Episode 1691 Scott Adams: The New is Weird Today; Lots of Strange Little Stories. Come Have Some Fun
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Governor DeSantis continues to impress
Teaching financial literacy in schools
Supreme Court grandstanding
President Putin and the G20
Ukraine War speculations
President Trump vs Mo Brooks
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Some of you might prefer YouTube just because you can listen to it while you're doing other things on your phone.
Isn't that funny as soon as I talked about the algorithm?
It doesn't look like YouTube is working, does it?
YouTube was always online until you turned it off.
Well, I got a screenshot if somebody said it wasn't online.
And I saw the comments stopped.
It's not just your channel?
Oh, it's a YouTube problem? I've been having all kinds of internet problems for the last week.
Is anybody having a lot of internet problems in the last week?
I'm wondering if something's getting hacked over here.
Nope, nope, nope.
Yes, nope. I knew a lot of people would say yes, because that's confirmation bias.
All right, well, I think we're all good now.
Yay, YouTube, you all came back.
Thank you. I appreciate it.
Sorry about the technical problem.
Anyway, I was saying that I have a different algorithm than the rest of you, because human beings decide what to send me, and then I look at that.
So I am free of the algorithm, but not free of your influence.
So if you want to influence somebody who influences other people, you're doing a good job.
In fact, there are a number of people who follow me who are very influential on my content, because every day they're going to send me some article that's interesting.
And some of you are really good at guessing what stuff I like.
All right, here's what I say about inflation.
People ask me about inflation all the time, and what I say about inflation is really the same thing that a Russian general would say to Putin.
No tanks. No tanks.
That's what I say to inflation, and a Russian general says to Putin.
Well, so the UK is doubling down, as we like to say, in this talking about the news business.
They're doubling down. Everybody's always doubling down or walking it back.
Nobody's ever in the same place, are they?
I'd like to hear a story about somebody who's like, somebody did something, and they're just doing exactly the same thing.
They're just doing more of it.
No, they're always doubling down or walking it back.
Or they're flip-flopping.
Well, the UK is doubling down, and they're dashed to nuclear power.
So according to a report in The Guardian, I guess, and I saw it in Breitbart also, so Boris Johnson is going to meet with nuclear experts and try to make the industry, let's say, more approachable and friendlier so that people thinking about investing in nuclear energy would not have to worry so much about the government prohibitions.
So... Have I ever been more right about anything?
Now, I'm not going to say that my opinion was much different than any of yours, but I have for several years been saying, as Michael Schellenberger or Mark Schneider have been helping, or really leading, I'm not going to say helping, they've been leading. Doesn't it feel good to be this right?
I'm being asked, what about the significance of the passage of time?
Well, the passage of time is very significant, and here's the reason.
It's because of the significance of time when combined with the passage.
If you put them together, that's the significance of time right there.
Aren't you glad you found that out?
That is directly from your Vice President Harris.
All right. Ron DeSantis continues to be awesome.
That should be my headline every day.
I might have a new section of my live stream that will be things that DeSantis did today that are smarter than all the other Republicans put together.
How in the world is Ron DeSantis doing one thing after another that is so tone-perfect for his base, but also not so bad for For the Democrats.
He's really doing the thing that nobody's ever done before.
The thing that DeSantis is doing is finding ways to totally satisfy his base while still picking off some from the other side.
Which is a really good trick.
I'll give you an example. So, apparently he signed some declaration from Florida, so it's not any kind of binding law or anything, but essentially saying that the winner of the NCAA swimming,
whatever competition it was, the 500 freestyle, They said that the woman who came in officially second, Sarasota's Emma Wyant, Florida has declared that she's really the winner because according to Florida, not me, the person who won first place was a biological male.
And therefore ruining NCAA sports and women's sports.
And it's all a mockery of it all.
And so this is what Florida's doing.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
For his base...
It's a two-part question.
For his base, is this pitch perfect?
It is, isn't it?
I don't think he could do this any better.
Because I like the form that he used...
He didn't make a law.
He just stated officially from the perspective of Florida, the winner was the person who was named number two.
It's provocative.
It's in your face.
He shows his reasons.
Now, here's the beauty. That probably captured close to all of his base.
Close to. But don't you think that picked off a few Democrats?
You don't think there are a few Democrats who have female athletes in the House who have been looking at this story and saying, you know, those crazy Republicans, I hate those crazy Republicans, but I've got to give it to them on this one.
Am I right? Yeah, more than a few.
So why don't other people do this?
