Episode 1662 Scott Adams: Best Ukraine Analysis You'll Hear From Someone Who Doesn't Know Anything

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the best thing that ever happened in this universe and, dare I say, the afterlife. I don't usually talk about the afterlife, but today, have you noticed that there's something missing in the news about Ukraine? I'll tell you about that, and then we'll do this simultaneous sip, the holiest that there's ever been. Yes, I've noticed that a lot of people have been talking about Ukraine and Russia and the possibility of war, but we have not heard from the Pope. Now, the Pope was not available, but I know how he thinks. And so I thought I would give you the official Pope opinion on the possibility of war in Ukraine. Give me a moment. Let me concentrate. Want to receive the signal clearly. Religious signal coming in. Got it. The Pope would have you know that he is opposed to war. I think you're glad you waited for that. So. So when it comes to the Pope, no war. Doesn't like it one bit. Not one bit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the religious opinion on the war. And I don't think that has been given enough attention. So I thought I'd help. Do I look better with a hat? Is it my imagination or is it my imagination or did I get uglier when I took the hat off? Is it just me? I think that actually happened. I think that's. Yes. I think we found something we could all agree on. I look better with a hat. I think I'd look better with a hat and a mask. Because a lot of the pandemic, my ugliness was completely covered. So I'd have sunglasses on, and then I'd have a mask, and then I'd wear a baseball hat. So basically, the only parts of my entire body that were showing on the colder days were my hands. Unless I had gloves on were my hands. And this little strip of skin right here, which, by the way, looks pretty good on me. Best part of my body. And this was just pure luck. Pure luck. The best part of my entire body is this narrow strip just above where my mask line would be and below my sunglasses. I don't like to brag, but honestly, I've got one of the best overmask under sunglasses area of a body I've ever seen. I do work on it. Moisturizer. Stay out of the sun. A lot of people don't put the work in, but I do. How would you like the simultaneous sip? And all you need is a cup or mug or a glass of tanker Chelsea and a canteen jug of flask. Pests of any kind fill it with your favorite beverage. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. That dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes absolutely everything better. It's called. What? What? What is it called? That's right. The simultaneous sip. And it happens. Now go. Oh, I don't know. Something happened. Hold on a second. I hate it when this happens. I accidentally turn my coffee into wine. That. You think you've got things under control. Okay, I stole that joke from somebody on the Locals platform. I saw your comments on Locals and I did steal your joke, but they didn't see it. They didn't see it on YouTube. So for a moment there they thought I had a pretty good. Pretty good joke. Until I had to admit it wasn't mine. Well, let's do a little update on freedom. I was out and about yesterday and day before looking at how many people have taken off their masks now that the California mandate has been dropped. So if you're in a store or shopping or whatever, you do not require a mask. Where I Live, about 80% of people are still masked. That's right. My state was offered its freedom and 80% of the residents said, well, thank you but no thank you. I would rather stay in my little mask cage, including outdoors. Now, I'm not positive this is true, but I think the outdoor masking is at an all time high. This is after the mask mandate is completely eliminated. Outdoor masking. I've never seen higher outdoor masking than right now. Now. I had actually talked to some people who shall remain anonymous who actually said they kind of liked the mask era for a variety of reasons. They liked them. There are people who like the masks. Apparently you can get used to anything. I wasn't one of them, but. So I didn't see that coming. And I did a little tweet today to ask what mandates are still in effect in the United States. So here are the ones I know about. We'll see if these get mopped up. I hope they do. So the remaining mandates are, let's see, New York City, you still need vaccination passports to go in a restaurant. That's still true, right? Give me a fact check as I go and add some ones if you. I believe healthcare workers, including everybody, the janitors, the receptionists, everybody in healthcare are still under mandatory vaccinations. That's true. Right. Still need masks on public transport and for flying in particular, I guess just in public transport. Still need masks in some places. Like students are doing it in a lot of schools. Washington State, Massachusetts, California, Hawaii still got some masks, federal buildings, masks and cruise ships, which I guess is a form of public transport. So those are the, what ones did I miss? Has the, has the passport. Where else is the vaccine passport in effect flying? So here, so here's a sort of a checkpoint. Does it look like if you were just to judge the pandemic in terms of freedoms given up compared to other countries, just freedoms given up, are we doing