Episode 2821 CWSA 04⧸26⧸25
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 23 minutes
Words per Minute
132.38539
Summary
Some people believe they ve discovered a giant underwater UFO base just off the coast of Malibu, California. Also, magic mushrooms are on the rise in the United States, and some people are using them to help with their anxiety and depression.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization, and maybe
00:00:10.900
But if you think you'd like to take this experience up to levels that nobody can even
00:00:16.880
understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that is a cup or a mug or
00:00:23.440
a glass of tank or chalices, tiny, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
00:00:31.540
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure of the dopamine, the end of the day, the thing
00:00:37.280
It's called the simultaneous sip, and damn it, it's going to happen right now.
00:00:52.080
Well, I wonder if there's any new news about the benefits of coffee.
00:00:59.240
From the European Journal of Who Cares, habitual coffee consumption is associated with a lower
00:01:10.460
How many of you are frail because you didn't have enough coffee?
00:01:14.900
Well, sometimes it takes two cups before you're no longer frail.
00:01:19.560
But in other news, according to ZME Science, did you know that magic mushrooms, the use is
00:01:30.500
Apparently, in every age group, people are using magic mushrooms to cure their mental problems
00:01:37.860
and maybe just have a good time and get rid of their anxiety and their depression, and it's
00:01:43.560
And it makes me wonder, what if they made magic mushroom coffee?
00:01:50.900
How would you like to sip your coffee, become less frail, and at the same time, cure your depression
00:02:05.020
and all your mental problems while having a good time?
00:02:11.640
So, someday, pray, please give me coffee with mushrooms in them.
00:02:23.300
Importantly, there will be a Spaces event after this podcast with Owen Gregorian hosting.
00:02:44.140
So, Spaces after the show, if you'd like to get a little extra.
00:02:54.540
Well, here's another story about batteries that I like, according to Wired.
00:03:00.220
Did you know that the grid-scale batteries, the gigantic batteries that they put in the
00:03:06.460
network itself to store electricity when there is electricity, so it's available when there's
00:03:13.420
not, apparently the cost of that has dropped like crazy.
00:03:18.540
And so, with the cost going down, the number of batteries being added to the network is
00:03:28.040
So, that's one of those really big stories that doesn't have a, there's no moment when
00:03:35.780
it becomes a story, because it's just a thing that's happening over time.
00:03:39.600
But it's one of the biggest things, because if we had batteries everywhere in our network, we
00:03:49.780
And we'd be able to have, you know, a lot more solar, if you like solar, and other stuff.
00:03:57.660
According to the Daily Mail, some people believe that they've discovered a giant underwater UFO
00:04:10.080
Now, if I were going to build a gigantic underwater UFO base, that's where I'd put it.
00:04:20.000
But apparently, it's a big structure that you can see that's got a flat top.
00:04:27.000
And it's hard to understand how underwater there would be a gigantic flat top to anything.
00:04:35.400
And apparently, it's associated with a lot of UFO spottings.
00:04:56.880
Doesn't it feel like they could just go down there and look at it?
00:05:00.100
Is it really impossible to send some divers down off the coast of Malibu?
00:05:08.220
It feels like it wouldn't be the hardest thing in the world to check out.
00:05:14.720
Because I like to think that there's a gigantic UFO base just off my coast.
00:05:20.700
Well, I saw a post by Mike Cernovich, who says that I guess he's spent enough time in D.C. recently.
00:05:30.800
And he says that D.C. has been cleaned up and somewhat quickly since the beginning of the Trump administration.
00:05:45.700
Trump and his acting D.C. U.S. attorney Ed Martin have already transformed it almost completely overnight.
00:05:53.340
So that would be another situation where you just needed somebody to try.
00:06:17.340
So I guess it took a non-Democrat force to get D.C. cleaned up.
00:06:25.100
The Department of Justice, this is according to the Post Millennial reporting on this.
00:06:31.140
The Department of Justice has decided to stop funding for research.
00:06:35.980
And I know this will disappoint you, but there won't be any more Department of Justice research
00:06:41.880
on, quote, toxic masculinity or structural racism.
00:06:48.520
Now, that's kind of a problem for somebody like me, because if they're not doing any more research
00:06:55.340
on toxic masculinity or structural racism, how will I know how bad I am?
00:07:04.520
I'd be like, huh, well, I think my toxic masculinity is probably an 8 out of 10, so I'm kind of an
00:07:14.640
And my structural racism is, well, through the roof.
00:07:24.240
I like the old way where they would do deep research, so I would know just exactly how bad
00:07:29.480
I am, but I guess guessing is all we have left now.
00:07:34.560
You might remember the story of recently James O'Keefe and his OMG group got a secret video
00:07:43.800
recording of a Pentagon branch chief who was saying that he was going to try as hard as
00:07:52.400
possible to resist doing anything that Trump wanted.
00:07:57.000
So, he was basically a Trump resistor who was sort of on the Trump payroll in the sense
00:08:07.040
And as soon as I saw that video, I said to myself, how long is he going to be employed?
00:08:14.780
Can you actually say out loud that you're going to resist what your boss wants and stay employed?
00:08:25.300
So, I don't know if he showed himself the door or somebody else did, but he's gone.
00:08:32.980
So, you know the issue about members of Congress who are allowed to do insider trading?
