In this episode of the podcast, I'm joined by my good friend Alex Blumberg. We talk about quantum computing, AI, and why empires don't last forever. We also talk about why you should care about climate change.
00:15:31.460But the United States, does it seem to you like Biden is stealthily preparing for war that would involve America without saying, hey, we're getting ready for war?
00:15:46.460I feel like there's something missing in the process, as in some honesty, as in if this happens, American boots will be on the ground.
00:15:59.460I don't like just sort of being over there and being ready.
00:16:03.460And then America not being told at the same time that we don't have a speaker of the house.
00:18:21.460You can't turn it into a permanent outdoor jail and just do a better job of security.
00:18:28.460I think that's the comic Dave Smith approach, just do better security.
00:18:32.460And not just, but that being a big part of it.
00:18:35.460So the timing of it is going to be based on economics probably, which is the creepiest, most disgusting thought you could ever have in your life.
00:19:26.460I think the psychology of that is great.
00:19:29.460The psychology of it is to tell the citizens, no matter how long it takes, because they've done this before, you know, no matter how long it takes, we will get every one of them.
00:19:42.460And I think they will take as long as it takes.
00:19:46.460So Joel Pollack is over there now reporting.
00:19:49.460And I can't stop thinking about how terrible that would be to be over there.
00:19:57.460To actually just put yourself in the most stressful country in the world right now, where apparently the entire country is just in war mode.
00:20:08.460And everybody's mind is focused on this as it should be.
00:20:11.460And I can't even imagine just seeing the evidence of the devastation and having to just put your head in that situation.
00:22:04.460And indeed, I don't ever want a Speaker of the House if such Speaker of the House is going to put war packages together or war with anything else.
00:22:19.460Some of the other stuff, you know, the other pork and stuff, I can kind of see why maybe there's some advantages and disadvantages of combining them sometimes.
00:23:22.460So, I'm 100% behind Vivek on the don't put the funding into one package.
00:23:29.460The other thing he says, and again, this is a great addition to the debate.
00:23:36.460One of the things that Vivek is so valuable for, win or lose, is that he broadens and improves the debate wherever he goes, even if you disagree with him.
00:23:47.460He has very clear points about it, defends his points, and extends the argument into places where it hasn't been extended but needs to be.
00:23:59.460But one of the things he says is that he wouldn't be in favor of, I think, funding unless the, unless Israel has a plan for what happens to the Palestinians after the ground defensive.
00:24:20.460Now, remember, the plan doesn't mean Israel will fix everything.
00:24:25.460It doesn't have to be, but it could be a plan for how Palestinians will survive.
00:24:31.460The plan could include, we're going to, we're going to build a, let's say, multi-government coalition of Arab countries to manage and help the Palestinians.
00:24:47.460So it doesn't have to be on Israel's dime.
00:24:50.460If you tell me Israel shouldn't spend the penny to help even the innocent suffering Palestinians, I would say, ah, I can see that.
00:24:59.460In a normal situation, you'd say humanity has to win over politics and all that other stuff.
00:25:06.460But in this specific situation, I think Israel has a right to walk away and just say, you know what, there are a lot of Muslims in the world.
00:25:17.460If you can't take care of each other, don't ask my religion to do it.
00:25:30.460And I'm not sure that that's cruel, given that there are many wealthy Arab Islamic countries surrounding the area with a deep interest in the well-being of these people.
00:27:23.460They don't have an option of not doing a ground attack.
00:27:26.460But if they do the ground attack, it's guaranteed to have, you know, unacceptable losses on civilians.
00:27:36.460And you can guarantee that those unacceptable losses will be magnified forever to become a stain on Israel's reputation that will hurt them in different ways as much as if they did or didn't do the ground assault.
00:27:52.460So they have two ways to go and they're both losing directions.
00:38:22.460But it's suggested by the people who are, you know, chasing his bad behavior that this is a symbol of the sort of thing he's doing with or was doing with his ill-gotten criminal gains from selling his influence or something like that.
00:38:42.460But to me, it just looks like a bullshit story.
00:39:32.460He made a lot of money on a book and then he bought a beach house.
00:39:35.460The fact that the anti-Biden people tied together what looks like a public and completely understanding the source of money, but put that at the end of the article.
00:39:53.460Here's how that article should have been.
00:39:55.460I forget who wrote it, but it doesn't matter.
