Episode 2342 CWSA 01/03/24 Lobster Joe, Iran, Iowa, And All Kinds Of Political Fun
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Content:
Politics, Woke Disney, Jimmy Kimmel, Politician Stock Trading, Dan Crenshaw, Jordan Peterson, Ray Epps, Excess Mortality, Sanctuary Cities, Claudine Gay Resignation, Bill Ackman, ESG Government, President Biden's Sunburn, Democrat J6 Narrative, President Trump, CNN Viewers, Hamas Leaders, Iran Explosion, Vivek Ramaswamy, Steve King, Betty Crocker Homemaker Award, Scott Adams
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*singing* Good morning everybody and welcome to Coffee with Scott Adams.
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Now.
Oh god, that's good.
So good, I can't even put it into words.
The only word that could describe how good that sip was is closer to a moan than a word, and it goes like this.
Well, in entertainment news, I saw some posts by Em de Wokeness, one of my favorite new accounts on X. And apparently the next Star Wars film is going to be directed by a feminist activist and former journalist from Pakistan.
So did you think for a few minutes there, was there a moment when you said to yourself, you know what?
I think Bob Iger, the head of Disney, I think he gets it now.
I think he gets that the wokeness was hurting his business.
Nope.
Nope.
Doesn't understand the first thing about the business he's in charge of, apparently.
Because do you know what I said when I saw that there would be a Feminist activist who was making the new Star Wars?
But let's see if there's anything, if there are any other two things you can put together that would ruin both things.
About piss on a sandwich.
Piss on a sandwich.
Makes the sandwich better or worse?
Anybody?
All right, well, we'll just use that analogy.
So if you want to piss on the sandwich, just take your beloved franchise and hand it over to a feminist activist because these are woke times and you just have to.
You just have to.
Alright, one of the other funny things in entertainment is that Jimmy Kimmel is super mad that there is a fake news going about him that alleges incorrectly.
There's no evidence of this whatsoever.
Incorrectly that he was on some Epstein playlist.
Now, there's no real evidence of that.
As far as I can tell, completely made up.
However, live by the hoax, die by the hoax.
Honestly, if this fucking asshole didn't make his living telling hoaxes about Trump, That's what he does for a living.
It's like 30% of his entire act is making believe that he believes the hoax is about Trump.
So somebody put him on an Epstein list.
I don't hate that.
Honestly, if it happened to a person who was trying to be a legitimate good citizen and see things in a balanced way, I would say that's terrible.
It's like the worst thing, being smeared by this, you know, unfairly.
But if you make your living relying on political hoaxes about Trump, do you think Jimmy Kimmel ever said anything about Trump suggesting drinking bleach?
Do you think that ever came up?
Do you think Jimmy Kimmel ever believed or acted like he believed that Trump said good things about neo-Nazis in Charlottesville?
Oh, I'm sure he did.
I'm sure he did.
So I guess if you live by the hoax, you die by the hoax.
Well, Sean Hannity announces he's moving to Florida.
He admits he's a little late on it, but says Florida will be his little paradise down there.
We'll have better taxes and better politicians and less wokeness and all that stuff.
If Florida could just do something about the weather, then we'd have something.
Then we'd have something there.
Yeah, the summer weather.
Winter weather?
Not bad.
All right.
Mickey Mouse, as you know, the original Mickey Mouse, the 1928 version, fell off copyright at the beginning of this year.
And apparently, according to CBS News, there are already two horror films planned using the original Mickey Mouse in the horror film.
I thought that was interesting and funny, but didn't you expect it was going to be a porn?
I mean, the first one?
You don't think it was going to be Dickey Mouse?
Because I think the porn industry is waiting for Dickey Mouse.
Yeah, it's coming.
He's like Mickey Mouse, just one change.
There's just one, well, I won't say small change, but he's called Dickey Mouse.
All right, turns out that many of our elected politicians are really, really good at investing in stocks.
Whoa, they're so good that they're beating the average by a lot.
So I saw a list of all the politicians who were just killing the averages, just slaying, you know, they're like 50% gains, 60% gains.
60% gains, 60% gains.
And I said to myself, wow, I think there were like 30 people on that list or something, 40 people who had just killed the averages.
So, that's all you need to know, right?
What you need to know is the raw number of people in Congress who had just killed the average investor.
Because that tells you everything you need to know, right?
If you have the raw number.
What?
Simply left out?
Oh!
The number of people in Congress.
Yeah.
What if you knew the total number of people in Congress and you saw not just a list of the people who beat the averages by a lot?
What would that look like?
Would it look like a fucking bell curve?
Of course it would.
It would look like most people have average.
Some people did really, really poorly.
Some people just killed it.
Did you catch that?
Did you catch that if they simply told you there are 40, I don't know what the number was, let's say 40 people.
40 people who just killed the average.
So that tells you something, right?
That they're all cheating?
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't.
It just tells you that there are a lot of people in Congress.
You could have taken any group of 500 people and you'd find that 40 of them just killed the average.
Picking stocks.
Now, I want to be really careful there.
Am I telling you that there's nothing to see?
Am I telling you that the politicians do not do insider trading, it's just chance?
No, no, I assume they do.
I assume they're crooked.
But this doesn't tell you that.
Don't piss on my ass and tell me that I'm drinking lemonade.
I realize I started some kind of a saying that didn't exist.
I had to see if I could fix it halfway through.
Yeah, so now it's the same.
Don't piss up my ass and tell me I'm drinking lemonade.
You can keep that one.
You can keep that one and use it as much as you like.
I will not come after you for plagiarism.
So you can keep your job as the president of Harvard if you like.
Anyway, so I do think that the names on that list raise some deep questions.
