Episode 293 Scott Adams - Antifa Terrorists, Caravan, Guns, Healthcare, Mueller

bump hey everybody hey Thomas hey everybody I keep waiting for another name to come up on the comments and that it paused good morning Mustang girl GG Brett come on in here you know what time it is it's time for coffee with Scott Adams and if you have your beverage and it's in a cup a glass of Stein a mug any kind of a container this is the time to lift it to your lips and enjoy the simultaneous scent that's the good stuff so let's talk about some of the things in the news oil prices are crashing that's right the price of oil is way down it's good if you're a consumer it's bad if you're in the oil industry or a few owned oil stocks as I do so I can't I can't tell you this is great for my portfolio however it does tell you that whatever we're doing with Iran isn't going to hurt oil prices if you know what I mean so Iran is in a lot of trouble right now because not only are we giving them economic sanctions but whatever little oil they can sell is going to be sold at the lowest price and so suddenly we have all this economic leverage because the US has such a strong economy that oil up oil down it's not going to make that much difference to us but it will make or break Iran so while you are looking over here at caravans and Jim Acosta and all that stuff things in the Middle East are starting to line up here's the here's the first thing that's lining up the Saudi leader needs to do something to shall we say partially redeem himself from this killing of khashoggi at the Turkish embassy and I would not be surprised to find some announcements some progress some really big deals coming out of the Middle East might involve Iran it might involve Saudi Arabia certainly would involve Israel whether directly or indirectly but I'm feeling like the elements are all distorting to drift in the same direction you know it's feeling like it feels like North Korea felt a year ago which is that there's more heading in the direction of good than bad people are prompting me to talk about the alleged alleged I say election fraud in at least Florida I think that's a wait-and-see I believe that if you're looking at the anecdotal evidence yeah they're stories of somebody found a box of votes and if you're normal you say to yourself they found a box of votes two days after the vote I'm not sure that's real so but anything you hear at this point is still a fog of war stuff so I'm discounting almost everything I hear except that we should definitely get a handle on this at the very least law enforcement of some nature should be surrounding that place just to protect the Republic now I have a question for you it's well understood I think by most people in this country most smart people that there's no such thing as really voter fraud in this country that you hear stories but overall overall our system is you know very reliable over all give or take some individual cases but why is it that everyone has a recount everybody has recounts built into their system right they have different laws on recounts but why do you need recounts if your system is so good those are two things they can't exist simultaneously either the system is not reliable possibly because of ordinary mistakes bugs in the system you know things that don't get recorded but also because of the potential for playing with it yeah so even though even though the recount doesn't kick in until about a 1% level you know most of them have a threshold things have to be this close before the recount if you are going to do something fraudulent at least in this country where everything is polled and measured the only way you're going to get away with it is if the natural difference was around 1% so if the if the natural difference is sort of than that 1% range then I would think there's a lot of a lot of potential for fraud once you get that close you know I I don't see in this country anybody getting 40% more votes than they belong then they deserve that's probably not happening so I do not have an opinion about whether the Florida stuff is crooked in Broward County but like you my antennas are fully up as a what did Marco Rubio just say what did rick scott just say about their own state why what what all right so I'm like you I'm on got 20,000 about how important it is that we get this right but it's a little early to know exactly what's going on there so I'm just being a little bit cautious but like you got my suspicions now see mmm it was reporting as you know both CNN and Fox News like to add a lot of each other you know they both talked about the bad behavior of the other and Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon were talking about how on Fox News the story of the caravan suddenly when suddenly went from this dangerous invasion to not even a story and well they do have sort of a point there don't they but I would add a few things to that number one as I've said from the beginning nobody on either side of the discussion believed that the caravan was a big problem nobody had Fox News thought it was a big problem everybody but understands that if the caravan did whatever it wanted to do and in got its way no matter what that looked like to you but if the caravan got its way and most of those people got into the country the real question is what happens next well the next thing that happens is more caravans right so when CNN talks about Oh Fox News you're making a bigger deal about this it's no invasion it's just a few hundred people that's falling apart there are hundreds and miles from our our border and all that that's all totally valid but it's also not the right point the point has nothing to do with this care event because this Caravan is not really a big deal when you look at the whole world the whole country it's what happens next so we'll see what happens next I would say that the president has done a good job of making sure that what happens next turns into a non-issue because he moved the military down there he's making whatever changes he needs - he has threatened them sufficiently that apparently they've backed off he's also worked with Mexico to you know make accommodations within Mexico so I think the president has carved away on the caravan in all the right ways and psychologically legally militarily security wise to make it a non-issue which also pretty much guarantees that there won't be another string of caravans coming through as long as there's a president Trump because whatever happened this time is going to inform them what the next one looks like so it's not a coincidence the caravan left the news because once the election is over it actually is less important and it also has been largely dealt with so it did shrink from big and scary to nothing nothing we should worry about at the moment but it does have to be dealt with I'm I love watching CNN when they label the Fox News a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump administration so the the CNN framing of their competitor their mortal enemy Fox News is that Fox News is just in the pocket of Trump and the Trump administration now if you watch the news you would know that clearly Fox News is a pro Trump Pro conservative editorial slant and CNN and CNN consistently is sort of a Clinton democrat kind of a slant so as either of them accused the other they're both largely right but I've said this before and I'm going to say it again there does seem to me a difference in how Fox labels its opinion versus its news when you're watching you know Shepard Smith for example if you're watching him it looks like news and he does not seem to be in the pocket of Trump right if you watch why am i blacken on his name neil cavuto he sometimes loves what Trump is doing sometimes he doesn't and that feels fair you don't really see that on CNN right you don't see anybody on CNN who's an on-air personality who sometimes agrees with the president and sometimes doesn't on a fairly regular basis Bret Baier is another one you know he's hard news seems to stick to the facts it does not look like opinion when he when he presents it but that he take Hannity Hannity is just clearly an opinion show and he labels it as clearly as you would ever want it labeled he says it as clearly as you want one to say it as often as he wants to say it at the end he tells you