Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 790 Scott Adams： Shampeachment Entertainment, Iran's Scary Clowns

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody! I'm glad you found me this morning. Wow, what fun we have today. Once again,

00:00:22.940 our news is full of nothing but happy things. Well, that's not 100% true.

00:00:30.180 But most of the news is good news. And in order to enjoy it, in order to enjoy it to its fullest,

00:00:40.100 what do you need? I think you know. You need a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein,

00:00:45.820 a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.

00:00:51.360 I think you know I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,

00:00:56.580 the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.

00:01:00.920 The simultaneous sip. Go.

00:01:03.040 I'm hearing from more and more people the following comment. And I want to see if any

00:01:17.800 of you have had this experience. Apparently there have been a lot of people who were actually

00:01:23.380 afraid of what would happen to the world under a President Trump. And a number of people have

00:01:31.080 messaged me, and you know, quite a bit over the last few years, to say that they were in a state

00:01:39.600 of panic until they heard me talking about what was going on, and then they felt calm. Somebody here

00:01:47.080 just said they listened to me before they go to sleep. So apparently there's something about

00:01:52.440 listening to me talk about the world that makes people less anxious.

00:01:58.980 Now, I'm going to give you a little preview of something coming up. I don't think I'm going

00:02:06.660 to do it today because I'm not quite ready. But I've developed a brain hack that at least

00:02:15.040 one person has reported completely eliminated anxiety. If you can imagine that. Imagine somebody

00:02:23.420 having anxiety every day, not just about politics, but more of a generalized one. And that there was

00:02:29.540 something I said that reframed the world that just eliminated it. I heard that yesterday. Now, I think I

00:02:39.700 know why. In other words, the reframe was very specifically designed to accomplish a brain hack.

00:02:47.720 I'm surprised it worked. But I'm going to test it out with any of you. But that's coming up. That won't be

00:02:55.440 today. So look for that. All right, let's talk about what's happening. On this question of Warren and

00:03:03.180 Sanders, and who said what in their private conversation? Did he say that a woman can't win the presidency? Or

00:03:11.620 did he just say it would be an extra challenge? Warren says he said woman can't win. He says he didn't.

00:03:17.720 So author James Ponywazik tweeted, and this very much agrees with what I said. He said a plausible

00:03:27.160 scenario is they meet, both want to run. So that part we know is true. And then James says he's like,

00:03:36.600 quote, Trump is this meaning, meaning Bernie would say, Trump is a sexist, and he will use this against 0.97

00:03:44.440 a woman. She, meaning Warren, infers reasonably, he's telling me a woman can't win. So she recalls

00:03:54.360 the disagreement. He insists he didn't literally say a woman can't win. Now that's pretty much exactly

00:04:00.900 what I think is the most likely explanation of what happened, which is that he was sort of trying to

00:04:06.920 discourage her, saying she had an extra challenge that he wouldn't have. But it was more to maybe,

00:04:13.400 you know, clear the channel, so he didn't have to compete against somebody who was basically

00:04:18.120 using his policies. And then she interpreted that as a woman can't win, turning it into an absolute, 1.00

00:04:25.880 which is the most common thing you've ever seen in every human interaction. Somebody will say,

00:04:31.180 well, this is difficult. And the other person will say, why are you saying it's impossible?

00:04:36.860 And the first person says, I didn't say that. I just said it would be hard.

00:04:41.780 So here's the good part. Maggie Haberman, you all know Maggie Haberman. She, uh, she jumped in 0.67

00:04:50.020 with a comment on Twitter. And she said to James, why is the automatic assumption that her version is

00:04:56.820 wrong? Just curious, which is actually a fun question because in his construction, um, it assumes

00:05:05.420 that she, that Warren is the one who went away with the wrong impression. But what's interesting is

00:05:11.800 the way she worded it. So Maggie says, why is the automatic assumption that her version is wrong?

00:05:19.460 Where have you seen something like that before? An automatic assumption.

00:05:24.920 That sounds a little like impulsiveness. Maybe a little recklessness. Why is it that when

00:05:34.940 Democrats look at anybody who supports the president, they believe that their brains are not functioning

00:05:43.200 like ordinary brains? And that, and that James, who is a, you know, a well-known author,

00:05:50.760 obviously smart guy, why would it be on this one topic that instead of thinking through why he thought

00:05:59.760 what he thought, his assumption was automatic? Because there's nothing he said that would suggest

00:06:07.260 that he came to an automatic assumption. And other people jumped into the comments. Uh, I, I jumped in too,

00:06:16.340 and I asked Maggie, why assume it's automatic? Why would you assume that about anybody? Why would you

00:06:24.620 assume that anybody made an impulsive decision? Why would you assume that anybody made an automatic

00:06:30.860 decision? There's no evidence of that. I only know people who think about things and then make decisions.

