Shutdown drama and other ridiculous news~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, Potato Reframe, Jimmy Kimmel's Wife, BBC's Trump Apology, Anti-Trump Injunctions, CDL Illegal Immigrants, Michael Saylor Bitcoin, Chicago Office Vacancy Rate, Grocery Prices, J6 Pipe Bomber Allegations, Gait Analysis, democrat Designated Liars, Jaime Raskin, Filibuster, Government Shutdown, Chris Murphy, 50-Year Home Mortgages, Beef Prices, Nigeria Christian Persecutions, President Trump, Action Bias, Scott Adams~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
It's going to be so good I can barely even contain myself.
But then, what's that?
Random.
Get rid of that.
Now, let me find your comments so that I can give you the full time of day.
It's going to be good.
It's going to be a short show today.
See if he can tell why.
All right.
Really?
There we go.
we're up and running good morning everybody and welcome to the highlight of human civilization It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and you've never had a better time.
But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a copper and mugger a glass, a tankard chalicerstein, a canteen jugger flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dope meeting of the day.
The thing makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip.
It happens now.
go.
Well, looks like everything's working.
Yay.
Yay.
Everything's working.
Some people like it when I do a reframe before every show.
How many of you like to see a reframe before the show?
A reframe from my book, Reframe Your Brain, the most important book in the English language.
And all the other ones too, but it's not in those languages.
It's just the most important.
All right.
All right.
Here's the next one.
This is still in the mental health reframes section of the book.
Well, actually, you've heard this one before, so if anybody hasn't heard this one, this was very viral for reasons that kind of surprised me.
So see if you think this should have gone viral.
It did at the time.
So instead of the usual frame that you're a priceless work of art that must be protected, how many of you think that?
I mean, it's an exaggeration, of course.
But you think that you're important, don't you?
You think I'm more important than, at least to myself, I'm more important than other people.
The trouble is that's kind of limiting.
It would be better to say you're a potato that is easily replaced.
Here's the background on that.
If I told you to carry a priceless piece of art across the road to another museum, you'd be pretty worried that something would go wrong, right?
But you're the priceless art.
So when you're taking care of yourself, you're the priceless art.
And you're just worried all the time about taking care of it.
Would you like to worry less about what's happening to you and what's going to happen to you?
And will a bad outcome happen?
And is it going to be the worst case scenario?
Wouldn't you like to worry about all that less?
All you have to do is think of yourself as a potato.
And think if I were delivering a potato, like just an actual potato, across the street, it wouldn't even matter if I dropped it.
It wouldn't matter.
So, as soon as you think of yourself more like the potato, which again is not insulting yourself, has nothing to do with your ego.
Just assume that you're not so important that if something bad happened to you, it would be somehow the end of the world.
You're more like a potato than a Mona Lisa.
So, when I came up with that one, I have to admit, I didn't think it would be powerful.
But it's one of the ones that people have most commented on.
Did Greg mention it?
I think other people have mentioned it in other contexts.
So, I put it out there.
Maybe you like it.
Well, scientists say they figured out how to use an MRI to transcribe your thoughts.
Do you believe that?
Now that I've completely ruined for you the act of reading stories about science and believing them, because it's fun to believe them.
It's like, whoa, that'd be like a mind-reading machine.
To which I say, if you can thwart the mind-reading machine just by shaking your head, because obviously the MRI makes you be completely still, that's not much of a mind-reading machine.
And I don't know what they use it for exactly, unless you're like a locked-in syndrome or something.
And I also don't believe that they can do it well, and I don't believe that they can do it and repeat it.
And I don't believe anything about the story.
What was your first reaction to that?
Was your first reaction to the story, wow, they figured out how to use an MRI to read your thoughts?
Or was your first thought, that's more bullshit.
This is just absolutely more bullshit.
I lean toward the bullshit on this one.
Don't know.
So I'm not making an allegation.
I'm just saying how it felt when I read it.
A little more bullshitty than credible.
Well, if you haven't seen it yet, Jimmy Kimmel and his wife are on a podcast recently.
They just did a podcast.
And apparently, Jimmy Kimmel has been pulled off the air.
And as of this morning, when I was preparing, there was not yet a reason given.
Has that changed?
Has Kimmel or the network given a reason?
But apparently, he missed, I don't know, a couple nights, and they don't know when he's coming back, if he's coming back, or why he left.
Somebody said that it was maybe a personal thing, something personal.
But then when they showed on the podcast, well, I don't know when the podcast was recorded, so that might make a difference.
But we'll find out the mystery.
But I'll tell you what, we learned a little bit about the dynamic there.
You could tell that Jimmy Kimmel puts a great weight in his wife's opinion.
