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I almost forgot the words.
It's not like I do it every day.
Well, there are stories.
Remember that big problem with the sea ice?
That climate change was going to take care of all the sea ice and then we'd have problems, wouldn't we?
Well, according to the Daily Skeptic, Chris Morrison, there's been a massive recovery in Antarctic sea ice.
And let's see if even officially, the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Center confirms that.
And apparently it's sort of back into its normal zone-ish, proving that the variation was probably just natural, just a natural variation.
So the sea ice melting doesn't seem to be any indication of climate change, but it was predicted.
And then, of course, you've heard about the coral reefs.
The coral reefs were all being destroyed by climate change.
Except, I don't know if you missed the stories where it seems like they're all coming back.
But the climate change is worse.
How are they coming back?
Oh, maybe there's some natural variation.
How about that sea level?
Remember all those beach houses that used to be good, but now the...
Water rose, you can't live there?
Neither do I. So, climate change didn't predict sea level, coral reefs, sea ice.
Oh, but it did predict temperature.
So, I mean, that's true, right?
It did predict the temperature, didn't it?
Or is it possible that we're measuring that wrong, too?
Of course we're measuring it wrong.
The temperature might be going up, I wouldn't know.
There's no way we can know.
We don't have any kind of reliable mechanism for measuring the temperature of the entire planet over time.
That is so far from being a thing that humans could do.
But the news tells you they can do it, so you should believe it because it's on the news.
Well, the Trump effect has reached Chicago because a couple of the aldermen...
I think it's funny that Chicago has aldermen.
Is there any other city that has aldermen?
Is that just a Chicago word?
I got the aldermen.
Florida has elderly men.
So I don't know what an alderman is, but some kind of politician.
And they're in the legislature and they're introducing legislation.
They would roll back the city's sanctuary law.
So that's where the city would not cooperate with ICE and help them deport people.
At least two of them want to roll it back.
Now, this is according to the Daily Caller News.
Jason Hopkins is writing about it.
And what is interesting about this story?
I mean, there's always somebody who wants to roll back everything, right?
They're both Democrats.
Two Democrat aldermen, Democrats, are trying to roll back their own sanctuary city.
Is that the Trump effect?
What else would it be?
Of course it's the Trump effect.
The Trump effect, if you're looking for a definition, and I think we need one, the Trump effect is not just that good things are happening that Trump supporters would like.
Although that's certainly on the surface, that's what's happening.
What it is, is that the Trump effect made it safe.
It made it safe for people to pursue common sense.
Because I think Trump actually sold the idea that common sense is where the two parties meet in the middle.
We're not going to meet on, you know, some, let's say, philosophical level.
But we should always meet on the, how do you stop a fire?
We should always meet on, should we close the border?
We should always meet on, should crime be illegal?
These are now political things.
And it took the Trump effect to take the crazy left out of their bubble and say, what about the things that are just common sense, like safety?
Can we just work on that?
Now, of course, climate change hangs over everything because the climate change crisis believers, and again, I'm only talking about the extent of it, not whether or not it's happening.
I assume climates always change.
For one reason or another, and maybe humans are part of it.
I wouldn't know, and I'm pretty sure science doesn't know either, even though they told you they did.
I'm pretty sure they tell you a lot of things that you think they know that they don't.
Well, Special Counsel Jack Smith resigned from the Department of Justice.
That would be the smallest surprise in the world.
Do you think he expects to be investigated?
Because it feels like at least he's been accused of being some...
Part of some kind of potentially RICO-like bad behavior to lawfare Trump.
You know, I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, I think it would be damaging to the country to rip the Democrat evil RICO people up by the roots.
Even though they've, in my opinion, I would say it's fairly obvious that major laws have been broken.
But I'm not an expert.
So, I mean, I could be talked out of it if the real experts say, well, no, no laws were broken.
It was just something you didn't like.
Maybe.
Sure looks like laws were broken to me.
But if the people who know more than I do say laws were broken and they want to investigate, I think I would take the risk of that destroying the country.
Because keeping it the way it is would destroy the country for sure.
So, you know, having a, not a physical civil war, but let's say a lawfare civil war, probably necessary to regain, you know, mutually assured destruction and make sure that people know that if they cross the line and create literally a RICO treasonous insurrection within the government, that's got to have a price.
That has to be expensive.
If the Trump administration makes it additionally expensive for people involved in that bad behavior, maybe that's just the way it has to be.
I saw a social media thing that said Oprah was going to leave the country for four years because of Trump, but I can't believe that's true.
Can anybody give me a fact check on that?
This sounds like fake news.
I don't think Oprah would really leave the country.
For four years?
Now, if it's true, the only reason I could think is that she's trying to escape criminal prosecution for something.
And if she went to a no extradition country, that would sort of confirm it.
But I'm going to say fake news.
I'm going to say fake news.
What do you think?
Anybody think that's true?
I'm not going to go with fake news unless I hear a lot more about it.
Well, we'll see.
It's also something that she might be threatening and might actually mean it.
But I'm going to bet against it happening.
But we'll see.
I'll bet against it.
Meanwhile, Stephen A. Smith was on a podcast talking about Trump.
And now he's, of course, been a Democrat and he's a black man in America.
And he is really interesting lately.
So he's saying that Republicans make a lot of sense.
Just think about that sentence.
A longtime Democrat.
And then he says, quote, Republicans make a lot of sense.
Sense.
You know, common sense.
This is Stephen A. Smith completely falling into the Trump frame.
That some things are just common sense.
We shouldn't be talking about that.
Stephen A. Smith says, yes, common sense.
So, remember when we thought it was impossible to meet in the middle on anything?
As soon as the Trump effect went into, you know, wide effect, it seems like people like Stephen A. Smith can now say what they wanted to say maybe all the time, which is...
You know, I like my Democrats.
I still kind of like some of the philosophy, but why are we acting like common sense doesn't even exist?
Why can't we at least do the things that make sense that everybody agrees on?
Now that, weirdly, just wasn't a way of thinking even a year ago.
But now it is.
That's all Trump.
That's all Trump.
Here's what else he says.
Stephen A. Smith said, quote, the finishing touch for me in terms of changing his mind on politics was California.
Here it is.
Because I think he's the canary in the coal mine.
If he tells you the California experience before the fire, this is before the fire.
If he tells you that looking at California made him think that the Democrats were, you know, not the ones to back.
