Episode 1227 Scott Adams: The Legislation no one Read, The Mysteriously Good Coronavirus Outcomes in China
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
- How many people are killed by FAKE NEWS?
- No current pandemic issues in China?
- Mutated COVID19 in UK
- Coronavirus stimulus package
- Federal seizure of voting machines
- Solarwinds hack, Russia or China?
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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So, aren't you glad you're here at the best part of the day?
Coffee with Scott Adams.
Yeah, doesn't matter what else happens today.
You're off to a good start.
And if you'd like to make it the best, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or chalice, a sain, a canteen, a jug or a glass, a vasil of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day.
The thing makes everything better except the variant of the coronavirus.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go. Well, I hope that made everything better for you.
All right. Let's talk about the news.
I wonder if there's any way to calculate how many people the fake news kills.
Because in theory, you could do that, right?
So take the vaccine situation.
So you've got a very high number of African Americans who say they don't want to get the vaccination.
And you have to think...
That at least some of that is because the fake news said that Trump was supporting neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, also known as the fine people hoax, because in fact he said the opposite of what was reported, and also the drinking bleach hoax.
Imagine if those two stories didn't exist, plus the whole rest of the stories that Trump's a monster, racist, and anti-science.
Imagine if the fake news had not been saying for four years that Trump was not only a racist, but anti-science.
What would be the difference in the vaccination rate of black Americans?
Because I feel like it would be something, right?
And I feel as if you could probably come up with an estimate of like, well, you know, we got 60%, but it would have been 70%.
So 10% didn't get vaccinated.
And then you could just sort of work the math and see how many people they killed.
Am I wrong? Wouldn't you be able to do that math and actually estimate how many people he literally killed?
Now, the Tuskegee story, ask yourself this.
Now, everybody knows the Tuskegee horrible story about black airmen who were, let's see, was it intentionally infected, right?
And that story, I don't believe, would have necessarily been in the news if Obama were president.
Because if Obama were president, the story would be, hey, everybody, Obama's got a vaccination.
You're going to like it.
And I think it would have been fine.
And the black citizens of this country probably would have said something along the lines of, all right, I'll give it a chance.
But I do believe that the fake news has an actual death count at this point that would be hard to dispute.
Here's my biggest question in the world right now.
How does China have no infections, especially in Wuhan?
How do you have international travel, or is this the part I have wrong?
Did China stop all international travel at the moment?
Like currently, is there no travel from outside the country into China?
Because there has to be, right?
And how in the world, if there's still international travel in China, how is it they don't have an infection problem during a pandemic?
Doesn't it tell you that there's something really big that we don't know about this story?
Now, you might say to yourself, yeah, Scott, what you don't know is that they, you know, there's some conspiracy theory story.
About 20 million cell phones going dead around the time that Wuhan was being locked down.
The implication being that they just, you know, killed 20 million people to stop the virus.
Well, suppose they did.
I don't think they did, but suppose they did.
Or suppose that their extreme lockdown in Wuhan was really, really extreme, like you heard.
They were boarding people, boarding up doorways and stuff.
Suppose all of that happened.
Let's say they murdered 20 million people.
I don't think they did, but let's just say they did.
And they boarded people, and it was extreme, extreme, extreme lockdown.
And let's say it worked.
Because why wouldn't it, really?
I mean, it should work, right?
If you nailed everybody in their homes for three weeks, there would be no virus.
But here's the problem.
Don't they still have international travel?
Am I wrong about that?
Now, I don't think that they have quite the testing that they could thoroughly test people getting on and off planes.
So, there's something else going on, right?
Am I wrong about that?
How in the world can you explain anybody controlling the virus when there's still international travel?
How is that possible? It's only possible if there's some gigantic variable that we don't know about.
Somebody's saying it's because the survival rate is high, so maybe they just don't notice.
I don't think so. I think the hospitals would be impacted.
We probably know by now.
So you have to sort of assume that there's something bad going on, not just something you don't know about.
But at this point, it almost seems obvious that That either the virus doesn't have as much effect on Chinese ethnic people, or they have a treatment that works well and they're not sharing, which I think would be the highest probability.
My guess is that they're using some other kind of treatment in China and we just don't know about it.
That's my guess. Here's an example of good persuasion in the form of good framing from Josh Hawley in Congress.
And I just want to tell you the way he framed a topic.
It was better than I've seen before.
So he was talking about the allegations of election fraud.
And most people, when they talk about election fraud, they say, that election was stolen.
