Episode 1850 Scott Adams: More Obvious Lies From The FBI And DOJ. All The Gaslighting Going On Now
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
The enormity of Rob Reiner questioning a known fact
Imagining election rigging under current conditions
"Semi-Fascist" by definition is which political party?
If Iran gets nukes, won't entire middle east need nukes?
MIT invents new type of battery, liquid metal battery
Probable cause to believe possible obstruction?
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All right. To me, the most interesting story that just continues is that Bill Maher interview with Rob Reiner.
And I had to watch it again.
Because it's really interesting to watch it live.
When you read about it and you just see the quotes, it really doesn't capture the enormity of the moment.
And the enormity of the moment is that it captured everything that's wrong with all of the political conversation.
Because there was somebody who was a big, you know, Rob Reiner, a prominent Democrat voice, Specifically an anti-Trump voice.
And there was a major news story, you know, the suppression of the Honda laptop, that he was completely unaware of.
I mean, that's a big, big story.
To be completely unaware of that means you don't really understand anything that's going on.
Because if you don't know that your own government would not only suppress that, But admit it.
And the news would say, yeah, we did that.
That probably shouldn't have done that, but we did that.
They just admit it.
And he questioned whether that is a known fact.
And Bill Maher had to tell him, it's not only a known fact, they've confessed.
They confessed. The people who did it say they did it.
And Rob Reiner didn't know.
So, I give Bill Maher an A-plus for asking the question, but he still fell just short of the real question.
So the way he asked it, Bill Maher, was, you know, if Trump is so dangerous, is it true that anything would be justified to keep him out of office?
Now, the anything would be justified covers, you know, the whole range.
Anything. Anything. But here's the question you really want to ask, isn't it?
If you're a Democrat, and you think Trump is this dangerous, and you have the ability to rig an election to keep him out of office, would you do it?
And should you do it?
See, that's the question.
Because here's the thing that pisses me off.
I personally have no information that would suggest the election was rigged in a major way that I can confirm.
So let me say that right off the bat.
No court has said that the 2020 election was illegitimate, and I'm not personally aware of any information that would change that assumption.
However, however, when people tell me that it's unreasonable to imagine the election would be rigged, I can't sit still for that.
Okay, I'm okay when you say the evidence has not been shown in any conclusive way.
Okay. Okay.
But when you go further from that and say, oh, that's a ridiculous thing to imagine that an election could be rigged, under these conditions?
Under these conditions, it would be ridiculous to imagine it wasn't.
Am I wrong? The baseline assumption is that under these conditions, these very unique conditions, that people literally think that Hiller was going to be re-elected, under those conditions, you need to prove you didn't rig the election.
Am I wrong?
If all of the reasons suggest you should...
And you're probably able, I don't know that for sure, but one imagines that if you worked at it you could find some way to rig an election.
You might have to get more people in on it to cover it up.
But one imagines it's possible, right?
I haven't heard anybody argue that rigging an election can't be done under any situation.
I've only heard somebody say they believe it wasn't done.
But nobody said it can't be done.
Under all scenarios, there's just no way to do it.
Nobody said that. And so, isn't the most reasonable assumption that in this specific situation where the people running the elections believe they could save the world by rigging the election, the assumption has to be that they did.
The assumption has to be that they did.
Because the opposite assumption is actually nonsensical.
It would be like...
I know how much you like analogies, because they're so persuasive.
I'm not even going to bother.
I'm just saying that if you start with the assumption that Trump is what you think he is, it would be ridiculous to imagine that the election was not rigged to prevent him from office.
That would be a ridiculous assumption.
Now, if somebody couldn't figure out how to do it, or they were afraid of getting caught, that would hold them back.
But it's ridiculous to imagine that under this specific set of assumptions that Trump is so dangerous, it's ridiculous to assume that they didn't at least look into it.
Am I right? Do you think nobody looked into it?
Do you think there was no Democrat involved in any election process who didn't say to themselves, you know, hypothetically, I'm not saying I'll do it, If we're just doing a sort of a mental exercise here, you know, could do it this way, maybe.
Well, let's talk about the FBI brand.
Talk about timing.
Have you noticed that timing is the most important thing all the time?
Like, if the energy is just right...
For the thing that happens, then it takes off.
But look at this timing.
So you remember the NXIVM alleged sex cult situation?
There was a subgroup of NXIVM that was an alleged sex cult.
And their leader went to jail and FBI were involved in putting that case together.
And now there's an ex-FBI agent.
This is not the newest of news, but it's worth resurfacing.
So this ex-FBI agent looked at the evidence that convicted the head of this group, Keith Raniere, and decided that one of the photographs on the laptop, Raniere's laptop, that it was the date had been altered.
And that the day had been altered to make it seem as if the picture had been taken at a time that would prove that Keith Ranieri was having sex with an underage girl.
17, I think. 15, whatever it was.
