Episode 2293 Scott Adams: CWSA 11⧸15⧸23
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 11 minutes
Words per Minute
144.17204
Summary
A member of Congress accused of being punched in the kidneys while on live TV, and a video of something shooting sideways across the sky that could only be a UFO, probably aliens from another dimension, or it could be 6,523 fake videos of UFOs.
Transcript
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Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do good morning everybody and welcome
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to the highlight of human civilization and if you'd like to take your experience up to levels
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you know where I'm going with this don't you levels that no one's ever seen before can't
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even be expressed in human words well all you need for that is a cup or a mug or a glass
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a tankard cell, a chalice of stein, a canteen jugger, a flask, a vessel of any kind.
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And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine at the end of the day.
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By the way, a lot of people ask me for my pronouns.
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So a video of something shooting sideways across the sky that could only be a UFO, probably
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Or it could be number 6,523 fake videos of UFOs.
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It's either 6,423 fake videos in a row, and it's another one, or possibly beings from
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That Representative Tim Burchett accused Kevin McCarthy of giving him a sucker punch in the kidneys, as
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Burchett was doing a live interview to the news, and apparently, I think Burchett had voted to vote out Kevin
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McCarthy, and allegedly, and allegedly, I mean, I wasn't there, but allegedly McCarthy elbowed him in the kidneys so hard while he was on live TV that it caused Burchett to actually, you know, try to chase him down the hallway to fight, and then McCarthy acted like nothing happened, or it was no big deal, or he's blowing it out of proportion or something.
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And I'm thinking to myself, and I'm thinking to myself, that happened?
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Did that happen? That's a real thing that happened?
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That a member of Congress was assaulted while giving an interview by the ex-Speaker of the House?
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Well, that's the most outrageous and crazy thing I've ever heard of, and there's no way that two things like that could have happened yesterday.
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I'll tell you, that's one of those things that happens once in a million years.
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Well, did you see the congressional hearing in which Senator Mullen challenged the Teamster president to a physical fight?
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Because of something the Teamster representative had said previously.
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So they decided they were going to stand up and go fight, but it was stopped by Bernie.
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So Bernie Sanders, I guess, was in charge, and he banged his little gavel, and he stopped it.
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Now, have you ever seen men pretend they want to fight, but really, really, they want you to break it up?
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I'm so going to fight, unless, you know, unless somebody holds me back.
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I so want to go outside, but now I'm being held back.
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I can't tell you how much I want to be in a physical fight right now.
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So here's what actually happened, and I'm going to tell this literally, but I'll use funny words to describe it, but it's accurate.
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Senator Mullen really wanted to fight, but he was prevented by an octogenarian with a tiny hammer.
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Oh, oh, I wanted to fight so badly, but I had this octogenarian with a tiny hammer, and he hit that, the gavel down, and I'm like, oh, no, tiny hammer.
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So I really wanted to fight until the octogenarian with a tiny hammer weighed in, and then what could I do?
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Those are two stories that happened in the real world that you live in.
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Now, you might say to yourself, is this a sign that everything is falling apart and society is crumbling?
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No, no, it's a sign that the news has finally turned funny, like it always meant to be.
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We don't need all this war and killing, and we need more like this.
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I would like to see our representatives duke it out, or at least pretend they're going to duke it out and be held back by 80-year-old guys with tiny hammers.
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But I, for one, welcome this new competitive approach.
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I guess TMZ had a big scoop where it showed RFK Jr. walking barefoot on a plane going to the bathroom and back.
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And people said, my God, a future president walking barefoot on a plane?
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So he did a funny video where he's sitting in the airport with a full suit on.
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And then they pan back, and he's barefoot in his suit.
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It's really tough for a politician to do an intentional humor skit and have it work.
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So the joke was just they panned out and he was barefoot.
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So all he had to do was deliver like a straight line.
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And then he put out a little meme that said, no shirt, no shoes, no secret service protection.
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No shirt, no shoes, no secret service protection.
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Well, I mean, it's funny unless somebody attacks him.
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Candace Owens has her views on the Hamas-Israel situation, which are a little bit at odds with Ben Shapiro.
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And I guess Ben Shapiro didn't mind saying that in a public gathering of Daily Wire people and somebody caught it on camera.