Some deep questions.
I don't like to see Nancy Pelosi's list on the list of people who are doing the best investing.
Even though, to be fair, is she not married to somebody who's good at investing?
Yes, but doesn't mean it's all legitimate.
So, I think two things can be true.
I think the information can be biased in this presentation.
At the same time, it does seem likely there's some insider trading, doesn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Crenshaw is on the list.
Now here's something else that you didn't know.
You ready for this?
So how many of you caught this?
So Crenshaw is on the list of people who did unusually well.
So how many stocks of his entire portfolio, how many of those stocks accounted for most of that game?
Do you know?
If you don't know, you don't know a fucking thing.
Let me defend Crenshaw for a minute.
Actually, Crenshaw was nice to me.
He had me on his podcast once.
I enjoyed my encounter with him, so I have only positive vibes.
So let me say this as clearly as possible.
If you take a large body of people, some of those people are going to buy one stock out of several that is all they're getting.
There'll just be one good stock that went up a thousand percent.
Now, that happened to me.
I had a tremendous gain in stocks because one stock did really, really well.
Happened to be Apple.
I just happened to have some Apple stock.
It beat everything else I did by a lot.
Was I insider trading?
No.
I just had one good stock.
Now, if you tell me that Crenshaw is in the top 40 investors, which, by the way, is not that impressive, you know, out of 500, I mean, it's better than average, right?
It's not like that impressive.
Is it because every time he picked a stock, it was a winner?
Is that why he did so well?
If that was true, then I've got a real question, right?
If he picked 10 stocks and eight of them were just dead bang winners, okay, I have lots of questions, because that's statistically pretty unlikely.
However, if he had 10 ordinary stocks and one of them just hit gold, that's just an ordinary person investing.
That is no indication whatsoever of insider trading.
How many of you knew that?
How many of you knew that all it would take is one stock?
And if you have 500 people, and a lot of them are investing in stock, because they're that level of financial capability, there should be, statistically, out of how many people in Congress?
Give me the number of people in Congress.
Senate plus the House.
535, right?
535?
And of 535 people, most of them trading stocks, probably, most of them, how many of them would you expect have at least one stock that did really well?
A few dozen.
There should be a few dozen people there who have at least one stock that did very well.
Now let me ask you this.
When you look at Crenshaw, do you say to yourself, Oh, he's this ex-military guy in Congress, so how much does he know?
He's not very smart, so he probably got lucky.
Is that what you say?
Didn't he go to Harvard?
Give me a fact check.
Pennshaw went to Harvard, didn't he?
Can you give me a check on that?
I think he went to Harvard, and he's white.
You know, even harder to get in.
So you've got one person in Congress who's unusually smart and did unusually well in stocks, but maybe it was just one stock.
I don't know.
If you tell me it was 7 and a 10 killed it, then I got questions.
But I don't know that.
I have no indication of that at all.
So let me say again, there are two things that you can hold as true.
Number one, probably there's insider trading.
Do you know why I say that?
Because probably it's everywhere.
Probably everywhere that somebody has inside information, there's a little bit of insider trading.
Probably almost everywhere.
Not every person, and not every situation.
But on average?
On average, yes, of course there is.
But that doesn't mean that the people on that list who did well are insider trading.
You have to get that part.
They are unusually well informed.
But a lot of what they know is also public.
It's just not super public.
You only have to be a little bit public to be legal.
It just has to be one publication anywhere and you're legal.
I had some neighbors years ago where they both got accused of insider trading.
And the husband went to jail.
And the wife did not.
They insider traded on the same stock, but about two weeks apart.
When the husband traded, it had not been in any publication.
When the wife traded, it had been in one small publication that nobody read.
And that was enough to go free.
So she went free and he went to jail because she waited two weeks to buy her stock.
That's all it took.
It's a very fine line between insider trading and, well, the public could have known it.
So keep that in mind when you look at that insider trading list.
There's probably some crooks on there, but not all of them.
In all likelihood, even if most of them are crooks, I'd expect 20% of them just had a good day.
Jordan Peterson said something that just made me think for a long time.
So he said this on the X platform with no other explanation.
So it's just this one sentence.
So Dr. Jordan Peterson says, it's very hard to find your own words.
And you don't actually exist until you have your own words.
Wow.
Did that have the same impact on you as that on me?
Now, I think this is more impactful because of the AI.
Now that we know that something like intelligence can be created by nothing but patterns and frequencies of words, you can reproduce something like intelligence.
Well, in that case, it makes copied words look not as special.
So, for example, AI can only do things that existed as an existing combination of words.
AI does not come up with its own new patterns.
It uses existing patterns.
If you are like that as well, if you're a human being who goes through life using only the existing patterns, meaning the narrative that your news sources give you, are you really alive?
Yeah, are you really like a human with agency and something that you think is free will?
Or are you just sort of the driftwood that's floating down the river, and you're just going with the flow?
Yeah, so when I reposted this, I did say that's how you can spot an NPC.
The NPC is the non-player characters, if we're a simulation, which I assume we are, a reality.
Do you notice that their words, the exact words, even the form of the words in the sentence, are clearly assigned to them by news sources?
You can see it clearly.
You know, you can put on X any day of the week, just go to a couple of posts about politics, and you'll see the exact wording that was on Fox News, or the exact wording that was on CNN, And if you don't see anything but that, those are, you know, at least people who act like NPCs.
But, if you look at a post by Jordan Peterson, you'll read some stuff like, it's very hard to find your own words, and you don't actually exist until you have your own words.
Okay, who said that before?
Nobody, right?
That sounds like something I've literally never heard before.
So he exists.