Do you mind if I say it in the non-judgmental way?
That would be the non-judgmental way to say it.
It's clear when you see them interact that he puts a lot of respect into his wife's opinion.
I'm not saying that's good or bad because it's their relationship, not mine.
And there's no one way to do anything.
But respecting your spouse is a really good place to start.
So if you're going to judge him because he seems a little whipped, I don't think that's fair.
I don't think that's fair at all.
It's his relationship.
He can be as whipped as he wants or not whipped.
It's none of our business.
So, and I'm wondering, have any of you heard a reason?
Even speculation?
I'm curious as heck what's going on here.
If it's a personal problem, then I just send my, I'll send my, you know, understanding and empathy if there's just some, you know, might be a family problem or something.
And that wouldn't be funny.
All right.
But here's the thing I wonder about.
So his wife, Jimmy Kimmel's wife, really made me curious about her opinions.
And one of the things she said was that I guess she used to be in sort of a Republican world when she was younger, but later she found out what the other side was saying and liked that side better and became a Democrat, I guess.
So that part makes sense.
A lot of people have gone from one thing to the other.
But what she wondered about is whether she could be deprogrammed.
So these are her own words.
You'd think this is something a Republican would say about her, but these are her own words.
She said, quote, I wish there was some way to deprogram myself.
Like she said on the podcast to the world, I wish there was some way to deprogram myself.
Because just the act of being around other people who are Trump supporters is disturbing.
So it's not that she's saying that she's wrong.
It's that she's having a reaction to the world that she wishes she were not having.
I think that's the right interpretation.
Now, again, nothing wrong with that, right?
People have opinions.
That's her opinion.
But the thing with the Democrat opinions of things, now see if you agree with us.
Hold on.
I'm very, very parched today.
The thing I don't understand about liberal opinions is the same thing I sometimes don't understand when it comes from Republican mouths.
There's a thing that people say and do that just seems like if that's where you're at, you shouldn't be talking about politics at all.
You're not ready.
And it goes like this.
All the people who are making mistakes about the data are on the same side.
You know what I mean?
And she basically said that, some version of that, that she didn't want to be on the side that was wrong, the side that was wrong.
Well, here's the part that's hard to explain.
If you really, really were paying attention to politics and you really genuinely, instead of just saying it because it was fun to say, if you genuinely believed, and I'm just going to pick a name, that Victor Davis Hansen, a well-known conservative, one of the smartest people in the world, he looks like it anyway, knows more than any 10 people.
Does she really think he's dumb?
Or that he's poorly informed?
And he's just one person.
If there were only one, you could say, oh, maybe one person got bought off or something.
But how do you explain Molly Hemingway?
I'll just pick some names, some people I like, basically.
Molly Hemingway is super smart.
How can you possibly look at her work or her writing and go, oh, that did not touch me?
Okay.
How can you possibly look at her opinions or writing and think that she's not as smart as you?
Or in this specific case, way more informed than you are?
Do you not know that?
Is that something you wouldn't know?
Because I try to be true to this principle.
For example, if I found myself disagreeing on an engineering question with Elon Musk, what's my best play?
It's my best play to say, you know, granted, I'm not an engineer.
And a lot of smart people say that Elon Musk is not just an engineer, but the best engineer in the world and maybe the best that ever will be.
But I think he got one wrong this time.
Do people really do that?
Is that an actual opinion?
I think he got one wrong this time in his strongest domain, you know, and of seven billion people, the best engineer.
Really?
If I hear a story about the cost of pharma and what laws could be passed or what could be done on it, and Mark Cuban has an opinion.
He's actually in the business.
So if his opinion disagreed with mine, I wouldn't try to talk him out of it.
I would say, wait, what should I believe?
And then he'd tell me, oh, you know, this does this, this does this.
And almost certainly it would give me some common sense opinion.
So how do you look at the world and believe that when Ben Shapiro is talking, that you listening to a dumb guy?
Come on.
If you wanted to have an IQ off or an SAT off, where, let's say, the 10 smartest conservatives were put up against the 10 smartest Democrats just to have some trivia or some kind of mental IQ contest, how do you think the conservatives would do?
I think they'd do pretty well.
Don't you?
Do they have a Cernovich?
They got smart people do.
So I don't want to fall into my own trap.
Democrats are very smart people.
But if you don't understand that people can be wrong on both sides, then you should not even be in the conversation.
Would you agree with that?
If it's not your intention to find out which side is right, and it's only your intention to make sure that your side looks right, what are you adding to the world?
Like, what's your value add there?
Unless it's your job to do something like you get paid for it, that'd be different.
All right.
So, you know, what was fun about this is that Jimmy Kimmel's wife is not really part of politics, but she said some of the most interesting and new things that I had to talk about.