00:08:41.180
And apparently some of them are making some good money on it, but it's specifically legal,
00:08:51.780
So, Trump has just announced that he would sign a ban if anybody, you know, gave him that
00:08:59.980
He would sign a ban on congressional stock trading.
00:09:09.880
Do you think that 80% of the country would agree with Trump that they should not have
00:09:20.660
Do you think that 20% would be batshit crazy and they'd be in favor of Congress doing insider
00:09:30.200
So, what side do you think Democrats will take?
00:09:37.520
I swear to God, this just gets funnier and funnier, this 2080 stuff.
00:09:42.760
So, I assume, I haven't heard yet, but one assumes that Hakeem Jeffries and AOC and Bernie
00:09:52.100
Sanders will go all in saying that Congress should be able to do insider trading.
00:09:58.020
Do you know what would end insider trading forever?
00:10:09.180
Can you imagine if there's some new issue, I don't know, with war or solving war or tariffs
00:10:15.540
or something, where all the members of Congress know the new news, but just to be funny, the
00:10:36.480
And then the next time something comes up, the Republicans just go all in.
00:10:45.580
And then all the Democrats look at him and go, hey, hey, you can't do that.
00:10:57.940
I believe that you are protesting in favor of allowing this exact thing.
00:11:03.620
So why don't you go protest for my right to keep doing this?
00:11:08.060
All it would take is for Republicans to be making more money from it than Democrats,
00:11:16.980
Well, I just found out that Las Vegas will soon be testing another autonomous vehicle,
00:11:43.520
Apparently, there's a company that's backed by Jeff Bezos and some other investors called
00:11:52.580
And I guess they've got a self-driving cab that they plan to be testing in Las Vegas
00:12:02.500
Now, I don't know how many self-driving cab companies there will be, but boy, I'd be really
00:12:12.040
Do you think Uber is going to have to buy one of them?
00:12:15.260
You know, maybe Uber will have to make an offer for Waymo or Zoox or something.
00:12:25.760
Speaking of automobiles and speaking of Jeff Bezos, there's a lot of publicity today for
00:12:34.700
a truck, an electric truck that's also being backed by a Jeff Bezos startup.
00:12:43.680
And this little truck comes with just only the basics so that they can price it at about
00:12:58.680
And the windows are just hand-cranked and there's no entertainment system, but you could add it.
00:13:06.360
So it's being made like, I think they called it a Mr. Potato Head.
00:13:10.560
So you can get the basic and it'd be like $20,000, which would be amazing.
00:13:15.500
But then you could add a stereo if you wanted, and you could add a video screen if you want, and you could add some other stuff.
00:13:28.020
I looked at the pictures of it, and it totally activated my lizard brain.
00:13:32.920
You know, if you're male, and maybe this applies to some women as well, yeah, the company is called Slate.
00:13:43.400
When I looked at the truck, I just had this feeling in my body, and it was like, oh, oh, I just want it.
00:13:57.080
Now, if you're male, you've probably often had the experience of seeing a truck and saying, oh, I wouldn't mind owning that truck.
00:14:12.460
And there's a neighbor in my neighborhood that whenever I would walk past his property, you would always have a two-seater truck that had only the basics.
00:14:25.240
It looked like parked in front of his house, and it was just gray, and it was just really basic.
00:14:32.220
And I would always say to myself, that is exactly what I want, because I don't want to spend $100,000 on a truck that I would barely use.
00:14:40.820
But if I had a $20,000 truck, I would be making, you know, runs to the, you know, the landfill to throw things away, and I'd let people borrow it, and I'd throw my e-bike in the back.
00:14:56.260
And, like, I can think of all kinds of reasons if I had an extra vehicle, but I wouldn't buy, you know, an $80,000 extra vehicle.
00:15:16.920
So, I guess what impressed me about it was that somehow they built this thing so its look, its price, and its features just hit my lizard brain perfectly.
00:15:30.500
And I'd be so curious how many other people had the same experience.
00:15:42.460
Speaking of automobiles, famous investor TV guy James Kramer recently said, I'm putting my chips on Elon Musk.
00:15:58.660
He goes, I don't think Waymo scales the way people think.
00:16:02.000
And what did Elon Musk do when he heard that one of the most famous investors in the world was going to back his product?
00:16:19.480
So, Elon posted on the next that the inverse Kramer is tough karma to overcome.
00:16:25.660
Meaning that if Kramer says something's good, there's sort of a running joke that he's always wrong.
00:16:34.140
So, Elon is worried because Kramer just said that his product is the good one.
00:16:45.740
And then Elon says in the post, I'm calling weekend reviews with Autopilot to accelerate progress.
00:16:55.660
Not only does he call him out for always being wrong, but he tells him he's going to have to, like, double down on his efforts to try to overcome the Kramer curse.
00:17:12.360
I do think Musk is underappreciated for how funny he is.
00:17:16.640
I saw a, and I posted this on X, but I saw a long opinion piece by Dr. Insensitive Jurek, who's a real-life economist, who is anonymous.
00:17:31.180
And he was making a point that you can see in its fullness.
00:17:40.120
The summary is that AI will eventually destroy other sources of information, because right now AI is able to read, you might say illegally in some cases, everything that's out there.
