Episode 790 Scott Adams: Shampeachment Entertainment, Iran's Scary Clowns
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Content:
The alternate explanation of President Trump that Dems don't see
James Poniewozik on the Warren/Bernie who-said-what
Maggie Haberman and "automatic assumptions"
Lev Parnas said something interesting to Anderson Cooper
Iran's Khamenei and the translation of "clown"
#GreenNuclearDeal...Congress is listening!
Insurance companies beginning to fear climate change
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Once again, our news is full of nothing but happy things.
Well, that's not 100% true, but Most of the news is good news.
And in order to enjoy it to its fullest, what do you need?
I think you know. You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I think you know I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
The simultaneous sip.
Go. I'm hearing from more and more people the following comment.
And I want to see if any of you have had this experience.
Apparently there have been a lot of people who were actually afraid of what would happen to the world under a President Trump.
And a number of people have messaged me, quite a bit over the last few years, to say that they were in a state of panic until they heard me talking about what was going on, and then they felt calm.
Somebody here just said they listened to me before they go to sleep.
So apparently there's something about listening to me talk about the world that makes people less Anxious.
Now, I'm going to give you a little preview of something coming up.
I don't think I'm going to do it today because I'm not quite ready.
But I've developed a brain hack that at least one person has reported completely eliminated anxiety.
If you can imagine that.
Imagine somebody having anxiety every day.
Not just about politics, but more of a generalized one.
And that there was something I said that reframed the world that just eliminated it.
I heard that yesterday.
Now, I think I know why.
In other words, the reframe was very specifically designed to accomplish a brain hack.
I'm surprised it worked.
But I'm going to test it out with any of you, but that's coming up.
That won't be today. So look for that.
Alright, let's talk about what's happening.
On this question of Warren and Sanders, and who said what in their private conversation?
Did he say that a woman can't win the presidency, or did he just say it would be an extra challenge?
Warren says he said a woman can't win.
He says he didn't. So author James Ponewazic tweeted, and this very much agrees with what I said.
He said a plausible scenario is they meet, both want to run.
So that part we know is true.
And then James says, he's like, quote, Trump is, this meaning Bernie would say, Trump is a sexist and he will use this against a woman.
She, meaning Warren, infers reasonably he's telling me a woman can't win.
So she recalls the disagreement.
He insists he didn't literally say a woman can't win.
Now that's pretty much exactly what I think is the most likely explanation of what happened, which is that he was sort of trying to discourage her, saying she had an extra challenge that he wouldn't have, But it was more to maybe clear the channel so he didn't have to compete against somebody who was basically using his policies.
And then she interpreted that as a woman can't win, turning it into an absolute, which is the most common thing you've ever seen in every human interaction.
Somebody will say, well, this is difficult.
And the other person will say, why are you saying it's impossible?
And the first person says, I didn't say that.
I just said it would be hard.
So here's the good part. Maggie Haberman, you all know Maggie Haberman, she jumped in with a comment on Twitter and she said to James, why is the automatic assumption that her version is wrong?
Just curious. Which is actually a fun question.
Because in his construction, it assumes that Warren is the one who went away with the wrong impression.
But what's interesting is the way she worded it.
So Maggie says, why is the automatic assumption that her version is wrong?
Where have you seen something like that before?
An automatic assumption.
That sounds a little like impulsiveness.
Maybe a little recklessness.
Why is it that when Democrats look at anybody who supports the president, They believe that their brains are not functioning like ordinary brains.
And that James, who is a well-known author, obviously smart guy, why would it be on this one topic that instead of thinking through why he thought what he thought, his assumption was automatic?
Because there's nothing he said That would suggest that he came to an automatic assumption.
And other people jumped into the comments.
I jumped in too, and I asked Maggie, why assume it's automatic?
Why would you assume that about anybody?
Why would you assume that anybody made an impulsive decision?
Why would you assume that anybody made an automatic decision?
There's no evidence of that.
I only know people who think about things and then make decisions.
I've never heard of this automatic, impulsive thing.
Why is it that Democrats think that Republicans don't have normal functioning brains that work the way everybody else does?
You think of stuff and then you make a decision.
Who makes decisions without the thinking part?
It's not really a thing.
I mean, we do make unconscious decisions, you know, subconscious, we're influenced by our biases and all that, but it's never automatic.
