I ve been off the internet for more than I ve been on it lately because I ve ve been flying. And flying during the age of COIDV is not easy. I ll tell you what it s like to try to travel during the Age of CoidV.
00:00:00.000Hey, anybody out there? You know, this is a big day. It's an inauguration. And I'm not entirely sure how many of you are going to be on this live stream, because it's the wrong time.
00:00:19.120Well, better late than never, wouldn't you say? Let's try it. YouTube's having a little trouble connecting here. We'll see if we can improve that. Well, it looks like Periscope is outperforming YouTube today. YouTube's trying to reconnect.
00:00:34.560Okay. You feel bad? Do you hear an annoying buzz, somebody said? I don't hear it. All right. So it looks like YouTube's not going to work. But we don't care about that, do we? I don't think we do. Hey, Bill. Good to see you.
00:00:56.480All right. So I've been off the Internet for more than I've been on it lately, because I've been flying. So before we talk about politics, let me tell you what it's like to try to travel during the age of COVID. Not easy. Not easy. So we, Christine and I tried to squeeze in the honeymoon that we postponed because of the coronavirus.
00:01:23.200And I am now in a, uh, uh, uh, many, many miles away from the United States. I'll tell you where I am when I get there. I've got another plane ride and another boat ride before I get to where I'm going. Um, um, if you think there's some buzzing on this, uh, I'm going to be ignoring everybody who says that.
00:01:44.740All right. So, uh, whoever says there's buzzing on here, I'm going to start blocking you. Okay.
00:01:52.980I can't do anything about it. I plug in the microphone. I turn it on. That's, that's everything I can control. So if you've got a problem with it, please sign off because I can't fix it.
00:02:06.320All right. Um, and YouTube looks like it's not going to work at all. So let me turn that off.
00:02:14.180Boom. All right. So the first thing you need to know if you're flying is I needed to, we needed to get a COVID test before we flew. Those were negative.
00:02:24.440And then when you reach your destination in this particular case, um, I don't have a tan. This is, I'm just in the dark. I haven't even been in the sun yet. Uh, but when you get to your destination, they hand you another kit.
00:02:39.220You have to test yourself four days later and then to get on the plane to come home, yet another test. So I'll have three COVID tests just for one trip. And I'm actually kind of happy about it.
00:02:50.440I also saw some data that airplanes have such good filtration systems that the odds of getting something on the airplane is basically zero. So that felt pretty safe.
00:03:02.840Now, problem was that I flew United. And if you've ever flown United, you know how that goes. You get there on time and then United says the flight is delayed because they always do.
00:03:14.240And then half an hour later they say, ah, it's a, it's a minor problem. You know, uh, it's a little minor problem, but half an hour. And then four hours later, which is what happened yesterday, four hours later, they put you on a different plane because they give up.
00:03:32.120But here's the funny part. The thing they were trying to fix for over three hours was a software problem. So the plane kept giving software errors and they would change things and reboot things and they changed the card and it would just give them new errors.
00:03:47.820And then they would fix it. And then it would give them a new set of errors. All software. Now, how much do you think I wanted to get on that airplane and be over water for over seven hours on a plane that had never been tested because you can't really test the new software.
00:04:10.820When you load it, you can tell if it doesn't give you an error, but all the other things gave errors. And what was that other error about?
00:04:18.980So I would say that that was not an ideal situation. So I did about 12 hours wearing a mask yesterday, which if you have a little asthma, like I do, it's like being waterboarded, but, uh, it's worth it. Once you get there.
00:04:30.940All right. Who wants the simultaneous sip? Who wants it? You do. All you need is a cup or mug or a glass. A canteen. No, a cup or a mug or a glass. Let's see if this will be the first time I'll try to do it by memory in a long time. A cup or a mug or a glass. Uh, does anybody know how this goes?
00:04:52.540Canteen? Canteen? Jug? Flask? Something like that. Anyway, simultaneous sip. Let's do it. Go.
00:05:05.580So, uh, I'm in a hotel that's the, just an overnight hotel before we end up in our actual destination. And, uh, so, so this is a four star hotel, but they have one employee.
00:05:18.700So the woman who works the front desk, and there's only one of them, is sort of the only person. And she said, yeah, nobody else here. There's no porters. Nobody's going to take your bags. Just me.
00:05:31.360All the restaurants are closed. No room service. So we got here at night. Couldn't get food. Uh, and they have one of those situations where you, you put your room key card in the, in a little unit right by the door so that, uh, that's the only time the AC and the lights come on is if you've got your room key in it.
00:05:49.360So I walk in, I put my room key in it, and the entire unit just falls off the wall, off the floor. You know, the whole front part of it just collapsed as soon as I put my, my card in it just falls on the floor.
00:06:00.460So, uh, so, uh, I'm having a, uh, four star, uh, uh, uh, vacation experience, which, if I'm being honest, closer to a two, because the coronavirus takes two stars right off the top.
00:06:17.740But, uh, later today, we will be in a much better place. I'll tell you about it later. And that will be amazing.
