Episode 1111 Scott Adams: Portland Mayhem, CDC Death Counts, Crazy Bernie's Bad Math, Worst Criticisms, Middle East Peace
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Democrat "devil's bargain"
81 Nobel prize winners fail to impress
Dumb people check list
Chicago PD requests help identifying looters in photo
Biden's value proposition
State Department monitored 13 key conservatives
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You know it's going to be a tremendous coffee with Scott Adams.
Possibly the kickoff to an amazing day.
We'll see about that.
A lot of that's on you. But I'll do what I can.
And that's a lot.
Which is, to give you the entertainment, which is this following hour, started by the Simultaneous Sip.
And all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, and it's happening right now.
Go. I would like to begin this wonderful hour by reading you this little story which I just received from my secret source, deeply embedded in rural America.
And it goes like this.
Somebody named Miller, 36, of Tannersville, this is the area that I grew up in, upstate New York, was driving a UPS truck on August 21st When it struck two parked cars in the city, according to Hudson Police, but then apparently the truck continued on.
Two police vehicles and a bicycle patrol officer responded to a 9-11 report and located the truck at the corner of north, blah, blah, blah, following the accident.
Now here's the good part.
Hudson Police Officer Randy Stratman jumped onto the moving UPS truck Turned off the ignition to stop the vehicle and administered two doses of Narcan to Miller, the driver.
Meaning that the driver of the UPS truck probably was suffering an overdose, probably fentanyl, and was asleep in the truck while the truck was careening through traffic.
A police officer jumped on a moving UPS truck Just like Indiana frickin' Jones, turns it off, controls the truck, and administers a life-saving Narcan to the driver.
Now, here's what I'd like to suggest.
I don't know if a social worker could have pulled that off.
You know what I mean? You know, this is the sort of stuff that's literally happening every single day all over America where there are police officers running toward trouble Jumping on moving vehicles and saving lives.
Every day. Don't hear much about this?
But I give you that as your little array of good news.
Want some more? Okay.
More good news? Okay.
Here it comes. Saudi Arabia has apparently given the green light for Israel to UAE flights.
The civil kind. Not a military one, of course.
Now, it happened just a few times because there were a few specific flights that they exempted.
One of them had Jared Kushner on it.
But then, apparently, they talked about it and moved that into more of a permanent situation.
But here's the fun part.
This is from Nanyahu.
So he was talking about it and called it historic big breakthrough.
You're probably thinking to yourself, is that really a big breakthrough?
To be able to fly over a country?
That's it? You just have permission to fly a commercial flight over somebody's country?
Yeah! Turns out that's a pretty big deal.
Because in this case, it shortens the route To the point where it makes tourism much less expensive.
So it actually has a specific and immediate economic stimulus component.
But that's not the fun part.
So Netanyahu said, and I quote, these are the fruits of peace, he said, predicting that, quote, more good news would be coming.
Now, when you say more good news will be coming and your prime minister You don't say that unless you know more good news is coming, meaning that things are really starting to shape up in the Middle East.
Why is this not the biggest story in the world?
It's political season, and it's something that is not just good from Trump, but one of the best things ever.
I think you could make the argument already that Trump is the best president the United States has ever had for international relations.
Now, the counterargument to that is, but wait, what about those countries that don't respect us as much anymore?
I don't know. Is that costing me money?
How did that affect me?
Are they not taking our phone calls?
Because I think they're taking our phone calls.
Are they not doing trade deals with us because they think origin man bad?
No, I haven't heard any reporting on that.
I think countries do whatever is in their best interest.
In this case, what's in the best interest of the Middle East was working with the United States productively to get what looks like the beginning of something that could be lasting and good.
So, you know, we're in a world where it's hard to know what is true and all of our information is bad, but I feel as though historians are going to Conclude that Trump was the best president just in the first four years.
It wouldn't even matter what happens after this.
But just the first four years, I think, would be the most successful presidency for international stuff.
For domestic stuff, you can still make your arguments.
Here's something that only I would say in public.
That's why you have me.
There are some things that only I will say in public.
You ready? You know all those retail businesses that are being driven out of business by the riots?
They were not good businesses.
And by that, I don't mean that they all lost money, although most of them probably were operating close to break-even.
But they were businesses that were going to go out of business.
Maybe this year, maybe next year, maybe five years.
But Amazon was going to polish off all of those companies.
Any retail store, the exceptions would be maybe an Apple store, but that's such an exception that most of these smaller retails, smaller restaurants, they were all going to go out of business.
And here's the thing that I don't think we fully incorporated into our economic estimates.
A lot of the small retail places, especially the small independent restaurants, are basically criminal organizations.
This is why I'm the only one who will say this.
Small businesses like to do a thing I call not pay their taxes.
Or they'll hire a lot of illegal workers, restaurants especially.
So what happened that just demolished all those downtown restaurants probably was just an acceleration of something that was going to happen.
Probably doesn't have nearly the economic impact that you think it does, except on employment.
And I think that the city is probably, we're going to have less foot traffic anyway, because of the other things happening.
The rich people moving away.
So I feel like the stock market is not crazy to be so high lately, despite what looks like trouble on the ground.
Because I think the stock market realizes that if Amazon and Apple are making money like crazy, But that little restaurant on the corner went from break-even only by cheating on their taxes to non-existent.
Probably those people are going to find work as something that's maybe a better thing.