Yeah, Jordan Peterson is leaving his mark on civilization because every time he opens his mouth, it's a combination of words that you didn't hear before.
He exists.
Make sure you exist.
So Ray Epps looks like he's looking at potential six months in prison for January 6th, being in, I don't know what they call him, pleading guilty to being some misdemeanor charge of, I don't know what.
What are they charging you with?
The headline doesn't even say.
It doesn't even matter anymore what the charge is.
All right.
But anyway, so we'll see.
But if Ray Epps gets jail time, are you going to believe he was an inside source?
Will you believe that he was an FBI person if he goes to jail?
Yes?
You're going to believe he was in the FBI?
If he goes to jail.
Seriously?
Man, you're tough.
You're a tough audience.
Now, is that because you think he won't go to jail?
And it'll just look like he's going to jail, but he won't really go to jail?
It's all a cover-up?
Somebody says it's an op?
What if they say he went to jail, but there's no record of him going to jail?
And he just sort of disappears for six months?
So we're so suspicious.
That we don't even think he would go to real jail.
He would go to, like, fake jail, you know, and then act like he went to jail or something.
I don't know.
I don't think it feels like an op because it would be too obvious to catch it.
Like, if he doesn't really go to jail, I feel like that would be something we'd pick up on eventually.
That doesn't feel like a good op.
So here's how a good op could be.
It would be a good op if they find him guilty, but he suspiciously got no jail time.
That would feel a little suspicious.
But still, that wouldn't feel like an op to me.
It would depend if his sentence was equivalent to other people or not.
If it wasn't equivalent, then I'd say I have questions.
I don't know.
You will remember, I hope you'll remember, that I have defended Reyes.
Does everybody remember that?
When everybody was saying he's an undercover, I said, anything's possible.
I'd never ruled it out.
So I've never ruled out that he could be undercover.
But, I've told you a million times, he's a citizen.
He's a citizen first, and that means he's innocent until proven guilty.
Now, if it turns out that he's proven guilty for these crimes, I probably think he should be pardoned.
I think he should be pardoned with the others.
But it's starting to look like he might actually just be a citizen.
Maybe.
So I'm going to double down on innocent until proven guilty.
But I share your suspicions.
Is that fair?
Can I share your suspicion while still saying my standard, which I will not wiggle, is completely 100% innocent until the court's proven guilty?
They're going to have to prove it.
And then I still want him, even if they prove it, I still want him pardoned because he's a citizen.
All right.
Excess mortality.
Let's talk about that.
You know, Joe Rogan made some news talking about that with the guests.
And there are claims that there's excess mortality just all over the place.
You've all heard of them, right?
Claims there's just excess mortality all over the place.
Here's a question that I just want to put in there, not because I know what's true, because I don't.
So don't take this as me telling you what is true.
I really don't know.
I'm going to tell you how to think about it.
In other words, what model to use your head to decide what's true.
You're going to have to decide on your own what's true.
Here's the model you should consider.
Everything we heard about the vaccinations was bullshit.
Agree?
What we heard about the vaccinations was largely bullshit.
We all know that now.
What we heard about the virus itself, from its source to its deadliness, was bullshit.
You agree?
Everything about the vaccination was bullshit.
Everything we heard about the coronavirus was bullshit.
Now, there were true things within those stories.
I shouldn't say everything.
That's a little bit of an overstatement.
But there was so much that was bullshit about the vaccinations and also about the virus itself.
Right?
Very much bullshit.
Now we have this new data that says that there's excess mortality.
So let me check where you think he is.
You understand that the vaccination data was bullshit.
You understand the COVID data was bullshit.
But you believe the excess mortality data.
How many of you are there?
How many of you would describe yourself as somebody who disbelieved vaccination data, disbelieved coronavirus data, but now do accept, fully accept, that the excess death data is correct?
How many of you will?
Many people are admitting that.
Now, even though you admit it, does it feel logical to you?
Even though you feel it, that's your opinion, but even your own opinion, does it feel logical to you?
Do you feel that the data on excess mortality has a special quality to it that makes it reliable when every country and every professional fucking lied to your face for months about both the virus and the vaccination?
So you've seen that entire countries and all the officials in all the countries can tell you the same lie at the same time.
You saw it yourself.
We all lived through it.
Why would you believe the mortality numbers?
Because they're not motivated?
Is that why?
Do you believe it because insurance companies are telling you And they're the ones who have to get it right.
How many take that position?
That when the insurance companies tell you there's a problem, now you know for sure.
Anybody?
Good.
See?
See, now you're thinking.
Because the insurance companies, they have to get the right number.
Sorry.
Sorry.
You did it again.
And so did I. Many of you are making the logical mistake that I made.
Until just recently.
It took me a while to correct my own thinking.
The insurance companies make more money if they can convince you mortality is higher.
Let me say it again.
All of the money.
You believe that pharma lied to you so they could make money on the vaccinations.
You believe that everybody lied to you about COVID Partly so Big Pharma could make money on vaccinations.
So you believe that data is unreliable whenever the entity that controls the data can make more money by lying to you than telling you the truth?
So now you've got a new situation in which the insurance companies have a gigantic financial benefit from lying to you and telling you that there's excess mortality.
My God, you're going to have to pay more for your insurance because of all that excess mortality.
Like people dropping dead, we don't even know why.
So your rates are going to go up 20% for all the excess mortality.
All right?
Now, I would like to see confessions.
I'm taking confessions.
How many of you will now confess That if you believed motivated numbers from insurance people, that you feel stupid now.
Anybody?
Does anybody feel stupid?
Because I do.
I mean, I feel fucking stupid that I ever believed the insurance numbers.
I feel stupid.
