Episode 790 Scott Adams： Shampeachment Entertainment, Iran's Scary Clowns
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Summary
Sen. Elizabeth Warren says Bernie Sanders said that a woman can t win the 2020 Democratic primary, but what actually happened in their private conversation? And why does that seem to match up with what she says on the surface? Plus, a brain hack that can make you less anxious.
Transcript
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Hey everybody! I'm glad you found me this morning. Wow, what fun we have today. Once again,
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our news is full of nothing but happy things. Well, that's not 100% true.
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But most of the news is good news. And in order to enjoy it, in order to enjoy it to its fullest,
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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,
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a canteen jug or a flask, a vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid.
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I think you know I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure,
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the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
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I'm hearing from more and more people the following comment. And I want to see if any
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of you have had this experience. Apparently there have been a lot of people who were actually
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afraid of what would happen to the world under a President Trump. And a number of people have
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messaged me, and you know, quite a bit over the last few years, to say that they were in a state
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of panic until they heard me talking about what was going on, and then they felt calm. Somebody here
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just said they listened to me before they go to sleep. So apparently there's something about
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listening to me talk about the world that makes people less anxious.
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Now, I'm going to give you a little preview of something coming up. I don't think I'm going
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to do it today because I'm not quite ready. But I've developed a brain hack that at least
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one person has reported completely eliminated anxiety. If you can imagine that. Imagine somebody
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having anxiety every day, not just about politics, but more of a generalized one. And that there was
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something I said that reframed the world that just eliminated it. I heard that yesterday. Now, I think I
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know why. In other words, the reframe was very specifically designed to accomplish a brain hack.
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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
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today. So look for that. All right, let's talk about what's happening. On this question of Warren and
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Sanders, and who said what in their private conversation? Did he say that a woman can't win the presidency? Or
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did he just say it would be an extra challenge? Warren says he said woman can't win. He says he didn't.
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So author James Ponywazik tweeted, and this very much agrees with what I said. He said a plausible
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scenario is they meet, both want to run. So that part we know is true. And then James says he's like,
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quote, Trump is this meaning, meaning Bernie would say, Trump is a sexist, and he will use this against
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a woman. She, meaning Warren, infers reasonably, he's telling me a woman can't win. So she recalls
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the disagreement. He insists he didn't literally say a woman can't win. Now that's pretty much exactly
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what I think is the most likely explanation of what happened, which is that he was sort of trying to
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discourage her, saying she had an extra challenge that he wouldn't have. But it was more to maybe,
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you know, clear the channel, so he didn't have to compete against somebody who was basically
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using his policies. And then she interpreted that as a woman can't win, turning it into an absolute,
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which is the most common thing you've ever seen in every human interaction. Somebody will say,
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well, this is difficult. And the other person will say, why are you saying it's impossible?
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And the first person says, I didn't say that. I just said it would be hard.
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So here's the good part. Maggie Haberman, you all know Maggie Haberman. She, uh, she jumped in
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with a comment on Twitter. And she said to James, why is the automatic assumption that her version is
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wrong? Just curious, which is actually a fun question because in his construction, um, it assumes
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that she, that Warren is the one who went away with the wrong impression. But what's interesting is
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the way she worded it. So Maggie says, why is the automatic assumption that her version is wrong?
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Where have you seen something like that before? An automatic assumption.
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That sounds a little like impulsiveness. Maybe a little recklessness. Why is it that when
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Democrats look at anybody who supports the president, they believe that their brains are not functioning
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like ordinary brains? And that, and that James, who is a, you know, a well-known author,
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obviously smart guy, why would it be on this one topic that instead of thinking through why he thought
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what he thought, his assumption was automatic? Because there's nothing he said that would suggest
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that he came to an automatic assumption. And other people jumped into the comments. Uh, I, I jumped in too,
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and I asked Maggie, why assume it's automatic? Why would you assume that about anybody? Why would you
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assume that anybody made an impulsive decision? Why would you assume that anybody made an automatic
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decision? There's no evidence of that. I only know people who think about things and then make decisions.