The short-term disruption is devastating, so I don't want to minimize the impact on the humans who are involved with those businesses.
It's extreme, and it's life-ruining in many cases.
But if you're looking at the larger economy, it's a brutal economy.
People go out of business all the time.
It's just that when it's distributed across the country, you don't notice.
When it's concentrated on one main street, well, then you notice.
But it's not worse than sort of the baseline of companies going out of business all over the place as a normal part of capitalism.
So, I don't want to act happy that anybody's going out of business.
I'm just saying it's accelerating a trend that was going to happen.
Another, I think...
Well, never mind.
I'm noticing that Republicans are using a phrase I hadn't seen as much of before.
They're saying that the Democrats have made a devil's bargain with the progressives.
A devil's bargain.
Watch how much satanic imagery comes out of the Biden-Kamala Harris campaign.
Again, Just sort of a fun coincidence.
By the way, I tricked another couple of publications into running a story about me believing that Satan is behind the Biden campaign.
So every time they do a hit piece on me, so there was another one this morning, a hit piece on me, they don't quite know what's going on.
Because first of all, I don't know if they know that they've changed the story from me saying explicitly I don't believe that Satan exists.
They've changed it all the way to I'm promoting Satan being part of the Biden campaign.
Literally the opposite of what I said.
But I did it intentionally.
I allowed them to take me out of context.
I created it so that they could do it easily.
Not because they were fooled, but because they're bad people.
And they would take it out of context, which they did.
So now when I see a hit piece like that that is falling into my trap, I just retweet it.
You can't fail harder at a hit piece than to have the target of your hit piece just retweet it.
That's it. Just retweets it.
That's as hard as you can fail.
All right. 81 Nobel Prize winners endorsed Joe Biden for president in an open letter.
81 Nobel Prize winners.
Wow. Smart, capable people.
The best of the best.
And 81 of them? All Nobel Prize winners.
And they all think that Biden is better.
But let's see, what are the reasons?
Because if you've got 81 Nobel Prize winners and they offer their reasons, these are going to be good reasons.
I mean, we're not talking about a bunch of idiots.
These are smart people, the best humanity has to offer.
So when I read their reasons to you for supporting Biden, I think you'll find them quite brilliant.
So sit down.
Because sometimes this level of brilliance can blind you momentarily.
So if you are operating a motor vehicle, just pull over to the side of the road because I'm going to give you some brilliance that...
Honestly, I was thinking of wearing sunglasses just to read this, but I think we can get away with it.
Just playing it straight.
All right. The reasons that the 81 Nobel Prize winners give is that Biden has a willingness to listen to experts.
Okay, that part's stupid, because literally every president listens to experts.
There's never been one that didn't listen to experts.
There never will be one that doesn't listen to experts.
So the first part's kind of a throwaway.
That's obviously not the brilliant part, because, like I said, these are 81 Nobel Prize winners, so they're not going to rest on You know, unwilling to listen to experts when that's the stupidest thing you could ever say in public.
So it's the second part where the brilliance comes out.
Here it goes. And he has...
Joe Biden has a deep appreciation for using science to find solutions.
Okay, let me look a little further in the paragraph because I'm looking for the smart part because I know they wouldn't just say he has a deep appreciation for using science because, again, that would be literally...
Every living human being would fall under this description.
Trump, Biden, strangers, people you've never met, people with severe brain damage, people in other countries, people who have never been to school, people who have been to school, people who have PhDs, people who will never have PhDs.
Pretty much 100% of all humanity has a deep appreciation for using science to finding solutions.
So there must be something else in this paragraph where they get to the smart part.
Oh, that's the end of the paragraph.
I guess what they're telling us is that the Nobel Prize is no longer prestigious.
I actually wanted to get a Nobel Prize until I read this.
And now I see that there's not really any point to it.
They've actually ruined the prestige of the Nobel Prize.
Now, by the way, I had this same experience when I was younger.
I always wished, because I'm in sort of a writing business, I wished that I could win a Pulitzer Prize.
Because imagine how cool that would be, right?
I mean, just for the bragging.
It's like, yeah, I don't like to brag about it, but I did win a Pulitzer Prize.
You know, I always wanted to be able to say that or have other people introduce me as Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Scott Adams.
And I thought that would be pretty, pretty cool.
And I felt that until I met somebody who told me how the Pulitzer Prize committee works.
It's just people who read books and pick the one they liked.
That's it. It's just a small group of people who read some books that have been submitted.
It's not all the books in the world.
Just the people who filled out an application and said, I think my work is so good it should be considered.
And then a small group of people who read their stuff and say, which one do you like?
I kind of like this one.
That's it. Winning the Pulitzer Prize has no prestige.
Nothing. There's just nothing to recommend about that award, except somehow we got it in our heads that it's important.
It isn't. It's just several people read some books and they decided which one they liked.
That's it! Likewise, when I won the top award in cartooning, it's called the Rubin.
It's like the Academy Award for cartoonists.
And one year, and I lusted after it when I was a new cartoonist, I thought, if only someday I could win the top award in cartooning, my life would be complete.
And one day I won the top two awards, the top award for a cartoon strip, but also the same year I won the top award for all cartoonists of any kind, the number one in the entire world.
And after I won it, I realized, oh, it's just because I had a good year financially.
Basically, I made a lot of noise.
I was in the press.
The award committee said, you know what would be good?
