Episode 1297 Scott Adams: Bombing Syria, The Obesity-Virus Pandemic, and How Not to "Log Off" on Zoom
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Biden Bombs Syria
Strangling a leopard
$15 minimum wage, yes or no?
COVID's key infection factors
Tiger Woods accident
Bill Gates says nuclear power will be acceptable again
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Best time of the day. And it'll be one of the best ones ever.
Yeah. Hey, Omar.
Dr. Funk Juice. You, too.
Good morning, everybody.
And if you'd like to enjoy today to its maximum potential, and I know you would, all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice, a canteen, a chocolate flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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And join me now for the in-parallel pleasure, dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
And people all over the world will be joining in right now.
Go. Yeah, yep, that's the stuff.
Oh, you can feel it just going down and making yourself healthier as you digest.
Really good stuff.
Well, you want to talk about all the interesting things in the news?
I know you do. I know you do.
But first, a question for you.
What value do I produce that would make you want to watch this in the era of being after Trump?
Now, when Trump was in office, a lot of people were watching me for my Trump persuasion and other comments about him.
But why would you watch now?
I'll tell you what I'm going to try to do, and I'll look for some feedback on this.
I'm going to try to make sure that any time you watch me, you're increasing your talent stack.
In other words, I'm going to try to talk about What's happening in the news, but that won't be the main thing.
The main thing will be to try to get you to understand it better by improving your talent stack.
So I'm going to make you more effective in your life, not just informed.
That will be... My goal.
So if you're wondering why to watch this, it will be because the people who do are getting smarter and better every single day.
And by the way, I think a lot of you will confirm that that's true.
In the comments, while I'm talking about other things, for those of you who are newer, tell me if you think you've gotten anything valuable from watching me for however long you've watched me.
And that'll tell the other people what's up.
Alright, Biden decided to bomb some factions in Syria that are being funded and supported by Iran in response to Iranian proxies hurting at least one contractor in an attack two weeks ago.
Now, I would like to say that this is a good move by Biden.
Now, if you're tuning in to me to watch me say bad things about Democrats and good things about Republicans, I'm not going to do that.
Nothing like that will ever happen here.
I'm just going to talk about what works and what doesn't, and you can play the politics yourself.
When Trump and Pence won in 2016, I talked about what I call the new CEO move.
Which is how you establish who you are.
When a new CEO is hired, they'll often do something big and splashy right off the bat.
They'll maybe fire some executives who needed it.
They'll reorganize some things.
But the idea is to establish who you are as the new leader right off the bat.
Because your first impression just has all this power forever.
Whoever you are on day one, it's going to be hard to change that.
So you want to get it right in the beginning.
So Pence and Trump did that when they started talking to Ford and Carrier when they first got elected, before they'd even been sworn in.
It was really, really good first-move CEO kind of play.
And then Trump did it again when he fired all of his cruise missiles into that airport in Syria to give Russia a little bit of a tap on the shoulder.
Now, people watching it said, wow, that might even be sort of an overreaction, or, wow, Trump sure went military quickly.
But it was a good positioning attack, because it said...
Yeah, and there was also the mother of all bombs in Afghanistan.
And I believe that Trump played that exactly right by establishing right up front, you don't know what I'm going to do, which he would say that directly, you can't predict what I'm going to do, but you did see me drop that mother of all bombs, and you did see me attack that airport.
So, just be warned.
You don't know what I'm going to do, but it could definitely include lots of violence.
That is exactly the positioning you want.
Now, Biden comes in, and of course our adversaries are going to be poking them.
They're going to find out, hey, do we have a little more freedom under this new president?
Are we going to be able to get away with a little bit more?
And Biden has now sent the following message.
No. No, you can't.
Now, I know what you're thinking.
Was Biden even involved in the decision?
Is he so mentally degraded that it's his staff who's making the decisions?
I don't think it matters that much in this context.
Because whether it's Biden calling all the shots or some Biden cartel collectively making decisions, it looks the same.
The message is the same, which is if you mess with the United States, there will be violence.
There will be violence.
There will be a response.
Now, I heard somebody on Twitter say, why do you wait so long, two weeks?
That's also perfect.
Waiting two weeks to do your attack?
Perfect. Because it also sends the following message.
You don't know when it's going to come.
We're not going to forget it.
It's coming. Might be today, might be in two weeks, but the one thing you can be sure of, it's coming.
Now of course you want to do it right, so it might take a few weeks to pick the right target and get the right assets in place and all that.
So I'm going to give Biden an A-plus for handling this situation so far.
Anybody disagree? Would anybody disagree with that grade?
Now, there's a secondary question, and maybe it's not a secondary, maybe it should be a primary, some would argue.
The Rand Paul position that there's no authorization for this attack, and the president can't just start a war, basically.
He can't just attack another country.
And I think that that position needs our full respect.
In fact, Rand Paul's position is not unlike Jen Psaki's position just a few years ago when Trump was doing it, where she criticized Trump for attacking Syria, basically not authorized all the rest.
Now, here's an interesting thing.
I don't really understand the whole situation with executive orders.
