Episode 1661 Scott Adams： Let's Follow the Bunny and Predict What Happens With Ukraine, & Other Fun
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Summary
A Finnish skier in need of first aid has a frozen penis. The FBI needs to thank Trump for helping gather the personal information of white nationalists and other right-wing terrorists, CNN's Dean Obeidiah says in a tweet.
Transcript
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Good morning everybody and congratulations on arriving at the best place in the world at the
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best time. Even if you're watching this recorded, it is the best time still. I don't know how that
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works but I didn't take a lot of physics in high school. However, one thing I do know and every
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scientist will agree. The simultaneous sip will make your day better and all you need is a cup or
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mug or a glass, a tank or Chelsea Stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with
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your favorite beverage. I like coffee and join me now for the unparalleled pleasure, the dopamine
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hit of the day. It's the thing that makes everything better except Ukraine and it happens now. Go.
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So, I'm seeing a disturbing note on locals. Does somebody already drank their coffee prematurely?
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We'll have to talk about that. Yeah. Unauthorized sipping. No, actually, you're always authorized
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to sip without me but don't oversip. If you oversip, there will be nothing in your vessel. It's a
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problem. All right. The most important story of the day. This comes from the Omicron Olympics.
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There was a Finland skier who suffered a frozen penis. That's right. He was a Finnish skier. He
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suffered a frozen penis. You might say he was finished. Now, what was not included in the story
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is what you should do if you're the first person to come across someone who has a frozen penis?
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So, let's say it's up to you to do first aid and you're the first person on the scene. Now,
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you're going to have to find some way to warm the penis of the person who needs the first aid.
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some kind of warm, I don't know, place or cavity. Some place that you know would be nice and warm.
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Now, here's my advice. If you're the first person on the scene to treat somebody with a frozen penis,
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you should immediately say, I'll go get help. That's why you should say, I'll go get help.
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Because you don't want to be the first person on the scene when there's only one way to treat it,
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if you know what I mean. If you know what I mean. Wink, wink.
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Well, I went into my local grocery store yesterday. Of course, masks in California are now
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optional for adults in most situations, unless it's a medical or senior care or something.
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And I walked right into my grocery store with my maskless face, as I have for weeks, but now it's
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legal. Guess how many people in California, Northern California, wore a mask optionally?
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How many customers, not talking about the staff, the staff were mostly in masks,
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masks. But how many do you think wore a mask? Didn't need to. The answer is 80 to 90 percent.
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It took me a long time to find even one other person without a mask. Obviously Republican.
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I hate to say that the maskless people were obviously Republican, because, you know, that
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that imagined some stereotype. But if I may, the maskless people were obviously Republican.
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Don't ask me how I know what a Republican looks like. But you know what a Republican looks like.
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You kind of do. You kind of do. You know you do. And they were the only maskless ones.
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Well, Truth Social Platform is getting closer to launching. I guess the beta is up.
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But this is President Trump's new social media platform. And I asked myself, well, what could
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go wrong? Well, you know, what could go wrong with this? How could it go wrong? And then I saw
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a tweet from Dean Obadiah. He often appears on CNN. And he's sort of a designated pit bull to
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go after Republicans and Trump. And here's what Dean Obadiah says in his tweet. The FBI needs to thank
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Trump for helping gather the personal information of white nationalists and other right-wing terrorists
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with his new social media platform at Truth Social. Are you going to sign up? I think he talked
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me out of it. I don't know. This is a pretty good reason not to do it. Honestly. I mean, I wanted
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to succeed. And I'm very spring-loaded to sign up. I already have the app downloaded. I'm just,
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you know, waiting for it to go live. I have beta invitations. I just haven't used any.