If we nominate somebody who's already getting a lot of attention, and then we'll have more attendance at our event.
That was it. It had nothing to do with the quality of my work.
It had everything to do with the fact that it was unusually commercially valuable that year.
That was sort of a peak period for commercial success of Dilbert.
I thought, okay, well, that's off the list.
So now I have no respect whatsoever for the top award in cartooning because I won it.
I took all the value out of it.
I have no respect for the Pulitzer Prize because it's just some people saying what book they like.
That's it. And now 81 Nobel Prize winners just came out with the dumbest open letter in all the world.
And I just looked at it and said, if that's all it takes to be a Nobel Prize winner, is to be this dumb, I'm not sure I want one of those either.
So, didn't expect that to happen.
I made a list to help you identify all the dumb people, so you don't have to interact with them.
So these are the complaints about Trump, that if you see any of these, you can just stop listening to whoever is talking or tweeting.
If somebody says that Trump doesn't believe in science, just stop listening.
Just walk away.
Nothing that somebody says after that sentence is worth listening to.
Likewise, doesn't listen to experts.
Basically the same thing. Don't listen to anything that anybody says after they say that.
How about this one? Trump is unwilling to do his job.
What? Unwilling to do his job?
If you hear somebody say that, Just walk away.
You don't need to hear anything else they say after that.
Moreover, you should actively try to forget anything they said before that, just in case you inadvertently believe in any of it.
Because somebody who is so dumb that they would say, and it doesn't matter if you talk about Trump or any other human, if you say they're unwilling to do their job once they're president?
Because a lot of people are watching, right?
They're doing their job.
Trump, Obama, it doesn't matter who you're talking about.
By the time you become president, you're willing to do the job.
You didn't get there by being lazy or not caring.
How about this one? He only cares about himself.
That's one that you can just say, ah, I'm out.
Anybody who can say something that monumentally is stupid, that he only cares about himself, there's no such thing As a president whose personal fate is disconnected from the fate of the country he is running or she is running.
You can't disconnect those things.
It's the most transparent job in the entire world.
There's no job more transparent.
We're looking at everything Trump is doing.
Everything. We see it all.
And how in the world would anybody be in that job and think, you know, I think I'll do some stuff that's just good for me.
Bad for the country.
Good for me. I don't think anybody will notice.
That's not a thing.
The president knows with dead certainty.
I don't have to be a mind reader.
I just have to know that the president has an IQ over 20.
Because anybody with an IQ over 20, I might be exaggerating a little bit, He knows that they have to do a good job for the country.
The entire world is watching every minute of every day.
We're all watching. He doesn't have that option of, I think I'll just do something that's good for me.
That's not a thing. Even when the president goes golfing, again, I don't care if it's Clinton or Obama or Trump, do you want your leader to have some time, you know, with his own head, get outdoors, clear his mind, maybe meet a few people that he wouldn't have time to talk to otherwise?
Yeah, you should want that.
And you should want him to do a copious amount because it's good for him.
Does he still work hard enough?
Yes! Yes!
He works hard enough. He works really hard.
It's obvious. Alright.
The other ones that are crazy is he's a dictator when 100% of what we observe violates that assumption.
Or that he's a racist when, again, everything we observe shows that he cares about people who are citizens more than those who are not.
But beyond that, that's it.
That's his whole preference.
And he prefers people who obey the law, of course.
But if you do those two things, you're a citizen and you obey the law, he likes you.
And not just a little bit.
Ask Herschel Walker.
Does he like Herschel Walker?
Yeah! Yeah, for years and years and years.
Now, am I saying that because Trump has a black friend?
No. Trump has a lot of black friends, people he's worked with, people who have given him awards.
You know, he has a very deep relationship with a lot of different people.
Alright, here's my favorite one.
And I tweeted this.
If your main criticism of your opponent is chaos...
That that's what's wrong with your opponent.
They're bringing chaos. You don't really have a complaint.
What you have there is a perception problem.
If you're saying somebody else is all about the chaos, that's not really a statement about the other person.
That's sort of a public confession that you don't understand things well enough to know what's going on.
It's more about the limits of your own ability to understand the world.
And here's why. Chaos isn't something that one person brings to the situation.
Chaos is the situation.
The world is chaos all the time.
If you knew what was going to happen, would you need the news?
Why would there be a news industry if we already knew what was going to happen?
The whole reason that we're having this conversation, and a lot of you are finding out things this morning in the news and maybe Some of you hearing it from me for the first time.
It's because you didn't know it was going to happen.
That's what the news is.
Stuff you didn't know was going to happen, for the most part.
And if you don't know it's going to happen, it's chaos.
So just putting a clever word on it and labeling it, Doesn't change the fact that the world is unpredictable all the time.
Do you think you could hire or elect a president who would make the chaos go away?
I hope not.
Because if the chaos goes away, we're all dead.
The only way you could have no chaos is to literally be dead.
Because the world serves up a lot of chaos.
You hope that you have a president who knows how to deal with it.
And one way not to deal with all the chaos is to really dig into all the details.
I have much less respect for the presidents who try to master all the details of the topics.
I know that sounds counterintuitive.
You think, well, Scott, that's exactly what you need, isn't it?
Don't you want the president who really gets into the nuts and bolts, really digs in a little bit deeper?
No. No.
You want that kind of person who has, like if somebody works in a cubicle, you want somebody who can really dig into the details.