So this prompted one of my tweets in which I was wondering, so this is what I said, thanks to the miracle of cognitive dissonance, Democrats can only explain what they see in politics By believing that Trump has been, quote, lucky for several decades in a row, because you'd have to believe that.
If you believe that it's not skill, you'd have to believe that for several decades, let's say starting from the time he recovered from bankruptcy.
Now, recovering from bankruptcy is not easy.
He probably owed more than just about anybody in the world owed anybody.
And somehow recovered.
So if you start from that point and say, let's just start measuring from that point, because you've got a long, a few decades, right?
During those few decades, you had a hugely successful television show, ran for president successfully with no experience, and has a whole string of successes as president.
You'd have to kind of believe...
That decades of consistent, pretty consistent, you know, he had some losses, Trump University didn't go well, but in his portfolio it was very successful.
So you'd have to assume that he was lucky for decades and that he's operating on impulsiveness alone, that there's no thinking.
It's just weird criminal impulsiveness that ended up working perfectly for decades in a row.
And how do you explain your environment that way?
Now compare that to the alternate explanation.
I'm famous for offering the alternate explanation of Trump, and it goes like this.
He has unique skills.
That's it. That's the whole explanation.
There's a person...
Who has a unique skill set that lets him do things that other people can't or won't do.
And that would explain why he's been successful for decades and has reached literally the top of the success pile in the world.
I mean, what is more successful than becoming president of the United States without any practice being a politician?
I don't think there's anything more successful.
That's sort of it.
You're a billionaire.
You're married to a supermodel.
You just became the President of the United States.
Was it all luck?
How do you keep that going after you see him signing trade deals, you see him defeating ISIS, nominating judges like crazy?
The economy is going well.
Iran seems to be tamed at the moment.
North Korea seems to like President Trump, and they're not exactly pointing their weapons in our direction.
At least not the way they were in the past.
How do you conceive of your world that it was all luck?
Anyway, one of those theories is batshit crazy, the other one is not.
Speaking of mild curse words, I tweeted at YouTube, just using their public Twitter account, And mentioned that I get demonetized every day for no good reason.
YouTube, to my surprise, tweeted back and said they'd look into it.
Now, who they is is whoever is operating their social media, Twitter site for YouTube, so that doesn't mean that they have the power to look into it.
But whoever it was said they'd look into it.
And suggested that perhaps it's because my content Falls into the category of sensitive stuff that advertisers are a little wary of.
Now, I'm willing to accept that explanation.
It's possible that there's nothing going on except I talk about the news and they've decided that the news is a sensitive category that advertisers may be less inclined to be associated with.
Could be. But it's easy to demonstrate that.
So I tweeted back.
And said, essentially, I'm paraphrasing, that I'd accept that as a reasonable explanation of what's going on, with no other explanation under this condition.
That everybody else who is talking about the headlines, and that's all I talk about.
I literally look at CNN, I look at Fox News, I look at the other headlines, and I just talk about the headlines.
I put my opinion on it.
But it's not like I'm dangerous.
There's nothing dangerous that I'm doing other than a few curse words now and then, and I don't see people being demonetized for a few curse words now and then.
So, that's my challenge to the YouTube, Twitter account, is can you confirm or deny that everybody who talks about the headlines is demonetized?
But you'd also have to ask this question.
Why is it always reversed?
As in, always reversed.
Now, when I say always, I don't really mean 100%.
A few of them have not been reversed, but it's rare.
But the ones that were not reversed weren't really any different than the ones that were.
So they look more like mistakes than some kind of a decision.
So YouTube has now...
In public engaged me on the question of whether I'm being treated unfairly compared to other people who have similar talking about the headlines content.
So far they have not responded as of the last time I checked, but that doesn't mean they won't respond.
So we'll be watching that.
Somebody says, why does YouTube run ads on my channel?
Well, after a day, they do get re-monetized.
So we appeal it manually and we say, this doesn't look like a fair decision to de-monetize, but it takes a day or so to re-monetize and then ads will run.
Now, some people have reported, I haven't checked it for myself, I don't think I can check on my account.
I'd have to be not logged in, I guess, because I pay so I don't see ads.
But if I log in, I would see what some people are reporting that the ads are running from the first day.
So why don't you do this for me?
I'm sure that today I'll be demonetized, as always.
But see if any ads run from the first few hours.
Because if you see a newish post on YouTube and the ads are running, I'm not getting paid for that as far as I know.