00:17:56.140
So if you were going to look for some information, how long will it be before you say to yourself, well, I'm not going to go to Wikipedia, or I'm not going to go to, you know, this source where I think that information will be.
00:18:12.700
I'll just ask AI, because AI has read everything.
00:18:16.780
So once AI can answer every question about anything that's anywhere, which we're right on the verge of that being the case, why would those other sources continue to exist?
00:18:30.760
Because who would spend their time updating them or visiting them?
00:18:36.380
So the business model of normal sources of information should all disappear.
00:18:45.080
Because the AI depends on all those other sources that it's, you know, continually scanning to stay update.
00:18:54.580
Is the AI going to have to just use itself as its own source of information?
00:19:03.040
But it reminded me of a question that I had because I do this, you know, this podcasting and I talk about the news.
00:19:11.240
Have you noticed that podcasting and posting on X has largely replaced your habit of looking at the real news, the traditional news?
00:19:25.440
When was the last time you said to yourself, I think I've got to go look at CBS News?
00:19:30.940
Or I think I'll go to the AP or Reuters website and see what's new.
00:19:38.980
And I'm thinking to myself, you know, CNN's traffic and MSNBC's traffic are all going down.
00:19:47.460
At what point do the podcasters put in a business, the thing that all the podcasters need to stay in business?
00:19:59.480
So in other words, a lot of people say to me, the only place I hear news is on your podcast.
00:20:06.620
I don't know how many people are in that category.
00:20:09.100
But it used to be true for Jon Stewart when he did The Daily Show.
00:20:13.420
Young people would say, it's the only place I get my news.
00:20:17.220
Other people might go to Bill Maher's show and say, yeah, you know, I don't really pay attention to the news, but he catches me up on all the important stuff.
00:20:27.220
It's okay when you've got this big, robust news industry and only a few people who are, you know, well-known talking about it.
00:20:37.400
So if you've just got your Bill Maher's and your Jon Stewart's and Joe Rogan talking about the news, you're fine.
00:20:46.960
But what happens when all the podcasters are just talking about the news?
00:20:53.760
And then you say to yourself, as I've said to myself fairly recently, why would I ever go to a news site?
00:21:01.940
Because I just go to Axe and I go to, you know, Mario Knopfel's account.
00:21:09.680
And every single morning, he's got a summary that he's picked from all the news sources.
00:21:18.540
It's like, oh, Trump thinks he's close to a peace deal.
00:21:24.720
And it seems to me that we're on a path where all the original reporting will disappear because there won't be anybody going to look at it directly.
00:21:38.520
They'll only be seeing it through somebody who essentially borrowed it for their own content, like I do.
00:21:49.040
I don't think we thought this through because we're, and that would include me, I'm in a completely self-immolating activity.
00:22:04.120
You know, the more people watch something like this podcast to figure out what's new in the world and to try to understand it,
00:22:11.780
the less they're going to watch the things that I use as my source of what to talk about.
00:22:32.440
The gold standard of online casinos has arrived.
00:22:35.060
Golden Nugget Online Casino is live, bringing Vegas-style excitement and a world-class gaming experience
00:22:42.920
Whether you're a seasoned player or just starting, signing up is fast and simple.
00:22:47.360
And in just a few clicks, you can have access to our exclusive library of the best slots and top-tier table games.
00:22:53.600
Make the most of your downtime with unbeatable promotions and jackpots that can turn any mundane moment into a golden opportunity
00:23:02.800
Take a spin on the slots, challenge yourself at the tables, or join a live dealer game to feel the thrill of real-time action.
00:23:11.760
Why settle for less when you can go for the gold at Golden Nugget Online Casino.
00:23:29.680
Well, you probably heard that Susan Rice, Obama's right-hand woman for years, was on this committee,
00:23:42.040
this defense DOD advisory committee, and we couldn't understand why that would even exist.
00:23:49.780
So she didn't have authority to make decisions, but it gave her access to all the Department of Defense Pentagon people to push her opinions.
00:24:00.300
And once we realized that that existed, which surprised me, who knew that even existed, that advisory committee?
00:24:08.840
But I guess P.A. Agseth just got rid of that committee.
00:24:13.520
So he didn't just get rid of the people, he just got rid of the committee.
00:24:22.300
Well, let's check in on all the racists, starting with Harvard.
00:24:28.740
I saw a post on X from Aaron Siberium, your perfect example.
00:24:34.220
You know, I'm not looking at the original news.
00:24:37.180
I'm looking at the X post about the original news.
00:24:41.080
But apparently the Harvard Law Review has put in writing, so this isn't writing.
00:24:48.200
This is not guessing or reading between the lines.
00:24:52.060
They've made DEI the first priority of their admissions process, the process of deciding what articles to run in the Harvard Law Review.
00:25:02.480
And they say they routinely kill or advance pieces based on the author's race.
00:25:09.280
And they look for articles that have racially diverse citations.
00:25:21.060
So it's not like something that, you know, wasn't writing a long time ago, but they changed it.
00:25:27.660
This is their current method of deciding what to publish is based on your race.
00:25:38.440
So everything that you imagine about Harvard being a racist entity, it's apparently 100% true.
00:25:47.780
So they want, they very much want their hiring to be race-based.
00:25:57.360
And even who gets to publish in the Harvard Law Review, they say directly.
