Episode 1433 Scott Adams: How to Make Bad Ideas Go Away, and Coffee Too
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Patriots Soar plan to reinstate President Trump
Changing climate change opinions
California mismanagement = heatwave blackouts
Making CRT in schools go away
VP Harris, an entertaining nightmare
Rural people can't photocopy?
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I've already been talking to the local subscribers for a few minutes, and I'll bet you're wondering I know what you're wondering.
You're thinking, will today be the best coffee with Scott Adams of all time?
Yeah. Yeah, it will.
I say it every time, and it's true every single time.
And all you need is a cup or mug or glass or tank or chalice or stein in a canteen jug or flask.
A vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
It's called the Simultaneous Sip, famous all over the world, and it's going to happen now.
Go. Ah.
Oh, I'm seeing somebody say that CNN did report that on the Charlottesville situation, Trump said both sides were good.
Now, saying that there were fine people on both sides is a little bit different than saying he was praising the neo-Nazis.
So they may have stepped away from it a little bit because one would be unambiguous fake news, but the other is true-ish.
He did actually say the words that there were good people on both sides.
As long as they don't explain what he meant by both sides...
Well, they can be weaselishly true, but also fake news at the same time, which is, as you know, their sweet spot.
Well, here's an interesting factoid.
You know, every time we think we know something about statistical truth, especially during the pandemic, what happens when reality happens?
Give us a fact check.
Every time we think we understand what the statistics are telling us, reality is not serving it up.
Here's an example.
And I don't know what's wrong.
Is it the way we measure stuff or are we just dumb?
But Anatoly Lubarsky had a good tweet.
He noted that the UK cases of coronavirus are rising and they're rising faster than This summer than they did even last summer.
Now, that's in a condition in which fully 50% of the UK is fully vaccinated.
Now, does this make sense to you?
Could it be true that the spread is worse this year, this summer, than it was last summer during the height of the pandemic?
And Kevin, you're going to go away.
Put users in timeout.
All right. So all the trolls with their bad audio stuff, they're gonna go away.
So do you think it makes sense that you could have higher infection rates this year when half of the country is vaccinated?
Can that happen?
How is it possible That you've reduced the number of people who could get it by something like 50%, and the rates are rising faster.
Well, first of all, yes.
I think it is possible.
So the first thing is, yeah.
But our common sense, it doesn't...
Your common sense has trouble processing that, right?
So this is just one of those cases where the data and what your brain thinks is likely just don't match.
But I don't know. I don't know that there's really any problem here.
It could be the way it's measured.
It could be that it's moving fast with young people, but it doesn't matter because they're not dying.
So these things are too complicated to know if your common sense is really telling you anything useful.
Here is a fun, fun thing.
So you know CPAC is happening, right?
So CPAC, all the Republicans are getting together, going to do their speeches.
President Trump is going to do the closing speech, I guess, and Don Jr.
has already promised us it will be provocative.
People will be upset about it.
Now, we don't even know what it's going to be about yet.
Well, we kind of do, don't we?
I mean, you could pretty much guess what kind of themes he's going to hit.
But he's going to be shaking things up, and finally we'll get some fun news.
I'm so tired of the boring news.
We need Trump to give us some fun news.
But here's the most fun part of the CPAC. There's a group not associated with CPAC, but they're attending, I guess, Patriots SOAR, S-O-A-R, and they're handing out a seven-point plan.
I guess they've got some little handout.
Seven-point plan for reinstating Trump to the presidency.
Not getting him re-elected, but reinstating him into the presidency.
And here's how the plan goes.
I think this assumes that in 2022 the Republicans have a good midterm election.
Once the Republicans take control of Congress, apparently it's legal to pick a Speaker of the House who is not even an elected official.
So apparently the Republicans could pick Trump as the Speaker of the House without him being in office.
I need a fact check on that, but I think that's true, right?
Now, if that's true, then Trump...
Assuming you had a Republican majority only, could start organizing impeachments.
And he could impeach Biden, and then he could impeach Harris.
And the only thing he would need would be a Republican majority.
Because it wouldn't matter what the case was, right?
Impeachment is a political process.
If you have good evidence for it, well, maybe there's more chance somebody will get impeached.
But you don't really need any.
You actually don't need evidence.
Tell me if I'm wrong.
Give me a fact check on that.