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Somebody says, don't be afraid. But let me ask you this. If you know that Trump supporters are
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literally being tracked and rounded up, do you want yourself on that list? It's actually a real
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question. I think that this Dean Obadiah guy did actually a tremendous job of, you know, pissing in
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the punch bowl. I mean, that's actually, that is a scary, scary tweet. Honestly. They have your stuff
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already? Yeah, that's probably true. For people like me, yes. Well, so yeah, that's going to be a
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problem. Now, obviously, other alternative platforms have not been huge successes or as big as they could
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have been. But this might, because I think you can't ignore Trump. Am I wrong? You could maybe
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not use an alternative, you know, to Twitter or something. But it's hard to ignore Trump if he
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becomes the main story in the elections. See, you kind of almost have to have an account. And so I asked
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myself, wouldn't the press have to have an account just to track him? You think so, right? Like, if you
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are a member of the press, you'd almost have to join, even if you didn't use it every day, just to look at
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stuff that people talk about. Yeah. So we'll see how this goes. Maybe you'll get a little bit of
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people on the left. So Lieutenant Texas's Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he's got this idea for
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blocking tenure in public universities and colleges in an attempt to stop the teaching of critical race
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theory. And I asked myself, can you do that with legislation? Can you tell an entity, even if it's a
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public school, can you tell a public university or college to not have tenure?
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I'm seeing people say, yes, I suppose you can make a law about anything as long as the law is
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constitutional. But this feels like this feels like a weird overreach, doesn't it? It feels like an
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overreach coming from the Republicans. Because I feel like the Republican Party should be more
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about, you know, leave, leave everybody alone and let them work it out. But this, this would be sort
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of a direct meddling in the way they do business. I'm not sure how I feel about it. I get that it
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might work. I get that it might work. But I don't know that this is a way to do it. Exactly. What do you
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think of it? I don't, I don't think we should have tenure. So, you know, I'm against tenure. But I
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don't know that, I don't know that the government is the way to do it to get rid of tenure. You know,
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it's, but here's a interesting question, if I do say so myself. Wouldn't you say that the education of
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our youth is so connected to homeland security that you can't afford to do it wrong? Right? Would
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you all agree with that? We can't afford to educate our kids wrong? Because it's just the
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entire, you know, security of the country in the future depends on it. So in that case,
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could the government say, you know, we have to fix the biggest problem, which is teachers unions
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and tenure? So could the government say, in order to fix education, we're going to get rid of teachers
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unions and tenure? Could they do that? Would that pass all constitutional tests? I don't know. I don't
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know if it would. It feels like it might. I don't see an obvious problem with it. But I think that
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would be the way to go after improving the schools is to just directly say, there are two problems with
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schools that make them anti-competitive. It's tenure, and it's the school, it's the school, I'm sorry,
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the teachers unions. And so just get rid of them. There's no reason not to do that, right? I mean,
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in terms of constitutionally, you could do it. Well, I don't know. If Dan Patrick can actually do this
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tenure thing in Texas, it does open up a question about using that technique more often. I just don't
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know if that's a good idea for Republicans. Well, we have a story, I think this was on CNN,
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a professor of African and Latin American studies, who had been a professor at George Washington
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University for a long time, taking advantage of her background. She wrote extensively about Africa
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and Latin America. And so that was sort of her thing. She was an expert on that. And of course,
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it probably helped that she was identifying as African and Latin American. Turns out she was none
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of those things. She was just a white woman who had pretended all of her life to be a black and slash
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Latina. Now, this is not the first time we've heard this story, is it? Am I right? We've heard a few
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stories of white people trying to pass as black. Why is it that nobody tries to pass as white anymore?
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Now, people have said this before, but this story gives me an opportunity to say it again.
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There's only one thing you need to know about this fucking country.
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That people will pretend to be black for financial advantage. That's it. If you wanted to unpack
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everything else you need to know about the United States, you could just tell them that one fact,
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and if you uncoiled that, it would tell you everything about the United States. It's just the one fact.
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That pretending to be a disadvantaged racial minority is a huge economic benefit.
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I'm not wrong. Pretending to be the most disadvantaged minority would guaranteed, guaranteed,
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be a huge economic benefit for you, if you played it right. Doesn't work the other way, does it?
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Are you hearing any stories recently about the black person passing as white to get a job?
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That's not happening anywhere. Not in the United States. Nobody's pretending to be white to get a
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job. That wouldn't work. So it's easy to get lost in the detail. You know, who's teaching CRT and who's
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kneeling for the national anthem? And what are cops doing to minority people, etc.? And those are all
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important, you know, interesting questions. But if you wanted to just summarize the whole thing,
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if you wanted just one story or one fact that would tell you everything you needed to know about the
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rest, it's that pretending to be a disadvantaged minority is the best economic plan you could ever have.