So I'm sure they're very nice people.
I hear good things about them, actually.
The BBC, if you haven't seen this story, is so, it's just mind-boggling.
The BBC apparently is going to apologize, which means that they're admitting it happened, for deceptively editing President Trump's January 6th speech in an effort to make it look like he encouraged violence at the Capitol.
What?
How is this even real news?
Are we so beaten up about how fake the news is that this is sort of a side story?
Am I wrong that this is just a side story?
That the BBC made up a narrative that just didn't happen and pasted together some clips and made it look like the opposite of what he said?
That should sort of be the biggest story you've seen, except for all the other ones that are just insanely illegal looking.
Certainly looks illegal.
Anyway, do you think an apology is going to save them?
Because Trump's going to take the apology, of course.
He's going to bank the apology, but he's going to use the apology to show that there's no question about fact.
And then he's going to ask for something.
He might sue them, get them to settle because they don't have a possibility of winning.
They couldn't possibly win a lawsuit, I don't think.
I mean, I'm no lawyer.
You'll have to ask the lawyers.
But yeah, I got some kind of mothers.
Okay.
I believe the moth either survived or is clinging to my hand as a nasty, desiccated corpse.
Looks good.
Looks good.
All right.
So it looks like Trump's going to get another payday from the BBC.
According to an ex-user called Chas Mazell, who has been in the past, he's been a chief of staff at Trump's DOJ.
And he looked at some data and found that since 1963, listen to this, 75% of all nationwide injunctions have been against President Trump.
Since 1963, 75% of all the ones done in the country for any reason were Trump.
Now, again, I didn't fact-check this, so you might want to fact-check that.
And then he says 90% of those injunctions came from Democrat-appointed judges.
So 90% from Democrat judges and all of them just recently, basically.
And yet the administration, says Chad, and yet, with all of those injunctions, how did the Trump administration do fighting them off?
Well, it won 92% of the time.
92% of the time.
Now, that's just about as anti-authoritarian as you can get, right?
If 8% of the time you said, okay, you win, and you walked away, but 92% of the time you were just dead ass right, so you just won.
Isn't that like the least authoritarian thing you could think of?
Right?
If you could walk away from 8% of the things you really wanted to do, but the court said, you can't do that, and you can walk away.
And you can just walk away, say, all right, we really want to do that, but we'll work on something else.
Not too authoritarian.
According to a federal audit, and there should be federal audits of all the states all the time, every day, in my opinion.
Like, I actually mean that.
The federal government's main job should be auditing the states because the states are just out of control.
They're just taking their money and throwing it in the ocean.
62,000 commercial driver's licenses were handed out to people who were in California illegally.
62,000 illegal driver's licenses.
62,000.
So if you're wondering, is it a big problem?
Small problem?
That's a lot.
62,000 seems like enough that it could move a lot of different races.
I mean, I don't know how many races that would be able to change, depending on the distribution.
All right.
Do you know, how many of you know who Michael Saylor is?
S-A-Y-L-O-R, Michael Saylor.
He's sort of one of the big names, or maybe even the biggest name, I don't know, in crypto.
He's in the commercial side of things.
So he owns a company called MicroStrategy.
And I've only watched a little bit of his content, but it basically goes like this.
Buy Bitcoin.
And then I'll watch some extra other of his content.
And that content will go like this.
Buy Bitcoin.
But then something big will happen.
They'll Change the nature of everything, so you rethink all your strategies, and then he'll come out and he'll say, Buy Bitcoin.
And the annoying thing is, he hasn't been wrong yet.
If he could be wrong a few times, that'd be nice.
But in the short run, such as right now, it actually is taken quite a haircut, Bitcoin has.
So, if you're a very casual, casual, casual follower of crypto and you're sort of wondering, you know, I have a little bit, should I sell it?
I don't give advice, by the way.
So, this will this will not be advice.
Um, I don't give financial or health advice.
You wouldn't want to listen to any of my financial or health advice.
Um, but it's way down, way down, I don't know, 50% or something, some amount from the beginning of the year.
Uh, but that's not unusual in the Bitcoin world.
And Bitcoin is not like the other cryptos because it's you know, got this mathematical sort of perpetual value, whereas the other ones are literally backed by nothing.
They both sound like nothing, but one of them is you know treated as if it's a something, so there's a difference, anyway.
Um, he's probably going to be right again because I would be amazed if he didn't say, buy Bitcoin.
The argument for Bitcoin is that there isn't really any way for it to go down forever.
It just is just one of those things that if you just waited, you know, there would be periods where it's down for sure, but the odds of it just sort of going away, a lot of people think is low.