okay? I mean, is the United States, are we doing well enough to claw back our freedoms? Because we have some, you know, in Canada, I know some of the provinces gave up on some of their mandates, but we're not really, we're not close to the end point and we're not close. But I do think we're going to get away without vaccine passports. What do you think, do you think at this point, what is your current prediction about USA and vaccine passports? I feel like we're going to not have them. Am I wrong? Because if we don't have them yet, it feels like this wouldn't be the time to implement them. I don't think public would, would accept it now. Yeah. So I would say I'm going to give, I'm going to give America a C plus in regaining freedoms. Would you agree? I give us a C plus, like lots of work to do. But it's not as bad as it could have been. I mean it could have been worse, I suppose, but we're not close. We got to keep clawing. Have you noticed that the entire retail part of at least America, I don't know if this is happening anywhere else, has turned to garbage? As I tweeted yesterday, I went into six retail establishments and walked down of each one because buying something was too hard. Here's what happened. And I don't know if anybody has noticed this trend yet. If you make it possible to buy almost everything online, who is remaining to stand in line at an actual retail store? Now in the short run it's everybody, right? In the short run you buy some stuff online, but sometimes you go to stores. Over time, more and more people will move to online only. And then the pandemic hits and more and more online there. So who's left? Well, let me tell you who's left. It's all the people who have a frickin problem, right? You know how bad it is to get behind the elderly person who's writing a check at the grocery store. Like you don't want to be in that line. Now imagine that because all of the efficient people have already moved completely online. The people in line are only the people writing a check in the grocery store and people like that. Now add to the fact that the only people in line are the people with problems. On top of that, on top of that, the stores are asking for more stuff. Now they want your phone number. They've got to find out if you've got a coupon. Is the coupon good? Are you part of the loyalty program? If you don't have your card, can you plug it in? Do you want to donate something? You have four ways to pay and sometimes id, sometimes not. So I stood in line and nobody could get helped because everybody who was in line had like a story. Not only did the person in line have a story, but then the retail worker had their own story, like data they had to collect and explaining why they're doing things. And I thought to myself, I don't think I'll ever go into a retail establishment again. Because whatever good or bad they used to be, they've just turned to garbage. You can never buy your size. Am I right? Go into a store and find your size in anything. Basically can't. How many of you have stood in line long enough that you took out your phone, you scanned the barcode on the thing in your hand, and you ordered it from Amazon, and then you got it in a line and put it back on the shelf? How many have done that? I'm not the only one. I saw somebody commented on Twitter. Yeah, a lot of you, because the. The process of in store has gotten worse and worse as they make you do more work just to buy something. I don't know. I think retail is in big trouble. Even more than, you know, we obviously have known for a long time. Here's a little tip for you if you're trying to figure out what trade to get into. Lisa de Pascal was commenting on my comment about retail and she said, it's awful in this economy. Why am I spending so much time begging to pay people? Have you had this experience? You call somebody for some kind of a service, just something that needs to be repaired or serviced or something. You can't get anybody to show up. People will say, well, maybe in two weeks. Right? So if you are going to pick a field to enter, find out who you can't hire. Now, if you can't get. I'll give you one example. All right, I'm going to give you a trade tip. That's a pretty good one. You ready for this fireplace repair person? Because a lot of fireplaces are Gas operated fireplace repair person. It looks like the easiest job in the world because there are only like three elements to the whole thing and not too many manufacturers. So try to book one. You think you can get one same day? Nope. Nope, you can't. So if you wanted to enter a trade, find out who can't show up and take your money because there are people begging to give people money and they can't find anybody to take it. We have a whole country of people who have more money than they have services that they can buy. They want to buy stuff, they can't find anybody to do it. So that's the thing we'll talk about in Ukraine, of course. Turns out that cow manure is now economical as a major energy source. So dairy farmers are being approached by energy companies that turn manure into methane, I guess, and then into energy. They figured out the economics to the point where. I'm not entirely sure about this, but I think the cow shit might be worth more than the milk. I don't know that that's true, but are we going to get to a point where cow shit is more valuable than the milk that