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And nobody disagrees with that, which is weird. You know, if I said that and other people said,
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Scott, oh, you're crazy. You're crazy, Scott. That will never work. Well, of course it works. It
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works really well. It works great. Everybody who's ever tried it says it works. There are very few
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things that work as well as that, actually. Anyway. Apparently, I saw a tweet by Ian Miles Chung saying that
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the Ottawa police are going after local businesses that supported the truckers. There's a coffee shop
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that served coffee to the truckers, and the officials are closing them down for serving coffee to the
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truckers. Now, I'm no military strategist. But let me just put this out there. If it turns out that
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Putin invades Ukraine, and if it turns out that the cover or the the diversion of that allows President
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Xi and Xi and China to attack Taiwan, I think that would be the time to make a move for the United States to
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invade Canada and try to free their citizens. Because I do see a cry for help, if you know what I mean. Now, I don't
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know how much stinger missile, you know, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weaponry Canada has. They probably have a
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little, but no, no Second Amendment, right? So I feel like we could maybe not control the entire of
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Canada, because most of it is just, you know, snow and a moose here and there. But there's this little
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this little corner of Canada where pretty much 90% of all the population lives is sort of the valuable
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part. We could just take over that. Just take over the populated part. Leave the rest, you know, for
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the mice, the meese. What's the plural of moose? Mises? The meese. The mooses? Mooses. I need a fact check on
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this. Is moose plural as well as singular? Well, I'll be damned. Did you know that? That moose is
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both singular and plural. So you could say, look at that moose. Or you could say, look at all those
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moose. Hey, there's moose in the backyard. Just one? Oh, hundreds. Moose. Well, if we didn't have
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enough reason to attack Canada, we should at least attack for the benefit of giving them
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proper plural words. Because apparently Canada doesn't have a plural for moose. And I think
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they need one. So if we could just bring them a plural for moose and freedom, but not coffee.
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Not coffee. If you bring coffee to anybody in Canada, you could be closed down. But I think
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we can invade. I think we can give them a plural for moose. And I think we could have a beer with
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them. And it would probably be the least violent war of all times. Something tells me the Canadians
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would just sort of welcome you in, you know. Like if the American army appeared on the border,
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the Canadians would be like, hey, come on in and have a beer. And the Americans would be like,
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what? Yeah, come on in and have a beer. And we'd be like, okay. And we'd sort of conquer
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Canada, but nobody would really know what happened. It would be more like a conceptual
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thing. We'd end up partying because we like Canadians. So we'd end up partying and drinking
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beer and complaining about the lack of a plural for moose. And then we'd go home. But I think we
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could bring some freedom while we're there. So just think about it. 60 Minutes had a program
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about the alleged secret sonic or maybe microwave weapon that has been scrambling the brains of
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people all over the globe. And I ask you, why is 60 Minutes doing a story on that now?
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Why would 60 Minutes do a story on the secret sonic weapon now? What would be happening now
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that would make that a story? Because it's a little bit sort of maybe anti-Russian, isn't
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it? Is that a coincidence? Now, I don't know if the story ever tried to pin the blame on anybody.
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But remember originally, when we talked about it, the speculation was it was some kind of Russian
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weapon? There's no evidence of that whatsoever. And I think it's a ridiculous hypothesis. But
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I wonder, is it a coincidence that this vaguely but not really proven Russian connection to a thing
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that may not even exist in reality at all, is it a coincidence that it happened right now,
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just when Russia is poised to attack? It doesn't feel like it. Does it feel like a coincidence to you?
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I mean, it could be. Coincidences do happen, right? Well, I just put that out there. But the bottom line
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was there seemed to be a thousand incidents that have been reported, but they don't have any idea
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what the, you know, what the cause is, basically. It's a whole story that says we don't know what
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So as Jack Posobiec reports, Kamala Harris is doing a tremendous job, starting off in her assignment
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to be the lead on this Ukraine business. And if you want to hear some inspiring words,
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this is what our own Vice President Harris said when she was asked,
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Will sanctions deter Putin? So Jack Posobiec was tweeting about this. And Kamala Harris said,
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and I quote, and if anybody here needs to be inspired, if you're feeling down a little bit,
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I want you to listen to the inspirational words of our Vice President, and watch how this makes you
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feel. I think it'll pick you up a little bit. And so Vice President Harris said when asked,
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will sanctions deter Putin? She said, within the context, then, of the fact that that window is
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still opening, although open, although it is absolutely narrowing, but within the context of
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a diplomatic path still being open. I'm sorry, a tear came to my eye. I've never been so inspired.