Do you? Do any of you understand what's going on with, let's say, the whole body of executive orders over the last few years?
Because I don't quite understand how the president can just sort of do stuff that you thought Congress was supposed to do.
How does the president just decide to just do it himself, and then people obey it?
Why do they obey it?
Why does anybody obey an executive order?
Now, I know that there's different kinds.
There's some executive orders that are just a clarification on an existing law, and that's perfectly fine.
Everybody's okay with that. Somebody has to clarify the law, right?
Fair game. Maybe the courts have to do it if people don't like how the president did it.
But it's a good process. But what happens when the president does something with an executive order that the Constitution didn't quite...
4C. Do we let that happen?
I feel as if...
And this is just speculation.
I need somebody smart to tell me how wrong this is, because it's probably pretty wrong.
But it feels like the country has a great, let's say, a great flexibility with how they treat the executive, the president, when Congress isn't effective.
Because Congress has such a low rating...
That we're happy when anything gets done.
You see your government make a decision and then implement it and it goes well.
It's hard to disagree with it because the alternative would have been to take it to Congress and nothing happens and it's a big fight and nothing good happens.
So it feels as if...
It feels as if...
People are just sort of okay with executive orders because the alternative looks worse, which is to depend on Congress for making decisions.
So are we sort of drifting toward a dictatorship because people prefer it?
Because the alternative is being incompetent, having Congress muddle around?
Yeah, now the problem of course is that if you take it too far, Let's say, for example, this latest bombing attack, let's say that when Trump did it and also when Biden did it, let's say it was extra-constitutional, meaning the Constitution doesn't quite support this act.
But what if the country does?
The country might support it, by majority.
So, I don't know.
It feels like it could be dangerous, but on the other hand, I like it when it happens, generally.
I like it when something happens.
So I think I do like our presidents, including Biden, to have some executive order power.
Now, the Congress and Rand Paul, and I think Rand Paul is a great asset to the country by pushing back on it.
Because you don't want the executive orders without the pushback, right?
Anytime this happens, even if you like the executive order, don't you have to also like that Rand Paul is pushing against it?
You could like both of those things because they work together pretty well.
It keeps the executive orders maybe a little bit constrained because there's some pushback, but you still get to do them when they're important.
It's kind of perfect.
So thank you to Rand Paul for pushing back.
But at the same time, I kind of like this.
I like this action in terms of national security.
I've told you before that it's handy to have a story of you.
Here's the helpful part of my broadcast.
You should always have a heroic story of you, which is sort of the imaginary story you have in your mind of I've told you before that my story,
and I'm going to add to this in a bit, but the personal story that I keep running as a little loop in my mind, and always have, is what I call Prisoner Island.
And Prisoner Island...
It imagines that there's some island where all the prisoners go, and there's no law there.
They just are dropped on the island, and there's no guards or anything.
It's just a prisoner society, so it's pretty rugged there.
So I get convicted of something, and I'm dropped by helicopter onto the prisoner island.
Well, Australia's a little bigger, so that doesn't work for my story.
But imagine it's a smallish island, and all the prisoners know each other and stuff.
Now, on day one, if you drop me in Prisoner Island, how am I going to do?
Not so well, right?
Because I'm not physically large, etc.
So the prisoners would beat me up and rape me.
Day one. Day two, prisoners would beat me up and rape me again.
Day three, day four are going to look a lot alike.
Beaten up, raped, beaten up, raped.
Three or four months go by, beaten up, raped.
But here's the Prisoner Island story.
It's a story I run in my head.
Come back in a year.
Come back in a year.
In a year I'm going to run the island and everybody who touched me will be dead.
But you have to wait a year.
Day one won't go so well.
Day two, not so good.
Come back in a year.
They'll all be dead, and I'll be running the island every fucking time.
Now, is that true?
No, I just made it up, right?
It's just a story in my head.
Is it also true that I would fight through adversity?
Well, I'm trying to make it true, right?
I like to think it's true, but having a story of you is like a program that runs in your head permanently, And it can make you.
It can turn you into that by being the story that guides you.
Alright? Now let me take that story into this next news item.
There was a man, I guess his last name was Raja Gopal.
I think it was India.
Was it India? Might have been Pakistan.
I forget. But he's from the Karnataka's Hasan district, so somebody can tell me where that is.
But anyway, he was riding his motorcycle and a cheetah, or a leopard, it's not clear, attacked his family.
Just came from the bushes and bit his son on the leg and starts attacking his son and wife.
This guy, who's not some fighter or hero or anything, he's just a guy, gets off his motorcycle and kills the leopard with his bare hands to save his family.
He actually grabbed the leopard and strangled it.
Did he get hurt in the process?
Oh yeah, he did.
Yeah, he got hurt.
But he also saved his family and strangled a leopard.
Or maybe a cheetah.
A cheetah or a leopard. I don't know.
It's pretty bad either way. Now, that's the Prisoner Island story.
This is the Prisoner Island story.
Now, I don't know anything about the guy who did this, but it makes me wonder...
