Episode 1752 Scott Adams: Russia Loses War With Ukraine. Baby Formula Shortage Is Everyone's Fault

Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization, Coffee with Scott Adams. The best thing that's ever happened to anybody anywhere is true. And if you'd like to enjoy this in a way that, I don't know, you'll probably be telling your grandkids, all you need is a cup of mugger, a glass of tanker gels, a stein of canteen, jug of flask, of vessel of any kind. Fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. It's that dopamine the other day, the thing that makes everything better. It's the simultaneous sip. It goes now go. I have a question on the locals platform. Does dopamine help Vertigo? It helps everything. You'll still be dizzy, but you'll be happier about it. Does everybody feel their dopamine just go up a level? Is it just me? It's not just me, no. Your dopamine just went up a little bit. That little happiness you're feeling right now because of the beginning of Coffee with Scott Adams, that's real. That's real. You're feeling it. Well, I told you that there's a new Stark Trek series called Star Trek Discovery, and I watched the first one a few weeks ago and I reported that it was not ruined by wokeness, had not been ruined by wokeness, because the other most recent Star Trek had been just over woke to the point where it just ruined the writing. Now, I'm all for wokeness. I'm actually, you know, I know you might be surprised, but I think the wokeness stuff is completely appropriate. But like everything good, you can take it too far and then it ruins everything. So it's not the goodness of it in general. I think we should all treat people the way they would like to be treated to the extent that's practical, but everything good goes too far. I made a comic strip on that very thing. The Dilber comic doesn't make fun of bad things. That's a misconception. It doesn't make fun of things that are bad ideas. It makes fun of good ideas that are taken too far. Mostly. I mean, I do both, but it's an important distinction. So the new Star Trek Discovery, I watched the second episode and it's ruined by Wokeness. It's completely ruined. The second one was almost unwatchable because I thought, oh, they've got a nice diverse cast. That's good. Star Trek always had a diverse cast. That was one of its strengths. So we're good to see that. And then I Thought, okay, they're not, they're not trying to kill us with Wokeness. They're just doing it the way the original Star Trek did. They're just building, you know, building the cast up to be full capable people and that's all you need. Everybody from different types, they're all full and capable people. But no, the entire second episode had to be about the only black woman who is a cast member in the. On the deck and how awesome she is compared to everybody else. Basically, I'm thinking, I don't know, I mean, the fact that she was black and female didn't have to do with anything, did it? Except they wouldn't have done that story if she hadn't been. If she had been just a generic, or let's say it had been a generic white guy, they wouldn't have done a story about how smart he was, would they? Like, it wouldn't make sense as a story. It's just the wokeness of it that turned it into a story element. It's like, hey, she's black and she's female and she can speak 37 languages or 39 languages, whatever it was. And I think it's great that all the characters are celebrated for their positive traits. That's cool. But here's the problem. Here's the problem. To have a good show, you need flaws. Do you remember the original Star Trek with Captain Kirk? He was like his strong character, but he had a real flaw. And his flaw was his ego. Right? Which was an awesome flaw because his ego is what helped him. But it was also his enemy, which was really good writing, a good setup for good writing. But the current captain is just sort of a woke guy. There's no complexity there at all. So I can't recommend the new Star Trek Discovery. It is so far based on the second episode is ruined by Wokeness, but we'll see if the third one gets it heavy. And again, I'm all in favor of Wokeness. You just don't have to put it everywhere all the time. Too much of it, that's all. Jonathan Turley continues to be a national treasure. And partly, if you're not following Jonathan Turley for legal analysis, mostly he finds little corners of stories that you haven't seen yet that really do matter. Like actually really important stuff that hasn't been talked about yet. And he's doing it again. This one's really clever the way he's. I mean, clever in the sense that it's good that he knows these things and we don't so he can tell us. So there's this case about Steve Wynn, who owned the Wynn hotels. And I think he's out of the business now. I'm not sure what his stake is, but he got me too, don't I think. And he's being, I guess, sued by the government in a civil case about fara, that foreign agents registration situation. So if an American citizen lobbies on behalf of a foreign country, they have to register as a lobbyist of some sort, or else it's illegal. But it can be illegal in two different ways. Apparently, it could be illegal in a civil way, which means you don't go to jail. Somebody says, scott is wrong on this one. Well, I'm gonna fuck you into oblivion for saying something like that. Goodbye again. For anybody who's new, I like criticism. Just put the criticism in the comment. Scott, you forgot to mention, you know, you're under emphasizing X. What about Y? Absolutely love those comments. But, Scott, you have a bad take today. We don't need you here. You're worthless. Your