I could be wrong. Maybe they put it in some kind of an escrow until they work out the demonetization?
I don't know. Questions?
Alright, let's talk about some other stuff.
I tweeted that I'm kind of looking forward to, and maybe this is just me, but I'm hoping that we have another impeachment after this one fails.
Because stocks do really good under impeachments.
So I'm making a lot of money on this impeachment.
Let me check these stocks today.
Well, looks like stocks are up again today.
Pretty nicely.
And the longer that the, and even Bitcoin is up, a lot of stuff is up.
So, if we could get maybe one more of these impeachments, maybe two more this year, I know they take a long time, but if we get this one done quickly, I think we'll have time to get maybe two more in, just for economic reasons, because apparently it's just great for the stock market.
But that's not the only thing it's good for.
And this is the funny part.
As pundits have pointed out, President Trump is counter-programming the impeachment by trying to get a lot of accomplishments and doing a lot of things that will take your attention away from the impeachment theater to his accomplishments, meaning that he's had one of the best months a president has ever had.
Is it my imagination that the past 30 days, President Trump has accomplished more than More than, what, every president ever in the history of presidents?
I mean, I'm no historian, but I'd be real surprised if anybody's ever had a better 30 days of presidency.
I mean, this is pretty good stuff.
You know, two major trade deals took out the top terrorists in the region.
The economy is just screaming.
The stock market is at a new high.
I mean, seriously, has any president had a better 30 days than this one?
So the weird thing about it, and I just want to put this thought in your head, much is made of the president's personality, his character.
And some of the complaints you could say to yourself, even if you're a big supporter, you could say to yourself, I can see that.
I can see why you don't like that.
It doesn't bother me personally.
Yeah, but I can see why you don't like that.
So there are definitely parts of the president's personality which reasonable people can disagree with.
Some say, no big deal, he's just joking.
Some say it offends you.
You're all entitled to your opinion.
But here's one thing I think we all agree on in terms of his personality.
He is one competitive mofo.
If he's in a contest and there's going to be a winner and the loser, you're going to watch his game elevate.
Does anybody disagree with that, by the way?
Is it not true that he said it directly?
He thrives in tough competition.
He performs better when the pressure's on.
Is this president performing better because of impeachment?
Risk of impeachment, impeachment, the threat of impeachment, all of that.
Do you think that that makes the president perform better than he might have otherwise?
I think maybe.
I'm not sure.
It would be hard to measure it because you don't have the test case to measure it against.
So you can never be sure.
But if you had a choice of putting pressure on Trump Meaning impeachment, to cause him to compete at his highest level, or let's say the alternative.
Let's say the Democrats decided they liked Trump tomorrow, and everybody says, you know, let's just see how it goes.
Looks like he's doing pretty well.
How well would the president perform if the Democrats just started agreeing with him?
Say, you know, hey, you're doing okay.
Just do some more of what you're doing.
We'll talk about it.
We'll debate you when we disagree, of course.
We'll vote against you if we need to.
But you're doing okay.
Keep going. I don't know if he would do as well.
Because there's something about this that is focusing his competitive impulses.
And again, I'm not in his brain, so I can't read his mind.
We're speculating here.
Pure speculation. But I think...
We're seeing him perform amazingly well.
He's probably putting a lot of energy into it, and he's going to focus on accomplishments, and it's kind of fun to watch.
So, stock market goes up.
Trump stays in office.
We are severely entertained.
He gets all these accomplishments because he's focusing to try to counter-program.
What are we losing?
Didn't we find, completely accidentally, did we not find the very best place to be?
I mean, nobody planned it, but somehow we drifted into the best place you could be.
Speaking of entertaining, let me find the quote by Mitch.
Did you see Mitch McConnell's quote?
Which I'll find here in my notes.
Oh, Mitch McConnell said, quote, Nothing says seriousness and sobriety, Mitch McConnell quipped, like handing out souvenirs.
The second part of his sentence he should have left out, as though this were a happy bill signing instead of the gravest process in our Constitution.
If Mitch had just stopped halfway through that sentence, It would have been one of the funniest quotes ever.
He should have just said, nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs.
He should have just stopped.
It was so close to being one for the ages, like the most quotable thing you've seen all year.
But then he added, he had to gild the little bit as though there was a happy bill signing instead of the gravest process in the Constitution.
The second part was assumed, so don't ruin your perfect first part of a sentence with that cumbersome second part.