comes out of the same cow? If we're turning cow shit into electricity, doesn't that mean that we're turning basically everything green into electricity? We're basically. We're going to have to mow down forests and the cows are going to be traveling all over the grass, eating it and turning that into electricity. Is that really efficient? I feel like there might be a better way to get your electricity. But anyway, that's the thing that's happening. We reached the crossover point for profitability. And of course you ask yourself, why do you need cows? We got seven people, seven billion people pooping all over the place. How many cows are there? Are there more than 7 billion cows? Why don't you capture some people poop? All right, here's a. Here's a reason why nobody can be a good or bad predictor. And this is the weirdest thing, but maybe this was always the case. But it seems especially the case now that we'll never agree what is going to happen. I think you'd agree with that easily. We never agree what's going to happen. Like when we predict, people will predict all over the place. But the weirdest part, that might be new, but I guess you'd have to ask a historian. We can no longer agree on what did happen. That feels like it's new. So if you're in the business of predicting things, as I sort of am, you can't even know if you were right. Because I can think I was right. And other people will say, well, look at the facts. You were clearly wrong. So you can't even know if you can predict. Right. Because there will be no agreement on what is. Here's a perfect example. I predicted that Russia would not invade Ukraine. Did they? I don't know, because it turns out that they did move troops into an area where they already had troops and already controlled the two separatist regions that were already under complete Russian control, apparently. So if they move troops into a place they already had troops into a region that was really not under control of Ukraine anyway, it was already Russian. Did they invade? So was my prediction already wrong? So I asked a poll because I had no idea how people would see this. 50% of the people who answered my Twitter poll, which is of course, not scientific, half of them said it's not quite an invasion. Not quite an invasion, but. But 37% said yes. So 37% of the people in my Twitter poll, these are even people who would be largely friendly to my point of view, think I'm wrong and that my prediction has already been proven wrong. But 50% of the people said I'm right. So how do I even know if I'm a good predictor? I don't think you could just take the majority in this case. I mean, you can see that it's so clear that people don't even agree on literal reality at this point, because you can just word, think it away. Oh, it's part of Ukraine. Oh, it's not. And you both have a good argument. But yesterday, Zelensky himself said, quote, with today's and possibly tomorrow's decisions, Russia is legalizing its troops, which have actually been in the occupied territories of Donbass since 2014. It seems to me that the president of Ukraine does not believe that Ukraine has been invaded. I mean, at least not this week. Already invaded, I guess. So if the president of Ukraine thinks I'm right so far, so far, it's not looking like I'm going to be right. It does look like Putin's poised to do more. But at the moment, am I right or am I wrong in the comments? You tell me at the moment. Has Ukraine been invaded already this week? I'll just read out some of the answers. Yes. No, Wrong. Yeah, it's early in the week, right? Nope, nope, nope. Okay, we are mixed on that. All right, let's talk about what's happening. I had some curiosity about whether Russian citizens know what's going on in Ukraine? Now of course, their state run media is all propaganda. So the state run media is all misleading. If you live in Russia when you agree with that, the state run media is completely misleading to the Russian public. But don't they have Internet access? I actually, I wasn't sure until I actually did some Googling to find out what's going on. And Russia of course is doing a variety of things to try to suppress access to information that would be bad for them. But they do things like throttling certain content. The Internet is still available, right? If you live in Russia, can't you call up CNN webpage in America? There's nothing blocking that, Right. Can you give me a fact check on that? Oh, okay. So I'm sitting on locals. The very next thing I was going to talk about is the fact that Russians by and large don't speak English. The only reason that they don't know what's going on because everything that's in Russian presumably would be pro Putin. And do we have a problem that if the public in Russia had a better understanding what was happening that they would not support their own president? I don't know, maybe they would anyway. So here's a question. Have you seen anywhere in the news if the Russian public supports Putin so far in everything he's done? How many of you could answer the question? Does the Russian public by a majority support what Putin is doing right now? Because I've got a feeling they might. Right. It seems like probably partly because Putin can control information to some extent, but also maybe because they like it. You can't rule out the fact that they might just like a strong leader. He's made a reasonable