Because that's your job if you work in a cubicle.
I'm not disparaging people working in cubicles.
I spent much of my career there.
I'm just saying that that's a different job.
Some people's job it is to get into the details.
Other people are sitting on top of this giant ball of Chaos, let's call it.
And they're trying to nudge the chaos in intelligent ways whenever there's an opportunity.
And understanding all the details of all the chaos would be the least productive thing you could do.
It's not what a leader does.
It's what the cubicle does.
The cubicle can dig in, but they only dig into their topic.
The cubicle that's one cubicle over, they also dig in, but only to their topic.
Because the level of complexity soon would overwhelm anybody if you don't chunk it down to its smallest part.
So the last thing you want is a leader who's obsessing over the details.
You just can't lead that way.
You wish that were possible, but that's wishful thinking.
Instead, you have leaders who are dealing with, do I trust this person?
Does the general thrust of this fit with my philosophy?
Is this something I could fix if I break it?
Is this something that will cause maybe a predictable problem if I go this way versus that?
It's a risk management situation.
A lot of it is guessing.
A lot of it is intuition. So anybody who is operating at the child level that says that A candidate is bringing chaos, when in fact chaos is the canvas.
They're not really a good observer.
I've noticed this correlation anecdotally, and I want to see if you can notice it.
As I've famously called out, the Democrats who come after me on Twitter, if they say completely irrational things, And I check their profile.
They're usually artists of some kind.
And you can tell they're an artist because their comments depart from rational thought so grotesquely.
But there's another category because not all Democrats and not all critics of the Trump are artists.
Some of them have jobs where they've learned critical thinking.
What do the people who have actually learned critical thinking Let's say you're economists, you're lawyers, you're business people.
There are lots of other jobs.
But ones who actually have skill and experience in critical thinking and risk management.
What do they say when they come after me?
I will give you an example.
Sure, Dilbert.
Or, well, that's from the cartoonist.
That's it. They just do sarcasm.
As if that says everything that needs to be said.
Well, there's the cartoonist.
Nothing else needs to be said.
And I want you to see if you find that correlation.
So check profiles when somebody comes at you with nothing but sarcasm and see if this pattern holds.
I don't know if it will, but it might.
Just see if the critical thinkers use sarcasm and the artists try to use logic and But it's not working for him.
All right. I guess Rand Paul has called for the subpoena of Antifa's plane records and hotel records and travel and stuff to find out who's funding Antifa.
And I think that's everything.
You know, it feels to me It's too early to know.
But it feels to me that if we find out who's funding at least the primary agitators that get everybody else going, it only takes a small number of people to get the rest of the crowd going in some direction.
So just for clarification, nobody believes that all of Antifa are being paid to be there.
There are no conservatives who believe that.
No Republicans, nobody on Twitter, nobody's ever suggested that all the BLM or all of the Antifa, or even most, are being paid to be there.
Clearly not the case.
The assertion is, the allegation if you will, that there's a high likelihood, based on A high likelihood that some number of them, some kernel of them, small kernel, are paid professional agitators, and it would be good to know who's paying them, because they might be the ones who are driving the animal spirits of the rest.
So Rand Paul continues to be one of the most productive members of Congress, seemingly being the only person who's willing to do useful things on a regular basis.
I don't know what to say about this.
Like, how many times have I told you there was a good thing happening and then the name attached to it was Rand Paul?
It's a fairly common event.
And I say to myself, aren't there a lot of other people in Congress?
Like, why is it all the smart stuff comes from just a handful of people?
It's pretty consistent.
So Nancy Pelosi's got some political trouble.
She was... Caught on security camera indoors, getting her hair blown out, some kind of a wash and a blow for her hair.
Now, I guess the shop was closed to other people, but she was in the shop and she had her mask off.
And so she got a lot of pushback from that.
I guess her response was that she didn't know it was wrong.
Now, here's my opinion about that.
Don't care at all.
I don't care even a little bit that Nancy Pelosi was indoors when other people are not allowed indoors, you know, because it's against the rules.
And I don't mind that she didn't have her mask off when she was getting this particular treatment.
By the way, a lot of personal services, such as massages, it's not that uncommon for the The provider to have a mask, as in Nancy's case, but the person receiving the service to not have a mask, depending on what the service is, for example.
But in most cases, when you can wear a mask, it's recommended.
Now, the reason I'm not going to climb all over Pelosi for what is being called massive hypocrisy is not because it isn't.
It is. It's massive hypocrisy, but it's also not important.
And I would like to establish the belief that the leaders of our country should not be treated like the rest of us.
I don't think that's wrong.
I believe that Nancy Pelosi should be able to get her hair done indoors because she's the Speaker of the House.
And, you know...
There are things that you can't do on the sidewalk if you're the Speaker of the House.
Now, if everybody else was on the sidewalk, they're anonymous, people walk by, that's fine.
It's safe. It's good enough.
But if you're the President of the United States, or you're the Speaker of the House, or you're Rand Paul, yeah, that's okay with me if they take you alone.
Because being indoors, the problem is not just indoors.
The problem is indoors with lots of people.
If you take Nancy indoors with one person who's wearing a mask, and let's say that Nancy's been tested, she probably has been recently, it's not the biggest risk in the world, and she is safer indoors than she would be outdoors.
You know, I get that other people say, hey, other people, we did our own hair, we worked it out, but she's also in her 80s.
