to forward on to the Slack, but I just did because we're talking about it. But apparently it is people protesting at the reflecting pool. They've got the signs, they're chanting, all that kind of stuff. I'm going to play it here. Here you go. Let's go, LG, let's go!
|
Ivan:
[13:27]
| Let's go, LG, let's go! Yes! Let's go, LG, let's go! Oh yes, yes, yes! Yay, Audrey!
|
Sam:
[13:44]
| Okay, that's good enough to give the proper attribution. The one I saw was posted by an account, Charlie Cotton, but it's got a TMZ watermark on it. So I presume TMZ was recording this. And it's just a handful of guys who went out, they made t-shirts, they made signs, and they went out and chanted. Anyway, now you can move on to Air Force One.
|
Ivan:
[14:12]
| But it's kind of like the same bullshit methodology, which is happening with Air Force One, which is why I expect that this, thing where they have rushed this Qatari airplane, supposedly, it's not even ready for service. It's ready for testing. Okay. All right. To serve as an interim Air Force One because he wants a more luxurious airplane. And this airplane was, you know, was a very luxurious VIP airplane. And, and, I pretty much expect a lot of the same shit to happen because one of the things that Trump has insisted, which has been recommended against, okay, for Air Force One, was the use of this dark color that he decided to use on the airplane. Yes.
|
Sam:
[14:59]
| Famously, even before this bribe plane from, was it the Qataris?
|
Ivan:
[15:05]
| The Qataris.
|
Sam:
[15:06]
| I forget which. The Qataris.
|
Ivan:
[15:07]
| The Qataris.
|
Sam:
[15:09]
| Yeah, even before that, if you remember in his first term, he was talking about changing the color scheme. He just didn't, you know, win. And so Biden quietly shelved those plans while he was president. And he, of course, brought it right back as soon as he came in for this new color scheme.
|
Ivan:
[15:27]
| But the one thing is that the Air Force had been before. And livery just in general.
|
Sam:
[15:31]
| New design.
|
Ivan:
[15:31]
| Listen, Air Force, the Air Force, and it's actually, I've found in guidelines that the Air Force has, okay, dissuades, actively, I guess, these kind of dark paints on the airplanes, specifically because of heat absorption, okay? Because it's a fucking, you know, it makes everything hotter, it attracts heat at a very intense rate, and therefore it could cause issues with systems, okay? It's not, you know, for an aircraft that you want to be at a high availability level, okay? That needs to be, you know, on call, available for the president at any moment in time, you don't want this, okay? And the Air Force actively was recommending against this. And I fully expect the fact that this thing has been, again, rushed through, and they think that somehow they're claiming ready.
|
Ivan:
[16:34]
| It's going to be a disaster. So, yeah, I mean, I fully expect this to be another fiasco because I don't know. Listen, the main reason why and I don't expect I mean, this airplane can I don't see how it can be used extensively because why? Well, one of the things about the original Air Force One and the new Air Force One is why it's taken so long to to to for them to truly be ready. Okay is because all the cabling in the fucking airplane have to be replaced covered and wired in order to, shield it against like things like emp and shit like that that you want a fucking, airplane that the president is on to be you know.
|
Ivan:
[17:25]
| Shielded against okay let me ask there is they couldn't have done that because this is one of the reasons why it's taken so long for these fucking planes to be built right now. It's because they went the route of, hey, we're going to take a plane that came off the production line instead of building new ones. Okay? New airframes. Okay? Because there were a couple of whitetails. Oh, that could supposedly save us money. Well, that was a huge mistake because you have to rip the whole goddamn thing apart to basically put it back together to do this. Okay? It would have been a lot easier if you got a whole new fucking airplane, okay? And so, my understanding is that they did not replace the interior. So, how the hell? No, they did not. He wanted the luxury interior. That was the big thing.
|
Sam:
[18:24]
| He wanted the luxury interior, but I think there was some question, at least initially, about whether they would change the luxury interior. But no, I mean, I think you're right. Like a part of what he wanted was the very specific decor.
|
Ivan:
[18:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[18:39]
| Added the damn plane. Right. You know, which of course means, but here's the thing. This is also a security issue, right?
|
Ivan:
[18:46]
| It is a total security issue.
|
Sam:
[18:49]
| You leave the decor in. I mean, I presume they've swept the thing for surveillance and for all of that kind of stuff. But, you know.
|
Ivan:
[18:58]
| It's a huge risk.
|
Sam:
[19:00]
| Like, you know, for all you know, like, I mean, I presume they have done all the natural sweeps for stuff. But like normal paranoia on this thing would be, you don't keep anything.
|
Ivan:
[19:14]
| Exactly. But with, listen, how could you trust that they did the proper job with these fucking clowns in charge?
|
Sam:
[19:23]
| Well, like, what you would have to count on is that the people in charge are clowns, but the people lower down on the totem pole are still professionals. But, you know, if the people at the top are just constantly saying, what do you mean you want to do this? Fuck that. We're not going to do that. We're going to skip that.
|
Ivan:
[19:43]
| That's exactly what you're getting.
|
Sam:
[19:45]
| Then what happens? I mean, so all of the things that are precautionary are being ripped out. all of the things that are... I'm speculating here. I guess you are too. I mean, the actual detailed, what they did is classified, I'm sure.
|
Ivan:
[20:01]
| Listen, this is not like idle speculation. You've seen how they operate. You've seen how many times Trump has done this.
|
Sam:
[20:07]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[20:08]
| What makes you... Honestly, what makes... You've seen how little time they're saying that they're putting this plane to testing. Okay?
|
Sam:
[20:16]
| I mean, when we...
|
Ivan:
[20:18]
| The evidence all points to...
|
Sam:
[20:18]
| When the plane was...
|
Ivan:
[20:19]
| They cut a lot of corners.
|
Sam:
[20:21]
| When the plane was first given to Donald Trump, and we talked about it on this show, your statement was, it takes like four years to get one of these things ready, minimum.
|
Ivan:
[20:35]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[20:35]
| And that will put us past the end of Donald Trump's term. And here we are.
|
Ivan:
[20:41]
| One year later.
|
Sam:
[20:42]
| Yeah, one year later. About one year later since this thing was gifted. And it's going into trials. And what I heard was that the, the intended inaugural flight with Trump on board was going to be on July 4th, and Donald Trump would do a flyby of Mount Rushmore in the damn plane. Now, I may have misheard that.
|
Ivan:
[21:06]
| Maybe it was somebody exaggerating. I did do recall hearing something about that. I mean, if he wound up crashing in the inaugural flight because this asshole, like, you know, decided to not do this, it would be one hell of a fitting end to the Trump presidency.
|
Sam:
[21:24]
| Into Mount Rushmore?
|
Ivan:
[21:25]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:26]
| Right into George Washington's hat or something?
|
Ivan:
[21:28]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[21:31]
| Nah, I mean... Look, when you skimp on things, things happen you don't like. I mean, the reflecting pool is a perfect example of that. I presume.
|
Ivan:
[21:42]
| I'm sorry, the Iran. You want a better example of, like, fucking stupidity and humor?
|
Sam:
[21:48]
| You'll probably do the entire next segment on the Iran war, okay? So let's leave that for a second. But you're absolutely right. I mean, hell, pick almost anything Donald Trump has done in his second term. I mean, you can argue about things in the first term, too. But the thing is, in the first term, he still had people around him who knew what the fuck they were doing, who would basically.
|
Ivan:
[22:13]
| They kind of, they did stop him from doing stuff.
|
Sam:
[22:16]
| They would stop him from the worst, stupidest things.
|
Ivan:
[22:19]
| Yes. Right now, nobody is.
|
Sam:
[22:21]
| He still did a lot of stupid things. But they would, the worst things apparently, were indeed curtailed by the people he had around him in the first term. The second term, 100% yes, people. Even the people who know better are like, the reason I'm here is to say yes, and I have to keep saying yes, and I'm hopefully positioning myself for something after he's gone. But in the meantime, I know I have to say yes to everything or I'm gone, you know? So, so here we are.
|
Sam:
[22:59]
| And so practically anything you list in the, in the second term is this kind of, we're going to barrel right into it, do the thing the stupid man wants and then start suffering the consequences of them. Sometimes immediately, sometimes with a significant delay because, you know, hey, policy actions aren't instant, you know, aren't always instant. Some of these have been. And the mess increases. And this isn't even, I mean, you know, it would be a better world if there was actually ideological coherence here, even if things that were being done were things I drastically disagreed with, I think. What we have, in fact, is just random whims, essentially. Like most, you know, and thankfully, I think actually, you know, look, and we mentioned this last week, I think, too.
|
Sam:
[23:57]
| Better that he's screwing around things with things like the reflecting pool and air force one and a big like, thing on the white house you know lawn fight, the stupid fight on the lawn or the little monuments to himself or the kennedy center then i ran war kind of things you know he's doing all of them of course we have both of course we have both, but you know It's still, you know, it's... And I kind of take it back a little bit where I said it would be better if we had ideological coherence because the incompetence, at least means most of the stuff he's trying to do that is consequential and has negative consequences he's failing at. But sometimes there's still negative consequences. Like the Iran war, he's failing.
|
Ivan:
[24:57]
| Listen, yeah, we're having all sorts of cholera. Collateral damage from all of these things, damage that is long-lasting, damage that is impactful to the economy, to people, to families, to everything, to our alliances, to the long-term health of the nation and the world. I mean, at this point, this is, you know, the things that he's done have significant long-term consequences right now from, you know, from all these SCOTUS appointees that basically have created an environment that is unsuitable for women that are pregnant, and risk their lives every time that they are pregnant now, depending on where they live in the United States and even in other states. And it's just like in almost every state, for that matter, you know, to the long-term damage he's done to our alliances around the world and created a world where we have a new military arms race because of him, basically.