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I've never heard of this automatic impulsive thing. Why is it that Democrats think that Republicans
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don't have normal functioning brains that work the way everybody else does? You think of stuff and then
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you make a decision. Who makes decisions without the thinking part? It's not really a thing. I mean,
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we do make, uh, unconscious decisions, you know, subconscious, we're influenced by our biases and
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all that, but it's never automatic. So this prompted, um, one of my tweets in which I was wondering,
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um, so this is what I said, thanks to the miracle of cognitive dissonance, Democrats can only explain
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what they see in politics by believing that, uh, Trump has been, quote, lucky for several decades in
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a row, because you'd have to believe that if you believe that it's not a skill, you'd have to believe
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that for several decades, let's say starting from the time he, he recovered from bankruptcy. Now,
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recovering from bankruptcy is not easy. He probably owed more than just about anybody in the world
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owed anybody and somehow recovered. And so if you start from that point and say, let's, let's just
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start measuring from that point because you've got a long, a few decades, right? During those few
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decades, he had hugely successful television show, ran for president successfully with no experience
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and has a whole string of successes as president. You'd have to kind of believe that decades of consistent,
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pretty consistent, you know, he had some losses, Trump university didn't go well, but in his portfolio,
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it was very successful. So you'd have to assume that, um, he was lucky for decades and that he's operating
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on impulsiveness alone, that there's no thinking. It's just weird criminal impulsiveness that ended up
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working perfectly for decades in a row. And, and they, how do you explain your environment that way?
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Now compare that to the alternate explanation. Uh, I'm famous for offering the alternate explanation
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of Trump and it goes like this. He has unique skills. That's it. That's the whole explanation.
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There's, there's, there's a person who has a unique skillset that lets him do things that other people
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can't or won't do. And that would explain why he's been successful for decades and has reached
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literally the top of the success pile in the world. I mean, what is more successful than becoming
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president of the United States without any practice being a politician? I don't think there's anything
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more successful. That's sort of it. You're a billionaire. You're married to a supermodel.
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You're just became the president of the United States. Was it all luck? How do you keep that going
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after you see him signing trade deals? You see him defeating ISIS, nominating judges like crazy.
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The economy is going well. Uh, Iran seems to be tamed at the moment. North Korea seems to like
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President Trump and they're not exactly pointing their weapons in our direction. Um, at least
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not the way they were in the past. How do you, how do you conceive of your world that it was
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all luck? Anyway, one of those theories is bad shit crazy. The other one is not. Um, speaking
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of mild curse words, um, I tweeted at YouTube just using their public Twitter account and mentioned
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that I get demonetized every day for no good reason. YouTube, to my surprise, tweeted back and said they'd
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look into it. Now, who, who they is, is whoever's operating their social media, Twitter site for YouTube. So that
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doesn't mean that they have the power to look into it, but whoever it was that they look into it
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and suggested that perhaps it's because my content, uh, falls into the category of sensitive stuff
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that advertisers are a little wary of. Now, um, I'm willing to accept that explanation.
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It's possible that there's nothing going on except I talk about the news and they've decided that the
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news is a sensitive category that advertisers may be less inclined to be associated with.
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Could be, but it's easy to demonstrate that. So I tweeted back and said, essentially, I'm paraphrasing
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that I'd accept that as a reasonable explanation of what's going on with no other explanation
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under this condition that everybody else who is talking about the headlines. And that's all I talk
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about. I literally look at CNN. I look at Fox news. I look at the other headlines and I just talk
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about the headlines. I put my opinion on it, but it's not like I'm dangerous. There's nothing
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dangerous that I'm doing, uh, other than a few curse words now and then. And I don't see people
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being demonetized for a few curse words now and then. So that's my challenge to the YouTube,
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Twitter, um, account is, can you, can you confirm or deny that everybody who talks about the headlines
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is demonetized, but you'd also have to ask your, this question, why is it always reversed as in
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always reversed? Now, when I say always, I don't really mean a hundred percent. A few of them have
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not been reversed, but it's, it's rare, but the ones that were not reversed weren't really any
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different than the ones that were. So they look more like mistakes than some kind of a decision.
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So YouTube has now in public engaged me on the question of whether I'm being treated unfairly
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compared to other people who have similar talking about the headlines content. Um, so far,
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they have not responded as of the last time I checked, but that doesn't mean they won't
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respond. So we'll be, we'll be watching that. Somebody says, why does YouTube run ads on my
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channel? Well, uh, after a day, they do get re monetized. So we appeal it manually and we say,
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this doesn't look like a fair decision to demonetize, but it takes a day or so to re monetize
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and then ads will run. Now, some people have reported, I haven't checked it for myself.
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Um, I don't think I can check on my account. I'd have to be not logged in, I guess, because I,
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um, I pay, so I don't see ads, but if I, if I log in, I would see what some people are reporting
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that the ads are running from the first day. So why don't you do this for me? Um, I'm sure that
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today I'll be demonetized as always. Uh, but see if any ads run from the first few hours,
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because if you see a newish post on YouTube and the ads are running, I'm, I'm, I'm not getting
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paid for that as far as I know. I could be wrong. Maybe they put it in some kind of an escrow until
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they, until they work out the demonetization. I don't know. Questions. All right, let's talk
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about some other stuff. Uh, I tweeted that I'm kind of looking forward to, um, and maybe this is
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just me, but I'm hoping that we have another impeachment after this one fails because stocks
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do really good under impeachments. So I'm making a lot of money on this impeachment. Let me check
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the stocks today. Well, it looks like stocks are up again today. Pretty, pretty nicely. Um,
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and the longer that the, and even, uh, Bitcoin is up, a lot of stuff is up. So if we could get maybe
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one more of these impeachments, maybe two more this year, I know they take a long time, but if we get
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this one done quickly, I think we'll have, uh, time to get maybe two more in just for economic
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reasons, because apparently it's just great for the stock market, but that's not the only thing
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it's good for. And this is the funny part. Um, as pundits have, uh, pointed out, president Trump is
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counter-programming the impeachment by trying to get a lot of accomplishments and doing a lot of
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things that will take your attention away from the impeachment theater to his accomplishments.