When you see DeSantis do something this capable, and I guess capable is the right word.
He's just so capable. Somebody says Reagan was good at this.
I don't have any examples of that.
You want to hear another example?
Both of these examples are frickin' today.
You know, yesterday, I guess.
Two examples from DeSantis that are so tone perfect, they'll make you cry.
I mean, rarely do you see somebody do their job, whatever their job is, this well.
And Florida just signed into law, That in order to graduate high school in Florida, you have to take a course in financial literacy.
Now, is there anybody in the Republican world who would disagree with people having financial literacy as a high school requirement?
It's just half a credit. It's not going to absorb your whole life.
100%, what do you say?
There's nobody who's against that.
In fact, if you were to compare teaching financial literacy in school to half of the things they teach, geometry, which one's more useful?
Geometry or financial literacy?
It's not even close. Trigonometry or...
I could go down the list.
Let's see... Iranian history, that's being taught in California schools.
Persian history.
What's more important, that or financial literacy?
It's not even close.
Although I think history of other places is useful too.
Now, here's the thing you might not know about.
Where have you heard the topic of financial literacy before?
Remember, pretty much all Republicans are going to love that.
Where have you heard it before? Because I've brought it up.
And do you remember the context? So people have been watching me for a long time.
I've brought up financial literacy to be taught in schools.
Do you remember the context?
I brought that up.
It was from Hawk Newsome.
One of the Black Lives Matter leaders at the time.
I don't know if he's associated anymore.
But at the time, that was a Black Lives Matter, or at least one leader.
I mean, I can just talk about one person.
So, Hawk Newsom told me personally, you know, here's one thing pretty much everybody should agree on, which is financial literacy in school.
That was from him.
That was from Hawk. Ron DeSantis, Found free money and picked it up.
Where do you ever see that?
Trump, right? Trump is the only person I've ever seen pick up so much free money.
It's like, wait a minute. There's nobody in the world saying that kids should have financial literacy?
All Republicans like it?
Black Lives Matter likes it?
Probably. I mean, I don't think that Hawk is the one person who likes that, right?
That would be very unlikely.
So, DeSantis came up with an idea that is 100% base support and black support and probably a good deal of Democrats.
I'm not wrong about this.
These are two examples where DeSantis threaded the needle like nobody ever has, as far as I know.
I can't think of anybody. He threaded the needle maybe better than anybody since Bill Clinton.
I think Bill Clinton was good at that.
Now, Trump was good at it in the sense of, let's say, he did some things that were popular, like prison reform, popular with the left, but that's different because that wasn't nearly as popular with his base.
Right? So I give Trump credit because I think he did the right thing with prison reform, but he didn't get credit for it.
DeSantis, in theory, should get credit for both of his moves here.
I'll put you in timeout.
All right. Now here's my other question.
Who is advising DeSantis?
How is he getting such good advice?
Or is this him?
Because the things he's doing don't really think...
they don't look like the things the governor comes up with on his own.
Somebody says you are... No, I'm not.
I'm not. I'm sorry.
I think I asked the question like I was leading you to think it was me.
No, I'm not. So let me say it clearly.
I don't have any direct or indirect...
Well, I suppose everybody has an indirect.
But I don't have any channel to DeSantis.
But boy, is he killing it.
Now, I don't think he's killing it on persuasion in the traditional sense.
I think that the persuasion he's using...
It doesn't suggest persuasion expertise.
It suggests a policy cleverness that I haven't ever really observed before.
It's like operating at a higher level of cleverness.
And then it has the effect of being persuasive, I think.
I think it will. All right.
We're watching a lot of Supreme Court grandstanding, which is the only thing that comes out of these hearings usually.
Lindsey Graham, I think it's his moment to shine, don't you?
Don't you think Lindsey Graham just loves it when the Democrats are nominating a Supreme Court justice?
Because Graham, he's carved out this little area...
Where he disagrees with his own party about stopping qualified nominees.
Now I have to admit, I have to admit, I do agree with Lindsey Graham about how much you should fight the other side's nomination if it's a qualified person.
By the way, did you hear...
I may have this wrong, but I thought I heard Dana Perino on The Five.
Was it Dana? I think I was listening to it, so I was only hearing voices.
Mentioned that under some prior president, there was a Republican who was going to nominate a black woman to a high court, not the Supreme Court, But that the Democrats filibustered it and prevented it.
Was it under Bush? And the reason that the Democrats prevented the Republicans from nominating a black woman to the high court is because they didn't want a black Republican woman so close to the Supreme Court.