these personal friends with the president so when I watch Hannity like I can put that in the right context but here's where it gets dicey when I'm watching let's say Anderson Cooper's show Anderson Cooper is most well known for being a hard news guide most of his career he was the guy in the hurricane the disaster of the war zone you know and and when he was reporting you weren't getting opinion he was telling you there's a flood here this you know this is happening I mean he did the hard work of real journalism but at the moment his current job is sort of this weird hybrid where he's sort of the serious moderator and the pundits are doing the job of the opinion and because it's him I think our minds give it more weight as being news because when you see Anderson Cooper you say well that's a news guy and then you hear one of his pundits say and and the president's obviously a white supremacist or whatever they whatever they say on CNN and you will see P you won't see anybody disagree with it so don't you don't you process it as though you heard news when in fact it was opinion I think that's a difference but I'd be open to a counter-argument on that so the only point is that Fox News seems to label its opinion more clearly than CNN and I don't know if any of that's intentional it just could be the way things roll down now you're wondering will Trump fire Muller now that he's got Whitaker in place and here's my take on that my take is that the president doesn't make decisions until it's time to make the decision but he does walk right up to the line so that when it's the perfect time he can make the decision so if you're asking yourself has the president already decided to fire Muller or not my best guess and again we can't read his mind right but my best guess is that he has not made that decision but he has quite intentionally walked right up to the line and put a toe over it so that you know it's it's in the air it's possible here's what's happening because of that number one were in a period where people are sure he's going to fire or at least the opponents his opponents are sure he's going to fire Muller and so they're protesting etc at the same time he's not firing Muller so all the protests are hey you can't fire Muller you can't fire Muller while the reality is Muller still in this job so there's a strange situation where the president has created a situation in which his opponents are punching themselves out they're exhausting themselves on something that is completely imaginary right now which is not to say it couldn't happen there's a very good chance it will happen but at the moment they're flaming out punching themselves silly on something that they are imagining might happen what will happen if he lets them do this for a while let's say they go to maximum you know protest maximum excitement maximum emotional whatever they're gonna get used to it here's here's the great persuasion level that's a little bit invisible unless you study this stuff as I say often you can get used to anything humans get used to their situation is very quickly and so anything that's terrible and even anything that's amazing if you're exposed to it too much and for you know to consistently you just get sort of blind to it it's emotional value just starts trending down so trump has created this situation where he's not done anything wrong he he has not fired Mahler at the same time his enemies are going nuts using up all their energy against the thing that hasn't happened should he decide in the future to make it happened all of their outrage will have been siphoned off oh yeah they'll still make a big deal about it I'm not saying they won't make a big big deal about it but the level of intensity is going to be totally lower because people just got used to it and bored by it and are we still talking about Muller Muller was so last week we already protested Muller don't tell me I have to protest Muller again so the president is creating this brilliant situation of advantage without making the decision and my guess is he has not made that decision that he's just ready to make it should he need to now here are some other points on the Mahler thing I believe there is zero chance zero chance that we will never hear what Muller has found out about the president specifically all right I want to say that very clearly I think there's zero chance under any scenario that we won't find out any bad news about the president that came out of the Muller indictment or the Muller investigation and the reason is that there there are always leaks there are leaks there are legal you know there will be legal things there will be documents left and Printers there will be there'll be assistants who flip there isn't the slightest chance the slightest chance that the public will be denied whatever it is that Muller found do you know who would leak it well somebody close to Muller if not Muller himself if it mattered imagine if it mattered imagine if Muller had the goods you imagine if Muller had something that was like really good stuff first of all we probably would know it by now because leaks right where people would have seen the signs of it you would have seen you know lawyers Laureen up in places you didn't expect and that would give you a tip-off that sort of thing so although although Muller has been excellent in preventing leaks and I gotta say you have to compliment the guy whatever a Muller's group is doing do not have leaks is really impressive it's very impressive so you can't take that away from but my guess is this that there is a real issue about how many of the small trails Muller takes before he wraps it up you know does is he bleeding out into fields that he shouldn't be such as the president's taxes or other people who weren't involved with a campaign and that sort of thing so I think that's a real question and here's how I suggest fixing it they are ready for this I don't believe in goals I believe in systems so what would be a system that would make the people on the Left happy while also ending the Muller investigation on a timely in a timely basis and it would look like this if one of the issues is budget and the critics of the president are saying no you put Whitaker in that acting AG job because he's already said in articles before he was in this job he said that maybe Miller's budget should be shrunk to constrain him and so people are worried oh no it's a backdoor way to control Muller by his budget so I would suggest the following appoint a budget judge a budget judge an actual judge a setting judge who is the only person outside of Muller's team who is allowed to look at what Muller's doing and the budget judge would never talk could not tell the president what he finds can't tell Whitaker what he finds but he can get into all the details and say okay Muller what do you have and Muller says okay we've got this and this and this and that parts done but we need this much more budget to look into these extra things and then the budget judge says I judge that you should have more budget or half a budget or you should wrap it up just budget wise just budget wise we'll get rid of all the people who say I'm blocking all the people who say it's boring here we go I'll block all the people who say that did you and I know I know you don't mean well people were telling me the topic is boring but I'm blocking you anyway because I don't need that kind of energy here and so a budget judge because then the budget judge will be accountable for it later because later everybody will know what the situation was eventually we all know what the situation was and they'll be a cannibal let's talk about some other systems I'm gonna think outside the box now all right I'm thinking outside the box on guns you know that we've had obviously huge gun problems in this country and it doesn't seem like we're ever gonna get to the point where we ban all the guns and nobody's ever going to be happy with allowing guns the way they are so we have two situations that can't they can't last we can't have the current situation go on and we it's hard to change anything because the gun people so here's my out-of-the-box suggestion for solving the gun problem are you ready make it mandatory if you own a gun mandatory membership in the NRA it takes a while to think about why that makes sense but