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It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Well, so Putin is apparently doing some kind of a
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reality TV show right now, in which his Security Council is meeting with him to decide the fate of
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Ukraine. And it's televised. Now, I haven't seen the feed. I've only seen the reports of it.
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Is anybody watching that? I don't know if it's easy to watch with the translations and what.
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Yeah, I think in real time, Putin is videotaping a live session of his Security Council. Now,
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of course, it's all fake, right? Because everybody knows to say what Putin wants him to say. But
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we may be finding out the future of Europe with a reality TV show. That could actually be in real life,
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like no exaggeration. It's a reality TV show, and it will determine the fate of Europe. Now,
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it's not a real reality show because we already know the outcome. All right. I saw this great article
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on also CNN by Matthew Schmidt as we're trying to figure out what might Putin do and why might he do
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it. The why is the interesting part. Because I guess maybe there's so many reasons that why doesn't
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make sense because it's really a bag of good reasons that are all individually good and collectively
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even better. But let's see what we can learn that we didn't already know. So this is from Matthew
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Shred. He says, first of all, there are a lot of Ukrainians living in Russia. A lot of Ukrainians
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live in Russia. People have Ukrainian background, I guess. How happy would Ukrainians living in Russia
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be if Russia turns its guns on Ukrainians? Their relatives. It's a civil war among people who know
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each other. That feels like the least popular thing anybody could do. Could you imagine, you know,
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the president of the United States attacking Florida? Well, everybody has a friend in Florida.
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Is there anybody here who doesn't have a friend in Florida or a family member? In the comments,
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tell me, how many of you have at least a friend or a family member in Florida, just to pick a random
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state? A lot, right? How many Russians have a friend in Ukraine? I don't know. I don't know,
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but it's a lot, right? I remember when Kim Jong-un was threatening to nuke the United States and some
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smart people were saying he won't nuke his friend. What's his friend? Not Trump. Basketball player.
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Who's the basketball player who's friends with Rodman? Yeah. And so somebody said, he's not going to nuke his
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friend, Dennis Rodman. And you think about that, and that's actually a pretty good reason. It's actually a pretty good
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reason. That, you know, even if Kim Jong-un had some wild, crazy plans, would he nuke his friend?
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The guy he invites over all the time? I don't know. It's actually a perfectly good question. I don't know
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that he would. Would you? Would you nuke your friend? It's pretty hard to do.
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So that's a factor that, you know, Putin has some domestic stuff he has to worry about.
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The other thing is, as Matthew Schmidt points out, Ukraine might have way more effective weapons than
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the Russians think. Who told you that? That's what I've been saying for a number of days. Now,
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I don't know that Ukraine has much more effective weapons. What I know is that nobody knows. I don't
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think Putin knows. For example, Putin wouldn't know how many anti-tank missiles they have, and
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he wouldn't know how many stingers they have, right? And he wouldn't know where they are,
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necessarily. He might know some of that, but he's not going to know the bigger picture.
00:24:38.520
So, um, and so the technology and the training are way different than anything Russia has ever
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encountered with their modern army. So Russia has never moved against anybody who had this kind of
00:24:52.360
weaponry. What's going to happen? When was the last time the Russian army took, got a, like a serious
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bloody nose? Like somebody actually made them retreat? I don't know, maybe never? And well, I mean,
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since World War II or something. Uh, well, Afghanistan was sort of a low, slow bleed. I'm talking about
00:25:15.140
an actual army moving in and just getting its ass kicked and having to retreat, like on the
00:25:22.380
battlefield, like not even being able to go forward. That could actually happen. I think the Ukraine,
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Ukrainians might have enough weaponry to, you know, block an armored, armored movement. I don't know.
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We'll see. So Putin has to deal with the fact that there's a huge unknown about the level of
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resistance. And, uh, here's, here's the big question for me. Do you think it's profitable?