Because that would allow a Republican to make the first black woman nomination.
Now, It was told on TV like that's now an understood historical fact.
Is it? Is it?
I mean, I don't know if I trust anything.
If we don't trust the news today, why would we trust the news from then?
I'm not so sure I totally believe we could know that and what people were thinking, but that would be...
Oh, Graham stated the same thing.
Well, okay.
Let me correct what I just said.
I think if Lindsey Graham said it in public in this context, I would believe that.
I think that Lindsey Graham, he's a politician, so you can't trust everything he's ever said everywhere.
But if he's talking about a Supreme Court fact in the setting of talking about the Supreme Court, I would be quite confident that what he said was accurate.
Wouldn't you? So, that's just one of the worst things I've ever heard.
You know, if you don't count things that are violent, that are usually the worst things, of nonviolent things that the government's ever done, where nobody got physically hurt, that might be the worst thing I've ever heard.
That the government literally, consciously discriminated against a black woman for political gain, and then nobody got away with it?
I guess the got away with it part is the disgusting part.
I mean, you can almost feel like that's the kind of news that makes your body feel bad, doesn't it?
Like, you're like, wait a minute.
What country do I live in?
I lived through that.
You know, in my lifetime, in my lifetime, and fairly recent lifetime, you know, by historical terms, in my recent lifetime, my own government consciously discriminated against a black woman so that they could get some political advantage.
Name one thing that's worse than that that doesn't involve actually somebody getting physically hurt.
I can't.
I can't think of anything that...
What would be more morally, civilly repulsive based on everything that we've mutually agreed on about the world?
I don't know you could get more repulsive than that.
I suppose you could explain it away by saying that all of the nominations have that icky quality to them, and I think you're right.
I also wonder why we bother vetting these Supreme Court people When you already know what way they're going to vote.
If you already know what every candidate's going to do on every issue, or you think you do.
Yeah, I don't know, what's the point?
I guess it's good just to make them talk out loud.
So, the current nominee was asked, what's her last name?
Brown? Something Catania Brown.
Can somebody put her full name in the comments?
For some reason, I have...
Jackson. Something Catania Jackson.
I always remember her middle name because it's kind of cool.
Jackson Brown. Jackson Brown.
Stop it. Well, anyway, you all know who she is.
I love her middle name.
That's why I like to...
One of the things that Barack...
Oh, that's her middle name?
Her first name is Ketanji.
Is that the coolest first name?
I think anybody who has a first name that cool goes further in life.
Don't you think? Wouldn't you love to have a first name of Ketanji?
If I'm saying it right.
Ketanji. That is like the coolest first name.
Maybe that's just me.
Anyway, she was asked when life begins, and she paused and then smiled and said, I don't know.
And I think that was the perfect answer.
A better answer would be the Supreme Court is not asked to rule on that specifically.
And the interesting thing is that she said she didn't know because she's not a biologist.
Which really raises the question about transgender issues, doesn't it?
If she's saying she doesn't know who's a man and a woman because you would need a biologist to tell you, doesn't that tell you it's not a choice?
Didn't she indicate it's not a choice because you need a biologist to tell you?
If it's a choice, it doesn't matter what your biology is, right?
Am I right?
If it's biology, then men are men and women are women based on reproductive capability in DNA, I guess.
But if you have to ask a biologist, that means it's biology.
If you have to ask an ethicist, Who would you ask if it's not biological?
Let's say it's a preference, it's a choice.
Or, I don't know, maybe that's the wrong word.
Not preference or choice. Let me modify that so I'm not accidentally insulting the trans community.
So if it's not biological, what would be the other way to describe it?
Psychological? I feel like psychological...
Is somewhat insulting.
Because that would suggest that they're imagining it or something.
If it's not biological, it's what, identity?
Maybe chosen identity?
Yeah. Okay, I'll go with identity.
I think that's the cleanest.
You know, and let me back up and say the same thing that I say on trans stuff all the time.
And I say it about all the woke stuff.
But it's more important than the trans stuff, because we're all confused about the language to use.
I'm willing to be as open-minded as the most open-minded person about everything.
Call anybody what they want, give them as many rights as they want.
But what I ask in return, and I'm pretty serious about this...
What I ask in return for my extreme open-mindedness is that when I use the wrong language or say something that sounds accidentally insulting, you're going to have to fucking put up with it.
Right? You're going to have to get over it.
Because I'm giving you everything I got.
Everything I got is my best effort and my most open-minded acceptance of everybody's choice.