argument that these Russian speaking people should be part of the historic republic. And maybe the public likes it, maybe if it doesn't cost too much. So Putin also revealed that he asked President Clinton years ago if he could join NATO. Now that's not the first time we've heard that. Right? It's the first time for me. I didn't know it, but apparently there was some. Was there any knowledge about that before? I think there might have been, but it wasn't widely known. Right. And so for years now I've been saying that Russia and the United States are natural allies and that the only reason we would be at each other's throats is psychological. Like there's not a material reason that we would be enemies. There's just a psychological, maybe historical reasons or whatever, or political. And I wonder what would have happened if Russia had been considered for NATO because I thought the whole point of NATO was to deter Russia or the Soviet Union originally. Am I wrong that the point of NATO was mostly about Russia? What happens if Russia asked to join the alliance against Russia? Now, I get that they would do more than that, they would protect more than Russia, but I don't know, is NATO active in anything that would involve China? So I'm a little bit confused about what is the point of NATO if the enemy of NATO asked if he could join NATO. And it also makes me wonder if that was just an incredible master persuader move that didn't work out, but it should have confused the United States, right? If the person that you're trying to protect against asks you to join the organization of people protecting against him, what the hell do you think? How do you process that? The way you should process it is, is that NATO doesn't make sense. And if that's what Putin was doing, it was brilliant. I mean, it didn't, obviously it didn't end NATO, but it would have been a brilliant play to confuse people about why NATO even exists and put some doubt in everybody's mind about how much to fund. Could have been an incredibly genius move that was always meant to never be successful. But just put that down in, in a way, it's very similar to what Trump did with Kim in North Korea. Because what Trump did was simply act like he was his personal friend, which just ruins the whole frame. Everything historically that made sense instantly didn't make sense because Trump just changed the frame of reference to we're two buddies. And by the way, can I help you with your economy? Why would you give me trouble? We're buddies. Why would you point a nuclear weapon at me? Why would my buddy do that? I mean, I think the way Trump handled North Korea is one of the all time great things that anybody ever did politically. Honestly, I think it will go down in just one of the great moves of all time. It might not last if somebody else causes trouble with North Korea, but, but it was great at the time. And I think that Putin played a similar frame breaking play, maybe not as successfully. He just broke the frame that it's an enemy and an army against the enemy. Hey, can I join the army? It's kind of brilliant. But I do think it supports my idea that we are natural allies. Because if he could even keep a straight face, well, saying can you put us in NATO? And he probably did. If you could say that with a straight face, it probably means that you have an argument that we don't really need to be enemies. There's just nothing to be gained from it. All right? One of the worst things about war and the threat of war is, is that the leaders on both sides can become more popular with war. Isn't that the worst thing ever? You want your leaders to know that if they ever went to war for anything, they would become less popular, but they don't. You know, we have an automatic nationalist instinct in this country and every other country that as soon as something looks like war, the leader's approval goes up. It's almost automatic. And so Biden being in the basement of presidential approval, according to Rasmussen, it looks like he's getting a pop. Biden's approval is going up. Do you think he's earned it so far? Just because obviously this is based on Ukraine, do you think he's earned it just on Ukraine? So forget about everything else just for a moment because these polls tend to move with current events. I'm seeing almost all no's. Okay, I see one, yes. I'm saying hell nos. Okay? You're, you seem to be quite unified on no. Are you surprised that his approval is ticking up with this many no's? You should think, well, how could his approval be going up? All right, let me give you an argument for Biden. This is going to piss you off. Now, keep in mind, we don't know what happens tomorrow. So I'm only going to talk about what's happened so far. Here's what's happened so far. Russia has lost the Nord Stream too, because by moving troops into the two occupied territories, the separatist territories, that triggered Germany to say, okay, Nord Stream 2 is done. So that's a big economic hit. A number of other sanctions will probably kick in, but not, not the worst of them, right? So the minor sanctions might kick in, hurt a little bit around the edges. So so far, Russia has spent a bunch of money, it has degraded its international reputation. It lost Nord Stream, and if it attacks, it's going to get extra pain. And what has Russia gained so far? What did it gain so far? All it gained was