00:26:08.280
I don't know if Harvard will ever recover from this.
00:26:15.100
According to Chuck Ross, who's writing for the Washington Free Beacon, there's a group called the National Black Justice Coalition.
00:26:31.260
And they get money from big companies like Procter & Gamble and stuff.
00:26:37.940
And I guess their mission would be to make things more equitable race-wise.
00:26:47.220
So I guess their leader is David Johns, who, his past was, he worked for Obama's White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
00:27:01.960
And he was talking at a recent event for this organization, because they're pushing a boycott against Target, because Target rolled back its DEI.
00:27:15.680
Here are some of the things that this gentleman said.
00:27:23.500
Again, this is Chuck Ross, the Washington Free Beacon.
00:27:26.780
He lashed out this week against what he called white mediocrity and urged a, quote, woke army of black youth to wage war with whiteness.
00:27:39.980
That, uh, so Procter & Gamble is funding that and some other big companies.
00:27:51.200
Um, and then he endorsed a boycott against Target.
00:27:57.940
And he said, uh, Trump was a fascist trying to rob us of our wealth.
00:28:05.000
Uh, I'm not sure what wealth is going to rob there.
00:28:09.760
And then he urged, uh, black consumers to shop at black-owned businesses and, and to reclaim African way of being.
00:28:24.960
This is something that Johns actually said in public.
00:28:28.780
Quote, we don't need nothing from white people.
00:28:48.240
Well, I think we should have a potato salad off.
00:28:58.220
Because I think this is where we should draw the line.
00:29:10.480
You can say that you're forming an army of African American young people to take back your wealth.
00:29:19.280
But when you go after our potato salad, you bastards, you bastards, it's time to throw down.
00:29:27.220
So I think we need to have a potato salad off and solve this once and for all.
00:29:34.320
I'm not so confident that white people will win, but it would be funny.
00:29:48.560
So as you know, Harvard is racist and this organization is super racist.
00:29:59.160
Thank goodness if you asked AI a question, you're not going to get some kind of racist response from AI.
00:30:08.760
According to the rabbit hole account on X, who asked the following question,
00:30:14.480
is affirmative action racist, chat GPT said, no, affirmative action is not racist.
00:30:29.340
So I think I just decided which AI I'm going to use.
00:30:33.860
I think I'm going to cancel my chat GPT right away because it's racist.
00:30:45.320
If there's an AI that says that affirmative action is not racist,
00:30:51.160
what else is it going to tell me that's bullshit?
00:30:53.880
Now, even the people who are in favor of affirmative action,
00:30:58.940
and there was a time when I was in favor of it, when, you know, 40 years ago,
00:31:07.400
But, you know, maybe we need to level up a little bit.
00:31:13.000
So it's the forever part that I object to completely at this point.
00:31:20.500
But even if you're in favor of affirmative action, it's racist by definition.
00:31:29.420
The entire point of it is to change the outcomes from one race to another.
00:31:34.020
You can't get more racist than overtly saying race matters
00:31:38.640
and we're going to change the outcomes of race.
00:31:56.980
Well, in weird but tragic news, Epstein victim Virginia Jeffrey died of suicide yesterday.
00:32:06.600
Now, because this is mostly just a tragedy story,
00:32:13.080
I don't really want to play with the, oh, she did a suicide and Epstein did a suicide.
00:32:33.140
So I'm just going to let the family deal with this.
00:32:36.700
And I don't think this is part of a bigger conversation.
00:32:45.100
She had apparently been in a bad, some kind of auto accident and wasn't sure she would recover.
00:33:07.840
And he was talking about his own efforts back in his administration with Clinton to reinvent the government.
00:33:18.360
And he bragged how he used a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
00:33:27.400
They downsized the number of government employees.
00:33:31.440
But he was bragging that they cut the fat and not the bone.
00:33:37.940
And so he thinks that maybe Doge was a little too aggressive, too fast, cut too deep.
00:33:44.300
And he's not even sure they're going to save any money.
00:33:47.260
Because even where they cut things, they may have to add them back.
00:33:51.980
So he was negative on Doge, but was talking about the good work that he did.
00:34:02.380
But since he was on Bill Maher, I'll remind you.
00:34:07.560
During the Clinton administration, the Dilbert comic was gigantically popular.
00:34:12.840
So that was sort of the peak of its popularity.
00:34:17.320
And Gore actually had a Dilbert comic in his office because it mentioned Al Gore.
00:34:27.380
And he invited me into his office one day because I happened to be in Washington on other business.
00:34:35.400
And he invited me in and asked me if I wanted to help him use the Dilbert comic to explain how well they were doing with their reinventing government.
00:34:46.060
Now, at the time, I was smart enough to say, oh, I can't do that.
00:34:51.260
Because it will look like Dilbert's taking sides.
00:34:55.620
And I was taking the Michael Jordan approach that Republicans buy shoes, too.
00:35:02.240
So I didn't want to get political with the comic.
00:35:08.000
But I also advised him against using humor because it makes it look non-serious.
00:35:13.980
I usually advise corporations not to use too much humor.
00:35:18.140
You know, unless it's like a TV commercial, that can work.
00:35:21.220
But I wouldn't do it as part of your normal communication if you're trying to communicate something serious.
00:35:30.000
But I did hook him up with the best expert I knew on how to simplify and have good communication, which they used.