00:06:38.620 I've never heard of this automatic impulsive thing. Why is it that Democrats think that Republicans

00:06:46.780 don't have normal functioning brains that work the way everybody else does? You think of stuff and then

00:06:53.600 you make a decision. Who makes decisions without the thinking part? It's not really a thing. I mean,

00:07:00.300 we do make, uh, unconscious decisions, you know, subconscious, we're influenced by our biases and

00:07:05.420 all that, but it's never automatic. So this prompted, um, one of my tweets in which I was wondering,

00:07:16.820 um, so this is what I said, thanks to the miracle of cognitive dissonance, Democrats can only explain

00:07:24.080 what they see in politics by believing that, uh, Trump has been, quote, lucky for several decades in

00:07:31.280 a row, because you'd have to believe that if you believe that it's not a skill, you'd have to believe

00:07:37.720 that for several decades, let's say starting from the time he, he recovered from bankruptcy. Now,

00:07:44.940 recovering from bankruptcy is not easy. He probably owed more than just about anybody in the world

00:07:51.360 owed anybody and somehow recovered. And so if you start from that point and say, let's, let's just

00:07:57.500 start measuring from that point because you've got a long, a few decades, right? During those few

00:08:04.700 decades, he had hugely successful television show, ran for president successfully with no experience

00:08:10.620 and has a whole string of successes as president. You'd have to kind of believe that decades of consistent,

00:08:19.880 pretty consistent, you know, he had some losses, Trump university didn't go well, but in his portfolio,

00:08:25.900 it was very successful. So you'd have to assume that, um, he was lucky for decades and that he's operating

00:08:36.000 on impulsiveness alone, that there's no thinking. It's just weird criminal impulsiveness that ended up

00:08:44.280 working perfectly for decades in a row. And, and they, how do you explain your environment that way?

00:08:53.940 Now compare that to the alternate explanation. Uh, I'm famous for offering the alternate explanation

00:09:01.220 of Trump and it goes like this. He has unique skills. That's it. That's the whole explanation.

00:09:10.080 There's, there's, there's a person who has a unique skillset that lets him do things that other people

00:09:17.480 can't or won't do. And that would explain why he's been successful for decades and has reached

00:09:23.620 literally the top of the success pile in the world. I mean, what is more successful than becoming

00:09:31.340 president of the United States without any practice being a politician? I don't think there's anything

00:09:37.020 more successful. That's sort of it. You're a billionaire. You're married to a supermodel.

00:09:45.240 You're just became the president of the United States. Was it all luck? How do you keep that going

00:09:52.520 after you see him signing trade deals? You see him defeating ISIS, nominating judges like crazy. 0.76

00:09:58.520 The economy is going well. Uh, Iran seems to be tamed at the moment. North Korea seems to like 1.00

00:10:06.080 President Trump and they're not exactly pointing their weapons in our direction. Um, at least

00:10:12.080 not the way they were in the past. How do you, how do you conceive of your world that it was

00:10:18.080 all luck? Anyway, one of those theories is bad shit crazy. The other one is not. Um, speaking 0.99

00:10:27.240 of mild curse words, um, I tweeted at YouTube just using their public Twitter account and mentioned

00:10:38.440 that I get demonetized every day for no good reason. YouTube, to my surprise, tweeted back and said they'd

00:10:46.420 look into it. Now, who, who they is, is whoever's operating their social media, Twitter site for YouTube. So that

00:10:55.240 doesn't mean that they have the power to look into it, but whoever it was that they look into it

00:11:00.240 and suggested that perhaps it's because my content, uh, falls into the category of sensitive stuff

00:11:07.400 that advertisers are a little wary of. Now, um, I'm willing to accept that explanation.

00:11:16.520 It's possible that there's nothing going on except I talk about the news and they've decided that the

00:11:22.460 news is a sensitive category that advertisers may be less inclined to be associated with.

00:11:28.580 Could be, but it's easy to demonstrate that. So I tweeted back and said, essentially, I'm paraphrasing

00:11:35.340 that I'd accept that as a reasonable explanation of what's going on with no other explanation

00:11:40.900 under this condition that everybody else who is talking about the headlines. And that's all I talk

00:11:48.560 about. I literally look at CNN. I look at Fox news. I look at the other headlines and I just talk

00:11:55.500 about the headlines. I put my opinion on it, but it's not like I'm dangerous. There's nothing

00:12:03.440 dangerous that I'm doing, uh, other than a few curse words now and then. And I don't see people

00:12:09.340 being demonetized for a few curse words now and then. So that's my challenge to the YouTube,

00:12:17.240 Twitter, um, account is, can you, can you confirm or deny that everybody who talks about the headlines

00:12:27.100 is demonetized, but you'd also have to ask your, this question, why is it always reversed as in

00:12:35.720 always reversed? Now, when I say always, I don't really mean a hundred percent. A few of them have

00:12:41.440 not been reversed, but it's, it's rare, but the ones that were not reversed weren't really any

00:12:47.680 different than the ones that were. So they look more like mistakes than some kind of a decision.

