Episode 1482 Scott Adams: Today I Will Compare the Leadership Skills of the Taliban to Joe Biden
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Content:
Nobody fired for Afghanistan debacle?
Drone kills ISIS-K planner
Feels like Republicans will take everything in 2022
Adults emerging to fill leadership vacuum
Ex-Military Special Forces Afghanistan rescues
Kamala Harris avoiding things
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Because there are like 12 things I have to do before I can get these two live streams going.
One of those 12 things I forgot to do.
Which is printing out my notes.
Which is going to happen right now.
While you watch.
Alright. And while we're printing this...
Let me tell you about last night.
So I'm loving watching how businesses are conforming to the whole mask mandate stuff.
And I had this experience.
I went out to eat last night.
I remembered to bring my mask, which is useful only talking to the hostess, and then as soon as you sit down, you take it off.
So it's really just sort of a play-acting mask situation.
But Christina forgot her mask.
So Christina walks in without a mask.
I walk in with a mask, and I think to myself, what are the odds that the restaurant is going to make her go away because she doesn't have a mask, when all she had to do is walk from the stand to, I don't know, 12 feet away to sit down?
Now, if I had not worn a mask, would they have asked me to go get one?
I don't know. But I've got to think that covering up some of this is probably a good idea.
But Christina walks in, and they take one look at her, and they say, hey, you need a...
No, you don't. No, you don't.
Don't be covering any of that up.
So, Christina can literally walk around without a mask in mask-mandated places, and people would just look at her and say, no, we don't want to cover that up.
You're good. Literally, nobody will say a word to her.
And I wondered to what degree that would apply to ordinary people, because she's far from ordinary.
And have any of you had that experience where you just go to the restaurant without a mask?
And you just act like you own the place and just sit down?
Yeah, a beauty privilege.
It's no fair at all, is it?
I don't think so. All right.
So I woke up this morning to find out who had been fired for the debacle in Afghanistan.
I mean, obviously. Obviously, somebody in charge is going to get fired.
And then I checked the news to see about all the people who had been fired.
And there weren't any. What?
What? Nobody been fired?
Now, I feel as though the American public is a lot more flexible and forgiving than it seems when we're arguing in public, right?
You know, pundits don't act too flexible and forgiving, but the public is.
And I do believe that the public understands that war is messy business.
And that, you know, things don't go the way you want.
And I think even Biden could have been forgiven for messing things up.
If he'd made a good argument for himself, I think he could have been forgiven.
A year from now?
Yeah, you probably wouldn't even remember.
But, you know, we'll get to the simultaneous sip in a moment.
But, if you don't fire somebody, I don't know if we can forgive them.
Can we? Because I do have actually probably far more, let's say, forgiveness for the other team, if you will.
I'm not really on any team per se, but it feels like it.
But I don't think you can forgive him if he doesn't fire somebody or somebody doesn't resign.
And I was thinking, what's going to happen in 2022 if nobody gets fired over this thing?
Have Democrats just given up?
How could they possibly win any election going forward until somebody gets fired for this?
It just seems too big.
There are a lot of things you can say, oh, it's just baked in, we already assumed it, and it was built into our assumptions about what a Democrat is and what a Republican is.
But when you get a situation like this, it's not exactly Republican or Democrat, is it?
Because Trump wanted to withdraw.
Biden wanted to withdraw.
So it's not really even a policy issue.
It's pure competence.
That's it. Just pure competence.
Who could do it better? I don't think anybody thinks Trump couldn't have done this better.
Now, of course, it's impossible.
Hey, nice mug. It's impossible to know.
I mean, we'd be speculating.
But it does seem to me that whatever went wrong here is exactly the type of thing that Trump doesn't make a mistake in.
Now, I've said before, I'm not just a Trump supporter no matter what.
I don't think he was the right president for the pandemic.
For example, he was definitely the right president for the, you know, Operation Warp Speed, if you think that worked out.
But he wasn't exactly the bedside manner kind of president that maybe you needed in a pandemic, you know, that sort of thing.
And I'll admit that. I think he was just not exactly the right match for that situation.
But for the Afghanistan situation, yeah, I think he was.
I think he was the right match for that.
And you know, if you would like to take it up a level here and enjoy this live stream to the maximum potential, can you think of any way to do it?
Well, I can. All you need is a cup or mug or a glass, a tank or gel, a canteen, a jug of glass, a vessel of any kind, filled with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now.
