Episode 1806 Scott Adams: It's A Funny News Story Day. Come Join Me For A Beverage and Some Laughs
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
Twitter bots push to bring back masking
Adam Schiff knocks Biden's fist-bump with MBS
Apple's overcomplicated UI
Mexican Cartels
Joe Manchin vs Biden climate agenda
Open our borders, wide open!
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the optimistic show that makes you feel better every time.
Are you watching the other news-related programs and wishing that you could end your life?
No, don't do it. Don't do it.
Watch Coffee with Scott Adams every day, and I'll put the positive spin on the bad news.
Because, you know, sometimes it's good.
And if you think That I'm leading you toward the golden age?
I am. Here's a little tip.
I'm not predicting the golden age.
I'm only pretending to predict it.
I'm actually causing it to happen.
And what's happening right now is that I'm nudging you onto what I call the...
Wait for it. Wait for it.
Listen carefully. Oh, YouTube just went offline.
Is that weird?
Right before my punchline.
YouTube's offline. Hey!
I'm back. Can you actually see me on YouTube?
Nope. Just lost me again.
So YouTube just lost me again.
Huh. I'm going to run...
I know you care, so I'm going to run a speed check on my Wi-Fi.
Speed check. Here you can watch.
See how we're doing. Well, that looks good.
So it doesn't look like a Wi-Fi problem, right?
Looks pretty good. Let's see if YouTube's back.
That can't be on my side, right?
Is anybody technical enough to verify that?
You're only as fast as your slowest point.
Yeah, of course. Oh, hey, hello.
Are you back? Can anybody on YouTube tell me if YouTube is having a problem or is it just my feed?
Because I have a good feed-ish on locals.
Well, let's take it from here.
You know, you may have interrupted my flow.
Have you noticed that if I lose my flow at the beginning of the show, I never recover it?
Has anybody ever noticed that?
Sometimes I just have to give up.
Anyway, losing my flow is actually my biggest problem that I have, you know, working at home.
All right. All right.
It looks like we've recovered.
Everybody good? You want to pretend like it never happened?
Well, let's go to this simultaneous sip.
But all you need is a cup of mugger glass, a tanker, a chalice, a canteen, a drink of glass, a vessel of any kind, fill it with favorite liquid.
Let's hurry before the technology dies again.
Go! Oh, we were waiting for the punchline.
On YouTube, you missed the punchline.
Let's see if it makes it go offline again.
Alright. It goes something like this.
You may not think...
It goes like this.
You might think that I'm predicting we're heading toward a golden age where everything's better, but I'm not predicting it.
I'm causing it.
And what I'm doing specifically is I'm trying to nudge the public onto...
Wait for it.
Listen carefully.
YouTube, don't go offline.
Don't go offline. Don't.
Wait. Wait for the punchline.
I'm going to nudge you onto the sippery slope.
You're welcome. The sippery slope.
Because when you take it...
Oh, it wasn't that bad.
Shut up. Shut up.
Talk about a joke that wasn't worth waiting for.
Wow. Well, it's getting harder to brag.
I know this is not a problem for a lot of you, but for people like me, if you are a narcissist, it's getting hard.
Let me give you an example.
Early in my career, I did a Dilbert comic in which I included some reference to Garfield, the other comic.
Now, there's a standard within the cartoonist world that if you mention somebody else's comic in your comic, there's sort of a custom that happens after that.
And the custom is that the person who was mentioned will often contact you and say, can I have the original?
Because cartoonists will collect originals from other cartoonists.
And so when I mentioned Garfield, and this is when I was basically an unknown, I'd just started cartooning, I got contacted by Jim Davis.
Now, you can imagine if you're a starting cartoonist, just imagine what happens if Jim Davis, the creator of Garfield, when Garfield's gigantic, imagine being contacted by the creator of Garfield and asking for your original.
It's like the coolest thing ever, right?
If you're just starting out cartooning, it's like the Pope just patted you on the head or something.
So I, of course, agreed immediately and sent him my crappy Dilbert comic with ink that probably disappeared a week after he got it.
I didn't use permanent ink in those days.
And don't ask why, it's a long story.
So now I've got this original Garfield.
Probably at the time it was worth maybe $1,000, which would be more today.
And I thought, you know, it's not enough to own one.
Other people have to see this thing.
And I'm like, what is the point of reaching this pinnacle of my cartooning success at that point?
If I can't show off, show it to somebody.
So I took it to my local framing shop, and here was what I thought would be my first hit of narcissistic supply.
I thought, wait until the person I asked to frame this, because it was where you leave it and they frame it for you.
I thought, wait until the person I asked to frame this figures out what this is.
It's like gold, right?
And the person's going to ask, naturally, I figure, they're going to say, is this an original Garfield?
And I would say, yeah, it is.
It is. Yeah, it is.
And then, of course, you would follow up, like, how is it that you've come into acquisition of this valuable property?
And I would say, oh, he sent it to me.
If you have other questions, you might want to follow up.
Oh, why? Why did he send it to me?
Oh, it turns out that I'm also a cartoonist.
Yeah, yeah. I do a cartoon and it caught his attention.
And he liked it. Top cartoonist in the world who's maybe living.
He liked my cartoon. So he asked if he could trade.
That's how I thought it would go.
In my mind, I imagined myself fake humbly saying how I got it while he was, like, impressed.
And then I'd feel some narcissistic supply, and I'd be like, ooh, feeling good for today.
That's what I hoped. That's not how it went.
Here's how it went. I'm standing in line behind one other customer.
There's just three of us in the store.
The person who owns the place, customer in front of me, and me.
Customer in front of me is getting a framed Garfield.
Yep. We both had one.
And then, do you know what the store owner said to me when I brought mine?
Third one today.
Now, it turns out that was a joke.
It was not the third one today.
But the fact that there were two of them...