If the Republicans just had enough of a majority...
And they simply wanted to impeach somebody, they could just do it, right?
I mean, they would have to make up some, you know, BS reason.
But that would be easy.
In a political process, you just say, oh, it's obvious that Biden has dementia, right?
How hard would it be for Republicans to say, look, the Biden administration is not dealing with the fact that their leader has dementia?
The vice president should be stepping in, and she's not, Harris.
So you have to impeach them both.
What's wrong with that argument?
Seriously, what's wrong with that argument?
Right? Now, I don't know...
So impeachment isn't just for incompetence, right?
You need a little bit more than that.
But I feel like you could just stretch any argument as far as you want, as long as you have the majority.
You just have to get the votes.
And nobody's really responsible for what they vote for.
So all you have to do is convince the Republicans that...
And I'll just use that argument again.
That it's obvious Biden has dementia.
You could make that case with a straight face.
Right? You wouldn't be lying, would you?
I mean, you would be going further than your medical expertise should take you, because you don't have any.
But it would also be considered reasonable by people who heard it, even if they didn't like it.
Even the Democrats would say, oh, I hate it that you're trying to use impeachment, but it's not the worst point, that there's something wrong with him.
And if Harris is not stepping in to do something about it, She's not doing her job.
And if she's not doing her job, she needs to be removed.
So that could be the argument.
Now, will any of this happen?
Very, very unlikely.
Really, really unlikely.
But it's kind of fun. It's fun to know that it might.
Here's a question for you, and it's just a hypothetical.
We know that there are COVID variants, and the variation could, for example, be more or less deadly.
But it could also be more or less transmissible.
So it could be different in a variety of different ways, thus the variant part.
And I wonder this.
Could you, hypothetically, I'm not suggesting this is a good idea, but it's more of a science nerd question.
Could you, hypothetically, it would be terribly immoral and unethical, so don't do it, but would it be possible To develop a variant of the coronavirus that spread as fast as the Delta variant or faster and gave you very little symptoms, but it did give you immunity against other variants.
What do you think?
Could you, in effect, vaccinate the world by creating a weak variety of the virus and just let it go?
Now, obviously, this would be the most unethical thing in the world, right?
It would be deeply immoral.
So we're not going to argue that, right?
We're all on the same side.
You don't give people forced vaccinations by tricking them with a virus in the air.
But it'd be possible, wouldn't it?
And if it were possible, Would it be something that you would ever use in an even worse pandemic?
You know, this pandemic was pretty bad, but it could be much worse, one assumes.
So I'm seeing a lot of yeses.
Interesting. Yeah, it would be obviously the worst idea in the world to try to do it, but it might work.
Weirdly. Oh, there's a Dan Brown novel with that topic?
That makes sense. Sounds like a movie plot.
Yeah. All right.
There was a study on mask effectiveness in Kansas in which different counties were looked at to see if wearing masks worked.
What do you think was the result?
Remember, Kansas is pretty Republican.
And they had some counties with no mask mandates and some with, some without.
What do you think? Did masks work?
Well, according to this study, they worked really well.
Do you believe it? Do you believe that anybody can actually effectively measure whether or not masks work?
So I have a really, really big question about whether anybody can even measure this thing.
Because I feel like too many things happen at the same time.
By the time you mandate masks...
Don't you also do lockdowns and more distancing and treat it more seriously?
So I don't think there's ever a case where the only difference between two locations is masks or no masks.
So the first part is that it might be hard to tease out what really is the mask part.
Secondly, you can't do a randomized controlled test.
Because since the assumption is mass work, at least by the scientific community, if not by you, there wouldn't be any way to say, well, this group don't wear masks during the pandemic, and this group wear them, and we'll see who does better.
So you can't do the kind of study you want to do.
It would be unethical. So you're left with less reliable ways to check it.
And do you believe that when these researchers at the Institute of Policy and Social Research, they said that it saved about 500 lives in each adoptive county?
Do you believe that?
Do you believe that masks saved 500 lives in each county that did them?
I think I'd have to see a lot more studies.
I'd have to see a lot more people look at it.
We don't really live in a world in which you could take any of this seriously.
I'm saying that people are not believing it.
I'm still on the side that says if you could measure it, you'd find that masks made a difference.
But I don't know if you'll ever be able to measure it.
