Episode 1240 Scott Adams: My Impression of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler Negotiating, China Bad, Election Audit, More
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Content:
Questions about the regular flu
Meaningful contact with China kills Americans
Ted Wheeler's negotiation with anarchists
Ted Cruz pushes for election audit
Whiteboard: The Einstein Janitor's View
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Everything. Everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
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And once you've experienced it, you can't go back.
I know a lot of you, a lot of you are at home saying, oh, I hate this simultaneous sip thing.
Would he just stop doing this and get to the good stuff?
Oh no, you don't know what you're missing.
Ask the people who do the simultaneous sip how they feel.
Yeah, you don't see it, do you?
Well, in the news, all kinds of regular things happening.
For example, the regular flu, not the fancy coronavirus flu we're all getting spoiled by, because it's kind of special.
No, but the regular old flu, you know, the plain old flu that we used to get every year, and it was boring and it never made news.
But it allegedly killed 22,000 people between 2019 and 2020.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't that a suspiciously lower number than you've heard before?
Because the second part of the story is that even though it was 22,000 people died of the regular flu last year, the current number...
At least since the pandemic started, the 2020 number is closer to zero.
Closer to zero.
Now, why is that?
Well, obvious reasons.
Obvious reasons, right?
And Dr. Nicole Sapphire listed a few on Fox News I was watching.
One of them is that apparently we did a lot better job of getting the regular flu shots out as well.
So the number of just regular annual flu shots is way up.
So that's good. Could be part of the answer.
Also, Dr. Sapphire mentioned that the flights from China were, you know, greatly reduced because of coronavirus.
And that, I didn't know this, maybe you knew this, but apparently our regular flu comes from that region as well.
Did you know that? Did you know that the regular annual flu comes from China?
I didn't know that.
But so part of the speculation is that there's less travel and therefore it didn't travel over here.
Could be. That's possible.
And then, of course, you've got your masks and your social distancing.
So if you put all those things together, duh, you're going to have way less regular flu.
So you all expected less flu, right?
But I got questions.
I got questions.
Question number one.
Why is it that I'm hearing that 22,000 people died last year I mean before the coronavirus, basically 2019.
I feel as if every day until this day, I'd been hearing that number was closer to 50,000 a year.
Can somebody fact check me on that?
Because I know I've said that in public a bunch of times, and I believe I've read it a bunch of times.
So in the United States, per year, Wasn't the number that we've been told since the beginning, hey, that could be 50,000 a year, but on a bad year it could be 80, right?
Yeah, I'm seeing the numbers right now.
So you've all seen the same numbers, right?
50 to 100, 50 to 80,000.
Every time I've seen this reported since the beginning of the coronavirus, it was always 50 to 80,000-ish.
But today... Today, it's zero.
Basically, it rounds to zero.
It's way less than one percent.
So that's because of the better mitigation and the no travel and the vaccinations are a little bit better.
Could be. That could explain it all.
But why did the history change Now here's the part I understand.
I understand that if things are different this year, that this year would have a different rate of regular flu.
Totally on board with that idea.
Why wouldn't it be different?
If the things which control how bad it is are different, yeah, it'd be different this year.
But why did the history change?
Because I don't think that's supposed to happen, is it?
Can you change the history?
I don't think so.
What does it look like is happening here?
So here's one hypothesis.
You could call this a conspiracy theory, if you like.
I wouldn't even mind.
If you're going to call me a conspiracy theorist for the thing I say next, that's not too far off.
Because I don't have any proof of what I'm about to say.
Just kick it around in your head and see what you think.
Prior to hearing that the number of regular flus this year was effectively zero, not number of flu, but flu deaths.
So if I'd been saying number of flus since the beginning, could you go back and modify that in your mind?
I've always been talking about deaths.
So flu deaths, it looks like maybe...
There's another explanation.
So there was a real-life doctor who knows real-life doctor stuff several months ago during the pandemic who wanted to look into the question of how we count the number of regular flu deaths there are.
Do you know how we count them?
How would you think?
How would you think we keep track of how many people die from the regular flu?
Would you think that maybe it's reported on death certificates or some kind of medical records?
And then those medical records are summed up and maybe there's some kind of survey or whatever, however they do it.
And then they basically have counted the number of deaths.
Wouldn't you think that's how they do it?
Some kind of polling, survey, sample, statistics, something like that, right?
Or actually counting them because they're reported.
But that's not how they do it.
Apparently it's an estimate.
An estimate based on, I think, something like general mortality and how they think it differs from...
So basically they're just taking two numbers and subtracting and they're saying, ah, let's say the difference between these numbers is flu deaths.
Now, would you be concerned that the people in Big Pharma, who have much control over our government, we know that, Are selling vaccinations every year for the regular flu.
And interestingly, when they count the number of flu deaths, it seems to be in the 50,000 to 100,000 range when they use their estimate.
Now, if you've got 50,000 to 100,000 people dying of anything, and you could fix it with a vaccination, you'd pay quite a bit for that, wouldn't you?
I'd pay quite a bit.
But what happened the first year that instead of being able to estimate it, they couldn't?
And you know why they can't estimate the number of regular flu deaths this year?
Because of the coronavirus.
The coronavirus makes it impossible to know if the differences from the baseline are partly regular flu or partly coronavirus.
So the only way that they could determine regular flu, I'm assuming, is to count them.
Guess what happened when they counted them?
There weren't any.
Now, it could be, as Dr.
Sapphire said, better vaccinations, less travel from China, better social distancing.
Could be. But that stuff didn't do too much to stop the coronavirus.
Now, I get that the coronavirus is extra, extra, especially viral.
But is it that much extra, extra, especially viral?
That it's sweeping across the country despite social distancing and masks?
But I don't want to be the first one to tell you this.
I know this will come as a surprise to many of you.
But a lot of people don't wear masks when you're not looking.
It's true. It's true.
In public, people are pretty darn good about wearing masks.
But if several people gather at your house and they're not from your house, once they get inside the house, not so much masking going on.
That's the secret. Don't tell anybody who's not watching this.
