In this episode, I talk about why the corporatist model of government intervention in the economy is a giant failure, and why we should have a free market economy like the 1950s, where the government was heavily subsidizing particular businesses, where unions were strong, and where there were no government handouts to favor particular companies. I also talk about how capitalism is better than corporatism, because it is more free market oriented, and because it encourages competition, which is the basis of innovation and economic growth, and which is why it is much better than the current model of socialism and Keynesianism, which are two of the worst economic models the world has ever seen. I discuss why free markets are the best economic system on the planet, and how they are much more efficient than socialism and communism, which aren t so different at all. I also discuss why Bernie Sanders is the best candidate for the 2020 Democratic nomination, which I think is a good thing, because he's running against Joe Biden, who is running against both of them, who are both socialist and socialist, and who are running against each other for the Democratic nomination for the White House, and vice-presidential candidate, who's a socialist and a socialist. I finish with a rant about why capitalism is a better economic system than socialism is a bad idea, and what we should be focusing on in the 21st century, and I explain why it s better than capitalism is much more "free market capitalism, not just better than socialism, and also why socialism is not so much better, and much, much, better than communism is not better than free markets, and that s better, but it s much, and more, and it s a lot better than we should we all agree on what we need to be better than that we should all get a shampoo that makes us all have a good shampoo that we all have in the same type of shampoo that s all the same shampoo? I hope you enjoy it! Tweet me with your thoughts on this one! Timestamps: 0:00:00 - What's your favorite thing you like about capitalism? 6:30 - What do you think? 7: What are you looking for? 8:40 - Why is capitalism better? 9:00- Why do we need more competition? 11:00 12:15 - Why do you need more choices? 13:30- Why does capitalism make it better for consumer choice?
00:00:06.000Bidenomics, which is basically the idea that if we sink extraordinary amounts of taxpayer dollars into Joe Biden's favorite companies, or if we just blow out cash spending on a wide variety of causes that help Joe Biden's favorite political Friends, that if we do all of that, that somehow jogs economic growth and leads to economic durability.
00:00:26.000It's very difficult to explain to people why it's a lie.
00:00:28.000Because capitalism is a much more subtle and interesting conversation than is corporatism.
00:00:33.000Corporatism has always been in very easy sell.
00:00:35.000Corporatism is basically the idea, it was started by Mussolini in the early 20th century, that if you work hand in glove, government and business together, And then you direct those businesses in a particular way.
00:00:45.000This will lead to economic prosperity because it cuts out all of the evils of competition, and we all work together instead of working against one another.
00:00:53.000In fact, the idea of the corporation as sort of a corporate body, again, goes back to early 20th century philosophy, particularly prominent in fascist circles.
00:01:02.000Fascist economics looks very much like what much of the West pursues in terms of a mixed economy right now, meaning government subsidization, of particular businesses. A government telling business
00:01:11.000what to do and business just going and doing it. And what that actually results in is certain
00:01:16.000levels of economic stagnation because it cuts out innovation. When you are subsidizing certain
00:01:20.000businesses at the cost of other businesses then what you are actually doing is you are twisting the
00:01:24.000incentive structure in extraordinary ways.
00:01:27.000And when you hear people in the United States who are very nostalgic for the 1950s, they, why can't, why can't we have an economy like the 1950s where the government was heavily subsidizing particular businesses, where unions were really, really strong?
00:01:37.000The quick answer to that question is we can't have the 1950s unless you wish to destroy literally all of the Western economies on planet Earth, except for the United States.
00:01:45.000The reason the 1950s were a boom time in the United States is because every single export market for the United States Was completely destroyed, so destroyed that we had to spend billions of dollars giving those countries money so they could buy our product.
00:01:57.000So if you don't wish to, you know, devastate the entire world economy and then have the United States be the last one standing so that we can pay the unions off for manufacturing product that you could easily do elsewhere, well, then it's going to be kind of hard to square that circle.
00:02:11.000But Joe Biden's quote unquote industrial policy, his entire redistributionist policy, it has real costs and we've been living.
00:02:18.000With these policies for quite a while now and they are not going particularly well.
00:02:21.000We are looking at slowing rates of growth across the West as governments decide to move away from more free market oriented economics and more toward again this corporatist model.
00:02:29.000The reason I'm ranting about the corporatist model right now is because I don't think it's only a Bidenomics problem.
00:02:33.000I'm also seeing it happen on the right.
00:03:49.000And the same thing is true in the stock market.
00:03:51.000When people look at the stock market and they see it as a speculative enterprise, the stock market is not about the speculation.
00:03:57.000It's not about some dude getting rich day trading.
00:03:58.000The truth is you're not going to get rich day trading.
00:04:01.000The number of people who have gotten truly wealthy day trading is very, very, very low.
00:04:04.000That is not how good investors invest.
00:04:05.000The way that good investors invest is they find what they believe is an undervalued property, and then they buy it, and then they hold it.
00:04:10.000This is Warren Buffett's entire strategy.