I just don't know if I would ever trust any study on that.
All right. Let me give you an update on something from yesterday.
You might remember that yesterday I told you a funny story about how Christina, my wife and I, took personality tests, an online personality test.
So there's no science behind it.
It was sort of a variant of the Myers-Briggs test where you're an INTJ or an ENTF or whatever you are.
And I was joking because my result came out that I was compared to people like Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela.
And I joked that my wife did the same test and came out similar to Vladimir Putin.
Now, I may have cherry-picked some data.
So let me do a clarification.
In addition to having a A test that was similar to Vladimir Putin.
Well, number one, do you think Vladimir Putin took the test?
Of course not.
Do you think MLK or Mother Teresa took the test?
Of course not. So when the test says that you have the same personality as these famous people, there's no science to that.
It doesn't mean anything. But other people who would have allegedly the same personality type as Christina would be Isaac Newton, Much better than Vladimir Putin.
Elon Musk.
Stephen Hawking's Beethoven.
John Nash, the mathematician.
And JFK. Now, if you wanted to know how unscientific this personality test is, do you think that JFK and Vladimir Putin should be in the same category?
Right there, isn't that kind of a tip-off?
So, I wouldn't put any stock in this.
So, by the way, the Myers-Briggs personality test purports to figure out what kind of personality people have, and then the reason is, the reason that you figure that out is so that you can deal with them more effectively, right? Can you actually do that?
If you knew what your personality type was, and you knew what somebody else's personality type was, could you use that to great advantage in your business or personal life?
And the answer is, probably not.
There's no reason to believe that makes any difference.
And I'm not sure that there's any science to even figuring out what your personality is.
Because When I took the test, I was aware of answering the questions the way I wanted to answer them.
Or let me say it another way.
When I answered the questions on the personality test, I was kind of saying who I wanted to be, maybe more than who I am.
You know what I mean? Like maybe I gave myself a little bit more of a positive review of my own personality than perhaps was warranted.
Would that be unusual?
So I've got a feeling that people's own assessment of their personality is pretty wonky to begin with, and that once you've assessed it, it doesn't mean you can work with somebody else if you know their personality.
So in the Dilbert comic, I have mocked the Myers-Briggs test a number of times, and I will continue to do so.
There's no science to it. All right.
And I was just having fun with the personality test.
Okay. Next topic.
What would it take to convince you that the Earth is warming because of human activity?
What would it take to convince you?
So let's say I know my audience well, and I know that it is a common belief among many of my audience members here that climate change is not happening.
Or that if it is happening, it's some natural variation and has not much to do with humans.
So I know a number of you are in that camp.
I'm not in that camp.
I'm in the camp that almost certainly humans are making some difference, but we're not good at predicting it, and we're also very good at remediating.
So I'm not as worried about long-term devastating consequences because other people are.
As long as other humans are really worried about it and working on it and putting tons of money into it, we'll be fine.
But, you know, it's probably productive to worry about it, is my view.
Now, I could be wrong about that.
So if you ask me, Scott, what is your level of certainty?
I'd say not 100%, but pretty high.
Pretty high. So, but here's the question to you.
If you're in the camp that says, no, the world is not warming because of human activity, maybe because of natural variants or solar flares or whatever you think it is, what would it take to convince you otherwise?
Is there anything? Because if you don't believe in climate change, being human caused to some extent, you don't believe science.
Or at least you don't believe scientists, I should say.
It's not that you don't believe science.
That you don't believe the consensus of scientists.
So what would it ever take to change your mind?
Now I'm not saying I'm going to try to change your mind.
I'm seeing Roger saying the Tony Heller video should be required viewing.
Let me tell you, if you think that, you're really in bad shape.
Every time I bring this up, somebody brings up Tony Heller.
Tony Heller may have destroyed the earth.
I'm not saying for sure.
But the Tony Heller effect, he's a well-known critic of climate change, but he's so well-known and did such good work communicating that he's the main reason that people don't believe in climate change on the right.
One person. Because if you look in the comments, you'll see he's the most often, well, really the only person who's ever mentioned.
Now, here's the problem.
If you watch, you know, 10 or 20 Tony Heller videos, you will be convinced that he's right.
How many of you have had that experience?
How many of you watched enough Tony Heller videos to say, my God, this is convincing, he's right?
