Episode 1662 Scott Adams： Best Ukraine Analysis You'll Hear From Someone Who Doesn't Know Anything
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Summary
Join me for the greatest thing that ever happened in this universe, the simultaneous sip, where we talk about Ukraine and the Pope's opinion on the possibility of war in Ukraine, and then we do a little update on the end of the masking era.
Transcript
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Good morning everybody and welcome to the best thing that ever happened in this universe
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I don't usually talk about the afterlife, but today have you noticed that there's something
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missing in the news about Ukraine? I'll tell you about that, and then we'll do this simultaneous
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sip, the holiest that there's ever been. Yes, I've noticed that a lot of people have been
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talking about Ukraine and Russia and the possibility of war, but we have not heard from
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the Pope. Now, the Pope was not available, but I know how he thinks, and so I thought I would
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give you the official Pope opinion on the possibility of war in Ukraine. Give me a moment.
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Let me concentrate. I want to receive the signal clearly. Religious signal coming in. Got it.
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The Pope would have you know that he is opposed to war, and I think you're glad you waited for that.
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So when it comes to the Pope, no war. He doesn't like it one bit, not one bit. And that, ladies and
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gentlemen, is the religious opinion on the war. And I don't think that has been given enough attention,
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so I thought I'd help. Do I look better with the hat? Is it my imagination, or did I get uglier
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when I took the hat off? Is it just me? I think that actually happened. Yes. I think we found
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something we could all agree on. I look better with the hat. I think I look better with the hat
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and the mask, because a lot of the pandemic, my ugliness was completely covered. So I'd have
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sunglasses on, and then I'd have a mask, and then I'd wear a baseball hat. So basically,
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basically the only parts of my entire body that were showing on the colder days were my hands,
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unless I had gloves on, were my hands and this little strip of skin right here, which by the way,
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looks pretty good on me. Best part of my body, and this was just pure luck, pure luck. The best part of
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my entire body is this narrow strip just above where my mask line would be and below my sunglasses.
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I don't like to brag, but honestly, I've got one of the best over-mask, under-sunglasses
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area of a body I've ever seen. I do work on it. Moisturizer, stay out of the sun. A lot of people
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don't put the work in, but I do. How would you like the simultaneous sip? And all you need is a
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cup or a mug or a glass of tank or a chalice or a canteen, a jug or a flask or a vessel of any kind.
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Fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure that
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doped me into the day, the thing that makes absolutely everything better. It's called,
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what, what, what is it called? That's right. The simultaneous sip, and it happens now. Go.
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I don't know. Something happened. Hold on a second.
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I hate it when this happens. I accidentally turned my coffee into wine.
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That, you think you've got things under control? Okay, I stole that joke from somebody on the
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locals platform. I saw your comments on locals, and I did steal your joke, but they didn't see it.
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They didn't see it. They didn't see it on YouTube. So for a moment there, they thought I had a pretty
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good, pretty good joke until I had to admit it wasn't mine. Well, let's do a little update on
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freedom. I was out and about yesterday and day before looking at how many people have taken off
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their masks now that the California mandate has been dropped. So if you're in a store or shopping
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or whatever, you do not require a mask. Where I live, about 80% of people are still masked.
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That's right. My state was offered its freedom, and 80% of the residents said, well, thank you,
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but no thank you. I would rather stay in my little mask cage, including outdoors. Now, I'm not positive
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this is true, but I think the outdoor masking is at an all-time high. This is after the mask mandate
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has completely eliminated outdoor masking. I've never seen higher outdoor masking than right now.
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Now, I had actually talked to some people, who shall remain anonymous, who actually said they
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kind of liked the mask era for a variety of reasons. They liked them. There are people who
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like the masks. Apparently, you can get used to anything. I wasn't one of them. So I didn't see
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that coming. And I did a little tweet today to ask what mandates are still in effect in the United
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States. So here are the ones I know about. We'll see if these get mopped up. I hope they do.