Because it's the most obvious lie.
The most obvious lie is that people have the most financial advantage.
Now, again, let me be very clear.
Because, of course, this will be taken out of context someday.
So this will be the part they cut out.
I don't know if there's excess mortality.
How would I know?
The only thing I know is that the people who have the greatest incentive to lie to you say there is.
That's what I know.
Now, there's another standard I use to determine bullshit.
I call it the bullshit filter.
And it goes like this.
If science is making a certain claim, and let's call this a science claim even though it's coming from insurance companies.
If science is making a certain claim, and you want to find out if it's true, but you're not so good at evaluating science, one of the things I look at is to see if it looks like it's true in your real life.
I always use this example.
Science says that smoking cigarettes gives you lung cancer.
And sure enough, I know real people in the real world who smoked and had lung cancer, and I know only one person who ever didn't smoke and also got lung cancer.
So I'd say, okay, well, at least that's consistent.
That means something.
Right?
Science told you at one time that you could get AIDS from giving a blowjob.
Probably true, but I've never heard of it.
Never heard of it once?
Not a single time.
In theory it could happen, but I've never heard of it.
So I've got some questions about that one.
Doesn't mean it's not true, and I'm certainly not giving you any medical information.
Don't.
You know, if you have a choice.
Don't blow anybody who has AIDS.
It's probably a bad idea.
But that's an example where the science and my observation, they don't line up.
So I would at least have a question about that one, but I would play it safe and Stay away from risky behavior.
Now let's take the excess mortality.
In my own life, two people died this past year who were, in my opinion, way too young.
How many of you had that experience in the past year?
That somebody in your life died who was not yet a senior citizen or old enough?
Every one of you saw it, right?
It does feel like there's some excess mortality.
But if you believe it because the insurance company said so, just know that that's not the source you should be looking for.
Yeah.
So I don't know.
I mean, I am concerned that excess mortality is exactly what it looks like, which is too much.
I just don't know why.
And, of course, the vaccinations would be on the short list of things you'd wonder about.
All right.
Let's talk about our diversity hires.
So the White House press secretary says, quote, it is shameful to send illegal aliens to sanctuary cities.
Wait a minute.
If you were describing to me two plans, Which one would I say was shameful?
Plan number one, keep illegal immigrants in a place that is not a sanctuary city.
Or number two, ship them to a place that has actually changed their laws to be welcoming.
Which of those is the shameful one?
Go to the place that's welcoming, stay in the place that's very much not welcoming.
And our Diversity Hire Press Secretary, and by the way, we can say that now out loud.
I love the fact that I can just say out loud, it's obvious she's a diversity hire.
She's not qualified, and everybody can see it.
I mean, there's nobody, I don't think anybody is less qualified for their job than Doreen Jean-Pierre.
And she does it right in front of you every day.
And you don't have to be an expert, right?
If a lawyer does a bad job, I'm not sure I could tell the difference.
But if somebody talking does a bad job, oh, I could tell the difference.
I could tell that she's one of the worst talkers I've ever seen.
So yeah, that's obviously a diversity hire.
She acts as a beacon of everything that Republicans have been trying to say, everything that Vivek says.
I mean, I think Karine Jean-Pierre could be the Logo for Vivek Ramaswamy's entire campaign.
Literally.
This is what you get.
Irene Jean-Pierre, this is what you get with Democrat policies.
Do you want more of that?
That would be pretty strong.
Just use her as the logo.
It would be called racist, of course, because that's all they have.
All right.
The big news yesterday was that the President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, resigned, which is a big victory for some people pushing for it.
Bill Ackman, a big investor, Bill Ackman was pushing really hard.
And, oh my god, did he push hard.
And also Christopher Ruffo, political activist, I think you'd call him, pushes against the DEI and the ESG stuff.
And they're both taking I guess they're victory laps, but Bill Ackman is taking more than a victory lap.
He is taking a shame lap.
Which is interesting.
Because Bill Ackman won.
And he's taking a self-flagellation shame lap.
What's that all about, you ask?
Well, I'll tell you.
So Bill Ackman, hero of the day, and one of the architects of Forcing Harvard to at least fire their president, although she'll stay on as a professor, we believe, a well-paid professor.
But he wrote a very long post that I just saw before I came on, explaining that he had not fully understood the damage of DEI.
So he was basically saying, oops, how did I not know how bad this was?
And then he goes on to explain how bad it is, now that he knows.
I'll tell you the The value that Bill Ackman is providing to the public conversation is just tremendous.
And I think it's even stronger by the fact that he is telling you in public that he was blindsided by it and it sort of snuck up on him.
That increases his credibility.
Because when you say you're wrong about something, that makes him far more credible when you say, and here's why I've changed my mind.
And that's a very strong persuasion.
So yeah, credibility is high, victory is high, great year for Bill Ackman, and Christopher Ruffo, standing ovation.
Christopher Ruffo, you are doing a really good work in a lot of places, getting rid of ESG and DEI, especially in colleges.
All right, how did the AP report this story?
The headline was Harvard President's Resignation Highlights New Conservative Weapon Against Colleges, meaning the plagiarism.
Yeah, so that's the big story, is that the terrible people who are conservatives, they got this new weapon for getting rid of all these awesome people of color and diverse people.
Yeah, that's the highlight there.
It's not about Destroying Harvard, the most respected institution in America.
It wasn't about that.
It was about this new terrible weapon, which is going to enforce honesty on academics.
Whoa, terrible.
And it gets worse.
There's a mention that Christopher Ruffo said he got a scalp, a quote scalp.
He actually misspelled it in his post, but he meant scalp.
And the AP, Describes that as a practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.