Does he have the Prisoner Island story in his head?
Some version of it.
Has he carried a model of himself through his life that when he came to this situation the model kicked in?
And there was no doubt who was going to win the fight and that he was going to fight.
Now, it probably was just reflex of somebody saving his family.
So probably there wasn't a lot of thinking going on.
It was just reflex. But...
Whether or not he had the Prisoner's Island story in his head, he has it now.
He has it now.
The next time he gets in a situation that you and I would be frightened to death of, he knows he can get through it or has gotten through something similarly dangerous.
So make yourself a Prisoner's Island story.
It doesn't have to be real.
It just becomes the program that runs in your head.
Could come in handy if you were attacked by a leopard.
Have you seen the videos of the Tom Cruise deepfakes?
Look on my timeline if you haven't seen them yet.
I don't even know what to think about them.
So there's some discussion about whether they're real deepfakes.
They're actually so good...
That you can't tell if they're deepfakes.
And some people are saying, ah, you got fooled.
It's really just a lookalike.
It's a lookalike pretending to be a deepfake.
Maybe? Maybe?
I can't tell.
I can't tell if it's a real person.
I also can't tell if it's actually Tom Cruise who's playing a prank.
It doesn't quite look like Tom Cruise to me.
So my personal opinion is it's not Tom Cruise.
I can't rule out a lookalike.
But it did look a lot like him.
Now, somebody says too tall.
I don't know if you can tell from the video, his height.
But here's the thing.
That's how good a deepfake is right now.
That we can't even tell if it was really a deepfake.
How good do you think the best ones are?
Because this is just something that ran on Twitter, right?
It's just something on social media.
How is the best one?
Don't you assume that there are, let's say, government versions of this, where we're working on it for both offensive and defensive reasons?
Because I have to think these deep fakes have a military application that's through the roof.
What would happen, and you know we're working on this, right?
I don't feel like I'm giving away a state secret because it's kind of obvious.
Don't you think that our government, and probably other ones, are putting together deepfakes of other leaders and deepfakes of terrorists?
Don't you think if we had a good deepfake of Osama bin Laden, We could have made some videos and put them into the system and caused people to act differently because they thought Bin Laden was giving them guidance.
But we could. And I'm not sure we didn't.
How would we know, right?
We wouldn't know if we'd done that.
Nobody would tell you. So the opportunity for weaponizing These deepfakes is really scary.
Because imagine you get into a shooting war, and we take a deepfake of the leader of the other side, put him on a video, and he says, hey, everybody, lay down your weapons.
We're surrendering. His own military would probably think it was true, right?
Because everybody, even in the military, they have the phones, right?
Or do they? If you're on Operation Maybe not, because you could track the phone.
But when they got back to base, people would have phones and stuff, right?
So even if you're a terrorist, you would see the video.
It wouldn't have to be on TV. It would just be circulating.
And it would be your leader, your terrorist leader, saying, lay down your weapons.
We got everything we wanted, or whatever.
So that's common. Twitter is talking about having some kind of pay model.
Where you could optionally charge people for extra content.
Maybe even newsletters.
So the world is moving toward this subscription base.
But Twitter has a really big obstacle to overcome.
A psychological obstacle.
And the psychological obstacle is you're used to Twitter being free.
Once you get used to it being free, people are going to complain if there's anything that looks like it's extra and it's on Twitter but you have to pay for it.
It's really going to make people angry.
Let me tell you, how are you going to feel?
Well, this is how I feel now.
I'll read a story on, let's say, Twitter or CNN or whatever.
And I'll click to see the original story, and it's behind a paywall.
Or you have to go and figure out how to turn off your ads and your ad blocker, which is too much of a bother.
I would say I skip almost everything that's asking me for money or a password or my email address or to turn off ad blockers.
And every time I go to one of those links, I get angry.
Now, Twitter users are going to have that experience.
They're going to be like, hey, that looks interesting.
Click. Oh, I'd have to pay for that.
I'm angry. Oh, here's a good one.
Oh, I'd have to pay for that.
What would happen if everything that's useful on Twitter turns into a paywall?
Because that's the only thing that'll be behind the paywall, right?
Good stuff. You're not going to put your worthless stuff behind the paywall.
So, Twitter has a really big challenge.
How to handle the The customer's psychology.
Now, as you know, I have a full subscription account separately on the Locals platform.
But the Locals platform was built for just that.
Its only purpose is to be a subscription platform.
So there's no psychological barrier there.
Nobody would sign up for it unless they knew exactly what they were getting.
So they're all happy.
But if you're used to it being free...
People don't like you adding any kind of friction to that, even if it's the extra stuff.
Because they're going to think, we used to get the extra for free, didn't we?
But I do think subscription is the way things have to go.
So Twitter is making the right move.
It's just going to be hard to implement in their case.
I think they'll be successful at some level.
But if you don't want to be banned, etc., something like Locals would be better.
Now, I keep hearing about a new platform called Clubhouse, which, as I understand it, is some kind of open audio conversations with some set of rules.
And I've received a number of invitations to it.
I guess it's still an invitation.