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So the remaining mandates are, let's see, New York City, you still need vaccination passports to go
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in a restaurant. That's still true, right? Give me a fact check as I go and add some ones if you
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know. I believe healthcare workers, including everybody, the janitors, the receptionists, everybody
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in healthcare, are still under mandatory vaccinations. That's true, right? Still need masks on public
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transport and for flying in particular. I guess just public transport. Still need masks in some places,
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like students are doing it in a lot of schools, Washington State, Massachusetts, California, Hawaii,
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still got some masks. Federal buildings masks and cruise ships, which I guess is a form of public
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transport. So those are the, what ones did I miss? Has the passport, where else is the vaccine passport
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in effect? Flying? So here, so here's a sort of a checkpoint. Does it look like if you were just to
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judge the pandemic in terms of freedoms given up compared to other countries, just freedoms given up,
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are we doing okay? I mean, is the United States, are we doing well enough to claw back our freedoms?
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Because we have some, you know, in Canada, I know some of the provinces gave up on some of their
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mandates, but we're not really, we're not close to the end point. And we're not close. But I do think
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we're going to get away without vaccine passports. What do you think? Do you think at this point,
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what is your current prediction about USA and vaccine passports? I feel like we're going to not
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have them. Am I wrong? Because if we don't have them yet, it feels like this wouldn't be the time
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to implement them. I don't think public would, would accept it now. Yeah. So I would say I'm going to
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give, I'm going to give America a C plus in regaining freedoms. Would you agree? I'll give us
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a C plus. Like lots of work to do. But it's not as bad as it could have been. I mean, it could have
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been worse, I suppose. But we're not close. We got to keep clawing. Have you noticed that the entire
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retail part of at least America, I don't know if this is happening anywhere else, has turned to
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garbage? As I tweeted yesterday, I went into six retail establishments and walked down of each one
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because buying something was too hard. Here's what happened. And I don't know if anybody has noticed
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this trend yet. If you make it possible to buy almost everything online, who is remaining to
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stand in line at an actual retail store? Now in the short run, it's everybody, right? In the short run,
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you buy some stuff online, but sometimes you go to stores. Over time, more and more people will move
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to online only. And then the pandemic hits and more and more online there. So who's left? Well, let me tell
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who's left. It's all the people who have a frickin problem. Right? You know how bad it is to get behind
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the elderly person who's writing a check at the grocery store? Like you don't want to be in that
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line? Now imagine that because all of the efficient people have already moved completely online,
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the people in line are only the people writing a check in the grocery store and people like that.
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Now, add to the fact that the only people in line are the people with problems.
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On top of that, on top of that, the stores are asking for more stuff. Now they want your phone
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number. They've got to find out if you've got a coupon. Is the coupon good? Are you part of the
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loyalty program? If you don't have your card, can you plug it in? Do you want to donate something?
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Yeah, you have four ways to pay and sometimes ID, sometimes not. So I stood in line and nobody could
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get helped because everybody who was in line had like a story. Not only did the person in line have
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a story, but then the retail worker had their own story, like data they had to collect and explaining
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why they're doing things. And I thought to myself, I don't think I'll ever go to a retail
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establishment again. Because what, whatever good or bad they used to be, they've just turned to
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garbage. You can never buy your size. Am I right? Go into a store and find your size in anything,
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basically. You can't. How many of you have stood in line long enough that you took out your phone,
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you scanned the barcode on the thing in your hand, and you ordered it from Amazon, and then you got
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it in line and put it back on the shelf? How many have done that? I'm not the only one. I saw somebody
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commented on Twitter. Yeah, a lot of you. Because the process of in-store has gotten worse and worse
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as they make you do more work just to pay, buy something. I don't know. I think retail is in
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big trouble, even more than, you know, we obviously have known for a long time. Here's a little tip for
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you if you're trying to figure out what trade to get into. Lisa de Pascal, who was commenting on my
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comment about retail, and she said, it's awful in this economy. Why am I spending so much time
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begging to pay people? Have you had this experience? You call somebody for some kind of a service,
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just something that needs to be repaired or serviced or something. You can't get anybody to show up.
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People will say, well, maybe in two weeks. Yeah, right? So if you are going to pick a field to enter,
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find out who you can't hire now. If you can't get, I'll give you one example. All right. I'm going to
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give you a trade tip. That's a pretty good one. You ready for this? Fireplace repair person.