Now... Separate from the question of whether any of those things happened is the question of whether any evidence was rigged or faked.
So there's an ex-FBI agent who looked at it and said, oh yeah, this is definitely faked, because he just looks at the file, looks at the file name, and apparently there's some way to know when it got changed or the date got changed.
Now, here's the question.
It's an ex-FBI agent who's accusing current FBI agents, I believe, or at least law enforcement.
So there's only one of two possibilities.
Either law enforcement lied, or an ex-FBI agent is incompetent or lied.
Neither of those things is good for law enforcement.
Because either the current bunch are lying or incompetent, or this ex-SBI agent who wasn't ex that long ago is also incompetent or lying.
But whichever way you look at it, there's somebody involved with law enforcement who definitely is incompetent or lying.
That's the one thing you can say about the NXIVM case.
No matter what Keith Raniere did or didn't do, the one thing we can know for sure is Is that people recently associated with the FBI and law enforcement are definitely incompetent or lying.
We just don't know which ones.
We don't know which ones.
That's it. But we don't have to wonder about the quality of the people in the organization.
That part's been answered.
Let me do something that maybe is a little counter to what's been going on.
I keep hearing people say, oh, we're only talking about the leadership of the FBI and the Department of Justice.
We're not trying to impugn the integrity of the rank-and-file people who are just patriots and doing their job as best they can.
I'm not going to get on that train.
Nope. Nope.
If you work for an organization where the top of the organization is corrupt, you've got something to do about that.
Leave the organization or be a whistleblower or work on fixing it.
But you don't get a pass. You don't get a pass.
I'm certainly willing to say that the rank and file committed no crimes.
Are we all okay with that?
Most of the rank and file committed no crimes.
But you're not off the hook.
You're not off the hook.
If I belong to an organization that's doing horrible things and I continue to be part of the organization, I'm not innocent.
I'm not innocent.
If I willingly am supporting that group that's doing terrible things, I think the rank and file need to do something on their own.
Maybe police their own, do whatever it takes.
But I think they're in an unfortunate situation.
Through no fault of their own, their brand is being tarnished.
But it's still their responsibility.
Even though they're under the lower-ranked people, it's still their responsibility.
Alright, so Biden has referred to the ultra-mega people as semi-fascist.
And so I looked up the definition of fascist to figure out what semi-fascist would be.
And fascist would be the government controls industry.
Basically, right? That's when the government is in control of the private businesses, so they're not exactly private because the government controls them, and that the government suppresses freedoms, etc.
So what would be semi-fascist?
Well, full fascist is completely controlling industry.
Semi-fascist would be partially controlling industry, right?
That's just what semi means.
You're not completely controlling industry, you're semi-controlling them.
What political group would be most associated with semi-trying to control industry?
Would it be the ones who want to remove regulations or the people who want to put on regulations?
Well, I would say the people putting on regulations are trying to control them.
Democrats. Would it be the people who are increasing the taxes on these businesses or the ones who are decreasing the taxes?
Well, I'd say the ones controlling them are the ones increasing the taxes.
The ones not controlling them are the ones saying, you don't need to give us any taxes.
Do what you want. How about if you were trying to make industry comply with ESG, the idea that industry should pollute less and be better for the environment and have more diverse governorship?
They should be governed by more diverse boards, etc.
Where does that come from?
Is that coming from Republicans?
Or is it coming from left-leaning people?
It's left-leaning people.
So if you were to look at fascist means completely controlling the industry, semi-fascist would be partly controlling the industry, there's no question that's the Democrats.
Is it? I mean, to me, it looks exactly like they're trying to control industry.
But that's not all.
So being a fascist would also be trying to control free speech.
Which group is more associated with not eliminating free speech, but really reducing it?
You know, semi-fascist.
Full fascist would be no free speech.
Semi-fascist would be, well, you're not going to go to jail necessarily, but we might take away your social media access so you can't be heard.
Semi-fascist.
Am I wrong that half-fascist describes the Democrats fairly accurately?
Right? Now, and I'm not trying to make a Republican versus Democrat, you know, partisan point.
I'm just saying, what do words mean?
It's just what words mean, right?
And it's amazing that fascist has turned into such a non-word that you can use it in any context.
It's like the insult that you can use at any time.
What do you mean you're out of coffee?
You fascist? I mean, you just throw it in anywhere.
All right. Mike Cernovich continues to be provocative.
I don't know if he knows how to not be provocative.
But he tweeted that he wouldn't be interested in mountain climbing because it would be too easy for the deep state to make him disappear.
And people said, what?
What? He actually thinks the deep state might try to murder him If he had some kind of a hobby that would make it easy to murder him.
Now, he went further on another tweet, because people questioned that, of course.
And he said, quote, to kill me or frame me for a crime, the deep state only has to be lucky once.
I have to be lucky every day.