That's all I got. If you're expecting me also not to use a wrong word, well, that's where we fight.
Okay? That's where we fight.
We're going to fight about that, but we're not going to fight about you making your choice to live your life the way you want to.
Please. Please do live your life exactly the way you want to if it doesn't bother me.
But boy, if you get on me about accidentally using the wrong word, then we fight.
Then we fight. All right.
I am going to make your day a little bit better by suggesting you watch a video in which I'll, it's a complete spoiler, so I'm going to tell you what's on the video and it'll still be worth watching.
Apparently there was some kind of a TV game show kind of thing in which Kelly Clarkson was competing with Anne Hathaway to see who could start singing a song based on the first few notes.
So the band would start playing the song, and then the two of them would compete to see who could start belting out the song first.
So you may or may not know that Anne Hathaway is an actress and not known as a singer.
So imagine how...
Just imagine how you'd feel.
She'd be so intimidated. Because you're competing against, literally, Kelly Clarkson, one of the great singers of our time.
And you're not even a professional singer.
Imagine being in that competition and you have to sing in public against Kelly Clarkson.
Now, that's the setup.
Now, Kelly Clarkson apparently was behind, because Anne Hathaway had beaten her on a few songs already.
So Kelly Clarkson, before the next one plays, she says, you know, laughingly, she says, you know, play a song I know, you know, do one I'm familiar with, so that she can...
You know, get one right.
And the band starts in with just...
I think it was just like a drum beat, like...
before the sound had even started.
And Anne Hathaway recognizes the song first and steps forward and starts belting it out.
And the funny part was, it was Kelly Clarkson's, one of her top hits.
Maybe her top hit. It was Kelly Clarkson's own song.
And Anne Hathaway got it from just the drum intro.
And Kelly Clarkson didn't get it as quickly.
Now, so I've given you the whole spoiler, right?
So you think you don't need to watch the video, because I just described it to you?
That's not why I'm telling you to watch it.
Here's what you have to see.
You have to see Anne Hathaway act like a boss, like I've never seen.
It is so freaking well done.
Now keep in mind, she's a professional actress, so she spotted a moment, so Anne Hathaway spotted a moment that she could do something really cool, which is basically the way she presented herself.
Oh God, it was so fun.
So the fun part is how confidently And how quickly Anne Hathaway stood to the front.
And not only did she win the thing, but she belted out the song pretty well.
She actually belted it out pretty well.
And Kelly Clarkson collapses laughing because she lost on her own hit.
Now, again, I've spoiled the whole thing, but watch how it doesn't matter.
It won't matter to your enjoyment of watching it.
I guarantee you, if you watch that video, that part of your day will be better.
Like, you'll be happy for like an hour, because it's just so much fun.
So go, it's on CNN, it's everywhere.
Just Google it.
So there's a question about whether Putin should be kicked out of the G20, the 20 big economies that get together and talk about important things for the big 20 economies.
Apparently he has not been kicked out yet.
But might be. Ian Bremmer says don't ban Russia, because you need Russia in the G20, but only ban them until Putin leaves.
I say don't ban him.
Do not ban Putin from the G20. Do you know why?
Because the Ukrainians are no doubt looking for a decapitation strike, and they can get at him easier if he leaves the Kremlin.
Am I wrong? I'm not recommending it.
I want to be clear because I think you get booted off of social media and probably should.
If you recommend somebody kill somebody, probably you need to be kicked off of social media.
So I don't recommend it.
I'm just saying that if Putin has to leave the Kremlin, the Ukrainians are going to be looking for him.
And Putin is not the only one looking for a decapitation strike.
Remember? Putin wanted to take out Zelensky and make it fast.
Is there anything that prevents Ukrainians from taking out Putin?
There's not, is there?
So don't you think that the Americans would...
Well, I don't know if Americans would help on that.
That's a good question.
If America could help Ukrainians assassinate Putin, either with, like, let's say help would be just information.
Would they do it? I actually don't know the answer to that question, do you?
Yeah, it would be super illegal, of course.
Of course it's illegal. It would be more illegal than just about anything could be illegal.
But we would have killed Hiller, right?
Am I right? If the Allied forces had a chance, they would have killed Hiller.
I'm not wrong about that.
Am I? Am I right?
Well, they didn't kill Hitler at the Olympics, but maybe that was too early.
They thought about it.
So I'm going to say that anything that moves Putin out of his most protected situations and into a less protected situation would be good risk management for the rest of the world.