So, when somebody like me, who's not your financial advisor, says something as bold as, I don't think that Bitcoin is just going to go away, what happens next when people like me say, That's never going to go away, you better watch what happens on Monday because it'll probably go away on Monday because it's just the way the world is organized.
It's just the way the simulation works.
So, no, you should not listen to me.
But if that helped, uh, if that helped, but let me ask: was that level of detail?
Because I know many of you are way, way past that, and you understand crypto.
How many of you found it useful just to hear like a little top-level what's up with crypto?
Like, I wouldn't go further than that.
Was that useful or no?
I'm just looking at your comments.
all right you let me know all right apparently chicago's downtown office vacancy rate has now hit a record high of 28 percent Can you even imagine a city that's 28% vacant?
How does it survive that?
I always speculate that there are some magic numbers for things to fall apart.
One of them is 10%, and the other is 20%.
If anything goes to 10% problem, whatever it is, whatever the problem is, if it gets to 10%, then things could start getting out of control, but also 20%, depending on the thing.
So, whenever I see a 10 or a 20 coming, I'm like, whoa, 10 or a 20 coming.
But when it's at 28, it feels like it's already broken out into you can't get this toothpaste back in the tube.
Is it just me?
Now, here I'm only talking about how it feels.
This is again not what's happening, it's just how it feels, like it's out of control.
And I'm also curious, because you may have heard, that the real estate in New York City is actually coming back and prices are holding up and people are moving back to New York City.
So wouldn't it be interesting to know what was so different about New York City that allowed some of that to come back already, some of it, and Chicago may be getting worse.
It doesn't even say if it's just getting better.
So Justin News is reporting on this.
I will say for self-improvement purposes, as a consumer of news, when I see a story like this, this is what I want to see context-wise.
I want to see which direction it's moving.
Because 20, it's probably in the story.
I don't know if it's in the story or not.
I was skimming things today.
So I'm pretty sure that they covered the numbers that matter.
Just the news does a really good job, by the way.
You should always check them out.
Just the news, it's called.
All right.
But 28%, you'd want to know which direction it's going.
You'd want to know what the other cities besides New York were looking at.
And you'd want to know why is New York coming back or why do people speculate it's coming back?
Would they do differently?
Is it crime?
I don't know.
I guess corporate earnings were kind of good this quarter, but people are still worried, so the stock market didn't go up that much.
Well, actually, that's not true.
Everybody's got a different reason for why the stock market didn't move.
I saw one reason was that it's already gone up.
So, you know, it already anticipated good news.
Maybe.
But have you noticed that whenever the stock market goes up or down, whether it goes up or down, somebody's got a reason that you can't check.
You know, that you can't really check.
It's like, well, I think it's the animal spirits, Bob.
You know, people saw Trump jump up and grab his ear, and suddenly they reach for the wallet.
And, you know, everybody's just got some wild-ass story that they're pretty sure they can sell, especially if they're selling financial products.
You can never stop Bitcoin.
Well, that's probably what everybody says before something gets stopped.
But I know what you mean.
I agree.
All right.
So yesterday I lit a match and threw it on some gas.
And I want to talk this through with you guys, okay?
So this is going to start out with sounding like I disagree with you.
But if I do this right, by the time I'm finished with this topic, which is going to be healthcare, you will say, oh, we're not actually on different pages.
You ready for this?
We'll see if I can pull this off.
What I said was that the, I guess some of the Democrats were thinking about a one-year extension to the ACA, Obamacare, until they could figure out a better solution.
Now, the Republicans were offering to open the government and negotiate just over a few, the next several weeks, a much smaller period of time.
So when they offered that, the only change they offered, besides just keeping the government open at the same rate so they can feed the people and then work out a real budget.
So they were going to do that.
But a lot of the Republicans said to me when I commented that it seemed reasonable.
So to me, that was the first reasonable offer.
Now, when I say reasonable, that doesn't mean they should take it, right?
I mean, you've watched me long enough to know a reasonable offer doesn't mean you accept it.
You know, you can do better.
Ask Trump.
If you said to Trump, they made a reasonable offer, should you take it?
Do you think he'd say yes?
No, because he knows how to do this.
He'd say, Well, maybe we'll bump him up a little bit.
Maybe we'll tap that along a little bit, maybe get a little extra, because he knows how to do this.
So now the Democrats have an offer.
There's something to respond to.
And people told me, Scott, the reason you can't say yes and see if you agree with this, okay?
This is the part where I'm going to catch you.
So put on your smartest thinking cap and see where this is going.
So people told me, Scott, if you let this run for another year and you agree to an extension to essentially the current system, then you will have essentially created yet another system that never goes away.
If you don't get it now, you'll never be able to get it, right?
Look at the comments.