|
Sam:
[26:03]
| Yes. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[26:05]
| It's just the consequences are far reaching. And, you know, but I just saw that this is apparently it's a 10 year anniversary of Brexit. And, you know, these guys over here.
|
Sam:
[26:21]
| How has it been that long, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[26:23]
| I know. I'm, I just I shuddered about it. It's a 10-year anniversary, and I'm seeing this here, that they posted a story on Bloomberg that kind of epitomizes the Trump mentality kind of a thing, which says, Brexit was only as good as its plan. Oh, wait. There never was one. Ten years later, what still remains is the muddle and anger. And to quote Boris Johnson, which is a, you know, pseudo Trumpy type person. And he says, I quote, we didn't have a plan for what to do next, said Boris Johnson. Because we didn't think it was our job to have a plan. Okay.
|
Sam:
[27:12]
| I hadn't heard that quote.
|
Ivan:
[27:14]
| That's him. That bastard. i mean it's it's saying, yeah keir starmer is about to lose his job in the uk in large part because of things of how he's dealing with the post post-brexit things and he tried to do a budget, you know one of the things that i really i didn't i was looking at this more in depth because this show clarkson's farm is on, on on on your former employer's uh uh video service okay and And one of the things that came up was that this government that is supposedly pro the people, they had decided to try to cut the subsidies that they had put in to replace the EU farm subsidies by 76% to the farmers.
|
Sam:
[28:00]
| No one will notice that.
|
Ivan:
[28:02]
| Nobody will notice that, right? And I'm wondering why the hell his popularity has plummeted like a rock.
|
Sam:
[28:10]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[28:11]
| Right. Because by the way, this money was simply replacing the money that they got from the EU farm scheme. Okay. Right. And so all you were doing is trying to make the farmers whole. Because he told everybody that you were going to be better off post-Brexit. But, by the way, oh no, we'll give you a 76% cut.
|
Sam:
[28:33]
| Okay, yes. And they, yes, so they're currently doing things. It's pretty clear his, the prime minister's situation is not tenable. He has not officially announced he's resigning yet, but there's talk that even as soon as this weekend, He might announce a timetable.
|
Ivan:
[28:56]
| Yeah, I think he's cooked.
|
Sam:
[28:57]
| There are various people lining up to compete to be next. I think one of the things that they've, they're trying to encourage him to set a timetable. Like, I'm out in a month or I'm out in two months or something. To give time for the competitors to, like, figure out what they're doing. As opposed to straight up, like, I'm resigning today. Figure it out. You know.
|
Ivan:
[29:22]
| Well, his main competitor, if I understood correctly, went and won a recent vote by a crushing margin.
|
Sam:
[29:30]
| This was a vote yesterday or the day before. And I'm not, this is definitely a competitor. I don't think it's quite settled enough to be like, this is definitely the guy.
|
Ivan:
[29:44]
| But he is, what I understood, he's the leading contender.
|
Sam:
[29:47]
| He is one of the leading contenders. So let's put it that way. But yes. And and he just won a by-election and i made a note on the convention's cornerstock it's always interesting and like, you kind of wish in some senses that the u.s could do it this way, they they always do the count is always completed in a few hours by then they they do it and then they make all the candidates this is for the local constituency election so the equivalent of you know a member of parliament equivalent of a member of our house of recommend of representatives. They get at all the candidates together in like an auditorium. And they are all standing there on stage when the vote results are read out. And then they announce the winner. And they are all standing there next to each other and whatever, like congratulations, handshakes, whatever.
|
Ivan:
[30:38]
| By the way, the only reason we've got delays. Listen, the only reason we have a lot of delays right now in our vote counts is simply because of how we're treating, because of the treatment of absentee ballots and mail-in ballots. It has nothing to do with actual counting. If you did certain different types of treatment, you decided to do. Because Florida, for example.
|
Sam:
[31:01]
| We could make decisions to make it faster. I know. The part I'm getting at is not the instant. I don't actually care about the instant. What I love about this is getting all the candidates to stand together.
|
Ivan:
[31:12]
| Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[31:13]
| Including minor candidates. So, like, for instance, this guy who we were just talking about. I forget his name. You should look up his name.
|
Ivan:
[31:20]
| I know. I'm trying to remember his name.
|
Sam:
[31:22]
| He was standing on stage directly next to a protest candidate who wears a trash can upside down on his head as a costume.
|
Ivan:
[31:31]
| Oh, I love that.
|
Sam:
[31:32]
| And, you know, and so immediately upon announcing that he was the winner, the first handshake was from the guy with the upside down trash can on his head.
|
Ivan:
[31:44]
| I love it. I love it.
|
Sam:
[31:46]
| Who was also right in the same thing announced as having gotten 95 votes. And you know and there were interviews on the news about this guy and what his platform was and apparently he had a couple you know protest things about like you know the the guy who won apparently like, was still mayor of somewhere and was running for parliament instead. And he's like, you should finish out your term as mayor first. But then when asked about his positions, he started talking about some specific traffic issues in the area and some other specific issue. So like, you know, this guy got a platform, but like, I just think it's entertaining. I mean, what would you, I mean, I don't know. It would have been, can you imagine 2016? If you had it's.
|
Ivan:
[32:37]
| The guy's name.
|
Sam:
[32:38]
| Okay Burnham could you imagine 2016 if the announcement of the presidential election, was an event where Trump and Clinton and Stein and the Libertarian and all these people had to be standing next to each other on the stage while the results were read out.
|
Ivan:
[32:59]
| That would have been quite bizarre.
|
Sam:
[33:01]
| You know or Or can you imagine 2020?
|
Ivan:
[33:06]
| Now that one, I would have made money for.
|
Sam:
[33:09]
| With Trump standing there expecting to win, getting the announcement that he lost live on TV.
|
Ivan:
[33:19]
| That would have been something.
|
Sam:
[33:21]
| It would have been. Now, anyway. Now, we jumped straight into newsy stuff. And actually, we don't have that long a list. Reflecting pool was one of the two things on the damn list. But shall I jump to a quick movie, a couple movies before we move on? Now, I will have— Well.
|
Ivan:
[33:38]
| The reason I talked about—well, the reason, of course, I talk about it is because I was very big. This was my thing. I mean, I did this for a long time, you know? And I can assure you, I have proven far more competent than these guys that are doing the job right now. I am very confident if you had put me in charge of the pool thing, it would have been a much better job. Well, basically, we wouldn't have painted the—I wouldn't paint the fucking— But then you wouldn't.
|
Sam:
[34:08]
| Meet the requirement of making an American flag blue.
|
Ivan:
[34:11]
| I know. Actually, you know what? There was a way of doing this that didn't— Dye the water? No. Well, you could do that, but no. An easier way. Lights.
|
Sam:
[34:22]
| Lights. Yeah. You could have done it with lights.
|
Ivan:
[34:25]
| You could have done that with lights just for the celebration, and then you take away the lights, and that's it. You're back to normal.
|
Sam:
[34:31]
| People were pointing out, too, by the way, that what they tried to do with the hydrogen peroxide was probably also poisoning all kinds of neighborhood birds who were eating the algae.
|
Ivan:
[34:40]
| Listen, oh, my God. They basically created this toxic chemical cocktail over there is what they did, like right now. Yes.
|
Sam:
[34:50]
| Okay. I got a couple movies. One note. One note first. We do have someone watching on our live stream right now as we did last week and i want to apologize for both last week and this week the little youtube panel that normally would show where comments and stuff, instead just has a little purple monkey that says something went wrong, so like if whoever, so whoever if you're watching and if you're making comments and if you did last week as well, because I know someone was watching last week as well. I apologize in advance because I'm not seeing any of those comments. If you're not making comments, then, you know, who cares? It's fine. It's fine not to make comments. But I'm just letting you guys know, all I see is a nice little, it's a purple monkey with a red hat and a hammer, that says something went wrong. And that's all I see where the comments would normally be. So, purple monkey. Anyway movies number one I'm going to do two, The second of which we've talked about before, so it can probably be pretty quick. But the first one, from 1998, Crocodile Dundee 2.
|
Ivan:
[36:07]
| Oh, yeah, I remember that movie. It was, God, it's bad. Not great.
|
Sam:
[36:17]
| Well, when we talked about Crocodile Dundee 1 a while back, I did say that, you know, I didn't feel it really aged well.
|
Ivan:
[36:29]
| It wasn't good when it came out.
|
Sam:
[36:30]
| It wasn't my kind of humor.
|
Ivan:
[36:33]
| You mean two or the first one?
|
Sam:
[36:35]
| No, I mean one. I'm talking one. I was not a fan of one. It wasn't really my kind of humor. I forget if I gave it a thumb sideways or a thumbs down. I probably said thumb sideways because it's sort of, you know, one of those well-known movies of our generation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And good to know what it is. But I don't think I particularly was like, ha ha, this is so funny, this is great, this is whatever, I thought it aged badly, whatever. And two was just trying to, hey, the first one made money, let's make another one.
|
Sam:
[37:14]
| As opposed to being a really nice whatever. My usual Wikipedia plot summary. Two years from the first film, Mick Dundee and Susan Sue Charlton are living happily together in New York, although Mick's ignorance of city life is a hazard when he attempts to continue his former lifestyle, such as blast fishing in Manhattan's waters. Sue's writing has made him a popular public figure. He goes to work for Leroy Brown, a mild-mannered stationary salesman trying to live up to a self-conceived bad guy in the street's image. While working for the DEA in Columbia, Sue's ex-husband, Bob, takes photographs of a drug cartel leader's murder of an unknown person, and is spotted by one of the cartel's sentries. He sends the photographs to Sue before being murdered. Colombian cartel leader Luis Rico and his brother and top lieutenant Miguel go to New York City to retrieve the photos, and of course hijinks ensue, and that's the rest of the movie.