So I would keep him in the G20 just to expose him.
Make things interesting.
All right, although we might just do a Zoom or something instead of going.
We're seeing stories...
How many of you have seen stories about Ukraine taking back territory?
Sure, the Russians took some territory, but the Ukrainians took it back.
And do you believe that?
Do you believe that the Ukrainians are now turning things around and taking back territory?
I'm going to say no on that.
With a caveat.
Imagine this war.
You've got all kinds of military units doing all kinds of things.
Do you think with all kinds of Russian military units doing all kinds of missions and things, would there ever be a situation in which a Russian military went in and took control of something, and then, because they don't have infinite resources, they left to conquer something else?
Probably. Don't you think there are places where the Russian military went in, but then they had to relocate?
And when they relocated, then the Ukrainians take it back.
But what did they take back?
Just rubble. The only thing the Ukrainians took back was rubble.
The army moved to where they can do some more damage because there was nothing left to destroy.
So when you hear these stories about, you know, the Ukrainians taking back some territory...
Number one, it probably just isn't true at all.
It probably never happened, because most of the reporting out of the war zone is fake.
85% probably.
At least of specific little stories, I'd say 85% of them are wrong.
The big picture, we may or may not know what's going on generally, but the little anecdotal stuff, 85% bullshit.
So I'm going to say there's probably no credible evidence of anything like the Ukrainians taking anything back.
Now, take the same logic.
Whatever you say about Russian supply lines, have you noticed that we treat them like they're all the same?
We just say, Russian supply lines.
What, is there one supply line that goes to all of the units everywhere in Ukraine?
They're like spread out over the whole country.
Are you telling me that the supply chains are all about the same and they're all good?
Nope. Here's what's most likely happening.
Most likely, Russia's main fighting forces are being resupplied.
Because they'd have the resources.
Most likely, and by the way, I'd like somebody who has military experience to jump in here.
Most likely, there are also lesser important Russian units that have been completely cut off from their supply lines.
Disagree? Would you say that given that so many different things are happening, There's some Russians doing well, some not doing well.
Some have supply lines.
Some have less supply lines.
Right? I mean, that part's just math.
You don't have to wonder if that's happening.
Am I right? We don't need to hear a report to know that some units are doing better than others.
That's just sort of guaranteed of the situation, wouldn't you say?
They're not doing equally well.
So here's what I predict.
In theory...
The Ukrainians, if they can hold off, and it looks like they can hold out for a while, they should be able to isolate and annihilate the lesser Russian units that are out of everything.
Because they're not going to fight back too much.
they might just surrender.
So I think you're going to see stories of some kind of an accelerated Ukrainian offensive in which they're mopping up the Russian units that are the weaker ones that are out of resources.
Who disagrees with that analysis?
Again, I'm not...
Don't think I'm...
By no means am I presenting myself as a military expert.
You all know that, right?
So I'm only going to say things...
They seem common sense based on just the whole world and everything you know about it.
There's no way every Russian is doing just as well in the fighting.
There's no way. You don't have to be a military expert to know that, right?
So I'm getting somebody who says I totally disagree.
So is the part that you disagree with that all of the units are somewhat equally and well supplied?
Would that be your assumption?
Does somebody have an assumption that all of the Russian troops are about equally well supplied?
Because if you don't, then I think you agree with me.
If there are some that are going to run out of stuff, the Ukrainians are going to target them and take them out.
Right? Can somebody give me an argument against that?
I'm seeing some people disagreeing, but I don't see any pushback.
Yeah. Yeah, probably the Russians in the south are resupplied.
Probably in the north it's more of a problem, especially for the smaller groups.
You know, anybody who moved away from the main supply line channels is probably in trouble.
All right. Somebody says a little botulism goes a long way.
Do you think the Ukrainians are going to poison...
Is that legal? Suppose the Ukrainians took over a food truck on its way, or a food supply truck, on its way to the Russian soldiers.
Suppose they put a Ukrainian, like a fake Ukrainian, in the driver's seat and they deliver the truck acting like it's just a regular delivery.
And then suppose...
That that truck had food in it that wasn't so good.
Let's say it doesn't kill anybody but makes them incapacitated.
There's a lot of stuff you could do to an army that has a weak supply line.
So Russia, it seems, is relying on distance weapons, so shooting things from a great distance.
And apparently they're shooting things from their warships into the southern part of Ukraine.
Now here's a question for me.
How well protected are those Russian warships that are shooting from a great distance, I don't know, 20 miles?