00:35:41.520
So I was a helpful member of the effort to at least communicate what they did.
00:35:50.960
And I just hooked him up with somebody who was good at it.
00:35:54.320
So that was my little brush with that in those days.
00:36:08.100
When I found out my friend got a great deal on a wool coat from Winners, I started wondering.
00:36:17.660
Like that woman over there with the designer jeans.
00:36:39.040
Well, Bill Maher, also talking to Gore, said, quote, the issue to me that is a central issue
00:36:55.160
And I've heard a lot of other people say, yeah, you know, maybe Trump is doing some things
00:37:07.780
But, you know, the real thing, the thing which makes him completely unacceptable as a president
00:37:14.740
is that he was not in favor of the peaceful transfer of power.
00:37:24.260
The narrative that I understand is that there was a peaceful transfer of power and that there
00:37:31.380
was really no chance that a bunch of people wandering through the Capitol could actually
00:37:48.280
But it was so small, you know, relative to what it would take to overcome a country, you
00:37:54.660
know, change the government and don't have a peaceful transfer of power.
00:37:59.020
It was such a small, even though there was violence, you know, the total scale of it was
00:38:05.540
so small that it was a peaceful transfer of power.
00:38:09.760
But, separate from that, I propose that we find out if 2020 was rigged or not.
00:38:24.000
Well, you've probably all seen the graph of how many Democrats voted in all our recent
00:38:34.540
And you might be aware that it was always somewhere in the same level, except for one
00:38:41.640
There was one election where it was way on a line.
00:38:46.400
And then you say to yourself, but that's because Trump was running.
00:38:50.160
You know, when Trump's running, those Democrats are really going to come out, except they didn't
00:39:01.120
So, how do you explain that it was Trump who is now the worst Trump ever, according to Democrats,
00:39:08.520
because he had, according to them, had denied a peaceful transfer of power, even though, of
00:39:16.940
So, how could it be that 2020 was a gigantic turnout because they needed to defeat Trump,
00:39:27.280
but they didn't show up when Trump was even worse in 2024?
00:39:34.000
Here's how to find out if those votes were real.
00:39:40.580
Maybe you have a few different polling companies, but you say, just randomly ask people, which
00:40:03.400
I'm just guessing, but I'll bet you would not learn that a lot more people voted in 2020.
00:40:15.360
Do you think it would be possible to have multiple national large-scale polls that showed
00:40:23.800
that people did not do any extra voting in 2020, that it was kind of always in that 65
00:40:32.720
Do you think we wouldn't be able to easily spot that 2020 was fake if it was?
00:40:44.000
Now, if the polling showed that, yeah, we voted in 2020 and it's the only time we voted,
00:40:50.260
and millions of people, if the polling showed me that, I don't know, what is it, 15 million
00:40:59.820
people or some large number of extra voters beyond the baseline?
00:41:04.520
If the polling showed that there were, in fact, a whole bunch of extra voters who said they
00:41:12.040
were extra voters and they did vote in 2020, then I would say, well, maybe I should shut
00:41:18.620
the fuck up because that's actually pretty persuasive.
00:41:23.740
But what if you do two or three of those major polls with the most respected polling companies
00:41:32.480
and you really do it big and you make sure they're well-funded so nobody's complaining
00:41:43.500
So you'd have maybe Rasmussen because, you know, they tend to be a little friendlier to
00:41:51.920
You'd make sure you have, you know, maybe two pollsters that tend to lean right, at least
00:41:58.640
in terms of people's opinion, even if not in reality.
00:42:01.200
You give me three major polls and I will take that as true.
00:42:10.200
Do you think we couldn't find out with polling?
00:42:21.140
You couldn't do it if it's just Rasmussen because then it would turn into, well, why would
00:42:29.480
Well, you'd have to do it with a few polling companies that both sides have some problems
00:42:35.600
with, but have been doing it for a long time and have the, they have the weight to actually
00:42:48.280
Let's find out if that, if those votes were real.
00:42:51.720
And, and I'll say it again, if it turns out that all of the polls that check it find out
00:42:58.200
that, yeah, indeed there were major more voters in 2020, if that turns out to be true based
00:43:10.300
I'll never even allege that maybe there was some problems with 2020.
00:43:16.600
Now, how many of you are thinking to yourself, wait a minute, is it really that easy?
00:43:33.400
Well, it wouldn't be easy because it'd be pretty major effort, but it would be well within the
00:43:49.040
Who's up for finding out if we've been gas lit for years?
00:44:07.340
Well, as you know, nobody is above the law, which turned out to be, we've got a little
00:44:16.240
So I forget the details because it doesn't matter, but there was a judge who had a illegal immigrant
00:44:25.280
And I guess ICE was waiting to, you know, arrest the illegal immigrant when the court was done.
00:44:30.840
But the judge suggested, allegedly, suggested that the illegal immigrant use a non-standard
00:44:43.820
Now, that's illegal to help an illegal get away with being illegal.
00:44:52.460
And so it looks like the Trump administration arrested the judge.
00:44:58.420
So the judge got arrested somewhat publicly in the parking lot for aiding and abetting the
00:45:07.900
escape of an immigrant, who didn't escape, by the way.
00:45:13.940
Now, I don't have all the details to that, but that's the basic idea.