Interesting.
So, when I was a child, I guess I learned the wrong history.
I learned that it was the Native Americans who had come up with the scalping idea.
I do believe that the white colonists did also pick up the tagnate.
I think that's true, but I'm not sure I would have framed it that way.
As scalping be one of those white colonists things?
Damn those colonizers and their scalping.
If there's one thing I hate, it's all the scalping done by the colonizers.
Am I right?
So that's how the world is reacting.
Yeah, and I was looking at a Colin Wright post He was talking about what could be achieved now that we don't have Filtering and suppression of social media.
So the firing of Claudine Gay was entirely a social media phenomenon.
I think you'd agree.
It wasn't the press.
The press did not get this done.
I mean, they were part of the process, but they didn't get it done.
This was entirely X. Without the X platform, none of this happens.
So Elon Musk Can be said now, to have done a concrete, absolutely useful, productive, moves the ball forward thing, by owning X and making it free speech, actual good things happen in the real world.
And now you can trace that sequence of events very clearly.
But, I would say that the, let's say, opposing forces, like X, is more than that.
You know, Stephen Miller has this American First Legal group.
So they raise funds to do lawfare against Democrats, because Democrats use lawfare against Republicans.
So it's a counterforce.
So if you add the fact that there's now free speech on X, and Stephen Miller's group now can counter the lawfare, or at least have a, you know, equivalent power, it's a real different year.
Looks really different, doesn't it?
And some of the lesser publications starting to go out of business.
And I like the fact that the big publications are now completely smeared and chained.
You know, anybody who uses social media should know that the Washington Post, for example, is not real news.
They didn't know that a few years ago.
Let's see, what else?
The other thing that Conservatives have going for them is powerful influencers.
Now, Bill Ackman is not a conservative.
I believe he does not identify that way.
And I agree with him.
I don't think he does.
But he's just one of the people who noticed things went too far.
If you're anywhere in the middle, and he's probably somewhere in the middle, things are crazy.
So the fact that there are powerful voices Who are not taking a paycheck from a boss.
Who are starting to shape the understanding of the world.
That's new.
That's new.
So people like me, who already got cancelled.
People like Tucker, who no longer has a boss.
And you could name ten others.
There are a lot of people now who don't have bosses.
And that's different.
And they're influential.
And they have very large accounts on X. So that's a counterforce that started growing in 2015 when Trump came on board.
There were a lot of these, you know, pirate voices like mine that just came out of nowhere.
Oh, we weren't that powerful.
Now I think a lot of us, you know, when Trump got elected, my account on what was Twitter was... Does anybody remember?
Maybe a hundred thousand?
At the time Trump got elected, it started at 5,000 for a long time.
Now it's over a million.
It's like 1.1 million.
So my influence is 10 times what it was in 2016.
And that would be true for a lot of people in my position.
Probably 10 times.
About Tucker's power.
Tucker's power, at least double.
You know, you could argue 10 times because of viewership.
So that'll be interesting.
John Arnold does a post talking about ESG, says the arc of ESG as told through oil and gas quarterly investor presentations.
So before 2020, ESG was not mentioned.
But then between 2020 and 2022, the oil and gas people dedicated slide among the first 10 pages of the deck.
So it was in the first 10 pages of their presentations.
In 2023, it's mentioned in the back half of the presentation.
So you can see the corporations trying to put the cat on the roof.
It's like, oh yeah, ESG, still our top priority.
Well, it's not in the first slide.
It's not in the first slide, but we've got it in there.
Well, it's not in the first half, but it's totally in there.
Let's say it's sort of in the back half.
We're not going to talk about it a lot, but it's totally there.
High priority that we're not talking about so much because it's embarrassing now.
But as Russ Green points out, also on X, he thinks ESG will trend up again now that Canada, the EU, and the US, the financial regulators will be pushing.
As the corporations are trying to distance themselves from it, the governments are trying to embrace it harder.
And now the corporations and the governments are going to be, not yet, but might be a little bit at odds on the SG.
I've noticed that while I was looking at a story about China's economy being weak, jeopardizing President Xi's, you know, vision for the country, etc.
I was thinking that 2024 is looking pretty lit so far.
Feels like everything's going my way.
Except TikTok and Fentanyl.
TikTok and Fentanyl did not go my way.
There's more Fentanyl and there's more TikTok since I told you I was going to destroy both of them.
I'm not done.
I'm not a quitter.
I am going to destroy TikTok, and I am going to destroy Fencel.
Or, I'm going to be one of the people working on it.
So, double down.
Let's see, Bob Menendez in Congress.
Got some more charges against him for trying to set up a buddy with the Cutter royal family.
And I guess he got some gold bars for that, they allege.
You got at least two gold bars for a hundred thousand.
Now that's in addition, that's in addition to the other gold bars he allegedly got for some Egypt business.
Now, Matt Mullenweg spoke out against TikTok influence on the Tim Ferriss podcast.
That's a good guy.
He's the founder of WordPress.
Anyway, um, Yeah, everything's going my way.
Well, did you see the photos of Joe Biden coming back from his long weekend?
I guess he must have fallen asleep in the sun and he's severely sunburned.
His face looks like a lobster.
So, I think he's decided to become a person of color and he's just going to do it the hard way.
Now, here's a question I ask you.
Do you think it was a facelift?
Some of you say you think it was a chemical peel.
His hands look red, too.
Do you see his hands?
Do you think he did his hands as well as his face?
Because his hands look pretty red.
Interesting.
All right, well, if it's a sunburn, I was going to say it was a slow-motion assassination.
They're like, hey, Joe, you like taking a nap?
Well, yes, I do.
I would like to take a nap on the beach.