|
Sam:
[38:17]
| I'm going to go with another thumb sideways. It wasn't so bad that it was painful, but I just, it didn't do anything for me. It was just sort of like, eh, okay, here's another one of these. And it's sort of, yeah. At a certain point you're like, okay, he's been in New York for years. He should have figured this shit out by now, you know?
|
Ivan:
[38:42]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[38:43]
| And vice versa, like when they go to Australia and then, because of course they always go to, you know, they split the time. He, you know, it's like, I don't know. I'm just not impressed. Let's put it that way. I'm not impressed, but, you know, was it okay to spend a couple? It's okay, but it wasn't better than okay. You know, it's just sort of.
|
Ivan:
[39:10]
| I mean, it was a blah movie. that I remember, I would give it a B right now.
|
Sam:
[39:16]
| You'd give it a straight-up thumbs down.
|
Ivan:
[39:17]
| Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's one of those sequels that should never have been made.
|
Sam:
[39:24]
| Well, speaking of sequels that should never be made, not my next movie, but I'll just mention that later on, haven't gotten to it on the list, won't for a while, but we did watch Crocodile Dundee 3.
|
Ivan:
[39:39]
| Which actually isn't named Crocodile.
|
Sam:
[39:41]
| Dundee 3 it's Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles from 2001.
|
Ivan:
[39:48]
| I don't think I ever watched that one I'm pretty sure I didn't watch that one I think pretty much after 2 I was like okay, You shouldn't have made two. And I'm like, fuck, I'm not watching three. You know, I should. You know, by the way, you mentioned I mentioned on the slack that I saw Toy Story five yesterday.
|
Sam:
[40:08]
| OK. And you want to give you a quick review?
|
Ivan:
[40:10]
| I'll just say, because obviously it's brand new. Don't want to give any spoilers on this one.
|
Sam:
[40:17]
| They all die. They're all fed. They're all fed into a wood chipper.
|
Ivan:
[40:22]
| Two thumbs up. OK, it's an excellent movie. but I don't recall I did not see three and four I saw one and two that I remember I'm pretty sure I've seen one two and three yeah but not four but I gotta tell you five is fantastic, okay they did a really great job.
|
Sam:
[40:39]
| You didn't feel like the whole time you're like damn it I didn't see three and four so I don't know what's happening.
|
Ivan:
[40:43]
| I didn't feel that but it's just it's really but five you don't need to have watching it was it was really good it was really well made they really did a fantastic job with that movie i thought i'm like ah this is probably not going to be good whatever, uh damn it it was really good i i i urge everybody to watch it it's packed theater i'll tell you what.
|
Sam:
[41:09]
| You know what one of the things on our you know the the lists that i base my movies off of we are slowly going through the pixar movies but, i we're right at the beginning i think we saw the original Toy Story most recently. So...
|
Ivan:
[41:25]
| Look, I was realizing yesterday that we're watching Toy Story 5, which is a sequel to that movie, that that movie came out in 1995?
|
Sam:
[41:34]
| Now you're going to make me look.
|
Ivan:
[41:36]
| I'm pretty sure.
|
Sam:
[41:38]
| Toy Story 1 was indeed 1995.
|
Ivan:
[41:41]
| Yeah. I mean, it's... Man, we're doing a sequel to a movie 30 years later.
|
Sam:
[41:52]
| Here are the years. Wait, here are the years. Toy Story, the first one, 1995. Toy Story 2, 1999. 3 was in 2010. 4 was in 2019. 5-2026 plus of course we had the spinoffs Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Lightyear and a bunch of short films and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[42:16]
| Too but just think about how crazy it is that as watching a sequel to a movie that included a number of the original actors 30 years plus after.
|
Sam:
[42:29]
| Well Yvonne there were new Star Wars movies including some of the original new actors like recently as well.
|
Ivan:
[42:36]
| Well, that's true, but it's just, yeah, yeah, I know. That's even longer. I know. I mean, it's like four, yeah.
|
Sam:
[42:42]
| Mark Hamill was still playing Luke Skywalker just a few years ago on like the Mandalorian or something.
|
Ivan:
[42:48]
| Yes. Holy shit.
|
Sam:
[42:51]
| Mandalorian or Book of Boba Fett or one of those.
|
Ivan:
[42:54]
| Anyway, one of those, whatever, I don't.
|
Sam:
[42:56]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[42:56]
| But just how crazy is that?
|
Sam:
[43:01]
| Yes. Yeah. Um, there are some long running series that even include original actors. I mean, we know they make remakes and continuations that change the actors and things like that.
|
Ivan:
[43:16]
| But this is not, that's, that's not this. This is, this is sequel.
|
Sam:
[43:21]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[43:22]
| Period. That's it. So.
|
Sam:
[43:24]
| So big thumbs up, big double thumbs up on Toy Story 5.
|
Ivan:
[43:29]
| Yeah, absolutely. Totally. A hundred percent.
|
Sam:
[43:33]
| And. So if you had to choose between Toy Story 5 again or Crocodile Dundee 2, you would pick Crocodile Dundee 2, right?
|
Ivan:
[43:47]
| Oh, yeah, of course. Yes, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[43:53]
| Okay, the next one. And I had mentioned that we'd seen this. We'd talked about this on the show before because it had come up a different way. And this time it came up as I was working my way through that AFI list, the AFI 1998 ranking, up to number three on that list, The Godfather from 1972. Is that your attempt of doing the music?
|
Ivan:
[44:26]
| Yeah, it's a very terrible attempt, but yes.
|
Sam:
[44:30]
| Yeah, so thumbs up. Alex does not like any of the Godfather series. We have seen it. We've seen all of them. But this was a rewatch of Godfather. And I liked them all. And I liked the first one specifically. specifically does it deserve to be number three on this list and apparently in two 2007 when they re-ranked it they moved it up to number two, i don't know if it needs if it's really number three but it is a good look.
|
Ivan:
[45:05]
| Listen i i'm gonna say this i think i i'm gonna say yes i'm gonna tell you why because the movie is still good you.
|
Sam:
[45:15]
| Know we talk.
|
Ivan:
[45:16]
| About it even.
|
Sam:
[45:17]
| This and it was a 1972 movie.
|
Ivan:
[45:19]
| Yes Even this long afterwards. It's crazy how that movie, you know, with some movies you watch a whole bunch later and you're like, yeah, whatever. I was just, the other day it came on TV and I was watching it. I'm realizing how I'm fucking like sucked in. I'm like realizing, damn it, this thing, fucking how long afterwards? And it's still that, it's still good. It's still good. It's crazy. But yeah. Yeah. So I think that that is well-deserved because of how many movies that have been on that list and then you watch like now and you're like, eh, this is, you know, this isn't good. You know, this doesn't, you know, it didn't age well.
|
Sam:
[46:01]
| Right. That does happen a lot.
|
Ivan:
[46:04]
| Exactly. That happens quite a lot.
|
Sam:
[46:07]
| But, you know, as we're sort of finishing off this top 10 from the Say-Fi list, just real quick, let's see. Singing in the Rain, Schindler's List. On the Waterfront, The Graduate, The Wizard of Oz, Lawrence of Arabia, Gone with the Wind, The Godfather, Casablanca, Citizen Kane. I'd say actually most of them hold up pretty well.
|
Ivan:
[46:36]
| Yeah. Most of those, yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:38]
| Yeah. I mean, it's a good top ten. I mean, you can always argue top lists, but it's a decent top ten. And, you know, we'll talk about Casablanca and Citizen Kane and my thoughts of those in coming weeks. But, you know, it's a decent list. And I did enjoy the Godfather. I will say one additional sort of preview that will be a long time before we get to end the show. But I think I'd already talked about Godfather 1, 2, and 3 as we watched them previously. But because we watched Godfather again, the way my system works, that kicks off a rewatch of the sequels, too. So I think we already watched Godfather 2 again, and we'll eventually get to that. We rolled Godfather 3, but the first time we watched Godfather 3, we actually watched Godfather Coda, which was the re-edit and re-release of Godfather 3. This time when we rolled it, we went and found a physical media release of the original and ordered it.
|
Sam:
[47:54]
| It's out of print, so we're getting a used copy from somewhere or something. I don't think it's arrived yet. Has it arrived yet? I don't know. Anyway, we ordered it, I'm pretty sure. Am I making this up, Alex? Or is this true? Did we reorder the physical Godfather 3? I think we did. Anyway, sometime after it arrives, we will rewatch it. But in the original edit... And, you know, they made some changes, you know, so we'll see. We'll see what I think. See if I even notice the differences. I'm checking my Amazon order history for this thing. Oh, wait, yes. Arriving by July 9th. The stupid.
|
Ivan:
[48:36]
| What are they sending it?
|
Sam:
[48:37]
| Well, and we ordered it like a month ago, too.
|
Ivan:
[48:41]
| It's coming from China?
|
Sam:
[48:42]
| Something. I don't know. It's Godfather Part 3 on Blu-ray, but it's the original. It was some, you know, third party, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, for all I know, it's somebody who didn't really actually have the thing and just figured in two months they could find one and send it to me. You know, so.
|
Ivan:
[49:01]
| Is there a tracking associated with the shipping or no, no track?
|
Sam:
[49:05]
| Wait, wait. There is a, there is a shipping thing on it. Let me click it.
|
Ivan:
[49:10]
| Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Click on the track.
|
Sam:
[49:12]
| Shipped with see all tracking details.
|
Ivan:
[49:15]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[49:16]
| The tracking details are blank.