For the unparalleled pleasure.
The dopamine here in the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
Let's call the simultaneous sip and watch it coming at you right now.
Go. Ah.
That's so good. Well, Joe Biden has vowed that ISIS-K will pay.
They will pay for what they've done.
He was a little unspecific, but I assume that means he's going to raise their taxes.
I know. He's taxing everything else.
So I think he probably thinks he can raise their taxes.
We'll see. Here's some semi-fake news.
Semi-fake news.
We've got some real fake news later, but some semi-fake news, which means that there's an element of truth to it, Is that the U.S. military gave the Taliban a kill list.
A list of the Americans and the Afghan allies that are still in country and need to get out.
Now, is that true?
True story?
Or fake news?
What do you think? Is it a true story that we gave the Taliban a list of the Americans and the Afghan allies in the country so they can hunt them down and kill them?
I mean, that's not why we gave them the list, but it's true-ish.
True-ish.
The State Department says that they have, in fact, in individual cases, said, for example, there's a bus coming through, and here's the names of the people on the bus.
Because otherwise, the bus wouldn't be able to get through the checkpoint.
So the military had to tell the Taliban, who was operating the checkpoints, there's a bus coming, and you better... here's the name of the people on the bus.
We'd like you to let them through.
Then the Taliban would check to see if that was the people on the bus, and then they'd let them through.
Is that a problem?
Well, it is.
It is.
I mean, giving the names of anybody to the Taliban who might be the subject of some kind of revenge, that's a problem.
That's a big, big problem.
But what was the other thing they could do?
What was the alternative?
The alternative was they didn't get through.
So it looks to me like there are a lot of people making impossible choices over there.
A choice between maybe this person gets killed, but maybe this other person gets killed.
So we're making choices about who gets killed.
I mean, these are real, real leadership kind of decisions, the ones you don't want to ever make.
And I'm not entirely sure, based on the fog of war and the reporting we have so far...
That this kill list thing is exactly what you thought it was when it was reported.
Because, you know, the right-leaning news is going to make it a kill list.
Left-leaning news will probably shade it a little bit and say, well, yeah, they did give out some names, but not all of them.
They were special cases.
We'll see how much of a special case that is.
At the moment, I'm going to tentatively label this semi-fake news.
Um... Here's a question I ask you.
As we watch the Biden administration flounder and disgraced President Biden botching the withdrawal, I like to use disgraced and botched in the same sentence as often as possible, and we say to ourselves, man, I'm not so sure that our government is competent right now.
But here's a question for you.
How competent is the Taliban leadership?
Because it's looking pretty good.
Isn't it? Now, I'm not a fan, just to be clear.
I don't want to compliment the Taliban.
But they did take over an entire country in 11 days.
And that's not easy.
How much planning, leadership, and coordination is involved to take over an entire country in 11 days?
It seems like it would be a lot.
What about the public statements that the Taliban has made?
Can't you imagine a million ways that they could go wrong?
Right? A million ways.
Because, you know, we have their funds frozen and they'd like to get them back, presumably.
And they make public statements like, yes, we will help you get down to everybody and we're not going to get revenge.
Did that sound very Taliban-like?
We're not going to seek revenge if you want to leave, be our guest.
Not very Taliban-like.
Kind of different, right? How about, I heard that they said that women can still go to school and work and stuff.
Did that sound very Taliban?
Not really. Chad, Chad Bishop, you're way too nice.
I'm not sure what that's for, but thank you.
The Taliban are saying all the right things and apparently doing all the right things and apparently fairly intent on managing the country.
They tried to keep the Afghan government workers in place.
So can anybody think of a specific example where the Taliban leadership, the new ones, the recent ones, have made a mistake?
Can anybody in the comments give me an example of the Taliban making a mistake?
Of course the Taliban lie.
I get that, right? We all know that the Taliban lie.
We're just working through what we know.
Have they made a mistake yet?
Qatar is advising them, somebody says.
I don't know if we know that.
Uh... They have interviewed the women who are not allowed to go back to work.
So one problem the Taliban definitely has is that I don't think the leadership controls all the individuals.
And so I think the leadership might actually mean what it says, at least temporarily, to get us out of the country anyway.
But I don't think the individual fighters are necessarily going to do everything the leadership tells them to do at the moment.
Later, they might get a tighter control on things, but at the moment...
We don't know. Now here's what I want to see.
And we haven't seen it yet.