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So it makes me wonder, how long does Candace Owens last at the Daily Wire under this specific situation that Ben Shapiro thinks she's spreading bad information about Israel?
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Because I would rather see the conversation be brought up to another level.
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I mean, wouldn't you love to see Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens have a little podcast together now?
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And I'll tell you what would be the outcome of that.
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Ben Shapiro would probably provide some historical context that Candace needed.
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Candace would probably say, thank you for filling in those gaps.
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And then they would be two smart, capable people who went on with their lives.
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So I think there's a play here where Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens make us all smarter.
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So there's nothing wrong with a Ben Shapiro straightening you out once in a while, whoever you are.
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You know, we all need a Ben Shapiro sometimes just to tell us what we missed.
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I like the fact that Ben Shapiro said, was willing to say directly to the staff what he thought.
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In the what could be more ridiculous category, you know the tragic story of a hockey player, Adam Johnson, who was, how should I say it?
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Another player lifted his skate and seemed to thrust it into Adam Johnson's neck, which killed him.
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And today the story is that the player who did that is going to be arrested and charged with murder.
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So now a part of the story that's important, just because it's 2023 and this is the way we talk about everything,
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is that the person who died was white and the person who is arrested for murder is black.
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Now, as you know, that would be sort of not playing into the most popular narrative of all news organizations,
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that they like the George Floyd situation where you take a thing that happened one time to one person in the most totally unique situation
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and you try to make that seem like it's, you know, a representative of the whole.
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Oh, George Floyd represents all violence against black people, which of course it did not.
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It was exactly one situation of which I've never heard of one like it.
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It's not exactly like anything I've ever heard of.
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But we like to generalize it if somebody's got a narrative that says,
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oh, let's generalize this, you know, once in a million anecdote and try to make something out of it.
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But when the reverse is true and it would look like a black man killing a white man,
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again, let me stress, it's as anecdotal as the George Floyd thing is.
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There has never been another situation of a black hockey player killing a white hockey player.
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So to imagine that it represents anything, it doesn't.
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It literally represents two people in a tragic situation.
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One gets a statue and it becomes the biggest story for years.
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And the other one, you won't even believe this.
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One news entity, instead of showing the perpetrator's face or even mentioning the name,
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they're actually not mentioning the name of the famous hockey player who was arrested.
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They're not showing his picture because that would be a bad narrative.
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But worse, one entity, one of the news entities,
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showed a stock photo of a white person being arrested and handcuffed.
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I mean, just hold that in your mind for a moment.
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They tried so hard to avoid anything that could be turned into a negative narrative,
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I do not think they should allow that to be turned into some statement about black and white people,
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It doesn't mean anything if one of us does something.
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to not show a picture of the perpetrator who is a professional hockey player.
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It's not like some private citizen and nobody heard about this thing.
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So, you know, you want to give him some privacy?
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It was in all the news until he got arrested and then they scrub it out.
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So, the ridiculousness level is off the chart there.
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Well, singer Billie Eilish, she was in the news because she was bemoaning.
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That's what you say when you don't like what somebody said.
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Isn't that kind of insulting to say somebody's bemoaning something?
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Why can't they just have an opinion and they're saying it?
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because I don't think that's the right way to characterize it.
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But what she says is that being a woman in the public light is a perpetual war.
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And she claims that men do not get similarly scrutinized for their body.
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Men do not get similarly scrutinized for their bodies.
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Hey, Chris Christie, has anybody ever said anything that seemed a little negative at all about your body type?
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Has anybody ever said anything negative about my physicality?
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You know, height, your hairline, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
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How often do you, let's see, let's check the headlines.
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Let's see, there's a headline about Will Smith where he's accused of having a small penis.
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Now, by the way, I'm not saying it's true because the source is very undependable.
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So if I check the news, I see Chris Christie being called overweight.
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I see Will Smith being humiliated about something that's probably not true in the first place.
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Do you know why Billie Eilish doesn't know that men are continually scrutinized for their appearance?
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Insulting men is such a baseline activity that it doesn't even catch your attention.
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But at least women, when you insult them for their physicality, at least they make some news.
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And by the way, I'm defending you for, I think this news report is a little rough.
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Wouldn't you agree that men have no idea what it's like to be a woman?