I don't know. Can she do her own hair?
Being in her 80s is a bigger problem to me than the fact she got her hair blown out.
So I would like to be consistent because there's no way in the world there won't be, you know, Republicans and other people who get caught without masks, etc.
You know, maybe it'll happen to me.
You know, maybe I'll get caught on some video without a mask or something.
And it's just, I can't get, I can't get interested in it.
All right. But I understand it's a fun story in a political season.
Chicago police released surveillance video of suspects looting the store and they're asking for help identifying them.
Now, the people that they're showing don't have masks on.
Some do, but most of them don't.
Now, what do you tell yourself When you see that Chicago is asking the public to help them identify the pictures that they're publishing, presumably online, I don't know if it's in any newspapers too, what does that tell you?
Think through, what do you know is true if Chicago is printing photos of people and saying, public, can you identify them?
Here's what you know is true.
Chicago are really, really incompetent.
Do you know how hard it would be to identify every person in that photo?
Here's how hard it would be.
I'm going to demonstrate this.
This will be the entire effort to identify every single one within two seconds.
So the entire time to identify every picture, my claim, is sub 2 seconds.
Let me demonstrate.
It looks like this. Let's say this is the picture.
Now this is my phone.
And I look at the picture and I push this button.
And then their face comes up and I've identified them.
You can do that with an app.
It's an app that law enforcement uses routinely in other places.
What this tells me is that Chicago For whatever reason, is the only place that's not buying an easily purchasable app that every law enforcement person knows about, knows how to get, knows how to use.
Literally, it's this easy. Point your phone at the picture.
You don't even have to point it at the person.
Point it at a photo.
Press one button.
Done. The name of the person appears on your phone almost every time.
Close to 100%.
Now, what's wrong with Chicago that they can't buy this little app?
Well, obviously, there's somebody who told them that here I'm speculating a little bit, so I feel like I'm speculating responsibly, but it's speculation, so I don't want to sell this as fact.
They have to not be using these apps.
Clearview is the leader in that field.
They're obviously not using Clearview.
Why not? Why not?
What is the difference between using that app and getting their answer in two seconds versus publishing these in public and asking the public to identify them, which probably will work.
It's just really, really hard.
It's crazy.
Yeah, facial recognition would have them in two seconds.
And when I say two seconds, that's not an exaggeration.
The app doesn't even have to sit there and process.
It's actually two seconds.
Now, some of the apps are better than others at recognizing African-American faces.
I think Clearviews might be the leader in getting that right, but of course you still have to verify.
You don't want to trust the app for the final identification, but it tells you where to look.
All right. There's a report that the number of people looking for divorces was 34% higher from March to June.
Ouch. And the data shows that 31% of the couples admitted lockdown has caused irreparable damage to their relationships.
31% of couples believe they have irreparable damage to their relationship.
Irreparable. This is going to tear apart the nature of society.
Now, I always had a theory that part of a successful relationship is distance.
In other words, the fact that let's say one of the adults goes off and works all day, or maybe both of the adults go off and work all day, is probably a really healthy thing, because if you're in each other's business all the time, that can cause some tension.
It looks like we've proven that.
I've said before that the nuclear family needs to be not eliminated.
That's Black Lives Matter.
Ideas sort of get rid of the nuclear family, I think, if I have that right.
I hope I have that right. I've said something compatible with that but different, which is that it shouldn't be the only model because so many people won't be able to achieve it.
Not everybody can have a nuclear family.
Sometimes it requires a certain amount of money.
Sometimes you've got to be lucky to get the right person.
There's a lot that can go wrong with the nuclear family.
But if it works for you, I would agree that for those families where it works, it's tremendous.
It'd be hard to beat as an organizing principle.
But we do need something for the people who can't make that work.
And I think that shows it.
Joy Reid, I don't think she'll get cancelled because she's on the side that doesn't try to cancel itself as much as it cancels other people.
But she's being accused of being Islamophobic, I guess.
Who accused her of that?
Oh, Ilhan Omar, Representative Omar.
She said of Joy Reid, honestly, this kind of casual Islamophobia is hurtful and dangerous.
We deserve better, need an apology, etc.
So what is it that Joy Reid said that would cause her own side to try to cancel her?
How bad was it?
Well, let me read it.
She said, leaders, let's say in the Muslim world, talk a lot of violent talk and encourage their supporters to be willing to commit violence, including on their own bodies, in order to win against whoever they decide is the enemy.
And she said other things.
So she got in trouble for comparing Muslims to Republicans, I think, because the next part of this was she was saying about radicalizing supporters.
So Joy Reid might get cancelled, or at least she's getting in trouble, for comparing Muslims to Republicans.
Could that be any better?
Is there anything more entertaining than watching Joy Reid get cancelled by Ilhan Omar for comparing Muslims to Republicans?
That's just everything.
The whole year 2020 was just put into that one little package.
If you only needed to know that one thing, you'd know how the rest of the year went.
Alright. Here's my problem with intersectionality and critical race theory.
Two categories of things which I am no expert on.
But I'll just ask this question.
Isn't the guaranteed end result of those things that we keep carving each other into smaller and smaller categories until everybody has a reason to hate everybody?
How else can it go?
Because I would love to hear the thinking This says how this brings us to a better place.
It's certainly good to talk about racism and sexism and all those things and try to deal with them as practically as we can.