00:12:53.540 So YouTube has now in public engaged me on the question of whether I'm being treated unfairly

00:13:01.780 compared to other people who have similar talking about the headlines content. Um, so far,

00:13:09.640 they have not responded as of the last time I checked, but that doesn't mean they won't

00:13:13.900 respond. So we'll be, we'll be watching that. Somebody says, why does YouTube run ads on my

00:13:21.460 channel? Well, uh, after a day, they do get re monetized. So we appeal it manually and we say,

00:13:29.960 this doesn't look like a fair decision to demonetize, but it takes a day or so to re monetize

00:13:36.820 and then ads will run. Now, some people have reported, I haven't checked it for myself.

00:13:42.400 Um, I don't think I can check on my account. I'd have to be not logged in, I guess, because I,

00:13:48.060 um, I pay, so I don't see ads, but if I, if I log in, I would see what some people are reporting

00:13:54.640 that the ads are running from the first day. So why don't you do this for me? Um, I'm sure that

00:14:01.780 today I'll be demonetized as always. Uh, but see if any ads run from the first few hours,

00:14:08.600 because if you see a newish post on YouTube and the ads are running, I'm, I'm, I'm not getting

00:14:15.600 paid for that as far as I know. I could be wrong. Maybe they put it in some kind of an escrow until

00:14:21.580 they, until they work out the demonetization. I don't know. Questions. All right, let's talk

00:14:27.920 about some other stuff. Uh, I tweeted that I'm kind of looking forward to, um, and maybe this is

00:14:35.660 just me, but I'm hoping that we have another impeachment after this one fails because stocks

00:14:42.120 do really good under impeachments. So I'm making a lot of money on this impeachment. Let me check

00:14:47.800 the stocks today. Well, it looks like stocks are up again today. Pretty, pretty nicely. Um,

00:14:57.460 and the longer that the, and even, uh, Bitcoin is up, a lot of stuff is up. So if we could get maybe

00:15:08.300 one more of these impeachments, maybe two more this year, I know they take a long time, but if we get

00:15:14.620 this one done quickly, I think we'll have, uh, time to get maybe two more in just for economic

00:15:22.340 reasons, because apparently it's just great for the stock market, but that's not the only thing

00:15:26.800 it's good for. And this is the funny part. Um, as pundits have, uh, pointed out, president Trump is

00:15:36.960 counter-programming the impeachment by trying to get a lot of accomplishments and doing a lot of

00:15:42.600 things that will take your attention away from the impeachment theater to his accomplishments.

00:15:50.640 Meaning that he's had one of the best months a president has ever had. Is it my imagination

00:15:57.260 that the past 30 days, president Trump has accomplished more than, more than what? Every

00:16:05.960 president ever in the history of presidents. I mean, I'm no historian, but I'd be real surprised

00:16:12.420 if anybody's ever had a better 30 days of presidency. I mean, this is pretty good stuff. You know,

00:16:18.940 two major trade deals took out, took out the top, um, terrorist in the region. Economy is just

00:16:27.740 screaming. Stock market is at a new high. I mean, seriously, has any president had a better 30 days

00:16:37.100 than this one? So the weird thing about it, and I just want to put this thought in your head.

00:16:44.320 Much is made of the president's personality, his character. And some of the complaints you could

00:16:52.680 say to yourself, even if you're a big supporter, you could say to yourself, ah, I can see that.

00:16:57.920 You know, I can see why you don't like that. It doesn't bother me personally. Yeah, but I can see

00:17:02.380 why you don't like that. So there are definitely parts of the president's personality which reasonable

00:17:07.680 people can disagree with. Some say, no big deal, he's just joking. Some say it offends you. You're

00:17:13.700 all entitled to your opinion. But here's one thing I think we all agree on in terms of his personality.

00:17:21.360 personality. He is one competitive mofo. If he's in a contest, and there's going to be a winner and 0.97

00:17:30.280 the loser, you're going to watch his game elevate. Does anybody disagree with that, by the way? Is it

00:17:38.080 not true that he said it directly? He thrives in tough competition. He just, he performs better when the

00:17:47.860 pressure's on. Is this president performing better because of impeachment? Risk of impeachment,

00:17:55.400 impeachment, the threat of impeachment, all of that. Do you think that that makes the president

00:18:00.380 perform better than he might have otherwise? I think maybe. I'm not sure. It would be hard to

00:18:09.520 measure it because you don't have the, you don't have the, you know, the test case to measure it

00:18:14.120 against. So you can never be sure. But if you had a choice of putting pressure on Trump, meaning

00:18:23.220 impeachment, to cause him to compete at his highest level, or let's say that, let's say the

00:18:30.560 alternative. Let's say the Democrats decided they liked Trump tomorrow, and everybody says, you know, let's

00:18:36.840 just see how it goes. Looks like he's doing pretty well. How well would the president perform

00:18:42.720 if the Democrats just started agreeing with him? Say, you know, hey, you're doing okay. You know,

00:18:49.320 just do some more of what you're doing. We'll, we'll, we'll talk about it. We'll debate you when

00:18:53.120 we disagree, of course. We'll vote against you if we need to, you know, but you know, you're doing

00:18:58.180 okay. Keep going. I don't know if he would do as well, because there's something about this that is

00:19:05.320 focusing his competitive impulses. And again, I, I'm not in his brain, so I can't read his mind.