But Mitch, on the entertainment scale, A+. Because we're in here for the fun.
I don't know anybody who's watching Impeachment because they don't know how it's going to end.
When you went to the movie Titanic, which I rate as the worst movie of all time, by the way, Worst movie of all time, Titanic.
But I will acknowledge that a lot of people liked it.
They had a different opinion than me.
When you went to Titanic, you knew how it ended.
Right? You knew Titanic probably didn't win in the end.
But you still went, because you liked the entertainment until then.
So the impeachment process feels like that.
We're all being entertained...
But it doesn't matter. We know how it ends, so there's no mystery.
Speaking of how it ends, Reince Priebus had some interesting thoughts, which I'll add to.
And he said, on one of the shows, he said, sometimes the best defense is the so-what defense.
You just say, well, what if everything you say is true?
We're not even going to ask questions about it's true.
What if it's all true? What if everything the Democrats are saying is true?
Let's vote. Because none of it's impeachable.
And I thought, that's a pretty good defense.
A good defense would be, might be true, might not be true, but you can assume it's all true.
We don't even need any witnesses.
We'll just take your word for it.
Now let's vote. Nope.
Nothing there. Now, Reince also suggested that he liked the witness reciprocity idea.
This is Ted Cruz's idea.
That if you get one witness, we get one witness.
You get two, we get two.
That sort of thing.
And that's one way to go.
Sure. But isn't the complaint that the Republicans didn't get their witnesses during the House?
Because the House was in charge.
And the Republicans complained, we didn't get to have all of our witnesses.
Wouldn't it be fair enough, I'm not suggesting this, but wouldn't it be fair for Mitch McConnell to say, hey, I've got an idea.
Republicans will have witnesses and Democrats won't.
He could do that, right?
Couldn't he just say, we'll just have the witnesses in the Senate that we wanted to have in the House, But we didn't get.
So we'll just be completing that process.
Now, there's no way he'll do that.
But it's funny to think he could.
I've got a better suggestion.
You ready? Here's a suggestion that, again, they won't do.
But it would be really funny.
And that's why I like it.
And the suggestion goes like this.
To say, we're going to bring in witnesses, but we're going to do them in a certain order.
Because we don't want to bring in infinite witnesses and you keep adding them and we just keep going with witnesses.
So we're going to do them in a rational order.
Here's the rational order.
The entire case against Trump rests on, wait for it, rests on this question.
Was there a legitimate United States interest in asking about Biden and Barisna?
So we're going to bring in witnesses.
To only ask that question.
We'll bring in some Democrats, we'll bring in some Republicans, and we'll only ask that question.
Was this a legitimate interest of the United States to look into it?
Now, we already know because even the Democrats' top lawyer said, yeah, that's worth looking into.
There you go. Then you bring in a Republican.
I think I mistakenly called Turley and Dershowitz Republicans when I was talking about this yesterday.
They're both Democrats.
Even better, bring in Turley, bring in Dershowitz, three Democrat lawyers, experts in the Constitution, and say, what do you think?
Did this look like a legitimate thing?
For the United States to be looking into.
All three Democrats will say yes.
I'm pretty sure.
Once they say yes, you're done.
You don't need to look into any details of how the President did it.
Because nobody is arguing that the President has to do things the way you want him to do it.
That's not part of the debate.
Everybody accepts That once the president's in office, the president can do everything that's legal, as long as it's a reasonable attempt to get stuff done.
So, if I were Mitch McConnell, I'd say, let's find out the important question first.
We will take witnesses for just that question.
If that question says, if the answer to that is that the witnesses say, you know, it's a mixed bag.
We don't think that was worth looking into.
Well, then you can open it up to the second question, which is the details of what the president was doing, was it for his own personal use, etc.
But, if you can determine that the president thought, or any reasonable observer thinks, that looking into the Biden-BRISMA thing is legitimate for the United States, you're done.
You don't need witnesses to talk about the stuff that doesn't matter.
If it was good for the United States, you're done.
This is the thing that the Republicans have gotten wrong consistently since the start.
That's it. Now, what is the argument that the United States has an interest in looking into it?
Are you kidding me?
Are you kidding me?
Biden is still leading in the polls to be the next president of the United States.
And there's a very strong suggestion that That Ukraine or somebody over there might know a little bit too much about what Hunter was doing, and it might reflect on the President.
Could any reasonable observer think it's not worth knowing if there's any problem there?