00:04:12.000Warren Buffett is a student of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, and his basic strategy is, I find an undervalued asset where I like the business, and then I own a share of the business, and then the business grows.
00:04:21.000That is why Warren Buffett is successful, because he's a very disciplined investor.
00:04:25.000He does not speculate in the stock market.
00:04:26.000In fact, he does the reverse of speculation.
00:04:28.000He investigates the businesses that he is looking at, and then he invests in those businesses.
00:04:31.000So when you see the stock market as a speculative gamble, it becomes a speculative gamble for you.
00:04:36.000But that's not what the stock market is meant to do, and that's not actually what the stock market does.
00:04:40.000What the stock market does is it creates giant pools of liquidity.
00:04:43.000Those giant pools of liquidity make it possible for new businesses to get off the ground.
00:04:47.000Some of those businesses will fail, but many of those businesses will succeed.
00:04:52.000And that innovation creates profit margin.
00:04:54.000That profit margin allows more innovation to happen.
00:04:56.000This is why the sort of socialistic idea that profit is bad is really stupid.
00:05:00.000Profit is the incentive structure that actually allows people to create new and innovative products.
00:05:05.000And when you take money out of those markets, out of the stock market, for example, if you're the government, because you just suck money into the government maw, and then you blow it out on your favored projects, or if you're a sort of Right-wing industrialist, proto-industrialist policy guy, and you think, what if we just suck money out of the markets and then we just blow it out on a manufacturing center in Ohio?
00:05:26.000You are taking the money from where it is most efficient and where it is most likely to generate better products, better innovation, and more economic growth, and you are taking it and putting it in a place where that is less likely to happen.
00:05:35.000Now, you can pretend that that's good for the economy as a whole.
00:05:59.000When we talk about the wages of the 1950s, when we talk about bringing back the 1950s, economically speaking, you would not want to live in the 1950s, economically speaking.
00:08:39.000Birch Gold, the people I trust with my gold investments, protect your savings the same way.
00:08:42.000Birch Gold has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
00:08:44.000Thousands of happy customers text Ben.
00:08:48.000Okay, so what is the fallout from this kind of policy, this kind of dumb industrial policy, where we spend oodles and oodles of money on unproductive companies that could not survive in the private markets?
00:09:05.000Well, the fallout is that places go bankrupt.
00:09:09.000The fallout is inflationary policy in which you helicopter money all over the place and then you're shocked when all the prices go up.
00:09:15.000So for example, if you look at Joe Biden's total inflation rate since he became president of the United States, the total inflation rate, like when you actually add all that up, consumer prices since Joe Biden took office are up 16%.
00:09:46.000Well, because when you helicopter money all over the place, it gives people the impression they have more money, and then they go and they spend the money, and then they spend the money, and the prices go up.
00:09:54.000Well, right now, the fallout from this is going to be, eventually, the party comes to an end, and somebody is left without a chair.
00:10:01.000And some of those places are going to be companies that should never have had money in the first place.
00:10:05.000So one of Joe Biden's favorite companies was a company called Proterra.
00:10:09.000Proterra is an electric vehicle parts supplier, and Joe Biden actually spoke about Proterra and the magic of it in 2021.
00:10:14.000Here's Joe Biden in 2021 talking about the magic of Proterra.
00:10:18.000Right now we're running way behind China, but you guys are getting us in the game.
00:10:52.000Cloud, Minnesota, CWA workers are building electric buses so people can get where they need to go.
00:11:03.000Where they need to- Okay, um, there's only one problem.
00:11:06.000Yesterday, electric vehicle parts supplier Proterra, according to Reuters, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, making it the latest company to go belly up in an industry grappling with supply chain constraints, slowing demand, and a funding drought.
00:11:17.000Where's that funding drought coming from?
00:11:18.000It turns out that when you get addicted to government cash, eventually the heroin supply stops coming.
00:11:22.000The move comes weeks after Lordstown Motors filed for bankruptcy protection and put itself up for sale after failing to resolve a dispute over a promised investment from Foxconn.
00:11:29.000Proterra's shares nearly halved in value after the ballot.
00:11:32.000It listed its assets and liabilities in the range of $500 million to $1 billion.
00:11:36.000The entire market cap of the company is $362 million.
00:11:40.000In January of 2021, Proterra was valued at $1.6 billion, including debt, in a merger deal with a blank check firm.
00:11:46.000And it was Joe Biden who was touting this firm.
00:11:50.000Now, the difference between the government subsidizing a firm and you subsidizing a firm?
00:11:54.000I've made investments that have gone bust, and I lose the money.
00:11:56.000When the government makes the investment and then goes bust, you also lose the money.
00:12:02.000And that is why these sort of industrial policies are a fail.
00:12:05.000Meanwhile, the Bidennomics team, they keep out going out there and proclaiming that everything is going swimmingly when we all know it's not.
00:12:10.000Here is Kamala Harris lying yesterday saying that wages are up and inflation is down.
00:12:14.000Well, that all depends on your starting point.
00:12:16.000If you start from like last month, then that's true.
00:12:20.000If you start from when Joe Biden became president, it's wildly false.