The pressure would break most people.
I don't wish it on anyone.
For me, it's good.
Keeps me away from sinful behavior and requires vigilance.
How we should all live.
Now, what do you think?
Is that hyperbole?
Do you think that Mike Cernovich specifically, not talking generally, just specifically, Do you think that Mike Cernovich has a risk of being murdered or taken out, let's say, by scandal or some kind of allegation or legal process?
Do you think the deep state is trying to take Mike Cernovich out?
There was a time that I would have scoffed at this.
There was a time I would have said, nobody's trying to take you out.
But now I would say this is a reasonable take.
I think that it seems obvious that influential voices who are more associated with the right, I'm not sure if you would even identify that way, but people that other people associated with the right are all being targeted, are they not? So he's definitely being targeted.
You don't think that if the left had a way to put Cernovich in jail, you don't think that they'd chase that?
Of course they would. Because every time you take a piece off the chessboard, you get a little advantage.
And it looks like they'd do just about anything for advantage.
Alright, so what about me?
Do you think I have been or will be a target?
to be taken out by the media or deep state?
Here's the difference between Cernovich and me on this topic.
I also believe that I'm on the target list So there's no doubt that people who are prominent in the Democratic Party have wondered how to take me out.
Would you say that's fair?
There are probably people who have, you know, worked on the question of how to take me out.
I think that's fair.
You're definitely going to see some kind of major hit piece in a big publication between now and December, or between now and elections.
Probably before the presidential elections, because I don't have that much influence on congressional stuff.
Now here's the thing.
I'm not worried about them taking me out.
Do you know why I'm not worried?
Do you know why I'm not worried about the deep state taking me out?
Because it's already factored in.
I think it's going to happen.
I don't know how. I mean, I would guess against murder.
I doubt I'll be killed.
But maybe. Who knows?
But I think my fate is to go down hard.
I suspect that, you know, my story ends in flames.
I've always assumed I would probably be assassinated.
That's factored in. So my actions are not going to be changed by that because I don't think I can change it.
I think I end poorly, one way or the other.
I just don't know when.
But it does feel like, you know, it does feel like I'm not going to go to...
I'm not going to make it all the way.
So I do think that it's a dangerous kind of thing that Cernovich does, and a dangerous thing that I do.
But he's got kids, and he needs to stay alive.
And I'm a little more...
I think I'm a little more willing to go.
I wouldn't mind going for a good reason.
I suppose if I got murdered, but it made my messages take on a bigger life, that might be good.
You never know. Anyway, I don't want to go fully dark, but we do live in a world where a prominent voice worried about getting taken out, you have to think that's real.
I think that's real.
Now, I don't know what my odds are, but I've just factored that into my decision.
Speaking of that sort of thing, Lindsey Graham has said in a video, he's on video saying that there'd be riots in the street if Trump is prosecuted.
This is being interpreted by the left as an effort to encourage political violence.
Everything is upside down and backwards.
Yes is no. Black is white.
Wet is dry. There's nothing you can say that someone won't look at it and say, well, I conclude the opposite.
It seems to me that Lindsey Graham is trying to decrease violence by warning that prosecuting him...
Now, keep in mind that Lindsey Graham is working from current information.
Our current information is that there's no crime to prosecute Trump.
So under the current situation that there's no crime, if Trump gets prosecuted, yeah, there would be a pretty big public reaction.
So don't you think it's a good idea to not prosecute an ex-president unless there's an actual crime in evidence?
So he's talking kind of hypothetically.
So to imagine that this is promoting violence, do you think that nobody would have thought of rioting in the streets unless Lindsey Graham had mentioned it?
Do you think the militias are all there, ooh, we weren't going to activate, but Lindsey Graham said something on that video once.
So we better do it.
I don't think it works that way.
I feel like Lindsey Graham is simply describing the situation.
If you imagine he's causing the situation, you're not really understanding the nature of anything.
Lindsey Graham can't cause this.
He's just describing it.
What do you think? What do you think about the truth of it?
If Trump gets, let's say, prosecuted, do you think there will be riots in the streets?
Yes or no? Riots in the street, if he gets prosecuted, yes or no?
Oh, this is interesting.
It's mostly no's.
Mostly no's. There are some yes's.
But Waymore knows.
Now, why do you say that?
See, it's a trick question.
It's actually a terrible question.
It's a very unfair question.
Because you're all forced to make an assumption.
If you assume that he was prosecuted for an actual real crime, well, there would be...
I don't think there would be riots.
Let me say the question better.
If you believed he was being prosecuted for an actual crime...
A crime you could actually observe yourself and say, oh shit, that's a crime.
Do you think there'd be riots if it was an actual crime that got proven?
I think there'd be protests, but not a big deal.
Not a big deal. If the case is made, Republicans are rule followers.
Republicans are not going to abandon everything that they believe most basically, the rule of law.
