Persuasion and cussing lesson, how to fix everything, and more political fun~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Politics, Reframe Mind Changing, Akira The Don, Waymo LA Freeways, Epstein Files Trickle Strategy, ACA Extension Vote, JD Vance Talent Stack, Marco Rubio, CA Hoax-Driven Government, Gavin Newsom, CA Corruption Fraud, Homes For Homeless Scam, Ivy League Prestige Decline, CBS Bari Weiss, 60 Minutes Reporting Style, Pentagon Audit Failures, Team America, Venezuela Dark Fleet Seizures, Cuba-Venezuela Connection, Ukraine Russia Negotiations, Lindsey Graham, Greenland Acquisition, Tim Walz, National Debt Interest Payments, Moscow General Assassination, 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.
You're going to learn about persuasion and cussing and so much more.
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Oh, so good.
Oh, what?
That shouldn't have happened.
Let me try this.
We are getting a different.
There we go.
That's better.
There we go.
Come on in.
Come on in.
All right.
Let me give a little announcement while you're streaming in.
If you were subscribing to Get Dilbert Reborn, those are the naughty and daily comic strips.
You may have noticed that I missed a week while I was in the hospital.
I did post the few extra that were in the can, but my art director and I need to catch up.
So I'm going to try over the next month to up my production of comics from once a day to 1.5 a day.
And somewhere around a month, I should get back to current.
So the dates on the comics will look old.
They'll be a week old and five days old and four days old.
Because, as you know, I am genetically incapable of being lazy.
So I'm completely aware that you would give me a pass for being in the hospital.
Am I right?
There's nobody who would say, oh, I'm going to unsubscribe because I missed five days of comics while you were in the hospital.
I don't think you will do that.
But the reciprocity for that is I'm going to try really hard to make sure that I produce the 100%.
It's just going to take a little extra work.
Now, I think I can do it because I had already evolved into doing the writing and then just doing some art direction for my actual artist who's worked with me for years and can draw Dilbert better than I can.
So you'll see a little bit of difference in the drawing, probably mostly in the backgrounds.
So at this point, the characters will look exactly the way they should.
That should be perfect.
But there might be different choices made for the background art.
And I'm also working with my artist to see if I can close that gap a little bit.
All right.
So that's enough about that.
How would you like the simultaneous sip?
I know why you're here.
All you need is a copper mugger, a glass of tanker, chalicostine, canteen sugar 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 dopamine of the day.
The thing makes everything better.
It's called.
That's right.
The simultaneous sip.
Go.
Oh, so good.
So, so good.
All right.
Let's see what's happening this week.
It's a slow Monday, so I thought I'd start out with a reframe.
Anybody want to hear a reframe?
All right, I was asked this morning during what is called the pre-show.
And if you didn't know it, I do a pre-show before this show.
The pre-show is only for subscribers of the locals platform.
And one of the locals people asked me, how do you learn to change your mind?
And how do you recognize people who can do it?
And I thought, that's a really good question.
How do you learn to change your mind?
And here's the reframe.
I'm reasonably sure that part of the reason, it's not the 100% the reason, but a big part of the reason people don't want to change their mind is that it would look like weakness.
And maybe you would look like, well, you're not so smart, you know, because you were wrong.
So the reframe is this.
There's something I can guarantee you as an official smart person.
First of all, would you accept my starting assumption that I am a smart person?
True?
Even if you hate me, would you agree that I would be classified as a smart person?
And so I'm going to talk as an official smart person.
Nothing is smarter than being able to change your mind.
So instead of thinking of your ability to change your mind as a weakness, you should think of it as a strength, almost a superpower.
You've seen me change my mind in front of you how many times?
I mean, how many times have you seen me change my mind?
A few, right?
Did I ever look like I got weaker?
Did it make me look stupid?
Not at all.
You probably said to yourself, wow, I wish I could have done that.
You might have said, oh, that was probably pretty hard to change your mind.
So once you realize that changing your mind, assuming you have reasons for it, is recognized by other smart people, and this is the key.
It's not recognized this way by dumb people, but do you care what dumb people think?
You don't care what dumb people think.
If you want to be impressive, the only people that matter are smart people.
If smart people say, whoa, there's somebody who can change their mind, that's a superpower, you come out way ahead.
So I think that people mistakenly believe that when I change my mind, I'm experiencing some kind of sacrifice.
I'm not.
I'm experiencing bragging.
It's closer to narcissism, because I'm basically showing off.
Look, I can change my mind.
So I've never once in my life, not once, did anybody give me a hard time for changing my mind.
But a lot of times, people have given me credit for changing my mind.
It really is a one-way street.
So the answer is: reframe it from, oh no, it's not a weakness to change your mind.
It is a superpower.
Now, the second part of the question was: how can you recognize this superpower in other people?
And unfortunately, I think the only way is to observe it.
So if you observe them changing their mind, you should immediately bump up your impression of their mental capacity.
You might even mention it.
You might even mention it.
That's that's impressive.
Change your mind.
So that's your reframe of the day.
So, yesterday, you remember I made a big deal about the talent stacks of a few people, primarily Akira the Don, who's released his meaning wave music.
Well, he followed up with me, and this is fascinating, to give me a list of his actual talents.
Because the one thing I could tell just by observing, I have no musical ability whatsoever, but even I could observe that whatever he was doing, creating this mix of podcast voices, including mine, with musical beasts, however he was pulling this off, had to be a combination of a wide range of talents.
But he gave me a list of his actual talents, and I thought, this is so interesting, I just have to read it to you.
So, apparently, when he was young, as young as seven, he was already making mixtapes.
All right, if you've been making mixtapes since you were seven, you know, that's a talent.
He was a DJ, and as he points out, if you're a disc jockey, you get this sense of how music affects people physically.
That's a good one.
If you've experienced live what kind of music has what kind of effect on people's bodies, like a DJ would, wow, what a talent.
He was a rapper for years, over a decade.
So, he says it gave me a weapons-grade sense of rhythm.
You can observe that.
I wondered where that came from when I was observing it, but he had a decade of practice.
He was an ad music composer, so he learned to produce in any genre.
He did music production, he did ad music composer, he learned to produce in any genre.
He was a music journalist, and he used to interview people, which was helpful for him to go through his podcasts and transcripts and pick out the vital points.
He was a comic artist.
I didn't even remember this, but he does his own artwork.
So, his album covers is his own artwork.
That's a hell of a talent.
Of course, I'm biased.
He knows video editing, he learned web design, he learned marketing, and he adds to his list that he's been a voracious reader since he was three.
And that allowed him to delve into the philosophical writings of people and just be aware of more types of human thought because he just read more than other people.
So, I hope that's as interesting to you as it is to me.
I find that fascinating.
So, thanks, Akira the Don.
If you want to see what we're talking about, just Google Akira the Don and MyName or Meaning Wave, Meaning Wave, one word, meaning wave, and you'll find his product.