the property it already owned, which was the separatist regions. So far, Russia broke even on land and is taking a hit, pretty big hit to its gdp. Biden has so far gone cheap. So Biden so far hasn't committed large funds to military and he got a huge degradation of an opposing country. So far. Biden is winning. Now, I don't think that's, I'm not predicting that will last okay, so I'm not. I'm not saying that when we're all said and done, I'm going to say, hey, Biden, you handled that just right. That seems unlikely, but didn't that piss you off a little bit? It did, damn it. Because almost every one of you said he's doing everything wrong, but so far he's ahead on score. Am I wrong about that? Am I wrong that so far he's ahead in points doesn't mean he wins the game at all, but so far. Give me the argument in a short comment, can you? I get that some of you are disagreeing. I see the disagreement, but can you give me the reason? He created it by being weak. World stage loser. It's only the fourth inning. That's true. No, because it's bs. You take his flawed. He's weak, and the world will pay. So is it his weakness? His weakness. Right. But does he look weak? Because he did unify NATO. So if he unified NATO, killed Nord Stream 2, hurt Russia's economy, hurt their standing in the world, he didn't come out ahead so far. Now our stock market will go down as well. I think Russia went down $40 billion yesterday or this week. He failed to deter him. But that also only matters if he keeps going, because he's only been undeterred to take what he already owned. Somebody says he didn't unify NATO. All right, so here's. Here's another perfect example of what I was just saying. I was just saying that not only do people predict what will happen differently, but once something has happened, we don't even agree what happened. Isn't this another perfect example? And by the way, I'm not going to disagree with you on this. I made my best argument for an argument that was a Biden has done a reasonably good job so far. That was my best argument for it. I don't disagree with your argument that he's blowing it. I feel like it's a little premature because as somebody said, this is the fourth inning. You got to kind of wait till the end to see who won. Right? So I'm going to wait till the end to see who won. But unlike some of you, I'm way closer to wait and see. Then something terrible has happened already. What happens. Here's what I think is one strong possibility. Do you think that Putin could claim victory? If all he did was consolidate control over the two separatist regions, would that be enough for him to say, yay, I won, got everything I want. I liberated these two separatist regions. I'm a liberator. Can he go home? Can he go home with a win? Maybe, you know, maybe even makes money if the price of fuel goes up, that whatever he can deliver Without Nord Stream 2, doesn't he sell it for a higher price? If energy prices went up, maybe they won't stay up if he leaves. But have we not created a situation in which by Biden and Zelensky, you could say cleverly, but other people would say weakly, as in being weak. Is it weak or is it clever that Biden and Zelensky have allowed that whatever Putin does with the two separatist regions doesn't seem to count as an invasion? Is it weak or clever? Because one possibility is that it allows Putin an easy escape hatch. He can claim victory in a fairly credible way. He could claim victory and then he'd have a way to back down and still look like the strong leader and still have a gain within. And I suppose he could still keep pushing on the rest of Ukraine. And then would Biden look like he's a winner because he didn't really give them anything they didn't already have and they lost the Nord stream, too? I don't know. I think there's a situation now where both can be winners and maybe Zelenskyy too. You know, Zelensky is still saying that he doesn't think there'll be an invasion of Ukraine proper. I guess I shouldn't say proper. He doesn't think there'll be an invasion of whatever's left of Ukraine. And do you think he's lying about that? Do you think Zelensky is just lying and he's trying to keep the public from panicking? Or does he really not think that. That Putin will cross the line because maybe the price is too high? Let me ask you this. Remember I said that Putin doesn't know what kind of weapons would be thrown against him, because this should be the first time, the most modern, at least American weaponry gets used in that kind of battle against a sophisticated foe. What happens if Putin goes into battle and gets a bloody nose? He could. Now, here's something I don't think any of you thought of. All right. We know that the United States has incredible cyber warfare capabilities. We assume so, right? Maybe not. But you make the assumption that the United States does. There are other countries you'd make that assumption about Israel. You would assume they have great cyber warfare capabilities. You think China does, You think Russia does. Great Britain, France, probably. Right. So you can name a number of countries that you're pretty sure have the best cyber warfare capabilities. Now does the United States sell weapons to Ukraine? Actually I don't know the answer to that. Do we, we sell them weapons directly or does it go through some kind of middle channel for any reason? We do it directly, right? Yeah, I