Just think about the fact.
That he could see it before the fire, and he was affected by it.
I don't think it changed his vote, but now it might.
And he said about California, you see what's going on in California, higher taxes, homelessness, crime rate, etc.
When people are going off, particularly folks on the left, and they're talking about these policies and what policy is better, blah, blah, blah.
I see folks on the right talking about real-life issues and stuff like that.
And he says, I'm like, I hate that they make a lot of sense.
Now, does that sound like exactly something that came out of my mouth?
It does.
It sounds like exactly something I would say.
The Democrats have lots of lofty conceptual ideas, and they're going to call you names if you don't like it.
Republicans have been really, really clean about talking about what's wrong and how to fix it.
The border's open.
Too many criminals.
Close it.
Everybody understands that.
Everybody understands that.
And here again, I'm going to credit Trump for something that's not obvious to you.
When Trump says what he wants, everybody understands it.
And then he says it a bunch of times until we all get it.
And then we can like it or not like it.
But it's a real proposed solution.
And we can evaluate it and we all understand it.
That's sort of new.
Because my memory of past, you know, traditional boring politicians is that they would say general hypothetical, you know, philosophical things too.
And you could barely remember which one was backing what policy.
But now it's such a clean distinction.
One says, do obvious common sense things.
The other says, Well, the 1% is not paying their fair share.
And I got my DEI. And what about the lesbian porpoises?
You know?
Now that you can mock that, even if you're a Democrat.
So even Democrats can mock that now.
Bill Maher, of course, was a pioneer mocking it.
But here's the kill shot.
Oh, man.
Just listen to this.
This is Stephen A. Smith again.
And if you're not familiar with all the famous names in sports, you have to know that he's black and has been Democrat.
Those are important to the story.
So he says, I saw folks on the left basically try to guilt me into voting for Kamala.
You know what bothered me?
I might have ended up voting for Kamala because I didn't like how Trump acts.
You know?
That is such...
Every time somebody says, I don't like how he acts, that's just not a thing.
That's not a real thing.
You could say, I don't like his policies.
You could say, I didn't like what he did in his first term.
But I don't like how he acts.
Really?
That would be the reason you pick the other person?
Let me tell you how he acts.
He acts in a way that with no experience whatsoever, he became president of the United States once.
And then, being completely destroyed by lawfare and fake news and the Democrat evil committee, he rebuilt from absolute destruction in four years to come back and win the presidency in a convincing way.
Now, that's the way he acts.
Do you think it's accidental that his provocative ways happened at the same time as his great success?
If you still haven't figured out that all that stuff of the way he acts, that's the active ingredient.
I think all the Democrats are so maybe, what would be the word?
I don't want to insult them.
I'll say they're not seeing the right frame.
If you think that Trump has a few good ideas, even in your own opinion, but that it's ruined by the way he acts and his insults and his crazy statements, what would be the evidence that all those insults and crazy statements were negative?
Was it that he didn't become president twice?
Is it that he doesn't have the biggest mandate ever?
Is it that...
Is it that every politician who's worth a damn is looking at what he did and trying to copy it?
Is it that Fetterman, a Democrat who I have a lot of respect for, I have to be honest, is that he's looked at Trump and said, hmm, that looks like it works.
Why don't I do some of that?
And then he does it, and guess what?
It works.
It works for Fetterman.
It works for everybody.
How about we, can we finally get to the point where we realize that The way he acts is the active ingredient.
I mean, he has to have good policies that are common sense, of course.
But selling it, selling the policies, which is absolutely essential to a good leader, he can't have good ideas and not sell them, selling them comes from the way he acts.
If you don't get that, everything's confusing.
I've been saying this since 2015, and I don't think I've ever been more right about anything in my life.
I'm about as right as you can be that it's the way he acts that's the secret sauce.
All right.
But going on, here's what he said.
He said, but what I didn't do was call Trump a racist.
I didn't call him a Nazi.
Just listen to this.
I knew Trump before he ran for president.
There it is.
There it is.
Do you know how many black Americans knew Trump, were close to him?
He helped.
He helped in a number of cases.
He helped Michael Jackson.
He helped Mike Tyson.
I'm pretty sure he helped, who was the boxing promoter with the wild hair?
I forget.
I mean, why do I know?
I'm just a casual observer, and I know at least three examples where he, with nothing in return, well, there's always something in return, I guess, but just as helpful to everybody.
So he goes on and he goes talking about Trump.
So this is Stephen A. Smith talking about Trump.
He said, we talked on the phone.
We talk at basketball games or boxing events.
I knew this man.
And so some of the things that were being said about him, I knew were not true.
And I was saying, come on, y'all.
You've got to do better than that.
Don King, thank you.
Yeah, he was friendly with Don King.
I think helped him in his career as well.
So, you know what would have been really useful?
If Stephen A. Smith had said this before it was safe.
Would you agree?
Wouldn't it be nice for Stephen A. Smith when Trump was being called, you know, favoring neo-Nazis and the fine people hoax and he's the biggest racist?
Wouldn't it be nice for a respected, smart voice to say, oh, I know him personally?
Yeah, you don't have to worry about that.
That's not an issue.
Wouldn't that be nice?
But I found myself, you know, getting ready to respond to a post on that and say basically, Thanks for nothing.
Thanks for nothing.
This would have been really useful in 2015. It would have been really useful in 2020. It would have been really useful in the beginning of 2024. Do you know what it is now?
Now it's unnecessary.
It's unnecessary.
He won.
So, now that it's safe...
Elon Musk can say it, and Joe Rogan can say it, and a whole bunch of public figures can say it, the left and the right can say it.
Now it's safe.
So I found myself getting actually angry at him for sort of speaking out too late, like that counts.
And then I slapped myself in the face.
Scott, stop it.
Stop it.
I'm ignoring my own rule.
You know a rule I'm ignoring of my own?
Here's the rule.
Everything good takes too long to happen.
Everything good takes too long to happen.
This is good.
This is good.
Took too long to happen.
And now I reject all my prior comments.
So I'm taking them back, which I knew I would do.
So I'm taking back my comments that he waited too long.
And that it wasn't brave to wait till now, and he's waiting until it's safe.
And I'm going to completely revise that.
I respect his opinion, and I really appreciate it.
I respect it, and I really, genuinely appreciate it.