00:19:12.640 We're speculating here, pure speculation. But I think we're seeing him perform amazingly well. He's

00:19:22.340 probably putting a lot of energy into it, and he's going to focus on accomplishments, and it's kind of

00:19:27.240 fun to watch. So stock market goes up. Trump stays in office. We are severely entertained.

00:19:37.680 He gets all these accomplishments because he's focusing to try to counter program. What are we

00:19:43.740 losing? Didn't we find completely accidentally, did we not find the very best place to be? I mean,

00:19:53.420 nobody planned it, but somehow we drifted into the best place you could be. Speaking of entertaining,

00:20:02.860 let me find the quote by Mitch. Did you see Mitch McConnell's quote? Which I'll find here in my notes.

00:20:15.940 Oh, Mitch McConnell said, quote, nothing says seriousness and sobriety,

00:20:22.540 Mitch McConnell equipped, like handing out souvenirs.

00:20:28.700 The second part of his sentence he should have left out, as though this were a happy bill signing

00:20:33.640 instead of the gravest process in our Constitution. If Mitch had just stopped halfway through that

00:20:40.280 sentence, it would have been one of the funniest quotes ever. He should have just said,

00:20:44.640 nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs.

00:20:51.700 You should have just stopped. It was so close to being one for the ages, you know, like the most

00:20:59.580 quotable thing you've seen all year. But then he added, you know, he had to gild the lily bit as though

00:21:05.840 there was a happy bill signing instead of the gravest process in our Constitution. The second part was

00:21:10.500 assumed. So, you know, don't, don't ruin your perfect first part of a sentence with that, you know,

00:21:19.020 cumbersome second part. But Mitch, on the entertainment scale, A plus. Because we're in here for the fun.

00:21:29.200 I don't know anybody who's watching impeachment because they don't know how it's going to end.

00:21:33.300 And when you went to the movie Titanic, which I rate as the worst movie of all time, by the way,

00:21:39.520 worst movie of all time, Titanic. But I will acknowledge that a lot of people liked it.

00:21:44.680 They had a different opinion than me. When you went to Titanic, you knew how it ended, right?

00:21:53.300 You knew, you knew Titanic probably didn't win in the end. But you still went because you liked the

00:22:01.220 entertainment until then. So the impeachment process feels like that. We're all being

00:22:07.680 entertained. But it doesn't matter. We know how it ends. So there's no mystery.

00:22:14.580 Speaking of how it ends, Reince Priebus had some interesting thoughts, which I'll add to.

00:22:23.700 And he said on one of the shows, he said, sometimes the best defense is the so what defense.

00:22:29.060 You just say, well, what if everything you say is true? We're not even going to ask questions about

00:22:35.760 it's true. What if it's all true? What if everything the Democrats are saying is true?

00:22:40.880 Let's vote. Because none of it's impeachable. And I thought, that's a pretty good defense.

00:22:48.380 A good defense would be, might be true, might not be true, but you can assume it's all true. We don't

00:22:54.480 even need any witnesses. We'll just take your word for it. Now let's vote. Nope, nothing there.

00:23:03.960 Now, Reince also suggested that it was, that he liked the witness reciprocity idea. This is

00:23:10.940 Ted Cruz's idea that if you know, you get one witness, we get one witness, you get two, we get

00:23:16.060 two, um, that sort of thing. And that's one way to go. Sure. But isn't the complaint that the, uh,

00:23:26.100 the Republicans didn't get their witnesses during the house because the house was in charge

00:23:31.180 and the Republicans complained we didn't get to have all of our witnesses. Wouldn't it be

00:23:38.080 fair enough? I'm not suggesting this, but wouldn't it be fair for Mitch McConnell to say, Hey, I've got an

00:23:46.040 idea. Republicans will have witnesses and Democrats won't. He could do that, right? Couldn't he just say,

00:23:54.780 we'll, we'll just, uh, have the witnesses in the Senate that we wanted to have in the house,

00:24:00.520 but we didn't get. So we'll just be completing that process. Now there's no way he'll do that,

00:24:06.560 but it's funny to think he could. I've got a better suggestion. You're ready.

00:24:14.900 Here's a suggestion that again, they won't do, but it would be really funny. And that's why I like it.

00:24:23.620 And the suggestion goes like this to say, we're going to bring in witnesses, but we're going to do

00:24:29.420 them in a certain order because we don't want to bring in infinite witnesses and you keep adding them

00:24:35.180 and we just keep going with witnesses. So we're going to do them in a rational order. Here's the

00:24:40.800 rational order. The entire case against Trump rests on, wait for it, rests on this question.