Look at my numbers.
You know, lots of people voted for Trump and sizes of the crowds, etc.
Now, you've noticed that that attack has not been extra persuasive, right?
Everybody who says the election was stolen is met by some Democrat who says there's no proof.
That's it, right?
The election was stolen.
There's no proof.
That's kind of the end of the conversation.
Isn't it? So Josh Hawley does not fall into that bad framing that is just a clear dead end, and he says this instead.
I'm paraphrasing, but it'll get you the idea.
He talks about how after four years of the Russia collusion hoax, that it's sort of rich that the Democrats would be saying that the Republicans should just accept the election as legitimate, and After experiencing four years of the other side doing nothing like that, and it all turning into a hoax.
But here's how Hawley, I can never pronounce his name, here's how he sums it up.
Instead of saying, that election was stolen, he says that Republicans are being told their concerns about the election don't matter.
Isn't that good?
Republicans are being told their concerns about the election don't matter.
That's really strong.
Because it's true.
Even if you are a Democrat, and even if you think there was nothing wrong with the election and you just want to move on, even if you think the Republicans are just crazy, it is nonetheless true, and unambiguously true, that Republicans are told their concerns about the election don't matter.
Don't matter. Now, it would be one thing to say that the election was stolen or not stolen, but we don't even get to that point.
We don't even get to determine whether there's any evidence or not, because things that were tried to get into court were rejected for standing and doctrinal latches and other bullshit.
So we've never really had a hearing about In which the evidence was presented with some opportunity for counter-evidence and debate.
So it's never really happened.
So since we've never had a forum in which the evidence that is still being collected could be presented, along with the people who have the counter-evidence, never been presented.
Wouldn't you say that what perfectly describes the situation is that Republicans are being told that their concerns about the election don't matter.
That's exactly what's happening.
It's really strong persuasion to say it that way.
Well, Rasmussen is saying that both the legacy media and Congress have approval levels below 20%, to which I said, below 20%?
Are you telling me that Congress and the media are higher than 10%?
Doesn't that seem wrong?
Have you met anybody who approves of the media or Congress?
Ever? If you go into a...
How about this holiday season?
Try this experiment.
Go around to each of your relatives that you're not supposed to be seeing because you're socially distancing and ask them one at a time so the others can't hear it.
So what do you think of the job of Congress?
See how many of your relatives, apparently there are 20% of people who will say, yeah, they're doing a good job.
See if you can get even one of your relatives to say, you know, all things being equal, if I'm being fair, yeah, I think they're criticized unfairly.
I think they're doing a pretty good job.
See if you can get one relative to say that.
Do you believe that nearly 20% of people said, yeah, Congress is pretty good, and By the way, the media is pretty accurate.
I don't know about that.
You might get it from the media, but I don't think anybody is going to say they like Congress.
There's this coronavirus variant now in the UK and maybe other places.
It's been there for a long time, and the question is whether we should close travel.
And I guess Canada is closing travel from Great Britain, and the United States is not.
Now, which of those decisions sounds better to you?
We don't quite know exactly if this is a big new threat, because maybe the vaccines work the same.
They say it might be more virulent or more transmissible.
That would be horrible.
But I don't think we'd know that.
It feels like it's too early to know if it's more transmissible.
But what should we do about it?
Should we do what Canada did and say, well, we don't know.
Could be bad, maybe it's not, but we'll just be careful in closed travel.
Or do you say, like we did, apparently, well, we don't see the reason to close yet, so not yet.
Which one of those two strategies is smart and which one is really dumb?
You should know the answer to this question.
The smart one is to shut it down because you don't know how big the risk is.
It's kind of a no-brainer.
Are you telling me that there's somebody in the UK who just absolutely needs to travel to the United States?
Now, if we have Americans who are trying to get home, There's probably a testing regimen that they can do, and, you know, until they have the result, they have to stay in a room or something.
So, you know, there might be some trouble getting people back.
And then, of course, there's also the problem that the other countries that have not closed travel, the UK people could just fly to Germany and then fly here or something like that.
So you don't get them all, but you get a lot of them.
It feels like It feels like it's obvious that closing travel from the UK, at least until we know more, it just seems obvious.
You may remember I was among the first to call for a closing travel to China about a week before the president did, and that was right.
Why would I be wrong this time?
All right, so we got this giant relief package for the coronavirus.
And it's $2.3 trillion, and it looks like it's over 5,000 pages.