Well, there's another UFO sighting, apparently, according to the New York Post.
A pilot saw a silver canister that was floating off the airplane's, I don't know, it was floating at the same speed as the airplane.
And there's an audio, an audio of the air traffic controllers talking to the pilot.
And you know what's missing?
You won't believe this, but it does not include a grainy video.
So the pilots, obviously there were two of them, were sitting there observing a UFO that they believed was a silver canister that was matching their speed and not connected to anything.
And either of them thought to take out their phone and snap a picture or take a video.
My advice is don't take seriously any sightings of UFOs that don't come with UFO with video.
And secondly, don't take seriously any UFO sightings that have very unclear video or photos.
It's 2026 almost people.
If it's real, somebody's going to have a good photo of it.
Yeah, well, I don't know if it could be a balloon because it was matching their speed.
And even if it were attached to something, it seems like it would be a little fluttery or something.
So I don't know what it was.
It seems more likely it was an optical illusion of some type.
I'm going to say optical illusion.
But I don't believe, I don't think it showed up on radar, blah, blah.
So this is a small story, but it shows you where things are going.
I guess Waymo has now been approved at least a little bit for driving on LA freeways.
Now it had already been used in California on side streets, but allowing it on freeways is a big, pretty big change.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but Waymo is a Google company.
Is that true?
Waymo is Google, right?
And Google is so big and so connected and so powerful that I can't imagine in my wildest dreams that the state of California can block them from being fully autonomous, as well as Tesla.
I don't think California will be able to hold out for another year.
So my guess is that 2026, sometime during the year, will be the year of autonomous self-driving cars that don't require you to pay attention.
So a Waymo does not require you to pay attention, but is limited to where it can go.
Now it's not limited to where it can go, or at least they're testing it on the freeway.
It's not approved fully.
It's just being tested.
And I would say every indication from including what everything Elon Musk is doing and saying, and then everything that Waymo is doing and saying, which suggests we're almost there.
This is definitely the year.
Can you imagine how the world would be different with the self-driving cars?
You know, for a lot of people, especially people who commute, especially people who are living in LA traffic, this is such a game changer.
If you told me, Scott, do you want to live in LA?
Probably the first thing I would say is, no, I can't handle the traffic.
But if you said to me, well, the traffic will be bad, but it will rapidly become less bad as people start sharing auto cars, et cetera.
And by the way, instead of being nailed to your driver's wheel, you could just do your own thing.
In which case, the commute would just be productive time.
If you said, Scott, bring your laptop, you have Wi-Fi, presumably, And you can just sit in that car and treat it like it's an office that happens to be moving.
The commute is gone.
It would be like the commute didn't exist.
It would just be extra work done.
So the way society is going to change in the next 12 months is really, really interesting.
So most of you will be here for that.
So as I predicted in my mind, but did not tell you, the Epstein files have turned into the trickle strategy.
The trickle strategy is that they will continue releasing things that make us unhappy.
That's not enough.
That's not enough.
I'm going to sue you.
But wait, here are some more files.
Oh, all right.
I'll wait another day because you said you'll give me some more files.
Wait a minute, they're redacted.
Well, wait till tomorrow.
All right, I can wait one more day.
Oh, wait, we had to pause because we haven't redacted enough.
Well, then I'm going to put you in jail.
But wait, you'll have them by tomorrow.
You don't want to put me in jail if I'm going to produce them tomorrow.
Okay, that's reasonable.
Then tomorrow comes drip, drip, drip.
So how long can the Department of Justice or whoever is behind it trickle us without going to jail?
And the answer is forever.
There's really no limit to the ability to stall.
Now, as I said yesterday, and this is, I would say, is more of a Mike Ben's realization that I'm stealing, is that if you assume that the real thing that's slowing things down is not so much protecting the rich and powerful, but simply the intelligence agencies, we don't know which ones, but at least the CIA.
At least.
If they're the ones who are stopping the progress, you're not going to see the files.
Obviously, they really, really, really don't want you to see something.
So, no, there's no hope you'll see them.
Do you think that Rokana and Massey will succeed in getting some kind of impeachment of Bondi?
Doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter at all.
She might be impeached.
She might not be impeached.
But do you think that will make any difference on whether you see the files?
No, they're not even related.
It's just something bad that might happen to Bondi.
So, yeah, if you don't like Bondi, then you'd be happy about it, I guess.
I'm not even sure if it would remove her from office.
So, no, there's absolutely no recourse.
No recourse.
Even if she went to jail, you're not going to see the files.
So, there's no path that would produce the files.
And I think Rokana, and by the way, I give him credit as well as Massey, it was a pretty good try.
But as soon as they included that you can redact things for national security or to protect the victims, as soon as that was part of it, there was no chance you would see them.
You're just going to get the trickle.
Trickle, trickle.
Well, House Leader, minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, I guess he predicted yesterday that they would get enough votes, I think this would be in January, to extend the subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, the ACA.
Now, why that's important is if these subsidies run out, then millions of Americans will be priced out of the health care market.
That would be bad.
And Republicans can't seem to agree on extending it because that would look like wasting more money to them.
And Democrats, of course, insist on it.
So the question is, Scott, if you're so good at persuasion, how do you get past the fact that there's going to be a total health care apocalypse unless Republicans do what Republicans don't ever do, which is sign up to spend way more money than they think they should be spending.
It's now something that the Republicans are going to say, you know, well, you know, why not extend it three years?
Because they're talking about a three-year extension.
So I would like to offer the following path.
Republicans probably could agree, or enough of them could, that you don't have to get all of them.
You just have to get enough to have a majority with the Democrats.
But I believe you could convince some Republicans to temporarily, maybe not three years, not three years necessarily, but temporarily extend it, but they'd have to guess something in return.
Now, what could Republicans ask for in return for this thing they definitely don't want to do, which is extend it?
What would they ask for that would make sense?
That you would say, oh, well, if you got that, I'm okay with it.
And I don't know what the answer is, but let me just throw out an idea, okay?
So the suggestion would be this, that Republicans could demand that if they vote to extend the ACA, they would have to get in return some kind of guaranteed audit and fraud reduction system that is stronger than whatever is happening now.
Now, what I've learned recently is apparently almost all big expenses in the government do in fact compared with a requirement to audit.
Did you know that?
So auditing is actually built into a lot of government processes, but it doesn't work.
And I think the reason it doesn't work is that the people in charge of spending the money are the same people in charge of the audit.
So of course it doesn't work.
If the auditors are part of the same political party as the people who are stealing the money, they're just going to be in on it.
So apparently what happens in the real world, in the real world, there'll be a requirement to audit and they just don't do it.
Or if they do do it and they get a bad result, they don't do anything about it.
Nobody goes to jail.
So when I say that the Republicans could demand some kind of audit control, I mean a different form from whatever we're doing now that doesn't work.