So if you're thinking to yourself, well, this massive social distancing and masking is probably making a difference, probably not.
Probably not as much as you think, because I don't think that the coronavirus is spreading just because it's extra special viral, although apparently it is.
I feel as if it's because people aren't really socially distancing, only when you're watching, which is a very small percentage of total human interactions.
So, given my hypothesis, based on observation, but not A randomized controlled study.
It does seem to me like that regular flu would have plenty of opportunity to spread, despite all of the controls for the coronavirus.
And so I will just put out there this alternative hypothesis.
There was never much of any flu deaths from regular flu.
It was always just, this is my conspiracy theory, not a fact, right?
It was always bullshit.
And it was always bullshit to scare you into getting vaccinations, because vaccinations are very profitable.
Maybe. Or, or we're just really good at controlling the virus this year.
Do you know what's going to happen when the coronavirus is under control?
I'm just going to make a prediction that the regular flu virus is going to rage back all the way to 50,000 to 80,000 deaths a year the moment we can't count them.
That's right. The moment you can't count them, it's going to rage back to 50,000 to 80,000 deaths.
Just a coincidence.
Alright, so again, that's just conspiracy theory talk, so don't take it too seriously.
China's mad at the United States for kicking off of the New York Stock Exchange's three big Chinese telecom companies.
The reason for doing it was interesting, I didn't know this until now, that Trump had issued back in November 12th an executive order saying that you couldn't list on the New York Stock Exchange companies That are basically controlled by the Chinese military.
Now, if he asked China, would they say, oh yes, our big telecom companies are totally controlled by our military?
No, they would not. They would deny that that is the case.
But the Chinese system is such that there's no such thing as an independent major corporation.
That's not really a thing.
Of course the major corporation You know, has to answer to the Chinese Communist Party, and of course the military does too.
So for all practical purposes, they are controlled by the military.
It's just the way China does it.
And to me, that executive order makes perfect sense.
We should not be promoting our enemy's military assets.
Because military has turned into cyber, right?
So if these telecommunications companies are the weapons that the Chinese military uses for their cyber attacks, and of course they are.
Of course they are. For stealing IP, for spying.
Of course they are. That's exactly what they're for.
There's not any debate on that.
There's nobody smart who thinks that the Chinese telecom companies are not being used for cyber war.
So of course they are. It's just a military asset in addition to being a civilian one.
So I think that was a really good executive order.
And here's another one of those cases where Where ask yourself, would Biden have done this?
And how important is it?
How important is it that we could...
Somebody says, it's over, Scott.
Give it up. So I'm going to talk about assholes like you in a bit.
So I've got a separate section on assholes.
So I'm glad you showed up.
Oh, I'm not going to block you.
I'll leave you there so you can see what an asshole you are.
I want you to see that before I block you.
We'll get to that. So it's pretty good executive order.
China is arguing.
But here's what I'm starting to think.
I feel as if the United States and China are like incompatible organs in a body.
Like you could get a transplant, but it would be rejected eventually.
You could only do it for a little while.
It lasted a week, but it got rejected.
Because think about all the ways that we're literally allergic to China.
Not literally, but in a little bit, a little bit literally.
So now that we know that our viruses, even our regular viruses, are coming from China, we should just close travel.
If it's literally unsafe to have travel back and forth from China because they're giving us diseases and killing us, let's just stop doing it.
Why do we need flights from China?
Do we need them? Because we got Zoom.
We got email, right?
Now, I understand that in-person meetings are way more effective than remote meetings because human beings are human and there's nothing that matches the in-person thing.
But here's my question.
Do we want Americans and Chinese business people to get close?
Close the way that human contact gets you close, but a phone call does not.
You see what I'm saying? The benefit of meeting in person is a really big benefit.
And if we're meeting in person with, let's say, our business partners in Germany or Great Britain, is that a good idea?
Yeah. Because I can't think of anything that would be healthier or better for America than we have strong person-to-person ties with our allies who are also democracies-ish and are also capitalist countries.
That feels like one of the healthiest things you could ever do, have lots of personal connections with your allies.
But why would you want personal connections with a known enemy in the middle of a hot cyber war?
That's the opposite of what you'd want, right?
Wouldn't you want any deals with China to be sort of hands-off?
It's like, okay, just show me the spreadsheet.
Alright, alright, the spreadsheet says this could be a good deal, so we'll do the deal.
But I'm not going to have tea with you.
We're just going to talk on Zoom or email.
That's it. Do you think that the United States would be better off, or worse off, with or without those close personal connections with a country that's a known enemy?
I feel like we'd be better off without them.
I can't think of an actual reason Why anybody needs to travel back and forth from China, with the exception of, you know, family members who maybe need to do it.
So you probably need some exception for family situations, but I don't think we should do any business travel, and we shouldn't do any recreational travel if what's happening is a bunch of flu is coming over here.
Let's just not do it.
So we are incompatible with them from a Financial sense and a healthcare sense.
Financially, we can't take one of their companies and put it into our system, because that's what happened with the New York Stock Exchange, right?
We just took Chinese companies, telecom companies, and said, let's treat them like any other company.
But they're not any other company because their system essentially makes them captive to the military for all practical purposes.
So we're incompatible in a business sense, because their businesses are really military, and ours are less so.
And we're incompatible healthcare-wise, because if they travel here, we all die.
And we're incompatible even with the mail, because they mail fentanyl over here.
I mean, that's more of a goes to Mexico to the cartels and then comes here.
But every contact we have with China kills us.
Right? If we have physical contact with them, we get viruses and die.
If we let them mail things, they mail fentanyl to Mexico and it comes here and we die.
If we let them have contact with our financial system, they put telecom companies into our networks and use it for cyber warfare and we die.
Do you see the pattern?
Every contact with China...
Kills Americans. Let's say we have contact with them and move some of our companies there.
So our companies and our jobs move over to China.
What happens to the Americans left in, let's say, the Rust Belt or wherever else?
They die. They do fentanyl and they die.
Every contact with China, think about it.
Is this an exaggeration?
This is not an exaggeration.