I'd love it.
You have some sunscreen?
Oh, you're not going to need any sunscreen unless you fall asleep.
So just don't fall asleep.
All right, good plan.
Goes down to the beach, falls asleep, nearly dies.
Yeah, I think they were trying to assassinate him.
Very slowly.
That's one possibility.
The other possibility is that red is the new orange.
Red is the new orange.
Anybody?
Because orange is doing so well in the polls.
He realized he needed a color.
Because he was running against a person of color.
Orange.
So he needed to become a person of color.
Maybe.
I have more jokes, by the way.
I have more dad jokes.
Are you here for them?
Who's here for the dad jokes?
Well, you're going to hear them anyway.
You know, it's not the first time that Joe Biden has been embarrassed by a son.
It's not the first time he's embarrassed by a son.
See, here it's funnier if you think it's a son.
I don't know if it is, but if it is, it's funnier.
Uh, do you know the football team, the Washington Commanders?
Yeah, they asked Biden to be their new mascot.
Elizabeth Warren, most heard.
Okay, I got another one.
Uh, another 20 minutes of Sun and he could have been the president of Harvard.
Anybody?
Another 20 minutes of Sun could have been the president of Harvard.
He's already got the plagiarism.
He's already got the plagiarism.
I know, that's not bad.
How about, let's see.
I saw a post from Mays, Mays Moore, who said that, about Joe, that maybe his approval rating was so low that now he wanted to be appealing.
He wanted to be a feeling.
So now he is.
Yeah, okay.
But to me, being in the sun and getting so badly burned until it looks like a lobster is shellfish.
It's shellfish.
Yeah?
No?
All right, that's all I got.
That's all I got.
All right, so the news says that Biden is going to give a big speech on January 6, of course, in which he'll be painting Trump as an insurrectionist, because that's all they got.
It's going to mark three years since the Capitol riot, and he's going to do his speech at Valley Forge, where George Washington staged American troops, to which I say, Joe Biden, Get in that narrow ravine, will you?
Hey, here's a narrow ravine.
Why don't you get right in there?
Because there's nothing that makes it more vulnerable than claiming this was an insurrection.
Because unlike other hoaxes, the mockery canons work best for those accused.
Usually the mockery is on the side of the accuser.
Like, oh-ho-ho, you say drinking bleach!
Oh-ho-ho, you!
And it's hard to defend yourself when you're being mocked, right?
You can't mock back.
It just feels like too little, too late.
But when they go after Trump for an insurrection, which is the most ridiculous claim of all hoaxes, like, you don't really have to even know much about the news.
If the only thing you knew is that the Republicans were unarmed, you'd already know everything you need to know.
So, the fact that we can mock this out of existence, I want to make sure that Biden is completely committed to it, though.
Because you want the mocking to happen, like, over the summer.
You don't want to mock too soon.
So, ideally, you want the Democrats to think this is working, to fully commit to the insurrection narrative as their main thing, and then you just destroy it over the summer.
Now, the way to destroy it is with mockery, as I said.
And if anybody says to you that Republicans were trying to take over the country, ask them to describe how that would work.
All right?
All right.
Put the, you know, connect the dots.
Now they've got the lectern, all right?
So they've captured the lectern.
Now connect the dots to their control of the nuclear triad.
What's the series of events between capturing the lectern And of course, the sauntering.
It wasn't all about the lectern.
There was also some sauntering.
So, but just connect the dots.
I know you've got a good argument, but I'm not seeing it yet.
I know it's a good one, but connect the dots.
How do they go from the lectern and the sauntering to control of the nuclear triad?
Connect those dots for me.
Yeah.
So, it's going to be fun.
So they're walking into Trump's narrow ravine, and he'll be taking care of that later, I'm sure.
Michael Smirconish did a poll, not a scientific poll, but a poll of audience, I guess, or people who watch CNN or something like that.
And 68% of them, 23,000 voters, say that keeping Trump off the ballot would help democracy.
Let me say that again.
Two-thirds of the people that CNN polled, meaning CNN viewers or people who are friendly with CNN to answer their poll, two-thirds of them think that keeping the leading candidate, the one who's leading in the polls, keeping him off the ballot helps democracy.
Now, What does that show you?
I don't know how Smirkonish is going to spin this when he talks about it.
He's teasing that he's going to talk about this today, I think.
But doesn't that tell you the CNN viewers are fucking idiots?
What else could you possibly conclude, other than the viewership of CNN are idiots, and that the CNN content made them so?
I don't know another way to interpret that.
So, that's interesting.
And now Biden and the White House are going to blame Republicans for the situation at the border.
Don't you love that?
The Democrats are going to blame the Republicans for not having a better border situation.
Here's their argument.
Now, by the way, their argument is not terrible.
They actually have an argument.
I don't buy it, and I'll tell you why, but it's actually a better argument than you think.
It goes like this.
The GOP rejected Biden's supplemental funding that would have helped at the border.
Now, apparently that's true.
That the GOP did reject his border funding.
And what it would have done, it would have hired new border agents.
No, you want that?
That sounds like that would be good.
More asylum officers and immigration judges, as well as technology to combat the flow of fentanyl.
Well, I want to combat the flow of fentanyl.
And if they have some technology that didn't get funded to do that, it seems like a problem.
But did you catch the part about the asylum officers and immigration judges?
No, the problem is the asylum law.
The problem is not how do you handle more asylum people.
I'm pretty sure that if you had more asylum officers and immigration judges, especially the asylum officers, wouldn't you have more immigrants?
If you had more effective processing to let people in, because asylum is not about keeping people out.
Asylum is designed to let them in.