But if the moment you've dealt with it and you said, okay, okay, we're doing the best we can to Let's say, make the world just as good for black people and white people.
Of course, we're not there, but let's say we're doing a good job on that.
The next thing that happens is, well, what about black people who are also Muslims?
And then you say, alright, alright, that's a new category.
It feels like every time you slice the category, well, what about if you're black, a Muslim, and gay?
Okay, okay, we better do something about that category.
I don't see how you ever take this philosophy to a good end point.
It feels like it's one direction to complete destruction, and I can't even conceive of the exit path.
I don't see the exit path, where things get better and better, and then you reach a good place.
I'd love to have somebody explain to me The thinking behind that.
Because I think, like most left versus right differences, it doesn't take into account human motivation.
It doesn't take into account human psychology or the way an average person thinks or acts.
This is the thing that the conservatives consistently get right and the left consistently gets wrong, which is forgetting that humans will always act like humans.
If you design a system that can't work For humans, don't be surprised if it doesn't work.
Why would that be surprising?
Bernie Sanders said one of the dumber things you'll ever hear.
He said this, the mainstream media doesn't talk about it.
Space, space, space.
Congress doesn't talk about it.
Space, space, space.
Trump doesn't talk about it.
Space, space, space.
But three multi-billionaires now own more wealth than the bottom half of our society.
And he suggests that that would be very, very bad.
Now, here's what's wrong with that.
Now, I've described myself as being left of Bernie, but with a special caveat.
That I'm also good at math.
I use good at math as a proxy for good at thinking.
Good at logic.
And I'm not like the world's best at any of those things.
I'm just better than Bernie.
So I can see the obvious idiocy that he brings to the table.
And here's the problem.
Suppose nobody knew how much money those billionaires had.
Here's a mental experiment.
All right? So Bernie has said it's a real problem that three billionaires have as much as the bottom half of the entire United States.
That's an amazing statistic.
It's mind-numbingly, jaw-droppingly amazing.
But imagine a world where you just didn't know.
They existed exactly like they exist now.
The only difference is you didn't know how much money they had.
Would you be worse off?
It doesn't make any sense.
If the only reason we're complaining about it is that we know about it, but there's nothing underlying in terms of it won't hurt you if you didn't know about it, why is this his biggest problem?
Why is he raising this in a time of great uncertainty in this world and problems that are as big as any problems we've ever had?
Why is he raising the only problem I can think of where if you literally didn't know it existed, You would never find out.
Because nothing would go wrong.
In fact, you'd be hearing Bill Gates is giving away hundreds of millions of dollars and curing malaria or polio or some damn thing in Africa.
And you'd hear that story and you'd say, huh, I wonder how he's paying for it.
But would you be unhappy that Bill Gates was curing a disease in Africa?
No. No, you'd be kind of happy about it.
You just wouldn't know how he paid for it.
Would you be unhappy if you found that Elon Musk had figured out not only a way to go to Mars, but he had created an entire competitive space industry which makes the future of the Earth possibly far better than it would have been without our ability to someday effectively leave our gravitational force?
What would you think about that if you didn't know that That Elon Musk was worth billions, and all you knew is that he was a guy who opened up space.
He was a guy who built a network of solar shingles for your house that could work into your battery, which someday might be part of a solution for green energy that would make the world a better place.
Suppose you didn't know he was a billionaire, but you knew he did all of those things.
Would you be less happy? What exactly is Sanders talking about other than jealousy?
Does Sanders understand that the money that the billionaires own is being used?
Jeff Bezos' ownership of Amazon is still mostly in the stock.
That's why he's so rich.
It's in the stock. If Bezos pulled his money out of the stock, what would he do with it?
Would he buy more food for himself?
No. He probably eats all the food he needs to stay fed.
There's a limit to how many things a rich guy can buy.
You know, Bezos got his yacht, which he probably hardly ever uses, and he'll be tired of it and then he'll get rid of it, but he got one.
Billionaires don't really have a way to consume the wealth they have.
They have to put it into something that benefits the economy.
They have to. They don't really have an option.
So he has to put it in stock where it's bolstering the market in different ways.
Or you put it in the bank and then the bank can use that for lending.
But money doesn't just sit in a mattress.
These billionaires aren't sitting on a gigantic pile of dollar bills.
Their money is in the system working.
They're the ones who are funding startups.
Where do all of your important startups come from?
They come from some billionaire who said, well, I can put a million dollars into this startup.
It might work, it might not, but I got an extra million.
I don't care. So for Bernie not to understand the most basic, basic, basic stuff about economics is really embarrassing.
All right. And...
Bernie goes on to say that that level of inequality is immoral and unsustainable.
But again, if you didn't know they had the money, it wouldn't make any difference at all.
It would be completely sustainable if you just didn't know about it.
That's it. Now, I could argue that maybe Warren Buffett is not adding as much to the world because he's more of a financial manipulator.
But even he is making markets and companies more efficient because when he buys a piece of a company, he doesn't just buy it.
Often he'll, you know, improve it in small ways and big.
The people who are worthless are the hedge fund types who are just taking money out of the system, but they're not adding anything.
All right. It seems to me that Biden's value proposition has devolved into some form of vote for Biden or Biden's followers will hunt you down and kill you.
Now, that's hyperbole, but it's starting to feel that way, isn't it?