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Do you think that Putin has judged that, that if things go the way he wants them to go,
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that Russia will make more money or be worth more? And here's my question. If we can come up with a
00:26:10.580
economic forecast for climate change, think about how complicated that is. Coming up with an economic
00:26:17.700
forecast for climate change. Now, of course, I always say that that's basically impossible. Too many
00:26:23.540
variables, you know, too long a timeframe, but we still do it. And we do it for persuasion purposes,
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don't we? It's not exactly to know what's going to happen. It's more because it's persuasive to put
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a price tag on things. Why is there no price tag on this war? Not for the United States and not for
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NATO, because we sort of have to do what we have to do. But it's an optional war for Putin,
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isn't it? It's an optional war. So why isn't somebody said, if you do this, you'll lose this
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amount of money? Because there'll be sanctions put on, so you can calculate that. Now, you can't
00:27:02.860
calculate anything accurately, but again, does it matter? We still do it for climate change. We do
00:27:09.640
inaccurate predictions for lots of things, because it at least tells you what the scary parts look like,
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potentially. So wouldn't you like to see our economists say, all right, let's do the pluses
00:27:22.900
and the minuses here. So Putin's going to spend X amount of money directly on the military. So you
00:27:28.940
could probably estimate that, don't you think? You know, because we've got the satellites, so we've
00:27:34.120
got some rough estimate of what wars cost. So I think we could put a number on that. Then you could say,
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what will happen with the sanctions? You could put a number on that. It might be a range, but it'd still
00:27:46.380
be a number. What would happen with Russia's future sales of gas, especially? Well, you could probably
00:27:58.740
put a number on that because of, let's say, fewer pipelines in case they get closed down, etc.
00:28:05.180
Now, you could also, you'd also have to put, I think, a value on Ukraine as an asset. So it's not just his
00:28:13.520
expenses. You know, what's it cost to keep the army running? You know, how much did you lose from your oil
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sales? It's not just that. He's also acquiring an asset. So you'd have to take the entire value of Ukraine,
00:28:25.120
right, and add it to Russia. Now, I don't know, what's the value of the entire GDP of Ukraine? I don't know.
00:28:34.240
Let's say it's a trillion dollars. Who knows? Let's say it's a trillion dollars. He gets a trillion
00:28:41.800
dollars, right? If you don't own Ukraine, and then you do, you gained a trillion dollars. But is it an
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asset that is cash positive or cash negative? It's a valuable asset, but does it produce more cash
00:28:58.740
than it uses? Because it's going to be expensive to hold it. An occupying army is really expensive,
00:29:05.080
right? So why don't we produce that number? Because there are two possibilities I can think of that,
00:29:13.700
you know, are likely to come out of that. One possibility is that it's wildly unprofitable.
00:29:18.700
Wouldn't you like to know that? And wouldn't you like to remind Putin of that? And wouldn't you
00:29:25.980
like his oligarchs, who do have some control over things, allegedly? I don't know exactly how that
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works. But you think the oligarchs need to be a little bit happy for Putin to be safe? Would you
00:29:39.360
buy that? Even though Putin is strongly in control, don't you think he sort of needs to keep the
00:29:45.260
oligarchs on his side so they don't gang up against him? I think so. So suppose the West came up with an
00:29:53.560
economic projection. It said the GDP of Russia will lose X trillions of dollars, and you oligarchs
00:30:04.600
are likely to see your fortunes go down by 20%. Now, some oligarchs will make money, some won't,
00:30:11.920
right? Because it's never even. But suppose you said to the oligarchs, well, this looks like a 20 to
00:30:17.700
50% hit to your assets and your income, and there's no upside. Because that might be the case. Or
00:30:28.160
it could go grossly the other way. You could do the economic analysis and find out that it's a
00:30:35.640
no-brainer. That Putin really, really comes out ahead if he gets Ukraine. In which case, war is
00:30:42.500
guaranteed. Now, I tweeted yesterday a map, and this is a few years old, but I think it still worked,
00:30:48.620
a map of all the pipelines from Russia that cross through Ukraine. I kind of had this simple idea
00:30:57.040
in my mind that there were one or two pipelines. It turns out Ukraine is just crisscrossed with
00:31:04.680
pipelines. Ukraine is practically a pipeline itself. There's so many Russian pipelines in
00:31:11.280
different, you know, cobweb ways through the country to get to different places. So once you see the map
00:31:17.280
that Russia is completely dependent on Ukraine as its distribution, once you see that map,
00:31:25.840
you know Putin's going to take Ukraine. Until I saw the map, I actually thought he wouldn't do it.