So if you hire more people to process people who want to come in and stay, isn't that making it worse?
But because most people would not understand that nuance, it would look like the Republicans failed to fund something that would have stopped immigration.
If you didn't know that asylum actually creates more of it, not less of it.
So, yeah.
Meanwhile, the IDF probably, I don't think they're taking credit for it, but Top Hamas founder was assassinated in Beirut, which is interesting because it's Beirut and it is not Gaza.
So they took out, somebody did, let's say IDF probably, took out A Hamas leader assassinated him.
I think there might have been another one there.
There's some claims that there were no innocent civilians killed.
Does that sound likely?
A big missile attack and no civilians killed?
I don't believe that.
Yeah, and it was a bad day for Hamas because they lost President Claudine Gay as well as this Hamas leader.
Just kidding!
Just kidding.
But here's what I ask, because obviously there will be more Hamas leaders in other countries that are going to be killed.
Israel is pretty clear about the fact that they're going to hunt down and kill all the leadership of Hamas.
I wouldn't bet against it, that's for sure.
But if you knew that you were standing near a leader of Hamas, wouldn't you try to put some distance?
Like, it would be terribly unfair if somebody were, let's say, you know, a server and was just serving them at dinner and didn't know that he might be the subject of a missile attack at any moment.
So I would say learn who your Hamas leaders are and stay away from them.
There were two big blasts in Iran, which is scary.
They killed over 100 people and wounded Killed over a hundred people.
And this blast was at an event commemorating the slain general, Solomon A., that Trump had killed.
Now, who exactly would have done this?
And it's been called a terrorist attack, and I think they're blaming some Sunni extremists.
Because they're Shiites.
Now, does that sound right to you?
Do you think that the Sunnis Would target Salome's funeral?
I don't know.
Maybe.
Maybe.
But I think there's a lot more to find out about this.
I don't think it sounds like Israel.
It doesn't feel like an Israel operation.
I'm pretty sure Israel is not blowing up crowds of mourners.
That would be Not their style, but also it wouldn't be effective and they would know it.
So it's got to be some kind of terrorist.
doesn't make sense to be anything else.
All right.
Vivek Ramaswamy got a big endorsement from former Iowa representative Steve King, Who of course the mainstream press says he's a provocative person.
Because he once questioned why, quote, white nationalist was offensive.
I think that's what cost him his job.
He questioned why the phrase white nationalist was offensive.
Because why can't you be white and also a nationalist?
So I think that's where he was going.
It was not good politics because he should have known that was, you know, a third rail and obviously that was going to go wrong.
However, I wonder if that would look the same if it happened today.
If you were on the X platform, I wonder if he would have been, you know, if X had its free speech, I wonder if he would have been protected.
Meaning that conservatives might have rallied around him and said, look, there's nothing wrong with white nationalists, if that's what they believe.
I think it's a terrible term, because it just invites criticism.
So, if you're trying to say it should be okay to be white and it should be okay to be a nationalist, I think that's a better way to go.
Because I'm pretty sure that Steve King, if you asked him, would be very much in favor of Asian American nationalists and black nationalists, black American nationalists.
I think he just liked nationalists.
But he didn't think that it should be wrong if you're white at the same time.
So he did a terrible job of explaining, and I think he liked, you know, what you would consider maybe the, you know, the classic European culture or something like that.
Separate argument.
But he did a terrible job of explaining his position, but I wonder if that'll help Vivek.
Might.
Don't know.
Anyway, the Iowa debates are going to be limited to I guess because of the new rules, you have to have at least 10%.
The only invitees would be Trump, who won't go, because he'd be crazy to debate.
He has such a lead.
So it'll be just DeSantis and Haley.
Meanwhile, Trump will probably do something on Fox News Town Hall, and Vivek will do something on Tim Pool's show.
All right, what are you going to watch?
Are you going to watch DeSantis and Haley?
Trump's town hall on Fox or Vivek on Tim Pool?
Go.
Who are you going to watch?
I'm seeing lots of Tim casts.
Boy, Tim Pool's looking strong.
A lot of Vivek.
I see more interest in Vivek than the others.
I see a lot of Trump.
Yeah.
I don't have any interest at all in DeSantis versus Haley.
I'll watch the highlight clips if there are any.
But I feel like that's going to be so milquetoast and they'll just... I don't know.
It feels like a lot of nothing.
So, to me it's between Trump... Well, I don't know that Trump is going to make any news.
Do you suspect that Trump will say something that will change your mind about Trump or anything else?
I mean, he'll be interesting.
I'll definitely watch the highlights.
Yeah.
Vivek on Tim Pool?
Are they going to turn on the debate and then mock the debate in real time?
Because I would watch that.
I'd watch the hell out of that.
They're not going to talk about the debate in real time?
I hope they are.
If they're doing it at the same time, they should talk about it.
Well, I don't know the answer to that question.
But I will tell you that Viveka on Tim Pool sounds like a really good show.
That sounds like a good show.
All right, so Viveka has done the double Grassley.
I guess Chuck Grassley was famous for campaigning in all 99 precincts in Iowa, and Viveka has done all 99 twice.
Nobody's ever done that before.
Now, he still is way behind in the polling.
Way behind Trump, as everybody is, but also pretty far behind Haley and DeSantis, about half of their numbers.
Do you think that his extreme retail campaigning in Iowa, Viveks, will give him a surprise?
Do you think the polling has yet captured that he's visited every place twice?
Because I love the fact that he's visited every place twice, because that sticks in your head like crazy, doesn't it?
If he said he went every place once, I would have said, oh, that's nice.
But, you know, I probably could have got away with going to the biggest places twice, and it'd be just as good.
So going every place once, that's all right.