Can somebody give me a distance?
At what distance would the Russian Navy be firing?
20 miles?
Somebody knows that.
Come on, you know that.
Somebody says hundreds. I see 20.
Now, I'm not talking about a cruise missile.
I'm talking about just regular kinetic weapons.
So he says 50, depending on the missiles.
Well, are we talking about missiles?
I guess they are missiles, aren't they?
I was thinking it was artillery, but it's probably missiles, isn't it?
Is it both? Cannons, 10 kilometers at most.
Okay. So here's the question.
Can the Ukrainians really not reach those ships?
No. The Ukrainians don't have any kind of small boats with handheld anti-ship or, you know, shoulder-mounted.
They can't get a small craft to go out there that are, you know, maybe too many of them for the boats.
I mean, you wouldn't want one motorboat with a missile on it, because they could probably see that and blow it out of the water.
But suppose you had lots of them.
Suppose you had 25 little boats that went out there and they all had shoulder-mounted missiles and they took a crack at whatever ships are out there.
Russia controls the whole sea.
Well, nobody controls the whole sea.
Oh, support helicopters, keeping them down.
Yeah. And what about...
Let me ask this. Are you telling me that the United States doesn't make a torpedo that you can release from the shore?
See what I'm saying?
Are you telling me that the United States doesn't have anywhere in its weapon systems a torpedo that you can release from shore...
Or maybe you take a boat out and you're just not far out.
That would have a guidance system on it, a guidance system, that would just take that bomb based on, let's say, satellite, maybe satellite navigation.
Torpedoes are huge and heavy.
Would it have to be missiles?
French exoset. All right, so I guess this was what I'm asking.
Are those Russian boats going to blow up?
And why not? Are the Ukrainians even trying to take a crack at them?
Or is that too much of an escalation?
That might be too much of an escalation if you sank a Russian warship.
Oh, there's an airplane.
Oh, yeah, an airplane dropping a torpedo.
I just saw a picture of it. So it looks like even in World War II, What the hell World War was that?
A biplane dropping a torpedo?
Okay, I'm not quite connecting those technologies.
That looks like two different technology eras.
A biplane with a torpedo?
Did they have torpedoes in World War I that they could drop from a plane?
Eh, maybe. Too much in the weeds here.
Can we talk about Trump? Well, you know, everything is tied to Ukraine at the moment.
But it does suggest if Russians are using distance weapons, it suggests that the Ukrainians have better weapons for the defense than the offenders, than the offense has.
Here's my further prediction.
You ready for this? So this is really confirming or doubling down on a prediction I made before Putin invaded.
And I said that there might be some high-tech weaponry that the Ukrainians have that we've never even seen.
And it's starting to feel like that, although you couldn't conclude from what we've seen.
It could be that the weapons we know exist, the shoulder-mounted rockets, etc., it could be that that's exactly all they needed to hold off the Russians for now.
But... Aeromarine 700.
Yeah, you'd think there would be a robot submarine by now that could just go destroy a warship anywhere.
Anyway, now, I think I forgot my point there.
Oh, the point is that I predict that we'll find out that the Ukrainians used some weapons we'd never heard of.
How many people want to take the other side of that bet?
That when it's all over, maybe not during the fighting, but when it's all over, there will be stories that say, you know, it's a good thing that the Americans let the Ukrainian defenders use the drone 600 because it could do whatever.
It's going to be something, somebody says, a few years, maybe a few years, but I feel like I feel like there's something going on weapon-wise that we don't exactly know.
Could be small drones.
If you have enough of them, yeah, the switchblade drones.
It could be the switchblade drones, but we don't know how many they have.
We've seen the Ukrainians say how many losses the Russians have had, and they've got big charts of all the tanks and troops and stuff, but everything, of course, is sketchy.
So here's the question.
When I was a commercial loaning officer for a bank...
And I would review loan requests.
And the person, usually an entrepreneur or business person, would say, my expenses will be X and my revenue will be X for this first year, so therefore give me a loan.
Now the first thing you do if you're a loan analyzer is you take what they say they're going to make and you divide it by, give me a number.
You take the entrepreneur's income, That's what they optimistically say.
And then you divide it by?
I see some experienced people here.
At least two or three.
At least two or three.
And three is smarter. I'm surprised how many of you knew that.
So yeah, cutting it by 50% or more would be standard.
Now what do you do with the expenses?
The expenses you raise, because no entrepreneur has ever accurately estimated their expenses.