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Because a lot of fireplaces are gas operated. Fireplace repair person. It looks like the easiest
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job in the world, because there are only like three elements to the whole thing. And, you know,
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not too many manufacturers. So try to book one. You think you can get one same day? Nope. Nope. You can't.
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So if you wanted to enter a trade, find out who can't show up and take your money. Because there are
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people begging to give people money, and they can't find anybody to take it. We have a whole country,
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people who have more money than they have services that they can buy. They want to buy stuff. They
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can't find anybody to do it. So that's the thing. We'll talk about it in Ukraine, of course.
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Turns out that cow manure is now economical as a major energy source. So dairy farmers are being
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approached by energy companies that turn manure into methane, I guess, and then into energy.
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And they figured out the economics to the point where I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think
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the cow shit might be more worth more than the milk. I don't know that that's true. But are we going to
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get to a point where cow shit is more valuable than the milk that comes out of the same cow?
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And if we're turning cow shit into electricity, doesn't that mean that we're turning basically
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everything green into electricity? We're basically, we're going to have to mow down forests and the
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cows are going to be trampling all over the grass eating it and turning that into electricity.
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Is that really efficient? I feel like, I feel like there might be a better way to
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get your electricity. But anyway, that's a, that's the thing that's happening. We reached
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the crossover point for profitability. And of course, you ask yourself, why do you need cows?
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We've got seven people, seven billion people pooping all over the place. How many cows are there?
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Are there more than seven billion cows? Why don't you capture some people poop? All right.
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Here's a, here's a reason why nobody can be a good or bad predictor.
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And this is the weirdest thing, but maybe this was always the case, but it seems especially the case
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now that we'll never agree what is going to happen. I think you'd agree with that easily. We never
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agree what's going to happen. Like when we predict, people will predict all over the place.
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But the weirdest part that might be new, but I guess you'd have to ask a historian,
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we can no longer agree on what did happen. That feels like it's new. So if you're in the business
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of predicting things, as I sort of am, you can't even know if you were right. Because I can think I
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was right. And other people will say, well, look at the facts, you were clearly wrong.
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So you can't even know if you can predict right. Because there will be no agreement on what is.
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Here's a perfect example. I predicted that Russia would not invade Ukraine.
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I don't know. Because it turns out that they did move troops into an area where they already had troops.
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And already controlled the two separatist regions that were already under complete Russian control,
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apparently. So if they moved troops into a place they already had troops,
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into a region that was really not under control of Ukraine anyway, it was already Russian,
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did they invade? So was my prediction already wrong? So I asked a poll, because I had no idea how people
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would see this. 50% of the people who answered my Twitter poll, which is, of course, not scientific.
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Not quite an invasion. But 37% said yes. So 37% of the people in my Twitter poll,
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and these reasons people would be largely friendly to my point of view, think I'm wrong. And that my
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prediction has already been proven wrong. But 50% of the people said I'm right. So how do I even know
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if I'm a good predictor? I don't think you could just take the majority in this case. I mean, you can
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see that it's so clear that people don't even agree on literal reality at this point. Because you can just
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word think it away. Oh, it's part of Ukraine. Oh, it's not. And you both have a good argument.
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But yesterday, Zelensky himself said, quote, with today's and possibly tomorrow's decisions, Russia is legalizing
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its troops, which have actually been in the occupied territories of Donbass since 2014.
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It seems to me that the president of Ukraine does not believe that Ukraine has been invaded. I mean, at least not
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this week, already invaded, I guess. So if the president of Ukraine thinks I'm right so far,
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so far, it's not looking like I'm going to be right. It does look like Putin's, you know, poised to do
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more. But at the moment, am I right or am I wrong? In the comments, you tell me. At the moment, has
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Ukraine been invaded already this week? I'll just read down some of the answers. Yes,
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no, wrong. Yeah, it's early in the week, right? Nope, nope, nope. Okay, so we are mixed on that.