And I've declined them all so far.
Now, the reason that someone says Clubhouse is Chinese, that's not true, is it?
I don't think that's true.
So don't believe that unless you see some confirmation.
I don't think that's true.
But you've got my interest.
If it is true, I definitely want to know it.
Somebody says it's not a U.S. company.
I was sure it was a U.S. company.
No? The API they use is Chinese, somebody says.
Alright, so there may be some connection.
Let's put that as an open question.
But that's not what I was going for today.
What I was going for is I don't understand it.
So this is an interesting thing.
Clubhouse, everybody's talking about it and signing up and everything.
So there must be something to it.
But I keep waiting to hear something about it that makes me want to do it.
And I haven't. And I don't know what other people are hearing that makes them want to do it.
Because lots of smart, connected, forward-thinking people are already on it and telling me I should be on it.
But I don't know why.
Does anybody know why?
Because I don't think you can monetize it, right?
And if there's no video, isn't it less good?
All right. Somebody says, think live podcasts.
Well, I suppose if they did a good job on the interface, it would be interesting.
I'll probably check it out eventually.
But my only point is not that it is or is not valuable, but why have I heard so much about it, and yet nobody has told me what its value proposition is?
Isn't that weird? Well, you would think that almost any business or product that you hear about, people would tell you why to use it, like what its extra advantage is, but I haven't heard that about Clubhouse, and I don't know why.
Does that mean there isn't any extra advantage?
I don't know. I guess I'll keep that as an open question.
There's big news about the minimum wage, $15 thing that the Democrats want to make...
National law. And I guess there's a rules person who decides, the parliamentary and rules person in the Senate has decided that they can't include that minimum wage thing with this big omnibus bill.
There's some kind of rule that says you can't include things that are trivially related to the main purpose.
And this is too trivially related to the main purpose, I guess.
So, number one, I don't agree with this parliamentary decision.
It might be correct in terms of interpreting the rules, but why does Congress put a rule on itself?
What's the point of that?
Why would Congress limit its own flexibility?
Somebody says, it's a rule!
It's a rule! But why?
Why is it a rule? Why in the world can't the Congress say, you know, we all think this should be in this bill.
Why can't we just put it in there?
Would that bother you as a citizen?
If you were a citizen...
Would it bother you that there was some weird rule that they collectively decided to just ignore?
Because there wasn't any purpose for the rule.
I can't see the purpose for it.
Now, I get that you don't want to have big, you know, messed up group things and you want to maintain the ability to do a filibuster and, you know, it's like complicated, etc.
But none of this stuff serves the public, I don't think.
Somebody says in all capitals, you don't understand the Senate and House rules.
I'm going to block you for telling me what I don't understand.
Goodbye. In all caps.
Probably could have gotten away with that if you hadn't used all caps.
Don't criticize me in all caps if you want to come back.
At the very least, use upper and lower case.
Then you've got a chance of surviving.
But you're not going to survive with all caps and no reasons.
Just some kind of weird insult.
Because I'm telling you I don't know the rules.
So you don't need to yell at me that I don't know the rules when it's literally what I'm fucking saying to you.
I don't know the rules.
Okay? I'm swearing at a guy who can't hear me.
All right. So here's my take on the minimum wage.
So forget about the rule part.
You wish there could be something like an executive order from...
Mitch McConnell, who could just say, yeah, it is a rule, but we're just going to ignore it because it doesn't serve us.
So what is your opinion on the $15 minimum wage?
In the comments, can I get a feel of the crowd?
Yes, no, on the minimum wage going to $15.
It doesn't look like it's going to be an option right away.
But what do you think?
I'm interested in my specific audience.
So take a second for the answers to come in.
I'll tell you my opinion. It goes like this.
And I base this on the fact I have a degree in economics.
I have an MBA from a high-end college, you know, university, Berkeley.
And here's my opinion about the $15 minimum wage.
I don't know. I don't know.
Every one of you who says yes or no, what are you basing that on?
Because I'm telling you, I've got a degree in this.
I don't know. I don't know if it's good.
How do you know? Where the hell do you get your opinion from?
Seriously, where the hell did you get these opinions?
Because I don't think economists agree, do they?
Wouldn't you like to see two economists, one on each side, Just get on a show and give you 15 minutes.
You don't need more, but you don't need less.
Just 15 minutes of two economists on either side saying, here's why it's a good idea, and then the other one says, this is why it's a bad idea.
And then maybe then I could make a decision?
But have you ever seen that?
I haven't seen that. I've seen complaints about people saying it should be different in different areas because not every area is the same.
It might hurt some places.
It might help some places.
And that feels like a good argument.
I don't know how accurate it is, but it feels at least like it makes sense.
So here's my advice to you.
If you have a really strong...
Feeling about this $15 minimum wage, and you're not a small business owner yourself, in other words, it's not going to directly affect you immediately, maybe you shouldn't.
Maybe you shouldn't have that opinion.
Because I don't think economists agree.
I don't think all economists are on the same side, do you?
Do you think if you surveyed economists, they'd all be like 95% of them would say either yes or no?