let me tell you what's the first thing that the NRA is concerned about they're concerned that there would be some kind of a national registry of who owns guns but do you know who already has a national registry of who owns guns the NRA the NRA has a list of its membership pretty much a hundred percent of those people own guns there might be somebody who gave away their gone and still wants to be a member but for the most part the NRA does have a national registry of who owns guns and who cares about guns now on top of that the NRA is the most proactive organization for gun safety as many of you are saying in the comments right there the most proactive on gun safety and here's the best part they also have the most interest in reducing gun violence whoo but the NRA has that much interest in reducing gun violence because it's their entire you have the reason for being you know you and I have other things to worry about gun violence is just one of the big things we're worried about but we have lots of other things to worry about the NRA has one thing to worry about keeping guns safely it's the safely part the they need to figure out so what if you just take government out of the job and say look here's the deal if you want a gun at the same time you have to sign up for the NRA because the NRA is going to be trying to educate you there couldn't be trying to figure out more about their members they might even come up with wait for it the NRA might come up with its own gun control measures why because as soon as you take the government out of it and you say ok it's a private organization we all get to vote within this organization let's decide how we want to handle guns but the government is not part of it the government won't be part of that so the NRA could collectively say ok now that the government is out of the decision-making we're not worried about the slippery slope anymore because we're making our own decisions gun owners are making the decisions nobody else gun owners are making the decisions for gun owners not the government now suddenly you're flexible because you're saying there's no slippery slope the gun owners are not going to screw themselves the government might screw us but the gun owners are not going to screw themselves so if the gun owners say let's have this kind of a check let's have this kind of a requirement let's you know let's let's try this somewhere it's going to be a lot more a lot more palatable now you also don't want people to have to pay dues to the NRA so you might have to have some kind of dual membership level you know if you had a higher level ship a level of membership maybe you get some more benefits but you at least needs to be on the mailing list and at least need to be part of the organization all right now this is an out-of-the-box idea and so I do not present it as a suggestion it's not a suggestion it's just an end of the box idea because when you first hear it didn't you have the experience of why is that a good idea it's not a good idea or sighted by it idea and then it starts to settle in with you that when you've taken the responsibility away from the governor which is where all the constitutional questions are and you put it in private hands and you empower them and you make it their brand make it their brand to take care of this kind of stuff these these shootings maybe you have something here's another idea I have a hypothesis which could be tested suppose you have an app or some kind of a social media add-on idea in which anybody could report any other citizen that they believe is a gun risk so so here's the idea an app that anybody can report anyone they think is a gun risk now if you report your your your personal enemy and there's only one of you and it's just one report well the app just lets us sit there and it doesn't do anything because you don't want people just report people they don't like but suppose your app shows that the mother reported the son the friend and the girlfriend have all used the app to report him and it's all confidential then it starts beeping and then the government starts asking questions holy shoot we've got three people who are confidential so the girlfriend can say I didn't report you the mother can say I don't know what you're talking about they just use their app and then it starts gathering other information maybe maybe once somebody has you know risen up the line then maybe law enforcement or other people start seeing their social media posts and then you're looking at their social media posts you see that they've got somebody saying that's a terrible idea I'm open to why it's a terrible idea by the way you could there's plenty of room for reasons you know you don't have much room in your comments but just just make a reference to the category of reasons false negatives there would be false negatives but they would be rare because you'd need multiple people from different positions coming in and reporting somebody and it would not automatically mean that you lose your guns so it wouldn't mean that it would just mean that you've been flagged so you're way off on your last three ideas if you don't like those ideas listen to this one it's about health care I'm trying to understand and there might be a reason for this by the way but I'm trying to understand why there can't be two separate healthcare tracks in this country one that's a single-payer type of situation but only the people who sign up for it and if they sign up for it they're also the only ones who can ever be taxed to pay for it now or in the future and then the separate one that is completely private you know sort like the current systems but you can never get the benefits of being in the other one so you can switch sides anytime you want and and then things would be adjusted or impro rated whatever but they would be competing plans the country is so big that the you know half of the country would account for you know bigger than a regular country right so why are we arguing about which way it should be isn't that argument what dumb people do if you can test it why don't you just do it what would stop people from volunteering to be in the system there was also competing against the somebody's calling me a socialist is it a socialist system to have two competing systems that are both public and you can freely go between them is that what socialism looks like to you the because that looks like pretty much not socialism to me some of you are saying yes yes yes I know a lot of my the followers here have a sort of a reflexive feeling about the socialism but if socialism is optional I don't know if that makes it socialism you know if you personally never have to pay for somebody else's choice is that really socialism that's a weird definition of it you saying auntie firewood flag all their enemies if there was an app that could point out crazy gun people I think there would actually be very little of that but here's the thing those of you who are saying that my app idea is terrible you are not thinking right independent of whether the idea is terrible because it could be tested anything that can be tested small should be tested there's very little risk if you build this app and let's say all bad people use it and report all the wrong people and it causes some problems well you just cancel it like a month into it it's like well we tried it for a month ant if I used it to make a bunch of false claims can't tell what's real what's it was isn't so we'll stop using it that's it if you have a problem this big you should be trying a whole bunch of stuff see what you learn from that what works what doesn't it could be the building app simply teaches you about something else that does work and then you pivot to that but those of you who are saying that it's a terrible idea and they're therefore should not be tried don't understand how anything works everything that works big God tried small so if you're not trying stuff small you're not really part of the you know the reason the reason debate on anything all right yeah there could be penalties for abuses we can figure it out as we go but doing nothing doing nothing would certainly not make sense now if you were so do you notice here that for each of my ideas there seemed to be people who hate them the the people who are yelling socialism about any of these ideas