friends hate you. Anybody who says they love you, they're lying. All right, so Steve Wynn, because his case is being treated as a civil case instead of a criminal case, Jonathan Turley cleverly has picked up on the precedent because there's somebody else who might be facing a potential legal problem based on foreign being active for a foreign government, and that is somebody named Hunter Biden. And so, as Jonathan Turley argues, if I understand his argument correctly, the Hunter Biden defense could say, wait a minute, wait a minute. How could you possibly come after us with a criminal case if such a thing happened in the future? How could you come after us for a criminal case doing exactly the same thing? They would argue that Steve Wynn is only being charged civilly, which is a far lesser offense. We'll go by Friedler. Fuck you. You're into oblivion, too. I think it's just some people want to get blocked or something. All right, so I think it's a good point. Good point. Is there something happening that's intentional that would. That would make Hunter Biden get off on a lesser charge, if there's any charge at all. And if he's done anything illegal, which is to be determined, yes. Could be a precursor to softening things up for Hunter. So I love that there's a Jonathan Turley who can sort of sniff this out before it's news. This is really good sniffing, isn't it? He's connected. Two stories that before you saw them connected, he could see around the corner this is why you follow him. He can see around corners. Eddie also writes about. There's a situation with Ben Dominesh of the Federalist who made a joke on Twitter about his own staff unionizing. And he made a joke about off to the salt mines or something. If you try to unionize. Now, it was in the context of some other entity unionizing, and it was just a joke, but apparently it's illegal if you're in charge of a company to say something about unionizing that makes it sound like there's going to be a penalty for it because you have the right to unionize. And so somebody who has nothing to do with the company, not an employee, just some liberal troll, decides to sue over a joke. Really? So there's somebody on the left who sued Ben Domenech over a Twitter joke that everybody knew was a joke. You couldn't miss the fact that it was a joke. It was an obvious joke. And do you know what? The court ruled it was a joke. So I guess the court had enough people involved who could tell what a joke was. Hey, this is a joke. It's not a legal problem. It's actually just a joke. And I can't believe that ever went to a court, but it did. Alright, here's an interesting question. How do rights get formed? Or do you just have them unless the government takes them away? In my view of things, you have a right to do everything until the government takes it away. Does anybody, Would anybody agree with that description? But God given just means all the rights. I would say the God given part could be eliminated from the discussion because whatever it is we're starting with, we're starting with, it doesn't matter how it got there. So whether it was God given or not, irrelevant to rights because rights are human entities, basically. So however we got here, would you say that whether God put us here or not, that the question of rights is that you have all the rights until the government limits them? Right. So then this interesting side question this is, do you have a right to an abortion? Do you have a right to an abortion? And the answer is yes, until the government takes it away, Right? Yeah, you have a right until the government takes it away. That's how it works. Now there are lots of things that the government takes away. I can't drive a car if I'm 14. It would be a right except the government took it away. So it's the way everything works. But George Upper at the uppercut says this. He says that I'm incorrect in my definition of a Right? He says you cannot have a right. So he's clarifying a specific case here, not a general case, but a specific case. He says you cannot have a right to something that requires someone else to give something up. And he says that's why healthcare isn't a right in any form. You cannot have a right to something that requires someone else to give something up. True or false. You cannot have a right that requires someone else to give something up. It's false. Completely false. It could not be more false. But you're all saying true. Every single right gives something up. Let's say you have the right to take a walk in the park. Right? You have a right to take a walk in the park. You would say there's no law against it, so you have that right. Now, let's say, what does that do to my right to be in the park alone? Because there's no law that says I can't be in the park alone, and I want to be, but now I can't because you exercise your right to walk in the park at the same time. So my right to be alone, I mean, at least my ability to be alone has gone away. Didn't take away my right, but you took away my ability to be alone. Pretty much everything that gives you a right to do something is limiting somebody else from doing that thing at the same time or in the same way. Pretty much everything. So it's indirect. It's indirect. Somebody says that's thin. I would say it's indirect. But it's always there. Everything you do has some limit on somebody else. You want another example? Give me another right. What is something else? You have a right to. A right to own a gun. Let's say, okay, you have a right to own a firearm in the United States. Does that take away anybody's right? Well, it takes away my right to not be around guns. If I wanted