Now, I get the Milton Friedman argument, of course, that the free market is the best mechanism.
But we don't really have a free market.
We don't really have a free market.
We have a very...
Let's say, we do have a free market, we don't have an efficient market.
That's what I should have said. It is free, but it's not efficient.
In order for this minimum wage to find its right level based on competition and the economy and everything else, you need less friction.
You need the ability for things to adjust in real time fairly quickly and all that.
And I don't believe that happens.
Because people don't have that much mobility...
There's just too much friction, I think.
So I have no idea whether this is a good idea.
I have no idea. Now, what do you do when you have no idea if something is a good idea?
Anybody? Anybody.
What do you do if you're not sure it's a good idea?
You test it.
Which one of the sides, the Democrats or the Republicans, are saying, you know, we can't tell if this is good or bad.
Why don't we run it for a year in, let's say, one state or maybe some selected counties?
We'll just test it for one year, and then we'll know.
Are the Republicans saying that?
Where are the Republicans saying, you know, we think it's a bad idea, but we don't hate testing things.
Where's that guy? Or woman, right?
Where's that person? Or any gender you like?
The only thing we need, we don't fucking have.
Am I wrong? Is there some story I'm missing here?
Tell me I'm wrong.
Nobody knows the right answer.
It would be trivially easy to test relative to big national things.
It's easy. You just say, this county.
That's the rule for a year.
Let's see how it goes. Right?
I don't understand why we as a population are putting up with this.
This is pure incompetence.
Because the people making the decision, they don't know if $15 an hour is a good idea.
Do you think there's anybody in Congress who knows more than I do And I don't know much.
That's the whole point. I don't know much.
About whether a $15 minimum wage is a good idea?
I don't think so.
And when I say good idea, I mean good overall in the long run, right, all things considered.
It's obviously good for the people who get the raise.
Most of them, if they keep their job.
So I don't think we can be happy with any opinion on this, and I would tell you that if you have a firm opinion, either yes or no on the minimum wage, you shouldn't.
If you have a firm opinion on this, you shouldn't.
Because smart people don't know.
Like really well-informed smart people don't really know.
They might lean one direction, but without a test, nobody knows.
All right. I've come to a potential decision about what's the biggest factor or factors in COVID infections.
And it goes like this.
I feel as if there are two things, and some of this is just speculation and a little bit of what I'm reading.
But here are some things we've learned about the COVID infections, we think.
Number one, in the UK, surprisingly, they say there's no real difference in minority outcomes for coronavirus, except that they get infected more often.
But haven't we all been under the impression that That your genetic makeup would probably make a difference in your outcome.
But it might be that that's true, but that genetic difference is not necessarily ethnically related.
In other words, if you read between the lines here, the UK outcome, if, let's say, the data holds, you know, any preliminary study like this, you can't assume it's right, but let's say it is.
It would be saying that genetically there wouldn't be much difference across ethnicities, but there might be a big difference in terms of lifestyle and economic situation, and that might be what's driving more infections.
For example, at the lower economic end of things, there might be more people living per house.
It could be that.
It could be they have less healthcare resources.
It could be that. So, this...
This may be really important information if it's true.
I'd still wait to get a confirmation of this.
All right, so...
That's the first new piece of information.
There might not be that much difference ethnically, even though the outcomes are very different.
It might be lifestyle, not genetics.
Although there could still be, and probably is, a gigantic genetic difference across individuals, but not necessarily across ethnicities.
Um... Which seems unlikely to me, frankly, but doesn't it seem unlikely to you that there's no difference in ethnicity?
It feels unlikely, but that's what we have here.
All right, then we also have an HSE University research study that says that...
Oh, I'm sorry, that was the genetic difference study.
But there's an additional study that says that 63% of U.S., So obesity, according to this one study, is responsible for 30% of the excess hospitalizations In the same sentence, it says 63%, so it's written very poorly.
So I don't know exactly which of those numbers to look at, because it looks like it's two different numbers saying the same thing.
But there's a gigantic difference in obesity.
Now, we all knew that, right? We all knew that.
But there's some kind of word that I didn't write down that says that...
Sometimes it's the combination of two things.
You need the comorbidity plus the virus.
One by itself doesn't kill you.
Now, why do we call this simply a virus pandemic when it's clearly an obesity pandemic at the same time?
It's two pandemics, if you call obesity a pandemic.
But we sort of ignore one of them.
And pay all of our attention to the other one when they're clearly both gigantic variables.
Now, I agree the virus itself is a bigger variable than obesity, but the obesity thing is so big, it's like you should talk about them in the same sentence every time.
We've got a big problem with the virus killing our fat people.
Now, I don't do fat shaming, so I'm just using fat...
In a casual way, not to mean an insult.
You know, I myself have been a few pounds overweight at various times in my life, and so I don't do fat shaming.
But it's just simply a fact that Americans are overweight.
So I feel as if the fact that we don't talk about that more For what?
Social reasons?
Wokeness? Is there some reason we can't talk about people's health?
Because they'll feel bad?
It'll be racist somehow?