are probably the least credible people in the conversation because if all you're doing is labeling it with the first word that comes to mind you're not really engaging in the idea you're just saying sauce all of them social them that's more like Tourette's syndrome you know sort of yeah if every if every idea for how to reorganize or organize better you know the society we live in if your first response to all of it is socialism socialism then you're not really part of the serious discussion you go and try first lol on what is alright that's a ridiculous comment now let's talk about some other cool things happening in health care I bought yesterday at my local CVS a device to take my temperature by pointing at my forehead have you heard of this so I've got it downstairs but it's about this size it's a little device the $40 or something and instead of sticking it up your bod or putting in your mouth or sticking in your ear or where you've got all these sanitary problems you just hold it like an inch away from your head push a button and it tells you your body temperature without even touching you I was trying it out last night I think it works I think it works you know at least they gave me a body temperature this seemed reasonable and then I also saw there's commercials all over the place for a little device you clip to your phone and it can give you a FDA quality EKG yeah EKG so you can test your heart with your phone just putting your thumbs on a little device that sticks into your phone this stuff that's coming is really really big we're very close a lot of you don't know this background but after 9/11 when there was a lot of fear of poisons from terrorists the government tasked industry and there the government labs especially to come up with a way to test blood very quickly in the field to find out what kind of poison the terrorists had used so we went from a a place 15 years ago or whatever where where we couldn't easily test anybody's blood to shrinking it down to handheld devices we now have handheld devices that can test just a little prick of blood all kinds of stuff and I believe you could probably stick them to your phone and get an answer pretty quickly so we're right on the right on the verge of being able to do your own blood test your own EKG test your you know test your temperature there's also a I have a small investment in a company that will test your skin cancer with basically something like a piece of tape you so instead of having to carve out the the suspicious mole and send it to a lab and two weeks later you hear about it it's literally a piece of tape you put it on your suspicious thing that you go you rip off the piece of tape you put it in the Machine and it tells you if you got skin cancer you know right there now that machine was desktop it was sort of like this big but I believe the active part of it probably can shrink and shrink to the point where you're sticking it in your phone pretty close right so we're gonna be so close and I also think that there are apparently big cost I've read articles where people are getting the cost to say hey I think it's a cat scan or a PET scan the Cask and I think that if you organize differently you know you do some things differently if some laws change the cost of a cat-scan will come way down to you know a fraction of what it is so if you start combining all of these little bits of technology that are coming online from all these disparate sources we're very close to being able to piece together almost a self health care situation will be having doctors to myapp the interface by wind hub app I'll give you more of an announcement of that at some point but where we will be onboarding some doctors so that you could call up you know use the app and for a low price you can get a doctor immediately you just pick one that's online at the moment boop-boo-boo-boop and you have a video call with a doctor now the doctor says well maybe you should test this or that and you use your devices of your phone or maybe your neighbor has a device you don't have one but you go borrow your neighbors and suddenly you've got the best advice in the world you've got Google to check things you can you can get a second opinion also on the app you can you know test your blood test your skin and you can sign up for you know a cat scan that's 10% of the cost so it seems like we're very close to where we could get something like 80 percent of our health care needs taken care of somewhat locally with outside of any kind of a health care system then you need something like a catastrophic coverage just for hospitals and such and I'm sure that there are many many health care costs which could come down and that I know I noticed that the government is also talking about lowering pharmaceutical cost how do you lower pharmaceutical costs I don't know what the idea is for that are we just telling the pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost how does that work well I hope it works but it seems to me that our pharmaceutical companies should be giving us great deals in the United States and overcharging other countries to pay for it I don't know if that's an option but I'd like to see it doctor will say need to make an appointment the the telemedicine doctors don't say that because they don't make appointments so obviously there are cases where you do have to have somebody go in for the to be checked out in person but the telemedicine model is not built that way the telemedicine model is trying to fix things on the phone yeah whenever that's practical I also wonder about the cost of insurance let me ask you this have you ever heard of the phrase self-insured it refers to big companies that are so big they don't need insurance for a building for example because even if the building blows up the company itself is so large that it can afford to pay for a new building so self-insured it means that you're such a big entity that any part of you can fall apart and you still got plenty of money to fix it yourself you don't have to pay an insurance company for that and it seems to me that the government has that going for them if the only thing you did with health care was remove the profit from the insurance companies and say the government will pay for whatever you need because the government is essentially the insurance company - but there's no profit in insurance from the government they simply print more money or raise your taxes or whatever they need to do if they need more money but there's no insurance industry profit if the only thing you did to healthcare is say okay this half of the country doesn't need insurance because the government will act as though they are they insure even though there's no insurance involved wouldn't that take down the cost of health care 30% am I wrong how much is the insurance cost on top of the actual service it's law right just 30% high or low I don't even know but I would guess that there's there are lots of gains that could be made anyway I'm just looking at your comments right now that is universal health care yes I just described a single-payer system but what I'm asking is why doesn't the single-payer system automatically take 30% off the costs because it gets rid of insurance somebody's saying 50 percent more than 30 percent people are saying somebody's saying 70 percent I'm not going to buy that the government is not competent to execute I wonder if the government even needs to be very involved if you have a single-payer system what how much does the government actually get involved except for writing the checks and they need some kind of auditing to make sure they weren't getting screwed but if you had the single-payer system running parallel with a private system wouldn't you always know who's getting screwed if you had those two systems they could both look in each other and say wait a minute where are these single-payer people paying less than we're paying over in this free market and then suddenly things would would adjust all right Brian Danes there's your shadow anyway I want to frame everything I said in terms of ideas today as just out of the box thinking I'm not presenting them as good ideas there may be perfectly good reasons why nothing I said is a good idea but I don't know those reasons if somebody does let me know and I will talk to you later