It is not an exaggeration that every meaningful contact with China kills Americans by the thousands.
Probably tens of thousands.
Yeah. Every meaningful contact with China kills Americans by tens of thousands.
Has anybody noticed the pattern?
Am I the first one to tell you?
There's a pattern.
Literally every meaningful contact with China kills tens of thousands of people.
If there were some other country in which every meaningful contact killed tens of thousands of Americans, do you think we'd still have contact with it?
Yeah, I'm seeing in the contact somebody saying, wow, Yeah, the first time you realize that it's a pattern, every meaningful contact kills tens of thousands of Americans.
All of them. Mail, email, because even the email is going to be cyber attacks.
Everything. Business, commerce, every meaningful contact.
Now, does every meaningful contact we have with, I'll just pick a country, Germany, result in the death of Americans?
None! None.
I mean, I'm supposed to be some weird coincidences, but we're not talking about anything meaningful.
How about Great Britain?
How many people have died in the United States because we have strong ties with Great Britain?
Probably none. I mean, I can't think of any.
Canada? None.
Mexico is a little dicey.
Mexico is killing a lot of Americans, but specifically the cartels.
It doesn't feel like...
Well, I guess the cartels are the government for all practical purposes in Mexico.
Yeah, so I would think Mexico would be thrown on the list as at least a country that...
Causes death in the United States, but notice that even with Mexico, it seems to be limited just to the drug trade, you know, and the violence around that.
Whereas, it's not as if everything we do with Mexico kills Americans.
You know, we've got tourist trade, and we've got business trade.
You know, NAFTA doesn't kill Americans exactly.
Well, maybe NAFTA did, but the current deals are not so dangerous.
All right, enough on that.
There's some big news out of Portland.
There was a Democrat there named Mayor Ted Wheeler who has realized, and I know this will come as a shock, that human beings respond to incentives.
Now, I know that doesn't sound like big news, because if you're following this, you're probably leaning right in the political spectrum, if I know my audience.
And you're probably saying to yourself, What do you mean he's discovered that incentives make a difference to people?
Didn't everyone know that?
To which I say no.
That's actually the main difference between Republicans and Democrats.
The single main difference is that Republicans try to build systems That understand human motivation.
If you do the right thing, big reward.
If you do things that are bad for society, jail.
If you work hard, money.
If you don't work hard, no money.
So that's the Republican system.
It's entirely built on human motivation as the guiding principle for the whole system.
The Democrats build systems as if human motivation...
Isn't even a thing. Isn't even a thing.
And so, you know, socialism in its, you know, more, let's say, more extreme forms as opposed to just safety nets, but in its more extreme forms, it completely ignores human motivation.
The single most important thing to get right.
Ignored. It's not like they even get it wrong.
They just ignore it.
So it's the same with the teachers' unions.
That create no competition for schools.
The teachers' unions are a perfect example of the Democrat kind of philosophy.
The human motivation isn't part of anything.
We don't have to worry what motivates people.
We'll just build a system and ignore that.
And so they build a system with trying to close out competition from private schools and charter schools and stuff.
In doing so, they've completely ignored the most important part of human motivation that if you don't have a reason to compete, you won't.
Why would you compete to make a better product When it's going to be purchased, exactly the same amount, whether it's good or not.
You wouldn't. So their entire systems are built on a lack of understanding.
But Portland's Ted Wheeler has been dealing with this Antifa, mostly Antifa, and also Black Lives Matter at different times.
But I think Black Lives Matter has...
Decided to stand down since the election-ish.
But it looks like Antifa's going strong, as you might imagine.
And Portland's Ted Wheeler has announced that his quote, and I'll use his words now, his good faith efforts with anarchists were met with violence and scorn.
Pretty surprising, isn't it?
Because when you negotiate with anarchists, you do expect a good outcome.
Because human motivation is not part of your system.
Why wouldn't you be able to negotiate with an anarchist?
Well, let me give you an example of Ted Wheeler, my impression of him negotiating with an anarchist.
Scene number one, I'll play Ted Wheeler as well as the anarchist.
For the role of the anarchist, I will be wearing this sophisticated disguise so you can tell the difference.
This is Ted Wheeler.
Again, I don't want to confuse you.
This will be my Ted Wheeler.
This is an anarchist with a bad beard.
Ted Wheeler says, we've been having all these problems in the city, a lot of rioting, and I hear your concerns.
I hear your concerns and we take them very seriously.
And I'm wondering if we could reach some accommodation now Having heard all of your concerns and taking them very seriously, could you maybe begin to negotiate, let's say, less rioting and destroying all of our stuff?
I don't see why.
Well, I don't think you're listening to me.
I'm saying that we've heard your concerns and And we're taking them seriously.
We'll have some committees, some hearings.
We'll even add some people to some boards, some committees.
We'll really take you seriously and see what we can do about your concerns.
You know we're anarchists, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want to... Hello?
Right in the middle of my best scene.
I know you're anarchists, but I don't want to cast dispersions.
I don't want to make assumptions.
I don't want to be discriminating against you just because you're in a group.
I would like to reach an accommodation, something that works for you and also works for us.
I really don't think you understand anarchism.
No, I feel like I do.
I read up on it. I looked in Wikipedia, and I know what it means.
But I know that you're reasonable people on the inside.
Sure, externally. Externally, you're causing some trouble, and I know you're acting out.
But on the inside, I know that you're reasonable people, and we can reach an accommodation that would be good for you, but also good for the rest of us.
Nope. You don't understand anarchism.
And also, scene.
But there's something that you don't understand.
There's a story that I think I'm the only one reporting it.
And it's not directly related to this situation, but I think it's a good human interest story.
And Ted Wheeler, the mayor, a lot of people haven't heard this, but he noticed that there was a family of skunks in his backyard, and And of course that's a problem, right?
You can't even use your backyard.
You've got skunks back there.
They're going to spray everything. And so he did what any reasonable Democrat would do.
He started negotiating.
So every day he'd go out there to try to negotiate with the skunks and he'd be covered with skunk spray and then he'd have to rub himself in, I don't know, mayonnaise or whatever you do when you get sprayed by a skunk and take seven baths.