They're always low. And the reason they're low is that you can't estimate an expense for something you don't anticipate, and the world is full of things you can't anticipate.
So, yeah, usually you double the expenses, cut the revenue by a third, and if it still makes sense, well, maybe then you get the loan.
But you would never give somebody a loan based on their own estimates.
Everybody know that? You would never grant a loan based on the customer's own estimates of what's going to happen.
That would just be dumb. So when we see the Russian losses as reported by the Ukrainians, we know they're exaggerated, of course, because it's war and it's propaganda.
But what is the factor of exaggeration?
It's at least three, wouldn't you say?
It might be five, but But it could be 10.
I doubt it's 10.
I'm going to guess 5.
Right? Because you would exaggerate at the most that you could exaggerate and think you could get away with it.
And so, just commonsensically, I think you could triple the number of losses, given that fog of war and the difficulty of confirming anything.
I think you could triple the actual losses and get away with it.
So my best guess is if you're trying to look at the Ukrainians' claims, I would divide them by three.
Roughly. Does that sound about right to all of you?
Take their claims, divide by three.
It might be more than that. Maybe you have to divide by five.
But just as a starting point to get you in the general area, that's about right.
All right. There's a movie coming out, I think on Amazon Prime, by musical artist Lizzo.
Do you all know Lizzo?
Now, the important part of the story, and we don't do fat shaming, So we will tolerate no fat shaming.
But she is a large woman.
I don't know what she weighs.
Looks about 300 pounds or something.
So she's a very large black woman.
The black part is irrelevant to this story.
I'm throwing it in just so you can have an image in your mind.
And one of the things she's doing is...
I'm going to say it's interesting before I put an opinion on it.
She is...
Let's say maybe celebrating or embracing her size, and she does a lot of dancing in skimpy outfits, And she's quite active.
She's interestingly physically capable for her size.
Now, her movie involves auditioning other women roughly her size, not all of them, I guess, but choosing dancers for some kind of event and then putting together this dance thing that a number of the women are roughly the same size as Lizzo.
Now, I commented that the fact that this movie exists tells you everything about 2022 in one movie.
It's sort of everything you need to know about our current time.
I mean, I could go down the list, but you could do it just as well in your head.
You've got everything there.
It's like the full, woke smorgasbord.
And... Nothing is more obvious than the fact that I can't talk my actual opinion about this situation.
Am I right? If I gave you just my actual honest opinion, I'd probably be banned from social media, which is also a perfect 2022 thing.
However, I'm just going to say...
That celebrating lifestyles which appear to me, in my non-medically trained opinion, to be unhealthy is maybe not a super good trend for society.
On the other hand, I do kind of like that there's a counterbalance to the idea that everybody needs to be real thin.
I'm a big proponent of managing your weight and your fitness and stuff, but I'm also realistic.
We don't live in a world where everybody's going to be nailing that stuff.
So I do think that if you were just looking at it from a health perspective, which is a reasonably objective way to do it, it might be sending the wrong message.
It might be sending the wrong message.
So I don't think it's optimal, but I also live in a world where I like free expression.
So I do not think...
I don't think it should be banned or discouraged, other than, you know, talking to your own family, perhaps.
Yeah, it looks like it's seriously bad for society, but free speech.
I also suspect it will be a huge hit.
Does anybody want to take that bet?
I think this will be a huge hit.
I feel like I have to watch it.
I desperately don't want to watch this.
In fact, I can't think of anything I would less want to watch.
And I don't even like movies in general, and this would be at the bottom of my movie list.
But I feel like I'm still going to have to watch it, just because it's such a culturally significant thing in some way.
And I love the fact that Lizzo's marketing...
It's so effective.
She is kind of a genius in marketing, or she has help or something.
Yeah. All right, so Trump decided that he wasn't going to back Mo Brooks.
Yeah, for the Senate. And the reason is that Brooks did not support Trump in saying that the 2020 election was rigged.
Mo Brooks said he wanted to put it in the rearview mirror.
He said it seven months ago, but Trump has a long memory, and he decided today that he's going to unendorse him.
I don't know. Will that make a difference?
It could, right? And that could be the difference between getting elected and not elected.
But I've often described this, and every time I see it, it's worth reminding you.
The Trump technique for persuasion is twice as strong as everybody else's technique.
It's twice as strong.
It's because he does two paths at once.
He makes it really good to do what you want, because he'll praise you and promote you, at least give you attention and stuff, if you do what he wants.
So that part most people will do.
So most people will say, yeah, if you do what I want, I'll say good things about you.