I don't think Republicans are going to abandon the rule of law for one candidate, if they believe the law has been broken.
Now, the gray area is if Republicans don't believe he broke any laws and he's getting prosecuted anyway.
In that case, in that case, If you believed he was unfairly prosecuted, riots or no riots?
Riots or no riots?
If you believed he was unfairly prosecuted, riots or no riots?
Really? People are still saying no riots?
Unfairly prosecuted, no riots?
Maybe? Wow!
You know, I think I'm going to be influenced by your answers.
Now, is the reason just because Republicans don't riot?
Is that why? Yeah, somebody says that directly.
Republicans don't riot.
Huh. Yeah, you might be right.
I'm not going to disagree with you.
I was curious what you would say.
All right. Have you ever been frustrated...
By the fact that the news is almost entirely about stuff we don't know.
And the press won't even ask the right questions.
At one point, I thought that the way I would, let's say, position myself in the public, at least in terms of talking about politics, was to be the person who helped the press ask the right questions.
Because I'm always frustrated when the press doesn't ask the right questions, the one I would ask.
And so I thought, wouldn't it be useful if there was some kind of public, I don't know, process or some kind of website where the news media could see what the public wants them to ask?
So you could go there and say, oh, boy, the public really, really wants me to ask this question.
It's the one voted to the top.
So I'm definitely going to ask that one first.
Wouldn't that be helpful? And think about the things that we don't know about.
The public doesn't really know what we spend money on, or why, because it's too complicated, and the news won't even bother trying to explain it because it's too complicated.
So the biggest thing that the country does is spend money.
All of our priorities, our policies, all of our everything is represented by spending money on it.
So the most important thing the country does, the public is completely blind We really don't know what is happening money-wise.
Nobody's watching the budget.
We don't know what any of these investigations will turn up.
So we don't know what Durham is going to find yet.
We had to wait forever for Mueller and then we couldn't agree what the document said.
Now we're waiting for this Mar-a-Lago stuff and we're waiting for something about Trump's taxes and We're always waiting for an investigation to conclude.
You can't make any decisions when you're waiting for stuff to be known.
We don't know what's in the Mar-a-Lago boxes.
We don't know what the Iran deal looks like.
We don't know what was in Hillary's emails.
We don't know if the UFOs are real or what the government knows about it.
And we don't know how we're going to ever pay off all our debt.
National debt. Yeah.
So it's really frustrating how many things we don't know.
Now, speaking of the Iran deal, Israel basically says they're not going to sign on to any kind of a deal that would give Iran a path to a nuclear device.
Now, Israel's complaint is that if Iran gets a nuke, it will cause the other nations in the area to need nukes of their own.
So then Saudi Arabia is going to say, well, if you've got nukes, we'd better have some nukes.
And then everybody's got nukes and it's more dangerous.
What do you think of that argument?
That if Iran gets nukes, the neighboring countries that maybe are afraid of Iran might have to get some nukes of their own.
Well, here's what I would do if I were Israel.
I would try to get the countries that would consider nukes to actually say they would build nukes if Iran does.
Wouldn't it be useful for Saudi Arabia to say, look, we don't want Iran to have a nuke, but if they build one, we're definitely building one, and here's our plans.
Here's our budget. We've already approved a budget to build a nuclear program.
But if Iran doesn't build one, we won't do it either.
So here's what I think Israel should do for persuasion.
They should somehow make visual the fact that the Iran deal is not about Iran.
It's about opening up the nuclear box for all of the Middle East.
Because there's nobody who thinks that a whole bunch of more nuclear powers in the Middle East is good for anybody.
So I think that would be their best play.
Their best play would say, if you don't stop it in Iran, it's going to be everywhere.
Now, of course, Israel would like to be the exception, have their nukes with nobody having them.
But, yeah, I think that's the angle they have to go for.
If the argument is limited to just Iran getting a nuke, apparently that's not having an influence on Biden.
But also, what do you think Israel is going to have to do if Iran and the United States and Europe come up with some kind of an Iran deal?
Because Israel's not going to sign off on it no matter what.
So it would be a European-American-Iran deal if there is one.
But what do you think Israel's going to do?
I think Israel would have to be far more aggressive in destroying their assets and their scientists wherever they can find them.
So, if you assume that Israel will not tolerate a nuclear Iran, and I don't think they will, then a peace deal with Iran guarantees war.
Doesn't it? I mean a nuclear agreement with Iran.
A nuclear agreement with Iran should guarantee war.
Not stop it. And Israel, I think, can make that case plain.
Look, if you make a deal and we're on our own, it's war.
I mean, it might be a covert war.
It might be an entirely deniable kind of war, like, oh, we don't know why that blew up.
But it is war.
I mean, it's full military, blow-up shit, kill-people war.
So I don't think Israel is doing a good job of laying out the alternative path.