00:45:16.840
But Andrew Weissman, who you might all know as a TV Democrat lawyer, there's a video of him
00:45:25.800
talking about when Trump was arrested and law fared.
00:45:36.780
And then when the judge gets arrested for what is clearly a violation of the law, I mean, I
00:45:44.400
think even the supporters of the judge would say, okay, that was illegal.
00:45:58.520
So when it was Trump who was getting law fared, no one's above the law.
00:46:06.440
But when a Democrat leaning judge gets arrested for obviously breaking the law, well, it looks
00:46:18.120
So if you ever wondered if the TV lawyers are just liars, well, there you go.
00:46:26.480
Well, not all of them, not every one of them, but obviously just a liar.
00:46:34.940
So I would say his credibility is gone forever.
00:46:39.180
Let's look into Democrats eating other Democrats.
00:46:43.760
The Washington Free Beacon noticed this on MSNBC.
00:46:47.860
I didn't say the name of the speaker, but they had a guest on who was a black man, which matters
00:46:55.220
to the story, and the MSNBC guest was scolding AOC and Bernie for what he called a shockingly
00:47:05.760
non-diverse crowd at their events in Los Angeles.
00:47:10.020
And the MSNBC guest said that the Dems are going to lose midterms unless they have young
00:47:17.520
Well, it could be that the brown people were practicing their potato salad, possibly.
00:47:31.060
But I had noticed the same thing when I saw images of the crowd.
00:47:36.200
It was really super white for the party that seemed to be all about diversity.
00:47:44.200
And I don't know if it's because oligarch doesn't activate the black and brown community and that
00:47:56.800
white people like to pretend they know what that word means.
00:48:07.580
So I'm going to agree with the guest whose name I wish I could tell you, because he's
00:48:16.120
If the Democrats keep doing gigantic events and there are no black or brown people in the
00:48:22.140
audience, I'm pretty sure their own base of black and brown people are going to notice
00:48:30.260
So it could be that AOC and Bernie are working against their own interests without necessarily
00:48:38.120
Well, according to Victoria Ballera and Fox News, there's a new Fox News poll that says
00:48:48.560
It hasn't been that low since, I don't know, a long time.
00:48:52.740
And for the first time in a decade, it was that low.
00:48:56.540
But at the same time that Democrat favorability hit a new low, the Democrats are also advantaged
00:49:11.620
So if you look at a generic Democrat versus a generic Republican, according to a Fox News
00:49:19.900
Now, it's normal for the party that's out of power to have an advantage in the midterm.
00:49:29.360
But I feel like I've seen polls that said it was the opposite.
00:49:33.940
So I think we need a poll off, besides having a potato salad off.
00:49:41.400
Because I would swear we just saw some polls that said that the generic Republican was beating
00:50:01.180
I'm an astronaut, an author, a citizen of planet Earth.
00:50:05.180
Join me for a six-part journey into the systems that power the world.
00:50:09.920
Real conversations with real people who are shaping the future of energy.
00:50:17.740
Just solutions-focused conversations on the challenges we must overcome and the possibilities
00:50:31.980
UC Berkeley, one of my degrees was at UC Berkeley.
00:50:42.140
But UC Berkeley is in trouble because apparently they were involved with a Chinese-funded joint
00:50:50.320
research process in which China put $240 million into it, a joint tech venture that's been running
00:51:00.960
And apparently, UC Berkeley did not disclose that to the government, which is now a requirement.
00:51:10.940
So a quarter of a billion dollars came from China to UC Berkeley.
00:51:16.200
Do you think that would affect UC Berkeley's anything?
00:51:24.740
Do you think it would be transferring valuable technology to China that they couldn't get any
00:51:37.240
If they could do this research themselves, wouldn't they do it?
00:51:41.800
They wouldn't pay a quarter of a billion dollars to an American entity if they could do it themselves.
00:51:48.660
So UC Berkeley, racist and possibly traitorous.
00:51:53.640
I disavow my degree, and I'm going to pretend I never went to college at all.
00:52:07.360
Anyway, so Breitbart, that was a Breitbart story, by the way, the UC Berkeley one.
00:52:14.660
According to CNET, Apple is close to shifting all of its iPhone assembly to India.
00:52:25.040
So because Apple would have a big problem with tariffs if they leave everything to be assembled
00:52:35.260
in China, they're moving all of the assembly that would be sold to America, not the stuff
00:52:45.860
So China will still assemble iPhones, but only the ones that are going to be sold to non-United
00:52:54.080
And apparently, Apple was with other companies.
00:52:59.680
A lot of companies were already moving to India for a variety of reasons, because China
00:53:07.720
But Apple may be able to do its entire line of iPhones for the U.S., which would be about
00:53:16.940
They might be able to do every bit of it from India by the end of 2026.
00:53:21.120
Now, when we were talking about tariffs causing companies to, you know, move their production
00:53:29.760
facilities, we generally thought they couldn't do it very quickly.
00:53:35.720
But, you know, here's one of those special cases where they had prepared for years, I guess.
00:53:40.520
They've been training Indian employees and building facilities in India.
00:53:46.660
So it was already going to happen, but they're going to speed it up.