Talk about deflating.
My God! Now, fast-forward to last night, all right?
Fast-forward, you know, a few decades to last night.
My new thing that I like to humbly drop into stories, not really humbly at all, is that I once visited the Oval Office and talked to the President, Trump.
Now, let me tell you, if that ever happens to you, or something like it, you're not going to keep that to yourself.
Now, I'm worse, because I like bragging, so I want everybody to know.
But I don't want to be like, I got invited to the White House.
So I want it to be like subtly, maybe it just comes up as a natural part of the conversation.
I'll be like, yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact.
Yep, bend the overlaws.
So I'll do things like, If there's a news program and it shows the Oval Office, I'll drop in something like, huh, looks like they changed the rug.
You know, just leave that in there.
Huh, looks like, is that the same lamp?
Looks like a different lamp.
You know, just wait for somebody to ask the question.
Like, well, I don't like to brag, but I've been there.
Yep, Ivanka gave me a tour of the furniture in the Oval Office.
Probably happens to a lot of people, so...
So anyway, so I like to get my little narcissistic supply by telling people that I was once in the Oval Office.
Last night, I'm at a neighborhood gathering in town, and I'm just talking to the neighbors, and once again, politics came up, and I thought, well, here's my opportunity.
I'm going to just drop this in here.
Because when you're just talking to the neighbors, like literally the people who live on your block...
This is going to be a little extra impressive, wouldn't you say?
Because, you know, often I'm talking to other public figures and they've done interesting things too.
But if you're just talking to the neighbors, you can really wow the neighbors.
So I was talking to a woman who lives in the neighborhood and I mentioned, you know, I've been in the Oval Lavas.
I met the president.
And she said, yeah, I had dinner with Obama.
And I just thought, well, fuck it, I'm just going to give up.
I'm just going to give up.
Is there anybody I can talk to who hasn't done something better?
Good Lord! What do I have to do?
What do I have to do?
I don't know. So, I know lots of you have your own problems.
And your own problems seem big to you, but, you know, everybody thinks their own problems.
Will you give me a moment for some sympathy?
I've been trying to brag for years, and it's not working out.
At all. So, I'll just keep trying.
Yesterday, I saw a straight news piece that made me laugh for ten minutes.
Right? Now, remember I said that parody and reality have merged?
If you can find a better example than this, now I'm going to read you the actual straight headline.
And you tell me that it's not a joke, right?
Try to distinguish between the actual headline.
I'm not making this up. This is an actual headline from yesterday.
Kamala Harris's speechwriter quit.
It's not just me, right?
LAUGHTER And I went to retweet it and add a joke, and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't add a joke.
Because you can't add a joke to the joke.
Like, that's just piling on.
There was nothing you could say to that to make it funnier.
I just laughed for ten minutes, and every time I kept trying to do a quote tweet, where I'd, you know, add the humorous spin on it.
There's no humorous spin you could add on that.
Well, I thought... But it turns out that one professional...
Oh, damn it, did I not write that down?
Oh, somebody had a better joke than I did, quoting the speechwriter humorously.
Anyway, never mind.
But I wondered if this is generating a whole category of jokes.
Do you know how Letterman used to do the top ten list?
And it seems like they can always make that funny, at least a few items on it.
Because there's something about a top ten list that just naturally is easier to write jokes to.
It's a format that you can easily write jokes to.
But when I heard that Kamala Harris' speechwriter quit, I thought, I have an announcement too.
My hairstylist has resigned.
So this is my public announcement.
My hairstylist has resigned.
And if that wasn't bad enough, it was a bad day on my staff, my personal stylist quit.
Yeah, my personal stylist quit.
One day, I wear a white t-shirt because it's laundry day.
My personal stylist says, fuck it, I'm out of here.
I have some other news about other people.
Michael Moore's personal trainer quit.
Just resigned, walked off the door.
So, am I wrong that this is a genre we can play with?
I don't understand what that means.
Somebody just said, my gynecologist just quit.
I don't know why that's funny.
You're not even on the right, that's not even the right theme.
It's funnier because it doesn't work.
Ah!
It's funnier because it doesn't work.
Yeah, I know it's the guy that said it, but it's funnier because it doesn't work.
Well, I guess if you're saying...
I mean, that's a little too far.
All right. Here's a mystery solved.
Maybe. I've been wondering why there haven't been any gigantic forest fires this year in California.
Now, if you don't live in California, you have not noticed that they're not here.
And I'm pretty sure that we were seeing them by now last year in the year before.
No trees left?
We've got a few left.
And it turns out there was a 60 Minutes report that may have explained why.
So apparently we have now, although it's not being as utilized or used, I like to say, as much as it could be, there's a helicopter fleet of rapid response types.
And there are big Chinook-type helicopters, you know, the double rotors that can lift up anything.
And they can carry enormous amounts of fire retardant.
But the big difference is they're equipped to fly at night.
I didn't know this, but did you know this?
That they stop fighting fires at night?
At least by air.
Did you know that? Because I guess the regular night flying is too dangerous.
But if you use the ones that are sort of military-grade Chinooks that are meant for all kinds of nighttime things, they can do it safely.
And it's much easier to fight the fire because it doesn't rage as much at night, so you get it at its weakest point.
But apparently the idea is, for an enormous amount of money, so like one flight of these helicopters is going to be, you know, millions and millions of dollars.
Well, not one flight, but one fire.
You know, fighting one fire would be many millions for these helicopters.
But it's because of the low altitude that's what makes it dangerous for planes, somebody's saying.
That makes sense. So...
Somebody says $23,000 an hour.
That sounds about right. But apparently the company that makes them makes the claim that even though they're insanely expensive, it's less expensive than letting the fire get out of control.
And on that, I think they make an actually good argument.
Is it solved? You know, I had an idea that maybe is the next generation.