I want to see the Taliban executing their own people.
Other Taliban. I want to see the Taliban executing other Taliban for not doing what the leadership told them to do.
Because the things that they're doing are executable offenses, certainly over there, under the Taliban.
So if the Taliban is...
I'm not talking about ISIS-K. I know the Taliban doesn't control them.
We're talking about just the Taliban.
So if the Taliban does some bad things individually, and it seems like the reporting is finding it all over the place, at what point does the leadership of the Taliban line those fuckers up and shoot them on video to make their point?
At what point does the leadership say, watch us kill our own people, because we're serious about this?
If you see that, this isn't the Taliban you thought they were.
There's something else going on.
They're not good guys, right?
Nobody's saying that. I'm just saying that there seems to be, at least they're signaling, some intention of being a legitimate state.
And to have legitimacy, they're going to need to be able to control their fighters from these kinds of massacres and stuff.
So I would look for that.
That's the next thing I'd look for, is the Taliban executing their own fighters in public and letting you know we did this.
Look, we told you that women could go to school.
You stopped it. We're going to kill you now.
And we just execute that guy.
If you see that, the Taliban's serious.
And maybe even somebody you could deal with, despite, obviously, not any trust, per se.
Fox News had a hilarious article.
I forgot to write down the writer's name, so I apologize.
But it's on the Fox News site, and they said that CNN keeps getting victimized by its own guests.
How funny is that? That Fox News is reporting that CNN keeps getting victimized by its own guests.
Now, the context is that the guests, the pundits, are saying things that aren't true, and CNN doesn't know it at the time when they're on the air.
Yeah, I see your comment, itchy.
Thank you for that. So, I think that's just a funny way to frame this, that they're being victimized by their own guests.
But here's one example. Fake news.
Allegedly, CNN had a Tennessee former vaccine manager on there, Dr.
Michelle Fiscus.
And she alleged that somebody mailed her a muzzle.
In the mail to keep her from talking.
And she joked it was the wrong size because she's more of a pit bull than something else.
And there was a probe and they found that she bought that muzzle herself with her own credit card.
That's right. She bought the muzzle herself with her own credit card.
Now this didn't happen recently.
It was just an example that Fox News was giving of how CNN is putting guests on the air that say things that aren't true.
Which is pretty darn funny.
Victimized by their own guests.
So here's the good news.
Joe Biden, of course, has ordered a military strike.
He sent down a drone to kill an ISIS-K planner.
So we got him.
Good news, people.
We got a planner.
ISIS-K planner killed that guy with a drone strike.
Now, I think we killed him with a drone strike.
Thanks, Itchy. But as someone wittily commented, whose name I will give you in a moment, because I totally wrote it down, Rodney Howard Brown, he talks about this planner that we killed with the drone.
He says they buried his body at sea.
So you might never see the body, but trust me, we totally killed the planter.
Yeah, we didn't do nothing, because doing nothing would look weak and pathetic.
We went out, we found the planter, and we killed that motherfucker.
So don't ask us to see the body or the bomb reports.
Don't ask us to see video from the drone.
Just trust us.
There was a planner, and now there isn't.
Because we freaking killed him with a drone.
Feeling pretty good.
Feeling pretty good about that.
America! America!
We're back. We killed a planner.
Now, it was a wedding planner.
They didn't mention that.
It was a wedding planner. But we killed him, and that's not nothing.
How good a planner was he?
Well, he didn't see this coming.
Didn't see this coming.
So, might have been not such a good planner.
Now, here's one of my theories about these terrorist organizations.
It goes like this.
In order to put together a real good international terrorist organization, you have to be pretty good at planning and leadership and management, right?
It's not something anybody can do.
If you tried to create an international terrorist organization, how far would you get?
Maybe you don't have those skills.
And so when I look at us battling against terrorist groups, I always think, if you could kill the top three or four people, I think we're done.
Because it's so rare that you could find somebody who could be a leader in a situation like that and who would be good at it and could do a 9-11 kind of a plan.
If you kill the person at the top, how good is the second-in-command?
Now, if it's al-Qaeda, pretty good.
Second in command, not too bad.
Not bin Laden, but pretty good.
If you kill the second, how about the third?
Still pretty good. Still pretty good.
Again, not as good as the first or second person, maybe, but pretty good.
What if you kill that one and the next five after that?
Well, now you're down to the not-so-good leaders.
You're down... You're down to the people who maybe can't plan a 9-11.