In the comments, how many of you have done that?
Because I've gone down that rabbit hole.
And if you watch enough of his videos, they're really, really persuasive.
Like, really persuasive.
How many of you?
Just looking in your comments.
Never heard of the guy who...
All right. So...
Here's what you need to know.
If you watch only Tony Heller videos, they're really convincing.
So don't do that.
Because if you watch only one person's view of anything, they're going to be convincing.
So the problem is not that Tony Heller is right or wrong.
The problem is you took a method of finding information that can never work.
You hear this clearly.
If you follow down the Tony Heller path...
You took a way of finding information that can never work.
And it has nothing to do with Tony Heller.
It has to do with watching any one person's content is the worst way you can understand anything.
Because they will be persuasive because you're not hearing any counterargument.
You have to read the debunks, and then read his stuff, and then read the counter to it, and then read his response to the counter to it, etc.
You've got to go pretty deep down the hole before you realize that everything that Tony Heller says has a reasonable defense.
Maybe not everything.
Because sometimes the critics will find things that are being done wrong, but it doesn't debunk the whole thing.
It might be there's a messy spot or something.
Yes, Al Gore is the same problem.
If you just listened to Al Gore, and he was your primary source of information, you would be using a process which guarantees you would be not well informed.
So the same thing I said about Tony Heller, who says climate change is not real, is exactly the same as I would say about Al Gore.
And by the way, Al Gore would tell you the same thing.
If you had a private conversation with Al Gore...
I feel confident this is true.
By the way, I have had private conversations with Al Gore.
That's another story. But in the White House, when he was Vice President, I got to hang out with him a little bit.
I like Al Gore, by the way.
I think he's the real deal.
Now, whether he's right or wrong on any particular things is a different question.
But I think he's actually...
I like him, anyway, so I'll just put that out there.
But I think he would agree with this statement because he's a rational guy.
If you said the only information you have is from Al Gore, should you treat it as credible?
Not even Al Gore would tell you that.
I don't think. Because he seems like a pretty straight shooter.
He may be right or wrong on stuff, but I think he's a straight shooter.
And I think he would tell you that listening to any one person on any big complicated topic is a terrible idea.
So... It's one thing to listen to Al Gore, but you've got to listen to Tony Heller maybe also.
And then you've got to listen to the debunk of the Tony Heller.
Potholer is one, famous one.
And then you've got to listen to the response to Potholer, which could be pretty persuasive.
But you've got to go all the way down, or else you don't know anything.
So what would it take to convince you that climate change is real?
Think about your own answer.
You don't have to answer me. But think about if there's nothing that would convince you, why do you believe it, right?
You have to check your thinking if there's nothing that could change your mind.
No new information, no better source, no record temperatures, anything.
What would change your mind? I'm not saying I'm going to try to change your mind.
I'm just wondering what would.
All right, apparently more than 30 million Americans were under excessive heat warnings across the West.
Does that change your mind?
So we have these record highs all over the place.
30 million people with pretty serious heat warnings.
Yesterday I kept getting information from my local energy company, PG&E, telling me that they were maybe going to turn my power off for one or two hours.
Smart people in the comments.
So the question I asked is, Would you be persuaded by 30 million people being under excessive heat warnings?
And almost all of you said no.
Correct. That is correct.
Having an excessive high temperatures does not prove climate change.
We all agree with that, right?
That just because you set a record, that's not enough.
Suppose we set a record every year for 10 years in a row.
Would that change your mind?
How about 20 years?
Suppose we had a new high.
I don't think this is likely.
But suppose we had a new high every year for 20 years in a row.
At the end of 20 years, would you say, yeah, that was probably something going on there?
Let's see. Would that convince you?
20 years every year is a new high.
A lot of people say no.
And no is the correct answer.
Yeah, no is the correct answer.
Because 20 years is not very long.
In terms of, you know, the history of the Earth, you could have a 20-year period where, you know, things are different.
Now, if that were the only evidence, I would say maybe that's not as credible or convincing as it should be.
But it won't be the only evidence.
There will be, you know, evidence from a variety of sources, etc.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
Why are we having rolling blackouts in California?
So yesterday was the first day they said your electricity might go off voluntarily, meaning that the power company might turn it off just to save electricity.
Well, as Michael Schellenberger tweets, there was a California electricity grid manager who explained it in 2020.