00:24:50.460 Was there a legitimate United States interest in asking about Biden and Borizna? So we're going to

00:24:58.300 bring in witnesses to only ask that question. We'll bring in some Democrats, we'll bring in some

00:25:04.560 Republicans, and we'll only ask that question. Was this a legitimate interest of the United States

00:25:10.780 to look into it? Now we already know because even the Democrats' top lawyer said, yeah, that's worth

00:25:18.060 looking into. There you go. Then you bring in a Republican. I think I mistakenly called

00:25:24.700 Turley and Dershowitz Republicans when I was talking about this yesterday. They're both Democrats.

00:25:34.060 Even better, bring in Turley, bring in Dershowitz, three Democrat lawyers, experts in the Constitution,

00:25:43.300 and say, what do you think? Did this look like a legitimate thing for the United States to be looking

00:25:52.100 into? All three Democrats will say yes. I'm pretty sure. Once they say yes, you're done.

00:26:02.840 You don't need to look into any details of how the president did it because nobody is arguing

00:26:09.080 that the president has to do things the way you want him to do it. That's not part of the debate.

00:26:16.040 Everybody accepts that once the president's in office, the president can do everything that's

00:26:22.080 legal as long as it's a reasonable attempt to get stuff done. So if I were Mitch McConnell,

00:26:30.740 I'd say, let's find out the important question first. We will take witnesses for just that question.

00:26:37.020 If that question says, if the answer to that is that the witnesses say, you know, it's a mixed bag.

00:26:45.320 We don't think that was worth looking into. Well, then you can open it up to the second question,

00:26:50.920 which is the details of what the president was doing. Was it for his own personal use, etc.? But

00:26:58.280 if you can determine that the president thought or any reasonable observer thinks that looking into

00:27:06.840 the Biden-BRISMA thing is legitimate for the United States, you're done. You don't need witnesses

00:27:14.040 to talk about the stuff that doesn't matter. If it was good for the United States, you're done.

00:27:22.860 This is the thing that the Republicans have gotten wrong consistently since the start. That's it.

00:27:28.280 Now, what is the argument that this is worth, that the United States has an interest in looking into

00:27:33.880 it? Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me? Biden is still leading in the polls to be the next

00:27:42.720 president of the United States. And there's a very strong suggestion that Ukraine or somebody over

00:27:50.240 there might know a little bit too much about what Hunter was doing, and it might reflect on the

00:27:57.620 president. Is there any way, could any reasonable observer think it's not worth knowing if there's

00:28:05.060 any problem there? I mean, on the surface, it certainly looks like something you're going to

00:28:10.300 look into. All right, that's the way I'd go. If it turns out that they need to dig into the

00:28:19.240 details, we've got this interesting thing that Lev Parnes said, that loose associate of, what's his name,

00:28:32.120 Giuliani, Rudy Giuliani, who's talking and saying stuff to Rachel Maddow and to Anderson Cooper. Now,

00:28:40.920 as Joel Pollack pointed out in an opinion piece in Breitbart, that Lev said something interesting,

00:28:49.560 Parnes said something interesting to Anderson Cooper. And he said that the reason that there was a push

00:28:59.480 for Ukraine to announce an investigation was because, according to Lev Parnes, no one trusted Ukraine to

00:29:09.480 conduct an investigation. No one trusted Ukraine to do an investigation. If you look at the implication

00:29:19.520 of that, it means that the ordinary way you would approach this, nobody believed would work.

00:29:27.080 The ordinary way would be, hey, have the FBI talk to your justice people, put together an

00:29:34.760 investigation, you know, look into it. And here, the witness is coming forward, he was part of all

00:29:42.080 this, and he says, no one believed that would work. So now you have the answer, or at least, you know,

00:29:49.240 the most credible explanation of why it was not done a different way. Because the different way,

00:29:55.100 nobody believed it would work. So what way did they take? If you get somebody a little bit

00:30:01.500 pregnant, I like to use that analogy, there's a good chance that they will continue to be pregnant. 1.00

00:30:09.820 Let's not talk about abortion, because it ruins my analogy. So in business, that's a common

00:30:17.340 common phrase, we got somebody a little bit pregnant. I am dealing with now, a vendor in my life, who 1.00

00:30:27.260 shall remain nameless, who got me a little bit pregnant. In other words, there's somebody who I

00:30:32.380 gave a large amount of money to do a job. And now it turns out that that job will not be done

00:30:39.100 for months when it should have been done in one month. Now, what can I do? Turns out that in this

00:30:46.320 specific situation, it doesn't matter. No, it doesn't have anything to do with WenHub. It's in my personal

00:30:52.340 life. It turns out that it would be really impractical for me to fire them at this point,

00:30:59.880 because they've done half the work. So I have no choice. I've just got to wait a few months,