|
Ivan:
[49:19]
| Ah.
|
Sam:
[49:24]
| And it's shipped with Ascendia.
|
Ivan:
[49:29]
| Well, you might be in the same territory where I ordered some pants like a while back from a third party like this, where a month and a half later, and the tracking came up something like this.
|
Sam:
[49:42]
| Yep.
|
Ivan:
[49:43]
| And a month plus, the pants are nowhere to be found. And I'm just like, first I asked them for a refund. They basically were like giving me shit. And I just went to the credit card company and said, listen, they said they're shipped.
|
Sam:
[49:58]
| That's a stamp charge.
|
Ivan:
[49:59]
| Yeah, just give me my fucking money back. I'm never... These things are never coming. I don't know what the fuck scammed or run. Yeah, we'll see. They give me my money back immediately.
|
Sam:
[50:08]
| Yeah, we'll see. I can be patient, you know? I mean, usually, eventually, like, if these things are never sent, you know, Amazon will do something themselves. But, yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I forget. Oh, I was just looking. It has been the order. We placed the order May 27th.
|
Ivan:
[50:34]
| It's almost a month.
|
Sam:
[50:35]
| Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we'll see. Ah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. That's all I got on this. Shall we take a break and then try to figure, I guess, I guess I ran.
|
Ivan:
[50:46]
| Yes, we have to talk about IRA.
|
Sam:
[50:48]
| Unless you got something else.
|
Ivan:
[50:49]
| No, no, no. I ran.
|
Sam:
[50:52]
| I ran. Where did you run?
|
Ivan:
[50:54]
| Treadmill. Actually. I've been doing a lot of treadmill. No, I've been doing a lot more treadmill running lately.
|
Sam:
[50:59]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[51:01]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[51:03]
| I should probably run some, but I would need to, like, work myself up to a run. Like, if I run flat out right now, I...
|
Ivan:
[51:11]
| No, no, no, you're not. Okay, that's... Yeah, no, that doesn't work. No, you got to start a little bit with, like, you know, you do some walking, you build the speed, you do some incline walks, then you do some short bursts of running, and then you start working up the time. Start running maybe two minutes, three minutes. It's a buildup. It's not.
|
Sam:
[51:32]
| You know, my biggest recent source of exercise, other than, you know, occasional household chores and stuff like that.
|
Ivan:
[51:40]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[51:41]
| I did go to the gym once in the last three months. So I did do that once. Or maybe even twice. I'm not sure. But I think once. But anyway, no, my biggest actual source of exercise. Yvonne's laughing.
|
Ivan:
[51:54]
| Twice in three months? Wow. You're really pounding it, Sam.
|
Sam:
[51:59]
| I think it was probably actually only once. maybe twice in six months you know you're.
|
Ivan:
[52:04]
| Really killing it sam.
|
Sam:
[52:06]
| I don't i don't but no my biggest source of recent exercise has been, what's the right what's the right frequency i for a while i was doing this like five days a week, was just giving alex piggyback rides now for those of you who know alex is my son wait wait how how long.
|
Ivan:
[52:31]
| Ago was this.
|
Sam:
[52:32]
| The last time i did it was last week week and a half uh.
|
Ivan:
[52:36]
| For how what distance were you carrying him piggyback.
|
Sam:
[52:40]
| Well let me let me state to people first of all for anybody who doesn't know my son is now 16 years old, and is taller than me and weighs more than i do well i'm not sure he weighs more than i do he probably weighs very close to the same amount as i do maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit less because i am a bit fatter than he is even though he's taller, you know but no only only about 20 30 feet but still okay but that's still strenuous.
|
Ivan:
[53:11]
| That's still strenuous yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:13]
| Yeah so and he's getting on me right now okay off, Anyway, but, you know, for a while, I was pretty convinced I could not do that anymore at all because he was big enough that that would just be impractical. But then he jumped on me at one point, or maybe I even offered to try. I forget in what context it came up, but I was like, this isn't actually that bad. I can do this. So I've been doing it occasionally, you know. And the one difficulty, the one part that I have had to sort of insist he do more carefully is the getting on part.
|
Ivan:
[53:55]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[53:55]
| Because if he climbs up onto me in a certain way, it's no big deal. If he tries to leap onto me, then he could potentially cause some damage that way. Yes, he could. And so I'm like, don't do that. Don't do that.
|
Ivan:
[54:08]
| Yeah. My thing is that I've been doing What I did was I normally I go to this place that, I mean, according to their logs, I guess I've been, I've worked out at that place about a hundred times the last few years. They told me that I had reached a hundredth workout. Where it's more focused on weights, weight training. Okay. It's not, not as much cardio, but what I've been doing is showing up early before the, before we start doing the, the weight training and just running, on the treadmill. They've got, they've got a treadmill. So I've been doing that. So I've been doing 15, 20, hell, one day I did even 30 minutes. But right now I can go like, you know, because I've been working on it. And plus, because I lost weight as well, go like 20, 30 minutes at five miles an hour, five and a half miles an hour. Just, just, just, just stay on there, like just to warm up and then, then do weight. So I've been running a lot more.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| Okay. Okay. Let's run that break. And we'll be back after this and talk about Iran. Here we go. Okay, we're back.
|
Ivan:
[56:06]
| We are back.
|
Sam:
[56:07]
| Eating the bugs on my face.
|
Ivan:
[56:09]
| Yes, eating the bugs on your face.
|
Sam:
[56:11]
| Yeah. Sounds so lovely. You know, Alex and I watched a Nova from like 10 years ago recently that was specifically about bugs on your face and, the microorganisms that live on people's faces. And, you know, it talked about some of the specific species and basically the flora and fauna that every human being has. They're little mites that live on your skin. Like no matter what you do. And in fact, it would be unhealthy to get rid of them because we live in symbiosis with all of these creatures. They're ones in your gut as well. But the ones on your face are specifically little mites. And if you get a good enough microscope and just look at pretty much anybody's face, you'll see them crawling around with their little legs and they eat the dead skin and all kinds of stuff. Yvonne's making a face, you know. I mean, it's disgusting.
|
Ivan:
[57:17]
| Well, I was going to make a comment like before we continue that I did. So I just I went to get I hadn't gotten gas for my plug in hybrid in a long time. I realized that the last time I did was May 1st, to be exact. So almost two months. But I didn't even need a full I decided to get it because I had time and I might be. Well, I got to go to the airport tomorrow. Okay so it's a longer drive and i'm like look i got time so i'll go to costco where it's where it's cheaper so premium is four dollars at costco right now versus other places so that's well i, i usually go to costco anyway because when i i don't have to get fuel that often for the car but i but then i went, look i i went from may 1st through june 20th okay all right drove 1051 miles, and only used 11 gallons. So I did like 93 miles per gallon, basically. I was driving mostly on electric. The thing is that with a 40-mile range on the car and the car sitting in the garage being plugged in every time, I just don't use that much fuel.
|
Ivan:
[58:36]
| Most of the time, it's just running on electric. So I don't, but so, but yeah, I avoided, I have managed to avoid having to get fuel for my plug-in hybrid, during the price spike, pretty much. I think I only, it's, I've only had to fuel up since the start of the Iran war twice. Yeah, that's right. Twice.
|
Sam:
[59:00]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[59:01]
| That's, so that's pretty decent, you know.
|
Sam:
[59:06]
| Well, good job. Now, let me ask you this time, Yvonne, because you've asked me this the last few weeks. How's the whole Iran situation going right now? Are we fully at peace?
|
Ivan:
[59:19]
| We won, Sam.
|
Sam:
[59:20]
| We won. Okay. We won.
|
Ivan:
[59:24]
| It was an unconditional surrender.
|
Sam:
[59:28]
| Yet again, last week when we talked, we said that apparently, based on the things Donald Trump was saying, either we were going to sign a peace deal imminently or we were going to nuke Iran. one or the other. So what happened?
|
Ivan:
[59:45]
| Yeah, kind of. Yeah. We signed our surrender at the Versailles Palace. Apparently. Macron took him to Versailles. Apparently Trump not seeing the epic trolling that it meant that he took him to sign at Versailles.
|
Sam:
[1:00:07]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:10]
| Oh, he's just thinking, oh, this is a palace. This is great. How could he? So stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:00:20]
| How could he? I don't know. How would you expect anything else?
|
Ivan:
[1:00:24]
| I mean, basically, he hung out in front of him. Oh, here, look, Golden Palace. Look, you want to go over there and sign? Oh, great. It's a Golden Palace. Yay. And he happily sauntered over there to sign this thing.
|
Sam:
[1:00:42]
| Sauntered. That's good.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:44]
| Well, sauntered, well, not much sauntering because, I don't know.
|
Sam:
[1:00:48]
| He's having trouble walking.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:49]
| He's having trouble walking, to be clear about this. He's having trouble moving. You know, that's very evident that he's having a lot of trouble with his mobility. Okay? Right. And, Sam, we forced Iran to our terms, right? Basically, they're paying us money, right? And we are getting, victory out of this somehow, right? I don't, you know, what did we win, Sam? Did we get any prizes? Does, like, the price is right.
|
Sam:
[1:01:28]
| Look, let's go through the timeline.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:31]
| Let's go through the timeline. We declared victory six weeks ago, five weeks ago, four weeks ago.
|
Sam:
[1:01:37]
| Three weeks ago. I was just going to do the timeline of the last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:41]
| Oh, we declared that we had completely eliminated all their military capability several times. And yet somehow we didn't.