Quote, people wonder how we made it through the heat wave of 2006.
The answer is we had San Onofre, a nuclear plant, and a number of other plants totaling thousands of megawatts that are not there today.
So the reason we don't have enough electricity is not climate change.
It's because we ignored climate change.
Because getting rid of nuclear power plants is like being really dumb if you have a climate emergency that you believe is your top priority.
And I was listening yesterday to a podcast in which I heard some very smart people say, for example, that you should put nuclear power plants and desalinization plants up and down the coast of Northern California, or all of California, and just solve that problem.
It would be very expensive, but how would you like to have no water?
So there are your two choices.
It's expensive, or you don't have water.
Easy decision. If you had a good government, that would be an easy decision.
Well, does anybody know if Branson is up in space yet, or up in near space?
I think he's going to be near space.
Does anybody know if he left?
There was a delay in the Virgin Galactic flight, and Richard Branson was going to be on it himself.
Sir Richard Branson.
And I believe we got delayed 90 minutes.
So it hasn't taken off yet, I'm hearing in the comments.
All right. How does it make you feel that Branson is in the flight and likewise that Bezos will be in his first flight?
How does that make you feel?
Because I understand what Branson is doing.
He's not only bringing attention to it by being on it, but he's also trying to convince people that it'll be a safe way to fly in the future.
But here's the thing.
Elon Musk has told us directly people are going to die in the quest to get to Mars, which I think is one of the smartest things anybody ever said in public, by the way.
When Elon Musk says, you know, people are going to die, and he's working on a project that's going to kill people.
But we kind of have to get to Mars.
The future of humanity does require us to settle space.
There's no doubt about that.
And I love the fact that he's transparent about it.
Yeah, people are going to die. I don't know if Elon Musk will be on any of his upcoming flights, but it would be not unreasonable for him not to.
Because I'd much rather have Elon Musk alive than dead.
Now, I don't know if I feel exactly the same about Richard Branson or even Jeff Bezos, who's now sort of retired from Amazon.
Now, I don't want any of them to die, just to be clear.
You know, I very much want them all to live, and I think they all have great value to the planet.
But Elon Musk, probably the only one who's Direct contribution makes a difference to whether we'll get to Mars, right?
Probably it does matter who's in charge there.
So I would hate...
Oh, my God, I would hate to see anything happen to Branson or Bezos.
That would be just so bad for space exploration.
But on the other hand, you have to give them a compliment for leading with putting skin in the game.
Is it a coincidence that these two leaders are unusually successful?
Maybe this is why, right?
Maybe this is exactly why they're successful.
That they'll get on their damn plane, or rocket, or whatever it is.
They'll take it themselves.
And they'll risk dying.
Three minutes and counting. Oh, it left off.
So where are we?
Are we actually in countdown? Give me an update on that as we go.
Alright, here's my suggestion for those of you who don't like critical race theory in schools.
Here's how I would handle it.
You know...
Oh, he launched already?
Or did he? Alright.
So you know that if you argue against something you don't like, the people on the other side just dig in deeper, right?
So telling people that something is a bad idea...
that they think is a good idea, does it ever work?
No. In the real world, it just never works.
Usually they've already thought of your argument anyway, but once people dig into a side, they're kind of hard to move.
But there is a way to do it.
It doesn't work every time, but it goes like this, and you've heard it before.
If you buy into a bad idea and then extend it, you can just break it.
In other words, pretend that you think it's a good idea, Buy into it and then take it to its logical death.
Here's how you do that with critical race theory.
Instead of saying, no, I don't like this critical race theory.
I think it's racist, but in a different way.
Nobody can hear that argument.
Instead, do this. Say, yes, we should do critical race theory in schools.
And there are two improvements I would like to add.
Two improvements.
How does anybody argue against improvements?
Not only do you like critical race theory, but I like it too.
And here's how I would improve it.
Because you and I both like it, wouldn't we like it to be even better?
Really? I mean, it's so good now, let's have a little more of that, right?
So here's how I'd make it better.
Number one, I would make a national, maybe a federal requirement, at least a state requirement, that parents have to be given the materials.
Parents have to be presented with the same materials for the critical race theory that the children are being taught.
A legal requirement.
Why? Just to make them better informed parents, because parents are part of the process, right?