A different form might include some better approach to getting, let's say, Republican auditors.
Suppose Republicans said, if you allow Republican majority, but not 100%, Republican majority control over auditing this domain, we will approve the expense.
Because there's so much fraud and waste, and the only way anybody's even going to mention it or even look for it is if they're on a competing political party.
So imagine you're the Democrats and the Republicans offer this.
We will extend.
We will vote to extend if you vote that we're going to create auditing entities that are by a majority, could be three out of five people, but a majority, Republican.
If you let us pick the auditing team, we will promise it will include some Democrats, but they will be in the minority.
What would Democrats say to that?
Would Democrats say, no, we do not want a stronger form of auditing.
Right?
So you tell me, is that the best idea you've heard so far?
Because as you've seen in many negotiations, nothing is solved until both teams can claim victory.
If the Republicans could claim victory over strengthening the anti-fraud pro-auditing part of the world, then they can claim victory.
They say, you know, it's not perfect, but we can really get to the bottom of this if you give us another year.
So I would say extend it for not three years.
You might get that three years down to a year or something reasonable.
But go for the audit.
And again, it's not audit versus not audit.
You would have to revise how you audit to make it credible.
And that's the part that can be improved.
Well, here's another persuasion lesson.
I hope you've been as amused as I am that Trump is good at cursing at just the right amount.
And Democrats are bad at it.
So when Trump curses, it guarantees that that will be the big quote the next day.
It puts a focus on things and he never overdoes it.
You can tell the very carefully selected where he's going to put that F word.
But it turns out that JD Vance has the same skill.
And why Democrats can't do this, I don't know.
But the context here is that I guess JD Vance was giving a speech.
It was at, I think it was at Turning Point USA.
And he was defending his wife because apparently both Jensaki and Nick Fuentes have said bad things about her.
I don't know what Jen Saki said, but Nick Fuentes is, let's say, a white supremacist.
I'm not sure what he is, but he has some negative things to say about her ethnicity.
And I, of course, do not approve of that.
But JD Vance did, the first thing he did right is he directly defended his wife.
You do that first.
And here's what he said.
He goes, let me be clear.
Anyone who attacks my wife, whether their name is Jensaki or Nick Fuentes, can eat shit.
Oh, he said it at Unheard in an interview.
It wasn't during a speech.
It was during an interview with Unheard.
And then he went even better.
He goes, that's my official policy as Vice President of the United States.
My official policy is that Gen Saki and Nick Fuentes can eat shit.
Now, the first thing that's brilliant about this is that he paired Gensaki with Nick Fuentes, which is just brilliant.
Because you know, they don't really have much in common, except maybe they said something about his wife.
But putting them together really makes you go, what?
What?
And it dismisses Nick, dismisses Fuentes in a way that Republicans wouldn't mind at all.
Which is really?
You're like a Democrat?
He's not like a Democrat, but it's a good approach.
And I think you can confirm that JD Vance is not noted as a prolific cursor.
So when he pulls out the S-word, it's in the context of defending his wife.
Who minds that?
Every one of you says, oh, okay, if you're defending your wife, your spouse, if you're defending your spouse, yeah.
There's no limit on the words.
If you're defending your spouse, there's not really any limit on what you can do.
We all get that.
Let me make an appeal that I think would be compatible with some of you, but not all.
There is definitely an anti-Indian American sentiment within the Republican Party.
Would you agree?
Would you agree that there's a sort of a rolling anti-Indian American sentiment in the Republican Party?
Well, I think that conflates people's complaints about employment, you know, the H-1B stuff, and it conflates that with who they are as a people.
I have lived in California for all my adult life, and so I'm always surrounded by, and especially now in my current neighborhood, a very large Indian American population.
I can tell you, I promise you this is true.
The Indian Americans are awesome people.
And if you ever get to know your Indian American neighbor, you're going to be happy about it.
They're actually just some of the best people in the world.
They're funny, they're smart, they're hardworking, great, great people.
So do not conflate the ethnicity with the fact that we have an immigration issue that you would prefer to be more pro-American and not bringing in people who are from other countries as much.
Now, that's a separate argument.
So I'm not putting up an argument that we should be flooding the country with extra Indian technology workers.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying if you're looking at the ethnicity, they're amazing people.
And if you get to know them, you'll be happy.
All right.
So apparently, speaking of JD Vance, people are chattering because Erica Kirk, who's taking over the Turning Point USA and it just had a big event, she has come out and endorsed JD Vance for 2028.
Some people say it's too soon.
Do you think it's too soon?
It's not too soon.
So let me give you the.
I was trying to think: what weaknesses does JD Vance have that would matter?
So I'm thinking, all right, JD Vance, he's an amazing speaker, so they wouldn't be able to match that.
The Democrat candidate would not be as good a speaker as he is, no matter who it is.
He's just going to be better.
He's very quick-minded.
He's very smart, obviously smart.
He also has all the right backers.
So he's got some of the most powerful and smartest backers that the Republican Party can produce.
But more importantly, he's probably going to have, we assume, Trump's support.
Nobody's going to run for president as a Republican unless Trump supports us.
So if Trump supports him, you know, you're 90% there, right?
And I was thinking, what qualities does he lack?
And I'm watching him having obviously learned from Trump.
You can see that he's picking up the most powerful parts of Trump, including the cursing at just the right amount.
And he's learning to be provocative.
But unlike Trump, he probably holds back a little bit.
And that makes sense.
He's vice president.
He's not president.
So I would say he's definitely learning technique.
He's learning persuasion.
He would have Trump and Trump lovers backing him.
The only thing I'm worried about is that it puts a target on his back too soon.
But on the other hand, it's so obvious that he's the frontrunner that I guess that target would have been there anyway.
So I'm going to say that Erica Kirk's early endorsement does not hurt him.
It might help him.
And I'm fascinated to find out if the Democrats will have any way to attack him that would be reasonable.
Does anybody, I'm looking at the comments right now, does anybody have any idea what negative stuff you would put on him?
Because the only negativity is coming from Republicans, right?
Basically, Republicans who are a little bit anti-diversity, let's say, that's the best thing I can say about it, might not like he was married to.
But are they going to vote Democrat?
Are you going to vote Democrat because you think his wife should be whiter?
Really?
So I don't know that there's anything that would slow him down.
So I don't think that my endorsement per se is useful.
So I'll put it in the form of prediction.
So prediction, not endorsement.
Later I might.
I mean, I might endorse him later, but it's too early for me.
So I'll call it a prediction.
He'll be the nominee.
Now, what about Rubio?
Rubio, as very cleverly and smartly, well, that would be the same as clever.
He's already taken himself out of the run onto the condition that JD is running.
And we assume that to be true.
So imagine if there is some kind of, let's say, opposition research or something comes up that takes JD out of the race.