|
Sam:
[1:01:55]
| Okay, look. So shortly after our last show was recorded, Trump announced that a deal was imminent. And as usual, we said, you know, look, the normal thing is the Iranians will say, no, it isn't. But no, this time the Iranians confirmed that they were negotiating a memorandum of understanding, specifically with the Trump administration, and that they agreed that we were close to it. Leaks started coming out about what might be in it, but they were just leaks and no one was sure. The Iranians were saying one thing. The leaks that were coming out were basically that the Iranians get everything they want. Okay? That's the bottom line. The Iranians get everything they want. We can go through, like, specific things, but it doesn't really matter. The Iranians were getting everything they wanted. The Trump administration was saying, no, no, no, no. That's not it. That's propaganda, whatever. And so then, a couple days later, this thing was actually signed, as mentioned, at Versailles by Trump and by the Iranians somewhere else, and then they exchanged electronic copies or whatever. And then the actual signed copy was released by Iran first, I believe.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:03:19]
| And guess what? It was what the Iranians said, not what the Trump folks said. It basically gave the Iranians everything they wanted. It unlocked a whole bunch of money. It gave them new money to repair damage from the war. It said they couldn't do tolls or fees on the Straits of Hormuz for 60 days, but said nothing about afterwards. It said they would start talking about what to do with their nuclear supplies. It reiterated that Iran was not interested and would never produce a nuclear weapon, which, by the way, they have said consistently for decades. This is not new. They've said this consistently for decades. And they said it again. Let me ask the question.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:10]
| Did we win anything?
|
Sam:
[1:04:13]
| In this agreement, the only thing that you could consider to be a win was that it would be over.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:22]
| OK, now, OK, so wait, wait, wait, wait. From where we were December 1st, are we ahead on anything related to Iran?
|
Sam:
[1:04:37]
| No, no, no. Now, everything at this point, no matter what you look at, it's about cutting your losses now. It's not about getting back to where we were before we did this stupid war. OK. All right. It's about cutting losses.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:52]
| We are materially, materially worse off right now across the board with this.
|
Sam:
[1:05:00]
| Yes. Yes. Then if we had not done this at all. Absolutely. Right now. And that's one thing that I want to be very careful about how we talk about this, because I think in a lot of the coverage I've watched anyway, and a lot of reactions from politicians on both sides of the aisle and everything else. Is there are two different things to talk about here. One is, given where we actually are today, what is the best path forward? And the second is, how much of a disaster was having done this in the first place? Okay? And those are two different things. So it is quite possible, in fact, that the best possible outcome at this moment is indeed, okay, give the Iranians everything they wanted. That might actually be better than the alternatives at this point, which would be trying to continue the war or something. But now, because we do not have whatever leverage we have, apparently, just to say not even better than last year, but the day before these actions on Iran, we were, people forget, we were actively negotiating with the Iranians at that moment.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:24]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:06:24]
| And the deal that they had put on the table with us on the eve— Is much better than.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:28]
| What we got now!
|
Sam:
[1:06:30]
| Is better than what we got now, yes. Absolutely. Because, you know, and people keep here. Here's the thing. I am more and more convinced as we go forward with this stuff, that in a lot of there's always trust, but verify that. But, you know, I think the proof is in Obama's deal with the Iranians that they meant it. Right. They weren't, like, trying to, like, make a fake deal and get around it, whatever. They complied with the Obama deal. They had inspectors in. They were checking everything. They were doing—and it was working. And even if they were doing a few little things on the side, they were by and large complying and keeping their stockpiles down and doing and, you know, look, and we're the we're the ones who have been disingenuous in this whole damn thing. Well, especially Donald Trump. I mean, pulling out of the agreement in the first point, why would you trust any agreement going forward?
|
Ivan:
[1:07:36]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:37]
| Certainly with him.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:38]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:39]
| But, like, it looks like they were ready to make another deal because, frankly, you know, look, the Iranian regime and even more so has probably dug in more now that we changed from the older Ayatollah to the younger Ayatollah who, you know, the Revolutionary Guard is really the power center at this point, blah, blah, blah. But even then, you hear rhetoric all the time of, you know, they're an international pariah, they want to be blah, blah, blah. No, look, they would love to be welcomed back to the realm of nations, you know, and have a more normal relationship. Now, they're still going to want to defend their local regional interests. Like, you know, we keep saying we want them to get out of Lebanon. We want to get them out of Yemen. We want them to like, you know, and I understand all those desires, but they're going to want to defend their regional interests no matter what. But would they welcome a scenario where they can basically be treated as a normal country again, as opposed to an international pariah? I think they would. And that they viewed the Obama deal as the first step in that direction.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:53]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:08:54]
| And frankly, if if, you know, after that was done, Obama hit so much resistance about just having done that deal that he did not move any further. And of course, Donald Trump reversed it. But if we just leaned into that, I think, you know, Iran would be in a much better place today overall, both internally and in its position regionally in terms of and not in terms of being a hostile power either. But in terms of like sort of resuming a more normalized place. But no, we didn't go that direction. And yeah, so we got. So anyway, I think we need to be careful because a lot of a lot of even Democrats have been going on the record and being like. Donald Trump has agreed to a horrible deal. Look at him. He's a failure. This is an awful deal. He's letting the Iranians get away with it. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And some of that is true. But the correct reference point is about we were, you know, that's still better than him deciding that, yeah, I'm going to go in a full out ground war with Iran or nuke them or something else. Which would probably be worse. So let him...
|
Ivan:
[1:10:13]
| It's once again, but Sam, those thresholds, those standards, it's once again when we lower the bar, when we make it flush to the ground again for Trump.
|
Sam:
[1:10:22]
| It's not that. It's just that you have to put the error where it was. The error is not in signing a peace deal now. The error is having done this in the first place.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:35]
| The error was canceling the Obama deal in the first place.
|
Sam:
[1:10:38]
| Well, yes, yes. going back even further. Absolutely.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:42]
| That was the error and thinking that you could get anything better.
|
Sam:
[1:10:48]
| Well, and I think, look, if you look at this and the Israelis right now are really, really pissed about this, as are the neocons in the U.S. Senate because they think this is...
|
Ivan:
[1:10:59]
| Well, let me read about the neocons in the Senate. There was this comment that I think you had posted. It said, GOP operatives say the Trump-Iran deal is so abhorrent, that some GOP senators are talking about the Trump impeachment coming after Dems take Congress in the midterms and the expectation that some GOP senators will support Trump's conviction removal. The GOP Senate anger at DJT is intense. By the way, it's not just because of this. It's also because he's hurt them in many, many, many other ways. This is just an additional really, really bad thing that he has done.
|
Sam:
[1:11:33]
| And apparently in the last week, it's been reported that whenever any of these people complain to him about any of this or talk to him at all about this. And you're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:44]
| Fuck you. And you're not.
|
Sam:
[1:11:45]
| Yes. Yes. Basically. So he's doing a really good way, a really good job at managing his own side here. But no, the point here, all these people are mad at him and actually still, like, want to keep the war going. And, you know, like, we can't actually stop. The Iranians are still bad guys.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:10]
| Here's a big problem with the whole continued the entire war. We were not properly prepared to engage in this war. And if you look at back even at early 90s when we went to the first time we attacked Iraq, okay? It took a very, very, very long time of planning and mobilization before we did the first strike.
|
Sam:
[1:12:40]
| Well, both Trump and Netanyahu were convinced that you kill a couple people at the top and you bomb a few things and they would immediately capitulate 100% and give you everything you wanted.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:53]
| And it was stupid. What all we did was we actually heartened everybody, which anybody that would know anything about, you know, if you heard any of the experts in the area, they would have told you that flat out in the first place.
|
Sam:
[1:13:07]
| And rather than strengthen any opposition that was building in Ireland, we did the opposite. We did the opposite. We completely undercut them and put them in a position where whatever momentum they had a year or two ago is gone. Is undercut yeah and and arguably there was momentum i i you know for some of the domestic things basic.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:31]
| Things in iran were not going well for the iran regime at all.
|
Sam:
[1:13:36]
| Right i mean with some of the women's protests and things that happened a couple years ago they were actually loosening up some of the internal restrictions they were taking some powers away from the morality police etc etc, and all of that ground to a halt not with this latest attack but remember we did another attack last year earlier yeah that's.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:57]
| Right i forgot about that.
|
Sam:
[1:13:58]
| It was a more limited one but all of this momentum completely stopped at that point now iran was already cracking down just to be clear iran was already cracking down and there it made it was not looking like it was necessarily going to be immediately successful, but it was chinks in the armor and it was weakening. And, and that was completely undone by this because it just brings this total, this is, this is a fundamental thing. And look, this is one of those things where Trump arguably had previously said, this was the whole problem with Iraq, right? We shouldn't have been doing this. The neocons were all wrong. We can't be jumping into other people's business and trying to use military force to change them. We should stay away from all that. And then he was convinced to do the opposite in Iran. There have been multiple reports that basically say he was emboldened by what we did in Venezuela, thinking he could do exactly the same thing in Iran. And so he switched to the position.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:10]
| Well, here's the thing. In terms of getting the leader, we did. We did. I mean, they did. But the thing is that. I guess we may have stopped at that.
|
Sam:
[1:15:20]
| He figured the same thing would happen, though, where we could, whoever took over next would be someone we could deal with and that would basically do what we wanted.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:32]
| Well, I think another big mistake was underestimating their military capabilities, which I am pretty sure that anybody, if they actually listen to the people with. Brains that were analyzing the new shit, they probably would have told them, that, hey, their arsenal is lethal. Their arsenal, we don't match up well, arsenal to arsenal. And if we're going to do this, I mean, you have to.
|
Sam:
[1:16:07]
| You know. At least ramp up and bring more things. I mean, they did bring some more things in, but you need to think about it.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:13]
| But I think it wasn't like a two-week buildup.