And if you hear me ever again say that something is good, but it took too long, can you slap me?
I don't want to ever hear that out of anybody's mouth.
Because everything good took too long.
There's no exception to that.
Everything.
So it's just the dumbest, simplest, you know, pundit thing to say, oh, where were you before?
Why didn't you do something earlier?
No.
How about that was good?
Thank you.
I respect it.
And just take the win.
All right.
Let's talk about Greenland.
Apparently there was a poll on whether they wanted independence or to stay owned by Denmark.
Now, I don't know if this is a scientific poll or an internet poll or what it was.
I'm not sure we can totally trust this.
But two-thirds of them wanted independence.
And one-third wanted to stay with Denmark, if you believe that poll.
What I say is...
So two-thirds of them want independence.
Let's check again in two months.
If you check back in two months, I'll bet you 80% say they want independence and or some kind of association with the United States that's stronger.
Because that's the Trump effect.
Trump will find a way to convince the Greenlandic people.
I think it's Greenlandic.
The people are called not Greenlanders.
See if I'm right.
I need a fact check on that.
Are they the Greenlandic people?
I don't know.
Anyway, so as you know, the Greenland prime minister spoke out.
Do you get the joke?
The Greenland prime minister, he spoke out.
Do you know why that's funny?
Do you know what his first name is?
Mute.
M-U-T-E. That's his actual name.
His first name is Mute.
Yeah, he spoke out.
There's your simulation.
The mute is speaking out.
So he didn't say that he wants to be an American state or anything like that.
He said that the Greenlandic people should decide what their fate is, but he's not.
He didn't seem terribly keen on staying owned by Denmark, and you can understand that.
But here's the bigger surprise today.
Apparently, the Danish officials think that some kind of middle ground can be reached.
This is according to the Daily Wire, Tim Pierce.
And the middle ground would be something short of a sail, but some kind of a stronger cooperation, something like that.
We don't know what that would look like.
What do you think of Trump's first offer?
If you want to see the art of the deal in real time, let me try to set this up for you.
Suppose you were a regular politician.
Suppose you were Joe Biden or Jimmy Carter, and you had this idea that we should own or have control of, functional control of Greenland.
How would you go about it?
Well, you probably have some secret meetings, right?
And then the Greenland people would never hear about it, and then they would never weigh in to tell you that they agreed with it.
So that would be the first mistake of everybody who's not Trump.
Trump tweets about it.
If Trump puts it in the public, the entire nation of Greenland is talking about it.
I'll bet you 100% of all the Greenlandic people have had lots of conversations about this.
Everyone.
And it's because Trump said it.
And Trump said it publicly.
And not only say it publicly, but he said, here's the beauty.
He basically said, if you don't sell it to us or give it to us, we're going to take it.
What do you think the Greenlandic people think when the entire U.S. military and the President of the United States named Trump says, you know, we could just take it?
Do you think they believed it?
Yes.
Well, at least they believed there was a high possibility.
Do you think he meant it?
As in he would send in the actual military and start arresting any Greenland resistors?
Don't know.
That's the beauty of it.
I follow Trump as closely as anybody.
I don't know.
Did he mean it?
That's his magic.
His magic is he might mean it.
He might.
And that's all you need.
So think about how much action he got simply by putting it out there that if you don't work with us, we're just going to take it.
Because once he's established that it's a military security requirement, which I'd never heard before.
Before Trump, I'd never even heard that it's some kind of military requirement, which I believe because of the opening of the ice nearby.
It's going to be fought over by Russia and China and all the powers.
So yeah, we need a strong, strong presence to make sure our hemisphere doesn't get invaded by missiles and who knows what.
So the first thing he does is informs the country that it's a requirement for security.
So we're like, hmm, well, there's no way to get there, but wouldn't it be great?
Then he says it in public, and the Greenlandic people are like, oh, no, no, no, I don't want to do that.
But what's the offer?
You only have to make them curious.
Just make them curious what the offer is.
Because who's going to say no before they hear the offer?
Right?
You could say no after you hear the offer, but who says no before they hear the offer?
You know, just ordinary curious people who are not killing it in life.
Maybe they'd like to do a little better.
This rich guy says, hmm, maybe I can do something for you.
You're going to stay and you're going to listen.
And then you hear, but he might just take it.
Then you think, maybe we should talk to him.
And then Denmark says, you know what?
I'm thinking maybe we should talk to you.
Maybe we'll meet in the middle somewhere.
Do you know what Trump needed?
He just needed him to meet in the middle.
I don't think the United States would be in favor of making him a state.
Do you know why?
Because I'm pretty sure we don't want their voting record.
I'm pretty sure we don't want to give them some kind of political power.
Now, I don't know what their beliefs are politically, but just as a point of reference, I checked if abortion is legal in Greenland.
Because I feel like that's going to tell you kind of quickly where their heads are at.
Not only is it legal to get an abortion in Greenland, But according to Google, they have the highest abortion rate in the world.
The highest abortion rate in the world.
Now, if I were a negotiator, I would say to myself, hmm, yeah, that's sort of a poison pill.
You know, if you're a Republican, it's a poison pill.
So maybe we should meet in the middle instead of turning it into a state.
Maybe some kind of territory situation with a special arrangement would be best for all.
But what's interesting is that just as Trump is sort of offering, hey, wouldn't it be great if you were Americans?
Wouldn't you like that?
The Greenlandic people are the busiest of all people, killing their own people.
So even the Greenlandic people don't love Greenlandic people.
They're killing them at the highest rate of any civilized country.
I'm just joking.
The Greenlandic people probably just have a lot of sex, so there's nothing else to do.
So they probably need more abortions because they have more sex or something like that.
Now, here's something I learned from the comments on locals.
I hadn't really considered this before, but you know how Trump is really good with real estate?
He can spot an opportunity in real estate that other people might not catch, because that's his business.
And somebody pointed out that this is the perfect time to buy Greenland because once climate change turns on and Greenland actually turns green, we're not going to be able to afford it.
So you want to get it cheap before climate change turns it into a beachfront, sort of a tropical island, because that's when it's really going to be expensive.
So I think Trump's brilliant.
He's going to get it before it warms up.
You can't tell if I'm kidding, can you?
All right, so I thought I would put together a Greenland deal just so we could sort of play with it to see if it looks like it could be something that would work.