I thought that we should have a fleet of drones that's always flying around looking for any fires.
Now, I guess they're using the helicopters for that and the night vision, but you could use a drone for that.
So I think there should always be drones in the air and always looking for forest fires anywhere in California.
You know, as soon as one lands, another one takes off sort of thing.
So if you spot it quickly, I guess that's half the fight, right?
You could easily put night vision on a drone.
But then I thought, what if you had a fleet of firefighting drones?
A little too soon for that.
I don't think we quite have the technology.
But if they were helicopter drones, could they not do what the Chinook did?
Maybe you just need the human pilot at this point, but at some point, that's what I think it's going to be.
At some point, I think forest fires will be spotted by drones, and then the first phase of suppression will be drones.
Maybe the first drones can't carry as much, but you've got lots of them, right?
You're just black in the sky with smaller drones that don't have a big payload, but there are lots of them, and they're fast.
I don't know. I think that's where we're going.
But it's nice to know that it's possible that these helicopters might be the reason that my sky looks blue.
All right.
So that's good news. I saw a tweet by Twitter user Machiavelli's Underbelly, who is a real good follow.
If you're looking for a good follow, especially on AI and technology-related stuff, just search for Machiavelli's Underbelly.
Machiavelli is spelled just the way you think it is.
All right, and he notes...
Somebody else was tweeting, there are a whole bunch of bot accounts requesting that we go hard with new mask mandates.
And the bots are saying the exact same thing.
It's obvious it's a cut and paste.
And it's all kinds of different accounts.
And as Machiavelli's underbelly alleges, now this is an allegation, but I don't think it's wrong, that it's a foreign entity that is flooding us with bots trying to destroy America by...
You're bringing up the mask mandate thing again.
What do you think? Do you think...
And I do think the evidence was strong.
There was a list. There was actually a video list of a whole bunch of accounts that all have the same thing.
And, oh, you know what?
If you find it, just do a search on some of the terms and you can see within Twitter, you should see all the accounts just pop up because it's the same terms they use.
Now, who do you think would be behind it?
Do you think, first of all...
Well, let me state with...
If the accounts shown really exist, then there is a bot problem.
And it's a bot problem pushing masks.
Who would do that? Do you think that a domestic entity would do that?
I mean, anything's possible, but it seems very unlikely.
I don't see it domestic.
So would you buy that if it's a bot attack, it's foreign?
I think it's foreign.
Yeah. You could argue that maybe it would help somebody in the election, but that's a little murky, isn't it?
I don't really see how that's going to help any American.
Not really. So I feel as though it's got to be foreign.
And who would be the most likely culprits?
China or Russia?
China or Russia?
China. You don't think Russia?
Isn't Russia more implicated in Bots?
Both? Say both.
Well, this is a specific attack.
So, I mean, it's Iran?
Yeah. It feels Chinese, but that's just a guess.
All right. So, I guess I'm a little late on this story, but we're still talking about Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia, and he did a fist bump...
With the Saudi's crown prince there.
And the fist bump was even Adam Schiff criticized Biden.
Is that the first time?
Adam Schiff just directly criticized him pretty aggressively.
And I've got to say, I didn't think I would ever respect anything that came out of Adam Schiff's mouth, but that was exactly the right thing to do.
I hate to give him credit, but he just went hard at his own party for something that was perfectly appropriate criticism, in my opinion.
Can we give him that?
Let's see if we can fight with our confirmation bias and our team spirit up just to give him that.
Schiff is a piece of shit.
He's like one of the worst human beings I've ever experienced in public life.
Just an opinion. But I'll give him that.
Because he went after his own team and it was the right goal.
Now, what do you think was in Biden's mind when he did this fist bump?
What the hell was he thinking?
Because the fist bump, it feels to me like that is a clear sign of a lack of mental, let's say, sharpness.
Did it seem like that to you? I don't feel like that was some cleverly thought out thing he did.
I don't know that it was just a spontaneous thing and he thought, oops, as soon as he did it.
I feel like he should have been a little more prepared for that.
And it feels like his advisors didn't have control over that.
You know, it wasn't on a teleprompter or something.
I feel like that was just a sign of age.
What do you think? Did that look to you like really it could only be explained by his mental decline?
You have to be careful because if you're already primed to think that everything is his mental decline.
I already debunked that handshaking thing.
Where it looks like he wants to shake hands and nobody's there.
That's just a fake video.
Fake in the sense that they cut off the fact that he's just gesturing towards something.
He's actually gesturing to where they're going to walk, or, should I walk over here, or are we going over there?
So if you don't see the whole stage, it looks like he's trying to shake hands with a ghost.
But that's debunked.
That's nothing. So maybe, just like the handshake, maybe we're all just primed to see it as what it's not.
Who knows? Maybe he thought of it.
Maybe it was intentional.
Who knows? But it's pretty awkward that we send our president over there who said the Khashoggi thing is the worst thing and they should be treated as a pariah.
And then when he gets over there to talk to the pariah, he's like, fist bump, fist bump.
I didn't see it, but I'm sure I wouldn't have liked it.
Now, here's something else in the news that...
I want you to just shake your head when this happens.
I'm going to tell you the news, and I want you to just go, what is happening to us?
Here's the news. The president went over to Saudi Arabia and asked them to pump more oil, and the Saudis said that they're basically close to capacity, so there's not much they can do.
Is that the headline you heard?
That they're close to capacity, so there's not much they can do.
And then, did you read the numbers?
So the headline says they're close to capacity, there's not much they can do.
What did the numbers say they could do?
Where are they? They're at about 10 million barrels a day.
What did they say they could get up to, because they're right at their cap?
What did they say they could get up to?
13. They could go from 10 to a maximum of 13.
Now, do the math.
That's a 30% increase.