think we. Do we sell it or do we provide them? We sell them. Right. So the Stinger missiles and the anti tank missiles, we sell them. So would you agree with the following statement? We can sell them weapons? Yes. Right. There's nothing would stop us from selling weapons. Could you, this is going to blow the top of your head off. Wait for this. Could you sell cyber warfare as a service? As a service, and here's what I mean by that. You say to Ukraine and it doesn't have to be the United States, it could be an ally, it could be Israel. Could Israel. I'll just, well, let me not throw Israel under the bus. They have enough problems. Let me pick a country. Albonia could Elbonia, a made up country with a great cyber warfare capability, say to Ukraine we will sell you the services but you can't have the IP or the tools. We'll keep the tools. So you can't do this on your own. But as a service, if you push this button, it will turn off the lights in Moscow and then the Ukrainians would have to be the ones that push the button. But whatever happens after they push the button goes through the cyber warfare. Cyberware for your as a service. By the way, those of you who work in technology, when I use the phrase software as a service, you're familiar with that. This would be cyber warfare as a service. Because you definitely don't want to give your cyber warfare tools to any country that doesn't already have them, right? Not even an ally probably. I assume. So you can't give your tools away, but you could sell, if you can sell a weapon, you could sell cyber warfare as a service. You wouldn't be the one pushing the button. You would just be the one who has a network that, that, you know, chain of connections went through. Is that illegal? What was, what would stop it from happening? Now let me ask you this. If Ukraine could buy that service for it'd be expensive. But if they could buy that service, what damage could they do to Russia if Russia attacked Ukraine's more agreed on territory? Here's the answer. Putin doesn't know. Am I right? Putin doesn't know. And isn't that a pretty big risk? Are you telling me that nobody thought of this so in order for this not to be a real thing already would require that the best cyber warfare strategic thinker in the country is me. Okay, we agree that's not the case, right? If I thought of it, that's all I'm saying. If I thought of it, it's already done. Am I right? And we can't know for sure, but if it's obvious enough that the cartoonist thought of it, it's got to be an option, at least. At least it's an option. Now, we don't know if Ukraine has access to that kind of power indirectly through a service provider. But why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? Now, it could be that, that would, you know, whoever provided the service would then become a target. But are you telling me that the people who have cyber warfare capability couldn't hide the tools so that by the time the attack happens, it's just not clear where it came from? I feel like they could. So I don't know. That's something Putin has to worry about. So that would suggest that maybe Putin isn't going to cross a line that would open up Ukraine's whole toolbox of weaponry. Wheelman is saying naive. Did you see the title to my live stream today? Did everybody read the title to the live stream? I said this would be my misinformed opinion on Ukraine and probably the best ones you hear today. I'm going to stand by both of those statements. So you don't need to tell me I'm naive or misinformed. That's the show. That's the show description. Misinformed and naive and talking about world events. If that bothers you, good luck finding somebody who's doing a better job. The problem is that the quality of commentary on this topic is so low that if you think my commentary, which is misinformed and is naive, if you think it's going to be less than the average you're going to see today. Well, I'd say pay attention to the average, because I think we're going to be in the same ballpark, if you know what I mean. It's not because I'm awesome. It's because I'm not really competing with an awesome field is what's happening here. Here's a question I have not seen in the news. Do these separatist regions that Russia just moved new troops into, do they want to be part of Russia? And isn't that the most important question today? Now, I know they had a vote, right? They had a vote about being part of Russia. But Does a vote mean anything in that part of the world? I wouldn't put any credibility in a vote. I'm saying mostly yeses, but I don't know if you really know that. Now, I do believe if I googled it, I would have the same opinion, but I don't know if that really means anything. Yeah, get a map, Get a map. Yeah, I get it. I know the location is everything in this case. All right, well, do you want to see the United States get involved in any kind of a war in which we don't know if we're fighting for something that anybody wants? Like would we be fighting for the wrong side if the public actually wanted to be Russian by some majority? I don't know. But the longer the. You should just be aware that American news is not telling us. If those separatist place want to be Russian, that should be the main thing that they talk about, shouldn't it? Isn't that the main thing that they should be talking about? I don't think you'll see it in