But he wasn't a quitter.
He'd go out there the next day and negotiate with the skunks, spray it again every single day for four months.
After the fourth month, he mentioned what he was doing to a neighbor, and the neighbor said, you know, Ted, the skunks, they don't speak English.
And then he realized he'd wasted four months trying to negotiate with the skunks, but they don't actually understand English.
So he decided to He needed to work with them, obviously not use any violence or anything like that, because that's not cool.
So he decided if negotiating isn't going to work with the skunks, what about petting?
Because dogs like to be petted.
Cats like to be petted.
And a skunk isn't...
Is it that different from a dog or a cat?
Not really. Because people are people, right?
And people are good on the inside.
And skunks are good on the inside.
It's just on the outside they have sort of a very annoying demeanor and they'll spray you and ruin your house and stuff.
But on the inside skunks are actually good people.
And so the mayor knows this because he's a Democrat.
He's not some evil Republican.
Can you imagine how a Republican would handle this?
What a shit show that would be.
Some Republican would probably call a service that would capture them and move them somewhere.
I mean, skunks in cages, am I right?
I mean, that's not going to fly with the public.
So, Ted Wheeler, being a more woke professional politician, he knew that if negotiating doesn't work, you don't go to violence next.
You don't go to violence next.
You try padding. Now, he tried a month of that and it didn't work out because it turns out that the skunks were not motivated quite the way he was hoping.
He felt they were motivated toward making an arrangement and a deal and working something out, but it turns out they took the padding, which he was right about that.
They liked the padding and But they also sprayed them because they're feral skunks.
And once he realized that negotiating with skunks didn't work because they don't speak English and petting them doesn't work because they're feral and they spray you, that really left, if you think about it, there's only one solution left.
Are you with me?
If negotiating doesn't work, talking doesn't work, petting doesn't work with the skunks, all you got left is hugging.
Hugging. Now, he's working on that, I understand, so we don't know how that's going to work out.
And the skunks are a little bit hard to hug, so it's not like it's going to happen on day one, right?
You've got to have a little patience. You're going to have to, like, corner them.
You probably have to build up some kind of...
Immunity to the spray.
Now, the first time you've ever been sprayed by a skunk, I don't know if you've ever been sprayed by a skunk.
You know, if you grew up where I grew up, you probably have been.
Or at least your dog was.
You know, a fairly common experience where I grew up.
But the first time you get sprayed, it's pretty bad.
But you know, you can get used to anything.
Second time you get sprayed, it's still bad, but it's not as bad.
So Ted Wheeler, now having been sprayed by skunks probably hundreds of times, he can hug them and put up with the spraying a little bit, but they're still hard to hug because you've got to corner them.
Sort of like this situation, and then, you know, they claw and they bite.
They don't like to. They'd rather spray.
But if you're trying to hug them, you're going to get clawed and bitten a little bit.
So Mayor Ted Wheeler is still working on the skunks in the backyard, still negotiating with the Antifa, but at least with the Antifa he's decided to...
What was his words?
He was going to use additional tools and push the limits of the tools we have.
So he's going to use his tools to handle the Antifa.
What tools is he speaking of?
I assume the tools are other Democrats in this context, but just a guess.
All right. Early, I guess Friday, vandals went to Nancy Pelosi's home in San Francisco, and the unidentified suspects, they painted graffiti on her garage door and left a pig's head on the sidewalk, said the police department.
Now, I wonder if anybody saw this coming.
If you're a politician and you live in San Francisco and you are on the side of policies that create a lack of law and order, what did she think was going to happen to her house?
Maybe not on day one, but how did she think this was going to go?
Because if you don't understand human motivation, This probably caught her by surprise.
I can imagine her walking out there and seeing that pig head on her sidewalk and her garage graffitied and saying to herself, how in the world did this happen?
Who in the world thought that a Democrat politician in San Francisco would eventually be the subject Of some disobedience.
Who could have seen this coming?
Well, it was a big surprise to us all.
As Twitter user Tommy Auer said of Antifa and Portland, Since I will no longer be able to blame Trump for the violence in my city, I demand the violence stop since it's making me look bad.
Now, I don't buy into necessarily that Ted Wheeler is only now interested in stopping the violence.
Because Trump is no longer in office.
I don't think it's like one to one, one cause the other or something.
But it is hard to ignore the fact that the riots suddenly and magically are going to be reduced despite zero problems being solved.
Please list all of the problems that were solved by BLM and ENTIFA writing for, I don't know, nine months or whatever it is.
Which problems have been solved?
Uh, none.
Is there anything they asked for that they got?
So, they were violently protesting for months and months, got exactly zero, And so they decided to stop.
Okay. Totally legitimate protests.
Because that's how protests work.
When you get absolutely nothing you're asking for that was so important that you were willing to protest and destroy your own city, once you get none of it, well then you're happy.
Why wouldn't you be happy getting none of what you want?
Because remember, they're all Democrats.
If they knew that human motivation is actually part of the variables of figuring out what's going to happen, if they knew that, then they'd probably notice there's a disconnect between all that rioting and getting nothing, and then stopping the rioting.
You'd think they'd notice the correlation.
So obviously the rioting was not related to any complaints.
Can we say that for sure?
Because the complaints, nothing stopped.
Nothing changed. So it wasn't because the...
Oh, somebody says it's just winter.
Yeah, I think you're right. Winter plus nothing else.
If it's summer and there's nothing else to do because of lockdowns, that's the worst situation.
Yeah. Well, of course, the big news is that Senator Ted Cruz is leading a dozen GOP senators on January 6th to challenge the certification of the Electoral College votes.
And, of course, not everybody thinks this is a good idea.
Not everybody. But what they're asking for is very clever.
And I would expect nothing less from a Ted Cruz effort.
The one thing Ted Cruz doesn't do is stupid stuff.
You could watch Ted Cruz for a long time.
Some things will work.
Some things won't work. Some things will be better than other things.
But he never does anything that doesn't make sense.