The alternative path is nuclearized Middle East and war.
See, I think Israel is just...
They don't help themselves by being subtle.
If they say stuff like, well, we'll have to take greater action than Iran or something like that, just say it's war.
Just call it what it is.
If you make a deal with Iran, that's war.
We're going to pull out all the stops to directly attack Iran's infrastructure for supporting a nuclear bomb.
Because you know Israel will, right?
Do you think Israel's going to go soft?
Do you think Israel would say, well, you know, we wanted to stop them from getting a nuke, but now that this deal is signed, we'll just live with it.
You think they'll do that?
No. I think Israel's persuasion game is a little weak right now, which is unusual.
very unusual.
I think they could increase their persuasion game quite a bit.
All right.
So I asked this question about voting.
Here's something I had a big gap in my knowledge.
So for those voting precincts where everything's on paper, and then they tally up the results, When they transmit their totals to the big database in the sky that gives you the total totals, they can check their subtotals got there correctly, right? So in other words, do we have to worry about the digital path From the local precinct to the final database.
Because the local precinct can say, alright, we had X number of votes for Biden.
Did it get recorded that way?
Yup. X number of votes for Biden.
So I think that's probably not a big risk.
Because the precincts probably check to make sure their data got there.
If they can.
And I think they can. And I think it's even public, right?
It's probably public what the precinct voted, and then it would be public on the main database so you can see for yourself, I think.
So, is the only place that we should be worried about digital voting is where the voting machines themselves were tabulating votes at the local precinct.
And then transmitting it digitally.
Is that the only place that we would have a question?
Because I don't know if that even applies to any of the battlefield places, does it?
Are there any battlefield election locations where the voting is not done on paper?
Because I know we do have places where people vote entirely on digital machines, but I don't know if those are battleground places.
Are the battleground places mostly paper?
Somebody says, correct.
What?
Remember, Romney got zero votes in some Philadelphia precincts, yeah.
Right. They don't count at the precinct level.
What? You're telling me a precinct doesn't count its own votes?
Are they sent to a center that's counted?
So do they physically transport them before they're counted?
Oh my God, really?
Really? I don't believe that.
I don't believe that paper leaves the facility uncounted.
Are you kidding me?
There's a lot of people who think that locally...
The votes are taken, and you've got the votes on these ballots on pieces of paper, and that the pieces of paper are transported to another facility for counting.
They're not counted locally.
I guess that makes sense, because you wouldn't want a counting feature at every little local voting place.
Okay. I guess I'm going to accept that, because it does make sense that you wouldn't want a counting function at every little local polling place.
So, then how would we know if some of it disappeared?
The only way you'd know...
Well, you could count the total number of votes.
Right? So, would the local precinct at least know the total number of people who voted?
So they would know if the total got through, right?
Yeah. So, here's the thing that nobody's done a good job of explaining to the public.
Which is explain the whole process as if we're idiots because we are.
Put it in simple terms.
Person votes. Their piece of paper goes here.
It goes in this pile.
Then somebody batches them up and they put them in this truck.
And then the truck goes here. I want it that way.
Because I want somebody to explain, okay, because we check here and we check here, we can know with certainty that there was no problem in between.
Right? Wouldn't you like to know that?
But, because this happens and then this happens, there's still a little bit of risk here, but we haven't seen any problems, but it's something that's a little bit non-transparent.
Wouldn't you like to know that?
Yeah, I guess I realize the process is a little different in every state, but I think we can get a general sense, at least for the battleground places, how do they even handle it?
Because it seems to me there are probably local systems that are completely secure.
And I'll bet there are some that aren't.
In other words, if they all do it differently, well, let's use some common sense.
If the election processes are different at different places, doesn't that pretty much guarantee that some of them are not good?
Do you suppose that they use all kinds of different processes and they're all just as good?
They're all just as good.
It seems very unlikely, right?
It seems to me that the expensive ones are better and the cheaper ones are worse.
Probably it's just money.
Money plus time to implement, right?
So you would expect if it's like everything else in the world, there's this big range of very secure to, well, we're not so sure.
I'd love to know how that breaks down.
And whether the battleground states are even anything we should worry about.
I'm on the right trail now, somebody says.
It's the same trail I've always been on.
There's not enough transparency in the election system for the public to actually have a reasonable opinion about what happened.
Yeah, I've been saying that the elections are not fully auditable.
But maybe they're closer to fully auditable than I know.
Maybe, for example, maybe the battleground places are the most secure.
Right? If you happen to be in charge of a battleground state, don't you think you could get more money from the state to make sure yours was done right?
You'd say, we're the battleground state.
We're the most important one.
Give us a big budget so we do this right, because we don't want any questions in a battleground state.
I feel as though there's a lot to know here.
All right. Rasmussen asked American adults about their opinions about the public school system here.
Only 8% of American adults rated the performance of public schools excellent.