that, I mean, it's not the right I want, but if I wanted it, I wouldn't have that option. So I would say maybe it doesn't take away somebody's right. It takes away their options in pretty much every case. Scott, you confuse rights with privileges. Now, see, that's a good comment. You don't get blocked for that. The rest of you who don't know how to make good comments learn from that. He says I'm confusing rights with privileges. Now, I don't think I am, but that's at least a reasonable comment. I'm conflating a right with, let's say, the physical ability to do something, because there's no point having a right to do something you can't do. I have a right to flap my arms and fly. Is that useful? Go flap your arms and fly. You have the right. Doesn't help. So in a practical sense, everybody's rights tend to impinge on other people. You can use different words for it, but everything you do impinges on other people. All right. Otherwise it's just word thinking. I was watching. Not all of you watch basketball, so I'll make quick work of this. And it's not about sports, but the warriors beat the Mavericks. It's the third time in a row. And I like watching sports because of persuasion, like watching the sort of mental part of it. And I'll tell you, there's one thing that you can see in the faces of the Mavericks versus the faces of the Warriors. If you looked at the faces of the Mavericks, they looked like they didn't think they were going to win. Now, could just be my bias, of course, but they really look like they didn't think they were going to win. Well before the game was too far away for them to win, whereas the warriors always looked like they were going to win. And some of it has to do with the fact that Steph Curry is on one team and not on the other. And if you've never noticed Steph Curry, I don't think he's having a good a year as he's had before. But I'm sure the reason is because he's bored. If you watch him in the first part of any game, he misses a lot of shots, seems a little sloppy, and then the last 10 minutes comes, which is the only time that matters, and then he just wins. He just wins. It feels like he doesn't get interested until it's almost too late. He reminds me of one of the most fun I've ever had or the best times I've ever had watching a youth soccer game. So it was, I think maybe 10 year old boys playing when my stepson was playing on the team and I was watching and there was one kid on one team, that was the team I was rooting for, who is sort of a superstar among the kids. And for some reason their team was behind. And I mentioned to his dad, I said, what's going on here? Nick's team is behind. How's that happening? He goes, I don't know. He yells out to his son, he goes, nick, do you know what the score is? And Nick looks over and he just nods. And there's like three minutes left. I'm exaggerating. Just a few minutes left and then Nick scores, I don't know, three or four goals solo and wins the game. It was just the funniest thing. Nick, do you know what the score is? He just nods. He scores three goals and wins. It was the most awesome thing you've ever seen in a kid's soccer context. But anyway, that feels like what Stephen Curry does. He just waits till the end. They're like, okay, now it's time to wake up. But I'd like to say something about the coach. So Steve Kerr has coached the same group of people, mostly largely the same, to several championships and would be presumably, I guess, considered one of the greatest coaches because he's done so well. But it's hard to know how much is that. He just has better players, right? Does he just have better players? But there's something he does that I don't see other coaches do. And maybe if you watch more sports than I do, you can tell me how common this is. He doesn't get mad at his own players for even really, really dumb mistakes. Have you ever noticed that? Is there anybody else who watches him? He is completely poker faced when one of his players just passes it to the wrong guy. I mean just really dumb stuff. Nothing, not a single reaction. But when one of his players gets a bad call, like he's all over it, supporting him. So he does take people out, you know, he replaces them if they're not performing. But it's very just matter of fact, you're out, you're in. And I have to wonder how important that is because he does sort of what it looks like, the Dale Carnegie approach where he's only telling them what they're doing. Right? That's what it looks like. It looks like he only tells them what they're doing right now. He must be telling them what they're doing wrong sometimes or the, or the other coaches do or you know, doing the day to day drills and stuff. But it looks like he's operating on a pretty high level, I think. Was it Coach Jackson who coached, you know, Michael Jordan, etc. Phil Jackson? Wasn't it Phil Jackson who had that same approach? Right. He basically never got mad at his players during the game, not even a little. In fact, he didn't even look bothered. And let me tell you the, the, the psychology of it. Actually, let me tell you a story from my own, my own past. As you know, I'm a hypnotist as well as sometimes I Used to play tennis. So it used to be my game. I used to play tennis a lot, actually. And when I was young, I lived at a place that had some tennis courts in the apartment complex, and they would have some. They would have tennis tournaments for the people who lived in the apartments. And I joined a tournament one time, and it was. They would pair you with somebody who would be your partner. And I got paired with a woman to be my tennis partner who had never played tennis. That's right. I was in a tennis tournament, and I got paired with somebody who didn't even know how you keep score. I'd never touched a tennis racket. Now I said to myself, it looks like I'm going to lose this tournament because I'm playing with somebody who's never touched a tennis racket. But I don't like to lose. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that I don't like to lose. I don't like it at all. So I set about the task of what would it take to win if you have a player who's never touched a tennis ball? And what I did have going for me is that she was a college athlete, so I guess she was a college basketball player, which means she's coachable. And almost instantly. Have you ever dealt with somebody who's instantly coachable? It's really rare. You can say, hold the racket like this, and then they go like that, and they hold the racket, and then you go, oh, okay, I guess I'm done with that. You just did that exactly like I said. And then you check back in an hour, and they're still holding it correctly. Very rare, Very rare. Almost nobody can do that, but she could. So I got her racket held. I got her basics down in just a few minutes. And then I said, all right, here's the deal. You're going to play the net, like, all the time. You'll just play the net, and all you have to do is, if this ball comes over, just slap it down. And she had good hand eye coordination. And so whichever way we started, we instantly switched. And I was fast, so I could cover the entire back court easily. So even if she missed one, I could get it behind her because I was fast enough and she was tall enough and coordinated enough that she could slap the ball down from the net. I think we. We got all the way to the finals. I believe we lost in the finals. But the technique that I used with her was the Steve Kerr technique. She would do something that was just, you Know a mistake. And instead of saying that's okay, which is, don't do that if you're. If you're on. If you're a tennis player and your partner makes a mistake, don't say that's okay. Don't do that. Also, don't act like it's a mistake. Do you know what the right thing to do is? Act like you're getting ready for the next point. That's it. That's the only thing. Just act like you're getting ready for the next point. Don't acknowledge it. And she was an athlete, so when she screwed up, she would look to me and apologize. And I would just. I just wouldn't have it. I wouldn't have it. I just wouldn't acknowledge the apology because we're going to win the next point. So I kept her mind on the next point. I got next point, next point. And because she was a athlete, she rose to the challenge and we got all the way to the finals. Now, I think that that's something that Steve Kerr is doing too, and it's one of those valuable lesson kind of things I like to reinforce. If you just tell people what they're doing right and let them work out the mistake part on their own, you get really good results. My current music instructor, who's teaching me drums, uses the same technique. I'll be drumming and I'll realize that I've completely messed up a fill. You know, I came in on the wrong beat, just completely destroyed it. And I'll look at him like he's gonna tell me I did that wrong. But he knows that. He knows that I know I did it wrong. There's nothing to say. He just lets it go like it didn't even happen. And I'm like, oh, I just made a mistake, but nothing happened to me. There was no repercussion. So now it's easy to make another mistake. And now it's easy to practice. It's easy to stay loose. I don't worry about it. There's nothing coming back at me, and I just loosen up and I play well. It's an amazing technique. The positive reinforcement. Having said that, Steve Kerr also wears a face mask during his coaching while the entire stadium and all the players do not, except for some of his coaches. And then he takes it down when he's talking to people up close. So he is a lefty moron. He is a moron in general, but apparently he's a good coach, so I won't take that away from him. How about this baby formula story. So there's a new effort that seems to be totally successful to launder the Democrat complete incompetence on the baby formula issue, to launder that and turn it into a Republican problem. And it worked. It worked. So Nancy Pelosi comes up with this, or at least she promotes this fake legislation that would give $28 million to solve the baby formula problem, except that it wouldn't make any difference. Like it's money that isn't well conceived or would not be well spent. It's not really on point for the problem. But does the public know that? The public doesn't know that the bill is so poor that no self respecting legislator should vote for it. They don't know that. They only know that something that looks like it was going to help got voted down by Republicans. And so there needs to be a term for fake legislation because this is how many times have we seen fake legislation in the past year? Fake legislation is something that's meant to sound good but is bad so that the other team will have to turn it down and they'll be turning down something that sounds good. And that's what happened. So the so Pelosi successfully, it actually worked. She laundered the Biden administration's incompetence through this fake legislation that Republicans voted against. And, and now it's a Republican failure because they voted against the fake legislation. Yeah, Fake Assalation. We need a name like Fake Assalation. Not bad. But how many times have we seen the same trick? Didn't they just do this for abortion? I think. Didn't Schumer just do it for abortion? They're