00:12:23.000Again, inflation is up almost 16% from when Joe Biden took office.
00:12:26.000If you're looking at the price rate, if you're looking at wage rates, they're down 4% during that same period in real wages.
00:13:00.000Inflation has fallen 12 months in a row.
00:13:02.000Okay, which is sort of like saying that you're doing better than you did yesterday, and you're doing better yesterday than you did the day before, and that's because 12 months ago you were hit by a truck.
00:13:24.000And we brought it down month over month.
00:13:25.000By the way, when you bring it down month over month, that still means that the inflation is continuing.
00:13:29.000It's just the rate is not changing in a positive direction.
00:13:33.000That's like you're filling the bathtub and the water is still going up.
00:13:35.000It's just filling a little bit more slowly than it was a minute ago.
00:13:39.000But if they lie to you often enough, they figure that maybe they'll get away with it.
00:13:42.000Because again, they can just point to, whenever you have a system where you can point at concentrated winners and disparate losers, it's much easier to pitch.
00:13:49.000This is the beauty of industrial policy and corporatism.
00:13:52.000You can point at individual companies, you say, ah, this guy's a winner.
00:13:57.000He had a chance at winning, like amazing.
00:13:59.000The problem is, when you have this many disparate costs, they start to add up.
00:14:03.000And we're seeing that in spades right now for the American wage earner.
00:14:07.000We're seeing this for American businesses.
00:14:09.000And that the future of American growth is very, very precarious right now.
00:14:13.000We'll get to more on that in just one second.
00:14:14.000First, it's time for our Meat of It question, sponsored by Good Ranchers, where we get to the meat of a hard-hitting weekly question.
00:14:19.000The question is, with all the recent investigations into both Trump and Biden, which American political family do you think is the most corrupt?
00:14:26.000Well, I mean, this is a long list of corrupt political families.
00:14:29.000So, you'd have to put up there the Kennedys.
00:14:32.000The Kennedy family had some serious, serious corruption issues going all the way back to Joseph.
00:14:37.000Also going back to, you know, Teddy Kennedy leaving a lady dead in a river.
00:14:41.000You'd have to look at the Clinton family.
00:14:42.000Both Bill and Hillary, wildly corrupt.
00:14:44.000Selling pardons for cash and all the rest of it.
00:14:46.000And of course, the Biden family is extraordinarily corrupt, as we've been talking about at length.
00:14:51.000While some political families may attempt to disguise their foreign business dealings as completely innocent, Foreign meat can disguise itself as a product of the United States.
00:14:57.000Yes, grocery store shelves are riddled with meat from other countries disguised in a product of the U.S.
00:15:35.000And I pointed out, And that there is, in fact, a different measure of economic growth, different than GDP.
00:15:43.000And that measure of economic growth doesn't look just at consumer and product spending, which is how Keynesians would look at it.
00:15:49.000This is why they always believe that government spending is going to jog GDP, because government spending goes into consumer growth.
00:15:54.000If the government spends a lot of money on a product, then this is called economic growth.
00:15:58.000That's really not the way that it should work.
00:16:01.000There's a better measure called gross output that we've been talking about.
00:16:04.000Gross output is how businesses are investing and how businesses are spending.
00:16:09.000And what you see is that gross output remains pretty precarious right now.
00:16:15.000It's not looking fantastic because businesses are pulling back.
00:16:18.000And you're seeing this in pretty much every area of American life right now.
00:16:22.000So for example, According to the Wall Street Journal, new lending by mortgage REITs has now dried up.
00:16:27.000So if you are worried about commercial real estate taking a dive, you should be worried.
00:16:30.000Blackstone Mortgage Trust and KKR Real Estate Finance Trust, two of the biggest mortgage real estate investment trusts, have now halted loans to any new borrowers.
00:16:39.000That means that liquidity is drying up.
00:16:40.000When liquidity dries up, it means that people can't invest it.
00:16:43.000While these firms continue to provide financing related to existing loans, they're not originating any new loans.
00:16:47.000That's also true of Starwood Property Trust.
00:16:49.000Mortgage REITs, which lend to property owners instead of buying and developing real estate, like equity-oriented REITs, typically originate an average of about $10 billion in loans every quarter.
00:16:58.000Hardly any new loans are being made right now, which means that you're going to see markets start to decline in real estate.
00:17:04.000Well, stocks declined pretty significantly yesterday after the banks were downgraded by Moody's.
00:17:11.000So, according to the Wall Street Journal, weak Chinese export data, which, by the way, is a reflection of the American consumer market, because we're the ones who are actually buying Chinese product.
00:17:18.000Weak Chinese export data, a dimmer financial outlook from UPS, and a credit downgrade for 10 smaller U.S.
00:17:23.000banks sends stock indices down on Tuesday.
00:17:25.000Government bond prices climbed, pushing yields down.
00:17:27.000That means people are trying to invest in government bonds at this point and get away from the stock market, which is a sign of economic weakness.