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Meaning that he's had one of the best months a president has ever had. Is it my imagination
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that the past 30 days, president Trump has accomplished more than, more than what? Every
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president ever in the history of presidents. I mean, I'm no historian, but I'd be real surprised
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if anybody's ever had a better 30 days of presidency. I mean, this is pretty good stuff. You know,
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two major trade deals took out, took out the top, um, terrorist in the region. Economy is just
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screaming. Stock market is at a new high. I mean, seriously, has any president had a better 30 days
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than this one? So the weird thing about it, and I just want to put this thought in your head.
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Much is made of the president's personality, his character. And some of the complaints you could
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say to yourself, even if you're a big supporter, you could say to yourself, ah, I can see that.
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You know, I can see why you don't like that. It doesn't bother me personally. Yeah, but I can see
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why you don't like that. So there are definitely parts of the president's personality which reasonable
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people can disagree with. Some say, no big deal, he's just joking. Some say it offends you. You're
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all entitled to your opinion. But here's one thing I think we all agree on in terms of his personality.
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personality. He is one competitive mofo. If he's in a contest, and there's going to be a winner and
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the loser, you're going to watch his game elevate. Does anybody disagree with that, by the way? Is it
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not true that he said it directly? He thrives in tough competition. He just, he performs better when the
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pressure's on. Is this president performing better because of impeachment? Risk of impeachment,
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impeachment, the threat of impeachment, all of that. Do you think that that makes the president
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perform better than he might have otherwise? I think maybe. I'm not sure. It would be hard to
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measure it because you don't have the, you don't have the, you know, the test case to measure it
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against. So you can never be sure. But if you had a choice of putting pressure on Trump, meaning
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impeachment, to cause him to compete at his highest level, or let's say that, let's say the
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alternative. Let's say the Democrats decided they liked Trump tomorrow, and everybody says, you know, let's
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just see how it goes. Looks like he's doing pretty well. How well would the president perform
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if the Democrats just started agreeing with him? Say, you know, hey, you're doing okay. You know,
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just do some more of what you're doing. We'll, we'll, we'll talk about it. We'll debate you when
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we disagree, of course. We'll vote against you if we need to, you know, but you know, you're doing
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okay. Keep going. I don't know if he would do as well, because there's something about this that is
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focusing his competitive impulses. And again, I, I'm not in his brain, so I can't read his mind.
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We're speculating here, pure speculation. But I think we're seeing him perform amazingly well. He's
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probably putting a lot of energy into it, and he's going to focus on accomplishments, and it's kind of
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fun to watch. So stock market goes up. Trump stays in office. We are severely entertained.
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He gets all these accomplishments because he's focusing to try to counter program. What are we
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losing? Didn't we find completely accidentally, did we not find the very best place to be? I mean,
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nobody planned it, but somehow we drifted into the best place you could be. Speaking of entertaining,
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let me find the quote by Mitch. Did you see Mitch McConnell's quote? Which I'll find here in my notes.
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Oh, Mitch McConnell said, quote, nothing says seriousness and sobriety,
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Mitch McConnell equipped, like handing out souvenirs.
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The second part of his sentence he should have left out, as though this were a happy bill signing
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instead of the gravest process in our Constitution. If Mitch had just stopped halfway through that
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sentence, it would have been one of the funniest quotes ever. He should have just said,
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nothing says seriousness and sobriety like handing out souvenirs.
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You should have just stopped. It was so close to being one for the ages, you know, like the most
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quotable thing you've seen all year. But then he added, you know, he had to gild the lily bit as though
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there was a happy bill signing instead of the gravest process in our Constitution. The second part was
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assumed. So, you know, don't, don't ruin your perfect first part of a sentence with that, you know,
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cumbersome second part. But Mitch, on the entertainment scale, A plus. Because we're in here for the fun.
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I don't know anybody who's watching impeachment because they don't know how it's going to end.
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And when you went to the movie Titanic, which I rate as the worst movie of all time, by the way,
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worst movie of all time, Titanic. But I will acknowledge that a lot of people liked it.