Because the way you feel isn't necessarily the exact way that things are, but the way it feels as a Trump supporter is that Biden is literally threatening us And other people have made this observation, but I'm just piling on.
It does feel like the left is threatening us, but here's what they don't get.
The left has not yet fully internalized that the protesters are not on their side.
You get that, right?
The left doesn't quite understand, they're just starting to understand, that's why they're coming out against them, that the protesters are not on their side.
The protesters are on their own side, whatever that is.
But they're definitely not on the Democrat side.
And they're not on Trump's side.
They're not on America's side, you could argue.
There's a big non-story, two big non-stories in the conservative world.
Now, for those of you who say, Scott, why do you only say good things about Trump?
Why don't you never say any bad things about the other side?
Well, I do all the time, and I'm going to do that now.
So there's this tape, you heard it on Tucker's show, some of you, Chris Cuomo talking to, of all people, Michael Cohen, the disgraced and jailed lawyer, ex-lawyer for Trump.
So apparently Chris Cuomo and Cohen knew each other pretty well.
Who knew that? That's sort of a weird little backstory.
But on this audio recording, Chris Cuomo is heard to say things which are completely exculpatory and make Chris Cuomo look like he did not do the things he's accused of.
How did conservative pundits treat an audio tape in which it's pretty clear that Chris Cuomo legitimately believes he was not involved in the things that he was accused of doing, the MeToo-ish accusations?
How does the conservative world treat the fact that it really shows he doesn't think he did these things?
In private, he acts like he believes that they didn't happen.
They treat it like it happened.
Like he didn't say what he said.
And I watch this and I think, we're seeing more and more of this where somebody will say, they'll hand you an apple and they'll say, What do you think of this banana?
And you'll say, what banana?
You just handed me an apple. This is clearly an apple.
It's red. It's round.
I take a bite out of it.
It's an apple. Stop saying this is a banana, because that's an apple.
And then the person will look right at you like nothing had ever happened, and they'll say, is the banana good?
And you'll say, what's going on here?
This is no banana.
We're both looking at this.
It's an apple. And the other person will look right at it and say, now that's a banana.
I've never seen this before.
So it happened with the Cuomo story.
There's nothing on there that should be embarrassing to Chris Cuomo, and it's treated as a national story of something that's embarrassing to Chris Cuomo.
It's literally the opposite.
It's completely exculpatory.
I don't even know what to think about that.
Alright, is that the only time that's happened?
No. How about this one?
So Dr. Scott Atlas, he's part of the Trump team, you know, the coronavirus team, I guess.
And CNN was reporting that he was pushing for herd immunity.
So he came on, I think it was Fox, and they said, were you doing that?
And he was like, no, no, I've never pushed for herd immunity.
Nobody has. It's not even a thing.
It's never been brought up.
The president's never mentioned it.
It's never been in a conversation.
It's never been floated as a possibility.
Nobody thinks it's something we should pursue.
There's zero times zero times zero to this story.
What will people say once the person who is the most closest to the story, what will CNN say now that he has said, no, there's nothing to it?
They'll just act like he didn't say it.
And they'll just keep reporting that it's happening.
Like it didn't even happen.
This is just a weird world.
How about the story that the CDC had modified their death count and it wasn't 180,000 or whatever, it was closer to 9,000 because only 6% of the people were dying without comorbidities.
Therefore, it's all a big fraud, etc.
Nothing like that happened.
Again, it's like a big national story, but it didn't happen.
It literally didn't happen.
None of that happened. All that happened is they just sliced it a different way, and as the experts say, pretty much everybody who dies of anything has comorbidities.
It's very rare for a person to die, unless it's, you know, say an accident or some rare Genetic disease or something.
But it's actually really unusual for anybody to die without comorbidities.
So the fact that 94% of people who die from coronavirus have comorbidities, it's kind of like everything else.
Now, what do conservatives say?
They say, but, but, but, Scott, I know what you're saying.
But still, What that proves, Scott, you're missing the whole point, Scott, Scotty.
People who disagree with me like to call me Scotty.
Scotty, you're missing the whole point.
The point is that those people who don't have the comorbidities should not have been afraid, because their odds of dying are just vanishingly small.
So let's send the kids back to school.
Because why in the world would you not send kids to school when, A, you know it's good for the kids, You know that their risk is tiny.
There's no reason, there's no logic whatsoever for not sending the kids to school.
And I look at that and I go, what's wrong with you?
What's wrong with you that you would say that in public?
The reason that they don't want to send the kids to school is not that the kids will die, it's that they'll be part of the transmission that will get to the 94% of people with comorbidities, And there's more spread, could put the teachers at risk in some cases.
We don't know how much risk, but could put them at risk.
Well, it would put them at risk.
We don't know how much. And I think to myself, if you leave out the part where the kids bring it home or help spread it, you're not part of the...
You can't consider yourself part of the adult conversation.
The minimum requirement to be an adult in the conversation...
Because you have to at least acknowledge the big factors in the conversation.
One big factor is the kids themselves.
And I think almost everybody agrees that they would be mostly fine and the risk would be so small that the benefits to the kids themselves would be tremendous.
Benefit to the parents?
Tremendous. Because the parents would now be freed up to do what they need to do.
But if you leave out the part about this clearly would contribute to the spread, if you leave that part out, you're not in the adult conversation.
You really aren't. Now, you could argue that it won't spread it, but that would be a scientific question.
I think the evidence is that it probably does, but maybe we don't know.