bump hey everybody hey Thomas hey

everybody I keep waiting for another

name to come up on the comments and that

it paused good morning Mustang girl GG

Brett come on in here

you know what time it is it's time for

coffee with Scott Adams and if you have

your beverage and it's in a cup a glass

of Stein a mug any kind of a container

this is the time to lift it to your lips

and enjoy the simultaneous scent that's

the good stuff

so let's talk about some of the things

in the news oil prices are crashing

that's right the price of oil is way

down it's good if you're a consumer it's

bad if you're in the oil industry or a

few owned oil stocks as I do so I can't

I can't tell you this is great for my

portfolio however it does tell you that

whatever we're doing with Iran isn't

going to hurt oil prices if you know

what I mean so Iran is in a lot of

trouble right now because not only are

we giving them economic sanctions but

whatever little oil they can sell is

going to be sold at the lowest price and

so suddenly we have all this economic

leverage because the US has such a

strong economy that oil up oil down it's

not going to make that much difference

to us but it will make or break Iran so

while you are looking over here at

caravans and Jim Acosta and all that

stuff things in the Middle East are

starting to line up here's the here's

the first thing that's lining up

the Saudi leader needs to do something

to shall we say partially redeem himself

from this killing of khashoggi at the

Turkish embassy and I would not be

surprised to find some announcements

some progress some really big deals

coming out of the Middle East might

involve Iran it might involve Saudi

Arabia certainly would involve Israel

whether directly or indirectly but I'm

feeling like the elements are all

distorting to drift in the same

direction

you know it's feeling like it feels like

North Korea felt a year ago which is

that there's more heading in the

direction of good than bad people are

prompting me to talk about the alleged

alleged I say election fraud in at least

Florida I think that's a wait-and-see I

believe that if you're looking at the

anecdotal evidence yeah they're stories

of somebody found a box of votes and if

you're normal you say to yourself they

found a box of votes two days after the

vote I'm not sure that's real so but

anything you hear at this point is still

a fog of war stuff so I'm discounting

almost everything I hear except that we

should definitely get a handle on this

at the very least law enforcement of

some nature should be surrounding that

place just to protect the Republic now I

have a question for you

it's well understood I think by most

people in this country most smart people

that there's no such thing as really

voter fraud in this country that you

hear stories but overall overall our

system is you know very reliable over

all give or take some individual cases

but why is it that everyone has a

recount

everybody has recounts built into their

system right they have different laws on

recounts but why do you need recounts if

your system is so good

those are two things they can't exist

simultaneously either the system is not

reliable possibly because of ordinary

mistakes bugs in the system you know

things that don't get recorded but also

because of the potential for playing

with it yeah so even though even though

the recount doesn't kick in until about

a 1% level you know most of them have a

threshold things have to be this close

before the recount if you are going to

do something fraudulent at least in this

country where everything is polled and

measured the only way you're going to

get away with it is if the natural

difference was around 1% so if the if

the natural difference is sort of than

that 1% range then I would think there's

a lot of a lot of potential for fraud

once you get that close you know I I

don't see in this country anybody

getting 40% more votes than they belong

then they deserve that's probably not

happening

so I do not have an opinion about

whether the Florida stuff is crooked in

Broward County

but like you my antennas are fully up as

a what did Marco Rubio just say what did

rick scott just say about their own

state why what what all right so I'm

like you I'm on

got 20,000 about how important it is

that we get this right but it's a little

early to know exactly what's going on

there so I'm just being a little bit

cautious but like you got my suspicions

now see mmm it was reporting as you know

both CNN and Fox News like to add a lot

of each other you know they both talked

about the bad behavior of the other and

Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon were talking

about how on Fox News the story of the

caravan suddenly when suddenly went from

this dangerous invasion to not even a

story and well they do have sort of a

point there don't they but I would add a

few things to that number one as I've

said from the beginning nobody on either

side of the discussion believed that the

caravan was a big problem nobody had Fox

News thought it was a big problem

everybody but understands that if the

caravan did whatever it wanted to do and

in got its way no matter what that

looked like to you but if the caravan

got its way and most of those people got

into the country the real question is

what happens next well the next thing

that happens is more caravans right so

when CNN talks about Oh Fox News you're

making a bigger deal about this it's no

invasion it's just a few hundred people

that's falling apart there are hundreds

and miles from our our border and all

that that's all totally valid but it's

also not the right point the point has

nothing to do with this care event

because this Caravan is not really a big

deal when you look at the whole world

the whole country it's what happens next

so we'll see what happens next I would

say that the president has done a good

job of making sure that what happens

next turns into a non-issue because he

moved the military down there he's

making whatever changes he needs

- he has threatened them sufficiently

that apparently they've backed off he's

also worked with Mexico to you know make

accommodations within Mexico so I think

the president has carved away on the

caravan in all the right ways and

psychologically legally militarily

security wise to make it a non-issue

which also pretty much guarantees that

there won't be another string of

caravans coming through as long as

there's a president Trump because

whatever happened this time is going to

inform them what the next one looks like

so it's not a coincidence

the caravan left the news because once

the election is over it actually is less

important and it also has been largely

dealt with so it did shrink from big and

scary to nothing nothing we should worry

about at the moment but it does have to

be dealt with I'm I love watching CNN

when they label the Fox News a wholly

owned subsidiary of the Trump

administration so the the CNN framing of

their competitor their mortal enemy Fox

News is that Fox News is just in the

pocket of Trump and the Trump

administration now if you watch the news

you would know that clearly Fox News is

a pro Trump Pro conservative editorial

slant and CNN and CNN consistently is

sort of a Clinton democrat kind of a

slant so as either of them accused the

other they're both largely right but

I've said this before and I'm going to

say it again there does seem to me a

difference in how Fox labels its opinion

versus its news when you're watching you