So you don't really have to kill a lot of terrorists.
You only have to kill the top five smart ones, and then they become incompetent and start fighting with each other and destroy themselves or something like that.
And I always think that you could take care of pretty much any large group, you know, terrorist kind of group, just by getting the top five competent people.
Um... Let's see what else is going on.
We've got the fake attack, which is actually a pretty good strategy.
I wouldn't... First of all, I think Trump did the same thing.
Remember when Trump attacked the largely vacant base in Syria?
And he just bombed the hell out of that mostly empty base.
And the news reported it as a real tough...
First impression for the world, this president isn't going to mess around.
We're going to bomb the hell out of things.
And they dropped that mother of all bombs and stuff.
So Trump was really good at at least creating the impression that he was seriously dangerous.
And Biden is trying to do the same thing with this mysterious planner.
We've got your planner.
But it feels a little weak.
But it's in the right domain, right?
At least he's going in the right direction.
But I think it was a little weak.
I'm seeing a lot of you mentioning Sam Harris.
He's been in the news for...
I think I can characterize the latest as him not being so happy that he got Joe Biden.
So he had celebrated Joe Biden's victory, I guess, on social media.
But now he's...
He's publicly eating his words.
In his own words, he's eating his words.
And let me throw in a compliment.
May I throw in a compliment?
And by the way, this is good form.
If there's somebody who's on the other side of a debate, see if you can muster a compliment.
Something about the way they think or how well-informed they are or how honest they are or something.
Because if you can't do that, it really is a red flag that you're just a partisan and you're just going to take the other position.
But if you can say something good...
And mean it about whoever you're debating, well, then maybe your opinion has some merit and it's not about the person or being on a team.
So let me say that about Sam Harris.
He's one of the most rational, smartest, well-informed people in the public domain.
So when he says something, I take it seriously.
Because, you know, he earned that, right?
He's got the history and he's got the accomplishment to say you pay attention to him.
And he's serious. And here's another example why.
I was very much on the other position, you know, the Trump versus anti-Trump.
He was anti-Trump. Now, I don't think he's pro-Trump.
Nothing like that's happened.
But he's certainly having second thoughts about the quality of the alternative and saying it publicly.
And to me, that's such a sign of credibility that That I think it puts him ahead.
So a lot of you have been asking me to dance on his grave or whatever.
He's still alive.
A lot of you have been asking me to sort of take a victory lap Because it looks like I'm more right than him on which president would do a better job.
But that's not true.
I don't think he would admit that Trump would have been a better choice.
He's just having some trouble with the one that got in there.
However, I would say that you should consider his reputation as an unbiased, let's say, analyst of what's happening.
I think it just went up.
I think his credibility went up, not down.
Because if you can say something in public and then publicly eat it, that's who I want to listen to next time.
If you can put it out there and then just eat it in public...
That's who you want to trust.
Nobody can be right all the time.
Nobody's going to think every one of their opinions turns out just right.
I don't, certainly.
So I don't think you want to judgment that.
All of us, we public pundits, we're going to get some stuff right and some stuff wrong.
But if you judge people on the fact that they did get stuff wrong, it's kind of not really a useful judgment because everybody's getting stuff wrong.
You should judge people on how they handle it.
How do you handle it?
How he handled it was perfect.
He unambiguously ate his words right in front of you and told you he was doing it, and then he ate them.
So that's as good as you can get.
Ian Bremmer, I saw him predict that the, if I remember this correctly, he said that Congress could swing 40 seats to the GOP. In 2020.
I didn't do my one minute of research to find out if that changes the majority.
Would 40 swings change the majority?
It would, right? I'm seeing yeses.
Somebody said barely.
Somebody says five would.
This is a perfect example of...
Me being ignorant in public?
Because that's sort of an important number, isn't it?
Like, to understand what's going on in the world, I should know how close that is, and I didn't know that off the top of my head.
I knew it was close-ish, but I didn't know the number.
Okay? Okay, people think that that will make a difference.
All right. I think it will make a difference, too.
Because, number one, you know the GOP will never let this go, right?
The Afghanistan withdrawal is...
Biden owns it, the Democrats own it, and it's going to hurt.
I don't think there are that many topics that can really change an election.
But because this is not a partisan issue, weirdly, you know, we have our only nonpartisan issue...
That I can even remember.
Can you remember a nonpartisan issue?
It feels like there's never been one before.
But this is one.