00:31:34.100
And then I saw the map, I was like, oh, that's way too big of a strategic risk to have your pipelines
00:31:39.960
in other people's country. There's no way he's going to put up with that. In the long run,
00:31:44.960
for business purposes, which are also strategic, oh, yeah, on locals, somebody's publishing the map
00:31:52.520
right now. So if you get a chance, Google that. Once you see the map of the pipelines, you know that
00:31:59.340
Putin's going to take Ukraine. Because for purely business reasons, you can't have your competitors
00:32:06.960
or enemies control that much of your distribution. You just can't do that. So I think from an economic
00:32:14.760
perspective, this is a no-brainer for Putin. And he could put a trillion dollars into this and come
00:32:19.660
out ahead. What do you think? If I put a price tag on it of a trillion dollars, do you think he comes
00:32:26.440
out ahead? Because I think he does. I think he does. Without running any numbers, I think he would
00:32:34.200
make more than a trillion dollars in the long term. But he would also protect himself from an extreme
00:32:40.080
downside, which is the pipelines get attacked and destroyed.
00:32:47.480
Yeah, Ukraine is also a breadbasket, and that's going to matter as well, right?
00:32:59.420
that Russia will have to control Ukraine one way or another,
00:33:03.520
either indirectly or directly. And then I asked this question. Which military and or
00:33:12.360
other kinds of businesses would gain if there's an attack? So if Russia attacks, we expect energy
00:33:21.420
prices to spike. And although there won't be more energy produced, you know, quickly in the short run,
00:33:27.580
all the energy that's there, the companies that produced it, get to charge more for doing the
00:33:34.980
same job. So they make a windfall profit for anybody who's competing with Russia as an energy
00:33:42.060
source. What about the companies that make the big tankers that carry the natural gas? Well, if the
00:33:48.800
pipelines from Russia are at risk, there's going to have to be a lot of shipping in in the short run,
00:33:54.980
shipping in of gas, probably American gas and from other places. The LPGA, yeah. And who makes
00:34:03.220
who makes a profit from that? Are you concerned that there are gigantic energy companies that would
00:34:11.240
make a huge profit if war breaks out? Because don't those gigantic energy companies have a lot of
00:34:17.240
influence on the government? Because lobbyists? It's starting to look, I'm not I'm not going to say
00:34:24.780
this as a fact. It's looking like we're inviting them in. And what would it look like if Biden really
00:34:32.720
wanted them to attack? Suppose he wanted it. What would that look like? Well, it would look like this.
00:34:41.160
The first thing you do is assign Vice President Harris to the job of preventing it. Am I right?
00:34:46.780
If you're Russia and you see that Harris has been assigned to prevent war, what would you think
00:34:53.760
about the United States' interest in avoiding war? I'm not joking. You would think they're not serious
00:35:01.200
about it. Am I right? Because you could think of a lot of people you could send to do this job
00:35:07.400
that Russia would take seriously. But this is the only one they would. So it's almost as if we're
00:35:14.200
signaling to them we want you to invade. Here's another hint. Why do we insist on applying the
00:35:21.900
sanctions after invasion? When Ukraine itself is saying, could you put those sanctions on now
00:35:29.480
and maybe it will deter them? And we say, no, no, no, it's after the invasion we'll put them on
00:35:36.440
when it's too late. Doesn't that sound a lot like maybe we want them to invade? Because if you have the
00:35:42.840
option of preventing it and you don't do it while you have the option, that kind of means you want
00:35:50.980
them to invade. Am I going too far with that? Here's another one. Don't negotiate with Russia
00:35:59.260
seriously. When you've heard of the back and forth between Russia and the United States, does it sound
00:36:05.480
like we did that seriously? Because it doesn't to me. We should have at least said, you know,
00:36:12.360
your security concerns are valid. How can we work together so that we're less afraid of you and
00:36:19.980
you're less afraid of us? But I don't even think the conversation happened. Now it could be that
00:36:25.720
there's so much distrust it was a waste of time, maybe. But if you're putting together the hints,
00:36:33.240
Harris is in charge of stopping the war, which looks like we're not trying. We're going to apply
00:36:39.380
the sanctions after invasion, which looks like we're not trying to avoid it. We're not even
00:36:46.600
negotiating seriously, in my opinion. I think you'd have to be in the room to know for sure. But it
00:36:51.680
doesn't look serious. Nobody's even suggested any kind of accommodation for anything. And then we're
00:37:00.920
actively creating these alternative channels for delivering gas to Europe, aren't we?