I don't know what that would be, but you just imagine something you don't know or something that hasn't happened, hits him and takes him out.
Rubio would just be sort of loyally sitting on the sidelines, just the obvious person to step in.
So Rubio probably increased his odds of becoming president by taking himself out of the race.
Does that make sense?
By taking himself out of the race, he doesn't have a target on his back, and JD does.
So as time goes by, if the bad guys make a dent, and I don't know what that would be, but if they make a dent in JD, the only replacement that would seem obvious would be Rubio.
And he would look like a loyal supporter.
He would by then have some major accomplishments, as you could say he already has major accomplishments.
And he would probably instantly get Trump's support under the condition that Trump agreed something took JD out.
So I think if he ran straight up against JD, there's no chance he would win.
But if he sort of loyally stands aside and said, you go first, and it doesn't work out.
Now, I don't know what the odds of it not working out are, let's say 10%.
You would go from a 0% chance of winning to 10% without any risk whatsoever.
So good play.
Rubio being smart.
So you've probably watched as the Minnesota fraud stuff makes more headlines.
But as it does, people seem to agree that the California fraud and California mismanagement might be something like 10 times as big.
How in the world could Governor Newsom ever become president under the context of by the midterm, we're going to know a lot more about all the hundred billions of dollars that were stolen in his state.
But not just stolen, also mismanaged, because it's kind of hard to tell what is stolen and was mismanaged.
It might end up being the same thing.
But here's just some examples.
All right.
So by the midterms, some experts are saying that the cost of gas in California could reach as high as $10 to $12 per gallon.
And that that cost would be almost entirely because of California mismanagement and almost entirely because California is what I call a hoax, hoax-driven government.
So the reason gas will cost so much is a variety of regulatory things that were designed to protect the climate from catastrophe.
Now, there was no chance it was ever going to protect the climate from catastrophe because one state couldn't do that anyway.
But what it did do is it created this gigantic umbrella for fraud.
So the only thing that happened was our gas might go to $10.
It might go at least to $5 or $7, but some say as high as $10.
We got a 20% decrease in capacity when January hits because two refiners just said that we're out.
Too much regulation, we're out.
So there won't really be any serious argument about what caused gas prices to be out of control in this one state, because all the other states will not have this problem.
And you can directly tie the cost to California believing, incorrectly, the hoax that we were in an existential crisis that could somehow be fixed by California alone doing things that other states were not doing.
How in the world would somebody who was the steward of that process as governor, how in the world do you get elected president?
I mean, the fact that even Bill Gates has said we don't have an existential threat, that completely pulls the rug out of the entire California strategy for the last 10 years.
So that's going to look like a disaster, right?
So the first example of the hoax-driven government of California is that there was a climate hysteria or a climate crisis and they had to address it.
That's hoax number one.
But what Governor Newsom and other Democrats blamed the problem on was price gouging by the oil companies, price gouging.
When it was looked into, audited, There was no price gouging found.
That was a hoax.
Hoax number two, that the energy companies are the problem, not the policies of the government.
Those are big hoaxes.
How about when there was a border crisis in California?
What did California say?
California said there's no border crisis.
Hoax number three.
Literally a hoax saying that there was no border crisis.
How about the homeless problem is one that can be solved by building them homes?
Was there ever any hope they could solve homelessness by building homes for the homeless?
No, no, there was never any chance that that would make a difference because it's based on the misperception that the homeless have a no-home problem.
The reality is they have mental problems, drug problems, and if you gave them a home, they wouldn't be able to maintain it or live in it and wouldn't even want to live in it.
They'd rather be on the sidewalk because they're insane or they're drugged or whatever.
So that would be, what am I up to?
The fourth hoax?
And then I'm not even throwing in reparations.
So we've got a state that's trying to pay reparations when California never had slaves.
None of the people lived here were victims of California slavery.
It's a complete hoax.
What about the trans issue that you could be born one sex, but really you're the other sex?
Now, I usually stay away from that one, but I think most of you would say, hey, throw that one in there as another hoax.
So I could probably go on, but I see that Elon Musk had replied on X that California would go bankrupt if all the federal transfer payment fraud was stopped.
So you got the federal transfer payments fraud.
I'm not sure what the hoax is there.
That hoax might be the wrong frame for that.
It's just crime.
But here's an example of what California did that other states did not.
I think this was maybe Mario Noffel.
I saw this on X.
So apparently, after the pandemic, there were all these stimulus funds that came from the federal government, and every other state used the government funding to pay down their debt, except California.
So California, instead of paying down the debt, and now we're basically bankrupt, they used it to just spend more on more stuff, which almost certainly was fraud, or partially.
So the result would be that the Californian businesses are going to be hit, apparently, with some enormous payroll tax to compensate for the fact that California was the only, only mismanaged state.
We got 50 states, and only one of them didn't know how to handle the money from the federal government.
And even the other blue states didn't make this mistake.
It's the worst of the worst of even the Democrat states.
How do you become president?
How in the world did the person who was presiding over all that become president?
Now, I haven't even gotten into, I haven't even gotten into the, what, $50 billion for the bullet train that never happened.
How do you possibly become president?
So, one of the things I suspect fairly strongly is that Republicans are doing the what is the what's the what's the movie where the Scottish warrior goes, hold, what's that movie?
Hold, hold, you recognize that?
Which movie is that?
I have to get the right movie.
Uh, uh, Braveheart, thank you.
Yeah, the movie Braveheart, when the two armies are getting ready to face off, and uh, and then what's his name?
The actor, what's the actor's name?
Well, William Wallace was the character.
Let's go with that.
William Wallace was the character.
And before he attacks, he's going down Mel Gibson.
Thank you.
Mel Gibson is the actor.
And Mel Gibson is on his horse and he's going, hold, hold.
I always loved that.
That was one of my favorite movie piss.
But it feels like the smartest people in the Republican Party, by now, they must have figured out that Newsom is the weakest candidate they could possibly run.
I mean, maybe even worse than Kamala Harris.
So I feel like the Republicans are saying, hold on, wait until he gets nominated.
That will take him out.
Well, apparently Yale has no Republican professors across 27 other departments.
So as you know, the liberal elite colleges are all cesspools of one-sided thinking.
And the conservatives are basically shut out from higher education.
I mean, in terms of being the professors.
And I'm wondering if that will quickly be resolved by AI.
So what we need is a Grok college.
I don't think Grok is where it could do that yet, but it's very close.
So don't you think that maybe in a year or two, you can have a choice of going to Yale or Harvard or Grok?
And if you go to Grok, it will take out the bias.
And you can get a degree that your employer will say, oh, you mean you learned all the useful stuff.
And then somebody from Harvard comes in to apply for the job, and the employer will say, oh, you learned to be a pain in the ass and care about all the wrong stuff.
So clearly, at this point in history, it would be way better to have an Ivy League degree than some kind of made-up, you know, AI Grok degree.