trying to get everybody on record. They say anyway, I'm going to say Pelosi gets the persuasion win for a clever weasel play. And I'm sure the Republicans do this too. You know, I'm not saying that this is just a Democrat trick, but it's pretty weaselly, the fake legislation trick. All right, and now CNN is trying to save the Biden administration from the inflation monster or at least in terms of save them in terms of how the public thinks about it. Now let me ask you a question. How many of you think that Biden and his actions are responsible for the big part or a lot of the inflation go? How many, how many would say the Biden administration is guilty of making decisions that increased inflation? Not surprised that my audience is mostly yes. Seeing a smattering of a few nos, but mostly yes. All right, now stop, stop answering this question for a moment and now, without looking it up, without looking it up, you have to answer the second question. What is the. And you could be approximate, but what is the approximate inflation rate in the United Kingdom? So the UK today, so. So you got apples and apples. You're comparing the United Kingdom's inflation today to the United States. Without looking it up. What is it? I'm seeing numbers all over the place. I haven't seen the right number. Oh, there it is. Somebody got the right number. Okay, some of you actually knew. It's about 9%. About 9%. US is about 8.5. So if it's Biden's fault and the UK has a conservative prime minister doing different stuff, why is it that the UK's inflation rate is the same as the United States? Basically, somebody says, not comparable. Pick another country. How about France? What is the inflation rate in France? I didn't look this one up. Does somebody know what's the inflation rate in France? I don't know. So if you think that you know why inflation is worse here. I don't. I don't. I've got a degree in economics and I don't know why it's what it is because I don't understand why the UK is same inflation rate. Is it just some weird coincidence that it's all different variables but it came out about the same? Could be. Could be, totally. So the first question you gotta ask yourself is, why are we not seeing comparable comparisons more often? Because I would think both the left and the right would want to make those comparisons. Somebody says it's all due to the same green energy policies. Is it in the uk? I don't know. I don't know about that. So I'll just put that out there as we all have this intuition that Biden caused inflation go higher. And I share that. I share that intuition. But I don't see numbers to support it. So I'd have to see some numbers to believe it. But my intuition leans that way. So be a little bit more, I think be a little bit more guarded on your opinion about inflation. I think there's just too much fog of war stuff going on there. Then John Harwood, cnn. One of their main propagandists, opinion people. He says that. Indeed, he says economists across the political spectrum now believe that Biden's 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan had some good parts but did accelerate inflation. And he said that Republicans have a point. So this is someone writing for CNN who says Republicans have a point, that the economists agree that Biden drove up inflation. He Says what's unclear is how much of a difference the rescue plan made. Normally I would be criticizing that statement for propaganda because he's sort of minimizing it. What's unclear is how much of a difference the rescue plan made. But when I look at the UK's numbers, I have to agree with them. I'm not inclined to agree with that, but I have to, right? I don't want to. I don't want to agree with that at all. I feel like it's something I should disagree with. But the numbers support the fact that you can't tell how much of it was any one cause. And then he's arguing that the reason the inflation hasn't affected us much yet is that the thing that caused it or caused part of it. Some say the rescue plan gave people money and then the lockdowns caused them to save money on, I guess, entertainment and other stuff. And so Americans had some excess savings. I don't know what the definition of excess savings is, but more than usual, I guess. And unemployment looks good. So he's arguing that, yeah, inflation's up a little bit, but people also got some free money because of the thing that caused inflation. And so, you know, push, pull, not that big a deal. He would say, what do you think of that? Do you think that, do you think that the softening of the inflation scare story is valid? Because if it's true that the other countries that are comparable ish have similar inflation problems, it's probably not because of management decisions. Is it cutting oil production? Oh, okay. So some are saying that US cutting oil production affects everybody. Uk. How much. How much energy was the UK getting? And would there. Would their prices really be affected by the US cutting production? Probably would. I mean, indirectly would, of course, but how much? It's more of a how much question, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Any change in supply and demand should change all oil price prices conceptually. But did the UK have something like a. The American rescue plan? Did the UK do something like that? All right, well, I guess my only point is that math proves anything. All right? If I were the Democrats and I cared about persuasion, every time somebody mentioned inflation, I would mention the uk. Because don't Republicans say, hey, that Boris Johnson reminds me of Trump. Right. So if I were trying to be a persuader on the Democrat side and I wanted inflation not to be such a big thing every single time it got mentioned, I'd say, you know, it's about the same as the UK now, even if the reasons are not the Same. It's good persuasion because the people we don't know. If you just tell me we have the same inflation as the uk, I say, oh, well, I guess it doesn't matter what you do, right? Because they didn't do exactly what we did. And we're not saying that they did something wrong necessarily, are we? Scott, why are you ignoring Canada? Why does everybody ignore Canada? Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. No, I don't mean to insult Canada. Why am I ignoring Canada? What is the inflation rate in Canada? That might be the question you're asking. Inflation rate In Canada, anybody? 6.5, 6.8. So 6.8 compared to 8.5. I don't know if that tells us anything. To me, those are the same. I mean, I would round 6.8 to 8.5. I don't think that sounds about. Yeah, it's 25% difference, but on a small number. All right, I need more InfoWorld. I will reiterate this question. Why are we not hearing more about this supply chain? Why is this supply chain story so opaque? And why are we not panicked about it? What's going on? There's either a gigantic supply chain problem or there's not. The only thing I can figure out is that the supply chain has figured out the 8020 rule correctly. In other words, if they knew they could only get 20% of their things delivered on time, could it be that the supply chains have figured out how to get the important 20% shipped? And the other 80% like waiting for furniture? So, for example, I ordered some furniture that I won't get until July. I don't know if this has anything to do with the supply chain problems. It could be normal, but I don't really care if I have to wait till July to get a chair. I mean, I'm not going to sit on the floor. I'll probably sit in a different chair. But if I were missing my microchips for whatever, if I couldn't buy an iPad or a phone, I'd be in serious problem. It'd be trouble. So I feel as if the supply chain just adjusted the 8020 so that we're getting the 20% that really is critical, the 80% that isn't. We're waiting for it, but it doesn't matter. Is that what's happening? Is it just massive micro adjustments everywhere? Baby formula is not a supply chain problem. That's just a US poorly managed problem. Supply chain expert John Monroe has a podcast. But what's the bottom line? But what is the bottom line? We must have made massive adjustments because everything we've heard suggests that the economy should already be destroyed. If anything we were told was true about the supply chains, you know, that the massive number of ships that can't be unloaded and all that, if any of that's true, the economy is already destroyed and we haven't noticed or something. But I don't think it is true. I think somehow the Adam's Law of slow moving disasters worked fast enough that we got past the hardest stuff. Right? Because the story we're not hearing is, oh, we're right on the teetering tipping point for one thing or another, because I don't think we are. The baby formula was a special case that didn't really have anything to do with display supply chain problems per se, container shortage. Is that a thing? Might be. All right, here's the news on cnn. This is what they chose to cover from the Ukraine war. That there was one Russian tank commander who's been prosecuted by the Ukrainians for war crimes, killed a civilian. And I ask you this, what does it mean when there's a story about one soldier jailed for war crimes in the context of a major war in which lots of civilians got killed? I feel as if this is just propaganda, right? It's propaganda. It's a show trial. It's propaganda. But isn't it interesting that that's basically the only news on the war? The only news on the war was one Russian guy is going to be jailed for life for a war crime. That's it. Like it's a major war. And that's the only thing CNN wants to talk about about this major war. One guy. Well, I'm going to make a declaration today, provocatively, that the war is over and Ukraine won and Russia lost. So I'm going to call it. Because who gets to decide when a war is over? I don't think there's going to be any kind of a meeting. I don't think Russia is going to sign a document that says the war is over. So it's not going to be over over. Like the way some wars are where there's a document and a signing and all that. That's not going to happen. So who gets to decide if the war is over? I think it's the observers. The observers, the people who write history, the pundits, basically. And since I, you know, I live in that world at the moment, punditry, I declare that the war is over and Russia lost. That's my opinion and I'm going to say it publicly. The war is over. Russia lost. Now let me give you the counter opinion which is worthy of consideration. Mike Cernovich saw my opinion on Twitter and said, I sense the opposite. Ukraine lost in the real world. Millions of most talented left as the regime was corrupt, land taken, cities in rubble, and Russia lost in the fake world mystique. They didn't take Kyiv in 72 hours. And the question is, which matters most long term? Good question. Because what does it mean to win a war? It's not so clear, is it? What does winning look like? Well, it depends on what you think they were trying to achieve. So one argument is that they both lost. Ukraine lost talent and cities and treasure and people and territory. They lost a lot. What did Russia lose? They lost their mystique about their military, their reputation, their economy will take a hit and they look weak and probably