know Shepard Smith for example if you're

watching him it looks like news and he

does not seem to be in the pocket of

Trump

right if you watch why am i blacken on

his name neil cavuto he sometimes loves

what Trump is doing sometimes he doesn't

and that feels fair you don't really see

that on CNN right you don't see anybody

on CNN who's an on-air personality who

sometimes agrees with the president and

sometimes doesn't on a fairly regular

basis Bret Baier is another one you know

he's hard news seems to stick to the

facts it does not look like opinion when

he when he presents it but that he take

Hannity Hannity is just clearly an

opinion show and he labels it as clearly

as you would ever want it labeled he

says it as clearly as you want one to

say it as often as he wants to say it at

the end he tells you these personal

friends with the president so when I

watch Hannity like I can put that in the

right context but here's where it gets

dicey when I'm watching let's say

Anderson Cooper's show Anderson Cooper

is most well known for being a hard news

guide most of his career he was the guy

in the hurricane the disaster of the war

zone you know and and when he was

reporting you weren't getting opinion he

was telling you there's a flood here

this you know this is happening I mean

he did the hard work of real journalism

but at the moment his current job is

sort of this weird hybrid where he's

sort of the serious moderator and the

pundits are doing the job of the opinion

and because it's him

I think our minds give it more weight as

being news because when you see Anderson

Cooper you say well that's a news guy

and then you hear one of his pundits say

and and the president's obviously a

white supremacist or whatever they

whatever they say on CNN and you will

see P you won't see anybody disagree

with it so don't you don't you process

it

as though you heard news when in fact it

was opinion I think that's a difference

but I'd be open to a counter-argument on

that so the only point is that Fox News

seems to label its opinion more clearly

than CNN and I don't know if any of

that's intentional it just could be the

way things roll down now you're

wondering will Trump fire Muller now

that he's got Whitaker in place and

here's my take on that my take is that

the president doesn't make decisions

until it's time to make the decision but

he does walk right up to the line so

that when it's the perfect time he can

make the decision so if you're asking

yourself has the president already

decided to fire Muller or not my best

guess and again we can't read his mind

right but my best guess is that he has

not made that decision but he has quite

intentionally walked right up to the

line and put a toe over it so that you

know it's it's in the air it's possible

here's what's happening because of that

number one were in a period where people

are sure he's going to fire or at least

the opponents his opponents are sure

he's going to fire Muller and so they're

protesting etc at the same time he's not

firing Muller so all the protests are

hey you can't fire Muller you can't fire

Muller while the reality is Muller still

in this job so there's a strange

situation where the president has

created a situation in which his

opponents are punching themselves out

they're exhausting themselves on

something that is completely imaginary

right now which is not to say it

couldn't happen there's a very good

chance it will happen but at the moment

they're flaming out punching themselves

silly on something that they are

imagining might happen

what will happen if he lets them do this

for a while let's say they go to maximum

you know protest maximum excitement

maximum emotional whatever they're gonna

get used to it here's here's the great

persuasion level that's a little bit

invisible unless you study this stuff as

I say often you can get used to anything

humans get used to their situation is

very quickly and so anything that's

terrible and even anything that's

amazing if you're exposed to it too much

and for you know to consistently you

just get sort of blind to it it's

emotional value just starts trending

down so trump has created this situation

where he's not done anything wrong he he

has not fired Mahler at the same time

his enemies are going nuts using up all

their energy against the thing that

hasn't happened should he decide in the

future to make it happened all of their

outrage will have been siphoned off oh

yeah they'll still make a big deal about

it I'm not saying they won't make a big

big deal about it but the level of

intensity is going to be totally lower

because people just got used to it and

bored by it and are we still talking

about Muller Muller was so last week we

already protested Muller don't tell me I

have to protest Muller again so the

president is creating this brilliant

situation of advantage without making

the decision and my guess is he has not

made that decision that he's just ready

to make it should he need to now here

are some other points on the Mahler

thing I believe there is zero chance

zero chance that we will never hear what

Muller has found out about the president

specifically all right I want to say

that very clearly

I think there's zero chance under any

scenario that we won't find out

any bad news about the president that

came out of the Muller indictment or the

Muller investigation and the reason is

that there there are always leaks there

are leaks there are legal you know there

will be legal things there will be

documents left and Printers there will

be there'll be assistants who flip there

isn't the slightest chance the slightest

chance that the public will be denied

whatever it is that Muller found do you

know who would leak it

well somebody close to Muller if not

Muller himself if it mattered imagine if

it mattered imagine if Muller had the

goods you imagine if Muller had

something that was like really good

stuff first of all we probably would

know it by now because leaks right where

people would have seen the signs of it

you would have seen you know lawyers

Laureen up in places you didn't expect

and that would give you a tip-off that

sort of thing so although although

Muller has been excellent in preventing

leaks and I gotta say you have to

compliment the guy whatever a Muller's

group is doing do not have leaks is

really impressive it's very impressive

so you can't take that away from but my

guess is this that there is a real issue

about how many of the small trails

Muller takes before he wraps it up you

know does is he bleeding out into fields

that he shouldn't be such as the

president's taxes or other people who

weren't involved with a campaign and

that sort of thing

so I think that's a real question and

here's how I suggest fixing it they are

ready for this I don't believe in goals

I believe in systems so what would be a

system that would make the people on the

Left happy while also ending the Muller

investigation on a timely in a timely

basis and it would look like this

if one of the issues is budget and the

critics of the president are saying no

you put Whitaker in that acting AG job

because he's already said in articles

before he was in this job he said that

maybe Miller's budget should be shrunk

to constrain him and so people are

worried oh no it's a backdoor way to

control Muller by his budget so I would

suggest the following appoint a budget

judge a budget judge an actual judge a

setting judge who is the only person

outside of Muller's team who is allowed