But I feel like that could be completely reversed in maybe two years, two years.
So I think the free market, given the new tools, the AI and stuff that will be available, I think the free market's going to fix this.
And it won't be because the government did it, and it won't be because the higher education decided that they needed to be less biased.
I don't believe it's self-correcting, but it doesn't need to be if alternatives pop up.
And I think maybe two years.
Well, there's a story in the news, I think, is no story at all, which is Barry Weiss, who's now the CBS news editor-in-chief.
She killed a story that was a 60 Minutes segment about Venezuelan migrants being deported to that notorious El Salvadorian prison.
Now, the knock against her is that the segment had already been blessed by the lawyers and they'd done all the work and they're ready to go on Sunday.
And that mean old Barry Weiss told them that they should wait until they at least had some comments from the administration.
Because apparently it was a story about what the administration did that did not include any quotes from anybody useful from the administration.
And so the way the reporters at 60 Minutes and others, I guess, are complaining about it is they're saying, Hey, you're censoring us or you're just agreeing with the administration.
I don't think that's what's happening.
If you've been involved in any kind of news or editing environment, as I have for most of my career, this is the most normal stuff in the world.
If you had an option of you could see this segment right now, and I guess it would have run on Sunday.
So your options are you could see it now and it would not include any important opinions from the administration.
Or you could wait a week, maybe two weeks, and you could see the exact same thing, except it would include, I think she wanted Stephen Miller to be the voice of the administration.
And that would be a good choice.
It doesn't have to be him.
What would you pick?
As a consumer, wouldn't you rather wait a week and then have some chance of seeing both sides of the argument?
Of course you would.
So I think that this feels like more of an anti-Barry Weiss story than it is about anybody made a mistake.
This is definitely not censorship.
In the real world of news, in the real world of editing, in the real world of anybody who has an editor, this is just normal behavior.
Now, if you wait a few weeks and the story never runs, well, then I revise my opinion.
So we'll go back to the very first reframe that began today's podcast.
I will change my mind if this does not produce a useful counterpoint that makes the story more valuable.
Because I think she was hired to make the news business better, not worse.
And if you put me in her job, well, let me say it this way: if you put me in her job tomorrow, I would have made the same decision.
I would say this is not ready to go.
So I'm not defending her because then you're going to say, oh, you're just being a pro-Barry Weiss.
I really don't know what Barry Weiss is up to.
I have not been following her.
I don't know if she's a good egg or a bad egg.
I don't know if giving her any support makes the world a better place or a worse place.
I don't know.
I have no idea.
But if you take the personalities out of it, I would do the same thing.
I'd say you're not ready.
Now, how many reporters have ever finished a story, wrapped it up, and then when their boss delayed it, said, I'm happy about that?
Never.
In the history of reporters, no reporter is going to say, I agree with my editor.
This story was not good.
No, that's not going to happen.
So I say, hold your opinion on this for at least two weeks.
If after two weeks you hear that it's just going to be banned forever and it'll never run, I might revise my opinion.
Well, apparently the Pentagon has failed an audit for the eighth consecutive year.
The EPOC Times is reporting.
Now, you probably knew that the Pentagon doesn't pass audits.
It's good that audits exist, but remember I've been complaining that it's not that audits exist or don't.
There's something about the way we do it that guarantees they don't work or that they don't have the effect you would like, which is fixing all the problems.
But part of the problem is that auditing is such a boring story that the public hears the story and they go, oh, the Pentagon failed an audit.
Well, better luck next time.
Then they think about something else because it's just not interesting.
So one of the questions I have is in a cursory reading of how they failed the audit again.
A lot of it is they can't find their assets or they can't account for things like spare parts.
And if you can't account for your assets, the possibility that they've been stolen and sold is pretty high.
Or just in general, if you can't account for your assets, we don't know that that signals gigantic fraud, but it does signal that we don't know if there's gigantic fraud.
So again, I would say the problem might not be the Pentagon.
The problem might be that the way we audit either doesn't have any teeth or we're doing it the wrong way or it's the wrong people doing it or some combination of all those things.
So I would look at auditing the auditing.
It could be, and I'm starting to form this opinion, that it's not that something is or is not audited.
It's that the auditing doesn't work because it's also corrupt or incompetent or we don't do anything about it.
Now let me ask you this.
Do you think anybody got fired or demoted because they failed that?
Well, Heg Seth says that they're improving and that they might pass their first audit by 2028.
That's their goal.
I am in favor of having a goal, in this case, it makes sense, to have a target for when you got it fixed.
But it coincidentally is when they'll be out of office.
So I've got an idea.
How about we promise to have everything fixed when I'm no longer here?
Oh, when would that be?
2028.
So are you happy that they have a plan that it will be fixed when they're no longer here?
Because you really don't need to fix it if you're not really going to be there.
So I would say I'm not happy with the excuse that we'll get it done by 2028.
There's something, something far more aggressive has to happen before then.
Now, I will wait to 2028 if something happened that was aggressive.
So if, for example, they said we just shakehand our entire audit process or we just put a general in jail, something like that, like a big shocking change.
If you give me a big shocking change that clearly is directionally correct, I might wait.
Yeah, I might hold my opinion to 2028.
But if you're not showing me that anything is going to be different, and it's going to be the same people doing the audit as did it last time, and the same people hiding the assets that hid it last time, I don't want to wait.
I do not find that acceptable.
You know, somebody criticized me the other day on social media, says I would be more credible if I ever criticized the Trump administration.
To which I say, that's true.
I would be way more credible if I ever criticized the Trump administration.
I've definitely criticized the Trump administration.
I'm doing it right here.
Are they doing enough?
No.
No, they're not doing enough.
Are they satisfying me that they're even capable, even capable of doing enough?
No.
No, I see no signal that the Trump administration is fixing this problem.
So that is a criticism.
I think I'd say almost exactly the same thing if Democrats were in charge.
So the next time you say to me, hey, you never criticize your own team, I say, well, that's what this is.
My own, by the way, let me be clear.
My team is not Republicans.
My team is not MAGA.
My team is America.
Right?
If you're on Team America, which would include all of us, you need to get this shit fixed.
This is not about one side versus the other.
This is America versus the end of America.
It's an existential problem.
It's do you exist or don't you exist?
It's way beyond, way beyond Democrat or Republican.
All right.
Well, apparently the U.S. is putting more pressure on these so-called dark fleet of tankers coming out of Venezuela.
So I guess some tankers that were incorrectly flagged, I think that's a false flag, are being subject to a seizure.
And I believe that now the third one has been seized.
We already had two.
And some people said, hey, those particular tankers are exempt because they're a different flag.
Well, it looks like the flags were fake.
So the U.S. is taking the position.
I don't know if it's valid or not, but they're taking the position that these can be seized.
And apparently we're going to escort them to American ports and just take the oil.