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They had a different opinion than me. When you went to Titanic, you knew how it ended, right?
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You knew, you knew Titanic probably didn't win in the end. But you still went because you liked the
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entertainment until then. So the impeachment process feels like that. We're all being
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entertained. But it doesn't matter. We know how it ends. So there's no mystery.
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Speaking of how it ends, Reince Priebus had some interesting thoughts, which I'll add to.
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And he said on one of the shows, he said, sometimes the best defense is the so what defense.
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You just say, well, what if everything you say is true? We're not even going to ask questions about
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it's true. What if it's all true? What if everything the Democrats are saying is true?
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Let's vote. Because none of it's impeachable. And I thought, that's a pretty good defense.
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A good defense would be, might be true, might not be true, but you can assume it's all true. We don't
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even need any witnesses. We'll just take your word for it. Now let's vote. Nope, nothing there.
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Now, Reince also suggested that it was, that he liked the witness reciprocity idea. This is
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Ted Cruz's idea that if you know, you get one witness, we get one witness, you get two, we get
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two, um, that sort of thing. And that's one way to go. Sure. But isn't the complaint that the, uh,
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the Republicans didn't get their witnesses during the house because the house was in charge
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and the Republicans complained we didn't get to have all of our witnesses. Wouldn't it be
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fair enough? I'm not suggesting this, but wouldn't it be fair for Mitch McConnell to say, Hey, I've got an
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idea. Republicans will have witnesses and Democrats won't. He could do that, right? Couldn't he just say,
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we'll, we'll just, uh, have the witnesses in the Senate that we wanted to have in the house,
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but we didn't get. So we'll just be completing that process. Now there's no way he'll do that,
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but it's funny to think he could. I've got a better suggestion. You're ready.
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Here's a suggestion that again, they won't do, but it would be really funny. And that's why I like it.
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And the suggestion goes like this to say, we're going to bring in witnesses, but we're going to do
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them in a certain order because we don't want to bring in infinite witnesses and you keep adding them
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and we just keep going with witnesses. So we're going to do them in a rational order. Here's the
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rational order. The entire case against Trump rests on, wait for it, rests on this question.
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Was there a legitimate United States interest in asking about Biden and Borizna? So we're going to
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bring in witnesses to only ask that question. We'll bring in some Democrats, we'll bring in some
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Republicans, and we'll only ask that question. Was this a legitimate interest of the United States
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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
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Turley and Dershowitz Republicans when I was talking about this yesterday. They're both Democrats.
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Even better, bring in Turley, bring in Dershowitz, three Democrat lawyers, experts in the Constitution,
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and say, what do you think? Did this look like a legitimate thing for the United States to be looking
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into? All three Democrats will say yes. I'm pretty sure. Once they say yes, you're done.
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You don't need to look into any details of how the president did it because nobody is arguing
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that the president has to do things the way you want him to do it. That's not part of the debate.
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Everybody accepts that once the president's in office, the president can do everything that's
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legal as long as it's a reasonable attempt to get stuff done. So if I were Mitch McConnell,
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I'd say, let's find out the important question first. We will take witnesses for just that question.
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If that question says, if the answer to that is that the witnesses say, you know, it's a mixed bag.
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We don't think that was worth looking into. Well, then you can open it up to the second question,
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which is the details of what the president was doing. Was it for his own personal use, etc.? But
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if you can determine that the president thought or any reasonable observer thinks that looking into
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the Biden-BRISMA thing is legitimate for the United States, you're done. You don't need witnesses
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to talk about the stuff that doesn't matter. If it was good for the United States, you're done.
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This is the thing that the Republicans have gotten wrong consistently since the start. That's it.
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Now, what is the argument that this is worth, that the United States has an interest in looking into
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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
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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
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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,
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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.
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The ordinary way would be, hey, have the FBI talk to your justice people, put together an
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investigation, you know, look into it. And here, the witness is coming forward, he was part of all
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this, and he says, no one believed that would work. So now you have the answer, or at least, you know,
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the most credible explanation of why it was not done a different way. Because the different way,
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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.
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
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,
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
00:35:43.600
supporters as, in the government anyway, as American clowns. And he went on to say that them pretending
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
00:36:20.340
clown? Because it might not mean the same thing because he said that they're clowns, but they would
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
00:36:32.380
bit of overkill. Do you need a poison dagger if you're stabbing somebody in the heart? I say no.
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
00:36:53.540
venomous dagger, I would fire that clown. So, I think clown means something different.
00:36:59.180
But it's interesting that the supreme leader had to call out the fact that America, at least its
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
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
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
00:39:06.640
Schneider, who may be watching this right now, for coming up with Green Nuclear Deal as a great way to
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.
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
00:47:26.260
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.