Everybody wanted to get out, and everybody wanted to get out right, and it didn't happen.
We're all on the same side on that.
So at least it's unifying that way.
But if I were a Democrat, honestly, I think I'd just give up all hope.
I don't think that...
It feels like...
And, of course, we have short memories, so maybe two months from now we'll just be talking about something else.
But it feels like the Republicans are going to take everything.
The way it's set up at the moment, I see the Republicans taking everything.
Know you? And they've got a pretty good argument to make that happen.
Here's another, and let's call this surprising yet positive news...
Did you watch Bill Maher last night?
Bill Maher did a fairly extended compliment to Greg Gottfeld on Fox News for his new show, The Greg Gottfeld Show, which is competing with the other late-night shows and beating them all.
So Greg has the highest-rated show in its time slot against...
And he's on cable news.
So just imagine this.
He's beating all of the competition, and he's on cable, which is a much smaller universe than the broadcast networks.
It's not even close. So Bill Maher, who you would imagine would not necessarily be a fan of anything Fox News, had only compliments for him and his show.
And I guess that's the news.
There was no but.
It was just a pure compliment.
But he made a good point about it, beyond the fact that he likes Greg and apparently knows him, and he was just complimenting the show.
And the point he made about it is that It wasn't maybe possible to do that kind of show until the left part of the universe became absurd enough that you had a humor that you could make naturally.
Now, Bill Maher was saying it was easy to make fun of the right because there were all these silly things happening there and it was just naturally easy.
But it was harder to make fun of the left because they were just saying things like, shouldn't we have equal rights?
How do you make fun of that?
There's nothing there.
There's no material. Yeah, yeah, we should have equal rights.
Okay. But at this point, you know, when it's gone over-woke, things are a little crazy.
So I thought that was, again, another good sign that maybe some of the adults are starting to emerge.
And I think Bill Maher is one of the adults, simply because he has the capability to take a side wherever the data plus his opinion lead him.
Not many people can do that.
There are only a few people who can do that in public.
Sam Harris just did it.
Sam Harris, I consider him an adult in the room, even when I disagree with him.
And Bill Maher, same thing.
Even when I disagree with him on a topic, he's definitely an adult in the room.
And it feels like there's a leadership vacuum.
Do you feel it? You do, right?
No, you feel a leadership vacuum.
It's like a big one.
I don't know if I've ever felt this before, have you?
Have you ever felt in your entire lifetime, if you're an American, let's say, have you ever felt a leadership vacuum?
It's kind of weird.
And it seems to me that when there's a vacuum, you know, something steps up to fill it.
And I'm wondering if there is not something like a...
I don't know, like a volunteer army of adults that are just sort of starting to emerge...
People who you could trust not to take a side, and you could trust them to at least do their best to look at the data and try to be rational about it.
It doesn't mean they'd be right, but I feel like something is emerging.
I don't have a good look at it yet, but it has something to do with the Bill Maher's, Sam Harris's, and maybe you could come up with some examples that are more right-leaning.
Chad says, for $100, he paid $100 to put his comment in a noticeable form here.
He says, leadership vacuum, the dog that is not barking.
Why is no city, no state, or the U.S. government tracking and publishing the number of COVID recovered with antibody serology?
First of all, is that true?
That nobody anywhere is tracking the number of recovered?
Now, you wouldn't be able to count them.
You'd have to track them with some kind of statistical sampling, right?
I don't know that that's true, though, is it?
Is it true that we don't routinely check the blood of random people to find out how many people have recovered?
I can tell you I don't know the number.
So at the very least, it doesn't seem like it's being widely reported.
That's a good point. I would like to see that.
Yes. Now, I did say that Democrats are good at leadership when it doesn't involve three things.
So I don't want to be completely insulting to Democrats.
So I'm going to say they are quite good at leadership, except in three categories.
The three categories that they're not good at would be anything like money, freedom, or security.
Otherwise, pretty good.
Pretty good. But if any topic has money, freedom, or security involved in it in any way, not so good.
Not so good. And I was wondering if that might be a Republican attack.
Because it's kind of sticky, isn't it?
And when you hear it, it feels true, doesn't it?
It feels kind of true. That Democrats are good at leadership unless it involves money, freedom, or security?
Because I feel as though even Democrats think that's true.
Right? Let me ask you this.
There are probably roughly zero Democrats watching this.
If there are any Democrats watching this, do you feel...