00:39:57.460The article should have said, at about the same time he was making millions of dollars on his book, he bought a beach house.
00:40:39.460You know, if you see a story like that from your own side, you know, let's say you lean right and it's a right leading entity that writes it.
00:40:54.460I'm saying you're going to need to do better than that.
00:40:57.460But if you're proving he made a whole bunch of legal money that's well disclosed, and then he spent some of it, that should be the whole story.
00:41:06.460Separately, maybe he did some, you know, scabby things.
00:41:31.460Number one, it could be a way to launder funds.
00:41:36.460In other words, if he got an unusually high advance for his book, you know, way more than they expected to sell the books, that would be suggestive that maybe there's a publisher who wanted a favor from somebody in the government.
00:41:52.460So they were willing to overpay a little bit.
00:41:55.460You know, maybe there's a billionaire involved with the publisher who was willing to subsidize a little bit of their overpayment.
00:42:02.460So there are a million ways that you could do some sketchy things that launder money by overpaying for a book.
00:42:09.460And that's probably what happened, given the players involved and the fact that they sell influence for a living, you know, legally, perhaps.
00:42:19.460I don't know that Joe or Hunter did anything illegal, but it's obvious they were selling influence.
00:42:25.460That part seems well-established by everybody, basically.
00:42:46.460Oh, let me finish one other point about book advances.
00:42:52.460If you say to yourself, Scott, the likely number of total sales of a Biden book could never justify an $11 million or whatever the advance was.
00:43:44.460When, when Dilbert was a huge, well-respected hit, I, I negotiated a big book deal after I'd written the Dilbert principle and it was a number one book.
00:43:58.460But when they, when they offered the advance for, it was like a five book deal, even I could tell they were overpaying.
00:44:06.460I mean, it was obvious to me that I would never sell that many books.
00:44:10.460Uh, but the advance was so good that of course I said, yes, it was their, it was their risk to take.
00:44:49.460So yes, Biden might've been overpaid, uh, because there was something sketchy going on, but he could have been overpaid just because that's exactly how publishers operate.
00:45:28.460Here's a little story that, uh, I have to wonder about.
00:45:32.460You'll probably wonder the same thing.
00:45:34.460So Trump has a new video out campaign video, um, in which it shows people being brainwashed by Hillary and uses, and even Trump did a truth post on it in which he said brainwashed.
00:45:52.460So they're using the word brainwashed and they're using the video of Hillary saying that she wants to deprogram Trump supporters.
00:46:00.460So Trump has gone directly at the brainwashing propaganda part of the Democrat engine, which is pretty interesting.
00:46:20.460And if he can, if he can convince anybody that it is, that's an interesting line of attack.
00:46:29.460And the beauty of it is you don't have to argue about policy if you're arguing about whether there's a brainwashing operation because the brainwashing operation, you can simply point to it.
00:46:41.460It's like, well, here's another example.
00:46:43.460And, and it also creates a confirmation bias trap.
00:46:47.460Have you ever seen him do that before?
00:46:49.460It's classic Trump when he nicknamed Hillary Clinton as crooked Hillary, it was because he knew for sure that during the campaign, there would be new things that come out allegations that you would say to yourself, huh?
00:47:05.460That sounds like Hillary did something crooked.
00:47:07.460Oh, of course she's crooked Hillary makes perfect sense.
00:47:11.460And then your brain stores all of her crooked deeds under his framing, crooked Hillary.
00:47:17.460So he's literally changing the real estate in your brain with these nicknames that make all the information seem like confirmation, but it could be confirmation bias.
00:47:29.460So now when he calls down brainwashing, every time you see something that looks like it's in that domain, you're going to say, instead of that's a lie, which you would have said otherwise, you can say, Oh, that's what Trump's talking about.
00:47:54.460Now, every time you see something that you would have interpreted as just a lie or just politics or something like that, you're going to say to yourself, Hey, are they trying to brainwash me?
00:51:08.460They're talking to somebody who actually is just crazy.
00:51:11.460And they're, you know, in their own little world.
00:51:14.460Or the person who's talking is the one who's brainwashed and when presented with a good argument or new facts that counter their opinion, they immediately go to the badness of the person.
00:52:15.460But like I say, since I've been, I've been the one to tell people to seek help, because in my mind, it did look like they just had a mental problem.