It doesn't blow me away.
Going to every precinct twice?
is really impressive.
And let me ask you this.
Have you ever seen a clip of Vivek looking tired?
What the hell is up with that?
How can he never look tired?
He never looks tired.
He did over 200 of these little appearances in Iowa, with these small audiences, in which he talked with the same energy, the same enthusiasm, Over 200 times, with probably a very similar message.
Yeah, being 38 helps a lot, doesn't it?
But I couldn't do that when I was under 38.
So I often think that you can't have that level of accomplishment unless you don't need the same level of sleep.
I've often thought that might have been Trump's superpower, too.
Just less sleep.
He's just got more energy than the average person.
You remember Trump's superpower against Jeb Bush?
Energy.
So what Trump did was he was smart enough to know that if you show the most energy, people respond to that as leadership.
Energy and leadership, your brain just thinks they're practically the same thing.
So he's, so Vivek has created a narrative of energy, a double Grassley, that not only has branding, it's a double Grassley.
How awesome is that as a name?
He doubled Grassley, the first one ever.
How much energy does it take to double Grassley when Iowa isn't even the only thing that's happening?
It's not even the only thing happening.
And he still doubled Grassley.
That's a level of energy that's crazy.
That's crazy energy.
So, I don't know.
I'm not going to predict I'm not going to go out of my way and predict any outcome in particular, but if you think he can't surprise, you might have a surprise.
He might surprise.
He might surprise.
Because if you do that much right, and let me also say this, name the error that Vivek made.
Name the error, the campaign error that Vivek made.
Nothing.
Nothing.
How in the world did he get to this point?
Nothing.
Not a single error of any consequence.
The worst thing he did was keep his microphone on when he took a leak.
And that just became more content.
It just created more energy.
Even that wasn't a mistake.
Yeah.
I don't think that I don't think it's possible to fully appreciate how good he is at communicating until you realize he's gone this far without a mistake.
The least one I can think of.
I can't think of one.
If you say Nikki Haley, I can think of a mistake.
And she said women are better than men.
That's a big mistake.
I can't think of anything that... Now, Vivek explained his TikTok strategy.
I would, you know, my first choice is everybody to dump on TikTok.
But he said directly, I can't believe there's still people who believe the Soros connection.
Would you show yourself?
How many of you will admit that you're so under-informed that you think that Vivek is a Soros puppet?
How many of you will admit you actually think that is true?
Or even think it might be true?
You actually think that's true?
I think that's mockable.
You're in mockable territory.
That's so obviously not true.
It's the most obviously not true in the world.
He's literally campaigning against ESG.
Do you think a Soros puppet would say anything that came out of his mouth?
Literally everything he says is anti-Soros.
Everything.
Why would you believe that?
The DeSantis campaign wanted you to believe that.
I think that's where it came from.
Yeah.
Now, the scholarship stories and the context is bullshit.
Of course he took money.
Why not?
Who cares about taking money from a scholarship?
In high school, I took money for scholarships.
Do you think I cared about the organization that gave me the scholarship?
I did not.
Yeah.
You know who I got a scholarship from?
True story.
I once got a financial award from the Betty Crocker organization.
Betty Crocker.
Betty Crocker had a homemaker's test that you could take when I was in high school.
That's right, I said it.
A homemaker's test.
Yeah, no shit.
When I was a kid, the Betty Crocker organization would give you money for writing an essay That said whatever they wanted to say about America or something.
Betty Crocker.
Now, I sat for the test and I remember the teacher saying, what are you doing here?
And I said, there's a Betty Crocker homemaker test and you get money if you write the best essay.
So I'm here for the money.
And they said, you know, it's mostly for the girls, right?
I know, but there's no law against Me being a homemaker, so I'm going to take the Betty Crocker Homemaker Test.
And they said, well, OK, I guess you can take the test.
Or you can do the essay.
Now, what they didn't count on is I won the essay.
I wrote the best essay.
So I actually won the Betty Crocker Homemaker Award.
I did.
Got the Betty Crocker Homemaker Award.
Why was I even talking about that?
What point was I making before I started talking about that?
Oh, Soros, right.
Now, Betty Crocker makes cake, right?
What do you think is my opinion of people who sell sugar to people as food?
What do you think I think of any company that is selling you sugar And calling it food.
Yeah.
Terrible.
Terrible.
Terrible, terrible, terrible company.
Now, ask me how I felt about taking their money.
Pretty good.
Really good.
You know, I even felt better because it was a sexist and exclusionary process that I went in and just fucked up because I could.
That was part of it.
By the way, do you want an answer to the question, Scott, were you always like this?
Now you know.
Yeah, I was always like this.
Yeah.
I've never taken a shit from anybody at any age.
Not once.
I'll give you another example.
You want to hear another example?
When I was in sixth grade, I think?
Our class was bad, and the teacher decided that we were all so bad that the entire class would have to sit for detention without regard to whether any individual did anything wrong.
Now, I was in the class, and I was quite certain that I had not participated in any of the things that were problems.
So the entire class went to sit for detention, and I just went out and played outside.
And then it was done.
My teacher said, hey, you're supposed to be in detention.
And I said, for what?
I didn't do anything.
And they said, but I know, but you're supposed to be in detention.
And then I gave them a little speech about collective punishment.
You know what happened to me?
My teacher said, you know, I don't think we want to fuck with this.
Let's just move on.
True story.
I rejected their collective punishment and was willing to take it to the mat.
I don't know how far they were willing to take that issue, but I was willing to take it all the way.
I have more stories like that.
Yes, I've always been this way.
I was born this way.
So that, ladies and gentlemen, is all I've got for you today.