|
Sam:
[1:16:15]
| The fundamental misunderstanding, though, was thinking that that was unnecessary, thinking there was no way they would react in the way they actually did. So you didn't need to be ready to defend against it. Right, exactly. Because, you know, we would do 24, 48 hours of bombing and it would be over and they would give us everything we wanted.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:36]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:16:37]
| And so it was clear after those 48 hours that wasn't going to happen. And then there was no plan B.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:45]
| Kind of like I mentioned Boris Johnson's quote on fucking Brexit. I mean, Sam, they're mirror images.
|
Sam:
[1:16:57]
| Yeah, and look, this just, jumping out a lot, this goes back to the whole notion that.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:08]
| We don't need fucking experts.
|
Sam:
[1:17:10]
| Well, not that even, but more generally speaking, that you can't solve problems like this by force alone. I mean, and some people were like, well, you can't, the lesson is you can't solve it by air power alone. I think, you know, it's actually you can't solve it by force alone. Something like Gaza proves that, right? You know, you can't just come in and impose your will militarily with no consequences whatsoever. You are—that's not solving the problem.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:45]
| Okay, let me correct you.
|
Sam:
[1:17:46]
| In the end, the way they actually move forward is diplomacy is talking to them.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:51]
| Listen, okay, could you militarily, like, say that you want to do this? Okay, the problem is that the level, the force level needed to commit to do so is way, way above anything that was committed to this. We're not, you know, we aren't, like, ready for a— Listen, we showed this 20 years ago when we invaded Iraq. Thank you. We don't, we don't, we are not ready, like based on the military that we have right now to occupy a country of that size. Effectively, we aren't. Okay. You know, it takes a world, you know, to do that properly in a country that size takes a World War II level of military buildup. Which to people not understanding at that point, we were spending most of our GDP was devoted to a war effort. Okay. And, you know, you need to deploy like probably like a million troops, okay, out there to do this, okay? And this shit, we don't, we're not.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:05]
| We don't, we're not ready for that. Nobody wants to do that. Who the hell wants to send, you know, a million troops to invade Iran? We're going to start a draft again to go to Iran?
|
Sam:
[1:19:22]
| Yeah, I mean, yes. I mean, this is the fundamental. And look, I bet B.B. would love to if he could. But they can't do that either, right? And so he was counting on us backing them up. And.
|
Sam:
[1:19:41]
| Before we move on, I just want to say that the whole thing I was getting at in terms of, Look, if you really want to solve the problems, it's diplomacy. It's talking to people. That reminded me of a famous speech from a Doctor Who episode. So I'm going to play it real quick. It's, I forget how long it is, but I got it brought up. I've included this once on the show before when something similar came up a few years ago. It's amazing how these things recur, right? But we'll do that. And then after this, let's talk a little bit about all of the wedges that this is driving between different people, between Bibi and Trump, between Trump and the Senate, between all this stuff. Anyway, I'm going to play this real quick because it's right on point, I think. Every war ever fought right there in front of you. Because.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:04]
| Down, and talk! Thank you.
|
Sam:
[1:21:11]
| Okay, that's it.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:13]
| By the way, okay, well, by the way, another thing about this war, okay, remember we talked about, we haven't talked about Bibi and what the outcome of this has been for him. Look, it's an epic political disaster for him right now. I was looking at, I just pulled up some information just to double check because I hadn't looked at it, but I assumed that this was the case. Right now, his public disapproval rating, 70%, okay, in Israel, okay, 70%, okay, this is how bad he has pissed off.
|
Sam:
[1:21:48]
| But one key thing from what I understand and have been seeing, unless this changed in the last couple of weeks, too, is the problem people have with him is that he's screwed it up and he's ineffective. But most of the Israeli public at this point is in favor of continuing war with Gaza, continuing war with Iran. They just want it to be done better. I know.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:18]
| No, I don't think that's exactly what I'm saying. Here's the one thing right now. Listen, here's a reality. Anybody that would sober up and tell you that this is an untenable way of handling this right now. Okay probably but but bb is at the strength but look it's looking like they're going to another election and his government's.
|
Sam:
[1:22:43]
| Going to fall okay um well and the question though is what replaces it because the i'm, from what i understand is specifics about this in in in part apart, Most of the sort of liberal factions in Israel have been declining for years now, and Bibi's primary competition is from hardliners that are worse than him. Now, also, given the way the Knesset is splintered, we always end up with a situation where nobody has a majority, and so it's a matter of building coalitions anyway. And you might have a situation where, you know, Bibi's out, but the coal— Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:33]
| By the way, I went into analyzing a little bit more what the heck that means, because there is a difference between, hey, do Israelis believe that Israel should be defending its security?
|
Sam:
[1:23:48]
| Well, and the answer will be, of course.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:50]
| Of course. Yes. 80 percent. But the reality is that as to how Bibi is doing that, there is strong disapproval. So that's the really disconnect there. It's not that You know, you're not asking Israeli, hey, should you try to neutralize the threats that are against Israel? Hell yes, of course you should. Should it be? That's the way Bibi's doing it. 70%, 65% of the people say no.
|
Sam:
[1:24:18]
| But the point is those 65%, on the other hand, don't say, oh, the right solution to this is figure out a workable two-state solution.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:27]
| Well, it's not that. Enable the Palestinians and make peace with Iran. But it's not this either. Okay. That's the thing. Okay. Which, let's be clear. Okay. This is, what BB has been doing is insane. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:24:43]
| Well, and to bring up the division that I was bringing up is apparently Donald Trump at this point is done with BB. Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:54]
| And that's another problem.
|
Sam:
[1:24:55]
| Basically, and I did not mention when we were talking about this memo of agreement earlier, because we got onto other things and need to get back to it. That we, the deal, the memo of understanding included the Israelis will pull out of Lebanon and won't do more stuff in Lebanon. The Israelis were not even involved in the conversation, let alone made this agreement. And so, and Donald Trump is mad at Netanyahu because Netanyahu says, I'm not doing any of that.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:35]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:25:35]
| Okay. And he's trying to pressure him. And by the way, because of this, we didn't mention this earlier because we were doing it chronologically and hadn't gotten it there yet. The Iranians have already said the memo of understanding is done because it's already been violated. With that whole 60 days of negotiation. Sorry, the Israelis are still doing stuff in Lebanon. So we're done here. And the Straits of Hormuz are closed again.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:05]
| Let me read you a little bit deeper into this right now, because here it goes. So yes, a growing majority of Israel believes the threat should be handled differently.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:17]
| But here's the thing. So you asked them, like you said, hey, do we need the war? Do we need to be doing this? Yes, absolutely. But look, a whole bunch of things. 66% of Israelis, and this is a recent poll, show that it's time to stop fighting. That's 66%, okay? So that's significant, okay? So, but remember, this is coming from 80% believe they should be neutralizing the threats. But 66% say it's time to stop fighting. Okay? All right? So, this is 74% of Israelis support reaching an agreement with the Hamas to secure a full release of people. So, you see, you got 66% believe in stop fighting, 74% believe in a negotiation. So, this is diametrically, and the main thing is that Netanyahu's strategy has been absolute victory. Right and by the way 51 but okay so in that in that poll, they said 51 percent of jewish respondents and 77 percent of arabs that live in israel believe that that is ridiculous that there is no way to achieve that, so when you dig so that's the thing you ask that question hey should you neutralize the threats yes you get that positive 80 but when you dig through it, You find that people are fed up with what BB's doing, okay? That it's not continued a war to this absolute victory that BB has been trying to do, which everybody apparently knows is impossible.
|
Sam:
[1:27:43]
| Right. So one quick note. I did find another way to get, like, we still have our one viewer on the live stream, and apparently he didn't see the thing where I mentioned the purple monkey with the hammer and stuff, and I can't actually see any comments because he's been flooding the live stream with comments. There's like a couple dozen there. He apparently disagrees with some of what we've been talking about in terms of BB and stuff. But by the way, and this is Club Exile again, who was watching a couple of weeks ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:13]
| Hi.
|
Sam:
[1:28:14]
| Hi. We generally don't go back and forth on the live stream, by the way, not like your show, Club Exile. And I'll promote him again, Club Exile on YouTube. He's part of the Snohomish Podcast Network. So feel free to talk on there. We may look at the comments later. But we're not a live Engage With Listeners show. We're a recorded show. But other than we'll occasionally acknowledge that there's somebody there. That's about it. But anyway, I went on a separate device so I didn't get the purple monkey. And I can see that he's saying all kinds of things. But I'm not even reading all of them right now.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:49]
| The purple monkey sounds cool.
|
Sam:
[1:28:51]
| I know the purple monkey is cool. The something went wrong YouTube purple monkey hammer hot ant thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:57]
| I mean, this purple monkey sounds good.
|
Sam:
[1:28:59]
| You know, I will give you a couple of these comments just as I go through. He says he loves Yvonne's passion. He says, J.D. Vance addressed all of this in a recent press conference. It would be useful to get a take on that. He says...
|
Ivan:
[1:29:16]
| Listen, I'm not going to address J.D. Vance's conference because the J.D. Vance press conference is like a fantasy show.
|
Sam:
[1:29:23]
| And he's being thrown under the bus in general on this. Correct. He says, give the Iranians everything they want. It's very disingenuous framing. Again, I refer you to Vance. You can see where some of this is coming from. He asks us, do we think Trump is worse than Iran? Yvonne's thinking Yvonne's thinking and he says by the way I think y'all just don't like Trump oh absolutely thank you great insight there.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:54]
| Gee, that's a shocking conclusion.
|
Sam:
[1:30:00]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:01]
| Anyway.
|
Sam:
[1:30:02]
| All right. And by the way, he points out we can disable comments. We don't want to disable comments. Comments are fine. It's just that we're not doing.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:10]
| We're not live replying to them.