00:17:33.000Bonds are getting more attractive compared with stocks lately, given higher yields and the risk that recession hits corporate earnings in the future.
00:17:39.000Financial shares were stung when Moody's lowered credit ratings for 10 smaller U.S.
00:17:41.000banks and said it was reviewing ratings for six larger ones, including Bank of New York, Mellon, and U.S.
00:17:46.000The move renewed concerns over tighter lending and the banking system's ability to withstand sharply higher interest rates.
00:17:51.000Again, if the banks invested a lot in bonds two years ago, they're absolutely jacked.
00:17:54.000This is what happened with Silicon Valley Bank.
00:17:56.000They invested a lot in bonds, figuring that the government was a safe place to put the money, and then the government had to raise those interest rates radically on the new bonds, making the old bonds essentially worthless.
00:18:03.000That's what bankrupted Silicon Valley Bank.
00:18:06.000There are some other banks that have similar math.
00:18:09.000So we are looking right now at persistent high inflation in Europe, tight financial conditions in Asia, a slow recovery.
00:18:18.000China is slipping into deflation right now.
00:18:21.000According to the Wall Street Journal, tepid consumer demand and rising economic concerns in the world's second-largest economy have now tipped China into a deflationary territory for the first time in two years, adding pressure on Beijing to act more aggressively to avoid a deepening economic malaise.
00:18:33.000Instead of experiencing a surge in prices after lifting the COVID-19 pandemic curbs late last year, China is now suffering an unusual bout of falling prices for a range of goods, from commodities like steel and coal to daily essentials and consumer products like vegetables and home appliances.
00:18:52.000Now, we are still a better bet than China.
00:18:54.000We're still going to be able to sell our bonds.
00:18:56.000But just remember, when we sell bonds that have an interest rate of 5.5%, 5.75%, all we're really doing is saying that the government in 10 years is going to have to pay off all of that interest.
00:19:07.000Which is going to eat up our entire government budget right now.
00:19:10.000So we have in this country extraordinary levels of government debt.
00:19:13.000That is paired with extraordinary levels of personal debt.
00:19:15.000All of this is a tsunami waiting to happen.
00:19:27.000credit card debt hit a trillion dollars for the first time toward the end of July.
00:19:31.000This rise reflects a number of factors, including rising consumer confidence and spending power amid cooling inflation.
00:19:36.000But again, people are spending on that credit card, which means a bunch of people are going to go bankrupt because not everybody pays off that credit card.
00:19:43.000There are 70 million more credit card accounts open now than pre-pandemic in 2019, according to Fed researchers.
00:19:49.000So Americans are spending an enormous amount of money on their credit cards.
00:19:53.000Rising balances may present challenges for some borrowers.
00:19:55.000The resumption of student loan payments this fall may add additional financial strain for many student loan borrowers, according to Fed researchers as well.
00:20:02.000It's all fun and games until the carousel stops.
00:20:05.000There's a good account on Twitter called the Cobacy Letter, which is a commentary on global capital markets.
00:20:12.000currently has $17.1 trillion in household debt, $12 trillion in mortgages, $1.6 trillion in auto loans, $1.6 trillion in student loans, $1.0 trillion in credit card debt.
00:20:22.000Total mortgage debt is more than double the 2006 peak.
00:20:28.000It relies on the government to bail everybody out.
00:20:30.000And when those bailouts stop, which eventually they will, then people are going to be in a really hard situation.
00:20:35.000That's when you'll get more calls for more government spending, more government regulation.
00:20:39.000This is the beauty of being a corporatist.
00:20:40.000When your policies fail, you just call for more cowbell.
00:20:43.000You just blame capitalism and suggest that it was capitalism's fault that all this stuff happened when it wasn't capitalism's fault in the first place.
00:20:51.000We'll get to the impact of all of this on the 2024 race momentarily first.
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00:21:59.000Okay, one of the ways that you can see that the easy money is drying up is because very foolish corporate policies are also starting to dry up.
00:22:07.000Those are the preserve of the privilege.
00:22:09.000In the same way that environmentalism is a preserve of the global privilege, the only people who care about the environment are people who can afford to do so.
00:22:16.000They're not people who are living in Africa who are burning dung for fuel and trying to make sure that their one-year-old stays alive.
00:22:22.000It's a bunch of rich people living in the West who are deeply worried about the polar bears and the Arctic ice caps.
00:22:27.000Well, the same thing happens with regard to the economy.
00:22:29.000When you have loose money policies, bad companies get money.
00:22:32.000And bad corporate policies get promulgated.
00:22:33.000Well, now you can see, again, this is actually, it's a good sign for the future of corporate America, but it's also a sign of an economic downturn that all these corporate firms are now getting rid of ESG and DEI.
00:22:43.000ESG and DEI are just dragged on the profitability of these corporations.
00:22:49.000And corporations were able to do that and they were able to virtue signal with their money and with the stock market.
00:22:54.000They were able to do that so long as the money was still flowing.
00:22:57.000When the money stops flowing, the first thing to go is all the virtue signaling.