What would happen if parents were well informed and had a real clean summary of what critical race theory is teaching?
Would they still be supportive?
I don't know, but I love critical race theory, and so for me, the more you can spread it, the better.
So if you go teach it to the kids, well, you want it to stick, right?
So also make the materials available to their parents, because their parents can then reinforce it when the kids get home, right?
The more critical race theory, the better.
So give it to the kids, but make it a requirement that the parents have to see the details.
See where I'm going? You can embrace something until it dies.
Here's the second part of that.
So you require the kids to see it, and you let the transparency kill the bad parts, but I'm having a brief memory problem here.
The second part, which I just wrote about on Locals, could somebody remind me what I just wrote?
Because I just blogged this on the locals' platform.
All right, they'll tell me in a moment.
Yeah, I'm having a Biden moment.
The problem is that I make notes for myself, so I don't do what I'm doing now.
And the place where this note belongs is right in this little space, where apparently I was just about to put my note about what I was going to talk about right now, and then I got distracted.
All right. Yes, there we go.
Thank you. So the point I was going to say is that you should include in the critical race theory training that teachers' unions are the biggest source of systemic racism.
Does anybody disagree?
Teachers' unions are what prevent school competition.
School competition is the only thing that will ever get good schools for everybody, or as good as we can get.
So it is the teachers' unions Who need to be included as a lesson within critical race theory to improve it.
How can you have critical race theory training and leave out the biggest source of systemic racism?
You can't do that.
So there should be a module that is included in it about teachers' unions being the biggest problem of all.
So those are the two things.
Make the parents see all of the materials and include teachers' unions being the biggest source of that problem.
In those cases, bring it on.
Let's see us some critical race theory.
Now, you may say to yourself, but Scott, aren't you accidentally accepting all the other things that I don't like in critical race theory?
And the answer is, this is how persuasion works.
The fact that you're uncomfortable With me saying that I would like any part of critical race theory is what makes it hard for you to look away.
That's the intentional wrongness.
I could have easily fixed it by saying, oh, I'd like to take all of the parts I don't like out of critical race theory.
That makes sense, right?
Wouldn't you like to take all of the parts away that you don't like?
But by not doing that, I made my proposition There's something wrong with it, right?
It would be wrong to accept anything that's wrong, if you know it's wrong.
But I've told you directly that I would accept it with a couple of tweaks.
Now, that's really just to get more attention on the tweaks I'm talking about.
It's not really because I'd like the rest of it.
Although I don't know, because I've never seen it.
So, if I did, maybe I'd feel differently.
Speaking of vaccinations, which we weren't, how many lives do you think were saved in, let's say, just the United States based on vaccinations?
In the comments, what would be your guess?
How many estimated lives?
We'll just say between now and the end of the year.
So hopefully that would capture most of it.
How many lives do you think were saved by vaccinations in the United States, just the United States?
Just the United States.
The answer is, oh, I'm seeing pretty good guesses there.
Your guesses are actually pretty good.
Now, that doesn't mean it's right, but there is a source that estimated that without a vaccination program by the end of this year, there would have been approximately 279,000 additional deaths.
And, you know, 1.25 hospitalizations.
1.25 million.
And that would just be the United States alone.
So... Does President Trump and President Biden after him for following up get credit for saving 279,000 people?
Do they get credit for that?
And do you believe it?
I'm seeing some doubt.
There seems to be some doubt about whether you could measure this.
Well, as someone who has done many estimates of numbers of things in my professional life, I don't think you can measure this.
I feel like any estimate of this is going to be a little bit suspicious, if you know what I mean.
But when you come up with an estimate that just coincidentally happens to be right in the range of things you think it would be, then you should be really suspicious.
What happens when the estimate that you put a lot of time and effort into it, and you're figuring out all the variables, and you're trying to isolate variables and all that, and after all that work...
You come out to a number that's just about the same as what you might have guessed.
That's a little bit of a flag, you know what I mean?
It's a little bit too close to exactly what you thought it would come out as, right around 300,000.
If I had said, hey, there's going to be a study on vaccination effectiveness, how many people do you think is saved?
I'll bet most of you would have guessed somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000.
Right? And there it is, right in the middle of that range.
So while I do believe that vaccinations have saved a lot of lives, I don't believe you can estimate it with any kind of confidence.