If you don't turn this off when you can, when you've got an opportunity, you might never get another opportunity to turn it off.
Is that a reasonable point of view?
How many of you think that's a reasonable point of view that things the government does never go away?
Any program you implement will never go away?
How many of you would agree with that statement?
We'll keep it simple.
Would you agree with the statement that any major program, because this is a major program, that any major program that's implemented and lasts for a while, you can't get rid of it?
Everybody on the same page?
You know, the Trachus copyright, the prestige.
I don't even know what that is, but it has something to do with magic.
All right, now I'm going to turn your world around.
If your point of view is that once something is implemented, it can't be changed, then it's already implemented and it can't be changed.
You have a point of view that is both forward and backward at the same time.
They can't both be true.
It can't be true that you could stop this thing now after years of being implemented and being a major program.
If it's also true that you can't get rid of things once they've been put in.
So which is it?
You can't get rid of something and then put in, or you can.
Only two possibilities.
But many of you have chosen both.
You see what I'm saying?
Many of you have chosen both.
You can't have both.
It either can be canceled or it can't.
So what I'm saying is, if you accept the notion, and by the way, this is iffy.
I'll admit this is iffy.
But if you accept the notion that all things are cancelable if you try hard enough and Trump would be the ultimate canceler, right?
If you just said to me, nobody could cancel this, and I said, Trump, you're telling me Trump couldn't cancel it?
Trump could cancel it.
He's like the ultimate canceler.
So you wouldn't compare him to anybody else in the canceling department.
You got really quiet, didn't you?
All right, now I need some confessions.
For some of you, this twisted your brain around 280 degrees.
How many of you had not realized that it was inconsistent to say you need to cancel it now because nothing can be canceled now?
How many had caught that before I mentioned it?
It's kind of sort of hiding there, isn't it?
It's both obvious after I tell you, but if I don't tell you directly that it's there and it's looking right at you, you know, then there's no doubt about it.
I mean, it's not even an opinion, it's just a description of what's happening.
You're right, and we can get rid of it.
Yeah, I'm usually on the there's some way I can get rid of anything.
Apparently, 59% of Americans blame Trump for the increased grocery prices.
Fox News is reporting that 59%.
Now, you would think that 59% blaming grocery prices as often as you have to look at those, those are the really insulting ones.
You'd think that would be enough to keep a Republican from ever winning again.
Well, in 2028, let's say.
Don't you think that would be enough to just totally kill the Republican chances?
So the real question would be: could that be fixed?
Is there any way at all?
And I'm wondering if there's some clever, totally out-of-the-box way to approach food costs that gives.
So here's the minimum it would have to do.
The minimum we would have to do is keep the current system intact.
So whatever it is, would have to be not the government paying for it.
And yeah, not the government, that's the main thing.
Not the government paying for it.
It would have to be just a separate system.
So let me give you an example.
Suppose somebody started a store for the poor and it only had four items.
Had some, I don't know, chicken protein, something reasonably inexpensive that's a protein, and some vegetables that might even come from some place where the vegetables were suboptimal.
So they not suboptimal, but let's say cut in different shapes.
So maybe it makes some soup or whatever.
So yeah.
So I think if you tried to build a grocery store that only had when you were done, 20 items, that nobody would starve because they'd always have 20 items, and it wouldn't be the only place they could give food.
You know, they could also just use their social security or some of it to buy regular food.
So everybody would still have everything they have now.
But those people who really, really wanted to save money and they really, really were on a diet, could go get their chicken thing that's totally healthy.
And the government just makes sure that somebody sells it to you.
No?
All right.
Just running that idea by you.
Did you see the story I talked about that investigative reporter Steve Baker believes that he's seen some gate analysis?
That's how people walk, their gate, G-A-I-T.
And that the software identified one particular person who I'm going to take the advice of someone I saw online who said, don't use the name.
That's sort of where I'm at on this.
I'm sort of at, I don't think I want to use a name on this one.
Because remember what I said?
If you don't see a video, you have to suspend credibility, basically.
It doesn't mean it's false, but it doesn't mean it's true.
So my minimum for the pipe bomb video to be credible to Scott, not to you, just to me, this would be my personal standard.
I would have to see a video of the alleged person walking in a way that would be similar enough to what they got in video.
And then I would have to see the actual video, which I'm not even sure they showed us the actual video.
It might have been some kind of clipped or AI video or something.
So there's something going on.
And do you remember my first take on this?
Because it's important to track people's first take to see how crazy they are.
My first take was that if I don't see the video, it's not a thing.
And that's where I still am.
No video, no thing.
Well, still, Mark Levin and Candace Owens, and I guess Tucker, they're still trying to entertain us by, I don't know, creating some right-wing controversy that didn't need to be created whatsoever.