So so far he does everything that everybody else would do.
But then the other thing he does that you don't do is that he makes sure that he publicly executes anybody who doesn't do what he wants.
I mean that hyperbolically.
So Mo Brooks is sort of being publicly executed.
And the point has nothing to do with Mo Brooks.
The point is, do you want to mess with Trump?
Because if you go against them, and this is a fairly insignificant crime that Mo Brooks did, which is just disagree with him on how to treat the election.
It's not even clear that Mo Brooks disagrees with him on the facts.
I mean, I don't know that Mo Brooks thinks the election was rigged or not rigged, but he wasn't even talking about that.
He was just saying, strategically, we should let it go and put it in the rearview mirror.
And that... That alone, just disagreeing with Trump.
Got him unendorsed, and he might lose his job.
So you see why I say he's twice as persuasive.
Everybody does the things where you compliment somebody doing what you like, but very few people will take you out and execute you in the courtyard in front of everybody.
Again, not literally.
Very few people will do that.
That's what Trump does.
We should never let it go.
Trump is right on this.
He might be. He might be right.
You know, Trump is feeling more right than ever because now we know that the Hunter laptop story was suppressed to change the election result.
His claim that the election was rigged is now actually supported by the New York Times.
His other claims that there were irregularities in the voting itself...
I don't know where that is, honestly.
I do not have a sense if any of those claims are holding up or should hold up.
I don't know. It's hard to trust any of it, really.
Because most of the claims, 95% of them have been pure bullshit.
So I don't know. I do think there is no possible, physical, logical way...
That 50 states could be running perfectly fair elections.
Let me just say it this way without...
I'll just describe the situation.
We live in a world in which everybody is lying and cheating about everything.
Are you with me so far?
Will you accept my starting assumption that every expert and every official in every capacity...
Is non-credible.
So why would we think that 50 individual states, each of them individually running their election, can you tell me that you feel that in a context where every other organization from the CDC to the presidency to our intelligence agencies to all of our experts have intentionally and consistently lied to us about everything?
So why would you believe that 50 states could hold an election without an irregularity that mattered?
Really? Let's try the really test.
So in 2022, in a world where we have confirmed, this is not speculation, we have confirmed that everybody who has any kind of responsibility or expertise has lied to us.
Confirmed. And yet, all 50 states ran a good, capable, fair election without fraud that was significant.
Really? Really?
This is the one time where math doesn't work?
Where human nature decided to take a vacation?
This is the only situation where human nature didn't apply.
Every year...
Every election, all 50 states, they're all nailing it.
Really? The only thing that's working right in this country is 50 separate groups independently coming up with their own processes and running their own independent elections.
Everything else in the whole world is fucked up.
Everything. Everything in the whole world is fucked up.
Not working, lying, and broken.
But hey... We got 50 individual state elections with no significant problems.
Really? Really?
Are you fucking kidding me?
There's no chance that that's true.
Am I right?
What evidence do I have?
None. Because our system guarantees we can't get the evidence.
If you have a system and the only thing you heard about it is you can't audit it.
But it's really important that money's at stake and there's a lot at stake, high stakes, and you can't audit whether it's working as planned.
And there are 50 of them.
I'm not even talking about an election.
Oh, you thought I was talking about an election?
No. It's just an example.
Just an example. It's a generic situation, not about an election, but In which everybody in the whole fucking world is lying to you, but all the states are good.
They're all good. That's what we've been told, and we are so sheep-like, we rolled over and just said, Bah!
Election's good! It's the only thing that works!
Bah! I won't get banned from social media for saying this.
Do you know why? Because this is the argument you don't want anybody to hear.
That's what protects me on social media in this specific case.
I am protected from being banned because if I get banned for saying that, that's going to be a story.
Am I right? If I got banned for saying that the elections are weirdly the only thing that worked right...
And everybody heard that story?
Do you think the Democrats want people thinking that way?
That it's plainly ridiculous to imagine that an unaudited system run by 50 entities is the only fucking thing in the world that works right.
It's not.
It's not the only fucking thing in the world that works right.
We just don't know what's wrong with it because we're not allowed to look.
At least in any detail that we would like to look.
Well, I wasn't planning on that rant, but it came out anyway.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the time at which my YouTube audience may have to go do something else.
But I think you can agree it was the best live stream you've ever seen in your entire existence.
And possibly some other dimensions that we're not aware of.
And so, ladies and gentlemen, and...
According to Ron DeSantis' calculation, that includes everybody.