I'm going to throw out a first draft right now of what a deal might look like.
Now, I don't know if you know, but I have an extensive background in negotiating.
It used to be my job.
In corporate America, I was the person who had to negotiate with vendors.
To get their prices down and all that stuff.
So you learn about deal-making and also my MBA background, they teach about deal-making.
So I have some experience in how to put together a deal.
So this is not completely speculative.
Just know that there's a little bit, a little bit of actual professional skill that's going into this, okay?
Just a little bit.
Like, I'm not the best at it or anything.
Number one, I like the idea of calling it a territory or whatever word you want to put on it and not a state.
We already have some, right?
Guam and whatever.
I don't like them voting, but that's no problem because Greenland probably doesn't care about voting in our politics.
I would say that you'd want to offer the Greenlandic people full local control of their laws.
So that the law of the United States doesn't necessarily apply there, but they get to make their own laws and have their own justice system, just like now.
So basically, they would operate exactly the same.
And they would have their own taxation.
We wouldn't tax them, but we would take over the, let's say, the support payments that Denmark is doing.
So what Denmark would get out of it is they don't have to pay Trump his extortion when he says, if we're going to protect your island, You're going to have to pay us $20 billion a year or whatever he puts on it.
And they're not going to want to pay that.
And they currently pay to subsidize Greenland.
They wouldn't have to pay that.
So wouldn't it be great if Denmark just sort of got out of the business of managing something that they don't want to manage?
So I think Denmark could be made happy as long as Greenland came out ahead and they cut their own budget so they didn't have to support it, I think.
Seems doable.
But here's what you would do if you're a chump to sweeten the deal.
You'd say, we're going to greatly expand the mining operations for the rare earth materials.
I think there's some energy too.
Was there natural gas?
Maybe we don't know for sure, but we'd look for some more.
And the idea would be that we would share the income with the locals, maybe the same way that oil companies When they first went to the Middle East and the countries where they wanted to drill did not have the ability to build oil wells themselves.
So I don't know the details.
I'd love to be informed about that, by the way, if somebody knows those details.
Did the oil companies say something like, we'll give you half if you let us just drill on your land that you can't drill on?
Or 20%?
Like, what is the number where both are happy?
I don't know what that number is.
But we could say to them, we're going to give you a percentage of that, and it will be way bigger, way more money than Denmark was giving you every year.
Your lifestyle will improve.
You can have less abortions.
And they'd get full military protection.
But I think there would have to be a clause in there, which could be a sticking point.
They would give the United States the authority for full martial law in the military.
Now, if you're wanting to be an independent sort of associated territory, you're going to bristle at the idea that there could ever be martial law imposed by effectively another country that you're working with.
But I don't know that we could say no to that.
I feel like if we're going to give security to them, it seems likely there would be cases where the military would have to put a boot on ordinary freedoms just temporarily.
That's what martial law is.
And everybody hates martial law, but I feel like we need some kind of out.
Now, maybe we don't need it, because even the military base that would be stationed there would be far more powerful than a bunch of Greenlandic citizens with their handguns or whatever.
So I suppose we could get anything we wanted if we really needed it.
But it'd be nice to put it in the deal so everybody knows it's possible.
And then you could say, hey, you guys, you could get American passports.
Do you think the Greenlandic people would like to have an American passport?
I don't know if that's good or bad.
It'd be in addition to maybe whatever they already have.
So, why wouldn't that work?
Can you think of any idea why they would not take that deal?
So, they still have independence.
They make a bunch more money.
They get a free military without having to pay any taxes for the military.
And they get some freedom from Denmark.
Where's the downside?
It's all upside.
And Trump made this conversation possible by, what did Stephen A. Smith say?
By the way he acts.
That's right.
So the way he acts makes this possible.
That's what the way he acts gets you.
Greenland.
Maybe.
We'll see.
Well, let's talk about the LA fires.
I know that if you're not in LA, you're just...
Just wishing we could stop talking about this.
I get it.
I get it.
But I think this is more relevant to all the rest of you than you think.
First of all, it would be fascinating to understand what went wrong so it doesn't happen in your state.
And also to give you an idea of whether it can fix.
I'm going to give you the bad news first.
You ready?
I think that the rebuilding cost will be at least a trillion.
And nobody can pay for that.
So the rebuilding, if you put it on top of the regulations that exist, you know, all the environmental stuff, how long it takes to get a permit, the complications, you know, the removal of the toxic debris, the cleaning of the water, the re-hooking up of things.
There is actually no way to get from here to there.
There is no way to rebuild that.
And if California is just abandoned, effectively, to the criminals because nobody's going to live there and it just isn't affordable to fix, homeowners can't fix it on their own.
There really isn't any way to fix it in the current normal system.
So let me say that again.
There really is no solution.
Because the federal government isn't going to put a trillion dollars into it.
The homeowners can't afford to rebuild.
California isn't going to have enough money or even clothes.
It's going to destroy all of our insurance and maybe all of our banking in the entire country.
I don't think people understand that when California falls, the country gets more than a black eye.
It's an existential threat to the rest of the country.
I think California might be toast.
Unless...
You want some good news?
See, I set you up.
And by the way, when I say there's bad news and good news, they're both possible.
I'm not underplaying one of them.
There doesn't seem to be any path that you could recover.
Want to hear why bad it is?
How bad it is?
Why do you think that Californians can't get insurance?
You've heard...
You've heard the government blame the insurance companies for pulling out and trying to get too much profit, right?
You've heard the insurance companies blame the government because the government won't let them raise their prices.
I'm a Californian.
Let me tell you what's true.
There is no solution.
It wouldn't matter if the government or the insurance companies did everything smart and logical and legal.
There is no solution.
So here's what happens to a normal Californian.
You get in your house, let's say you're going to stay where you are for a while.
You can afford your house, and maybe you've even retired in it, and you've figured out how to keep affording it even after retirement.
Now your house goes up in value, but you're still okay.
And in fact, you're happier, because if you sell it, you make more money.
But also, your property insurance doesn't change much.
You're like, oh.
I still pay roughly the same amount of taxes.
It does go up, but not as much as the value of your house.
Then your house doubles again.
Now your house is worth four times what you paid for it.
As long as you stay there forever, your property taxes will be the original cost.
Good.
But what about insurance?
The cost of insurance is for replacement.
So now your cost of insurance is going to have to be...