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Not even the slightest idea what it's like to experience life as a woman.
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But do women have any idea what it's like to experience life as a man?
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It's like, you know, can a white guy know what it's like to experience life as a black guy?
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So, Billie Eilish, I think you have a blind spot about men.
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If you haven't seen it, I've got a pinned tweet on my top 10 holiday gifts.
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I have this idea that the best gift recommendation is stuff that you've owned for a long time and you don't have any economic interest in.
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Because I hate a recommendation where there's a new product and then somebody opens it up and talks about it.
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Because new, you really don't know anything about it.
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I mean, you've got to use it for a year before you know if you hate it or love it.
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So I gave you 10 recommendations of things, two of them are my books.
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But the other eight are just things I own and have owned for a long time.
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Such as my coffee warmer and a thing that I use to fill up my tires.
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And a bunch of stuff you might be interested in that just makes good gift stuff.
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And people ask me what kind of electronic drum set I use.
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And people ask me what kind of equipment I use for podcasting.
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You might know somebody who wants to be a podcaster.
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Might be a teen who wants to just get into it or something.
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How many Americans say the economy is not on the wrong track?
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You could probably get this within, I don't know, a few percentage points.
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But according to Fannie Mae, what percentage of Americans don't think we're on the wrong track?
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How do you always know the answers before I even ask you the question?
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If you're new to this live stream, I hope you're impressed about the other people watching.
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Well, once again, more confirmation that, you know, the economists for, I don't know,
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over a year or so were saying there's going to be this big old recession and a hard landing.
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And that's what the experts pretty much, by consensus, were saying there's going to be some recession-y thing.
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And that, and you wouldn't see inflation dropping down fast enough to save it.
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But now the current opinion is that we're expecting a soft landing and inflation is way too slowly, but is coming down.
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Now, this is a case again of Scott beats the experts.
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Can you remember anyone except me predicting that we would have a soft landing or, you know, we'd do fine?
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Did you hear any other person making that prediction a year and a half ago?
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I don't think I heard even one person say that we'd probably make it through fine.
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So I do have the best economic prediction of the year.
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If you can find somebody else who said the same thing, then I'll give them credit.
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But I don't know anybody else who said the same thing.
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So put that on my permanent list of what I get right and what I got wrong.
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But there are some categories that I get right more than often, more right than often.
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The things I get wrong are things that are purely political because that's not my domain.
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So, for example, when somebody picks a vice president, I'm terrible at guessing that because that's just purely political, right?
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There's too many things behind the scenes that you don't know about.
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But I'm pretty good at telling you when a mass hysteria is a mass hysteria because that's one of my domains.
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I'm pretty good with economics and business because that's my education and background.
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And if you see me get out of my domains, you should immediately lower your impression of my predictions.
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So when I talk about UFOs being fake, that's my domain.
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So I'm probably right about that, that the UFOs are fake.
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So Nikki Haley trying very hard to completely destroy any chance she would have to be president.
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She's saying of Vivek, you know, Nikki Haley and Vivek are going back and forth.
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And she said on a podcast that Vivek might have a girl problem.
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In other words, his problem criticizing Nikki Haley is because he's a sexist.
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Do you know who doesn't say bullshit like this?
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How do you run as a Republican by acting like a Democrat as hard as you can?
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Now, is that my only example in which she's acting like a Democrat?
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She seems quite willing to fund the forever wars.
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Now, that's, unfortunately, you know, sort of the military-industrial complex.
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So her military opinions fit both Democrat or Republican.
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And now she's got this girl power comment that is pure Hillary Clinton.
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And that's the opposite of Republican, honestly.
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And then, now she's got this idea that every person on social media should be verified by their name.
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And all the platforms should show their algorithms.
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Here's what Elon Musk said to a news report that Nikki Haley wanted everybody to be verified by their name.
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She can stop pretending to run for president now.
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I think, god damn it, he's just so good at using his own platform.
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But the fact that he'd be good at building businesses, but also good at the small communication chunks.
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There's no way you could take her seriously as a Republican candidate.
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Even if there's something you liked about her, would you agree that she's out of the race now?
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As soon as you go sexist, remember I called this out early.