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All right, let's talk about what's happening. I had some curiosity about whether Russian citizens know
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what's going on in Ukraine. Now, of course, their state run media is all propaganda. So the state run
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media is all misleading if you live in Russia. Would you agree with that? The state run media is
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completely misleading to the Russian public. But don't they have internet access? I actually,
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I wasn't sure until I actually did some Googling to find out what's going on. And Russia, of course,
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is doing a variety of things to try to suppress access to information that would be bad for them.
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But they do things like throttling certain content.
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There is, they're not, the internet is still available, right? If you live in Russia,
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can't you call up CNN webpage in America? There's nothing blocking that, right?
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Can you give me a fact check on that? Oh, okay, so I'm seeing on locals the very next thing I was going
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to talk about. Is the fact that Russians, by and large, don't speak English the only reason that
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they don't know what's going on? Because everything that's in Russian presumably would be pro-Putin.
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And do we have a problem that if the public in Russia had a better understanding of what was
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happening, that they would not support their own president? I don't know. Maybe they would anyway.
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So here's a question. Have you seen anywhere in the news if the Russian public supports Putin so far
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in everything he's done? How many of you could answer the question, does the Russian public,
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by a majority, support what Putin is doing right now?
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Because I've got a feeling they might, right? It seems like probably. Partly because, you know,
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Putin can control information to some extent. But also maybe because they like it. You can't rule out
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the fact that they might just like a strong leader.
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He's made a reasonable argument that these, you know, Russian-speaking people should be part of
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the historic republic. And maybe the public likes it. Maybe. If it doesn't cost too much.
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So Putin also revealed that he asked President Clinton years ago if he could join NATO.
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That's not the first time we've heard that, right? It's the first time for me. I didn't know it.
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But apparently there was some... Was there any knowledge about that before?
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I think there might have been. But it wasn't widely known, right?
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And so, for years now, I've been saying that Russia and the United States are natural allies.
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And that the only reason we would be at each other's throats is psychological.
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Like there's not a material reason that we would be enemies. There's just a psychological,
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maybe historical reasons or whatever. So... Or political.
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And I wonder, what would have happened if Russia had been considered for NATO?
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Because I thought the whole point of NATO was to deter Russia, or the Soviet Union originally.
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Am I wrong that the point of NATO was mostly about Russia? And what happens if Russia has to join the alliance against Russia?
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Now, I get that they would do more than that. They would protect more than Russia. But...
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I don't know. Is NATO active in anything that would involve China?
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So, I'm a little bit confused about what is the point of NATO if the enemy of NATO asked if he could join NATO.
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And it also makes me wonder if that was just an incredible master persuader move that didn't work out.
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But it should have confused the United States, right?
00:23:10.200
If the person that you're trying to protect against asked you to join the organization of people protecting against him,
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The way you should process it is that NATO doesn't make sense.
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And if that's what Putin was doing, it was brilliant.
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I mean, it didn't... Obviously, it didn't end NATO.
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But it would have been a brilliant play to confuse people about why NATO even exists,
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and put some doubt in everybody's mind about how much to fund it.
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It could have been an incredibly genius move that was always meant to never be successful.
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In a way, it's very similar to what Trump did with Kim in North Korea.
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Because what Trump did was simply act like he was his personal friend, which just ruins the whole frame.
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Everything historically that made sense instantly didn't make sense.
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Because Trump just changed the frame of reference to that we're two buddies.
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And by the way, can I help you with your economy?
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I mean, I think the way Trump handled North Korea is one of the all-time great things that anybody ever did politically.
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Honestly, I think it would go down in just one of the great moves of all time.
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It might not last if somebody else causes trouble with North Korea.
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And I think that Putin played a similar frame-breaking play.
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He just broke the frame that it's an enemy and an army against the enemy.
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But I do think it supports my idea that we're natural allies.
00:25:05.720
Because if he could even keep a straight face while saying, can you put us in NATO?
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If you could say that with a straight face, it probably means that you have an argument that we don't really need to be enemies.
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One of the worst things about war and the threat of war is that the leaders on both sides can become more popular with war.
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You want your leaders to know that if they ever went to war for anything, they would become less popular.
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You know, we have an automatic nationalist instinct in this country and every other country that as soon as something looks like war, the leader's approval goes up.