He never does anything that's just sort of stupid.
Everything he does is smart.
So, is this smart?
Will this be the first time, at least that I can think of, That Ted Cruz would do something that doesn't even make any sense?
Well, Joel Pollack has an opinion that I think is worth noting here.
He says in a tweet, I don't think that the 11, at the time it was 11, I guess it's 12 now, Senate Republicans are doing is unlawful or unconstitutional.
I simply think it is unwise.
It has no reasonable chance of changing the election result.
It is simply a protest.
Sometimes protests are worth it, even when they have no hope of success.
Now, this is part of a larger string, so if you want to see Joel's full thoughts on it, I refer you to his tweet thread on that.
I don't think I disagree with that as much as I have some gaps in my understanding.
So I'll just say I have some gaps in my understanding, and they are as follows.
What are the possible outcomes of this?
Because I don't know. Suppose the challenging creates a debate which is the first time the public at large hears the actual detailed allegations.
Would that be useful?
Suppose the outcome of the election is not changed at all, but a Ted Cruz-led effort surfaces to the general public Just how, allegedly, just how bad the election was in terms of integrity.
Would that be useful even if it didn't change the outcome?
I say yes, but I also don't know if that's what's going to happen.
Will the public see the actual detailed allegations for the first time?
Because if you do some kind of an event in Georgia...
How much coverage does it get?
So the other day when I was mentioning, oh, there's this video of this tech guy in Georgia, and he presented to show that he was already hacked into the system.
So I talk about that in public, and I get messages from people who say, can you send me the link to the technical guy who said he was already hacking, like at that moment, had hacked into the voting machines in Georgia.
And, of course, I ignored it because I generally ignore it when people ask me for a link to something that they can Google.
And I thought to myself, what is more searchable than that?
Go to Google, Georgia, technical expert, voting fraud.
Look for whatever is the most current YouTube or video on it.
Right there. And so I get a follow-up message.
Hey, we and other smart people are looking for it.
Like really smart people.
I'm not talking about people who don't know how to Google.
I'm talking about really smart people, heard what you said and can't find that anywhere.
Could not Google successfully that video of the expert who had hacked into the machines in real time.
Now, what's going on here?
Did social media disappear it so you can't even search for it?
Do I really need to give you a frickin' link?
That's the only way you could find that story?
Are you frickin' kidding me?
Oh, my God.
I don't know that it's been taken down.
I think maybe they just disappeared in the searches or something.
I don't know. Now, somebody says...
DuckDuckGo will find it.
I don't know. But here's my point.
If having a hearing in which allegations come out that are really credible sounding, I can't judge whether anything is true from my vantage point, but they're very credible sounding, just like everything else that's Things tend to be credible when you first hear them,
even if they're not true. And I'm thinking to myself, if the only thing that Ted Cruz accomplishes, and nothing else, Is that he makes the major news networks cover it, because now it's the Senate, and it's the election, and it's Trump. Now they have to cover it?
What if the only thing that came out of it is that thing that disappeared, which is the strongest evidence I've seen yet that the election was questionable?
What if that's all that happens?
The public finally gets to see it?
Would that be worth it?
Yes. Yes.
That would be worth it.
Now, if what happens is somebody debunks it, would that be worth it?
Yes. Very much would that be worth it.
If the strongest evidence that's ever been presented on alleged election fraud could be shown to the whole public and debunked right in front of you, I mean, I haven't seen the debunk even offered, so I don't know that one exists.
But what if there was one?
What if there were one?
That would be good. What could be better than a world where half of the people think the election was stolen, roughly?
Wouldn't you like them to think the election was not stolen if, in fact, it was not stolen?
Wouldn't that be a great outcome for the country?
It would be a terrific outcome.
So either way it goes, whether it proves it was stolen or does a better job in proving it wasn't stolen, a public debate via Ted Cruz and his efforts and the other senators, that's a public service.
And here's the other thing that Ted Cruz does that's so smart.
The only thing he asks for is not to throw out the election, but rather a 10-day audit.
Now here's the genius of Ted Cruz.
This would be so easy to do wrong, but he didn't.
There were a hundred ways to do this wrong, and he found the only way to do it right.
That's pretty good. That's good politics.
Smart. And what I mean by that is he set such a reasonable standard for what they're asking for, that how do you turn that down?
Because even the people who say it's over, it's over, The election was fair.
Don't they also want to convince the rest of us?
Don't they think it's useful?
No matter how they think it's going to come out, don't they think it's useful to convince the rest of us?
So what Ted Cruz has asked for is not, here's the genius, Ted Cruz did not ask you to change your mind.
Because that would be hard.
He didn't ask anybody to change their mind.
All he did was ask for better information in a very short and reasonable time frame so that we could feel more secure about the outcome.
Boom! How is that now perfect?
Who argues against better information when that better information is critical to the operation of the United States?
It's not like that information is just for fun.
That information, whatever would come out of such a hearing, is so vital to the operation of the country, it's near the top of our priorities.
So how reasonable is it to ask for more information when it's the top question in the whole country?
It is amazingly reasonable.
And he's going to force the Democrats to vote against it.
It's pretty good.
So he has them in a corner.
If they vote against something that reasonable, they are, wait for it, if they vote against something that reasonable, and that was the genius of it making it so reasonable, it's completely reasonable.
It's 100% reasonable.
There's not even like a little hair off at this, oh, a little bit unreasonable.
Nope. Nope.
100% solid reasonable, no matter how it turns out.
Right? Cruz isn't even telling you, I think it's going to turn out this way or I think it's going to turn out that way.
He's not even asking for that.
He just wants more confidence in the system.
That's the way it's being set up.
Brilliant. So, I don't...
I would join with Joel in saying I doubt anything will change the outcome at this point because there's just too much in motion.
But the country needs to know.
And that is not negotiable, in my opinion.
Right? The system is going to do what the system does.
But understanding what happened, I don't feel that's negotiable.
We've got to know what happened, no matter what we do about it.
It's the second question. Have you noticed...
I said by tweet they got, I think, probably 14,000 retweets, so people liked it.