Does that hit, like, a little too close to home?
That Democrats are great at leadership unless it involves money, freedom, or security?
It does feel a little true, doesn't it?
Like, if you take off your partisan hat, it feels a little true.
And that's like the sign of a good attack, is that even the attack target says, yeah, that's a little bit true.
Ex-Democrat here, and it's true-ish for sure, I'm seeing in the comments.
I'm seeing more truths.
I don't know if you're Democrats or not, but some people are agreeing with that.
All right. Let me make sure that I have covered all of my important notes.
Oh, here's one. Unbelievable.
So Jack Posobiec is reporting on Twitter, and I've seen other reports.
New York Post has some kind of a story on it.
That there are U.S. Special Forces veterans who are coordinating their own privately funded operations to go into Afghanistan and rescue people.
Now, let me ask you this.
What would be a bigger sign of your commander-in-chief failing completely?
I think the most obvious sign of a commander-in-chief failing completely is if ex-military people form their own units to go fight a war, in effect.
You know, war, in quotes.
Chad, what the hell are you doing?
Yeah. Chad tipped me another $100.
I don't need that much money, Chad.
So thank you, and I appreciate your enthusiasm.
But don't tip me that much.
That makes me uncomfortable.
I'm sure you need that $100 more than I do.
I mean, I appreciate it as a compliment.
And I am, in fact, completely motivated by money, even though I have it.
I'm motivated in the sense that if somebody says, hey, I'll give you a tip for doing whatever you did, I'd probably do more of it.
Because I like compliments and I like doing what people like.
So yeah, the tipping has an effect on my psychology.
It doesn't have much effect on my bank account.
But thank you, Chad.
I appreciate that. Anyway, so these U.S. Special Forces coordinating their own operation over there.
And I don't know how Biden could possibly stay in office if the military has decided to do its own thing.
Talk about losing the confidence of the military when the military just says, we'll do our own damn mission and fund it ourselves, put our lives on the line because you're not getting it done.
Honestly, you can't fail harder than that.
That is the hardest fail...
Of any failure you could even think of.
I mean, it'd be hard to think of any...
It'd be hard to think of any failure that is more stark than that.
All right.
So, here's my next question.
Do you think that given that there are like a thousand ISIS-K people and probably the Taliban can figure out where they are, don't you think that there will be mercenary groups that are just going on hunting expeditions over there for a long time?
I feel like the Taliban could issue a hunting permit.
And just say, who are you?
Okay, you're a mercenary force, mostly American, but you've got a few other Europeans in there or whatever.
And you've identified yourself.
You made yourself known to the Taliban.
And you said, we'd like a hunting license to go hunt ISIS. Or to hunt for people who want to be taken out.
I almost think the Taliban would authorize them.
Almost. I mean, I don't know if they would.
But let's say it was a group of, I don't know, 20 mercenaries.
And those 20 mercenaries said, we're going to stay in the same place.
We'll be on one mission.
And we'll tell you where we are.
And we're just going to go kill some ISIS for you.
Because they want them dead too.
I feel like it's so close to being a thing that That you have to take it seriously.
I'm not predicting it'll happen, but it's very close to being a thing, isn't it?
And especially if the mercenaries were going to pay the Taliban.
So suppose the mercenaries say, we want to buy a license...
Plumber Mike, you're funny.
Suppose the mercenaries say, we'd like to buy a license to go hunt some Taliban or whatever they're going to hunt over there, and we'll pay you $100,000 just to have the right to go in-country and shoot some bad guys.
I don't know. Maybe.
For $100,000, that's a lot of money if you're the Taliban.
All right. Yes.
The best Kickstarter idea ever.
It would be an interesting reality show.
Sick as that is. It would be interesting.
All right. That's about all I have for today.
Did I miss anything?
Any stories I missed?
The Taliban made $600 million in 2020.
Did they? From illegal stuff, right?
Yeah. Yeah, and it looks like...
You know, you heard that, I guess, Trump made a deal with the Taliban in return for agreeing to leave, that they would stop attacking us for a long time.
And apparently they did.
So the Taliban actually somewhat kept their deal with Trump of not attacking until we were out of country.
And think to yourself...
Is that telling us something?
Because again, it just keeps looking like the Taliban are trying to act like a civilized country.
Prediction question, will boosters catch on or cause vaccines to fail?
Well, you've heard that there's some risk to the boosters, right?