I mean, on the surface, it certainly looks like something you can look into.
Alright, that's the way I'd go.
If it turns out that they need to dig into the details, we've got this interesting thing that Lev Parnes said, that loose associate of, what's his name, Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, who's talking and saying stuff to Rachel Maddow and to Anderson Cooper.
Now, as Joel Pollack pointed out in an opinion piece in Breitbart, That Lev said something interesting to Anderson Cooper.
And he said that the reason that there was a push for Ukraine to announce an investigation was because, according to Lev Parnas, no one trusted Ukraine to conduct an investigation.
No one trusted Ukraine to do an investigation.
If you look at the implication of that, it means that the ordinary way you would approach this, nobody believed would work.
The ordinary way would be, hey, have the FBI talk to your justice people, put together an investigation, look into it.
And here the witness is coming forward who was part of all this, and he says, no one believed that would work.
So now you have the answer, or at least the most credible explanation, of why it was not done a different way.
Because the different way nobody believed would work.
So what way did they take?
If you get somebody a little bit pregnant, I like to use that analogy, there's a good chance that they will continue to be pregnant.
Let's not talk about abortion because it ruins my analogy.
So in business, that's a common phrase.
We got somebody a little bit pregnant.
I am dealing with now a vendor in my life, who shall remain nameless, who got me a little bit pregnant.
In other words, there's somebody who I gave a large amount of money to do a job.
And now it turns out that that job will not be done for months when it should have been done in one month.
Now what can I do? Turns out that in this specific situation, it doesn't matter.
No, it doesn't have anything to do with WenHub.
It's in my personal life.
It turns out that it would be really impractical for me to fire them at this point because they've done half the work.
So I have no choice.
I've just got to wait a few months because I just don't have an option.
That's economical and sensible.
So, this vendor got me a little bit pregnant.
Meaning, now that they've started, now that I've paid, I can't really back out.
Now they own me. They own me.
I kind of got to do what they need.
Now, I don't want to dwell on that.
The point is that it would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do to try to get Ukraine to announce it Because the announcement gives you a little bit of pregnancy.
In other words, if they've announced it, they're going to have to explain later why they're not doing anything about it, because they announced it.
So it would put them in a position where they were liars, the government, that is, of Ukraine, if they don't do something.
Likewise, the underlings who might not be inspired to do anything for the United States would see their boss, the president, saying, we're going to do this investigation, and it would be reasonable to expect that then they would say, well, I guess that's what we're doing.
So, it seems to me that Lev Parnes has just explained away the whole problem.
Explained away the whole problem.
At least that's one interpretation of it.
Now, that's an opinion.
We don't know what was in his mind.
But if you're looking for a reason that they would ask for a public statement instead of focusing on the investigation itself, now we have it.
They didn't think the investigation was even possible.
But if they get him a little bit pregnant, now this is the part that's speculation, is that what they were thinking?
Were they completely happy to walk away with just an announcement?
I don't think so.
If you were in Rudy's shoes, would you say to yourself, if I get the announcement, I'm done.
I don't need anything else.
No. You would of course want the announcement plus the investigation.
Of course. All right.
Apparently there were 11, I think 11 of our troops were actually injured, or at least they're being checked down for concussions based on the Iranian missile attack on the base in Iraq.
And we're finding that out now.
And, of course, the big question will be, why are we finding this out now?
Who is lying to us?
But it looks like more of an abundance of caution and a judgment call, meaning that none of these people appeared to be injured in the physical way that you can see.
So the early reports were nobody injured.
But apparently when you're in the vicinity of these major missile bomb attacks, it's pretty common to get concussions from just the blast force.
And so there's an abundance of caution.
Some people they're having checked out to see if they, you know, so we don't know how bad it is.
Now, here's the thing.
I think we're all better off that we didn't know this on day one.
Somebody says, so he lied.
No, that's not the reporting.
So the reporting is not that the president or even the commanders in our forces in Iraq, there's no reporting that they knew on day one that these people would need follow-up care.
It was a judgment call that they'd probably just shake it off, or you didn't know if they'd shake it off, or it's a wait and see.
So it's a little bit of a gray area about When you could actually know somebody was injured.
Because you can't tell.
You can't tell by looking at them.
But concussions are pretty nasty things.
A concussion is a serious, serious problem sometimes.
Depends on the severity.
If we'd known this on day one, would our public just demand a military attack?