Have you noticed that the people who were insisting the election was completely fair...
Have stopped arguing on the details.
They're only going after the people who are saying it.
You notice that.
I talked about this before. But here's an example of it.
So Twitter user Emily Holcomb is reporting by Twitter.
She tweeted, I just answered one of these there's no evidence tweets with several photo and video documented examples from my state of Georgia.
A respondent told me I should be arrested.
The pattern is so clear now.
So here's somebody who said there's no evidence of election fraud, so somebody on Twitter just sent them a bunch of evidence, probably from the same set of data that I was talking about that you can't search now, but I guess she found it.
And the response to, here's the evidence you say doesn't exist, was you should be arrested.
There's not even the slightest pretense that anybody wants to talk about whether the election was fair or not.
Doesn't it feel to you as if the Democrats kind of know?
Don't you think that deep down, of course they're not going to say it in public, but don't you think deep down, private conversation, Whispers.
Nobody hears it. Don't you think the Democrats know this was stolen?
I feel as if they do.
I feel as if they do.
All right. Now, for those of you who are new to these live streams, if you believe that I am saying that Democrats steal elections and Republicans don't, no.
I believe that wherever theft can happen and there's a big upside and you can get away with it, it always happens.
So, of course Republicans are doing it, if it's being done by Democrats.
So it's either not being done by anybody because you just can't get away with it, which I think we know at this point that's just not the case, that you can get away with it.
We don't know how much was done, but you could definitely get away with it if you did it the right way.
So, I feel like that's a tell.
So you've got now two tells that if you were having a conversation with somebody accused of a crime and you knew how to determine who's lying and who's not, you would feel confirmed that even the Democrats believe the election was stolen.
Why?
Because if they turn down a reasonable 10-day audit request, it's because they don't want the answer.
It's not because it's unreasonable.
It's not because it would delay anything that's going to happen anyway.
It's not because of the price tag.
Nobody's arguing it's too expensive, even though it's expensive.
It's pretty much a confession of guilt.
That's sort of like a police stop you and they suspect there's something bad in your trunk.
What do they do if you refuse to open the trunk of your car to show them Do the police say, well, he's not opening the trunk, and he's calling me an asshole, so I guess there's nothing in the trunk?
No. You would say, if this person is getting belligerent and refusing to open the trunk, they're kind of confirming there's something in that trunk.
That's the way you'd see it if it were any other situation.
And so here the Democrats have this perfectly reasonable open the trunk request.
Just put the key in. Just open the trunk.
If there's nothing there, I'll go on my way.
They won't put the key in the trunk, and they won't open it.
What's that tell you? Well, that tells you they don't want to show you what's in the trunk, obviously.
And, of course, the personal attacks tell you they don't want to engage on any of it.
The hiding it in the social media, if that's what's happening, tells you the same thing.
So every sign suggests that the Democrats know the crime is there and it would be detected if you looked hard enough.
That doesn't mean it is there, right?
I could be reading these signals wrong, but I would say if this were any other situation and you saw these signals, it's like this giant...
Glowing light that says, guilty, guilty, I'm so guilty.
No, don't open the trunk.
Don't look in the trunk.
Here's something that just blows my mind when I see it happen in its various forms.
So yesterday I tweeted a hypothetical question.
And as you know, Twitter does not handle hypothetical questions well.
Not the smartest people, sometimes.
So that didn't go well in terms of the comments.
But here was my hypothetical question.
Luckily, all of you are smart enough to know that a hypothetical question is for curiosity.
It's like I don't think it's part of the real world.
And I said, what would happen hypothetically?
And this is more of a constitutional question.
I was just curious. So let's say the election process goes forward and Biden is inaugurated.
He takes office. And just hypothetically, a month after that, Evidence came out that even Democrats would look at and say, oh damn, yeah, the election was stolen.
Now, I don't think it's possible in 2020 to produce any kind of a fact with any kind of evidence like video, eyewitnesses.
There's probably nothing you can do in 2020 where the team that doesn't want it to be true will say, okay, you got me there.
You got me there. I was sure there wasn't anything there, but now I'm looking at your strong evidence and...
You convinced me.
That doesn't exist anymore.
We're not in that world.
We're in a world where you could show it to them in whatever level of proof, and it would make no difference.
It would be like they didn't even see it.
That's the world you're in now.
But hypothetically, so this is why it has to be hypothetical, because it can't be done in the real world.
But suppose you could come up with proof that even convinced Democrats, That the election was stolen.
What would be the constitutional process?
Does Biden stay president?
So I put that out there, and of course I have tons of lawyers who follow me on Twitter.
I don't know what that says about me, but a lot of lawyers on there.
One of them happened to be the senior legal advisor to the Trump effort on this, Jenna Ellis.
And she answered that under the Constitution, the only way to remove a sitting president is via the impeachment process.
That sounds right.
I assume that she's got the right answer there.
She's the right person to have that answer.
And I thought, but can you impeach somebody just because they didn't win the election, but they thought they did?
Is that actually impeachable?
Because I thought impeachment required certain standards that I don't think that would meet.
Because Biden wouldn't be the one committing any kind of a foul.
He would be just the one who was, in a way, he was a victim of the same crime.
You don't punish the victim, right?
I mean, it's a weird case of a victim.
If the election was stolen, we're all victims, including Biden.
He just happened to be the one who became president, theoretically.
So, not much of a victim.
But here's the part that blows me away, that I can speculate on a question like this that is important to the news cycle, and that the answer I get is from literally...
The senior legal advisor on this very question to the president, the most exact, perfect person to answer the question.
Twitter is amazing.
I mean, it makes the world so frickin' small that you can watch television, see things happening like in the White House, and then I can tweet and I get an answer from one of the main players on this national stage.
It's just mind-blowing every time it happens.
Twitter just makes the whole world so small.
In a good way, it makes it small.
So here's my last point.
I'm going to go to the whiteboard here.
I've got a theory here.
I don't know. Maybe it's just something I want to put a name on.
Don't take any of this too seriously, but this is what I deal with all day long.
And I'm going to give it a name.