00:31:05.800 because I just don't have an option that's economical and sensible. So this vendor got me

00:31:13.240 a little bit pregnant. Meaning now that they've started, now that I've paid, I can't really back

00:31:18.960 out. Now they own me. They own me. I kind of got to do what they need. Now, I don't want to dwell on

00:31:27.800 that. The point is that it would be a perfectly reasonable thing to do to try to get Ukraine

00:31:35.660 to announce it, because the announcement gives you a little bit of pregnancy. In other words,

00:31:41.880 if they've announced it, they're going to have to explain later why they're not doing anything about

00:31:45.740 it, because they announced it. So it would put them in a position where they were liars,

00:31:50.120 the government that is, of Ukraine, if they don't do something. Likewise, the underlings who might not

00:31:56.880 be inspired to do anything for the United States would see their boss, the president, saying,

00:32:02.640 we're going to do this investigation. And it would be reasonable to expect that then they would say,

00:32:07.540 oh, I guess that's what we're doing. So it seems to me that Lev Parnes has just explained away the

00:32:16.540 whole problem. Explained away the whole problem. At least that's one interpretation of it. Now,

00:32:24.900 that's an opinion. We don't know what was in his mind. But if you're looking for a reason that they

00:32:31.620 would ask for a public statement, instead of focusing on the investigation itself, now we have

00:32:38.840 it. They didn't think the investigation was even possible. But if they get them a little bit pregnant, 0.99

00:32:44.720 now this is the part that's speculation, is that what they were thinking? Were they completely happy

00:32:49.640 to walk away with just an announcement? I don't think so. If you were in Rudy's shoes,

00:32:56.720 would you say to yourself, if I get the announcement, I'm done? I don't need anything else? No. You would,

00:33:03.600 of course, want the announcement plus the investigation. Of course. All right. Apparently,

00:33:13.940 there were 11, I think 11 of our troops were actually injured, or at least they're being

00:33:20.500 checked out for concussions based on the Iranian missile attack on the base in Iraq. And we're

00:33:26.920 finding that out now. And of course, the big question will be, why are we finding this out now?

00:33:31.720 Who is lying to us? But it looks like more of an abundance of caution and a judgment call,

00:33:37.380 meaning that none of these people appeared to be injured in the physical way that you can see.

00:33:47.440 So the early reports were nobody injured. But apparently, when you're in the vicinity of these

00:33:54.520 major missile bomb attacks, it's pretty common to get concussions from just the blast force. And so

00:34:02.680 there's an abundance of caution. Some people they're having checked out to see if they, you know,

00:34:08.740 so we don't know how bad it is. Now, here's the thing. I think we're all better off that we didn't

00:34:15.000 know this on day one. Somebody says, so he lied. No, that's not the reporting. So the reporting is not

00:34:22.700 that the president or even the commanders in our forces in Iraq, there's no reporting that they knew

00:34:31.040 on day one that these people would need follow-up care. It was a judgment call that they'd probably

00:34:38.240 just shake it off or you didn't know if they'd shake it off or it's a wait and see. So it's a little

00:34:43.500 bit of a gray area about, you know, when you could actually know somebody was injured because you

00:34:49.520 can't tell. You can't tell by looking at them. But concussions are pretty, pretty nasty things. You

00:34:56.280 know, a concussion is a serious, serious problem sometimes. Depends on the severity. If we'd known

00:35:04.180 this on day one, would our public just demand a military attack? I'm kind of glad we didn't know

00:35:13.600 this. This is one of those weird cases where we're probably just better off we didn't know. I mean,

00:35:19.920 I have a lot of concern about these troops because concussions are a big deal. But I'm glad we didn't

00:35:27.700 know because I think we took the right path. Speaking of Iran, Khomeini did a rare appearance in which he

00:35:34.780 did the big prayer that they do periodically and a speech and referred to the president and his 0.96

00:35:43.600 supporters as, in the government anyway, as American clowns. And he went on to say that them pretending 0.97

00:35:52.000 to support the Iranian nation, but they want to stick a poison dagger into its back. Which raises an

00:35:59.400 interesting question. What is the translation from Farsi to clown? Does clown mean the same thing

00:36:09.620 in Iran? Does it? Does a clown, do, do, do Iranians have clowns? In Islam, is there such a thing as a 0.96

00:36:20.340 clown? Because it might not mean the same thing because he said that they're clowns, but they would 0.97

00:36:25.500 be using a poison dagger to stab you in the back. That's one scary clown. Now, it also seems a little 1.00

00:36:32.380 bit of overkill. Do you need a poison dagger if you're stabbing somebody in the heart? I say no. 0.94

00:36:38.220 No. A stab in the heart probably gets it done. But a poison dagger? That is some kind of clown.