Another 22% said good.
But generally speaking, it's a lot like people think of Congress.
If you ask the public, is Congress good or bad, they'll say, disapprove, Congress is bad.
But then you say, but what about your representative?
They'll say, well, my representative is pretty good.
I got lucky. Good thing my representative is good.
Well, people say the same thing about schools.
If you ask them if the school systems are good, they're likely to give a negative answer.
But if you ask them if their school is good, they'll say, oh, my school's pretty good.
But I hear those other schools are pretty bad.
Now, I've told you before that when I tell you optimistic stories about technology, some new invention or breakthrough, you should always take it in the following way.
Probably not true.
Stories about technical and scientific breakthroughs are almost never true.
I'd say 95% of them are false.
But aren't they fun?
When you hear some big breakthrough that could change the world in a positive way, don't you like to at least live with the thought that maybe it could be true?
So when I tell you that there's a new breakthrough, which I'm going to tell you in a moment, if it's true...
It's insanely good.
It's probably not true.
But can we agree to act as though it's true?
Because it'll feel good.
That's all we're trying to do.
We're just trying to feel good.
Well, MIT, the smartest people in the universe, say they've invented a cheap battery.
And what's amazing about it is not just that it's maybe one-sixth of the cost of traditional batteries, but it's made with non-rare materials, aluminum, sulfur, and rock-solid crystals.
So they experimented a bunch and found that these domestically abundant materials Can make a darn good battery.
Now, it might not be efficient enough for putting into your phone or putting into your car, although they're thinking of cars later.
But it would be efficient enough.
It would be efficient enough for maybe storing solar power.
So if you've got a big grid storage, it might work for that.
And it might be one-sixth the cost.
Now, there are some technical issues about the temperature it operates on.
There's some issues about bauxite mining to make aluminum.
So, as soon as you get into the details of any of these scientific breakthroughs, you usually run into a wall.
It's like, oh, I thought this was abundant, but it turns out if you made more of it, you'd pollute too much.
So there's always a problem you don't foresee.
But that's true of everything, right?
Doesn't mean those are unsolvable, but don't imagine that there are no problems.
Now, it turns out that they accidentally solved another of the biggest problems in batteries.
One of the biggest problems in batteries is that if they operate for a while, they grow these dendrites.
There's something that's like little growths inside the battery that start growing.
And if they connect, it shorts out the battery and you've got problems.
So that's a normal thing that happens to older batteries, is that they wear out in a specific kind of way through these dendrites growing.
But this new technology doesn't do that.
So they ended up solving the biggest malfunction problem of batteries accidentally.
They weren't trying to solve that, it just happened.
So they're way more efficient.
They don't have the risk of catching on fire the way lithium batteries do, which is a gigantic problem.
Don't know how much they degrade.
That's a good question. Don't know how long they last, which is probably going to be the main question, right?
How long they last. All right.
So, if this is true, then Elon Musk has been right all along.
Because Musk has said that you could power the whole country with, relatively speaking, not that many solar panels.
But then everybody says, bauxite is abundant, but there's a lot of pollution when you mine it.
I'm told. It's something I learned five minutes ago.
If it's true that you could have abundant materials and create these highly reliable, cheap batteries with non-rare earth materials, and it's one-sixth the cost, everything that Elon Musk predicted is true.
Meaning that solar panels really are the future.
Now, remember, Musk, even recently, he's pro-nuclear.
He tweeted just the other day that we should be keeping our nuclear plants alive.
So he knows it's a do-everything-you-can situation.
It's not just do the best thing, whatever the best thing is.
So I'm not going to tell you that solar has no problems, because you've got the waste problem.
It's a gigantic problem.
But all the pieces look like they're coming together.
When you predict the future of solar power, the thing you don't predict is a new invention.
And this might be in that category of something you didn't see coming.
A whole gigantic improvement in battery technology.
Rolls-Royce, somebody is saying in the comments here, Rolls-Royce is bidding to sell flat-pack small modular reactors to Japan.
And Japan is very pro-nuclear at the moment.
Yeah, I think these small modular nuclear plants are going to be the way.
Plus solar, plus batteries.
Well, there's yet more studies saying that mushrooms and psilocybin can help you with addiction.
So there's a new study that came out, a big one I guess, and they found that just two treatments with psilocybin, which is mushrooms, reduced drinking for at least eight months after the first treatments.
So it's the results from the largest clinical trial of its kind.
100% of all the mushroom tests have been, at least as far as I know, have been not just positive, but crazy positive.
Now, just think about this.
We're on the verge of solving energy because the small nuclear modules plus these batteries plus solar, we're on the verge of actually just solving energy.
Fusions on the way.
We're on the verge of solving addiction.
Because I think the mushroom thing is going to be way bigger than people imagine.
That's huge.
That's huge. And AI will probably solve a lot of our other problems.
By the way, AI would probably solve nuclear as well.