00:23:01.000Which is why the Wall Street Journal is reporting today that conservative legal activists have successfully challenged the use of affirmative action by universities.
00:23:07.000Now they're going after diversity initiatives widely deployed across American corporations.
00:23:10.000Some companies are already reconsidering their efforts.
00:23:13.000In lawsuits, shareholder letters, and petitions to the EEOC, activists are using some of the same tactics that progressive groups have used to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI programs.
00:23:22.000They are arguing companies are violating rules against race and sex discrimination, including those drawn from legislation designed to secure the rights of Black Americans.
00:23:30.000Comcast has settled the case accusing it of illegally favoring minority-owned small businesses.
00:23:34.000Amazon has been sued in Texas over a program offering special benefits to Black or Latino-owned delivery service contractors.
00:23:43.000And as you are seeing, S&P is now dropping ESG scores from debt ratings, which is exactly as it should have been in the first place.
00:23:49.000But when the money was free and loose, you could be just as lefty as you wanted to be.
00:23:52.000It's when the money starts to get tight that everybody turns into a conservative again.
00:23:56.000According to The Financial Times, S&P Global has now stopped handing out scores to corporate borrowers on ESG criteria.
00:24:03.000The debt rating agency has since 2021 published scores from 1 to 5 for a company's exposure to each element of environmental, social, and governance risks.
00:24:11.000Payments company Visa, for example, had received a 2 for E and S and a 3 for G. First Energy, a high utility that has been charged with corruption, received a 4 score for G, S&P's second lowest grade.
00:24:23.000Late last week, S&P reversed course, saying only taxed non-numerical scores would comprise analysis of a company's ESG matters.
00:24:30.000The rating agency said, quote, which means effectively speaking, it's not going to matter anymore.
00:24:33.000in our credit rating reports are most effective at providing detail and transparency
00:24:36.000on ESG credit factors material to our rating analysis.
00:24:39.000So they are going to continue doing the rating analysis, but they're not gonna give it a number,
00:24:43.000which means effectively speaking, it's not gonna matter anymore.
00:24:46.000Moody's is still rating ESG criteria on a one to five scale.
00:25:01.000And in fact, investors are looking and they're going, I just want to invest in the company that's going to make me money, in the company that is profitable and run well.
00:25:22.000And again, that's the first indicator that we're about to go into a fairly serious recession.
00:25:27.000Because again, when you look at the stuff that, just like you and your household, all your frivolous spending, when it's an economic downturn, when somebody loses a job, the first thing to go is your night out at the movies and your restaurant trips.
00:25:38.000Well, when it comes to corporate America, the first thing to go is ESG and DEI when the cuts come.
00:25:49.000And while Joe Biden is happy talking this thing, it would be important to start protecting yourself.
00:25:56.000With all of that said, Republicans would be poised to take advantage of this if they knew how to speak in free market terms, but Republicans have left that far behind.
00:26:05.000In the effort to win over people in middle America, the so-called Rust Belt, The suggestion has been made that those people are desperate for manufacturing policy that quote-unquote reshores jobs and all that is is nice sounding stuff that effectively means subsidization for some at the expense of others.
00:26:24.000Why Republicans are winning in Ohio and Indiana.
00:26:27.000The reason Republicans are winning in Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, all these Midwestern Rust Belt states, it has very little to do with manufacturing policy, because guess what?
00:26:41.000It doesn't mean people don't get lost in the shuffle, which is horrible.
00:26:44.000We have to find better ways to transition them to new careers.
00:26:46.000We have to find better opportunities for them.
00:26:48.000But the idea that you're bringing back like the entire manufacturing base of the United States is something that both the Republican Party and Democratic Party keep saying.
00:26:54.000And it's not going to happen in large swaths of the manufacturing economy in the same way that agriculture used to be a mainstay of the American economy.
00:27:01.000And now agriculture is worked by a tiny fraction of the workforce in the United States.
00:27:05.000You don't hear people saying, well, you know what?
00:27:07.000All those farmers who lost jobs, we need to find ways for them to go back to farming.
00:27:11.000That's just not something people say anymore, and the reason for that is economies become more innovative, they become more efficient.
00:27:16.000The actual reason, by the way, that Republicans are winning in red states has much more to do with the bizarre cultural policies practiced by left-coast elites than it has to do with industrial policy in the Midwest.
00:27:28.000So as the Republican Party embraces the idea that entitlement programs should never be messed with, that we should continue spending just like Democrats do, only on different people, It's a race to the bottom at that point.
00:27:39.000It'd be nice if somebody in American politics had the actual balls to talk about the beauties of the free market, which is what has made America the most prosperous country in world history bar none.
00:27:50.000Instead, we're just going to blow out our debt and we're going to continue ignoring all the systemic problems of the economy until we hit a cliff, at which point we hit a cliff.
00:27:56.000And then, because America is perceived as capitalist but actually is corporatist, at that point they blame the free markets and they call for more government interventionism and it's a spiral to the bottom.
00:28:04.000So, if that sounds kind of dark, it's because it is.