And even AOC, apparently AOC is on the same team with everybody, she said that members of Congress have not read this bill.
It's over 5,000 pages, arrived at 2 p.m.
today, and we're told to expect a vote on it in two hours.
So Congress got two hours for every member of Congress to read a 5,000-page document.
And what AOC says is that this isn't governance, it's hostage-taking, which is a pretty good analogy, as analogies go.
And when I tweeted this, people went into the comments and they said, Yeah, but you voted for it.
If you don't like it, why'd you vote for it, AOC? You're complaining about it, but then you voted for it.
I'm seeing it in the comments.
What does hostage situation mean to you?
She called it a hostage situation.
Do you let the kidnappers kill the hostage?
Is that your plan? Because I feel as though if you have the money...
Depending on the situation, you might want to pay the ransom and get your hostage back.
I don't feel that AOC was being hypocritical, saying it's a hostage situation, and then treating it like a hostage situation, which is she had to vote for it because she had no choice.
Now, remember I was telling you that the Republic is dead because we, at the very least, we can't be sure that the will of the people was translated into the outcome.
It could be. It's possible that the election was fair enough that the actual outcome was represented in the vote.
But we don't know, and it seems highly unlikely that it was, because there are so many ways it could have been gamed and so many people wanted to do it.
But on top of having no idea if we're voting for our candidates or not, you actually don't even know if your vote made any difference.
On top of that, Once they're in office, they create legislation that even they don't read.
So, what you want to have is a republic, right?
And the republic would be where you elect your representatives, and they go make decisions on your behalf.
Now, if that worked, you know, if that's what we were actually observing, I'd say to myself, on paper...
On paper, that looks pretty good.
Looks pretty good.
Because we elect smart people, and they could probably make better decisions than we can.
You know, they're checking in with us, of course.
They're not ignoring the public, they're just taking the leadership.
But what does it mean to have elected your smart representatives and give them no opportunity to look at the things they're voting for, the big things, right?
That's not even close to a republic.
Because first of all, we don't know if we elected these people.
And second of all, they didn't do anything like representing us.
They didn't do anything like that.
Nor did they even have the option.
All they had was the option of a hostage situation.
That's it. So we have never been further from something that looked like a Democratic, republic, will of the people.
We are a million miles from that.
There's just nothing like representative democracy.
And so, it looks like Congressman Matt Gaetz is going to join other Republicans in challenging the Electoral College.
Now, as I understand it, If you get at least one senator, you force a debate.
Now, forcing a debate doesn't mean the outcome will change.
It just means procedurally, I guess you have to have a debate.
Now, if we have a debate in Congress, will that be the first trial-like thing in which there are people on both sides of the issue who can ask the experts about the evidence and the witnesses, etc.?
This would be the first time, wouldn't it?
Because, and I don't know exactly if Congress ended up debating the Electoral College, do they get to bring in witnesses?
And if they don't get to bring in witnesses, I would think that at least they can say what the witness wrote down on an affidavit.
So will this not be the first time there's a trial on the evidence, such as it is?
Not proof. We don't know if it's proof, but there's plenty of evidence.
It'll be the first time, right? Fact check me on that.
Would it be a proper debate with both sides?
Because it's the both sides that's important.
If all you do is another hearing where Republicans talk to friendly witnesses, that means nothing.
You've got to have the other side in this or you don't have anything.
There have been a few before this, I'm hearing.
I'm confusing this with Senate hearings, maybe?
Now, General Flynn, and I guess some other people, have been involved in conversations talking about what to do about the alleged election irregularities.
And some of the ideas that have been floated are a federal seizure of voting machines in the swing states.
So just have the federal government, through, I guess, an executive order, just go take control of them, and then they can be audited, etc.
Then another one is scarier, which is the military would go into these swing states that we have some questions about, and they would hold a second election.
That feels so impractical, I think we could rule that one out.
But what about the federal seizure of voting machines?
I can't think of any reason not to do that, can you?
Because whether or not there's anything on these voting machines that's a problem, do we all agree that we as citizens would like to know?
We'd like to know if there's a problem on there.
I don't want to just guess.
And if the only way you can do that is to have the feds seize those machines, is there even any argument against that?
I get that you don't want the feds to step on the states, and it's the state's responsibility, but in a situation in which there is extreme doubt about the outcome of the election and the viability of our system, that seems perfectly appropriate.
Why wouldn't you? Have you heard any argument against that?
Why wouldn't you? Somebody says the logs have been wiped.