I'm kind of glad we didn't know this.
This is one of those weird cases where we're probably just better off we didn't know.
I mean, I have a lot of concern about these troops because concussions are a big deal, but I'm glad we didn't know because I think we took the right path.
Speaking of Iran, Khomeini did a rare appearance in which he did the big prayer that they do periodically and a speech, and he referred to the president and his supporters as In the government, anyway, as American clowns.
And he went on to say that them pretending to support the Iranian nation, but they want to stick a poison dagger into its back.
Which raises an interesting question.
What is the translation from Farsi to clown?
Does clown mean the same thing in Iran?
Does it? Do Iranians have clowns?
In Islam, is there such a thing as a clown?
Because it might not mean the same thing, because he said that they're clowns, but they would be using a poison dagger to stab you in the back.
That's one scary clown.
Now, it also seems a little bit of overkill.
Do you need a poison dagger if you're stabbing somebody in the heart?
I say no. A stab in the heart probably gets it done.
But a poison dagger?
That is some kind of clown.
So do you really need a venomous dagger?
I don't know. If I hired a clown and he showed up with a venomous dagger, I would fire that clown.
So I think clown means something different.
But it's interesting that The Supreme Leader had to call out the fact that America, at least its government, and some of its people, we keep saying that we're standing with the Iranian people.
That's what the President said in a tweet.
And he said, they lie.
If you are standing with the Iranian people, it is only to stab them in the heart with your venomous daggers.
And I'm thinking, I think Trump wins on this.
Because if the Supreme Leader is trying to explain why we keep acting friendly to their population, that's the conversation we want him to have to explain.
Because you want the Iranians to say, what do you mean the United States says it stands with the population of Iran?
Did he actually say that?
I hadn't heard that because I don't have the internet.
But now I've heard it because the Supreme Leader had to defend it.
I think the Supreme Leader just fell for the trick that Democrats have been falling for for three years, which is they're talking about the topic that Trump wants them to talk about.
What topic would Trump most want the Ayatollah to have to talk about with his own public?
The fact that the United States says unambiguously, we side with the population of Iran.
Let's talk about that some more.
Let's defend how that's not true.
And he had to come up with this weird venomous dagger clown to argue that it's not true.
He didn't even have a reason.
He had an analogy. That's it.
How about giving us a reason?
Not an analogy. A reason.
Alright. What else we got going on here?
So, if you didn't hear...
Michael Schellenberger testified in front of Congress, at least one part of Congress, and used the phrase Green Nuclear Deal.
Now, congratulations to Mark Schneider, who may be watching this right now, for coming up with Green Nuclear Deal as a great way to package the idea of nuclear being the best way to To address climate change.
And it's now made its way to Congress.
So it's now a headline.
It's something that Congress has seen.
It has framed it in their minds a little bit differently.
And congratulations to all of you.
Because I know that...
I try to boost both of these people as much as possible.
Michael Schellenberger and Mark Schneider.
But I can't do that alone, of course, without all of you who follow me on Twitter.
So you've done the same, and look what you did.
Look what you did. Now, I've been telling you for a long time that our republic has been replaced by some kind of a social media model where the government can't really do what social media won't allow them to do if there's too much of a response on social media.
So we're no longer a republic where they just go off and make decisions.
They really have to watch social media and respond.
And here you saw a perfect example.
People with good ideas bubble those good ideas up until some people with blue check marks, including me, lots of other people too, were also part of this.
But people with the blue check marks said, huh, Look, there's some good ideas from people who do not have blue check marks.
I will boost those ideas.
I boost them. Some other people boost them.
And next thing you know, there's a conversation in front of Congress.
Perfect example of what the government has evolved into for good, I think.
It's positive. Let me talk about the question of Betting on climate change.
A lot of people have said two things.
One, why are the insurance companies acting as though climate change is not a risk?
You hear that all the time, right?
The people who think climate change is not a big problem say, if it were a big problem, would it not be reflected in our insurance rates for people who have property on the coast?
Turns out, if you do a little googling on this question, The insurance regulators and companies are really, really concerned about this.
So it's one of the biggest issues in the insurance business is that there might be bankruptcy level risk from climate change.
So we're definitely at the point where, for example, apparently coal plants are having a tough time getting insurance.
So, more companies are getting out of the business of insuring coal companies.
Somehow, because of climate risk, I don't know if that means the coal companies are likely to be sued.