But still, if you leave it out, you're not part of the adult conversation.
The funniest story is the Portland's mayor Reportedly, I would look for confirmation on this, but reportedly he's considering selling his home in Portland because of the protests.
So the guy who has been most supportive of the protesters and literally joined in with them is learning that these protesters are not on his side, as he had hoped, but rather are a malign force, as they like to say on TV. Here's another non-story reported as a big story.
The State Department, I guess in Kyiv, something about Ukrainians, our State Department, was illegally monitoring conservatives on Twitter and social media.
Jack Posobiec, Hannity, Laura Ingram, and others.
To which I say, why is that a story?
Do you know who else is illegally monitoring Jack Posobiec?
I am. I am.
Yeah. I'm illegally reading his Twitter account.
And when he tweets, I break the law.
I break the law and I read it.
And if he tweets again, I don't like to broadcast this, but I'm probably going to break the law again and read what he tweeted.
Now, you might say to me, Scott, that's not what they're talking about.
They're not talking about reading his tweets.
What are they talking about?
Are they talking about hacking Twitter?
No, that's not in the story.
All they're talking about is asking some third party to keep an eye on various accounts that were of importance and tell them what they saw so that they didn't have to do it themselves.
Is that a real story?
Now, if there's more to it, if there was some hacking, an actual illegal act, I would say, yeah, let's look at that.
But the way it's reported, and again, could be more to the story, I don't know, but the way it's reported is they ask somebody to read the tweets of people who are important to their livelihoods and their jobs.
And I thought to myself, I don't think that's illegal.
If it is, it shouldn't be.
Trump is fighting back against the so-called fake news that he had some kind of stroke or mini-strokes or something.
The best evidence against it is that his trip to Walter Reed was brief, and he went home.
If you had any of the things that he was alleged to have had, do you go in and then just go home and go back to your job the next day?
Is that a thing? So I think this is debunked.
The president has debunked it in the The clearest possible words, but I know that the public isn't going to trust him on that.
If I had to guess, I would guess his slurred speech and a few of his speeches could be fatigue, it could be dental work, it could be anything.
But my guess is that whatever they rushed him in for was something embarrassing or something that wasn't really a problem.
And if it wasn't really a problem, did you need to do anything?
Have any of you ever gone to the emergency room only to be told, oh, that's no big deal?
You have, right?
Unless you're bleeding or you've got a broken arm or something.
How many of you have gone in and the emergency room just says, oh, that's nothing, take an aspirin?
It's a pretty common thing.
So I wouldn't be surprised if they did rush the president in for some...
Greater medical treatment than they had available in the White House.
And I guess there's a lot in the White House.
And then they checked it out and it was no big deal or it was something easily treatable.
And he just wants it out of the news.
Which I can understand.
What was Biden's exact quote when he did his speech and he said, Do I look like some kind of wild-eyed progressive?
What were his exact words?
Do I look like some kind of wild-eyed progressive?
And I thought to myself, how does that get him the vote of the wild-eyed progressives?
Because it feels like he's insulting how they look, isn't it?
Because he's saying, do I look like?
Like, literally, look.
He didn't say, have I acted like?
Do I have a record of?
Have I ever promised anything in that nature?
He didn't say that. He said, look at me.
Like, literally, with your eyes, look at me.
Do I look like some wild-eyed progressive?
It feels like he was mocking the protesters, their actual physical look.
Not that we haven't done that, but it would be news if he did.
And I wondered how this completely escaped the pouncing.
I thought there'd be more pouncing on that.
All right. Apparently Trump is down, depending on what polls you want to believe, they're all over the place.
But I think it was Nate Silver who said Trump is down 4-5%, or he said if, it was more of an if, based on where things are heading, Nate Silver said that if Trump ends up being down 4-5% in the battleground states, it's actually a close race.
Here's what I say. What does it mean to be down 4-5%?
In a world where 12% of the GOP says that they won't tell pollsters their honest opinion.
So 12% of Republicans would lie, and Trump's only down 4-5%.
What does that tell you?
Now, I want you to correct me on the math of this, but sometimes there are things that seem really obvious, that your brain isn't quite processing them right, so this might be one of those.
But here's what people are missing.
If a Republican voter simply refuses to talk to a pollster, they'll just call until they get another Republican.
So refusing to answer probably doesn't change the result that much because they'll just find somebody who's willing to answer until they have enough answers.
But if the GOP people who are being surveyed are lying, It's a double impact.
Because not only are they taking a vote away from Trump that they intend to cast, but they're giving it to Biden.
Doesn't that double the impact?
Because it's not just a vote that's missing.
It's a vote that the lie puts on the wrong tally.
So that one person makes a difference of two.
One away from Trump and one for Biden.
Am I thinking of that right?
I feel like I'm confusing myself, but that's right, right?
This is a good example of why I'm never embarrassed to be stupid in public.
It's a good skill. You should learn it.
Because sometimes I'll hit on something that's useful, and other times I'll say something that's like...
Okay, so people in the comments are agreeing with me.
So therefore, that 4 or 5% is really nothing.
Because if 12%...
are lying. That's a gigantic swing if their lie is that they're voting for Biden and they're not.
Alright. Yeah.
I guess that's all I got for today.
And it's like losing a stroke in golf.
Is it? No, it's not like losing a stroke in golf, because that doesn't add a stroke to the person you're golfing against.