Four times what it was when the value of the home was, you know, do the math backwards, right?
Nobody can afford that.
If you say to somebody, I'm going to double or triple what it costs you for, I think in my case, it was maybe a 10x increase.
10x.
When I got a market price, a market price.
From an actual insurance company that is still in California, it was 10 times what the old price was for fire insurance.
10 times.
So it was something like $1,000 a month went to $10,000 a month.
Now, I could afford it if I wanted to pay that.
But that's because I'm still working.
I'm not retired.
And I didn't buy my house when it was, you know, a tiny fraction.
It has gone up since I bought it.
So nobody who's a normal person with a normal job, even these rich-ish, rich-ish people living in the Pacific Palisades, some of them were super rich, you know, the Louis-Dreyfus ones.
But if you're looking at the, you know, the James Woods, Adam Carolla, and then, you know, down a level to people who don't have jobs that good either.
Those people just barely can hang on to their homes.
They might have had them a long time, so long that it was cheap when they got them and they were paying cheap property tax, cheap insurance relative to the value of the home that kept going up.
But if they have to rebuild, and especially those who maybe move, because most of those people are going to say, I don't want to wait five to ten years for my house to be livable.
And by the way, why would I live there?
It's all burned down.
Even if my house survived.
So those people are going to say, well, I got to move somewhere else.
What are they going to do?
They can't buy a house and then not get fire insurance if you just got burned out of your old place.
So there isn't really a solution because the value of the property is so inflated relative to its actual market value that there's no solution.
And I don't see one.
That if you straight line it, there's no solution.
So let me say it in a different way.
What you expected when you saw, oh, there's a big fire emergency, how is this burdened down?
It's really, really bad.
Did you say to yourself, well, this is a little worse than normal emergencies.
What will happen is, you know, FEMA will come in and, you know, people will adjust.
It's going to take a few years, but they're going to rebuild.
And then maybe it'd even be better than it was.
They'll build better homes.
We have to wait a few years, but we'll be back to normal.
That's not this.
This is unbuildable.
This is almost the total destruction of the entire Southern California.
What's that going to do to Northern California?
Well, who's going to pay for it?
Probably me.
So they're going to make Northern California, I think, unlivable because it'll be...
Tax like crazy, or they're going to have to steal some of our water or something.
But it's going to be completely unlivable.
If you assume the normal things are the only things that can happen, we are doomed.
Let me say it as clearly as possible.
If you assume normal business, normal recovery, normal emergency, normal rebuilding, nothing like that's going to happen.
It can't.
It's economically impossible.
That was the first problem.
The reason we don't have insurance is because it was already economically impossible.
And we just added a trillion dollars to the insurance burden.
So where it was impossible before, now it's just laughable.
The insurance is not coming back.
They're not going to come back to the state because we tweaked something.
They can't afford these houses.
It's a terrible place to offer insurance at any price.
Because if you have to increase the price by 10x, which is what happened to me, nobody can live there.
So is it the government's problem or the insurance company's problem?
A little of both.
More the government than the insurance company's.
But mostly it's that our property is completely, insanely overpriced.
Do you know what the real price of those homes should have been?
So let's say a $5 million home in Pacific Palisades in a place that did not have, they didn't know it, but suppose they knew it, that it did not have protection from a major fire.
What would be the actual market price of the homes?
So they were selling for $5 million.
What would you pay for a home that's probably going to burn down?
Right?
You'd say to yourself, well, I mean, well, before it burns down.
This is like heaven.
I'm told that was like the best place anybody ever lived in their life.
Like, people really, really like that place.
So you might say, well, I don't know if it's going to burn down.
I'm seeing the numbers.
$300,000?
Because if you lose $300,000, you might say, well, first of all, you could insure it.
The insurance companies would say, no, actually, you couldn't.
You couldn't insure it because the rebuilding cost is what the insurance company would care about.
And that would still be, you know, several million dollars.
So you'd have to buy it for something like $300,000, not insure it, and then if you lost the entire $300,000 to a fire, just say, well, it's not the end of my world.
Like, I can recover from that.
I'll just have to live somewhere else.
So the real problem, and by the way, I should give credit to Friedberg on the All In Pod.
Because if any of the All In Pod guys are watching, they're probably saying, is he stealing Friedberg's point?
Yes.
Yes, I'm stealing Friedberg's point.
Because somehow that was a little bit invisible to me because I was looking in the wrong place.
I was looking at the insurance and I wasn't looking at the house value.
So that's the bad news.
The bad news is there is no mechanism for recovery.
The good news is we've got a new president.
Now, I think he would be unlikely to spend a trillion dollars to rebuild the same bad situation.
But suppose, as Joel Pollack pointed out in an article on Breitbart, you happen to be lucky enough to have a great builder as a president, and there's this fellow in Southern California named Caruso who is also...
A developer.
And he's the one who lost narrowly to Karen Bass.
I think he's also a Democrat, but he's not a crazy Democrat.
He's a, can we do common sense Democrat?
A common sense Democrat with experience in building has my attention, but you need a lot more.
I'm going to throw out some wild ideas in the spirit of brainstorming that isn't with good ideas.
But if I throw out enough bad ideas, you're going to get the point that this is solvable.
All right?
So these are the bad ideas.
Suppose, just for Southern California, maybe Northern as well, the insurance rules are changed so that individuals can offer insurance.
So in other words, somebody like me, I can just say, hey, I'd like to invest in California insurance.
But I only want to invest in homes that have certain fireproofing and or local good management to get rid of the burnable stuff.
So I would say, okay, my neighborhood is in good shape.
If something burned in my neighborhood, there's a lot of tile roofs, people have removed the trees, then I might say, hmm.
Okay, as a personal investment, I'll put a little money into this, let's say, crowdfunded insurance.
Now, it might be a good idea, it might be a bad idea, but unlike the insurance company, if the insurance company takes a total loss, they're out of business.
And I think they might be out of business after this.
But if I, as a personal investor, said, you know what?
I'm going to put $1,000 into this, because I think next year it could be worth, you know, $1,200.
And then if I lost my $1,200, I would say, oh, darn, and nothing would change.
I would just lose my $1,200.
You know, it was a financial bet, didn't work out.
So, first of all, could you spread the bet to individuals, and then would the crowd be smarter about picking the ones they want to back?
And when people found out they couldn't even get crowd backing, what would they have to buy?