Because one of the problems with the modern reactors is you have to do a lot of calculations to keep things stable, and AI can do those better than we can.
Where are Scott's critical thinking skills?
Somebody asks.
I've noticed that when people question my critical thinking skills, It's always because they're really bad at critical thinking.
Almost never does somebody who has good critical thinking skills criticize my critical thinking skills.
It almost never happens.
But people who are not good at it are pretty sure I'm not good at it.
That's a pattern I notice.
So the FBI, or the Department of Justice, I just treat them all the same, is saying that in their affidavit said that there was a probable cause to believe the evidence of obstruction would be discovered at Mar-a-Lago.
Probable cause to believe the evidence of obstruction would be discovered.
Now, this raises an interesting question.
What would be the nature of that evidence?
So we're not talking about interviewing humans, so it's not about a human source.
There's a physical evidence of obstruction.
What do you think that would be?
What would be physical evidence of obstruction?
Now, one Democrat said, well, it would be evidence that he still had documents that he lied and said he does not have.
Do you think that's what it is?
Because if that's what it was, I feel like they would just say that.
They would say, there's evidence he obstructed justice by retaining some things he said that he gave to us.
Because it would be really easy to say what that obstruction would look like, right?
Because obstruction of justice is this gigantic category that could mean anything.
But if it's specifically that he retained some things that he said he didn't have or he refused to get back, well, then the evidence that those things exist would be evidence.
But do you need that?
Because I thought we had records of everything that's in those boxes.
Did the GSA not record what's in the boxes?
Because if we have a record of everything that was in the boxes...
And they know what they got.
We should know exactly what we got and what's in the boxes.
Do you need to go back to Mar-a-Lago to look?
I don't know. Maybe, somebody suggested.
There was evidence on video, security cam, showing somebody messing with the secure documents.
Would that be obstruction of justice?
Well, it kind of depended on what they were doing, wasn't it?
Do you think anybody really unlocked that door?
I'm sure everybody knew there was video security.
Do you think that anybody didn't know there was video security?
So somebody unlocked that door and then did something to, I don't know, do what?
Destroy it or take it out?
I mean, I can't even imagine what the obstruction would look like.
Give us any kind of hint.
Did Trump send a memo out telling everybody to obstruct, and then he had the memo ordered to be sealed inside the boxes so that they could be found?
I mean, to me, this is an obvious lie.
To me, the evidence of obstruction looks like a fishing expedition.
If you let us go in there, we'll find something.
We'll find something that looks like evidence.
Do you think you would sign a search warrant for For evidence of obstruction, if it didn't tell you a little bit about what that evidence might look like.
Like, we think we'll find a document with evidence.
We think we'll find a laptop with evidence.
Something. But if you just say you're looking for evidence of obstruction, what judge signs that?
I mean, I realize it's easy to get an indictment.
You know, you can indict a ham sandwich, blah, blah, blah.
But really? Would somebody sign a document with a generic description of, oh, it might be some obstruction of justice.
Might be some evidence.
Maybe. Maybe there's evidence of a murder.
We don't know. But if we don't look around, you never know.
Maybe there's a serial killer.
We don't know. That's why we're looking.
If we knew there was a serial killer, we'd act differently.
But we don't know, so we have to go look.
Every part of this is fishy as hell.
Every part of it. Yeah, why did it take eight hours?
Actually, I'm not too surprised that it took hours and hours, because just everything is slower than you think it should be.
I think the part that bothers me about this looking for the evidence of obstruction of justice is that our government doesn't respect the public enough to lie to us well.
It's one thing to lie to us.
It's bad enough.
That's really bad.
You don't want your government lying to you.
But I feel extra insulted when the lies are not even designed to fool us.
Right? This feels like a different level.
A lie that's designed to fool you, you don't like it, but you kind of understand that's a world you live in.
But when they lie to you in a way that you can tell just by the way they word it that it's not true, I don't even have to do research to know this isn't true.
Do I? Do I need to do my own research to know that they think there might be evidence of obstruction is bullshit?
Now, I could change my mind, by the way.
It would be easy for me to change my mind on this.
So if we find out tomorrow that there was actually some evidence of obstruction and it's exactly what they were looking for, okay, I'll change my mind.
But the fact that they worded it the way they worded it, with such lack of clarity about what it was they were looking at, that really just is a blaring confirmation that this is illegitimate.
To me, it looks like they're saying it right to your face.
This is illegitimate.
We're going to do it anyway.
That's what it feels like. It's not legitimate.
We're not even going to try too hard to lie to you about it.
We're just going to do it anyway.
Because we want to do it. That's why.
All right. What do you think about this take on Ukraine and Russia?
That whatever Russia gained by control over those territories that it captured from Ukraine, whatever it gained from that will never be as big as what they lost in terms of energy control over Europe.