|
Sam:
[1:30:12]
| Yeah, we're not. This show is not structured as a live conversation with listeners. It's structured as a conversation between Yvonne and I. And if commenters want to talk amongst themselves, that's fine. But we generally are.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:23]
| We do usually address like stuff that we get in between shows. And we'll address it on the next show that we do.
|
Sam:
[1:30:29]
| Yes. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:30]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:30:30]
| Okay, go. And so for anybody who's actually listening in the normal way for the podcast later, you know, sorry for the detour. Maybe I'll edit it out. I may not. Whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:42]
| No, no, no.
|
Sam:
[1:30:42]
| I probably, I'm not, I'm going to leave it in. Because, you know, at this point, Purple Monkey is going to be the title of this episode. So let's continue.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:50]
| Hey, by the way, you know, how are Italian-American relations right now? Are they going well?
|
Sam:
[1:30:57]
| Oh, you wanted to talk about that. Well, perfectly, of course. Just like all the like all our other relationships, just like you mentioned earlier, Macron mocking Donald Trump by having him do this agreement at Versailles. Yeah, there are more examples all the time. I mean, there was in China when Trump was there. We also had an issue where the president of China used a historical reference that went directly over Trump's head. And so he misinterpreted and talked to whatever. Yeah, okay. Give us the Italy story.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:31]
| Well, look, here's the simple thing. Trump went and said that for some reason that Maloney was bringing a picture with her, and Maloney came back out on social media and basically said, what the fuck is he talking about? He completely made this shit up. And he just, you know, and by, the way, they were so pissed off that there was a high level diplomatic visit that was scheduled middly to the United States. And basically, it was canceled. So, yeah, you know, it's, you know, it's just a bizarre claim that that that Trump would go and like just why would he? Well, why would he? Because he always wants to make up that people are begging him for stuff and that he's saying no.
|
Sam:
[1:32:26]
| It's one of his standard tropes. There are many. But yet what's different, I think, about the situation now compared to how it has been in previous years, is because he's effectively a lame duck now. And because he's clearly weakening domestically and because Iran has showed the limits of his power internationally as well that allies are willing to call him out on it now.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:57]
| And there is this.
|
Sam:
[1:32:58]
| Line in a way that they worked earlier there.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:00]
| Is this line that she said that I hadn't mentioned about as I made up is that she said this this is a very like, strong line. I can only say it's regrettable he doesn't have the same determination with the enemies of the West, the enemies of the U.S., with leaders he's far more accommodating with. That, you know, he treats like Putin, like with the Ferens, and he treats his allies like shit, and so she called him out straight up on it.
|
Sam:
[1:33:28]
| Well, it all comes back to his general—I saw someone talking about this earlier this week. And one of Trump's core beliefs, whether he says it out loud, but just observing his behavior for his entire life, not just his presidency, is he fundamentally believes in the concept of might makes right. There is no independent morality of certain things are good and certain things are bad and you avoid the bad things and you do the good things. No, it's if you have the power to impose your will, you do so. And the people who successfully do so are the ones who end up being right in the end. I mean, even in the last week, he had a new interview where he did some comments, where he was comparing himself to various historical dictators and, giving them as examples of successful leaders.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:30]
| Was it a Genghis Khan, one of them, that he compared himself to?
|
Sam:
[1:34:33]
| It was, I believe. Genghis Khan was one of them, I think. There were a few others. Hitler was in the list, but he wasn't the only one. Many of them were older than that. And it was riffing off something that some historian had said. It's not like he was bringing up these names on his own. He was riffing off something some historian had commented or whatever. But the point is that all of this has nothing to do with what those leaders did. So it's not even he praised this leader because he liked what they did to their country or whatever. No, it is simply because these are strong men who were able to impose their will on others. What that will was and whether it was for good or for evil generally doesn't even come into the equation. And the corollary of that is that leaders who let themselves be restrained by liberal democracy are weak and stupid and bad. And so that's why he has no respect for, say, the Western European leaders. And he does for, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:35:46]
| Putin and Xi and all of these other folks across the world. He's said good things about previous dictators in other countries as well. That's what it's all about, you know? So, and I think this is, I mean, look, honestly, you know, he keeps hearkening back to the 1890s. You know, if you look back in the 1890s, there were a lot more, you know, dictatorships and kings and queens and, you know, it was an unclear question which form of ruling countries would win.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:28]
| No, it was unelected leaders for the most part in the world.
|
Sam:
[1:36:31]
| Unelected leaders was the majority of the world. And there was a lot of honest argument that not only was that the case, but that's how it should be.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:41]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:36:42]
| And various rationale for why that's how it should be. And democracies always tended to fail, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And historically, that had been true. I mean, democracies were the rare exception. And, you know, the ancient Greeks went away. The Roman Republic gave way to an empire.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:05]
| Empire.
|
Sam:
[1:37:06]
| And for most of the 2,000 years after that, that continued to be the case. It may well be that the 20th century, specifically the late 20th century, was a weird exception. And that, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| You know, look, as much as there has been some backsliding in that sense, I think that it's it's still stay. It's still, you know, we're not seeing the reemerge. I mean, obviously, Trump is more authoritarian, but the United States is still a it's an imperfect democracy, but it is a democracy. OK, there are, you know, laws that are difficult to get enforced. Believe me, I know, but but it's not it's not completely unilateral and there's been some backsliding. But also, you know what? You've also seen some reversion of that. Look what happened with Viktor Orban in Hungary, for example. He got he basically he got thrown out, you know, and in other places that some of this has happened as well. So I think that I think there was an ebb, but I think that even though it's ebbed, it's kind of like stabilized at that point. And let's be clear, Putin, as much as he holds an iron fist on on Russia, that iron fist is also suffering right now at this point. You know, he is not as popular and people are not as enthused with him being their leader now that they're actually getting hammered by the Ukrainians. in a visible way.
|
Sam:
[1:38:44]
| Right. Yes. Specifically over the last couple of weeks, the rate of Ukrainian attacks on the Moscow area has increased dramatically and is much, much harder to sort of push into the background.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:00]
| They're having to ration fuel in Moscow.
|
Sam:
[1:39:03]
| And it's been publicly reported that Putin's advisors are starting to tell him this isn't sustainable. We've got to do something different. And, you know, that that's the kind of dissent that, you know, a couple of years ago, those people would be dead pretty quickly.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:20]
| One thing, as Trump's popularity sank in the last couple of months, you know, here, notice how fuel is a driver of that discontent quite quickly, isn't it? The rising fuel price over here with the Iran war all of a sudden just, you know, drove Trump's unpopularity down in a way we hadn't seen anything happen. And in Moscow now and in Russia, the same thing. The Ukrainians are inflicting damage on the fuel distribution, you know, system inside Russia. And all of a sudden, people are pissed.
|
Sam:
[1:39:57]
| Mm-hmm. You know, it continues to—it shouldn't anymore. It shouldn't have for a long time. But I end up continually still, to this day, surprised when I realize how large a portion of the population, both domestically and elsewhere, make decisions primarily on, what do I think the effect of this will be on me personally.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:32]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:40:33]
| You know, and I reckon, like, don't get me wrong. The effect on me personally is a consideration for me. But I don't think it's ever number one.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:43]
| It's been very rare as a primary one for me. But I realize that I'm not the norm.
|
Sam:
[1:40:49]
| Like, I generally start with some sort of global conception, of what I think right or wrong are, what I think the overall good is, and try to make decisions based on that, at least when it comes with politics and voting and all that kind of stuff. Like, it's entirely different, of course, if I'm deciding what I'm going to have for dinner. That's a different kind of decision. But like and, you know, and then I see how does my own personal good fall into that framework? But like I've routinely made decisions or made votes or whatever that I knew would not be optimal for me personally. Because I thought it was better overall. I'm like, you know, this is going to suck for me, but it's still the right thing. And, you know, I guess that's a minority way of thinking about things. You know, if people are even thinking about it at all. I mean, we've discussed on the show before, you know, how lots of people, the thought process doesn't even get into specific.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:58]
| Vibes, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:41:59]
| Specific. It's vibes. It's vibes. I mean, I've said before, I think we've got increasing evidence that, well, I've said that, you know, it's not right now when the U.S. is closely divided. You've got a whole bunch of people who are on one side or another and will never even consider the other no matter what. A lot of whom aren't thinking about it. It's just automatic. But of that middle group, the middle group that actually does waffle back and forth and is currently decisive in our politics, I feel like most of them, it really comes down to, am I happy right now? And if they're happy, they'll vote to continue whatever is currently going on. And if they're unhappy, they'll vote for a change. That's it.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:51]
| Or look, that doesn't—listen, I still also believe that because of how society is right now, especially with, disenflamed racist and anti-minority rhetoric, that that also is a big driver of whatever the hell is going on right now. You know, people—, You know, they have these prejudices and you've got a group of people that have no qualms at exploiting them. Look, it's ridiculous how successful, like I said before, the anti-trans shit was. Something that doesn't impact almost anybody. The number of people that this impacts is so tiny. And yet, how it became a national discourse and how all these people, you know, got convinced that the Democrats were trying to turn your child gay and turn, them into another, change their sex, how they were doing operations. And they were like, well, no, no, no, we got to vote against that shit.
|
Sam:
[1:43:52]
| Yeah. Yeah. And, yes. Most of whom have no personal experience whatsoever.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:00]
| None.
|
Sam:
[1:44:01]
| Their thoughts about the issue are actually wrong. If they actually met and spoke to trans people, they might feel differently.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:08]
| And they're just full of prejudice.
|
Sam:
[1:44:09]
| And they're full of prejudice. And just flame it.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:14]
| Like, you know, just take a fan on it and just flame the flame. You know, feed that flame and boom.