to look at what Muller's doing and the

budget judge would never talk could not

tell the president what he finds can't

tell Whitaker what he finds but he can

get into all the details and say okay

Muller what do you have and Muller says

okay we've got this and this and this

and that parts done but we need this

much more budget to look into these

extra things and then the budget judge

says I judge that you should have more

budget or half a budget or you should

wrap it up just budget wise just budget

wise we'll get rid of all the people who

say I'm blocking all the people who say

it's boring here we go I'll block all

the people who say that did you and I

know I know you don't mean well people

were telling me the topic is boring but

I'm blocking you anyway because I don't

need that kind of energy here and so a

budget judge because then the budget

judge will be accountable for it later

because later everybody will know what

the situation was eventually we all know

what the situation was and they'll be a

cannibal let's talk about some other

systems I'm gonna think outside the box

now all right I'm thinking outside the

box on guns

you know that we've had obviously huge

gun problems in this country and it

doesn't seem like we're ever gonna get

to the point where we ban all the guns

and nobody's ever going to be happy with

allowing guns the way they are so we

have two situations that can't they

can't last we can't have the current

situation go on and we it's hard to

change anything because the gun people

so here's my out-of-the-box suggestion

for solving the gun problem are you

ready

make it mandatory if you own a gun

mandatory membership in the NRA it takes

a while to think about why that makes

sense

but let me tell you what's the first

thing that the NRA is concerned about

they're concerned that there would be

some kind of a national registry of who

owns guns but do you know who already

has a national registry of who owns guns

the NRA the NRA has a list of its

membership pretty much a hundred percent

of those people own guns there might be

somebody who gave away their gone and

still wants to be a member but for the

most part the NRA does have a national

registry of who owns guns and who cares

about guns now on top of that the NRA is

the most proactive organization for gun

safety as many of you are saying in the

comments right there the most proactive

on gun safety and here's the best part

they also have the most interest in

reducing gun violence whoo but the NRA

has that much interest in reducing gun

violence because it's their entire you

have the reason for being you know you

and I have other things to worry about

gun violence is just one of the big

things we're worried about but we have

lots of other things to worry about the

NRA has one thing to worry about keeping

guns safely it's the safely part the

they need to figure out so what if you

just take government out of the job and

say look here's the deal

if you want a gun at the same time you

have to sign up for the NRA because the

NRA is going to be trying to educate you

there couldn't be trying to figure out

more about their members they might even

come up with wait for it

the NRA might come up with its own gun

control measures why because as soon as

you take the government out of it and

you say ok it's a private organization

we all get to vote within this

organization let's decide how we want to

handle guns but the government is not

part of it the government won't be part

of that so the NRA could collectively

say ok now that the government is out of

the decision-making we're not worried

about the slippery slope anymore because

we're making our own decisions gun

owners are making the decisions nobody

else gun owners are making the decisions

for gun owners not the government now

suddenly you're flexible because you're

saying there's no slippery slope the gun

owners are not going to screw themselves

the government might screw us but the

gun owners are not going to screw

themselves so if the gun owners say

let's have this kind of a check let's

have this kind of a requirement let's

you know let's let's try this somewhere

it's going to be a lot more a lot more

palatable

now you also don't want people to have

to pay dues to the NRA so you might have

to have some kind of dual membership

level you know if you had a higher level

ship a level of membership maybe you get

some more benefits but you at least

needs to be on the mailing list and at

least need to be part of the

organization all right now this is an

out-of-the-box idea and so I do not

present it as a suggestion it's not a

suggestion it's just an end of the box

idea because when you first hear it

didn't you have the experience of why is

that a good idea it's not a good idea or

sighted by it idea and then it starts to

settle in with you that when you've

taken the responsibility away from the

governor

which is where all the constitutional

questions are and you put it in private

hands and you empower them and you make

it their brand make it their brand to

take care of this kind of stuff these

these shootings maybe you have something

here's another idea I have a hypothesis

which could be tested suppose you have

an app or some kind of a social media

add-on idea in which anybody could

report any other citizen that they

believe is a gun risk so so here's the

idea an app that anybody can report

anyone they think is a gun risk now if

you report your your your personal enemy

and there's only one of you and it's

just one report well the app just lets

us sit there and it doesn't do anything

because you don't want people just

report people they don't like

but suppose your app shows that the

mother reported the son the friend and

the girlfriend have all used the app to

report him and it's all confidential

then it starts beeping and then the

government starts asking questions holy

shoot we've got three people who are

confidential

so the girlfriend can say I didn't

report you the mother can say I don't

know what you're talking about

they just use their app and then it

starts gathering other information maybe

maybe once somebody has you know risen

up the line then maybe law enforcement

or other people start seeing their

social media posts and then you're

looking at their social media posts you

see that they've got somebody saying

that's a terrible idea I'm open to why

it's a terrible idea by the way you

could there's plenty of room for reasons

you know you don't have much room in

your comments but just just make a

reference to the category of reasons

false negatives there would be false

negatives but they would be rare

because you'd need multiple people from

different positions coming in and

reporting somebody and it would not

automatically mean that you lose your

guns so it wouldn't mean that it would

just mean that you've been flagged

so you're way off on your last three

ideas if you don't like those ideas

listen to this one it's about health

care I'm trying to understand and there

might be a reason for this by the way

but I'm trying to understand why there

can't be two separate healthcare tracks

in this country one that's a

single-payer type of situation but only

the people who sign up for it and if

they sign up for it they're also the

only ones who can ever be taxed to pay

for it now or in the future and then the

separate one that is completely private

you know sort like the current systems

but you can never get the benefits of

being in the other one so you can switch