Now, that is a very Trumpian way to handle this, which is, I'll just take your oil.
Thank you.
Now, some of that oil, if we take it, would we use it to offset the military cost of controlling or the military cost of leading on Venezuela?
If we do, that would be a very, very Trumpian thing to do.
Well, thank you for the free oil.
You know, I always say that Trump picks up free money.
If you leave free money on a table and everybody walks by it, Trump is the only one who says, does anybody own that?
Whose free money is that?
And after he asks maybe the second time, and nobody says it's theirs, he takes it.
He just takes it.
So clearly this is theft, but it's also free money.
So very Trumpian.
Now, the big mystery about the whole Venezuelan operation is, does it have one purpose or does it have multiple purposes?
And what would they be?
And I don't know the answer to this question, but it could be a three-for, meaning that if you think of it in terms of trying to accomplish any one thing, then you would be confused because it's really meant to accomplish more than one thing.
So the possible things, some people say, some people who are not me, but are smarter than me about this topic, say that really leaning on Venezuela is also a way to lean on Cuba because Cuba and Venezuela have an economic relationship that if you hurt one, you would hurt the other, especially if you hurt Venezuela's oil business.
I think that would hurt Cuba the most.
So question number one is our actions at the moment, are they designed to take down or control two countries via the Monroe Doctrine idea that we're the dominant or the big dog and that if you don't do what we want and you happen to live in our part of the world, we're going to come for you.
So I would say maybe, or maybe it just makes the anti-Cuban people happy, but it's not part of the primary goal.
But I guess I would argue, obviously, it does put pressure on Cuba, but what do we expect will happen from that?
Do we expect that Cuba will have a regime change?
Have we not been expecting that for six, well, how many years have we assumed that if we put pressure on Cuba, they'll have a regime change.
So I don't know what we're trying to accomplish other than making Cubans poorer.
Then, of course, the stated objective is to put pressure on the drug cartels.
Well, it does that, but as many people have pointed out, fentanyl will probably just find another way.
And by the way, Venezuela is not the big fentanyl producer in the first place.
So, yeah, yeah, it's bad for the cartels, but is that why we're doing it?
I do agree with this thinking, that the cartels have become so powerful that you risk them becoming like a major military.
Now, you could argue they're already a major military, but they're not any match for the American military.
At some point, they might become so powerful that you couldn't really directly attack them because it would just be too much catastrophe.
So it could be that we're thinking ahead to make sure that the drug cartels don't reach a certain scale and power, and we're worried that they're coming to some kind of crossover point.
So I don't think we're doing it.
Well, here's the fourth possible thing.
The fourth possible reason is that the big money people, I don't know, the big energy money billionaires, may have decided that if we can just steal the oil from Venezuela, they will make enormous profits, which presumably would happen, right?
If Venezuela crumbled, but we captured their energy assets, would that make any American companies richer or any billionaires from anywhere richer?
The answer is maybe, maybe.
So we've got at least four possible reasons.
That Venezuela itself is a problem and they want a regime change.
That doing that will take down Cuba somehow, but I don't see how.
That the drug cartels got too powerful.
It was time to knock them down.
Or that some rich people have some enormous, enormous financial gain.
It's kind of a weird one.
So I do not believe that our full military will move in and just occupy the country.
But I do like the fact that Trump never takes that off the table.
All right, let's talk about Ukraine and Russia.
There's something interesting going on here.
So apparently there's been yet more meetings with Witkoff and Jared and Russia and Ukraine and mostly Ukraine.
And they're working on their 20-point plan for a multilateral security agreement.
So what Wickoff said is an interesting hint of where we're at.
He said that negotiators focused in the recent talks on, quote, timeliness and sequencing of next steps.
Now, it doesn't seem to me that you would talk about the timing of steps unless you thought you were close to agreeing on what the steps were.
And I don't believe that we've been close to that before.
So is his choice of words, timeliness and sequencing, is that telling us we've achieved some kind of minimum negotiations and minimum state where we're close to agreeing on the content, but not the timing?
Because if it comes down to timing, that would suggest we're close to something that could work.
And I'm not suggesting we are, but his choice of words does suggest that.
And I've not seen that before.
So that's my persuasion-related observation.
So now, U.S. Ukrainian and European officials earlier this week, they said that the problem is security guarantees for Kiev.
And here's what Lindsey Graham said.
Now remember, Lindsey Graham is a very anti-Russian guy.
And he said recently on Meet the Press, I guess this weekend, that it was unclear if Putin would accept the current deal.
So the negotiations were with Ukraine to tighten up the 20 points, but we don't know if Putin would accept it.
And he says if he doesn't accept it, that the approach should be to start seizing oil tankers that are carrying Russian oil.
And then to label Russia a state sponsor of terrorism for what he says, kidnapping 20,000 Ukrainian kids.
Now, You know, one of the problems with getting a deal is that Trump will be accused of making a deal that's pro-Putin, right?
That's a big problem.
How does Trump avoid the accusation that he's just working for Putin?
He's a puppet of Putin, and he's not trying to protect Ukraine, he's not trying to protect Europe, he's just trying to make Putin happy.
Well, it's a tough one because we're at a point where Putin's going to get something out of this deal that a lot of people don't want him to get out of the deal.
So one way you could address that, which is not a total answer, is you could send the most anti-Putin guy onto the TV to say that he would be willing to support some kind of a deal that looks like what we have now.
So if Lindsey Graham, the most anti-Russian guy, and nobody doubts that, so there's nobody in the world who doubts that he's anti-Russian, if he says this deal works for us, meaning America, wouldn't that be a pretty good signal that we're not doing it for Putin's benefit if Lindsey Graham says yes?
Now, I'm not a giant fan of Lindsey Graham's military first kind of approach to things.
I'm simply observing that if he has a long, long track record of being anti-Putin, he's exactly the person you want to send out to say, I could live with this deal.
That would mean something.
Now, of course, no matter what happens, the Democrats will use it as an attack on Trump, but it would certainly weaken the attack.
So, as I've said before, you never get a solution to a war under the condition that both sides are happier fighting than not fighting, which is the current situation, or if one of them loses and nobody's losing that hard yet.
You could argue that Ukraine is losing, but they're not losing hard enough that they would instantly sue for peace.
So, what do you do?
Well, as I've often told you, the only path would be to find a way where both sides feel like they won.
So, how could you create a situation with Ukraine and Europe and, well, in this case, there are four sides, you could say.
How does U.S., Europe, Ukraine, and Russia, how do they all win?
And I would argue that the one and only way that could happen is if they find a way to reframe the war as an economic opportunity.
Now, this is not a new idea, obviously, but as soon as you say, hey, I've got an idea where we all get rich, suddenly the war doesn't seem like such a good idea.
So, let me just develop this idea a little bit.
Suppose instead of giving Russia, what's the better way to say this?