All right. So Kamala Harris continues to be a nightmare for the Democrats in the most entertaining way.
She might be the least competent politician we've ever seen in the White House.
I don't know. Is anybody less competent than she is?
It's really shocking.
And now the latest controversy is that she's talking about a possible compromise with IDs for voters.
And of course, forcing somebody to have an ID reduces the number of people who can vote, but we don't know by how much.
And now she's saying that rural people can't even get a photocopy of their ID, so it'd be harder for them to register to vote.
And rural people said, what?
We might be rural, but we know how to make a photocopy.
And I ask you this question.
Why do you need a photocopy?
You can't take a smartphone picture of an ID and just send it to an address?
If there's a physical photocopy requirement, If you have a physical photocopy requirement, you couldn't also have just an email address that you just send a digital image.
And then if grandma doesn't have a photocopier and grandma doesn't have a smartphone, grandma says, hey, can you just take a picture of my ID and send it to this email address?
And your grandkid just takes a picture of it.
It feels like this is solvable with technology.
We should not be arguing over what Kamala Harris calls Xeroxes.
It's 2021, for God's sakes.
If you're using the word Xeroxing, that's a red flag right there, as she did.
But then she corrected it to photocopies, realizing what she'd done.
But if we're even talking about photocopies, what the hell is going on?
Oh, did the launch just happen?
Keep me informed.
I want to know that he made it safely, at least past the launch.
Very exciting. And congratulations.
He's in the air.
God, imagine what it feels like.
How would you like to be Richard Branson right now?
He's actually going into, I think, near space, not quite space, on a rocket that he caused to be built.
Wow. I would be scared to death.
But, quite exciting.
All right. Yeah, I don't think I'll be signing up for any space stuff immediately.
And apparently...
So Kamala Harris is overwhelmed with all these vague jobs that...
Let's see, what is she in charge of?
She's in charge of looking into the origins of the southern border migrant surge, expanding voter rights, closing the digital divide, Space Council, and some other stuff.
And here's the worst answer ever done.
She was asked about whether she had too much on her plate.
And she said, quote, yeah, maybe I don't say no enough.
Do you want to hear somebody who might be president of the United States, do you ever want them to hear, do you ever want to hear them say, maybe I don't say no enough?
That is the weakest statement any politician ever said.
Do you want a president who can't say no?
That just makes you completely unqualified to be a leader.
You can't say no, even to your boss, even though it's the president.
You should be able to say no.
If you can't do that, you're not very useful as a leader.
But she's very motivated by all the hard work.
Another terrible answer.
Makes you sound like a wonk.
Don't be motivated by all the hard work.
How about be motivated by all the benefits you could bring to the country?
Something like that. So there's some suspect they found with a bunch of guns in a hotel in Denver, and they're afraid it was going to be a mass suicide attempt.
But here's the weird part.
There were four people involved.
When have you ever heard of a sort of a mass killing that was really sort of a suicide attempt, you know, somebody just trying to go out big, when there were four people involved in the plot?
It seems to eliminate it, doesn't it?
All right. I'm just looking at your comments for a moment.
All right, CPAC is happening.
People are going to be outraged.
Got more of that coming? And that is just about all the news that's worth talking about.
Now apparently the Democrats are panicked because when they do a poll of people and ask them what are Biden's accomplishments, what do you think they say?
So in the comments tell me, what do you think people say when the public is asked what are Biden's accomplishments so far?
The answer is, they don't know of any.
Because even people who would say, oh, he did a good job rolling out the vaccines, they kind of know it would have been the same under any president, right?
Don't we know that? Or at least we don't know how it would be any different.
Because it was going to happen.
It wasn't like he had the idea.
Hey, I've got an idea.
Why don't we implement the vaccines that we made?
So I'm not sure what Biden actually added to that process other than taking credit.
Yeah, so what did he do?
Eat ice cream and make the border situation worse and make Russia, China, and Iran hate us a little bit more?
What? It would be really hard to come up with any accomplishment.
It's starting to look as if the Republicans have a real strong midterm coming, which would not be surprising, historically.
Yeah, he's got crime spiking off the charts.
He's good at stairs, somebody says.
He brought decency back to the White House.
Did he? So, we know he lied.
Right? We know he's done anti-science stuff.
All of the reasons that he ran for office, he's proven didn't work.