Sure. Here's the most predictable thing...
What was the most predictable thing that would come out of the Tiger Woods thing?
And by the way, I don't mean to make fun of anything that happens to Tiger Woods.
We all hope that he recovers and it is a tragedy.
So I'm not going to take anything away from how bad this is.
But the most predictable thing, and I wish I'd said it in public because it was so predictable.
Today we learn that Tiger Woods does not remember the crash.
Was that predictable? As soon as I heard that he was awake when they found him and he was coherent and all that, but that the actual cause of the crash was unknown, as soon as I heard that, I said to myself, he's going to say he doesn't remember the crash.
He's going to say he doesn't remember what happened.
What would you do in that situation?
What would you do in that situation?
If that were me, I would say I didn't remember the crash.
Because he might have been texting.
I'm not saying he was.
He might have had something in his system.
Apparently he was not tested for any drugs.
Now, I don't know if the rules are different in the UK, but because there were no overt signs of drug use or inebriation, in other words, there was nothing in his car that suggested he had taken something, and there were no eyewitnesses that said, ah, we saw him put something in his mouth or anything like that.
So if you don't have any cause, it's just an accident, I guess they can't check.
So Tiger Woods can just say, I don't remember...
They won't ever check his blood to find out if he was inebriated.
It looks like he can just go with that story that he doesn't remember.
And he'll be fine from any kind of repercussions.
So I don't think anything was more predictable than he would say he doesn't remember.
Do you believe it? Do you believe he doesn't remember?
I'm going to go on record as saying no.
I don't believe it.
It's not impossible. It's traumatic.
Very traumatic. Could be that the cause of the accident was that he blacked out.
So then, of course, he wouldn't remember it.
It certainly looks like he blacked out, doesn't it?
Wouldn't you say that the odds are, based on how far the car went, etc., you'd have to think he wasn't conscious.
Wouldn't you? And so to me, the texting or the cell phone, or even if an animal ran in the road, I don't feel like they completely...
Would describe what happened.
It feels like he was unconscious, but that's just speculation.
No, no. All right.
Do you know who Amy Siskind is?
Or Siskind? But she's one of the more ridiculous characters on Twitter.
I think she's blocked me and vice versa eventually.
But she was like a crazy anti-Trump person.
And she tweeted after Biden bombed Syria...
She's tweeted, so different having military action under Biden.
No middle school level threats on Twitter.
Trust Biden and his team's competence.
A tear is coming to my eye because Biden, he knows how to bomb Syria in a responsible way.
Not the way Trump did it, with his irresponsible taunts.
No, Trump bombed Syria the wrong way.
Whereas Biden, he's bombing Syria in a responsible way.
So, big difference there, according to Amy.
So, China apparently did some COVID tests on some U.S. diplomats and decided to go with the anal test instead of the cheek swab.
That's right. Instead of the nasal swab or the cheek swab, China decided to shove something up our diplomats' asses.
They complained.
The diplomats complained about China shoving things up their asses.
And China said, oh, it was an error.
It was a mistake.
Sorry. Didn't mean it.
Sorry. And what will the United States do?
Will we turn the other cheek?
Will we note that although America went to Mars, China went to Uranus?
I would like to give this opportunity for all of you to add your own jokes about China shoving a COVID test up the ass of our diplomats.
What would Trump have done if China shoved things up the ass of our diplomats?
And then said, whoops.
Whoops. Sorry.
What would Trump have done?
Would he do what Biden is likely to do?
Complain? I don't know what he would have done.
But he should have closed the embassies.
Should have just closed the fucking embassies.
Like, I don't know how you protect your diplomats, but...
Do you want to be a diplomat that was not protected the way these guys were not protected?
These guys and women and genders of all types.
They were not protected.
Now, I think they probably had a choice of saying no, but then they probably couldn't travel, or I don't know, there's probably some repercussion.
So I don't feel this can go unaddressed.
Do you? This should not be unaddressed.
I think Trump would have addressed it.
I don't know if Biden will.
There's a new story of a classroom assistant who didn't know his Zoom was still on, and he may have done a tubing.
He may have been doing a little tubing when the camera was still on.
So, and here's the funniest part, is that the young man, the 21-year-old employee, he also has a side company when he's not being an assistant in school.
He also runs Pirate Magic, a business that throws pirate parties for youngsters.
While he portrays a character named Captain Silly Bones.
Let me give you this advice.
Yes.
Here's some good advice for you.
You can take this to the bank.
If there's any chance at all that you're going to get caught masturbating on Zoom, don't have a side business.
Don't have a side business called Called pirate parties.
And don't call yourself Captain Silly Bones.
Don't do them at the same time.
That's like a comorbidity.
One of those things, just by itself, let's say the pirate parties, one of those things by itself, that's fine.
Pleasuring yourself in private, far as I know, still totally legal.
Totally legal. It's only a problem when you combine the two things on a Zoom call, right?
You know what? Captain Silly Bones.
I don't think he's going to get booked for another party.
Let me give you some advice that you will find very useful.
Let me tell you what I do the moment I'm done with these periscopes.