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There's no way you're going to put a misandri-ist, someone who's got a feeling about men.
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There's no way you're going to elect that as a Republican.
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It's literally as close to the opposite of being a Republican as you could possibly get.
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She wants more government restrictions on social media.
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You know, women are always going to support women.
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Everybody wants somebody that's on their team to do well.
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Here's a, you know, the big money companies are reported to be buying up single-family starter homes all over the country.
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And I didn't know how big this trend is, but apparently it's beyond enormous.
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Now, what do you make of the fact that the big hedge funds and the big money people are buying up massive amounts of private homes?
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Why would they do that now when home prices are so high?
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Why would the smartest money people buy the assets that are wildly overpriced, it looks like?
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Because real estate's really high compared to ability to buy.
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I'm going to give you a financial look at this that you haven't heard before.
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And it's also going to tell you what to do in your own financial situation.
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Number one, real estate is a good inflation hedge.
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Because the price of a physical asset will move with inflation, as long as people still want it.
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So if you put it in anything else, it could be risky.
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But homes, you know there's going to be a shortage of them.
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But do you think they're doing it just because it's safe and just because it's a potential inflation hedge?
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So this will be a little lesson on business models and how business people see stuff.
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In my opinion, one of the biggest problems in America is all the red tape and regulations about getting anything done in business.
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You've heard Elon Musk talk about, you know, the size.
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If you put all the regulations he has to satisfy from every country, if you put them in a pile, it would be, you know, the size of the ceiling.
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Now, imagine that in the world of building and construction.
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You know, the 50 states and their different recommendations and they just get tighter and tighter and it's harder and harder to build.
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I built my own home in my town and by far the hardest part was getting it approved.
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Was I building some kind of strange, crazy, dangerous house?
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It's just that the process, the paperwork is just so unbearable, you can barely get it done.
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So, the other thing that's brilliant about this is knowing that paperwork and complexity is increasing, so it's really, really going to be hard for somebody to build new homes.
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So, they're predicting, I think it's a prediction, that the government will be so incompetent that it won't allow enough home building to satisfy demand.
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Is that a smart bet by the smartest money people in the world?
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That the government will remain incompetent and maybe even get worse and therefore the supply of homes can never keep up with the demand?
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So, you've got the inflation hedge and you've got the fact that the supply and demand are kind of perfect because it's hard to imagine a situation where the government suddenly approves.
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Improves to the point where they're like, oh, these are all unnecessary regulations.
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You know, let us spur development by getting rid of these.
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But, there is a stronger reason for buying single person homes and I've never heard anybody say it and in my opinion, it's the strongest reason.
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That's everything you need to know about the future of investing.
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So, if you're working for a salary and your main economic engine is working for a paycheck, you're in serious trouble.
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But, if you own any kind of property, you have an advantage that no robot can meet, and we hope the government will keep it this way, that robots can't own property.
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So, owning a home you can rent guarantees you have something that humans will want in the future, because real estate is limited, and now housing is limited, and robots can't own them.
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So, if you own something that somebody has to rent, because they have no choice, they've got to live, then you've got something that's robot-proof.
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If you're working for a salary, you are not robot-proof.
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So, if you're hugely rich, you buy single-family homes.
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Orient your thinking toward ownership, toward getting a hold of an asset.
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Now, in the context of a business, it might be that you own trucks that people rent to do something.
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You might own assets that no robot could ever own that get some job done.
00:31:12.480
So, think in terms of a physical thing you can own that doesn't depreciate.
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Real estate actually appreciates in value while you can depreciate it on paper.
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So, look for things that don't depreciate, can be rented, and can become your future financial thing.
00:31:31.920
I mean, it might be, you've seen these little homes now that can kind of deliver and just plop in one place,
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and maybe it's $100,000, but then you can rent it.
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Like, if you can pull together enough to put an ADU in the backyard, that might be your only income at some point.
00:31:55.880
Now, the working against it is that maybe nobody will have any money to rent anything.
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Make sure you own something, because robots can't own something.
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Now, the way I do it is owning an intellectual property.
00:32:15.580
So, I own the, you know, the rights to Dilbert.
00:32:21.540
But, you know, at some point, I suppose the robots and AI will write a comic that's, you know, funnier and free.