Are you telling me that if one of the biggest producers in the world increases by 30%, nobody notices?
What? Am I wrong that the headline is opposite of the news?
Right? The news should have been, Saudis potentially could increase 30% and they're willing to try.
It might be hard, because that last 30% is hard to get to, because you've got to be operating perfectly.
But can you just give me a sanity check?
Am I right or wrong that the headline was opposite of the story?
The headline says there's not much we can do.
The numbers say there's plenty we can do, and it would make a big difference.
Am I wrong? Seriously, am I wrong?
Like, what am I missing? I'm a little worried here because I feel like...
Somebody says refining is the issue.
Is it? That's the only issue domestically.
It takes a lot of engineering work to get the extra.
Yeah. But, you know, if the story had been there's nothing we can do because we can't do it, then that would be the story.
But the story, the way it was written, was we can go from 10 to 13.
So, could our news business be worse?
Okay, I've been challenged to work a drone into this story.
Because I work drones into every story.
Challenge accepted.
How do I work a drone into the story about Gaspar?
Well, you know, if you need to transport it, If he had enough drones...
No, just joking. That would never work.
I don't think I could work a drone into that story.
But I tried. All right.
You know they say one person can't make a difference.
Do any of you think that?
That one person can't make a difference?
I'm hearing somebody say that we're only going from 12 to 13, which would be opposite of the story I just read in Axios.
So, I don't know. Maybe it's just the news doesn't know what the facts are.
All right, well, if you think one person can't make a difference, I would point you to Greta Thunberg nearly de-industrializing Germany.
So, that's on her resume.
I almost de-industrialized Germany.
Close. I mean, I don't think she succeeded.
Matt, you paid $10 to say Garfield is the least funny cartoon in syndication.
Matt, you may not be aware of this, and I'm going to give you a shocking revelation.
Humor is subjective.
Humor is subjective.
Do you know how much money people pay for Garfield?
Not just to run it, but merchandise and TV shows.
People are paying a lot of money for that thing you say is the worst thing, which indicates there's a whole lot of people who like it.
Humor is subjective.
So thanks, Greta, for destroying Germany, I guess.
Did a little bit less than Hitler, but she's making a dent.
I mean, I don't think it would be fair...
I think you'd agree with this.
Can we agree it would be unfair to compare Greta Thunberg to Hitler?
Can we all agree on that?
That would be completely inappropriate.
Do not compare Greta Thunberg to Hitler destroying Germany.
But can we also agree she's number two?
If you were going to rank them the most destructive people in the history of the German country, She's definitely not number one.
We're all on the same page, right?
Number one, Hitler. But I'm just saying, and there might be a long distance between number two, but once you get down to number two, very strongly at the top of the list of all the potential people destroying Germany would be Greta.
So I want to be very clear, do not compare her to Hitler.
She's nowhere near that bad.
But she's number two. She is number two.
All right. I wondered, as many of you did when Steve Jobs died, would Apple start making worse products?
Did you all wonder that?
Because it felt like he was the secret sauce, right?
Yeah, they got all the best designers in the world and, you know, Ivy does this and that and blah, blah, blah.
But... Didn't you think that Steve Jobs was like the ultimate guy who said, no, that's not good enough?
And it's in my imagination that Apple has completely lost the program with user interface.
Like, user interface was their thing.
But I just tweeted around.
I was using an app that has a microphone icon.
And then it's working on top of the OS that has a microphone icon right next to it.
There's two microphone icons that do different things.
One is to get a voice text, and one is to immediately send your voice.
Now, do you think that Steve Jobs would have allowed that there could ever be an app that would have the same icon on it in the App Store as Apple's own icon and right next to it, so you wouldn't know what the fuck you were doing?
You can't even imagine that Steve Jobs would have ever allowed that, right?
And, you know, I'm giving you some other examples.
It does seem that the...
And I told you there's, you know, five factorial ways to cancel an incoming phone call.
Do you think that Steve Jobs would have allowed five factorial ways to silence a phone call?
So let me ask the question.
Oh, and full disclosure, I do own Apple stock.
So I'm ragging on them, but I'm betting the other way.
So just be aware, I'm betting the other way.
So my money says it'll be great for a long time.
My opinion is there's something wrong without Steve Jobs.
So just hold both of those as true.
And I feel like Apple has lost it in the interface part.
What do you think? Is there any other Apple's users who think they've gotten too complicated?
And I think that's what Jobs would have stopped.
Okay, I'm not going to read that comment.
You could tone that down a little bit.
Just, you know, the Locals platform is free speech.
So, you know, nobody's going to get blocked on Locals.
But I'll give you my opinion that that's an inappropriate comment.
You know who you are. And everybody's welcome with your inappropriate comments, but I'm not going to let it go by without commenting on it.
Apparently the Mexican military captured one of the top drug cartel leaders, the leader of the Guadalajara cartel.
Now, I don't know my cartels too well, but would that be maybe the third biggest cartel?
I don't know the cartel, you know, the Sinoa might be the biggest.
I don't know. Is it like the third biggest?
Does anybody know? I didn't get that from the story.
The Zetas, the Sinoa, so they might be maybe third biggest or something.
Now, somebody said, oh, this is good.
It means the Mexican government is operating against the cartels, and here's, you know, solid evidence that they're serious about it because they caught the head of the cartel.
What do you think? Oh, Sinoa, not Sinoa.
Sinoa. Do you think that's what the story is?
That the Mexican government now is getting hard, they're going hard against the cartels?
Nope. Nope. It's Sinaloa?
I don't know what it is.
It is Sinaloa, I guess.
Thank you. No, the bigger cartel has friends in the army?
Thank you. That is the correct answer.
The correct answer is that another cartel controls the military and the government and told the military and the government to get rid of their competition.
That's what it looks like to me.
I'm alleging. I don't know this, of course.