Suppose we come up with a plan where the energy and other resources of Ukraine could be equitably, I don't want to say shared, but could become the launching pad for the U.S. to make a lot of money by investing in their energy infrastructure.
Ukraine could make a lot of money because their energy infrastructure could become great.
Europe would be simply protected by the fact that the U.S. would have such a big investment that if Putin attacked, he could be guaranteed that the oligarchs in the United States would say, unleash the army because we have too much money resting in Ukraine.
So, could you create a situation where Russia would be better off economically?
You know, they'd lose their sanctions and they'd give some relief and they get to keep the stuff they've already conquered.
I think that's a given.
And the U.S. gets rich or has so much economic opportunity that that becomes the security guarantee.
So we would not necessarily have to say we will place our U.S. army on Ukrainian soil.
We would only need to say, you think we're going to make $100 billion?
No, we're going to make a trillion dollars.
So if you could create a picture where the U.S. could get to a trillion dollars of economic benefit, just for investing in Ukraine, it might take a while, but you throw the trillion in there and people's eyes open.
Do you think that the U.S. would employ military might if Russia tried to encroach on our trillion-dollar economic opportunity?
And the answer is, of course, we would.
You might not like it.
A lot of people might disagree with it.
But yes.
Yes, you could guarantee that if we had a trillion dollars at stake, that our richest people would say, you know how I have a lot of influence over the government?
Well, this is where you pay me back.
This is where you go to war with Putin.
So I think there's some possibility that if we could tell a story where the U.S. has a trillion dollars to benefit, that Putin would know that attacking it had nothing to do with Europe and had nothing to do with NATO, that the U.S. would unilaterally say, okay, we're going to fuck you up bad.
So maybe, maybe we're getting close.
Well, apparently Trump has tapped, I like how they say tapped.
He chose Louisiana governor as a special Greenland envoy.
New York Post is reporting this.
So in addition to being governor of Louisiana, this gentleman whose name I forgot to write down, a governor of Louisiana will be the special envoy to Greenland.
I guess we didn't have one.
We had no special envoy.
Now, Denmark, of course, is objecting because they think, oh, no, that is one more step toward you trying to strong arm us out of owning Greenland.
To which I say, you know, Trump has already established that has already established that he's going to go strong on what looks to me like, you know, Monroe Doctrine times three.
And if you're in our part of the world, you don't get to say no if we have a legitimate security interest.
And do we have a legitimate security interest in having at least a military, military, let's say, strong association with Greenland?
And I would argue that if they don't give it to us, we're going to take it.
Not right away, but that is what I like about Trump.
He's very clear.
You're either going to work with us or we're going to take it.
And that's the Monroe document right there.
In my opinion, that's the Monroe Doctrine.
So in the context of Trump leaning on Venezuela, that surely gives Denmark some pause because I don't think they expected our navy to surround Venezuela.
Now, even though Venezuela has nothing to do with Greenland, it suggests what level of military might Trump might employ if we have an economic slash security reason to do it.
So it's got rattle.
So I would say the current context is good for Trump.
He's kind of taking down the verbal pressure, but it kind of subtly puts a little more pressure on them.
Now, here's what the New York Post says.
It says that behind closed doors, administration officials have mapped out a plan for the island, Greenland, to become independent and then enter into a compact of free association with the U.S., giving Washington a role in certain areas, such as defense.
So it looks like step one is to get Greenland to vote for their own independence.
Do you believe that our CIA, if it worked hard to co-opt the influential people in Greenland, there can't be a lot of them, you could basically bribe every politician in Greenland in about five minutes because there are not many.
So between what the CIA could do to bribe people, plus what they could do to threaten people, plus the fact that when I say people, I'm only talking about the most influential people who are already in Greenland, do you think we couldn't get them to say, you know, we should be a free country?
If we're asking them to join the United States, that's too far.
We wouldn't get that.
But if you said, hey, what do you think of your idea of more independence?
No, we're happy being owned by Denmark, but are you?
Are you happy being owned by Denmark?
Because the other option is you could vote for independence.
Do you think that Denmark would deny you your independence if, let's say, 70% of you voted for freedom?
No.
So if you could get the local leaders by bribery or incentive or I will make you rich, which wouldn't cost as much.
I mean, it would be the cheapest color revolution of all time because it's a small population.
We absolutely, 100%, could co-opt their government, the influentials, into agreeing that Greenland should be independent.
We would not be able to get them to say they should join America.
But if you became independent and you no longer had the support of Denmark, could you survive unless you had really productive some kind of association with the United States and probably Canada too?
And the answer is not really.
I mean, you would have to make deals with the United States.
For example, you can share in our development of our natural resources if you provide physical security against Russia and China, which they're going to need.
They're going to need it.
So it feels to me like they have a 100% functional long-term plan to get some kind of at least Monroe Doctrine control over Greenland's physical security, which would be paired with some kind of sharing of resources.
And I would say that if you wait long enough, we almost 100% are going to get that done.
I don't know if it could get done under the Trump administration.
It might be a 10-year thing.
But if you give me 10 years, I say there's 100% chance that this plan would work, 10 years.
I don't know if the government would be consistent for 10 years.
So the big if is what happens if Trump leaves office or what happens if a Democrat becomes president and everything has changed.
Well, that story is boring.
So I saw on X that Elon Musk stated that Tim Waltz is guilty of hiding vast fraud.
Now, who would know more than that than Elon Musk?
Because he was doging things.
And you also remember that Tim Walsh was the strongest voice accusing Elon Musk of being the corrupt one.
What is it we've learned about Democrat strategy?
Well, we've learned that they literally, this is not a joke, they literally accuse you of whatever they're doing.
So the fact that Tim Walsh made such a big deal of accusing Elon Musk of being the corrupt one, that does strongly suggest that he was the corrupt one, meaning Tim Walsh was.
And it's hard for me to believe that Tim Walsh was not in on at least some of the corruption, because he's also being accused by credible people of moving against whistleblowers.
So at the same time that he was accusing Elon Musk of being corrupt, he was frying whistleblowers in his own state who were the ones who would have outed him and others for being the corrupt ones.
So just hold in your mind for a moment that Newsom and Tim Walsh are two of the most prominent Democrats.
And I would say almost certainly they have a lot to answer for.
A lot to answer for.
Anyway, I don't know if I even care about this next story, but Israel approved 19 new settlements.
Obviously, they're trying to make it impossible to have a two-state settlement.
But that's no surprise.
And I guess Israel is bombing and attacking Hezbollah and Beirut.
They think they can, they think they're very close to completely destroying the military of Hezbollah.
So that's just more of the same.
I will remind you that Israel is not my country.
So I observe what they do.
It's not up to me to approve it or to deny it.
It's not my country.
So I simply observe.
If it affects America, then I get involved.
So according to the University of Minnesota, there's been a breakthrough in lab-grown spinal cords.