00:28:07.000Again, it would be really nice if somebody in political power had the capacity to speak clearly and cogently about the economy.
00:28:13.000But that's likely not what we're going to get.
00:28:15.000Instead, it's going to be a race of personalities.
00:28:18.000Speaking of which, apparently Carrie Lake is now preparing another Senate run.
00:28:25.000She lost to a wet rag in Katie Hobbs in Arizona.
00:28:28.000Everybody thought Carrie Lake was going to win that race.
00:28:30.000They thought she was going to win that race because again, Katie Hobbs is a terrible candidate, like a truly awful candidate.
00:28:36.000Carrie Lake somehow found a way to lose the race by essentially saying to a bunch of people in the middle, I don't want you to vote for me.
00:28:41.000I mean, she actually said that pretty much.
00:28:46.000And if this is the Republican plan for victory, I gotta say, it's really stupid.
00:28:50.000Declaring that you won a game that you lost does not make you the winner of that game, nor should it make you the favorite for the next game.
00:28:56.000There is no game of which I am aware that you claiming victory makes you the victor in the game.
00:29:00.000If you just declare that you won a basketball game after you clearly lost a basketball game, does that now make you a winner who moves on to the next round?
00:29:09.000And yet this seems to be denial is not just a river in Egypt.
00:29:12.000Denial is apparently now a Republican electoral strategy.
00:29:14.000If you pretend that you didn't lose an election and then you say a bunch of stuff about it that is unverifiable, then we give you the benefit of the doubt because we hate the left so much that we have decided that everything they say is a lie up to and including election results.
00:29:26.000That's not a good way to win a reelect effort.
00:29:28.000The Arizona Republican Party is destroying itself right now, and it's a disaster area for the Republican Party nationally, because if Republicans lose Arizona, which state do they make up in a presidential?
00:29:37.000Remember, until about five years ago, Arizona was entirely red.
00:29:41.000If you go back to, like, 2016, the senators from Arizona were John McCain and Jeff Flake.
00:29:48.000It was two Republicans, and Doug Ducey was the Republican governor of Arizona.
00:29:51.000And now, there's a Democratic senator— there are two Democratic senators and a Democrat governor in Arizona.
00:29:57.000So, is the Arizona Republican Party shifting back toward the sort of maverick state status that actually allows it to win in the state?
00:30:13.000It's wild, especially because this is a super vulnerable seat for Democrats.
00:30:17.000Kyrsten Sinema, the current independent senator in Arizona, she is running against Ruben Gallego.
00:30:23.000Ruben Gallego right now is drawing a plurality of the vote.
00:30:26.000Sinema is drawing some of the Republican vote.
00:30:28.000And, well, if you had a strong Republican candidate who, say, didn't alienate independents, maybe fewer of those independents would go over to Kyrsten Sinema.
00:30:36.000Right now, Kyrsten Sinema's winning like 37-38% of the vote, Gallego is at like 40-something, and Carrie Lake, if she were in that race, is in the 20s.
00:30:46.000And yet, Republicans in Arizona seem so obsessed with the idea that if they just keep relitigating 2020 and 2022 and presumably 2024 for the rest of time, that this will be an electoral strategy that leads to- I just don't understand how this has ever worked.
00:30:58.000Name a situation in your life where looking back on a thing and just Gnawing on it over and over and over has made your life better.
00:31:06.000Name literally one situation in your own life where something has gone wrong for you and you gnaw on it.
00:31:11.000You just sit there and you just obsess about it endlessly.
00:31:14.000And this has now made your life better going forward.
00:31:16.000And yet this is what Republican Party seems to be doing not only over 2020, but over over 2022 as well now.
00:31:22.000According to Axios, a potential three-way battle with Kyrsten Sinema running as an independent exposes deep divisions in both parties on whether to appeal to their bases or independence.
00:31:31.000Lake still has not conceded her gubernatorial loss in 2022.
00:31:33.000The race offers a state-level experiment on the implications of a possible three-way presidential contest because Sinema is playing the sort of no-labels candidate right now.
00:31:44.000If Lake wins GOP's primary next August, she will likely face down Gallego and Sinema in the general election.
00:31:51.000Sinema has not officially announced whether she will seek re-election, but she has a bunch of cash on hand.
00:31:55.000Now again, Republicans cannot afford to lose Arizona.
00:32:17.000Even as Republicans stewed over 2020 in Georgia, Brian Kemp won running away in Georgia over Stacey Abrams, who was the scourge of Georgia in 2020, supposedly.
00:34:21.000Also, whether it's changing the definition of words or trying to convince you that 2 plus 2 actually equals 5, it sometimes feels like the leftist culture is doing its best to make you stupid.
00:35:12.000There is not a thing that he has touched that has not turned to garbage.
00:35:15.000Well, here was Donald Trump on that topic yesterday, and this is totally fine stuff.
00:35:19.000Everyone can see the stunning contrast between our incredible success and Joe Biden's horrendous failures, and that's one reason why we're leading so big in the polls.