To get it.
Well, here's another idea.
Number one, you have to replace your roof.
Because if your roof burns, I'm not giving you insurance.
If you're in California and you have a flammable roof, I'm not giving you any insurance.
But if you want to buy a new roof, we can talk.
If you have a robot, let's think ahead a little bit.
If you have a robot who's a private fireman, And somehow the technology worked, I'd give you a better deal.
Because you as a human would leave the evacuation zone, and your robot, which is less burnable, would just stand there with a water pack and zap wherever an ember hits.
So the robot would just walk around the house, and just zap the little embers starting to affect your property.
Or, like in my house, suppose I had trees that are a little too close to the house.
Because the house itself is quite resistant.
I built it to be super resistant to be fires.
By the way, I should tell you that.
It was built specifically to be resistant to fires.
I designed it that way.
But the trees are too close, which makes it less resistant.
So somebody comes to me and they say, Scott, we'll give you some of this crowdsourced insurance, but you've got to get rid of these trees.
Then I say, are you kidding?
This place, like, these are really...
Mature trees.
And they say, but no insurance.
And then I cut down the trees.
And then I'm a little bit unhappy, but I got insurance.
So, could crowdsourcing get you to the point where individuals, maybe even in your town, can decide whether you're a good bet?
Because that's one of my takes.
Here's the other thing.
You know, Neil, you've seen pictures of people who had sprinklers on their roof, and they would just take the, I think it was a lawn sprinkler, they just put it on the roof before they evacuated, and it would just sort of keep the roof moist and kept it from burning in some cases.
Probably not all cases, but some.
So maybe, maybe there's a new technology that we don't know about.
A roof sprinkler.
Something like that.
Maybe.
The insurance company would do the forest mitigation for the state because there's a profit to be made.
If they can mitigate it, then they can sell the crowdsource insurance into the city.
Now, are any of those ideas good ideas?
Not really.
Not really.
They're all incomplete.
But does it help you imagine?
That if we released on everything we've done before and just started with a clean slate and said, all right, if you were going to invent this from scratch, would it look anything like the current system?
And the answer is no.
If you invented it today from scratch, you'd use AI, you'd use, I don't know, just a lot of different things.
And then maybe there's something with land values that have to be adjusted.
All right.
You may have heard that the leader of Black Lives Matter, Patrice Cullors, has lost two of her three Los Angeles mansions in the wildfires.
So I'm not willing to say that DEI is the reason anybody lost their house.
I do think it's the reason that there's mass incompetence in general.
But if you're looking for any one tragedy and one person in charge...
It doesn't necessarily mean that DEI is there.
But the irony of the simulation is that the person you would imagine most associated with DEI got her house, two of her three houses that she didn't deserve burned down by DEI. That's kind of perfect.
Now, again, I'm not saying it's DEI, but that's going to be the narrative about it.
All right.
Newsom went on a podcast, Governor Newsom, and he was blaming local leaders for the problem.
So he wanted to make sure you knew it wasn't necessarily the state leadership that he's in charge of.
It was rather the local leaders.
Local leaders.
So the white guy governor thinks the problem is the local leaders.
Is there anything about the local leaders that's worth noting?
Does it sound to you like local leaders is the racist dog whistle that a Democrat can use?
Yeah, it wasn't the white governor of the state.
It was the local leaders.
Do you hear it, or is it just me?
Do you hear the racist dog whistle?
I feel like local leaders just has a little bit of a vibe.
Of racism without using the words?
I don't know.
Maybe it's just me.
That's the way it hit me.
I certainly can't read his mind, but it's the way it hit me.
Sounds like a dog whistle to me.
According to the Climate Change Dispatch, California actually had record rainfall in, I think it was last year, and didn't save it because we don't have the right kind of reservoirs, and we haven't built many reservoirs.
Since forever.
So poor long-term planning.
Those people who say that it's climate change caused the dryness are ignoring the fact that California has always had a highly variable climate when it comes to rain.
The most common thing in California in my entire life is that, oh, it's a few years of drought.
Oh, it's a few years of too much rain.
Oh, we're back to a few years of drought.
Oh, it's a...
Too much rain.
All you have to do is save the rain from the too much rain year, and you would have plenty for the not enough rain year, at least for fire, maybe not for drinking.
So, yes, that would be a case of bad management.
Brentwood is under evacuation orders.
Brentwood's that famous rich place where people like Kamala Harris, LeBron James, and Arnold Schwarzenegger live, and OJ lived.
On top of that, Schwarzenegger says, you know, don't worry about me.
And, of course, we weren't.
It's funny.
Schwarzenegger tells the public, you know, don't worry about me.
I'll be fine.
And I think the entire public said, we know.
We weren't really worried about the people so rich they have multiple homes and, you know, $500 million or whatever he's worth.
No, we weren't worried.
But apparently Kamala Harris' house got burglarized.
Or at least there's a report that there were people there who looked like they were going to burglarize it and got caught.
Now, there is now, that means there's a non-zero chance that Brentwood could burn down and Kamala Harris' house.
That's what I call a bad year.
Can you imagine...
Losing the presidential race to Hitler, and within a few months your house burns down?
So she's out of a job, her career is destroyed, her husband was outed as a girlfriend beater, and then her house gets burned down?
If it happens, I mean, let me say as clearly as possible, I don't want that to happen.
I don't want that to happen.
I don't want anybody's house to burn down.
I don't care what they did to me or didn't do to me or the bad things they did.
I don't really want anybody's house to burn down, except for the Black Lives Matter woman who has three mansions that look to be entirely based on, you know.
So she would be an exception.
But no, I don't want Kamala Harris's house to burn down, just to be clear.
Wall Street Journal says the fire is 15% contained, and you think, oh, good.
They went from 3% to 15. We're in good shape.
They'll just keep going.
Nope.
The wind is coming back, and they should lose that whole 15 in the next day or two.
That's the current forecast.
The next week's going to be hairy.
So we don't know how far this fire is going to go, but let me teach you something about numbers.
Yesterday, I saw a report that one of the fires was 3% contained.
Do you know it's not a thing?
3% contained.
That's not a thing.
Do you think that they can measure 3% containment?
No, 3% is zero, but they want you to think that they're doing something.
So they go from zero to 3%.
There's no difference.
There's no difference between 3% contained and 0% contained.