So apparently they use 3D printing to create a structure that stem cells can be attached to that become lab-grown tissues that can repair nerve fibers and spinal cords.
I might need that.
Apparently the problem with repairing nerve cells is that you can't control them when they're growing and you need them to be sort of on a on a straight path.
But I think the 3D printing allows you to take the lab-grown cells and put them in a path that connects broken tissues or broken nerve endings, I guess.
That might be exactly what I need to walk someday.
So hurry up.
Hurry up.
So the national debt's going to approach a trillion dollars in just interest payments.
And I saw somebody estimate that we're doomed by 2035, which is longer than I would have expected.
And I always wonder why we're not more worried about debt, because it seems like the biggest problem that's coming.
But then I wonder, is the reason that we don't obsess about our debt problem because the only things we ever obsess about are things that some billionaire with dark money makes us think is the top priority?
Do you ever wonder about that?
With all the problems in the world, how do we decide which of the big ones that we talk about and address?
I don't think it's because of the big ones.
I think it's because nothing becomes a big story, whether it's climate change or anything else, unless there's some gigantic big money, dark money thing driving the story.
And I don't think any of them are driving the story about our debt is too high.
That's like there's no billionaire who is putting money on that story.
So that might be why we don't worry about it as much.
We just haven't been trained to worry about it as much as we should.
But I do wonder if Elon Musk is right that in the AI and robot future, which is coming up fast, that that will make money worthless because everybody will have everything for free.
The robots and the AI will just do all the hard work and we will just enjoy the abundance.
Now, if that's true, does that give us some kind of escape path from debt?
Because money wouldn't mean anything.
So even if you said, hey, we're going to cancel our debt, we're not going to pay you back, even the people who own the debt would say, oh, sure, whatever.
You could pay me back, but the money isn't worth anything because everything's free.
So that's pretty optimistic.
I can't quite get there.
That's a lot of optimism.
It's not impossible.
And I don't want to bet against Elon Musk's view.
That's always a bad idea.
But I wonder.
In a related story, Scott Besant is pushing the Trump accounts where every baby that's born gets $1,000 in an account, but you could add several thousand dollars if you're a parent, up to $5,000 a year.
So that by the time the kid becomes 18, they would have a nice little nest egg.
But here's the problem that automatically falls out from that.
So these accounts would be available to rich and poor.
And whether you're rich or poor, you get $1,000 in your account.
But whether you're rich or poor, you also get to add your own parental money, say $5,000 a year.
If the rich people add the $5,000 a year, but the poor people obviously do not, what happens when the poor kid and the rich kid turn 18?
The rich kid will have 10 times as much money than the poor kid.
So if what you're worried about is income inequality, Doesn't this guarantee that it's going to be really, really bad?
So I wonder how they'll deal with that.
I do think that raising money for babies is easier than raising money for other things.
Because even I'm thinking, I'm thinking, huh, maybe I should donate some money to that thing.
That looks like, but then I think, wait a minute, in 18 years, which is when the first kid would get the benefit from it, money might not be worth anything.
So either the debt will have killed us by then, or Elon Musk is right, and money will have no value.
So we've got this weird situation where if it were a steady state, which it never is, this would be one of the best ideas ever.
But because we absolutely cannot predict what the world looks like in five years, much less 10 years, much less 18, it's hard to imagine that things would stay as stable as they are now, such that this goes the way you think it would go.
The changes in the world are just so big.
You know, debt plus AI plus robots.
I don't know.
I'm not opposed to this idea.
It's just hard for me to imagine everything works out.
Anyway, there's a Russian general that got killed with a bomb under his car in Moscow.
So in Moscow is the key point here.
And I thought to myself, wouldn't that be the perfect murder if you wanted to kill a Russian general because everybody assumes Ukraine did it?
But suppose you had some other reason to do it, and you just wanted to murder that guy, you could so get away with it because the Russians would just assume that the Ukrainians did it.
I don't even think they would look at anyone else.
It'd be the perfect murder.
But it does make me wonder if Ukraine has taken a decapitation strategy like Israel.
So you know how Israel just consistently kills leaders of their enemy countries?
They just never stop doing it.
Well, there's a head of Hamas.
Well, there's a head of this.
Well, there's a head of that.
And I've always said that taking out the top leaders is an excellent long-term strategy because eventually you've taken out all the capable people and the only people left to assume control are less capable.
But also, if you're in a context of negotiating for peace, if you're the generals and the generals would have some influence with Putin, if you could convince the generals that if they stop now, they are not targets.
But if they don't stop now, or convince Putin to make pace, if they don't do it, that there will be continuous assassinations of generals.
So as a strategy, I would call that the Israel strategy.
And I think it's a strong one.
It doesn't mean it's going to work, but as a strategy, it looks pretty strong.
All right.
That is everything I wanted to say today.
Would anybody like a closing sip?
How many people we got today?
Now we got a pretty good crowd.
I think you have earned the closing sip.
So, what did you like about today's show?
While I'm sipping with you, tell me in the comments which points you liked.
Did you like the reframe?
Did you like?
I don't know.
Is there any part of this do you like more than any other part?
Or do you just like hanging out?
tell me remember i was telling you yesterday that i'm a proud narcissist but only only if i'm creating value for other people So I would be happy to be praised for what I did right, but only if it made a difference.
You like the reframe?
You like hanging out?
All right, let me pause some of these comments.
Just like hanging out, that's perfectly acceptable.
You like me destroying the Democratic Party?
Like the reframe?
Yeah, the hangout.
You like my blanket and my attitude.
What else?
Reframe in the start about smart people changing their mind.
Good.
You know, I felt that that was valuable.
A true narcissist only cares about adding value to themselves.
That's that's not true.
That is not true.
Well, it's a definition, so I guess you can have your own definition.
That's fair.
Oh, drawing the map for Republican success.
Okay.
The persuasion talk is the most beneficial.
It might be.
You like seeing me be resilient.
Sorry.
You like my non-tribal approach.
Good.
I get too much credit for what I do, because a lot of it is, you know, one choice to have.
Daily aid of our BS radar.
Oh, I love you too.
All right.
You're so rogue.
I see some racist comments, which I do not approve of.
You know, you're entitled to your opinion.
But the racist comments, I just think they're uninformed.
Just totally uninformed.
Talking about JV.
All right.
We don't need privatized Social Security.
Yeah.
So somebody is reminding the locals people that I've given one person permission to be inappropriate.
So on the locals platform, one individual was consistently over the line, you know, just unacceptable kind of public opinions.
And instead of banning him, with his agreement, he is now defined as our jester.
So the jester says things that are absolutely inappropriate, just 100%.
But he's the only one who's allowed to do it, right?
Only one person.
So that's worked really well because there's a little bit of an outlet for that behavior, but we reframe it as the jester so that it doesn't have too much of a sticky quality to it.