So I'm alleging. But it looks to me like one of the cartels took out the weaker cartel.
That's all it looks like to me.
If you hear that the Mexican military moves against the head of the Sinaloa cartel, then you have my attention.
But when the military that may in fact side with the Sinaloa cartel, I'm just wondering, maybe, possibly, when they take out a business competitor of the biggest cartel, I don't know if that's telling you what you think it's telling you.
You know what I mean? So here's the question I ask.
You know, you always see these pictures of the coyotes, the cartel employees who are helping the migrants get across.
And apparently the cartels make huge amounts of money charging the immigrants a god-awful amount to get across the border.
And they can't get across without the cartels because the cartels are literally guarding the border on their side.
But when we see the videos, you can always see the coyotes.
And they're real obvious.
You know exactly which ones are the coyotes, and you know which ones are the poor immigrants who are trying to get to a better life.
And I ask you this.
Why can't we use snipers and take them out?
Now, it would require an act of war or something, probably, but we could get that done.
Or drones.
But if we can see them...
And we know they work for the cartel, and we know they're bringing in fentanyl and killing us by tens of thousands a year.
Do you think that we couldn't...
Now, politically, it would never happen, so I'm not saying this is practical.
I also live in the real world where it would never happen.
But remember, I also suggested droning the cartels.
You thought that was crazy, until the news reported that Trump was asking about it.
Let me tell you what artists do that's of value to the civilization.
I read a book on this.
I forget the author, but it's the first time I've heard this idea.
Apparently, there are many examples in history of where art preceded science or predicted the future.
Now, you know lots of famous ones like H.G. What is it?
Who wrote the stories about rocket ships and stuff like that?
So artists have always predicted in science fiction what's going to happen, etc.
But it's also happened in science.
There are some artists who conceived of things before science actually discovered it was true.
And there's this idea that you can't act until you can imagine something.
Or you can't find it until you can imagine it.
In other words, you could walk right past something that you had never imagined without recognizing it.
So you have to imagine something.
H.G. Wells, thank you.
H.G. Wells predicted a lot of rocket ship travel and stuff.
And so here's what I'm doing for civilization.
Before I mention the possibility of using military snipers to take out the coyotes...
Has anybody thought about it?
Because I've never heard anybody talk about it.
Have you ever heard anybody talk about that idea?
Oh, you have? You've heard somebody talk about it?
In public or privately?
Oh, yes, but I'm in the military.
But have you heard anybody talk about it in a political sense in public?
Oh. Well, Special Forces, of course, right.
But what I'm suggesting is a little more radical than sending special forces, believe it or not.
Just imagine this visual.
There's a line of immigrants crossing, and there's a coyote usually standing somewhere in the stream, and you see a video of that happening, and then you see the head of the coyote just being blown off.
And just, like, his headless body just falls into the river.
And then repeat.
Just repeat. Just keep doing it and making sure you get it on video every time.
How many videos of a...
How many videos, viral videos, of a coyote having his head taken clean off would you need to publish before coyotes wouldn't want to do that anymore?
Not many, right?
Three. Three.
You might have to take three heads off.
And then nobody would do it anymore.
That would be it. Because it would be on everybody's phones in Mexico.
Everybody would see it. Yeah, about three.
Because our brain forms a pattern at about three.
If you did three, people would think it was a hundred.
Now, am I suggesting it as a practical matter?
I don't know. I'm no...
I'm an international expert.
I just know that fentanyl is coming into the country and killing us.
And if he asked me what I would be willing to do about it, if it were up to me, I would be willing to blow the head clean off of every coyote.
Let me say it again. With no moral qualms whatsoever, if it's up to me, and I'm president, I'm going to start taking the heads off of all the coyotes.
And I don't care which side of the border they're on.
And if Mexico complains, I will take their complaint under consideration.
And then I'll blow the head off another coyote.
And then Mexico will complain and they'll say, gosh, you know, I feel bad about that, but we're going to keep doing it.
And I would just keep blasting coyotes until nobody got close to it.
Somebody's asking me if I'm stoned.
No, I don't act like this when I'm stoned.
I'm usually less murderous.
Now, I'm only murderous when there's a reason.
I'm not like murderous in general.
No, I'm not high, as a matter of fact, which would be ironic in its own way.
Do you think we could do a declaration of war against the Mexican cartels?
I believe we could. We could not do maybe a declaration of war against the cartels.
I'm sorry, against the Mexican government.
That would be a bad look.
But we could declare war against the cartels.
Because all you have to do is declare them international terrorists.
Am I right? Okay.
What's the difference between China shipping precursors for fentanyl into the cartels and then the cartels moving it in?
The fact that the cartel is just trying to make money...
And probably their intention has nothing to do with destroying the United States.
But Mexico does.
I'm sorry, not Mexico. But China does.
China has a goal of destroying the United States through terrorist acts such as this.
So the cartels are just working with China as terrorists.
Now, it's not their purpose.
They're just trying to make money.
But their functional use is terrorism.
So if you tell me that ISIS had set up territory in Mexico, are you telling me we couldn't get government approval to take out ISIS in Mexico?
Of course we could.
We wouldn't even hesitate.
So what's the difference between the cartels, what the cartels are doing, and fucking ISIS? None.
There's no difference. There's no difference that matters.
There's a difference. There's no difference that should matter to how we treat it.
If you put a deadly risk in my neighbor's backyard and my neighbor won't do anything about it, I'm going to kill the neighbor.
I'm going to kill my neighbor if he does something that's going to kill me first.
Of course. So, you know, if we're acting like, oh, Mexico is our good friend, of course they are.
But it doesn't have any impact on what you do about reducing your own risk.
Scott, you're Fed posting.
What is Fed posting?
Is that like I work for the Feds?
Is that what you think? I'm being asked if I would kill the coyotes if they were trans.