I'm really curious what they think about the whole situation.
Because it shouldn't matter to any of you, should it?
That they all have different opinions.
And I'll say this again, I've said this 10 times.
If I were Jewish, then things that wouldn't bother me if I'm not Jewish would probably bother me.
And I would say them as anti-Semitic.
And so when I see somebody with a Jewish background say that's anti-Semitic, I say to myself, it's not a yes or no.
You just have a filter, not just, but you have a filter that would guarantee that if somebody just keeps walking up to that line, you've got a right to ask, why are you always up on that line?
Why are you so interested in this?
Perfectly fair question.
But it doesn't mean you're a monster.
So, and I can't read mine, so I don't know.
But I definitely see that if I were in a group that looked like, you know, had a historical reason to be worried about something that looks exactly like this to them, maybe not to everybody, I can see it.
I can see why you'd be concerned about that.
But I would be more in the get-together and talk it out kind of kind of world.
I'm not sure.
I think Mark Levin might be the one who doesn't want to platform anybody.
Doesn't want to platform.
I feel like the only people I don't want to platform are the people who don't want to platform anybody.
That feels like the only sin, doesn't it?
The only sin is censoring, not platforming.
So, but anyway, use your own judgment.
So, you know, how I always tell you that the Democrats have what I call the designated liars.
They have liars that tell the lies that the normal Democrats just can't do because they're just too big.
The lies are just so obviously lies and they're so ridiculous that the regular, you know, ordinary, normie Democrats can't tell that I like it.
But Jamie Raskin can, and Swalwell can, and Adam Schiff can.
They're among what I call the designated liars.
So they trot them out when they do them.
So one of them, this one was funny today, because there's always a video of Jamie Raskin saying the opposite of what he's saying now, almost every time.
And not too long ago, not too many years ago, he wanted to do away with the filibuster.
Can you guess which party was in charge of the presidency and maybe the House when he wanted to get rid of the filibuster?
You're right.
Yeah.
When the Democrats were in charge, he wanted to get rid of the filibuster.
What do you think he thinks about the filibuster now?
Because it was a good idea then.
It'd be even a better idea now, right?
Nope.
So when you see the two videos side by side, by the way, I should be giving a video credit.
And I'm not because I didn't write it down.
So if anybody has a video credit for that clip find, that was genius.
They should get some attention.
All right.
One of the other designated liars, Chris Murphy.
He's pretty funny.
He's actually talking about, and I read this in a Jonathan Turley article on The Hill.
So Chris Murphy is talking about keeping the government shut through the midterms.
Now, I'm no political expert.
I just watch it on TV and on the internet.
But is that really an advantage to keep the government shut through the midterms?
Doesn't that sound bashy crazy to you?
And then I thought, oh, let's put this in context.
The context for the Democrats seem to be that something good happens, and then they all try to guess what it was that made the good thing happen.
But they don't know what made the good thing happen.
So for a while, they thought the swearing is what made somebody win an election.
Why?
Because they can't tell what works.
They had no idea what works.
So like, well, he swears a lot.
And they're even talking about it.
The Republicans are actually laughing at it.
Yeah, yeah.
And that makes him look like a fighter.
Yeah, it must be the swearing.
It's the swearing, right?
So they keep coming up with these absolutely crazy hypotheses about why the Republicans are winning.
Like one of them is that all they have to do is get their own Joe Rogan.
That might be the funniest one they ever did because it just broadcasts such a lack of understanding about how anything in the world works.
No, you can't just make a Joe Rogan.
Nobody can make a Joe Rogan.
His mother had enough trouble doing it.
And it's only been done once, only once.
Anyway, when I see his mother, I mean she gave birth to him.
So yeah, so Chris Murphy thinks that would be an advantage to keep the government shut.
Maybe.
You know, and the funny thing is I can't really rule it out because it depends as much on how the news handles it.
If the news handled it the way they're handling it now, CNN has been pretty hard on the Democrats.
Does that work for them?
If CNN is essentially blaming you, which they are, does that work for Democrats?
It feels like they're just not reading the room.
We always say Trump's the best at reading the room.
Boy, is he.
He's just the best at reading the room.
And I guess the majority leader, John Thune.
And by the way, John Thune is named after the sound that a blow dart makes in the jungle.
Thoop, thoop, thoop.
Sorry.
Anyway, he told reporters on Saturday that senators will remain in session.
They're going to stay open.
And they don't get to pretend they're working and collecting their paycheck unless we get some government.
Give us some government, you bastards.
All right.
That's probably good politics to make it look like the Republicans are there the whole time and they're not going to be lazy.
And if the Democrats agree, they can sign it tomorrow.