00:36:45.260 So, do you really need a venomous dagger? I don't know. If I hired a clown and he showed up with a 0.99

00:36:53.540 venomous dagger, I would fire that clown. So, I think clown means something different. 0.99

00:36:59.180 But it's interesting that the supreme leader had to call out the fact that America, at least its 0.64

00:37:09.000 government and some of its people, we keep saying that we're standing with the Iranian people. That's

00:37:14.900 what the president said in a tweet. And he said, they lie. If you are standing with the Iranian people,

00:37:20.720 it is only to stab them in the heart with your venomous daggers. And I'm thinking, I think Trump 0.99

00:37:28.580 wins on this. Because if the supreme leader is trying to explain why we keep acting friendly to

00:37:36.760 their population, that's the conversation we want him to have to explain. Because you want the

00:37:43.740 Iranians to say, what do you mean the United States says it stands with the population of Iran? Did he

00:37:49.940 actually say that? I hadn't heard that because I don't have the internet. But now I've heard it because

00:37:54.520 the supreme leader had to defend it. I think the supreme leader just fell for the trick that

00:38:00.700 Democrats have been falling for for three years, which is they're talking about the topic that Trump

00:38:07.440 wants them to talk about. What topic would Trump most want the Ayatollah to have to talk about with

00:38:13.760 his own public? The fact that the United States says unambiguously, we side with the population of

00:38:20.680 Iran. Let's talk about that some more. Let's defend how that's not true. And he had to come up with this 0.51

00:38:28.300 weird venomous dagger clown to argue that it's not true. He didn't even have a reason. He had an

00:38:35.200 analogy. That's it. How about giving us a reason? Not an analogy, a reason. All right. What else we got

00:38:45.920 going on here? So if you didn't hear, Michael Schellenberger testified in front of Congress,

00:38:56.240 at least one part of Congress, and used the phrase Green Nuclear Deal. Now, congratulations to Mark 0.80

00:39:06.640 Schneider, who may be watching this right now, for coming up with Green Nuclear Deal as a great way to 0.84

00:39:16.120 package the idea of nuclear being the best way to address climate change. And it's now made its way to

00:39:25.380 Congress. So it's now a headline. It's something that Congress has seen. It has framed it in their

00:39:31.520 minds a little bit differently. And congratulations to all of you, because I know that, you know, I try

00:39:39.640 to boost both of these people as much as possible, Michael Schellenberger and Mark Schneider. But I can't do

00:39:47.420 that alone, of course, without all of you who follow me on Twitter. So you've done the same. And look what

00:39:55.320 you did. Look what you did. Now, I've been telling you for a long time that our republic has been replaced

00:40:02.920 by some kind of a social media model, where the government can't really do what social media won't

00:40:10.700 allow them to do if there's too much of a response on social media. So we're no longer a republic where they

00:40:16.340 just go off and make decisions. They really have to watch social media and respond. And here you saw

00:40:22.860 a perfect example. People with good ideas bubble those good ideas up until some people with blue

00:40:30.160 check marks, including me, lots of other people, too, were also part of this. But people with the blue

00:40:36.040 check marks said, huh, look, there's some good ideas from people who do not have blue check marks.

00:40:40.740 I will boost those ideas. I boost them. Some other other people boost them. And next thing

00:40:47.520 you know, there's a conversation in front of Congress. Perfect example of what the government

00:40:56.360 has evolved into for good, I think. It's positive.

00:40:59.260 Let me talk about the question of betting on climate change. A lot of people have said

00:41:10.400 two things. One, why are the insurance companies acting as though climate change is not a risk?

00:41:17.120 You hear that all the time, right? The people who think climate change is not a big problem

00:41:21.760 say, if it were a big problem, would it not be reflected in our insurance rates for people

00:41:29.060 who have property on the coast? Turns out, if you do a little googling on this question,

00:41:36.580 the insurance regulators and companies are really, really concerned about this. So it's

00:41:43.340 one of the biggest issues in the insurance business is that there might be bankruptcy level

00:41:50.960 risk from climate change. So we are definitely at the point where, for example,

00:41:59.060 coal plants are having a tough time getting insurance. So more companies are getting out of

00:42:06.740 the business of insuring coal companies. Somehow, because of climate risk, I don't know if that

00:42:12.320 means the coal companies are likely to be sued. I'm not sure exactly why they're getting out of that

00:42:19.680 business. But they are. And if they keep getting out of that business, you can't have a coal plant. 0.97

00:42:24.860 Because if you can't get insurance, you can't have a business, at least not a business of that scale.

00:42:31.760 So it could be that the insurance companies will put coal on a business just by not insuring. But

00:42:39.660 here's the point I wanted to get to. If you're wondering how can you make money by being so right,

00:42:45.480 in your opinion, that climate change is not a risk, here's a way to bet on it.

00:42:50.400 There are index funds called spiders, slight difference, but let's call it an index fund,

00:42:58.960 of insurance companies. You can find a basket of insurance companies that are collected for you

00:43:05.700 in a fund called a spider. Here's one example. This is not a financial recommendation. I'm only

00:43:12.820 talking about the concept of investing. I'm not telling you you should invest in this.