That's just something you say so the news will report it and people go, oh.
Well, looks like they've gone from zero to three in just a week, so it's picking up.
No, it's not picking up.
Three percent zero.
Same number.
Same number.
All right.
Elon Musk, I saw a post, but I didn't see the exact words and didn't write it down, but it sounded like he said that in 2021, Elon Musk has set out to destroy the woke mind virus, and now he's declaring success.
Do you think the woke mind virus is destroyed?
I'm going to give him the win on that.
I think he destroyed the woke mind virus.
I don't think Trump did.
I think Elon Musk did.
He said he would do it.
He did all the things that you would do if you were trying to get rid of it.
And it does look like people can now talk about it being ridiculous.
So you've got both Democrats, prominent Democrats, at least in the pundit class, as well as Republicans say, yeah, all that stuff, the woke mind virus was overblown, overdone, ridiculous.
It lacked common sense.
Yes, Elon Musk set out to destroy the woke mind virus and got it done.
And boy, did he take he for that.
And still is.
I mean, the amount, I mean, he had to have...
Beef up his personal security.
I mean, he took a chance on your behalf.
His as well, but on your behalf as well.
And good for him.
Good for him.
But, just to make his day better, there was a former, in the UK, Labour MP. So, part of the government.
So, he's recently out of it.
But he was one of the people who publicly criticized Elon Musk on British TV last week.
For when Elon was criticizing Keir Starmer, and it was all about the...
I don't want to say it because I'll get demonetized.
You know, you're all following the story.
So this guy complained about the complaints about the serious crimes against young people.
And the guy who complained about it, or complained about the complaints about it, just was arrested for attempting to have a meet-up with a 15-year-old boy.
So, you know that thing where you wonder, are the governments of the developed world all terrible sex criminals and transvestites and in the closet and every other kind of thing you can think of?
Is it really that?
And that they're all in place as puppets?
It might be.
You know what I heard from, of course this is not confirmed, that Justin Trudeau was never really the head of the country, and that he literally thought of himself as a relationship manager, and all of the real decisions were made by other people.
So the other people are the ones who say, yeah, he doesn't really do anything.
He's just a relationship manager.
And they've also alleged, and I don't know if this is true, but they alleged that he also didn't really pay attention to the news and didn't know what was going on.
So when you saw him talk, you would say to yourself, I did anyway.
You probably did too.
It's like, does he even watch the news?
Trudeau looked like somebody who wasn't even informed about anything.
And then the politician said, yeah, he wasn't informed about anything because he didn't need to make any decisions.
He was just supposed to go out there and say happy stuff.
That's what it looked like.
Now, that seems too much hyperbole to me.
I think he must have had some real power.
But what if he didn't?
What if the entire system is just people behind the scenes making sure they have the most blackmailable person in the top job?
Because it sure as hell looks like it, and that would make you understand why there was so much resistance to Trump, because he's quite clearly not that.
Whatever Trump is, he doesn't look like a puppet, but maybe that's what it is.
It's all puppets.
I had somebody come after me today who had pronouns in his profile.
Incident block.
I'm never going to have another conversation with somebody who has pronouns in their profile.
You know, I used to do it like I'd respond to them and say, well, here's my point of view.
I'm not going to talk to anybody with pronouns in their profile.
And I recommend that you don't either.
Because whatever they have to say, it can't possibly be useful.
Could it?
Like, just don't waste your time talking to anybody who thinks that's their priority enough to put it in their profile.
Meanwhile, over at the MSNBC Comedy Network, that's what I call it.
It's not intentional, but it's pretty funny.
So they had some commentator, I don't know his name, but his haircut looked like a paintbrush.
Do you know which one it is?
He has this big, like a giant paintbrush on his head.
Anyway, he was talking about the Carter funeral and how all the leaders were just sort of chatting friendly.
And he said this, quote, there was something strange about seeing multiple leaders who have warned that this guy, meaning Trump, is a dictatorship on the horizon, fascism on the horizon, the end of the American experiment.
Now, just because of the rituals of the funeral, so that's what he's blaming.
He's blaming the rituals of a funeral.
He says it is normalized by default.
We're just sitting and making small talk with a guy who we have said is going to end everything.
So, remember I said, what's going to happen to Democrat brains when reality is thrust upon them?
Well, here's an example.
So, instead of the more obvious interpretation that the entire Democrat Party was lying about Trump, which to me seems super obvious.
The MSNBC take, and I actually think he means this.
I think this is his actual take.
I don't think he sat around saying, what lie can I tell that?
I think he thinks this.
He thinks the problem, if you can call it that, is that the funeral forced everybody to act responsible, and that that's the reason that they were joking and talking to Hitler.
No, that's not why.
No, not that guy.
Not Eli Weasel.
There's some other guy.
So he looks more like one of those mushroom balls.
So I'm talking about the paintbrush hair, not the mushroom ball.
Anyway.
So I'm amazed at Democrats to look at something as obvious as this and decide that it's the funeral rituals that explain everything.
The funeral rituals.
Nope.
Can I be clear about this?
I would not attend a funeral for somebody who was not related to me and wasn't my best friend under any condition if I were going to be sitting next to and chatting with Hiller.
That's just me.
No, if he really, if any of the things they said about him were true, they would not have attended.
Or they would have disinvited, made sure that the, you know, the Hitler got disinvited.
The whole thing was always a lie, and MSNBC is the biggest purveyor of it.
Well, in surprising, but maybe not so much, news, the L.A. Times owner has invited Mark Andreessen to be on his board.
So you might know that the L.A. Times' newish owner, Dr. Pat Sun Xiang, decided not to endorse...
Kamala Harris.
And then people said, whoa, whoa, are you not as Democrat as we thought?
You're not as lefty as we thought?
Well, he did vote for Kamala Harris.
So the owner of the LA Times voted for her, but he didn't endorse her because he didn't want the newspaper to be just a biased entity.
So he got tons of hate for that because he was trying to be middle of the road.
But inviting Mark Andreessen to be on your board of your newspaper, that sends a whole different message.
Do you know what message that sends?
That he's going to turn Republican?
Nope.
Nope.
That he just wants to put on some window dressing so it looks like he's seeing both sides?
Nope.
I think he wants a common sense guy.
I think Mark Andreessen is sort of the ultimate common sense guy.
If you listen to him, you can use your imagination to like, well, is he Republican?