The moment I'm done with them, I've got two screens here, two iPads, that are facing me where I would sit at my office desk.
The first thing I do after I turn these off is I turn them this way.
So you're looking at each other now.
The first thing I do when I'm done with any kind of a Zoom call on my laptop, the first thing I do Close the laptop.
So let me suggest to you that you never assume that you're not on live stream.
Because that's how you lose your pirate parties, if you know what I mean.
Never assume it.
So as a habit, you should physically move your camera out of a viewing district when you're done.
Every time. And just do it every time.
As a habit.
I'll tell you, one wake-up call was when somebody discovered that, I guess, Mark Zuckerberg puts tape over the camera on his own laptop.
Now, do you think Mark Zuckerberg understands the world of security and what is or is not a risk?
Oh, he does.
And if he's covering up the camera on his laptop, maybe you should too.
Now, he's more of a target than you are, but you're all targets.
Yeah, and the same with the hot mic.
Just assume you're always being listened to.
Now, I've got a number of digital products here, everything from my phone to my Amazon digital assistant.
So I just assume that I'm being recorded all the time.
I just assume it.
I just assume there's nothing I say even in the privacy of my own home, even in the bathroom.
I just assume that somebody's listening or could.
Doesn't mean they are listening.
They just could. Technologically, they could.
Alright, so being boring is how I protect myself.
CNBC had this story, and I think it's important that it's CNBC, because it's a major network, right?
Bill Gates was asked about nuclear power, and he said it absolutely will be politically acceptable again, which is an interesting...
Way to make the prediction.
I think he was asked that specific question.
But according to Bill Gates, who most of you would associate with the left, wouldn't you?
Now, I don't think he associates himself that way.
I doubt, I mean, maybe he's a Democrat, I don't know.
But he seems more like a problem solver than a political animal.
And he's saying as clearly as possible, nuclear power will absolutely be politically acceptable again.
And he points out that it's safer than oil, coal, and natural gas.
The reason it will be acceptable is that it's safer.
And then he goes on to talk about one of the companies he's invested in, Terra Power.
It's the Generation 4 nuclear power that can't melt down, and it's smaller, more economical.
It's more off-the-shelf pieces.
You can transport it easily, etc.
So we may be years away from making that commercial, But it really does matter that Bill Gates said this, because he has credibility with the left.
You know, he thinks climate change is a big problem, so he's got credibility.
Here's the other observation I was going to make about COVID.
I feel like besides obesity, the other biggest factor is how many strangers you let in your house.
And by strangers, I mean anybody who doesn't live there normally.
So... I feel as if we controlled one variable, we would get through the pandemic quickly.
Now, maybe the vaccinations will get us there on time anyway.
But if, in the beginning, we had only done one restriction, I think we'd already be done.
And that one restriction would be...
Don't let anybody inside your residence who is not a resident.
Unless, you know, it could be the plumber with a mask, right?
But nobody to visit.
Not even your out-of-town family members.
I feel as though that one restriction of nobody in your residence, except the residents, for a month, we'd be pretty well done, I feel like.
Now, you wouldn't get rid of the infection, but you might get it down to a low level.
Now, does anybody disagree with that?
Because it's something like over 50% of infections, it's worse in the winter when you're indoors.
Somebody says, I thought we did that.
No, we didn't really do that.
We said you don't want to socially mingle, but I don't think anybody took it seriously inside their own house.
I think everybody lets their other family members.
I think everybody lets the boyfriend or the girlfriend come over.
I feel like inside the house there are no rules, and probably that was the main problem.
Probably the main problem.
And I would also think that you could solve that with statistics and publicity.
If you stopped somebody on the street and said to them, what's the main place you get infected?
What would the average person say?
Think about it. You're probably way more informed than the average consumer, just the fact you're watching a live stream about the world and politics.
The average person isn't really paying attention to too much news, on average.
So stop the average person in the street and say to them, where do you think most infections happen?
What would they say?
I'll bet they wouldn't say home.
I'll bet most people would say, well, they closed the restaurants and gyms.
It's probably restaurants and gyms.
Or they might say, must be the workplace.
Because why else would they do the lockdown?
But I'll bet it's not.
I'll bet if you simply produced enough statistics to say, look, Most of it is because you're letting somebody in your little un-air circulated space who doesn't live there.
That's most of it.
I think if we just hammered people with...
I don't know what the real number is, but it's like 56% is in the home.
And just keep telling people that.
Say, it's because the...
You use your app on Tinder, or whatever it is.
So that's all I have to say about that.
Now, Rasmussen has an interesting poll in which they were asking about people's opinion of some national leaders.
I've been telling you, why is there not a new national leader?
And I've said AOC may fill that spot.
But here are some names.
I'm going to tell you the names that they polled.
And let me see if you can guess who has the highest favorability at the moment with the public.
So this is the entire public.
The names they tested were, this is Rasmussen, Kevin McCarthy, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and AOC. Now, I'll add together their two favorable categories, the highly favorable and the normal favorable.
And who among those do you believe had the highest favorability?