00:53:55.000
According to the New York Post, major shipping container company, Hapag Lloyd, you know, Hapag
00:54:01.820
Lloyd, the major shipping company, you all know it, said its customers have canceled 30%
00:54:22.060
But there's been a massive increase in demand for shipments from Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam.
00:54:34.280
So the amount that got canceled in China from China to the United States is still way more
00:54:41.980
than the big increase from these smaller countries to the United States.
00:54:46.880
So it's not going to solve any problems that the smaller countries are increasing.
00:54:53.280
Well, there was a long post, opinion post by Bill Ackman on X, which is sort of redundant,
00:55:05.280
because if I say it's a Bill Ackman post, if you follow him, you know it's always too long.
00:55:15.980
But they all make sense, and he's very smart, and I think he's right on point on this.
00:55:25.380
He says that in terms of the tariffs, time is not on China's side.
00:55:31.940
Now, the popular opinion differs from his, but I think he's got the right take on this.
00:55:38.640
So the popular opinion is that China, because they're, you know, more of a totalitarian situation,
00:55:46.960
they'll be able to weather the tariff situation better.
00:55:56.080
But it looks like it might be true in terms of just, you know, the next several months.
00:56:01.620
So if there are several months of delay, they might be able to, you know, avoid a recession
00:56:09.860
or depression or something, maybe a little bit better than this.
00:56:18.200
The longer the tariffs persist, the more rapidly every company that has a supply chain based
00:56:23.920
in China is relocating it to India, Vietnam, Mexico, the U.S., or some other country.
00:56:30.000
Now, that's what Apple's doing, and that's what a number of other companies are doing, too.
00:56:41.100
There's no board of directors or management team who will ever again feel comfortable relying
00:56:47.280
on China for a major portion of their supply chain.
00:56:52.540
So every week that the CEO of a major company says to themselves, wow, China is risky, it
00:57:05.260
becomes something that seemed like it might be temporary to something that looks like it's
00:57:16.380
Do you remember in 2018, I promised you, and it seemed weird when I said it, that I was
00:57:23.400
going to make sure that people understood that China was unsafe for a business?
00:57:30.620
And I said, you know, my motivation was my stepson had an overdose of fentanyl.
00:57:37.180
And so I thought, you know, it's time that people understood that China is not safe for a business
00:57:55.240
But nobody said to me in 2018, I think you have a good point.
00:58:04.900
Pretty much 100% of the smart people said, Scott, that train has already left the station.
00:58:15.620
People feel comfortable doing business in China.
00:58:25.240
Of course, people are going to keep doing their manufacturing in China.
00:58:35.640
Because I'm going to say China is unsafe for a business.
00:58:40.800
And right now, Bill Ackman is saying in a very clear and well-argued point that China
00:58:56.680
And so, if you're thinking that Trump has shit the bed, screwed the pooch, and made the
00:59:05.900
biggest mistake of any idiot who ever did anything with his tariffs, I would look at Bill Ackman's
00:59:14.420
Because I do think that the longer they go, the more permanent the damage is to China, and
00:59:23.820
the more permanent the safety is for the United States as things move into either safer allied
00:59:40.300
Even though we might take a hit, we might get a little recession hit, we might have some shortages
00:59:48.220
But still, the long term, the actual survival of China as a manufacturing place that you
01:00:05.680
And so, what Ackman predicts, and I think this is a good prediction, is that both the U.S.
01:00:13.780
and China are going to realize that they're better off if they say something like, let's
01:00:18.780
pause this reciprocal tariff thing for 180 days and work out a real lasting agreement.
01:00:28.320
And if they do that, then we might come up with a better agreement than we've had.
01:00:36.260
But when we're done, China will still be unsafe for a business.
01:00:43.700
And the United States will still be the United States.
01:00:52.600
So, probably, there's going to be something like a mutually agreed pause.
01:01:01.380
And as Ackman accurately also points out, that probably the only reason it hasn't happened
01:01:06.920
so far, the pause, is that both leaders want to make sure they don't look like the weak one.
01:01:13.660
So, what does it mean to not look like the weak one?
01:01:17.900
Well, number one, if one side has made some big pronouncement about, we'll never back down,
01:01:28.120
well, you can't be on the other side and back down within a week of the other side saying
01:01:34.280
But if Trump says, you know, we're going to win no matter what, you can't expect she to
01:01:47.000
So, there's something about the timing of who's insulted who and how badly and how long you
01:01:53.980
have to wait before you can say, you know, maybe now's the time we should, you know, get
01:02:01.520
So, we might be just days away because you've seen that Trump has softened his approach to
01:02:12.760
You've seen that China seems to be saying they're not negotiating, but at the same time, it looks
01:02:21.400
like they're negotiating, which suggests that they're probably not too far from saying something
01:02:27.640
like, well, now that we've established, you know, mutual respect, you know, we can at least
01:02:36.320
So, we might be surprisingly close to something that looks like at least a pause on the worst
01:02:46.100
possibilities with a opening to improve our situation massively at the expense of China.
01:02:56.740
Because I don't know that China could ever recover from the risk that they've just shown the
01:03:06.420
Claudia was leaving for her pickleball tournament.
01:03:11.240
She was so focused on visualizing that she didn't see the column behind her car on her
01:03:17.260
Good thing Claudia's with Intact, the insurer with the largest network of auto service centers
01:03:22.940
Everything was taken care of under one roof and she was on her way in a rental car in no
01:03:27.380
I made it to my tournament and lost in the first round.