00:35:55.000How can my corrupt political opponent, crooked Joe Biden, put me on trial during an election campaign that I'm winning by a lot, but forcing me nevertheless to spend time and money away from the campaign trail in order to fight bogus, made-up accusations and charges?
00:36:14.000I'm sorry, I won't be able to go to Iowa today.
00:36:16.000I won't be able to go to New Hampshire today because I'm sitting in a courtroom on bullsh** because his attorney general Okay, again, I agree with him on a lot of this stuff.
00:36:33.000But is that going to win a presidential election with independents?
00:37:03.000It also does not mean that if we are constantly looking in the mirror and just seeing what we want to see, then we are going to come away with an accurate reflection of what politics in America looks like.
00:37:13.000So last night, there was a special election in Ohio.
00:37:16.000It was a special election on what they called Issue 1 on the Ohio ballot.
00:37:20.000This election was about whether to change the Ohio State Constitution to make it so that amendments basically required a supermajority in order to be passed.
00:37:28.000So if you want to change the Ohio State Constitution right now, you need just a sheer majority.
00:37:31.000But instead of that, they want to make it a supermajority.
00:37:35.000This debate actually wasn't about the constitutional amendments.
00:37:38.000It was about the Ohio Republican Party doing that and the left saying what they actually are attempting to do is prevent you from enshrining Roe versus Wade in the Ohio state constitution.
00:37:46.000What they really want to do is just ban abortion in state law and then make it impossible for us to overturn because they've changed the rules of the constitutional amendment.
00:37:53.000So that's what was on the ballot last night.
00:37:56.000And here's how the Associated Press described the results.
00:37:58.000So first of all, the Ohio resolution to essentially stabilize the Ohio state constitution, it went down to flaming defeat 57 to 43.
00:38:06.000Here's how the AP described it, quote, Ohio voters on Tuesday resoundingly rejected a
00:38:10.000Republican-backed measure that would have made it more difficult to change the state's
00:38:12.000constitution, setting up a fall campaign that will become the nation's latest referendum
00:38:17.000Supreme Court overturned nationwide protections last year.
00:38:20.000The defeat of Issue 1 keeps in place a simple majority threshold for passing future constitutional amendments, rather than the 60% supermajority that was proposed.
00:38:27.000Its supporters said the higher bar would protect the state's foundational document from outside interest groups.
00:38:31.000Voter opposition to the proposal was widespread, even spreading into traditionally Republican territory.
00:38:35.000In fact, in early returns, support for the measure fell far short of Donald Trump's performance during the 2020 election in nearly every county.
00:38:42.000So as Jazz Shaw points out over at Hot Air, the word abortion appeared nowhere in the text of issue one.
00:38:47.000It was a proposal to raise the bar for amending the state constitution to 60% support rather than simple majority.
00:38:52.000That's already in place in a lot of other states.
00:38:54.000However, however, it was read by the voters as an attempt to basically protect pro-life positions.
00:39:02.000He says, even a quick glance at the national polls will tell the same story about the state of play in American politics today.
00:39:06.000Joe Biden is among the least popular presidents in modern American history.
00:39:09.000Recent investigations have made it increasingly clear he is almost certainly among the most corrupt.
00:39:15.000But yesterday's results in Ohio are all the proof you need.
00:39:17.000Such a result is not going to happen like a giant romp over Joe Biden.
00:39:21.000And that Biden could still hold on to the White House.
00:39:22.000That's because if we allow Democrats to make next year's election all about abortion, their voters and a number of moderates and independents will ignore massive failures and the deplorable state of their country, hold their noses, and vote to keep the GOP out of power at any cost.
00:39:32.000There is no more pro-life person in America than I am.
00:39:35.000Okay, I am fully pro-life all the way back to point of conception, no exceptions for rape or incest.
00:39:41.000Now, I'm as pro-life as it is possible to be.
00:39:45.000Republicans saying over and over to themselves that if we take the hardest pro-life position in every state in the union, this will lead to electoral victory is dumb.
00:39:52.000You're going to have to gradually convince the American people of the rightness of your positions.
00:39:57.000Because if you don't, the backlash is going to come strong from the other side.
00:40:00.000You're seeing this in state election after state election.
00:40:02.000It's what's happening in Kansas, for example.
00:40:04.000Where an overwhelmingly Republican population voted to actually enshrine abortion in Kansas constitutional law.
00:40:13.000If Republicans feel like they are the only voters in the room, if they feel like they vote on the basis of Carrie Lake's race in 2020, or they vote on the basis of Donald Trump being victimized by law enforcement, or they vote for their nominees on the basis of who takes the most pro-life position and promises they're going to ram it down in law even without any political support for that position, they're going to lose.
00:40:34.000The left has been assuming with the economy gravity doesn't exist.
00:40:36.000And the left for a long time, with regard to things like crime, assumed that gravity did not exist.
00:40:40.000Gravity continues to exist in the political realm.
00:40:43.000Reality continues to exist in the political realm.
00:40:45.000Now, I'll be honest with you and I'll tell you where people are straying from their central principles.