No, I would not.
I would not. If the coyotes decide to be trans, I would let them go.
I would not. Because I don't want to be part of making the problem worse.
I'm only just trying to solve this drug problem.
But good question.
All right. So Joe Manchin, it looks like he's going to kill the big climate bill that would be expensive.
Does anybody think that Manchin is doing this for any other reason than because he has a lot of coal business in his state and they probably support him for re-election and God knows what else?
I mean, it's just for the coal. But it's interesting because our system lets him do that.
Not only lets him do that, but encourages it, really.
I mean, he does represent his state.
His state does benefit from coal.
I don't know. I go back and forth about Manchin.
Do you have the same problem? Because on one hand, I think, oh, he's doing exactly what his voters want.
It doesn't work for us, but that's how the system works.
And so, you know, I accept it as part of the system.
But on the other hand, don't you kind of suspect that maybe he's doing it because Big Cole gives him money?
I don't know that. But is it the most obvious thing you would want to ask?
Are you going to get any side benefits from Big Coal in any way?
You know, it's a question to ask.
So it looks like Biden is going to fail completely on this big green energy thing because of Manchin.
And somebody pointed out that his last name is Manchin.
It sounds exactly like, you know, what he's doing.
He's putting his chin out there.
All right. How many murderers do each of you know?
I want to do a poll here.
How many murderers do you personally know?
People that you've talked to, had a conversation with.
Like actual murderers, guaranteed murderers.
I've seen a number of you.
Somebody said two, three.
Two. Now, I'm not going to count military.
Not military. One.
One. None.
No, don't count abortion.
Just for this purpose. Don't count it.
Snipers don't count.
Yeah. One suspected.
I was thinking the other day that I know two.
And I thought, how many other...
At least three.
Wow. And I wondered how many people know, actually personally know a murderer.
The most famous one wrote a book about it.
And he lived in the cubicle on the other side of the little cubicle wall for me when I worked at Pacific Bell.
So he worked in marketing.
And he was the cubicle.
Literally, if I'm looking at my computer, he's just there on the other side of the little wall.
And he murdered a friend, strangled him with a belt, went to jail, and wrote a good book about it.
He mentioned me in the book.
So I think I know one convicted, at least.
You know two. Erica knows two.
Wow. Wow. You've met a guy who said he was an assassin.
I once had a friend who said she dated a contract killer.
And her story was that in the middle of the night you get a call and he'd take out his little contract killer gun You know, with the silencer, you'd assemble it, and they'd be gone for several hours.
They'd come back several hours later, presumably having just killed somebody, and she reports that the sex was excellent.
So apparently, if you have sex with a contract killer right after he does his job, really good.
It's really good. So if you're looking to upgrade your sexual experience, I would recommend a contract killer.
Somebody says, my wife murdered my inner joy.
We'll take that as a murder.
All right. Yes, it is disgusting.
True, but disgusting.
All right, let me ask you this.
How many of you have been in jail?
I see one person saying so.
How many of you personally have been in jail?
Mostly no's. Smattering of yeses.
I assume most of the yeses are probably, you know, young person mischief.
Yep. Oh, just visiting doesn't count.
Drunk tank, yep.
That's a lot of people on this.
Well, I'm seeing quite a difference on the...
On the Locals platform.
So the people who pay a subscription to see my extra content, there are a lot of criminals in this group.
You can't see it, but compared to the YouTube answers, on YouTube it's, no, no, of course not, no.
Over on Locals, it's, yep, yep, three years, yep, yep.
It's not quite that bad, I'm exaggerating.
But it does look like there's a difference.
Apparently I attract a criminal element.
Yeah, being a criminal is relative.
Very interesting.
For selling pot. Oh my God.
Your ex-boyfriend may have pushed his next girlfriend off a roof.
Okay. That's scary.
YouTubers don't get caught.
Okay, that's funny.
All right, locals, you've been insulted, but cleverly so.
So I'm going to repeat it.
I said there are more criminals, it seemed like, on the locals' platform, and somebody on YouTube says, the YouTubers don't get caught.
That's pretty funny. I'm going to try to create some kind of cattle and sheep friction between the locals and the YouTube people for no good reason.
Over on Locals, they're saying to the YouTubers, F you!
They stole my wedding ring.
What? Alright, so that's enough for now.
It's kind of a slow news day, so we're going to let it go.
Let's get to our day.
Let me just give you a little summary of things.
Did you notice that gas prices are down?
They're still way too high, but they are down.
You've noticed that nuclear plants are being not decommissioned as much as they were.
It looks like even Japan is going more pro-nuclear again.
So nuclear energy is up.
I don't think the next mask mandate, which I think they'll try, I don't think it's going to work.
I feel like the public is just about done with the mask mandates.
We'll see. But we're close.
Yeah, Generation 4 nuclear is being built in, is it Wyoming?
And... In my opinion, the odds of a nuclear conflict with Russia are, I'd say, about zero right now.
Wouldn't you? Yeah.
So we went from that was a real risk to no.
I would say that we're moving our manufacturing from China, not quickly, but it doesn't have to be quick.
We just have to stop moving it there, which I believe has already happened.
Am I right? We did stop moving it there.
Now, what you're worried about, the labor coming across the border.
See what I did there? Did you catch that?
I talked about the labor coming across the border.
I didn't mean to do that, but that was manipulative as hell.
That was accidental, by the way, because I was thinking ahead with my point.
But in a condition where it's hard to hire, one of the biggest problems in the economy right now is there are not enough people.
Right? There are not enough people to hire.
At the same time, we have hordes of people coming across the border.
Now, they may not be trained in the right ways, but they're going to pick up some of the slack for things that nobody's doing.
So we do have massive illegal immigration.
At the same time, we have massive need for employees.
It's not the worst problem, is it?
Now, let me be clear.