01:03:36.280
You know what's weird is that here's two stories that shouldn't be happening at the same time
01:03:44.860
According to The Hill, consumer sentiment falls to its lowest level since post-pandemic inflation
01:03:54.140
So, consumer sentiment would affect how much you spend.
01:03:59.480
So, if consumer sentiment is low, it would suggest that American spending and consumption
01:04:08.380
But the Wall Street Journal is reporting on exactly the same day that spending is up.
01:04:16.200
So, the U.S. consumer market is just so well-trained to consume that people are just buying a little
01:04:29.320
They're moving up some of their expenses that they probably wanted to do later, but they're
01:04:34.260
like, well, if I do it now, I could beat the tariffs.
01:04:40.420
How would you like to beat China and you're in this tariff war with the United States and
01:04:46.880
then you hear, ah, consumer sentiment in the U.S. is down.
01:04:50.660
They'll be buying less stuff and this will drive them into a recession.
01:05:04.020
That's like some of the best news you could ever hear.
01:05:07.400
It fits well with the Bill Ackman theory that the U.S. is probably in better shape to weather
01:05:18.780
Now, I'm not sure that it will be up next month.
01:05:21.700
You know, maybe a month from now, everything looks different.
01:05:23.920
But the fact that it's up at all in the context of a tariff war, that's pretty amazing.
01:05:41.260
And this also goes to the Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters.
01:05:44.880
So, when you heard that the U.S. was going to negotiate, what, I don't know, 160 different
01:05:53.860
tariffs with different countries, and if you know anything about international trade or how
01:06:00.520
complicated a tariff agreement would be, you say to yourself, that's going to take a thousand
01:06:09.880
But that's assuming that we don't get smarter and we don't become more efficient and we don't
01:06:15.660
figure out how to do trade deals more, you know, with less friction.
01:06:22.780
According to the Wall Street Journal, U.S. officials are creating a new template that sets common
01:06:35.420
I'll tell you, if nothing big happens over the weekend, this alone should make the stock
01:06:45.060
I'm not predicting it will go up because lots could happen that's, you know, beyond this.
01:06:49.640
But if nothing happened beyond this, if you learned that the U.S. has figured out how to
01:06:55.020
make a template so that we could go to every country and we would say, basically,
01:06:59.660
you know, these are the things we're going to talk about.
01:07:04.200
Tariffs, quotas, non-tariff barriers, regulations on U.S. goods, digital trade, rules of origin
01:07:14.940
And you could just see the list and you go, oh, okay.
01:07:21.480
So basically, it's a fill in the blank that you negotiate over.
01:07:25.380
That is a big freaking deal because if we start rolling up one deal after another because
01:07:42.380
This is the sort of process improvement that's exactly what we needed.
01:07:51.840
According to the Swiss Federation, or no, the Swiss Confederation president, Karen Keller-Sutter,
01:08:00.740
she said on Thursday that the U.S. is planning what she calls, quote,
01:08:04.840
privileged trade negotiations with 15 countries.
01:08:09.580
In other words, they would have their own sort of faster or improved process.
01:08:16.060
So that's in addition, or maybe even with the template, I don't know.
01:08:21.080
But if the 15 most important countries that are also our allies and are playing well,
01:08:27.960
so that would be Japan, South Korea, because they stepped up right away, good allies.
01:08:35.720
That would be presumably Europe if they wanted to get something done quickly, which they do.
01:08:46.620
Imagine that the U.S. has figured out that they want to fast-track the best 15,
01:08:54.080
because if they can get the best 15 done, like the ones that matter that are not China,
01:09:07.500
Trump might be on the cusp, and I say cusp that would last, you know, maybe a few months.
01:09:14.440
He might be on the cusp of one of the greatest victories we've ever seen.
01:09:20.740
And he would be pulling it from the deepest well of despair and apparent stupidity, according to all of his critics.
01:09:29.900
This could be one of the biggest wins of all time.
01:09:34.500
I mean, it would be legend if he pulls this off.
01:09:37.820
And when you see this stuff, you see that they're not just going for the goal.
01:09:52.700
They're fixing the system for how you negotiate these deals.
01:09:57.620
If they fix the system and then they start rolling them out, oh, my God.
01:10:19.940
he's softened up quite a bit on the energy and gas and oil situation
01:10:25.880
because the refineries are pulling out of California
01:10:32.420
And he's turning Republican as fast as a man can turn Republican
01:10:39.600
And he's talking about the burdensome regulations in California
01:10:46.480
And he says it's essential that refiners continue to see the value
01:11:41.400
Trump says that Ukraine might be close to the mineral deal
01:11:50.340
I've been saying I'm not sure that will ever happen,
01:12:03.040
And, of course, he always say it was productive,
01:12:14.920
that got introduced into the Ukraine-Russia conversation.
01:12:24.240
where you just can't seem to get anything accomplished,
01:12:28.680
that sometimes you have to introduce a new variable.
01:12:31.080
Now, one of the new variables is the Ukraine mineral deal,
01:12:44.160
and we'll have a little more ties to the U.S. economy,
01:13:12.520
that goes from Russia through Ukraine to Europe.
01:13:32.780
Now, that is a good variable to throw in there,