Take a guess.
I want to see in the comments how plugged in you are to the national consciousness.
Most people are guessing AOC, but I think you're I think you're guessing that because you think that's going to be the answer, because why would I bring it up?
I always talk about AOC's persuasion.
So I feel like I've biased the survey.
I think I've biased the survey too much.
You're trying to guess what it's going to be.
Here's the answer. Kevin McCarthy.
Kevin McCarthy. He has the highest favorability of this group.
What? What?
How the hell did that happen?
Did you see that coming?
Now, I don't think that necessarily means as much as you might think it would mean.
It could mean that he's just less controversial.
So the others have some specific reasons you're mad at them.
But I can't think of a specific reason to be mad at Kevin McCarthy, can you?
I can't think of a scandal, or was he on the wrong side of something, or...
I don't know. It could be that he just hasn't caused any trouble and that people respond to a specific story they remember more than they respond to the average.
So here are the numbers.
So Kevin McCarthy, if you add his two favorable categories together, 43%.
Compare that to McConnell at 29.
It's a big difference.
Compared to Pelosi at 37, surprisingly good.
Schumer at 32, and AOC at 34.
So if you were to look at this, would you say to yourself, my goodness, Kevin McCarthy should run for president, because he has substantially, like a 30% higher favorability than AOC. But it doesn't work that way.
Because our primary system does like the exciting people, right?
So I would say that AOC already has enough support to win a primary.
I think she already has enough support to win a primary for president someday, if it doesn't change.
But it certainly raises a question about Kevin McCarthy, if he has bigger ambitions to run for president.
That would be interesting.
So I'll just put that name out there.
We're all looking for our next leader.
And it's very interesting that he doesn't have obvious negatives.
Yeah, it could be that he just has the lowest profile, as somebody says in the comments, that just people don't know as much about him, so they don't have a negative feeling, so they say, ah, he's okay.
It could be just that.
So you have to be careful about averages.
If I've taught you anything...
And I'll remind you, this is what I call the Hollywood way of looking at favorability.
And I learned this when I was doing a Dilbert TV show, which never made it to the air.
We tried to do a live-action one with real actors.
The animated one did eventually get on TV. But when I was testing that, we made a pilot, we brought people into a room, and they have their little buttons that they push when there's something they like that's happening on the screen.
And I asked the executive, what are we looking for?
What average approval of the TV show would suggest it would be a hit?
And the executive said, we don't look at the average, because that's useless.
Which is really interesting to know.
We look at how excited some people are.
What you want is that a few people, maybe 10% of the audience, just thinks it's the best thing they've ever seen.
You don't even care about the other 90%.
Because most shows are not watched by 90% of the public.
A huge hit, whether it's a song, a movie, a TV show, is because 10% of the public loves it.
That's what makes it. Same with Dilbert.
If you ask the average person, hey, how about this Dilbert comic...
The average person would say, hmm, not for me.
But something like 10 or 20% of the public who has a job and relates to the situations, etc., will cut it out, buy the book, get the calendar, and that's enough to make Dilbert wildly successful.
So be careful when you're looking at average favorability, because it doesn't predict.
What does predict is if you're wildly hating or loving an individual, such as a Trump or an AOC. So Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the wild hate or the wild love, and that usually does not predict national success, at least running for president's success.
But how hard would it be for him to learn that or to, let's say, To adopt a persona that could get him elected, probably could do it.
Probably could do it. I would guess he has the capability to raise his game, but we'll see.
All right, that's all I got for now.
Yeah, I know about the brains behind AOC. She was sort of selected and groomed, and there was a You know, a mentor who probably made a big difference.
But here's the thing.
Everybody who thinks she's not smart, you're all wrong.
Say what you will about her politics.
She's really smart.
I hate to tell you, but it's obvious.
If you're still judging her as like the bartender, you are so missing what's going on.
She's smart. Most of our members of Congress are.
Most of them. It's not even unusual.
That's how they get elected. Somebody says she's misinformed.
My point was that her mentor may have taught her a lot, but if you factor in how quickly she would pick up what she learned, the mentor may have already given all he could give.
There may not be more to give there.
All right. When has AOC ever faced a tough interview, you say?
I wouldn't worry about that at all.
I'm pretty sure she could handle a tough interview.
And she does what Trump does, which is she'll do the big ask that you think is ridiculous, but then it ends up well because she negotiates toward the middle.
All right. That's all we got for now, and I will talk to you later.
Alright, YouTubers? Somebody says she even flubs the softball.
I'd have to see some examples of that.
Her public speaking is so good that I can't imagine that she would be bad in a tough interview.
Who's going to jail for the fraud?
Which fraud? Let's see.
see, just looking at some of your questions.
She's one generation removed from...
All right. Well, there's a lot of...
Margaret Huber, not good.
How do you bruise your arm?
Is my arm bruised?
That's weird.
I didn't know I had a bruise.
You know what's weird? I can't see it.
I'm looking at my arm, and I can't see it, but I can see it on camera.
Just the lighting is different.
Actually, I have no idea. I must have banked it on something.