If the logs have been wiped, Then that's reason enough for Congress not to certify anything, because that would be evidence of bad stuff, I would think.
Well, the CEO of FireEye, a cybersecurity company, so they're involved in looking at who was involved in the massive cyber attack that is being blamed on Russia.
But apparently this fellow, who is an expert in a company that's an expert on At this, and is involved in this very situation, they're not so sure it was Russia.
So Pompeo says it's pretty clear it was Russia.
And this expert also agrees that it fits the Russian profile, and it's very consistent with the Russia attack.
But he's not willing to say it's definitely Russia.
However, here's the interesting part.
He says that with time and enough effort, you could actually know for sure.
Do you think that's true?
Do you think that with some amount of time and effort, that somehow we have not had enough time and effort yet?
We've known about this hack for, I guess, months now.
But with additional time?
We would figure out who it was, and we haven't done it so far.
It feels like if we haven't done it so far, there wouldn't be much of a trail there, at least digitally.
So maybe they have other assets or other ways to find out with human intel.
But I'm a little suspicious that if you wait longer, you could be sure where the attack came from.
That just feels like something that's not a thing, if we don't already know.
If we knew already, then I'd say, oh yeah, I guess we found out.
So there's some talk that the Moderna vaccination, and maybe the other ones too, would work against this variant in Great Britain.
And that would be good news.
I don't know if it's good enough news to continue the way we're going, but yeah, good news.
And that is just about all that's happening, because it's the week of Christmas, and And it's a slow news time.
Have you looked at poor CNN lately?
Look at their news page.
It's a little sad, actually.
It's a little sad because they don't have enough Trump news.
Because Trump just sort of went undercover and all he talks about is the election stuff.
Somebody's saying something about Tesla.
Is there something happened with the Tesla stock today that I need to know about?
Not really. Down a little bit, no big deal.
All right. Yeah, no Trump, no drama.
So apparently Biden's plan of starving the news business of anything interesting is working really well.
And he is so far successfully starving the news industry of everything.
Somebody's saying Tesla's moving to Texas and Tesla's putting the S&P 500.
So there's some news on that.
All right. If you're not familiar with Q, look it up.
I don't think I'll be looking for Q. I see you're asking for a WenHub update.
The brief thing is that the coronavirus, the pandemic, pretty much put us on a business, but the tokens, the Wen, still exist because they live forever on the blockchain.
So we are looking for other uses for a token that exists and can be used for anything.
So if there's anybody who's thinking of starting any kind of a business that would require a token, We could potentially fund you with some of the tokens for free if what you're doing creates a demand for other tokens.
So if there's anybody out there who has a business that they don't want to start their own tokens and get them listed, which is kind of hard.
It's really hard. If you just want to use ones that exist, we could set you up on that, and it would make the WEM token valuable.
All right. If your business model was remote experts, why would COVID kill the business?
It had more to do with the team and where our efforts were and my own efforts being entirely this stuff.
Newsom recall.
You know, I know the Newsom recall petitions and stuff are going on, but I don't really have a big opinion on that.
Apparently he has a 60% approval rating in California.
I don't know if that's true. Somebody says to check my thyroid, because you think I have a goiter?
Why do you think I have a goiter?
Oh, are you seeing this?
This is a, if you're seeing my neck, this is a scar from voice surgery, so my vocal cords.
So if it looks like there's some irregularity on my neck, that's what that's from, just the scar.
Yeah, somebody on Twitter suggested it was time for me to make my move to take over the world.
And I've been thinking the same thing, really.
I think it's just time for me to take over the world.
Now, I don't mean in a dictator kind of a way, but I feel as if all the people who are in charge are not believable anymore, and that the real government will, you know, there's a good chance it will migrate, Two simply smart people that you don't think are lying.
They might be wrong.
They might be right. They might have a different bias than you have.
But if you're not getting your leadership from people that you at least know aren't lying, you're not really getting leadership, right?
So do you think that Biden will always tell you the truth?
Did the Democrats think that Trump was always telling the truth?
No. But let me ask you this.
Do you think... Pick...
Pick anyone from Twitter who you follow that you think is honest.
Do you think that they'll lie to you intentionally?
No. No.
They will not lie to you intentionally.
There's lots of people you could identify who are not in politics.
I'll just pick one name.
Tim Pool. If you watch independent journalist Tim Pool.
Do you think that Tim Pool will ever just lie?
No. No.
There's almost no chance of that, right?
I mean, you can say anybody can lie, I suppose, in some generic way.