00:40:50.000It is 100% true that if you go for a 10-week abortion ban, that is not a full abortion ban, nor it is remotely sufficient to protect human life.
00:40:57.000It is also true, if that's the best you can get, that may be the best you can get.
00:41:01.000Now, there are a lot of people who make a great living telling you that if you don't go for broke all the time, every time, that you're never gonna get anywhere.
00:41:29.000The pro-life movement defeated Roe vs. Wade over the course of 50 years of building up an entire legal movement specifically dedicated to interpreting the Constitution as originally intended.
00:41:40.000That took 50 years of incremental movement.
00:41:42.000Do you think that tomorrow, if we just go for broke, that magically the country is going to snap into a place of virtue?
00:41:50.000I think it's a long, hard process of convincing people, and working with people, and yes, taking incremental gains, and recognizing the gains for what they are, while also recognizing what they are not.
00:41:59.000That is what political honesty would look like.
00:42:02.000But very few people on either side of the political aisle actually do political honesty these days.
00:42:05.000Instead, their business is telling you about how pure they are on every form.
00:42:11.000Instead, what they worry about is can they wrong-foot the other guy and make it look as though he's actually pusillanimous on an issue, when what he's really saying is the only way to... I agree with you on the issue.
00:42:20.000The only way to get to the point where you win is by pursuing these very practical steps.
00:42:25.000Or alternatively, you can shout at the win and then you can lose.
00:42:27.000Maybe it feels good to shout at the win.
00:42:43.000So they lied about their AP African American History course in Florida, suggesting that it couldn't even be taught in Florida because you can't teach black history in Florida.
00:44:02.000You could just teach that sex, of course, impacts socialization because girls are girls and boys are boys.
00:44:07.000And gender is deeply connected with sex.
00:44:09.000You could totally teach that in the context of the AP psych course.
00:44:12.000But what AP is saying is that we don't want you to teach that.
00:44:15.000So as a columnist for The Federalist points out, the College Board is equating the limits placed on teaching these two skills with removing a cornerstone of the course.
00:44:21.000This is like saying that neglecting to explain all the unconventional ways punctuation is used for rhetorical purposes somehow makes the whole class illegitimate.
00:44:29.000And the real reason for this is because the APA, the American Psychological Association, which has always been and is a deeply, deeply partisan political organization.
00:44:38.000Groups like that are arguing that AP Psych should actually include more content about gender and sexuality.
00:44:44.000The APA CEO, Arthur Evans, says, quote, an advanced placement course that ignores the decades of science studying sexual orientation and gender identity would deprive students of knowledge they will need to succeed in their studies in high school and beyond.
00:44:53.000So first of all, I guarantee you that what they're teaching in AP Psych does not actually reflect the best science.
00:46:00.000So there is a book that was enormous in the 1970s.
00:46:04.000It's called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
00:46:07.000It was written by a guy who used to be sort of an English composition professor and then got very into psychology, went to University of Chicago.
00:46:16.000This book sold just millions and millions of copies, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
00:46:55.000So, basically what the book is, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, is it's a story about the author and his son taking a motorcycle trip across the country.
00:47:04.000And It's interspersed with his flashbacks to his days in psychology because it turns out that he had an actual psychological break and he was hospitalized and getting like electrotherapy and all of this.
00:47:16.000And so it's a travelogue interspersed with philosophical musings and investigations into what it was that made him go crazy about philosophy in the first place.
00:47:28.000Well, the book says a lot of the same sort of stuff that Jordan Peterson says now.
00:47:32.000So a lot of the book is about the magic of fixing his motorcycle.
00:47:36.000You don't have to be, by the way, a motorcycle enthusiast to actually enjoy this sort of stuff.
00:48:14.000And he breaks it down into Greek philosophy, and he basically says that there was an attempt to separate off the true from the good.
00:48:21.000And that was because if there was no way to define the good, then presumably truth could get lost.
00:48:27.000But what Pirsig says is, we should stop running away from the undefined term.
00:48:31.000Stop pretending that you can define a term that you can't define, like quality or the good.
00:48:36.000Because that is the thing that actually drives human beings.
00:48:38.000And you can pretend that you can categorize it, that you can nail it down like a butterfly on a piece of paper, but you can't actually do that.
00:48:46.000Because that is the way that we interact with the universe, is through the prism of that good, of that quality, and it's not entirely quote-unquote subjective.
00:49:08.000That system of values is in fact the divine.
00:49:12.000And that is how we interact with the world, is through that prism.
00:49:15.000That's what religion fills the gap of.
00:49:16.000He comes very close to basically saying that in the book, but he doesn't quite say that.
00:49:19.000But the book is really A much earlier version of make a bed.
00:49:24.000There is such a thing as a higher value and that higher value is the thing that orients you.
00:49:27.000That science is not that higher value because science has no values because the empirical cannot actually separate, cannot bridge what they call the is-ought gap from things around you in the universe in the physical universe to what you ought to do.
00:49:39.000And what he says is that's an artificial gap in the first place because the way that you actually address the world is always going to be oriented through a particular perspective of quality.