So it's a good look.
I'll say that.
Meanwhile, over in the world of Fannie and Freddie, how many of you have any idea what Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are?
Like, if somebody brought that up in a conversation over dinner, would you have any idea what that was?
For me, the most important part about it is that Bill Pulte is in charge of both of them.
He's the government head administrator, or I don't know what the actual terms are in this case.
But you put Bill Pulte into any business situation and things start getting better.
And that's actually what's happening right now.
So, one of the things they're looking at is considering legal, I guess it would be legalizing it.
This must be illegal right now, but they're talking about a 50-year mortgage option.
Now, what you should know is that the longer the loan, the more interest you're going to pay, right?
So, everybody understands that just because you make it a 50-year loan, yes, the price per payment can go down quite a bit and allow people into the market.
But when you're done, you might pay triple, you might pay triple the interest because it's 50 years instead of 30.
It's a big difference.
But on any given payment day, it would be cheaper.
So, I would say this is if you're talking to your friends about it, here's the one thing you need to know to be the smartest person in the room, okay?
Smartest person in the room.
Here it comes.
It depends on your situation.
So, there could be some people who, for example, know they have a kind of job that they're doing okay at the moment, but they know that they'll do way better in the future because it's just one of those jobs.
You know, maybe they're becoming a gynecologist or something, and they know that as they build up the practice, they'll have a lot more income in the future.
If you knew that, then you might say, All right, I'll get the 50-year mortgage because then I can get into a house I like as soon as possible.
And then, when my income zooms up, and it might be 10 years, but eventually it goes up, then I can just refi and refinance and bring it down by when.
So, you can have both a long-term mortgage on day one, so it's cheap in your payments, but as soon as you make more money, if you do, you don't have to, but if you did, you could pay it down, so you get everything.
Um, so that would be one example.
But how many people can know for sure that they're going to make a lot more money later compared to how much they're making now?
That's a little iffy.
So, everybody's got to manage their own risk profile.
But this is why you need a Bill Pulte, because this is the sort of thing that's psychological as much as financial.
Because people would have to think, I understand what this is, I understand when I would use it, and I understand what the government is doing to make this easier for me.
And that's the sort of thing that a pulte can do that an average, an average person who's not good at persuasion couldn't do.
But pulte is amazing.
All right.
Trump apparently has made some threats to Nigeria based on some coverage from Fox News, apparently, at least that's the reporting.
And there's an article in the Wall Street Journal by some good work by Annie Linsky and Drew Hinshaw and Joe Parkinson.
And apparently, the leader of Nigeria doesn't think it's such a big problem.
And the problem that Trump is complaining about is he would call it a genocide of Christians.
And he thinks that the, I guess that would be the Islamic goat herders have some very long-term historical beef.
Beef.
They got a beef with the other cattle, cattle-herding people, I guess.
So there's two entities that are fighting.
One of them is Christian.
The Christians seem to be outnumbered.
But we're not really getting the best information about how many people are involved.
This is another one of those.
How many people are involved?
Is it a lot?
Which direction is it going?
Is it getting worse?
So, I do like the fact that Trump jumped in before he knew all the details.
Let me say this: if you found out later, and I'm not sure that you will, but if you found out later that the problem wasn't as big as you thought, but it was real, would you be okay with how he handled it?
I would because he got something going.
Suppose he made some claims like, oh, I heard on the news that 20,000 people got murdered and they were all Christians and their churches got burned down.
And then you found out that it wasn't 20,000, it was a thousand.
Would that make you think worse of him?
Not for me.
No.
No, he might be just genuinely wrong.
But I always tell you, he has a bias for action.
And whatever the option set is, he always picks the strongest option.
Watch how many times I tell you that.
And every time I do, you go, oh, I should have caught it that time.
I should have caught it.
You should have caught it this time.
Yeah, by far, the strongest thing you could do is not ask for not ask for details on who's actually going to hurt over there.
There's nothing stronger than I might send my military over there.
That's like your first reaction.
That's pretty strong.
It doesn't mean he's going to do it.
It means instead of him having to prove there's a problem, it kind of flips the responsibility onto Nigeria.
Now, Nigeria, if they're smart, are going to have to offer Trump some kind of assurance that somebody credible, I don't know, the UN maybe, is going to watch this situation and make sure that there's not some kind of genocide that's forming.
There might be a bubble forming even before it happens.
So I think he's playing it exactly right.
And that if he takes the strongest position every time, you're just going to see the best president who's ever been.
And I think you are already.
All right.
That, ladies and gentlemen, was the last thing I wanted to tell you before this one thing.
It was one thing.
Did you know that the Dilbert 2026 calendar is out?