But no. No.
You know that he might be right, he might be wrong, he might agree with you, he might disagree with you, but you don't really have any doubt that he's telling you the truth.
Take Joe Rogan.
Do you wonder if Joe Rogan is telling you the truth?
No. No. He earned that.
He earned it through, you know, lots of public stuff that makes it very clear that he can be right, he can be wrong, but he's always telling you what he thinks is true, even if it's wrong.
Yeah, Cernovich is another one, etc.
So there are people who could be wrong, but they're not going to lie to you.
And We probably need to start moving a little bit of the power or the influence of this country over to the people who aren't trying to screw you.
So maybe there's some kind of a hybrid system that would compensate for the fact that the republic is over.
You know, we're sort of running on fumes.
It's just inertia right now.
But the system, the republic, truly doesn't exist.
We're like the homeopathy version of the Republic, you know, where you keep diluting the water until there's only the memory of the drug, but the drug isn't there anymore.
I don't think it's real, by the way, but that's what homeopathy is about.
All right. It's called free enterprise.
Yeah, I'm seeing you making an Eric Swalwell joke because his last name has a sexual connotation, and sure enough, he found himself in that situation.
Why do I blink like that?
So I've often been told that I get blinky.
I think it's when I'm tired or nervous or something.
I mean, I don't feel especially nervous.
But I'm a serial blinker.
And I don't know it when I'm doing it.
I only know it when I watch it on playback.
Your sinuses are acting up.
They feel pretty good at the moment.
Pretty good. All right.
Is locals the best way to contact you about business?
No, use LinkedIn. So just use LinkedIn.
I see all the messages in LinkedIn.
I don't respond to them all, but if it's a business thing, I'll see it.
So you can guarantee I'll see it sometime in the next week or so.
And that...
It's all I have for you today, unfortunately.
Unless you have some amazing questions that I see in the next five seconds, we'll make this a short one.
Why only one sip of coffee?
Because that's all you need.
That's all you need is one.
Am I leaving California?
As of today, I'm probably going to think about it.
If you asked me yesterday, I would have said no.
But things move fast.
Thanks for Doonesbury.
Thanks a lot. Your head is blocking your books?
Well, there you go. There you go.
There's those books. By the way, my book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Went Big, came out in 2013.
And when it did, my publisher told me...
That it would be an evergreen.
An evergreen is a book that doesn't just sell well for a year and then disappear, but rather it becomes one that just sort of lives forever and sells well for year after year after year.
And sure enough, the How to Fail book, actually, the oldest of my books is selling the most briskly and actually picking up steam years later.
Because there's so much buzz about it now.
So I don't know if you've noticed how many things that book influenced.
So anywhere you see anybody talking about something that sounds like a talent stack, that was from that book.
Anytime you see somebody talking about systems being better than goals, almost certainly they read that book before they did their own thing.
Please fill your shelves.
Does it bother you that the shelves are not filled?
Your wife is reading How to Fail right now, and I'll bet she'll like it.
Oh, you bought two copies?
Yeah, the most common thing I hear about that book is people buying multiple copies and buying it all the time.
THC today? As soon as we're done here.
I haven't started, but today's the day I'm going to need to dig in pretty hard.
I haven't heard much about Christina's pilot license.
Well, that's on hold at the moment.
And... All right.
How was The Expanse? Oh, yeah, I started watching The Expanse.
It's good. I mean, the sci-fi shows I don't watch the same way as I watch other stuff.
The sci-fi stuff, I want to feel like I'm in a world.
It creates a world, and you know those people, and you go live with them.
So I watch the sci-fi less for the plot and more for the absorbing atmosphere.
All right.
Why not Russia as a new U.S. state?
Okay. Who will be president at the end of January?
I would expect Biden will get in.
Because as Josh Hawley said, people don't care that Republicans don't like it.
It's just going to happen. All right.
How are your sinuses?
Very good. So I have the sinus surgery.
Unfortunately, I have a marker that suggests my sinus problems will re-emerge, but it won't happen right away.
Okay. And that's all I got for now.
Don't want to bore you to death?
I'll let you go. Bye for now.
All right. We're done with...
We're done with Periscope.
How was your week after you said last week was the worst week ever?
It's about the same.
Honestly, about the same.
I can honestly say that this month...
Would be one of the two or three worst times of my life, probably.
But I'm perfectly healthy and still rich, so I'm very resilient.
I've had my entire life destroyed a number of times, so it's nothing new.