I'm going to call it Einstein's janitor.
And it's Einstein's janitor's view of the world.
And it goes like this.
Now here in my artificial example, I'm assuming that Einstein is smarter than his janitor.
Now, if you've seen Good Will Hunting, you know that that's not a safe assumption.
Sometimes the janitor is smarter than the physicists.
But, just for my example today, let us accept that the janitor is a normal person and Einstein is not.
And that Einstein is smarter than the janitor, just for our example.
But the janitor can be smart, okay?
We're not dissing the janitor.
Janitor work is important and Well, I mean, if you didn't have janitors, you wouldn't need anything else.
Everything would be a mess.
So, yes, they are a critical job, no dissing on janitors.
But, let's say you looked at a normal distribution of intelligence in the country.
You got your people who are not so smart, you got your average people, that's most of the world, and you got your Einsteins over here.
The problem is, That from the perspective of the janitor, let's say he's not as smart as Einstein, the janitor can recognize real dumb stuff because he's smarter.
The janitor is an average person.
And he knows dumb when he sees it.
It's obvious. But the problem is, the janitor also thinks that smart looks dumb because he doesn't understand it.
And when the dumb person looks at a smart person, let's say Einstein, they think they're dumb.
Let me give you an example of this without Einstein and a janitor.
I'll bring it into your real world.
Now, it doesn't require a genius and a janitor.
It's just any difference in what you know about the world, right?
So it's not even IQ. It could be how well-informed you are.
So let's just call that all intelligence.
Let's say political intelligence, because it's your IQ, but it's also have you paid attention and listened to the right news sources, etc.
Whenever there's that difference in how much two people know, the person who knows the least can't tell if the person who knows the most is smart or stupid.
They look the same.
Can't tell. All you know is that you've got this opinion you think is pretty darn smart, and all the average people agree with you.
Look, I got 80 million average people who are on the same page as me, so can 80 million average people be wrong?
And the answer is, yeah, pretty much every time.
These people over here, who the janitor might think is dumb, but are actually the smart ones, yeah, they might know more than the average person.
That's what makes them.
Wait for this. This is a hard concept.
That's what makes them above average.
That they're above average.
So this problem you'll see played out over and over on Twitter.
People who don't know as much as you calling you stupid.
It's the most frustrating thing in Twitter.
Now this effect is accentuated by the fake news.
So the people who consume nothing but fake news...
Are pretty sure that they're over here on the smart side of things, but they've eaten so much fake news, they don't know that no matter what their natural IQ is, effectively they're morons.
Right? And there's nothing wrong with the people.
The people are good, well-meaning people with high IQs, but because they consume fake news exclusively, they're effectively morons.
And they can't tell when somebody's not.
Because it looks like they're even dumber than they are.
Like, you're coming up with stuff I've never even heard of.
Because you watch the wrong news.
That's why you've never heard of it.
There's a reason. So anyway, I'm going to call this the Einstein janitor effect, if you hear me refer to it.
Somebody says, we are smart and our news is not fake.
Well, I believe that the fake news is both left and right.
And if you're not sampling both sides and independent people as well, you're probably not even close to the truth.
But the people who only consume the fake news on the left are definitely the worse off, information-wise.
If you consume both, which is typical of the conservative world, at least you know what the argument is, right?
At least you've heard the other side.
But if you're on the side who has never heard the other argument, it's going to look stupid when you do.
Because you won't know the background or the context.
Alright. That is my prepared comments for today.
And if you have some comments, I will be taking them over on YouTube in a moment.
So, Periscope, I will be seeing you tomorrow.
And... YouTube, I'll be with you for another few minutes here.
Anybody have any questions?
Thank you. It's over already?
I don't know what's over.
You mean the election? Probably.
You know, if anybody doesn't remember, I would like to hearken back to the early days of post-election when, as soon as the networks called it for Biden, I did as well.
So, as soon as the network said Biden's president-elect, I congratulated him.
I don't believe there's much chance that we had a fair election.
I don't know that that'll ever be demonstrated in a way that the public agrees, but as I often say, the setup is such that there had to be fraud.
It was too easy and it was too valuable.
Of course it was. We don't know how much or if it changed the result.
And so even though I congratulated Biden, I believed that the system would protect him so safely that it wouldn't matter if any fraud were detected or when it was detected.
It just wouldn't matter. Why won't I talk about Q? I've talked about Q in the past, and it just...
What happens if you talk about Q, all the Q supporters come out and it becomes this frenzy of...
It just turns into this ugly thing.
So I've said everything I need to say about it.
I think that at this point, when Q was a bunch of predictions before we knew if they were happening, you could be excused for thinking that the predictions might be accurate.
It wasn't crazy.
Maybe there was a source, etc.
But at this point, you don't have to wonder If the predictions were accurate, because you could just look and see what did they predict and how did it come.
And I will leave that to you.
If you can find a source that says that Q made good predictions, you should believe in Q. If you Google it and you find out a list of things that predicted that didn't happen, I would recommend modifying your opinion.
What's going on with Pence?
Well, I'm the biggest Mike Pence supporter in the world, even though I don't think he should be president.
I don't agree with him on some of his social views and LGBTQ stuff.
I'm on the other team for all of that.
But Pence is a good person, as far as I can tell.
Or he's either a good person or he's the best faker in the world.
He's pulled it off for years, but I tend to think he's probably just a solid person.
And while I can disagree with him on the LGBTQ stuff in particular, I like his style just consistently.
He just plays an honorable public servant better than anybody has ever been an honorable public servant.
You've got to respect that.
And by the way, time proved him right, right?
With his The Pence rule, he wouldn't go to lunch with a woman unless his wife came.
It's some kind of rule like that.
And when you first heard it, you're like, oh, that's kind of backwards.
It's 2020, Mike Pence.
Maybe men and women could just have lunch.
And then you realize that the Me Too movement, basically, he was right.
That if you even put yourself in a position...
Where you would be tempted to do something or somebody might claim you did something, it's just not good.
So his risk management approach of just never being in that situation, it's a lot smarter than you think it is.