00:06:23.960Uh, a chalice. Yes, that was the other word. Can, canteen, jug, or flask? Well, I'm glad some of you remember it.
00:06:34.240So I'm not so good at remembering things. That's why I'd never be a good actor.
00:06:37.280Well, let's talk about Joe Biden. So, I'm going to be a little bit non-political, if that even makes sense. I'm not even sure if that's the thing.
00:06:46.040Maybe I should take that back. But I'm not going to be going hard at Joe Biden today.
00:06:50.620I feel like the country deserves one day where we just say, how about not today? Right? How about, how about one day we just be Americans?
00:07:04.300And I'm not celebrating, you know, Joe Biden's victory or Joe Biden. I'm not celebrating that.
00:07:10.840What I am celebrating is that we have a system which seems unstoppable by people, which is pretty amazing.
00:07:22.860The system just grinds along. We may or may not have had an election that enough people think is credible, but I don't think it mattered.
00:07:32.540We ended up with some kind of professional class politicians that have always been in charge, except for the Trump interlude there.
00:07:42.440I don't know that it's the end of the world, because even Biden isn't going to be able to get everything he wants.
00:07:48.720Congress will still push back. The public will push back.
00:07:51.920When he tries to do things that Trump did better, it's going to be obvious, and that will limit what he can do as well.
00:07:57.940So if you look at some of the things he's going to do, they're either trivial things or things that maybe can't get done.
00:08:08.420So we'll have to wait to see how much damage he can do other than the executive orders and reversing some of the Trump stuff that he didn't like.
00:08:16.880But here's the thing. I feel as if we've slipped into this place where politics is the politics of revenge and canceling the legacy of the last president.
00:08:32.980Now, of course, you'd have to blame Trump for doing it first, and so you can't really hold Joe Biden to a different standard.
00:08:40.800You know, if he didn't complain when Trump did it and tried to erase Obama's legacy, it's hard to complain if Biden just does the same thing and tries to erase Trump.
00:08:54.780And, well, you know, I've got to say, I had a little exchange with Ian Bremmer on Twitter yesterday.
00:09:02.200And he made a tweet, and I responded to his tweet saying that Trump's response to the election was terrible unless he was right, wouldn't you say?
00:09:17.520Because how you judge Trump's insistence that the election was rigged depends entirely upon you knowing that it wasn't.
00:09:39.340Do I have any personal information about the system working perfectly or even being, you know, imperfect?
00:09:46.500Well, everything's imperfect, but I don't have any specific proof of fraud or not.
00:09:51.900But I also don't have any reason to believe that it was fair.
00:09:56.340So this is the part that I would disagree with Ian, because he thought I was joking when I said, well, you know, Trump could be right.
00:10:06.080Now, we're treating it as though the system has made a decision, and I'm happy with that.
00:10:11.980I'm okay that the system grinds on, even if it's imperfect, because it's better to move forward than it is to fight forever about something you thought was wrong.
00:10:22.800So I think what's good for the country is to move forward and then try to adjust.
00:10:27.520Republicans will have another shot at it, a couple more shots.
00:10:32.100And I don't buy into the theory that the Democrats will put a lock down on the government and make rules changes that will put them in power forever.
00:10:41.780I feel as if there's too much pressure against that and that it would be too much of an overreach.
00:10:48.520And therefore, Biden being a—the one thing you could depend on Biden is that he's a moderate.
00:10:53.280So I think if it looks like a gross overreach, he's exactly the guy who wouldn't do it.
00:11:01.620So you might be—you might have some safety there, at least as long as he's in office.
00:12:10.740What would we look at as just citizens to know that that was fair or to know that it wasn't?
00:12:17.960Now, if you put odds on it, I'd say that would be reasonable.
00:12:21.600Let's say you were pretty sure it was fair and you said, you know, I'll put 95% on it based on my experience in life and things I've seen before.
00:12:32.040However, if you said 95% that it was fair or even 95% that it wasn't fair, I would say to you, that's probably not the percentage I would put on it.
00:12:43.260But at least you're talking logically.
00:12:46.020You're acknowledging that it can't be known.
00:12:49.160If you think it can be known, I don't think you should be in this conversation.
00:12:54.160It feels like not a reasonable position.
00:12:56.600Whereas Ruby Freeman, somebody says, I think the Ruby thing is one of the most unfair things that came out of it.
00:13:08.460And I found myself defending Ruby because I watched the same video that you did and I didn't see anything even slightly worrying in that video.
00:13:16.380If you think you did, that's probably confirmation bias.
00:13:19.960Because all you saw was they counted as the votes and the people who know what's happening and how vote counting worked looked at it, every bit of it, before and after, all the way through.
00:13:31.680And they said, all we see is vote counting, just the way it's supposed to be done.
00:13:35.720So if you believe the Ruby story, that would be the least likely one to be true.
00:13:41.780Along with the Venezuela part, that's least likely.
00:13:45.040The Italian connection, very unlikely.
00:13:47.080Anything's possible, but I would put a really, really, really low likely vote on any of those three things.