I'm in favor of strong border control.
And I'm in favor of us ratcheting up or down our immigration based on our economic situation.
If I were in charge of the border right now, do you know what I'd do?
I'd open it up. Because economically, I'm pretty sure we need workers more than we need to stop them.
You know, because there is crime, there is other things coming.
But give me just, you know, we don't have all the information, but do you think that you have the same issue with illegal immigration when we need the workers?
Does it feel the same?
And I get that we're, you know, there's a crime element coming in with, you know, good people, right?
But this would be exactly the time I would have opened the border if we had fully controlled borders.
If we had a wall that worked along the whole border, this is when I would have opened the door.
That's fucking with your brains, isn't it?
This is a fascinating experience on my side, because I see the nature of the comments in real time as they're going by.
And doesn't it fuck you up to know that I'm a totally strong border?
Always have been. You should seal that border so a fucking ant can't get through unless you want it to, right?
So you need total control of your border, and if we have high unemployment, you close it.
If you have low unemployment like we do now and a shortage of workers, you open it wide.
Yeah, and what's weird about this is I know that most of you, almost all of you, are really strong against illegal immigration, as am I, illegal.
I'm very strong against illegal immigration.
But I don't see any pushback to this, and I don't know what's going on, because it's not like any of you are shy.
Oh, open it for illegal immigration.
Well, I see what you're saying, but that's a slightly different topic.
I'm saying that I would let them in legally and track them and whatever we need to do.
But here's my point, and I feel like you agreed, but you don't want to say it.
So I'm going to say it again.
I want to see if you can go the extra distance.
I don't think you can.
So this is sort of a challenge to your mental flexibility.
Could you go all the way to, at the moment, because we need the workers, That the illegal immigration is not a problem in the way that it normally would be.
Can you go there? Who can go there with me?
It's a tough place to go because if your entire political opinion has been, no, no, no illegal immigration.
Now, if you could, release on the fact that they're illegal for a moment and just concentrate on the fact that it's either good or bad for the economy.
Is it good or is it bad for the U.S. economy?
Mostly no's. Okay.
Mostly no's. Almost all no's, actually.
All right. Well...
All right, here's my proposition.
At the moment, without doing a deep dive, and the deep dive could change my opinion, on the surface, it looks like this is when I would have opened the doors.
On the surface. But there might be more to the story.
How many go on welfare?
I'll bet not nearly as many are sucking up resources as are adding to it.
But that's what you need the economists for.
You need the experts in this field.
All right, let me ask you the question in a different way.
Are you ready for this?
Let's say, hypothetically, and this has not happened, let's say the best economists that you know...
Oh, okay, I'll give you a specific one.
This is hypothetical.
Suppose Thomas Sowell...
Who is one of the most respected economists on the Republican side.
Suppose, and he has not said this, right?
This is just hypothetical.
Suppose he said, all right, I've looked into it, and while I hate illegal immigration, I imagine he'd say that.
You know, I'm just speculating.
He'd agree with you. I hate illegal immigration.
First choice would be controlling our border.
But on this narrow question of whether it helps the economy or hurts it, it is my opinion that it helps it at the moment.
Suppose he said that.
Now, and in this hypothetical, he knows more about the economy than you do, and you agree.
If Thomas Sowell said that at this moment, the illegal immigration, illegal immigration, is helping our economy a little bit more than it's hurting it, would it change your mind just for the short run?
Go. I saw yes.
I saw sure. I see some yeses.
Interesting. I did not know if that would work.
A lot of nos. Now, if you said no, what would be your reasoning?
If your reasoning is about the illegal part, remember, that's the part I removed from the question.
Safety. I don't think safety...
Here's my problem with the safety issue.
Are the immigrants coming from south of the border bringing in more crime than the average of the public that's already here?
Well, let me ask you that. Does that matter?
Suppose you thought you needed the workers, so economically that wasn't your problem.
So suppose that you weren't worried about the economics, temporarily, but you were worried about the extra safety problem, criminal element.
If I told you that, and I don't know that this is true, but if I told you that the average of the people coming across the border is actually less crime than the average that's already here, But of course it's more people, so it's more crime.
Maybe it doesn't matter to you that the average would go down.
Maybe it only matters that there's more of it.
But if you need that more of it to operate your economy, that's different.
So I think what's happening, possibly, I want to open your mind to this possibility, which I do not claim is the truth.
I'm going to make I'm going to make two claims that I do not know to be the truth, but very well could be.
The first claim is that at this moment, we're in a very strange period of time where we need the labor more than we need to stop it.
That's the first claim, and I don't know that that's true.
I would look to a Thomas Sowell or something like that to confirm.
The second claim, and this is far more speculative...
Is if you looked at the total body of illegal immigrants, and I'm not even sure if you should include the second generation, because it's all connected, right?
Maybe you include the second generation, too, to get a really good clean look.
Is that fair? If I were to look at the crime from illegal immigration, would you allow me to include their second generation as part of the whole picture?
I think so. If you looked at the first and the second generation, would their average crime be higher or lower than what was already here?
I think it would be lower.
I don't know. And that's purely anecdotal and speculative.
I think it's lower. The thing you don't see if you don't live around the immigrant community is how much they really, really don't want to get caught for doing a crime.
Because the penalty's worse.
They go back to Mexico or wherever, right?
There's a bigger penalty.
And they know it. And they didn't come here to get arrested and get sent back.
That's the opposite of what they want in every way.
I think they're lowering the crime rate in America.
Now let me ask you this.
If all they did was bring in a bunch of people who were...
Oh, can I say this without being kicked off of social media?
Give me a pause.
I don't know, this would be a close one.
You want me to fly close to the sun?
Yeah, I don't think I could do that.
Yeah, it's not worth it.
All right. So I'll just say that I think you cannot rule out the possibility that they're improving the economy and lowering the crime rate.