It's a lot smarter.
And it wasn't easy.
I would imagine he would prefer to live his life without restrictions just like everybody else.
But he put that restriction on himself.
Time showed he was right, in my opinion.
And by the way, I would not have lunch with just a woman and myself who is not my wife.
I wouldn't do it either.
And I used to. It didn't mean anything to me.
Of course I would. If it was just lunch and it was literally just business.
But now I wouldn't even take a business meeting if I knew it was just business.
Like, no doubt about it.
Just business. Won't do it.
I won't have a private meeting with a woman over lunch or dinner or anything like that.
I would have, but I won't now.
Did your farmland lose all of its chestnuts?
I don't know about that, but is there some kind of chestnut virus from China?
It's being indicated here in the comments, but I don't know about that.
Barnes Law Twitter got hacked?
Somebody's saying? Oh, that's bad.
I hope that didn't happen.
Somebody says, Pence's state was the worst state for child trafficking.
Well, I don't know that that was his fault.
How do you know what Pence thinks?
I don't. So anything I say about Pence's inner character is based on external observation.
And I think I said, didn't I say directly, that it's based just on observation?
I can't know what he's thinking.
How can you ignore Bitcoin as it eats the world?
What is there to say about Bitcoin?
Here's the thing I don't get.
I do see a lot of people prognosticating about Bitcoin, but what is there to say?
If people's psychology remains that it has value, it'll go up in value, maybe forever, and if If the psychology changes or there's an alternative that comes out that's better, more secure, has some extra features, then it will be the thing that replaces Bitcoin.
But what else is there to say?
Right? Basically, Bitcoin is not something that's been around 100 years and therefore the next 10 years are kind of predictable based on the prior 90.
It's not like that.
What could happen with Bitcoin is Anything.
Just anything. It could literally disappear tomorrow.
It could also double tomorrow.
And anybody who says that they know which way it's going to go...
I mean, I could give you my opinion of what I think is most likely.
But I think you should put the smallest amount of value on that of anything I've ever said.
There would be nothing I could say in the whole world...
They should have less credibility or usefulness to you than to say what I think Bitcoin's going to do.
It just seems like that couldn't have any value at all.
And likewise, what anyone else says about Bitcoin?
Not too interested.
Now, I will tell you this.
The smartest people I know hold Bitcoin and like it and think, It's a good, at least for risk management, it's good to hold it.
And when I say the smartest people I know, I mean literally the smartest people I know.
If you made a list of the smartest people I know and then say, all right, let's take the top 10% of the smartest people you know.
They're already really smart.
But we'll take the top 10% of the smartest of the smart.
And then you would check their portfolio and Bitcoin.
Now, does that mean that Bitcoin is good because the smartest of the smart people own Bitcoin?
No. No.
Because even the smartest of the smart people can't know what's going to happen.
Do you think that there are people who can predict the future reliably?
Not really. I mean, I do the best I can, but I think if you get 60% of your predictions right, you're Nostradamus.
Nobody's getting 80% right, are they?
A lot of people would say that my track record on political predictions is better than most.
But what do you suppose my actual percentage is?
Sixty percent? Maybe?
If you actually made a list.
Now, there would be lots of subjectivity about did I really get this one right?
You know, so for example, the Kamala Harris thing, you know, did I get it right that she would really be the president or technically that she's not, so I got it wrong.
So you could argue about whether I got it right or wrong.
But if you were to do your own scoring and you just had a list of the things I predicted and a list of what actually happened, what do you think would be my percentage?
I don't know, because I haven't done it.
I'm guessing 60%.
But here's the second part.
I doubt many people have done better.
I'll bet you that the average is closer to 40%.
Because I think most people are worse than a coin to us about predicting the future.
And if I'm a little bit better, That would probably totally explain why I have an audience.
Just being a little bit better.
And I don't even know if I am.
Because it would be so hard to score it.
It's subjective. Let's see.
Somebody says that for the audit, it would take more than 10 days to decide what office to use.
Well, I don't know that you need an office.
I think just the states could just say, show up on Tuesday and recount these things.
They would find plenty of volunteers.
I don't even know if it costs anything.
They'd probably just have to open up the building and say, all right, you're volunteers, go count these ballots, or whatever they're doing.
I don't know if it's just auditing ballots or if it's auditing the software, which would be different.
Am I going to get the vaccine?
My strategy for the vaccine is the one you should use as well, which is don't make a decision until it's available to you, personally.
Because that last minute, when now you have to make a decision, you might have more information.
You might have experiences from multiple vaccinations.
For example, you might find out that the Moderna one has a certain set of side effects, maybe not confirmed, possibly just observed but not confirmed.
You might find out that the Pfizer one or the J&J one has more or less of those symptoms.
You might find out that one has a kind of symptom that the other doesn't.
So you're going to know more at the last minute.
Always wait for the last minute. There would be no reason to make a decision now.
But if what I hear is good enough, then yes.
So I'm leaning toward it.
Let me say it this way so that I'm less ambiguous.
I plan to get the vaccination unless, in the unlikely event, I think it's unlikely, I learn something between now and the time it's available to me that would change my mind.
That's all. The other thing I wonder is what my vitamin D levels are.
Because if I had a quick way, maybe I do, I don't know, if I had a quick way to Measure my own vitamin D levels, that would be a big driver to how eager I was to get the vaccination.
Because if I've got good vitamin D levels, and of course I've been supplementing and doing all the right stuff, but that doesn't mean I have enough.
If I did, I'd be way less worried.
Than if I just happen to be one of those people who's not processing my vitamin D right or whatever.
Somebody says, go to Quest Diagnostics.
You know, I might look into that.
If somebody has a source that could do a quick blood test on my vitamin D levels, because I don't think my health care provider does that kind of thing.
Oh, somebody says their wife gets a vitamin D test.
That must be related to a specific condition.
And I'm hearing good things about green tea, so maybe I should drink that.
There's a $40 at-home test.
Alright, I'll look into that.
I'll tell you what.
I will Google that and look into a vitamin D home test, and I will take that home test.