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And so Biden, being in the basement of presidential approval, according to Rasmussen, it looks like he's getting a pop.
00:26:16.020
So far, just because obviously this is based on Ukraine.
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Because these polls tend to move with current events.
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Are you surprised that his approval is ticking up?
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With this many no's, you should think, well, how can his approval be going up?
00:27:02.860
Now, keep in mind, we don't know what happens tomorrow.
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So I'm only going to talk about what's happened so far.
00:27:11.640
Russia has lost the Nord Stream 2 because by moving troops into the two occupied territories, the separatist territories, that triggered Germany to say, okay, Nord Stream 2 is done.
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A number of other sanctions will probably kick in, but not the worst of them, right?
00:27:34.540
So the minor sanctions might kick in, hurt a little bit around the edges.
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And if it attacks, it's going to get, you know, extra pain.
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And what is, and what has Russia gained so far?
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So far, all it gained was the property it already owned, which was the separatist regions.
00:28:08.740
So, so far, so far, Russia broke, broke even on land and is taking a hit, pretty big hit to its GDP.
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So, Biden, so far, hasn't committed, you know, large funds to military.
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And he got a huge degradation of an opposing country.
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Now, I don't think that's, I'm not predicting that will last, okay?
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So, I'm not, I'm not saying that when we're all said and done, I'm going to say, hey, Biden, you handled that just right.
00:29:04.460
Because you're, almost every one of you said he's, he's doing everything wrong.
00:29:23.080
Give me the argument in a short comment, can you?
00:29:44.940
You take his flaw, and he's weak, and the world will pay.
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So, if he unified NATO, killed Nord Stream 2, hurt Russia's economy, hurt their standing
00:30:01.920
in the world, he didn't come out ahead, so far?
00:30:10.720
I think Russia went down $40 billion yesterday, or this week.
00:30:15.860
He failed to deter him, but that also only matters if he keeps going, because he's only
00:30:28.720
All right, so here's another perfect example of what I was just saying.
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I was just saying that not only do people predict what will happen differently, but once
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something has happened, we don't even agree what happened.
00:30:47.000
And by the way, I'm not going to disagree with you on this.
00:30:50.320
I made my best argument for an argument that would say Biden has done a reasonably good job
00:31:00.860
I don't disagree with your argument that he's blowing it.
00:31:05.380
I feel like it's a little premature, because as somebody said, this is the fourth inning.
00:31:11.240
You've got to kind of wait to the end to see who won, right?
00:31:14.360
So I'm going to wait to the end to see who won, but unlike some of you, I'm way closer
00:31:20.880
to wait and see than something terrible has happened already.
00:31:27.400
So here's what I think is one strong possibility.
00:31:33.360
Do you think that Putin could claim victory if all he did was consolidate control over the
00:31:41.380
Would that be enough for him to say, yay, I won, got everything I want, I liberated these
00:32:01.420
You know, maybe he even makes money if the price of fuel goes up, that whatever he can
00:32:06.920
deliver without Nord Stream 2, doesn't he sell it for a higher price if energy prices
00:32:15.720
But have we not created a situation in which by Biden and Zelensky, you could say cleverly,
00:32:23.860
but other people would say weakly, as in being weak.
00:32:28.420
Is it weak or is it clever that Biden and Zelensky have allowed that whatever Putin does with the
00:32:35.140
two separatist regions doesn't seem to count as an invasion?
00:32:41.000
Because one possibility is that it allows Putin an easy escape hatch.
00:32:51.680
And then he'd have a way to back down and still look like the strong leader and still have a gain
00:32:59.880
And I suppose he could still keep pushing on the rest of Ukraine.
00:33:06.960
Because he didn't really give them anything they didn't already have.
00:33:13.760
I think there's a situation now where both can be winners.
00:33:21.780
You know, Zelensky is still saying that he doesn't think there'll be an invasion of Ukraine proper.
00:33:29.620
He doesn't think there'll be an invasion of whatever's left of Ukraine.
00:33:40.580
Do you think Zelensky is just lying and he's trying to keep the public from panicking?
00:33:45.700
Or does he really not think that Putin will cross the line because maybe the price is too high?