00:37:08.340
To me, it looks like we want them to invade so that we can essentially clamp down on Russia as a
00:37:15.000
provider of energy. And how much does the United States love Ukraine as an independent country?
00:37:23.040
I feel like Ukraine is just an expensive pain in the ass. And would we be worse off if Russia owned
00:37:30.740
the whole thing outright? I mean, I'm not saying I want that to happen. But if you're doing the cold
00:37:36.500
calculations of war, you have to ask yourself, does it make any difference? Now, part of the reason I
00:37:43.720
understand strategically is that Russia doesn't want missiles and missile defense that's right on their
00:37:48.800
doorstep. But does any of that stuff matter anymore? Can't Russia destroy us and we can destroy them
00:37:56.580
if we wanted to? There's nothing anybody can do to stop any of that, is there? So I'm not even sure
00:38:01.800
that any of that missiles on the doorstep made any difference, really. You don't want Russia to be
00:38:09.880
desperate. That's true. All right. Colonel Jack Jacobs was on a show. I don't know which new show it was.
00:38:22.380
But he was saying that suppose you were Russia and you just wanted to make a trillion dollars
00:38:27.660
without working. How would you do it? You would buy stock and a bunch of energy companies just on the
00:38:35.100
stock market. And then you would threaten war with Ukraine. And then the value of those stock
00:38:40.560
energy companies would go up and then you sell it. And then you say, oh, we're pulling back.
00:38:47.100
And then the energy prices go down. But you've already sold. So you buy them again. And then you
00:38:53.020
threaten again. And then the energy prices go up. And you sell it again. And you can short the Dow
00:39:00.920
and go long. Long means buying and short means you make money if it goes down. You could actually,
00:39:09.340
if you were Russia, you could actually invest in the stock market and then make it move the way you want
00:39:14.680
by where you put your army. So Russia could have extracted a trillion dollars out of our system
00:39:21.200
just by threatening. They may have already paid for the war.
00:39:25.780
That's right. There's no evidence that they did this, by the way. But if they did this,
00:39:34.700
if they invested before they moved their military assets, in other words, having insider information,
00:39:40.960
because only they knew what they were going to do, they may have already paid for the war.
00:39:44.720
They may have made a trillion dollars in stock gains already. Paid for the war. Possible.
00:39:50.780
I mean, it's unlikely, but it's weird that it's possible. All right.
00:40:01.700
And that is what I wanted to say today. So given the follow the money scenario,
00:40:10.260
and given that we haven't done an economic cost, and by the way, this is more evidence that we want
00:40:16.400
them to attack. If we didn't want them to attack, don't you think the United States would have
00:40:22.100
created a financial estimate of how expensive it would be? Because it's obvious, isn't it?
00:40:30.460
I mean, I don't think we've ever done it for any other war, but as soon as I say it,
00:40:34.860
it's kind of obvious, isn't it? Am I wrong? Am I wrong that that's just an obvious play?
00:40:39.940
Just do the math. Tell Russia how expensive it's going to be.
00:40:47.580
Now, I'm seeing some people say that the money doesn't matter, and that there are other issues.
00:40:54.760
But I would argue this. If the other issue is national defense, the money makes more difference
00:41:01.480
than anything. You know, being profitable is definitely the thing that keeps you the safest.
00:41:06.840
just being profitable. But could there be other things such as national pride or that sort of
00:41:14.980
thing? Yes, but I'll bet they don't overcome the economic things. You know, the reason that
00:41:20.500
follow the money is so predictive is because it always works. You know, if follow the money didn't
00:41:29.360
always work, it wouldn't be the most common thing that people say, right? Well, I suppose it could be,
00:41:35.440
but, you know, it does work. And I believe that, and as I've often said, follow the money works even if
00:41:42.480
the people who are making the decisions aren't thinking that way. People automatically go where
00:41:49.680
the money goes, even if their brain is saying, well, I'm doing this for national pride or some other
00:41:55.300
reason. They still go where the money goes. And it's not a coincidence. Money is just too powerful.