I'm not sure exactly why they're getting out of that business, but they are.
And if they keep getting out of that business, you can't have a coal plant.
Because if you can't get insurance, you can't have a business, at least not a business of that scale.
It could be that the insurance companies will put coal out of business just by not insuring.
But here's the point I wanted to get to.
If you're wondering how can you make money by being so right, in your opinion, that climate change is not a risk, here's a way to bet on it.
There are index funds called SPIDERS, slight difference, but let's call it an index fund, of insurance companies.
You can find a basket of insurance companies that are collected for you in a fund called the Spider.
Here's one example.
This is not a financial recommendation.
I'm only talking about the concept of investing.
I'm not telling you you should invest in this.
It's called KBW Insurance.
It's a low-fee insurance fund.
If you look at the growth of that fund, it's been pretty much...
Consistently up since 2009.
In 2009 it took a dip to like $5, but it's up to $35.
So this group of insurance companies is seven times higher in the stock price than it was at the 2009 dip.
If you think climate change is not an issue, That would be a good way to bet.
Because in theory, you should be able to get these insurance companies relatively cheap because there will be so many other people who think they're going to go out of business because of climate change.
So, it turns out that there is a pretty clean bet you could make Which is that insurance companies are already underpriced because they don't have that real risk of climate change.
But if you believe the other way, well, I suppose you could bet that it's going down.
So there's actually a market for that.
And at the moment, it looks like the market is betting that insurance companies will be fine, but it looks like we're, based on just the chatter you see when you Google insurance companies and Climate change, it looks like that's right on the edge of maybe changing.
So I think it's possible that insurance companies and this index are going to drop like a rock in the next five years.
So, you could wait for the dip.
Again, I'm not giving you financial advice.
I'm talking about the concept of betting on climate change.
I'm not telling you you should do it.
I'm just saying it's doable.
So wait for a big drop in climate in insurance companies as everybody panics.
I'm sure that will come. Then if you believe there's no real risk, jump in.
But not advice.
Just something that can be done.
All right. If you believe that, you should short the stock, some people say.
That is correct. All right.
So I think that's all we got.
Let me give you an update on my studio situation, because I think it's a fun concept.
For the last few years, I've been trying to upgrade the quality of this, what you're watching.
Try to get a bigger attention, etc.
I have spent maybe thirty or forty thousand dollars trying to do it so far.
So far, For two years and $30,000 or $40,000 of effort, nothing I've done has been as good as sitting in front of my iPad with a cheap little $20 clip-on lavalier sitting at my desk.
Now, if I could find something that's better than that, I'm going to do it.
Now, I put another $9,000 into it this week.
I bought a box from Telestream, a company that would allow me to, in theory...
Live stream to a number of different platforms at the same time.
I've tried OBS software, I've tried Wirecast software, just the software version.
This is the hardware version that has Wirecast built in.
If you do podcasting, you've heard of Wirecast.
So it's the software that allows you to stream to different platforms.
In theory, the hardware will solve my problems that I couldn't solve every other way.
But I've been wrong every time.
So I'll let you know.
So I'm going to be working on that over the weekend.
The lavalier I'm using is just something I bought off of Amazon.com.
I just bought whatever one had a high rating.
They're very cheap. So you're talking about $16 or $20.
Apparently the professional one isn't that much better.
Somebody says it's your room that needs more tuning.
Oh, have you had this problem with Amazon?
Do you buy things on Amazon that end up being the miniature of the thing you thought you were buying?
So a few weeks ago, I bought some bins, you know, those big plastic bins for storage.
I thought, I'm going to get some big plastic bins and put stuff in them.
And the plastic bins show up, and they're only this big.
I didn't even know anybody made plastic bins that are only this big.
I ended up with the miniatures because I looked at the pictures.
I didn't even look at the specs.
I didn't even know anybody made a little plastic bin that looked like a big plastic bin but is only this big.
And then the other day I bought a microphone screen.
It's a cushioned screen that sits around your microphone to shield it from noise coming from the back side.
So I buy this screen to put on my desk, and I'm looking at it, and I'm thinking, well, obviously, you know, the thing's probably this big.
And I get it. It's like only this big.
It's a miniature. So I keep buying miniatures because I don't check the sizes of stuff.
Anyway, don't be like me.
All right. I told you I would teach you a method for solving your anxiety.
I'm going to do that as soon as I've got a little more crispness on that.