it's going to be tough to build up their military again without as much money. So I will acknowledge that that point is a strong counterpoint. However, wars are have winners and losers. History is going to decide somebody won and somebody lost. And I'd like to get ahead of that and say Russia lost. So here's my argument. My argument is that I don't think there's any question that Putin wanted to control all of Ukraine. Now, I don't know what he said, I don't know if he was willing to settle for less, maybe he was willing to settle for the territory that had more strategic value, etc. But in my opinion, having watched everything we've watched, having watched the way they attacked Ukraine, you know, and sure, I get that maybe the attacks in the north were to pin down the Ukraine army and give them more leverage in the areas that they cared about. I get that could be just a military strategy and an obvious one, but it looks to be based on what Putin has been saying about Ukraine forever. To me, it looks like he was trying to take the whole country. Let me ask you, how many of you believe that Putin's objective was the entire country of Ukraine? How many think so? Mostly nos. Wow, Interesting. All right, you're surprising me a lot of no's. Okay, well, I didn't see that coming. Surprise. Now why do you think, do you think that he had a strategy of getting what he could get, but he at least one of the the places that are strategic. Because here's the thing, I don't think he's going to be able to hold the strategic places if you said he captured them and now he's going to control them forever. I'D say, okay, that's a good argument, that he won something pretty important. But I don't think he can hold them, do you? Because why would Ukraine stop pounding him? Ukraine's just going to turn that territory into like a killing field, aren't they? So I don't know what winning looks like in that context. Winning is no NATO, but NATO grew. I don't know. I would say Russia lost the war because they didn't get control of Ukraine. They lost the. They lost the narrative war. They lost the economic war, they lost the reducing NATO's influence war. I feel like they lost everything. Now Ukraine lost a ton and we don't know if they'll be able to build back better, so to speak. And yeah, the ruble was stronger than we thought, but that's more of a non issue at the moment. All right, so that's what I say. Ukraine won the war. There's a interesting take by Michael Mina. You might know him from. He was the main person arguing for rapid testing during the pandemic. I tried to boost that signal as much as possible, but ultimately the government, I think, because our government is corrupt, I think that's the only explanation. We're not fast enough with rapid tests to make a difference during the pandemic. As Michael Mina points out, that maybe part of the problem, and I would agree with this completely, is that we managed the pandemic with a medical mindset instead of an engineering mindset. I didn't see his entire interview, but I think it means stuff like this. A medical opinion would be don't use rapid tests because they're not accurate enough. And that was the guidance that kept us from having rapid tests. Don't use them because they're not accurate enough. That's a medical standard medical opinion. Don't use a test that's inaccurate. The engineering opinion was engineering opinion. It's just based on math. If you could do enough of these less accurate tests, you would come out ahead. So if you could do them often, you would catch so much of the virus at its worst infectious points because remember, the stuff it misses are the infections that aren't very spready. The reason it would miss an infection, in other words, give you a negative when there was a positive. The only reason it would miss it is because there's very little virus. But if it caught all the people who had really spready virus, how would that not make a difference? I mean, it's just an engineering approach. So I think he's totally right. I think that the medical first approach was completely a disaster. I would also extend that to the drinking bleach hoax. How do you get that? Drinking bleach hoax? Well, when Trump was speculating about can you do something to insert disinfectant into the lungs, he was talking about light. He started the conversation telling you it was about light, and then when he was done, he brought it back to light. So you knew he was always talking about light as the disinfectant. That's sort of an engineering. It's sort of an engineering approach to a medical problem, because the engineering is how do you get that thing down there. Right. We already knew that UV light could kill virus and maybe not damage people. You still needed to test it, but that was sort of an engineering thing. And then as soon as the medical people heard it, they turned it into a medical thing, and then it didn't make sense anymore. And then they said, oh, President doesn't make sense. No, the President was talking in a engineering sense. Correctly. He was correctly bringing up a topic in the correct way. But the medical people, we don't understand. It doesn't make sense from a medical perspective because it was an engineering thing. Yeah. His word choice was suboptimal. No way for Russia to win at this point. Well, one assumes that Russia will keep pecking away at Ukraine forever. Right. So they will use other tricks. They'll use bribery and espionage and hacking and whatever else they can. So I don't think Russia will ever be done with Ukraine, but I don't see that they're going to conquer and hold Ukraine as a country that looks like that's