any news program today which tells you that our news is all propaganda. It's funny what I read about the fake news in Russia. I no longer think it's worse than the United States. I do think it's completely fake in Russia, but I don't think ours is better. If our news were real, I know this is a provocative. Sounds like an overstatement, but if our news were real, the top of the news every day would be about the opinions of the separatist region republic, do they want this or not? And all they talk about is the Russian troop movements and the sanctions. All the news is focusing on the fight. They're not even focusing on, you know, the people who matter the most, the public in those areas. Well, we'll see if those sanctions make a difference. I was complaining yesterday that nobody had estimated the economic cost to Russia of an attack. But apparently there is a group called the analysts that, well, they're at Capital Economics, so they are doing some kind of estimates about what will happen to the GDP under various scenarios of sanctions. But even when the west had more power to sanction, I guess in 2014, we took 2.5% off of Russia's GDP. But now probably Russia's in better shape to withstand sanctions, or at least sanctions of that level. So they might be looking at it maybe a 1% or sub 5% change. So would Putin take a chance for, let's say, temporarily degrading his GDP by 1 to 5% to gain total control over the separatist regions only, or would that cost? Given that he's giving up Nord Stream 2 and he had to know that was going to happen, would he be happy with just getting two separatist regions, or has he already paid enough that he has to go get the rest because he sort of paid for it already? I don't know. We'll find out. So I guess it was a shooting. Some angry white guy with a gun confronted some people who were organizing just. Actually, I think people doing just the traffic control for Antifa and BLM and some protest, and he ended up pulling out a gun and shooting some of them. Now, of course, I don't condone any of that. I condemn all the violence. But the most predictable thing in the world was that if you got rid of the police and you continued to have protests that were bothering the public, somebody was going to pull a gun. I'm actually surprised there's not more of it. I don't want to see more of it, but I'm surprised there hasn't been more. So you have to give some credit to the Second Amendment people, because there is a level of constraint that as horrible as these events are, it's actually more controlled than I would expect, given the craziness of the general public and the access to guns. Kyle Rittenhouse is starting some kind of fund to gather money to sue media people who have lied about him and also for other people who get lied about, to have a way to sue the media might come in handy. Do you think I'll have any reasons to sue the media? How many of the people in the media have called me a right winger? There are a number of people in the major media who have labeled me a right winger. Now, that's the same as calling somebody a white nationalist in 2022. So if I tried to get a job and I didn't already have a public profile so I could do this sort of thing, if I had to get a regular job, I couldn't get one because somebody would Google me and it would say, he's a far right guy. They would translate it in their head to white nationalist, and I could get a job anywhere. Can I sue? I don't know. I wouldn't. But it's an interesting question. And it also makes you wonder, why didn't this already exist? Because the press had no accountability. Remember, I told you that insurance is the only thing that tells you where things are really going to go, because eventually everything has to get insured. Everything in the business world anyway. So it doesn't work so much in politics, but within the business world, if there's a business element to it. The insurance companies will decide what you can and can do because they will charge you too much for things that they say are too dangerous. So it's really predictive. And what's going to happen now that there would be organized entity just to sue the media for lying when their business model depends on lying, because it does. The media's business model depends on lying because it's the lies that get all the clicks. I mean, they're not going to say it that way, but it's the truth. Is that true? Somebody saying that the Ukrainian president Zelensky is an economist and a cartoonist? I know he's an actor, a comedic actor, but he's not a cartoonist, is he? And is he an economist comedian? Was he an economist? Give me a fact check on that. Economist or no. Who's got a Wikipedia page up? All right, I'll check for that. Anyway, we might be seeing a balance of power happening now. One of the interesting things that people are saying about CNN legal analysts is that CNN's got some real problems because of all their sexual misconduct cases that are high profile, that if they don't settle them and basically pay out tens of millions, then they're going to have to be subject to, what is it called, discovery, meaning that in the course of a lawsuit about something specific, a lot of CNN's dirty laundry could come out, and I don't think they could survive it. So CNN might be in a death spiral because they're going to have some big lawsuits from people who worked for cnn. And