00:33:54.100
Remember I said that Putin doesn't know what kind of weapons would be thrown against him?
00:34:00.580
Because this should be the first time the most modern, at least American, weaponry gets used in that kind of battle
00:34:12.660
What happens if Putin goes into battle and gets a bloody nose?
00:34:21.180
Now here's something I don't think any of you thought of.
00:34:25.600
We know that the United States has incredible cyber warfare capabilities.
00:34:32.020
Maybe not, but you make the assumption that the United States does.
00:34:36.000
There are other countries you'd make that assumption about.
00:34:40.820
You would assume they have great cyber warfare capabilities.
00:34:51.120
So you can name a number of countries that you're pretty sure have the best cyber warfare capabilities.
00:34:57.000
Now, does the United States sell weapons to Ukraine?
00:35:06.380
Do we sell them weapons directly, or does it go through some kind of middle channel for any reason?
00:35:20.220
So the Stinger missiles and the anti-tank missiles, we sell them.
00:35:24.220
So, would you agree with the following statement, we can sell them weapons?
00:35:31.100
There's nothing that would stop us from selling weapons.
00:35:35.520
This is going to blow the top of your head off.
00:35:49.500
You say to Ukraine, and it doesn't have to be the United States, it could be an ally.
00:36:04.520
Could Elbonia, a made-up country with a great cyber warfare capability, say to Ukraine,
00:36:11.880
we will sell you the services, but you can't have the IP or the tools?
00:36:17.040
We'll keep the tools, so you can't do this on your own.
00:36:20.060
But as a service, if you push this button, it will turn off the lights in Moscow.
00:36:29.860
And then the Ukrainians would have to be the ones that push the button, but whatever happens
00:36:35.100
after they push the button goes through the cyber warfare, cyber warfare as a service.
00:36:40.760
By the way, those of you who work in technology, when I use the phrase software as a service,
00:36:48.840
you're familiar with that, this would be cyber warfare as a service.
00:36:53.100
Because you definitely don't want to give your cyber warfare tools to any country that doesn't
00:37:04.760
So you can't give your tools away, but you could sell...
00:37:08.300
Well, if you can sell a weapon, you could sell cyber warfare as a service.
00:37:17.360
You would just be the one who has a network that that, you know, chain of connections went
00:37:32.560
If Ukraine could buy that service, it'd be expensive, but if they could buy that service,
00:37:39.480
what damage could they do to Russia if Russia attacked Ukraine's, you know, more agreed-on
00:38:01.580
Are you telling me that nobody thought of this?
00:38:06.340
So in order for this not to be a real thing already, would require that the best cyber warfare
00:38:33.800
But if it's obvious enough that the cartoonist thought of it, it's got to be an option, at
00:38:45.260
Now, we don't know if Ukraine has access to that kind of power indirectly through a service
00:38:55.180
Now, it could be that that would, you know, whoever provided the service would then become
00:39:00.980
But are you telling me that the people who have cyber warfare capability couldn't hide the
00:39:07.600
tools so that by the time the attack happens, it's just not clear where it came from?
00:39:21.040
So that would suggest that maybe Putin isn't going to cross a line that would open up Ukraine's
00:39:38.980
Did everybody read the title to the live stream?
00:39:42.120
I said this would be my misinformed opinion on Ukraine and probably the best ones you hear
00:39:50.680
I'm going to stand by both of those statements.
00:39:53.680
So you don't need to tell me I'm naive or misinformed.
00:40:03.000
Misinformed and naive and talking about world events.
00:40:07.660
If that bothers you, good luck finding somebody who's doing a better job.
00:40:16.300
The problem is that the quality of commentary on this topic is so low that if you think my
00:40:24.980
commentary, which is misinformed and is naive, if you think it's going to be less than the
00:40:32.000
average you're going to see today, well, I'd say pay attention to the average because I think
00:40:38.880
we're going to be in the same ballpark, if you know what I mean.
00:40:44.060
It's because I'm not really competing with an awesome field is what's happening here.
00:40:52.420
Do these separatist regions that Russia just moved new troops into, do they want to be part
00:40:58.440
And isn't that the most important question today?