00:42:02.560
It just drags you wherever it is. Boo the cat. I'm taking her into the vet again. She's not doing
00:42:10.360
well. But so this week, I'll take her in again. Have I noticed tons of ads for green technology? Not
00:42:18.300
really. But I'll look for it. Did you see the UN Gulf Stream that arrived in Ottawa and then flew to
00:42:27.260
Washington, D.C.? Well, I don't know what you're implying by that. I saw a story about that, but I
00:42:32.600
didn't know what the implication was supposed to be. All right. And that, ladies and gentlemen,
00:42:41.840
How does the fear frame filter work on Ukraine? Well, if I were going to try to stop
00:42:54.060
a war, I would be using fear persuasion to scare the Russian soldiers themselves because they don't
00:43:03.640
know what kind of a killing field they're walking into. So you want to lower the morale of the Russian
00:43:10.140
troops, which you don't imagine would be that high to begin with, because they're attacking
00:43:14.920
other Russians, basically. You know, the Ukraine-Russia thing is such a brother-cousin situation that
00:43:21.740
they've... How could you have good... Let me ask you this. If a civil war broke out in the United
00:43:28.020
States, and again, I'll just pick a state, and, you know, let's say Florida was the breakaway
00:43:33.540
state. How much morale would U.S. troops have to go in and shoot Floridians? Am I right? Like,
00:43:42.360
you're a soldier in the U.S. Army, and you've been ordered to go shoot citizens in Florida. Are you
00:43:48.320
going to do it? Even if they're a breakaway revolutionary state, are you going to do it?
00:43:54.200
I don't think so. So I think that Putin has a real morale problem, and I think you can make
00:44:00.540
it worse by using fear persuasion to, first of all, tell the Russian soldiers if you can
00:44:07.200
get to them. And by the way, can you get to them? Do you suspect that even though Russia
00:44:13.080
controls information, you know, aggressively, do you suspect that the average soldier just
00:44:19.380
can't get information from the outside world? Because maybe they can't. Maybe they can't.
00:44:26.600
Well, if they can, it seems like we could get to them. I would imagine there's some way
00:44:32.940
to do it. But they should have images in their heads of just being mowed down when they cross
00:44:40.620
the border. They should think of it like the Normandy landing, like it's just going to be
00:44:46.420
bullets. The air will be thick with bullets from Ukrainian guns. And they should think about
00:44:54.560
that long and hard. And they should think that even if they survived, all they got to do
00:44:59.100
was kill their own cousins. Right? All right. The bad news is you might get killed or disabled
00:45:05.440
for life. But that's if you fail. If you're successful, you get to kill people you didn't
00:45:12.420
want to kill who are basically your family members. I can't imagine that morale would be
00:45:18.980
any lower. But if we could lower us some more, that might be useful. Yeah, Russian soldiers are
00:45:27.280
not allowed to have smartphones. I would assume that's the case. But it doesn't mean they don't
00:45:30.900
know anybody who has one. There's got to be information coming in from other sources.
00:45:37.100
Maybe not well enough to change anything. Wouldn't a Ukraine invasion help China?
00:45:42.600
Would it? China is very anti-war. Because it's just never good for business. I feel as if
00:45:52.560
China would be opposed to that war. Although you can imagine it would give them cover for
00:45:58.920
Taiwan. It would keep us busy. You know, keep two armies. It would make a lot of military
00:46:05.260
poorer, I guess. Because they'd spend a lot of money there. Yeah, I mean, I feel as though
00:46:11.100
China's policy of non-involvement in this stuff is kind of brilliant. It's kind of brilliant.
00:46:24.080
Maybe Putin is really standing up to China. I don't see that happening.
00:46:31.380
Get off the weed. Yeah, the Belt and Road. Right. China needs to be friends with everybody
00:46:37.540
to build out their Belt and Road. So China's take over the world strategy is commerce, to
00:46:42.820
make everybody dependent on them for commerce, which is a good strategy. All right, that's
00:46:48.040
all I've got left. I will say goodbye to you on YouTube, and I'll talk to you later.