then you could have lawsuits coming from Rittenhouse and probably other people that buy into that business model he's building. And I have a feeling that CNN is going to get sued out of existence, and there's nothing they can do about it. Because if they don't settle or go bankrupt, I guess if they don't settle, then they are subject to discovery, and that's actually worse. Right? So they have a choice of going out of business by paying off all these lawsuits or going out of business by fighting them. That might be their only two choices. So keep an eye on that. Here's something that progressives and Democrats get wrong every time. It's human motivation, especially when math is involved. Am I right? The two things the left always get wrong. And by the way, if you're new to me, I identify as left of Bernie because I like his goals. I just don't like his Math. And I don't like how he thinks about human motivation. So I like the idea of helping everybody and getting everybody in healthcare. I just don't know how to do it. And I'm not gonna lie and say that math is magic, and I can figure out how to do it in a way the country will accept, if it's the country accepting it part that's the hard part. So here's something that Democrats got very wrong. And it's so obvious in hindsight, it's painful. And it goes like this. What they wanted to do, they, Democrats and progressives, wanted to reform the justice system such that the number of black people in America who are sent to prison gets a little closer to the percentage of black people in the public. Now, in order to do that, unfortunately, just because of the percentages of crime in whatever demographic groups, in order to do that, it requires. It requires letting people out of jail who are necessarily going to commit more crimes or not putting them in jail in the first place. Am I right? I mean, that is not in dispute that in order to get some kind of, what you would call racial balance, I guess, in jail, it requires letting out a lot of people who will do more crimes. Now, who are those people being let out? Well, specifically, they're trying to get people of color to be less represented in jail, I guess. And so if you're letting out a lot of black known criminals back into the community, will they commit more crimes? Well, yes, because many of them are career criminals. So a career criminal doesn't do one crime and then stop. They do crimes until they get caught. So if you put one criminal in prison, how many victims do you save? Dozens, hundreds. Depends on the criminal. Right. So for every good deed, which is not put, let's say, a good deed, from the perspective of the left, some people on the left, the good deed would be not putting somebody in prison if you can avoid it. But unfortunately, that requires. Because of why? Math and human motivation. The human motivation is, if somebody's a career criminal and they're not in jail, what is their motivation? Do more crime, Create more victims. And how about the math? The math is that one person that you helped by not putting them in jail created seven people. I'll just pick a number. I'm just making up a number. Created seven victims who are, and this is the messed up part, almost all black. So if you can save one black person from going to jail, that's great. If that one black person then goes on to have a successful life as a productive member of society. And if you could identify just those people, well, that would be kind of awesome. In fact, that's what the Trump administration tried to do by having the early release. Because if you find somebody who's going to work on, let's say, a trade or a skill, you're probably finding somebody who's a good bet relative to a career criminal who's not working on anything else. Right. So you should have been able to predict that by trying to help the segment of the world that is mostly black people going to jail, you end up with seven times worse outcomes for black people. And you've taken the pain away from the person who's causing the problem and you spread it to the victims who weren't causing any problem. So how does anybody who is a Republican ever lose an election again? Do you know the only thing that could screw up 2022 in 2024 is Trump talking. That's it. Now, when I said that, you said to yourself, haha, he thinks Trump will do something dumb that will ruin a good situation. No, no. I mean, that's always a risk. But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if he says anything, if Trump even just talks, they will find a way to turn it into the worst thing in the world. Right. So he can't do anything. If Biden proved anything during the last election, he proved that the less we see of the politician, the more we like. I wouldn't have guessed that. But I think if you're already, you know, you're already a known quantity, the less they see of you, the better, because otherwise it's just giving you reasons to be attacked. So Scott has identified peak Trump time. Best to understand this. Don't know what that means. If he's reelected, he'll have a mandate. He'll always talk to the press. Trump would. All right, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is my show for today. No doubt the best analysis you've ever seen of the Ukraine situation and. No doubt the best thing you've ever seen in your life. I'm going to say goodbye to YouTube and thanks for joining me.