00:41:09.640
But does a vote mean anything in that part of the world?
00:41:14.640
I'm saying mostly yeses, but I don't know if you really know that.
00:41:20.960
Now, I do believe if I Googled it, I would have the same opinion.
00:41:24.960
But I don't know if that really means anything.
00:41:36.320
I know the location is everything in this case.
00:41:40.460
All right, well, do you want to see the United States get involved in any kind of a war in
00:41:49.340
which we don't know if we're fighting for something that anybody wants?
00:41:53.340
Like, would we be fighting for the wrong side if the public actually wanted to be Russian
00:42:06.460
You should just be aware that American news is not telling us if those separatist plays
00:42:14.220
That should be the main thing that they talk about, shouldn't it?
00:42:18.620
Isn't that the main thing that they should be talking about?
00:42:21.280
I don't think you'll see it on any news program today,
00:42:24.340
which tells you that our news is all propaganda.
00:42:28.860
It's funny, when I read about, you know, the fake news in Russia,
00:42:31.940
I no longer think it's worse than the United States.
00:42:36.760
I do think it's completely fake in Russia, but I don't think ours is better.
00:42:42.560
If our news were real, I know this is a provocative, you know, sounds like an overstatement,
00:42:50.500
but if our news were real, the top of the news every day would be about the opinions
00:43:02.140
And all they talk about is the Russian troop movements and the sanctions.
00:43:11.480
They're not even focusing on, you know, the people who matter the most,
00:43:20.740
Well, we'll see if those sanctions make a difference.
00:43:24.860
I was complaining yesterday that nobody had estimated the economic cost to Russia of an attack.
00:43:31.400
But apparently there is a group called the analysts that, well, they're at Capital Economics.
00:43:38.240
So they are doing some kind of estimates about what will happen to the GDP
00:43:46.700
But even when the West had more power to sanction, I guess in 2014, we took 2.5% off of Russia's GDP.
00:43:59.800
But now probably Russia is in better shape to withstand sanctions, or at least sanctions of that level.
00:44:05.720
So they might be looking at it maybe a 1% or sub-5% change.
00:44:12.800
So would Putin take a chance for, let's say, temporarily degrading his GDP by 1% to 5%
00:44:20.000
to gain total control over the separatist regions only?
00:44:27.140
Or would that cost, given that he's giving up Nord Stream 2,
00:44:34.200
would he be happy with just getting two separatist regions?
00:44:37.720
Or has he already paid enough that he has to go get the rest?
00:44:56.680
Some angry white guy with a gun confronted some people who were organizing,
00:45:02.440
just actually, I think people doing just the traffic control for Antifa and BLM and some protest,
00:45:08.900
and he ended up pulling out a gun and shooting some of them.
00:45:17.200
But the most predictable thing in the world was that if you got rid of the police
00:45:22.400
and you continued to have protests that were, you know, bothering the public,
00:45:41.460
So, you have to give some credit to the Second Amendment people
00:45:50.300
that, as horrible as, you know, these events are,
00:45:56.580
it's actually more controlled than I would expect,
00:45:59.120
given the craziness of the general public and the access to guns.
00:46:09.540
to gather money to sue media people who have lied about him
00:46:21.980
Do you think I'll have any reasons to sue the media?
00:46:28.460
How many of the people in the media have called me a right winger?
00:46:35.080
There are a number of people in the major media
00:46:40.320
Now, that's the same as calling somebody a white nationalist in 2022.
00:46:50.460
and I didn't already have, you know, a public profile
00:46:55.400
If I had to get a regular job, I couldn't get one.
00:47:04.520
They would translate it in their head to white nationalist
00:47:14.440
I mean, I wouldn't, but it's an interesting question.
00:47:32.240
Because eventually, everything has to get insured.
00:47:41.180
if there's a business, you know, element to it,
00:47:43.480
the insurance companies will decide what you can and can't do.
00:48:28.540
Somebody's saying that the Ukrainian President Zelensky
00:49:40.460
because they're going to have some big lawsuits
00:49:52.160
that buy into that business model he's building.
00:52:00.980
who are necessarily going to commit more crimes