00:43:16.960 It's called KBW insurance. It's a low-fee insurance fund. If you look at the growth of that fund,

00:43:28.200 it's been pretty much consistently up since 2009. 2009, it took a dip to like $5, but it's up to $35.

00:43:37.080 So this group of insurance companies is seven times higher in the stock price than it was at the 2009 dip.

00:43:48.480 If you think climate change is not an issue, that would be a good way to bet. Because in theory,

00:44:00.500 you should be able to get these insurance companies relatively cheap because there will be so many

00:44:05.380 other people who think they're going to go out of business because of climate change.

00:44:12.300 So it turns out that there is a pretty clean bet you could make, which is that insurance companies are

00:44:21.920 already underpriced because they don't have that real risk of climate change. But if you believe

00:44:27.960 the other way, well, I suppose you could bet that it's going down. So there's actually a market for

00:44:34.760 that. And at the moment, it looks like the market is betting that insurance companies will be fine.

00:44:42.020 But it looks like we're, based on just the chatter you see when you Google insurance companies and

00:44:49.580 climate change, it looks like that's right on the edge of maybe changing. So I think it's possible

00:44:57.180 that insurance companies and this index are going to drop like a rock in the next five years.

00:45:05.580 So you could wait for the dip. Again, I'm not giving you financial advice. I'm talking about the

00:45:11.880 concept of betting on climate change. I'm not telling you you should do it. I'm just saying it's doable.

00:45:19.640 So wait for a big drop in climate in insurance companies as everybody panics. I'm sure that will come.

00:45:26.760 Then if you believe there's no real risk, jump in. But not advice. Just something that can be done.

00:45:32.960 All right. If you believe that, you should short the stock, some people say. That is correct.

00:45:45.940 All right. So I think that's all we got. Let me give you an update on my studio situation,

00:45:53.180 because I think it's a fun concept. For the last few years, I've been trying to upgrade

00:46:00.460 the quality of this, what you're watching. Try to get a bigger, bigger attention, etc. I have spent

00:46:10.200 maybe 30 or 40 thousand dollars trying to do it so far. So far, for two years and 30 or 40 thousand

00:46:21.440 dollars of effort, nothing I've done has been as good as sitting in front of my iPad with a cheap

00:46:29.500 little $20 clip-on lavalier sitting at my desk. Now, if I could find something that's better than

00:46:36.960 that, I'm going to do it. Now, I put another $9,000 into it this week. I bought a box from

00:46:43.880 Telestream, a company that would allow me to, in theory, live stream to a number of different

00:46:50.140 platforms at the same time. I have tried OBS software. I've tried Wirecast software, just

00:46:59.300 the software version. This is the hardware version that has Wirecast built in. If you

00:47:04.560 do podcasting, you've heard of Wirecast. So it's the software that allows you to stream to

00:47:09.540 different platforms. In theory, the hardware will solve my problems that I couldn't solve

00:47:15.100 every other way. But I've been wrong every time. So I'll let you know. So I'm going to

00:47:22.840 be working on that over the weekend.

00:47:26.260 The lavalier I'm using is just something I bought off of Amazon.com. I just bought whatever

00:47:33.660 one had a high rating. They're very cheap. So you're talking about, you know, $16 or $20.

00:47:41.460 Apparently, the professional one isn't that much better.

00:47:44.720 Somebody says it's your room that needs more tuning. Oh, have you had this problem with

00:47:51.740 Amazon? Do you buy things on Amazon that end up being the miniature of the thing you thought

00:47:57.560 you were buying? So a few weeks ago, I bought some bins, you know, those big plastic bins

00:48:02.540 for storage. I thought, I'm going to get some big plastic bins and put stuff in them. And

00:48:07.300 the plastic bins show up and they're only this big. I didn't even know anybody made plastic

00:48:12.900 bins that are only this big. I ended up with the miniatures because I looked at the pictures.

00:48:18.120 I didn't even look at the specs. I didn't even know anybody made a little plastic bin that

00:48:22.460 looked like a big plastic bin, but it's only this big. And then the other day, I bought

00:48:27.020 a microphone screen. It's a cushioned screen that sits around your microphone to shield it

00:48:35.660 from noise coming from the backside. So I buy this screen to put on my desk and I'm looking

00:48:42.680 and I'm thinking, well, obviously, you know, the thing's probably this big. And I get it.

00:48:46.580 It's like only this big. It's a miniature. So I keep buying miniatures because I don't

00:48:52.280 check the sizes of stuff. Anyway, don't be like me. All right. I told you I would teach

00:48:59.140 you a method for solving your anxiety. I'm going to do that as soon as I've got a little

00:49:05.300 bit more crispness on that. And I will do that at a different time. All right. That's all for now.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - January 17, 2020

Episode 790 Scott Adams： Shampeachment Entertainment, Iran's Scary Clowns

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