|
Sam:
[1:44:20]
| And look, it's—and again, to your point, even if they were—even if this was a strongly held position and they weren't—they wouldn't be convinced, even if they knew more information, even if whatever, it still doesn't— A number of people affected, like you said, is really small. And they're not trying to change your kid. They're not trying to do—anyway, we've gotten far, far astray. All right, well— Anything else to say about Abraham, or should we start wrapping things up?
|
Ivan:
[1:45:02]
| We've got to wrap up. We already beat it to death.
|
Sam:
[1:45:06]
| Indeed. Okay. Ah, time for the end of the show stuff. The end of the show stuff. Okay, number one, curmudgeons-corner.com. You can go, you can see all our old shows, you can listen to our old shows, you can see transcripts of the last couple years of shows, you can see all the ways to contact us, and very importantly, you can go to our Patreon and give us money. At various levels, we will mention you on the show, we will ring a bell, We will send a postcard, we will send a mug, all of that kind of thing. As you can see, chatting on our live stream also can potentially get you mentioned. You know, I said we don't really watch or interact, you know, and we're not going to ever be in a like a live dialogue for the whole show. But usually if we see somebody watching, we might we might say something if we see comments in the thing. Because, you know, 99.999% of our listeners are podcast listeners for the audio after we get published. But we welcome live stream viewers. And if you want to leave comments while that's going on, that's absolutely cool. But yeah, we're not going to just talk going back and forth with somebody on the live stream. It's just not what we do. But we welcome you there anyway, And we will eventually read the comments, even if we don't do it live.
|
Sam:
[1:46:33]
| And yeah, but at $2 a month or more on Patreon, we will also invite you to our Commudgeons Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I are chatting throughout the week and sharing links and talking to our listeners and all of that kind of fun stuff. And we welcome more people there, too.
|
Sam:
[1:46:56]
| And if you ask nicely, we'll let you in even if you don't pay us. But we like it when you pay. Paying is good. We like the cash. As long as you participate nicely in the Slack. You know, be civil. You know, all that kind of stuff. Anyway, Yvonne, what is an example from the Cummudgeons Corner Slack this week that is exciting and compelling and would make people want to join that we talked about on the Slack but not on the show?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:24]
| Well, I think the story I found is this, I had shared this Threads article about a popular Australian food influencer, Stacey Hatfield. Allegedly refused medical aid multiple times during a home birth that had deadly consequences. A coroner's court inquest revealed the 30-year-old wellness content creator twice refused an ambulance as she bled out after to learn her baby without a nurse or midwife present, at least according to a new report. Refused the ambulance not once, twice.
|
Sam:
[1:48:04]
| You know.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:05]
| Darwin at work. That's what that is.
|
Sam:
[1:48:08]
| I'm Darwin at work, but I still feel bad for her. I feel bad for the situation. I feel bad for the family.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:16]
| Listen, let me tell you something. We've got millions of people in so many places without access to health care at all.
|
Sam:
[1:48:23]
| No, I know. Look, look.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:24]
| Listen, without access to health care. And this fucking asshole goes and refuses, the life-saving fucking care that is so easily available where she is, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:48:39]
| Like I was saying, and I feel badly for her family, et cetera, but I think fundamentally this is systemic failure of education and stuff as well. I mean, the whole RFK bullshit is the same kind of thing. This is, you know, and I don't understand these people and I feel like there's got to be a better way to reach them. But there's this whole subset of society who feels like, you know, I don't know, the last 150 years was a mistake. And we should go back to sort of dying at age 35, the state of natural being. And why should we do vaccines? What's all this complicated medical care? This is all some sort of whatever. Yeah. And people do with diets too. And like, we should eat like cavemen ate and stuff like that. No, all of this, you know, we may not be perfect. We may not know everything, but we know a crapload more than we did in the past.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:46]
| Here's the biggest thing and the problem that a lot of people got angry during the pandemic, that the science was not perfect. And science is not perfect. It never has been, never will be. However, it is the best way that we've got of arriving at solutions that most probably are the best based on the available information.
|
Sam:
[1:50:05]
| Well, the other thing that people got mad at. Yes, you're absolutely right. It was because the science was imperfect and people couldn't understand why the advice changed several times on what to do. It's like because we knew better a few months in than we did a few weeks in. And we knew even better a couple years in. But no, aside from that is two other things. One is what I mentioned before when I was talking about political decision making, which is people really resented it when you said you should do something that wasn't about protecting yourself, but it was about protecting others. And two, an even more general thing that people are in.
|
Sam:
[1:50:48]
| Lots of people fundamentally, like, don't want to do preventive things as opposed to dealing with things once they occur. Because it's like, why would I spend energy, time, restrict myself, whatever, now? I don't have a problem now. I'll just deal with it if it happens. And I think these two things, the self-centered, I'm only going to do something if it directly helps me, not if it helps an overall problem. If I have to sacrifice something to help the general world, I am not interested, even if it's a really minor inconvenience. And also just, you know, what do you mean I have to do this thing because it might prevent something in the future that may or may not happen? Why would I do? And, you know, people sometimes accept that. But we've talked about this in all kinds of different areas. We've talked about this in the sense of, like, corporations doing cybersecurity and spending time and money on that.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:56]
| That is the best example, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:51:58]
| You know, but it also applies to people doing personal things. I mean, I think most of society at this point is, you know, brushes their teeth, you know, and stuff like that. But if you if you get to wait.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:14]
| Wait until RFK Jr. comes out with the anti, you know, toothbrushing.
|
Sam:
[1:52:21]
| But all of those kinds of things take cultural changes, too. I'm sure brushing teeth is a habit that took generations to really get ingrained. I mean, I remember, you and I are old enough to remember the backlash to seatbelts in cars.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:39]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[1:52:40]
| Oh, yeah. I mean, now that's dissipated. You don't get a lot of people complaining about seatbelts these days, at least not in this country.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:48]
| Well, we didn't have people complaining about vaccines in this country for decades and decades. And then all of a sudden we got this fucking surge of idiots.
|
Sam:
[1:52:57]
| It's been building for a few decades now, but yes, it's gotten really huge.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:01]
| But we had some pockets, but we had a surge, you know, post-pandemic.
|
Sam:
[1:53:08]
| Absolutely. And some of these things I have to acknowledge are just human nature. It's, I am more important. Look, it's, I am most important. Next is my family. Next is my sort of immediate extended family. Next is my tribe, whatever that tribe is. Next is my country. Next is the world. And by the time you get to the end, you know, even I, yes. I do make, myself and my family are more important like for immediate day-to-day decisions. Like I said, I sort of reverse that for general politics. But for day-to-day decisions, yes, I am not immediately giving up everything I have in the world to give it to people more needy than I am. Theoretically, I could do that. I'm not doing that. That's absolutely true. But it's human nature to have this sort of pyramid of who you care about. The question is just kind of what the slope of that pyramid is, and it's human nature to prioritize now over the future.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:14]
| Sam, you know, I'm going to tell you what the biggest problem is.
|
Sam:
[1:54:18]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:19]
| We watched too much Star Trek, and we liked Spock. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:54:26]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:27]
| The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
|
Sam:
[1:54:30]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:31]
| Or the one. Or the one. Yeah, I know. It's a very simple phrase, but honestly a powerful one.
|
Sam:
[1:54:39]
| Yeah. And look, it's not new. I mean, philosophers have talked about before.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:47]
| But it was, you know, popularized to us by Spock.
|
Sam:
[1:54:51]
| It was well articulated by Spock at the end of The Wrath of Khan. You know which i talked about on one of the shows you were missing i talked about it again but uh, but yeah look yes it's and and again also the present versus future yeah it's a lot of these are human nature it's human psychology i understand, but one of the goals of being you know, a good citizen advancing yourself as a human is to move beyond, just your instincts and be better than that, yeah i'm sorry and it's disappointing how the last decade has shows but expose just how far selfish racist.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:47]
| Pricks we have in this country.
|
Sam:
[1:55:49]
| Exactly, Okay, on that bright note.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:53]
| Let's... On the cheerful note.
|
Sam:
[1:55:57]
| Yeah, let's close up. I need to make a break for Robin Letter. I will mention Robin Letter again. Robinletter.com, open registration. If you haven't already joined, make some for your friends, blah, blah, blah. I suck at marketing. I have a whole list of things I want to do development-wise on it. Alex is out of school for a couple weeks before he goes back for a summer session. And I'm trying to get as much done as I can, but there's so much to do. And I'm doing a lot of invisible things right now, like, you know, improving security crap that like, you know, isn't new features. And I want to get to new features. But the point is I have a whole long list of things I want to do, but I suck at the marketing part of that. So help me out, guys. Like tell your friends, have them join up, set up Robbins, all that kind of crap. Anyway, it is growing, but growing slowly. I had new people join even like a couple hours before we started recording. I had a new account join. Anyway, that's it. We're done. Thank you for joining us. Have a great week. Have fun. You know, have fun, but not too much fun. That's what I always say. And we'll talk to you again next time. Goodbye, everyone.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:11]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:57:42]
| Okay, I guess we should log out so we can both go hate Donald Trump privately instead of on the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:50]
| Okay, we'll do that.
|
Sam:
[1:57:51]
| Okay, cool. Yeah. I should have noted, just to be clear, it's not just him as a human being. It's the damage he's caused through everything he has done over the last decade, and, you know, all of this. It's not like, although he's an awful human being as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:16]
| Exactly. I hate his existence.
|
Sam:
[1:58:17]
| But we hate him because of what he does, not because of what he is, I guess. But whatever. So on that hatred theme, I'm hitting stop. Goodbye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:29]
| Bye.
| |
|