If you go to Amazon.com and just do a search for Google Calendar 2026 and my name, get the one that looks like this.
Don't get the one that's any different color.
They might be counterfeits.
There's lots of counterfeits.
And get the ones that have my name and Dilbert's name spelled correctly.
That's how they do it.
They just slightly misspell a name.
But people are buying this like crazy and it will run out.
I'm pretty sure.
I'm going to check on it today.
I'll give you an update.
But I wouldn't wait.
I definitely wouldn't wait until December to buy it.
But the choice is yours.
All right.
People, people.
I feel like singing.
All right.
I'm going to make a confession.
Locals, you ready for this?
Confession coming.
And I've got to open something before I make the confession.
That makes you stay, doesn't it?
I'll bet not a single person left when I said, okay, I have to make a confession.
This is a real confession, by the way.
It's a real one.
Okay.
Come on, phone.
Work faster.
I want to see your comments right away.
So I'm putting it on this device.
My other one went dark for some reason.
There we go.
All right.
So, you know, I give you health updates because you know I've gotten cancer, etc.
Today it was a little, it was rugged.
So this morning was really painful, you know, mostly in my back area, really painful.
And but there are other signals that might be actually very positive.
I don't know yet.
So look into it.
But here's what I want to confess.
The confession has nothing to do with the pain.
The confession has to do with the fact that I solved the pain right before we went live.
As you know, I am a medical user of some things that in California are completely legal and doctors are completely fine with it.
But I won't say it out loud because, you know, it's a family show.
I do not recommend this for anybody under 18.
So if I can say this as clearly as possible, so you see that you hear this first.
First, not recommending this.
You got to make your own decisions.
And if you're under 18, you don't even get to make those.
And probably somebody else is making your own decisions.
But don't look to me for anything in that domain.
So a few minutes before I went live, I realized I didn't know if I could get through the show and I didn't want to go short.
Typically, what I do right after the show is what I did right before the show.
So I had, you know, we don't need to go private.
I wanted this to not be private, actually.
Because I think it's important.
It's important that everybody sees, you know, just what is and what isn't and what works and what doesn't, and that everybody's different.
And that this is just for utility.
This is not for entertainment.
This is for utility.
So, question number one: I did four gigantic 2025 quality, let's say, loads, loads.
And the only reason that I'm not hanging from the ceiling from the chandelier is that if you do it every day, and I'm not recommending it, just saying if you did, like me, it wouldn't affect you the same way.
So, but what it did do is it distracted and/or removed my maybe half of the pain, probably removed half of the pain almost instantly.
But the real question is: how was the show?
All right, now I've confessed.
You have to tell me, did you enjoy the show?
Or some of the people on locals knew what was going on because they see extra stuff.
But the people who did not know that I wasn't just taking some medicine, but I was taking some medicine.
All right.
How many of you thought that the show was good and was not harmed by the choice of paths I took?
I'm very curious about this.
Loads, yeah.
Don't be an NPC.
I thought it went well, but I wouldn't be objective about it.
I thought it went well.
Send me a message if you can.
Oh, locals people liked it.
I think you like it also that I'm transparent.
Isn't that true?
the fact that i'm transparent about it that just makes it a different situation doesn't it uh thank you Not as disoriented as I have been.
You know, you're right.
I actually felt less disoriented than I normally would.
And the reason is that the medicine that I took is of the sativa variety versus the kind that makes you tired.
So I use the wake-up smarter.
Well, not wake up, but keeps you alert.
So I was doing four doses of keep you alert, which doesn't last that long.
So if you wait long enough, they end up having the same effect.
You know, you want to take a nap eventually, but it might be hours versus minutes.
Went well.
Did anybody like my jokes?
I can't remember what I said, but I remember ad-libbing one joke that I was kind of proud of, but then I forgot the joke, so I can't enjoy it by thinking about it anymore because I forgot the joke.
All right.
Oh, Sergio, you're the best.
I love getting to know my regulars.
All right.
Approval.
Approval is good.
Oh, Thune.
It was the Thune joke.
All right.
How many of you laughed out loud by the third time I did a Thune dart gun sound?
I'll bet some of you laughed out loud by the third one.
It's hard not to laugh at that.
Not quite as loopy.
Yeah.
I see you.
Yeah, you know, there's maybe there's a better word for referring to me being loopy in the morning.
It's not anti-descriptive.
But if you could come up with any other word besides loopy, and again, not because it's not accurate.
I'm just saying, there might be some other word.
It sounds like loopy, but it's a little more, a little more respectful.
Not that I care about it, really.
I don't really care.
You actually did.
All right.
All right, everybody.
I'm going to try to shut down all the systems.
And I won't be talking to locals today.
I'm just, I got to get to get to sleep or something.