So Putin's Influence over Europe will basically disappear in about two years because they will find replacement sources.
They won't allow themselves in this situation again.
So wouldn't you say that Putin lost in the sense that his long-term loss of Europe as a market and also his political control over Europe, which is more important, probably...
Don't you think he lost more in the long run than he gained with those strategic places that he controls?
What do you think? Did he gain more or lose more?
If you're just comparing the strategic value of Europe as your energy market that you're losing, compared to the strategic value of taking control of that Crimea and Donbass area, So a lot of people think he gained more than he lost.
Yeah, to me it looks like a loss.
So there are more NATO countries.
He has less money, less standing in the world.
His technology-based industries are going to be decimated because they can't get ships.
He has lost his biggest energy deal.
Disinvited to a variety of international things, I assume.
That's going to happen. And all he got for it was more access to the ocean.
That's it. A little bit of land that's good economically.
But even the stuff he took over, it might have been good economically at one point, but if he has to occupy it with a standing army, it's not really economical anymore.
So I don't believe he won on economics with the territory he took over, because it'll be too expensive to hold it.
To me, it looks like loss.
Yeah, and if he is doing more business with China, that gives China subtle control over Russia.
So that looks bad, too.
Oh, yeah, and Russia's army has been shown to be weak.
And I think the public is going to start noticing the body bags at some point in Russia.
To me, I think that my prediction that Ukraine would win is one of my best predictions.
Because if you're the country that got attacked, winning means surviving.
And it looks like Ukraine will survive with less territory, but they'll survive.
And if Putin was trying to gain economics or influence or...
Even legacy. I'm not sure that he got that.
Looks like he might come out behind.
But maybe the legacy thing he can control because he controls the information.
Wall Street Journal said, if the winter isn't too cold, Germany's economy will only contract by 2.3%.
Well...
Do you think that people are really at risk of freezing to death?
Because I have a feeling that if the poor actually couldn't heat, they would just go where they could, right?
Would the poor actually just stay in their homes and die?
Or would they...
See, the people who die from freezing are the poor who are sort of in their own situation.
It's usually people who nobody knows they're freezing to death, and then they do.
But if you knew that all the poor people didn't have power, and they wouldn't know that, wouldn't you make sure that everybody went to all the poor people and said, look, you're not going to have any power, but if you come down to this government building, you know, you can sleep here overnight until we get power again, and we'll have at least electricity in this government building.
I feel like It would be a huge disruption in normal behavior, but they can keep people warm.
Right? I don't think people are gonna...
I think the ones that will literally die from the cold are the ones that don't have any family or connections.
Like, nobody knows they're there.
But I think everybody who asks for help will just be taken to a warm place.
Yeah. So we'll see.
Yeah, for months. If you had to.
Because, you know, look at the pandemic.
We did a lot of things in the pandemic that you would imagine were undoable, but you have to do them in an emergency.
We just had a pandemic, and the death rate didn't really matter, okay?
I think it did better.
Yeah, normal people go where it's warm.
Old people never die from cold, right.
You know, somebody has to teach Democrats that sarcasm is not argument.
Here's my typical argument with a Democrat.
I say, the moon is up in the sky, And the Democrat will say, the moon is, really, the moon is up in the sky.
Oh, this guy, this guy, everybody, the Dilbert guy, everybody, the Dilbert guy, you said, the moon, it's up in the sky.
Oh, stick to comics, you 80s comic guy.
It's like half of my discussions are somebody acting sarcastic out of context.
Sarcasm works when you have a point.
If you have a good argument, adding a little sarcasm on top of your argument, that's good stuff.
That's exactly where you want your sarcasm to be.
Make your good argument.
And then just frost it with a little sarcasm.
That's good stuff.
Do you know what is not good stuff?
No argument whatsoever with a restatement of what you just said, but with a sarcastic tone.
Oh, oh.
Trump was better for immigration.
Okay. All right.
Compared to Biden. Right.
So Trump controlled the border better than Biden, is what you're saying.
All right, guy. All right.
That's what the cartoonist says.
That's what the cartoonist says.
That's their whole argument, is attitude.
Have you ever watched CNN or MSNBC to see how they report the news?
They report the news, but they make a face.
So they'll report ordinary news, but with a face like there's something terrible going on.
It's like, well, President Trump says he's going to cut taxes.
And then that's the news.
The news is a statement of fact, followed by lots of facial, so that you think there's something wrong with the fact.
But if you only listen to the fact, you'd be like, well, that was just like a fact.
What's the sarcasm about?
All right. That, ladies and gentlemen...
Brings us to the conclusion of the exciting content which I prepared for you.
If you were a member of the Locals subscription platform in my community, you would be seeing a micro lesson probably later today on how to defeat your social anxiety using reframing.
Some hypnosis tricks that you could try on yourself.
And... So I'll be fixing everybody's problems over on the locals' platform.