I don't think you can rule that out.
They may be increasing the amount of crime, and if that bothers you, that's actually rational.
They might increase the total number of crime, because whenever you increase the total number of people...
Necessarily, you increase crime.
But you know, every time you have a baby, you increase crime, right?
Did you know that? That if you ban abortion, you've increased crime.
You all know that, right? I mean, not just the crime of the abortion.
Everybody gets that? If you banned all abortions, your crime would go way up.
Not your crime rate.
If I said your crime rate, I'd be a racist.
So I don't say that.
You're total about crime.
There's just more people. More people equals more crime.
So if you think that everything that creates more people because it brings more crime is bad, be consistent.
Everywhere there's more people being added to the country, you should say, no, I don't want more people.
I don't want you to have a baby.
Don't have a baby that will add more crime.
Not necessarily your baby, but if everybody had babies, you're going to get more crime.
All right, Freakonomics made the claim.
I think that was... I heard a debunk of the Freakonomics claim.
There's a book called Freakonomics in which they said that the reason crime decreased seemingly everywhere in the United States at the same time is that because abortion was legalized and you're seeing the benefit of fewer unwanted, let's call them babies, who are more likely to commit crimes, say the statistics.
But I feel like that got...
I saw somebody take a run at debunking that, but I don't know if the debunk was better than the book or vice versa.
Fewer people in a certain age range equals lower crime rate.
That is correct. If you have a higher percentage of senior citizens in the population, that's a good point.
Why have I never thought of that before?
Yeah, if you have a higher ratio of senior citizens, your crime rate would be low, theoretically.
And that's where we are.
Yeah.
Well, Scott, benefit.
What are you talking about?
More DoorDash robberies.
Millionaires seem to love cheap labor.
Yes, yes.
You know, when I talk about the fact that I'm friendlier to immigration, even illegal immigration, although I want zero illegal immigration, but we also have to deal with the fact that it exists.
If I seem softer on it, and then you say to yourself, well, Scott, that's easy for you to say because you just get cheap labor, you're right.
You're right. That's exactly what you should say about me.
You are absolutely correct that there's no way that I'm uninfluenced by the fact that it benefits me personally.
Of course I am.
Immigration tends to be a personal problem.
I don't know if you've noticed that.
Immigration tends to be a personal problem.
If you've had experience with any immigrants or that world, you have an opinion, and if you don't, You're dealing with it on some conceptual level, and that's really different.
But I don't deal with immigration on a conceptual level completely.
So anybody who says I'm being biased by positive association with the immigrant community, I want to tell you that's true.
I am absolutely biased by repeated positive interactions with the illegal immigrant community.
Consistently positive. And...
I don't know.
There's nothing I can do about that, right?
I mean, I could be aware of it.
I could call it out. I could be transparent that it exists.
But I can't make it go away.
You know the whole thing, people won't remember what you said, but they'll remember how you made them feel.
I forget who said that famous quote.
But that's exactly true with the illegal immigrant community.
I don't remember what they said, but I always remember how they made me feel.
And they always make me feel great.
So, fairly consistently.
How many criminals do you know?
Lots. Lots.
If you count the ones who haven't been caught, it's everybody.
Pretty much everybody.
Which party do you think immigrants will vote for?
Well, you know, famously people are noticing that it's changing, right?
I think the funniest thing is that the Democrats think that the hard-working immigrants who understand motivation and how motivation and economics work, because they're...
You can't get closer to it than an illegal immigrant.
That's as close as you can get to human motivation equals profit, right?
Like, they're living it. To imagine that the people who come out of that experience will turn into Democrats.
Maybe. Maybe.
But I live in the real world.
Let me tell you a little secret.
Here's a California secret.
Get into any mixed group of people.
Where I live, it's always mixed.
It's pretty rare to be talking to a bunch of white people in California.
There's always a mix.
And then privately, peel off one of the brown or black ones in your group and then talk about politics.
You get a really different feel.
It doesn't... I don't know if it's a local thing or what.
But I don't get anybody born in another country who's Democrat.
People born in other countries...
Actually, I'm thinking of some exceptions now, so I'm exaggerating too much.
There are some exceptions.
But I'm always surprised When somebody born in another country came over here, worked hard, made something of themselves, obviously they lean Republican.
Because everything they did was a Republican plan.
Work hard, stay in a jail, go to school, take care of your family.
It's pure Republican dogma.
It's their own version of it.
When they get here, who are they going to fit?
Religion? Yeah, belief in God.
Stevie says I'm so naive.
Here's what I think. I think that because there are a lot of Hispanic Democrat voters at the moment, we imagine that that's how it will always go.
But I think the Democratic Party of today is such a turn-off that an immigrant today, being exposed to both of them for the first time, would say, well, one's talking about pronouns...
And climate change that I don't even get.
It's not my problem at the moment.
And the other is wants to lower my taxes and, you know, is tough on crime and says work hard.
Like, who do you...
Yeah. And the Hispanic community is not so big in the Latinx names.
I mean, that's all just coming from Democrats.
Yeah. Yeah.
Everybody I know who came from Mexico loves capitalism.
That's why they came here.
All right. I believe we have exhausted all our topics, and we have come to the conclusion of one of the best things that's ever happened.
It's called Coffee with Scott Ems.
I will design the mug, still working on it, and it will be the most awesome thing ever.
And tomorrow I'll be back.
Yeah, I'll be back.
If not tonight. Oh.
So at the moment...
You know, I don't know exactly what my plans will be today, but there's a good chance I might do a Man Cave episode tonight.
And if I do, I do that without YouTube.
So we'll do a test of the locals' video and audio, because it could be that I'm running both platforms at the same time.
It might be something happening on my end.
I will try to not leave out the East Coast by doing it earlier if I do it.