So it's a theoretical risk, but it's based on sound science, which is that there's some scenario in which, for some people at least, the booster might be a problem.
But I kind of would need to see a lot more on that.
It feels like by the time I get the booster, I feel like I'll know.
Because I waited as long as possible to get the vaccination because I wanted as much history of other people getting it as I could.
So just selfishly, I decided to go last and see if anybody else had a problem with it first.
I'll do the same thing with the booster.
If a lot of people have got the booster, several months of booster shots go by, you don't hear a big tragedy, I'll get a booster.
Now, I have the luxury of doing that because I got my vaccination late.
So my immunity should be, you know, reasonable all the way through the booster period.
But I plan to get a booster.
I mean, that's my current thinking, but I'll check the data as it goes.
Somebody says Florida has beaten COVID. Here's a good tip.
When you hear some information about COVID and a particular state, it's not true.
That's it. That's the whole advice.
If you hear anything about COVID in a particular state, or even a particular country, none of it's true.
I don't think any of it's ever true.
Now, part of it is that people disagree what is the data for a state or a country.
But generally speaking, everything about that one state, whether it's Sweden or Israel or anybody else, or anything about that one country, it's just never true.
Well, let's take that back to say 95% of the time it's not true.
So just do that.
Just do that. Just tell your brain, oh, somebody said something about a state that was doing well or poor or not, or a country.
Just your brain should say, probably not true.
And you'd be right most of the time.
Larry Elder update.
I don't know that there's an update, per se.
I think he's still leading...
Among the people who would take over if the governor recalled a successful.
And I'm going to predict that the polling is a little bit inaccurate and that more people will vote to get rid of the governor, Governor Newsom, than the polls suggest.
So I think there's a polling bias happening here that's not terribly unlike Trump derangement syndrome, but...
Maybe the other version of that, in which if you ask a lifelong Democrat if they're going to vote for a Democrat again, I feel like they just say yes.
Because they don't want to be inconsistent.
But they might only want to be consistent in public.
Right? Meaning talking to the pollster.
I feel like when they get in that little booth, some of them are going to say, you know, I was a lifelong Democrat, but this is going too far.
You know, that's just too much.
Let's just say that Newsom is the Joe Biden of California.
Oh, how do you like that?
Governor Newsom is the Joe Biden of California.
Yeah. It's pretty good, isn't it?
You put that out there a couple of days before the vote, and suddenly Newsom will be paying for the Afghan pullout.
Because you just have to tie those two together.
Just make people think of the two of them as a pair, and you just say, Governor Newsom is the poor man's Joe Biden.
You throw in the poor man's, and it's even worse.
Yeah. You want Governor Newsom?
Yeah, we think of him as the poor man's Joe Biden.
That's pretty good. Do you notice that most of the news about Kamala Harris is about what she's avoiding doing?
There should be two sets of news about Kamala Harris.
One is what she's doing, which tends to be a short list.
She went to Vietnam.
And then there should be a larger list for the things she's avoiding doing.
Because that ends up being the story, well, she didn't say anything about this.
Well, she hasn't visited any troops.
Well... I'm being asked, do you ever feel like the Dems and the Republicans and the whole system are, quote, in on it?
No, I don't. I don't.
I do think it's a everyone-for-themselves system with a couple of teams.
The unit party? No, I don't think it's a unit party, but I think that there's some things they all like, such as war.
All right. Yeah, what about the border?
Don't hear too much about the border.
The war party is a thing.
Yeah, I mean, when it comes to war, they tend to agree.
But I'm not sure you would want that to be not the case.
So, I did just upload a micro lesson on the local platform for subscribers only.
My latest micro lesson is how to brag without bragging.
So, in other words, how to let people know that you have some skills.
Chad, what the hell is wrong with you?
So Chad says, for $50, I don't know if you're getting your money's worth, but you say you are.
So, you know, I've been working on a lot of things.
I just discovered I cannot pay for a super chat and include the YouTube link.
Oh, so the YouTube link he's trying to alert us to is Sioux Falls City Council meeting, unity through community immunity.
Well, it's a clever headline, unity through community immunity.
So Chad wants you to Google that and take a look.
And I guess me too.
Alright, that's all I've got for now.
And we'd better end before Chad runs out of money.
I wish you were all as awesome as Chad, but Chad, don't spend that much money on me, really.
Don't do that. But I appreciate it.
Five dollars, I would have seen it.
No refunds. And thank you everybody, and thank you especially Chad.