00:32:30.660
But I do think ownership is going to last for a while.
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And I thought it was, you know, you should be a little bit more polite if you're visiting somebody's country.
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And the video of him arriving shows him at the top of the steps from his airplane.
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Let me do my impression of him walking down the steps.
00:33:20.020
Because to show off like that in front of our president, our president who can't walk on the downstairs,
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You could be a little bit more polite as an invited guest.
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You've seen our leaders visit other countries, right?
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And sometimes they'll even wear the local ceremonial clothing.
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I mean, he should have at least, like, slipped on the third one, like, oh, ha, ha, ha, oh, good.
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And then we could do some pacing and leading, and then they could make a deal.
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But I think he blew his big chance there by just walking down the stairs.
00:34:13.120
Apparently, they've already agreed on some kind of limits on using AI on the nuclear weapons arsenal.
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To which I think, restricting AI from deciding to launch nuclear weapons might be the simplest decision any human ever made.
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I can't imagine any country would want to put AI onto their nuclear weapons in a way that would make them launch themselves or be unpredictable.
00:34:58.880
Now, as you know, the streets of San Francisco were cleaned up.
00:35:02.420
Now, you may not know that the homeless and also all of the excrement from the sidewalks, they were temporarily moved to Oakland.
00:35:14.480
And once President Xi is gone, then the homeless will be repatriated back.
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They'll take the feces and return it back to the sidewalks of San Francisco, repatriating the feces.
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Now, that was literally a joke I wrote yesterday for my comic, Robots Read News, that you can only see on the locals' platform.
00:35:38.080
But I saw a tweet today that suggested they really did move the homeless to Oakland.
00:35:47.400
Did anybody see a news story in which, in the real world, they actually moved the homeless to Oakland?
00:36:00.040
Because it's the only place you could move them that's close that they couldn't walk back.
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So, they're putting them on the other side of the bay.
00:36:11.880
If they put them anywhere in the south bay, they would just walk back.
00:36:24.360
More details on this Trump trial about the valuations of his properties that the government, or the DA, says he overvalued.
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So, Don Jr. has testified now, and I guess the accountants have or will testify.
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It won't be clear who came up with the estimates.
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Because I think the Trumps are all saying, well, we didn't come up with that estimate.
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And then the accountants are like, well, we don't come up with estimates.
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So, it's actually, so far the trial has been unable to identify anybody who came up with the estimates.
00:37:10.460
The most basic fact in the trial is, who came up with the estimates?
00:37:16.040
And they don't seem to be able to determine that.
00:37:19.200
So, what do you do if you're trying to decide on the merits of the case,
00:37:23.980
and they can't determine where it even came from?
00:37:26.880
Because if it came from the accountants, then the Trumps are innocent.
00:37:32.480
If it came from Trump, it would depend how he said it.
00:37:38.520
Or, you know, did somebody hear him say something once and made too much of it?
00:38:09.760
All of my trolls this morning seem legitimately drunk.
00:38:20.560
You should see the comments I got this morning.
00:38:28.200
Because I think that's actually, literally, I think that's what's going on.
00:38:37.240
but I'm still blown away that the attempt to impeach Mayorkas
00:38:52.140
What exactly was the argument for not impeaching him?
00:39:00.220
Somehow, I follow the news and never saw anybody say
00:39:09.100
That's the most obvious impeachment I've ever seen.
00:39:13.040
Now, is it just because he was following orders?
00:39:25.860
I suppose that's a follow-the-money situation, right?
00:39:40.160
Yeah, you think the cartels bought off the Republicans?
00:40:00.380
Because I don't know that anybody offered a real reason.
00:40:11.880
To me, the open border and the destruction of the United States
00:40:45.560
Anyway, I told you there's the Will Smith rumors,
00:40:47.840
but the bigger part of it is that his former assistant,
00:40:56.520
claims that he walked in and watched Will Smith
00:41:00.940
as, let's say, the recipient of some vigorous gay sex.
00:41:04.960
Now, what have I told you about celebrity news?
00:41:24.420
should be that you didn't hear any story at all.
00:42:30.260
You could usually bet against them and be correct.
00:42:46.200
Now, in this case, it comes from a named source.
00:44:17.860
But how do you get a wheelchair down the chimney?