done. I believe that question is asked and answered. And I don't even know what you. I don't even know what fighting is going on. Do you? What? What actual fighting happened in Ukraine today? I didn't see any reporting on it at all. Is there any? There has to be, right? Probably a lot. No reporting. All right, I need to follow defense politics. Asia tweeted at me. I'll follow. There's no reporting yet. You believe them when you. They say, we won. Here's what I believe. I believe that the Russian army is stalled and Ukraine still stands. Does anybody disagree with those two statements? Ukraine is still a country and the Russian army is stalled. It's not obvious that that's going to change. I don't see any reason it would change. Somebody's disagreeing with that. Which part do you disagree? That Ukraine still exists or that the Russian army is stalled? Somebody says they're back on the move. Okay, we'll watch for that. So you're saying that the news is just ignoring a major Russian advance because the news usually reports that the Ukrainians have beaten back the advance. I never believe that. I never believe the beaten back the advance stories. All right, well, we'll see. I'm going to stand with my prediction or statement that the war is over and Russia lost. And if you stick with yours, you should expect that Russia would do some major offensive and take a big chunk out of Ukraine. Five cities are under siege. Interestingly, the news seems very silent on that. Those five cities under siege, those are all in the disputed territory. Right. So I'm not. I'm not questioning whatsoever that Russia got some extra territory and. And the territory that they wanted the most. That does seem to seem like it happened. Pseudo Bill. Okay. All right. There will be a treaty and new borders. Ukraine says no. Ukraine says there will be no land negotiating. Now, of course, that's what you say before you negotiate, but I feel like they mean it. I feel like Ukraine is not going to stop fighting because they can just put their artillery, just sit there and just shell the Russians forever. Can't. With 40 billion behind them. Yeah, well, let's all stay away from the monkeypox and. All right, that's all for now. Ooh. Abbott is behind two of those things. Abbott center of Rapid test and Abbott center of baby formula is 25% of the supply shortage. Huh. Biden's remarks on China and Taiwan. I saw a headline that Biden basically said we'd go to war if China attacked Taiwan. Is that what happened? Or he suggested it. I'm not sure that's news. They're walking it back already. Yeah. I just don't know that that's news. The State Department walked it back, of course. Yeah. I don't think it matters what we say about it because if and when it happens, we're going to make the decision from that point. The thing that we're not going to do is go there because we promised. If anybody thinks that matters, I don't think it does. So it's not going to matter what we promised to Taiwan. It doesn't matter what we said before. If the shit goes down, we're going to make a decision like we never thought about it before. It's going to be a start from zero decision. All right? Now we're in this situation. What do you do? Now? It's not going to be based on what we said we'd do. None of that would matter. All right? Russia is winning bigly you say there's an antifa shooting in Colorado. Haven't heard about that. Oh, Bill Maher went based on the trans question. Yeah. I'm starting to get tired of Bill Maher stories. Every Friday, he says something that's anti his own team. He says anti Republican. More. But. Anyway, I'm getting tired of that story because it's like the same story every week. The Sussman trial. I'm just. My mind is boggled by the whole Sussman Hillary Clinton collusion hoax thing, because we've now proven that everything that we suspected about it was true. Right. Like everything you thought about it was true. And they. Meaning the Democrats have taken so long to deal with it that we don't care anymore. Like, it doesn't have the same salience to us. We just waited too long, and it's complicated and it's over, and Trump's not the president, so it doesn't matter. So you can make anything be the biggest problem in the world or the smallest problem in the world just by how you treat it. Oh, yeah. The Operation Fly formula. Oh, my God. So the Biden administration names their. Their airlift of the baby formula. Since they're going to fly it, they call it Operation Fly Formula Now. Fly formula sounds like something that Jeff Goldberg should stay away from. You catch my drift? Stay away from the fly formula because it'll turn you into a giant fly. Who came up with that name? A fly formula. No, get fly completely out of your name because I don't think of airplane. You know what that could have been? Project Baby Formula Airlift. Huh? Baby Formula airlift. Okay, how about Formula by Air about baby rescue? I believe I could go all day long and never say anything as bad as fly formula. Am I right? Nothing is worse than that Fly formula. Basically, equating children to flies. It's all part of the Biden war on babies. The B war. The Biden administration hates babies so much, they equate them with flies, they abort them. They don't give them enough formula, and they let them grow up in a world with all kinds of inflation. So the Biden war on babies continues. All right. Operation nipple nectar. Okay. Not bad. All right, that's all I got for now, and I will talk to you tomorrow. I'm sure the news will be fascinating tomorrow. And this is the best live stream you've ever seen in your life. I know. Best show ever. And I'll talk to you tomorrow.