Because you can almost hear it, but you can't.
Like, I don't know if he's Republican.
I don't know what he is.
But I can tell you that every time he talks, it makes sense.
He goes for the things that are common sense, not the philosophy, not the weird stuff, not the stuff that's clearly going to be here with us and then go away, but like real, permanent, logical, rational stuff.
Yeah, he'd be great.
I would rather him be the governor of California.
If I had a choice, Mark Andreessen, governor of California, big yes.
Big yes.
Schellenberger, yes.
Yes.
I can name a few other names, but yeah, there's some people that I'd like to see to get that job, and Andreessen would be right in my shortest list at the top.
So that's good.
That seems like the Trump effect in the sense that I don't think the LA Times could do what we're seeing, meaning the owner, Dr. Pat Soon-Shion.
I don't think he could do it without that Trump effect being just what it is, where everybody's got a little freedom to say what they want.
All right.
Here's the thing you need to know about we Californians.
It kind of sneaks up on you, so you don't realize it until it's done.
But we don't really have the right to own homes in California because there's a thing called property tax.
And if you don't pay your property tax, they'll take your home.
So you don't really own a home if you're paying somebody else to live in it.
That's not ownership.
But then you say to me, well, but Scott, if you sell it, you get to keep the money.
How am I going to sell my home?
Who would buy anything in California at the moment?
So I can't sell it, and I don't own it, but well, okay, when I die, I can leave it to my heirs.
Do you know what would be left of my net wealth after state and federal taxes and death taxes?
Nothing.
Well, it's not nothing, but it'd be like less than half.
So, no, we're basically living in a DEI-managed racist hellscape, and here's the other problem.
People keep saying, and I just said it a moment ago, we keep saying that all we need is to get capable and competent people in the top jobs, and then everything will be okay.
There's no mechanism for that to happen.
If the Democrats have as much control over the system as it is, It looks like.
You can't get incompetent people in office.
It's all going to be DEI incompetence.
And there's nothing that's going to change that.
You haven't seen a single thing from anything official, like in the government, where they would say, you know what?
Maybe California should pull back from DEI. And let me say something.
I hate to help them, but on the other hand, it would be good.
The most unlikely thing I can imagine is Governor Newsom saying, I'd like to make DEI illegal in California.
Now, you're going to say to yourself, there's no freaking way that's going to happen.
The potential guy who might run for president as a Democrat, do you think he's going to disown the single most important thing that Democrats do?
Well, here's the thing.
No matter how much you love or hate Gavin Newsom, even the people who don't like him seem to say grudgingly, he's kind of good at this politics stuff.
That's why he's the governor.
So if he's good at the politics stuff, and in my personal opinion, destroying California is unforgivable, even if the local leaders are the reason.
If he did something big and bold and commonsensical, like saying, you know what?
Competent people, we've got to get rid of DEI. Could he become president if he was the most prominent Democrat who said, guys, we've got to stop this.
I won't have any of it.
DEI is a losing proposition.
It's basically racist.
We tried it and it didn't work out.
We have to pivot.
That would put him right back on the top of the leaderboard for president.
I don't know if he can do it, but the thing I'm positive about is that he's smart enough to know he should or that he couldn't get elected without doing it.
Anyway, I think I missed the main point I was going to make earlier, which is because Trump is a builder and one of the people who ran for mayor but lost Caruso as a builder, that you can imagine the two of them getting together and saying, what regulations do we need to get rid of right away?
And you could revitalize California by massively changing the regulatory environment.
Could the two of them get it done?
Well, neither of them is the governor of California.
So I don't know.
But maybe some kind of federalizing things would work.
Mike Cernovich raised over $100,000.
I think it was over $130,000.
For Californians who are displaced and need some food, he's working with Chef Gruel.
Who is doing the hard work of the cooking and delivering the food, was doing it, I believe, on his own dime until Cernovich stepped in with $10,000 of his own money, and he raised $130,000 above that, I think.
I think that's the right number.
And that's pretty impressive.
So I don't know how the other states worked out.
I imagine it's the same in the sense that the people who had the ability to step in, Or stepping in.
So I'm trying to do my part in a variety of ways.
Not all of that would be public, but I'm hoping a lot of people are doing a lot of non-public things to help out.
That's pretty amazing.
All right.
Here's the...
Yeah, I think I already talked about that.
The American Psychological Association...
Is urging the FTC, according to the Futurism publication by Maggie Harrison Dupre, urging the FTC to investigate AI chatbots that are claiming to be therapists and offering free therapy.
So the human therapists are saying, hey, there's AI therapists online and they're pretending to be real people because they're deep fakes.
Now their complaint is simply that they're not labeled.
So, so far, they're not complaining that they might give you bad advice, although probably they think that.
The complaint is they're not labeled.
Now, that's a decent complaint.
I think the consumer should absolutely know if they're talking to an AI. They absolutely should know.
However, I would like to nominate therapists at the top of the list for being replaced by AI. Do you really think...
That your $200 or $400 an hour, I don't know what it costs, do you think that your once a week, one hour therapist is going to be anywhere near as good as the one you can talk to all day long as much as you want and it can answer all the same questions and has all the same skills and acts just like a human?
It's not really going to be close.
Now at the moment, I would imagine the human is well beyond what the AI currently can do.
But how long?
End of the year?
I think therapy might be one of the things that goes first to AI. Meanwhile, here's a fake news story, in my opinion, but maybe there's just something wrong in the way it was written.
It's in the Express publication, and it says that over in Ukraine there are these butterfly drones.
So they've got a big shipment, 30,000 drones coming in from the UK, and they say that these drones are so light and nimble that they look like a child's toy, but they have a machine gun and they can carry a soldier out of the war zone.
No.
No, there's no drone that's the size of a child's toy and has a machine gun on it.
And certainly it's not carrying any soldiers the size of a child's toy.
No.
No.
I don't know what's wrong with the story.
I don't know if any of it's right.
Maybe the entire thing's made up.
But no.
No, you're not putting a machine gun on something the size of a child's drone toy.
Weird.
But it says it has an operational range of 12.5 miles and can operate autonomously for up to three days.
It has this machine gun on it and a mobile turret.
Or it's also got, listen to this, it's got fourth-class protection armor.
So you can even shoot it.
And if you don't shoot it too many times or too hard, it'll survive being shot.