sides anytime you want and and then

things would be adjusted or impro rated

whatever but they would be competing

plans the country is so big that the you

know half of the country would account

for you know bigger than a regular

country right so why are we arguing

about which way it should be

isn't that argument what dumb people do

if you can test it why don't you just do

it

what would stop people from volunteering

to be in the system

there was also competing against the

somebody's calling me a socialist is it

a socialist system to have two competing

systems that are both public and you can

freely go between them is that what

socialism looks like to you the because

that looks like pretty much not

socialism to me some of you are saying

yes yes yes I know a lot of my

the followers here have a sort of a

reflexive feeling about the socialism

but if socialism is optional I don't

know if that makes it socialism you know

if you personally never have to pay for

somebody else's choice is that really

socialism

that's a weird definition of it you

saying auntie firewood flag all their

enemies if there was an app that could

point out crazy gun people I think there

would actually be very little of that

but here's the thing those of you who

are saying that my app idea is terrible

you are not thinking right independent

of whether the idea is terrible because

it could be tested anything that can be

tested small should be tested there's

very little risk if you build this app

and let's say all bad people use it and

report all the wrong people and it

causes some problems well you just

cancel it like a month into it it's like

well we tried it for a month ant if I

used it to make a bunch of false claims

can't tell what's real what's it was

isn't so we'll stop using it that's it

if you have a problem this big you

should be trying a whole bunch of stuff

see what you learn from that what works

what doesn't it could be the building

app simply teaches you about something

else that does work and then you pivot

to that but those of you who are saying

that it's a terrible idea and they're

therefore should not be tried don't

understand how anything works everything

that works big God tried small so if

you're not trying stuff small you're not

really part of the you know the reason

the reason debate on anything all right

yeah there could be penalties for abuses

we can figure it out as we go but doing

nothing doing nothing would certainly

not make sense now

if you were so do you notice here that

for each of my ideas there seemed to be

people who hate them the the people who

are yelling socialism about any of these

ideas are probably the least credible

people in the conversation because if

all you're doing is labeling it with the

first word that comes to mind you're not

really engaging in the idea

you're just saying sauce all of them

social them that's more like Tourette's

syndrome you know sort of yeah if every

if every idea for how to reorganize or

organize better you know the society we

live in if your first response to all of

it is socialism socialism then you're

not really part of the serious

discussion you go and try first lol on

what is alright that's a ridiculous

comment now let's talk about some other

cool things happening in health care I

bought yesterday at my local CVS a

device to take my temperature by

pointing at my forehead have you heard

of this so I've got it downstairs but

it's about this size it's a little

device the $40 or something and instead

of sticking it up your bod or putting in

your mouth or sticking in your ear or

where you've got all these sanitary

problems you just hold it like an inch

away from your head push a button and it

tells you your body temperature without

even touching you I was trying it out

last night I think it works I think it

works you know at least they gave me a

body temperature this seemed reasonable

and then I also saw there's commercials

all over the place for a little device

you clip to your phone and it can give

you a FDA quality EKG yeah EKG so you

can test your heart

with your phone just putting your thumbs

on a little device that sticks into your

phone this stuff that's coming is really

really big we're very close a lot of you

don't know this background but after

9/11 when there was a lot of fear of

poisons from terrorists the government

tasked industry and there the government

labs especially to come up with a way to

test blood very quickly in the field to

find out what kind of poison the

terrorists had used so we went from a a

place 15 years ago or whatever where

where we couldn't easily test anybody's

blood to shrinking it down to handheld

devices we now have handheld devices

that can test just a little prick of

blood all kinds of stuff and I believe

you could probably stick them to your

phone and get an answer pretty quickly

so we're right on the right on the verge

of being able to do your own blood test

your own EKG test your you know test

your temperature there's also a I have a

small investment in a company that will

test your skin cancer with basically

something like a piece of tape you so

instead of having to carve out the the

suspicious mole and send it to a lab and

two weeks later you hear about it it's

literally a piece of tape you put it on

your suspicious thing that you go you

rip off the piece of tape you put it in

the Machine and it tells you if you got

skin cancer you know right there

now that machine was desktop it was sort

of like this big but I believe the

active part of it probably can shrink

and shrink to the point where you're

sticking it in your phone pretty close

right so we're gonna be so close and I

also think that there are apparently big

cost I've read articles where people are

getting the cost to say hey I think it's

a cat scan or a PET scan the Cask and I

think

that if you organize differently you

know you do some things differently if

some laws change the cost of a cat-scan

will come way down to you know a

fraction of what it is so if you start

combining all of these little bits of

technology that are coming online from

all these disparate sources we're very

close to being able to piece together

almost a self health care situation will

be having doctors to myapp the interface

by wind hub app I'll give you more of an

announcement of that at some point but

where we will be onboarding some doctors

so that you could call up you know use

the app and for a low price you can get

a doctor immediately you just pick one

that's online at the moment

boop-boo-boo-boop

and you have a video call with a doctor

now the doctor says well maybe you

should test this or that and you use

your devices of your phone or maybe your

neighbor has a device you don't have one

but you go borrow your neighbors and

suddenly you've got the best advice in

the world you've got Google to check

things you can you can get a second

opinion also on the app you can you know

test your blood test your skin and you

can sign up for you know a cat scan

that's 10% of the cost so it seems like

we're very close to where we could get

something like 80 percent of our health

care needs taken care of somewhat

locally with outside of any kind of a

health care system then you need

something like a catastrophic coverage

just for hospitals and such and I'm sure

that there are many many health care

costs which could come down and that I

know I noticed that the government is

also talking about lowering

pharmaceutical cost how do you lower

pharmaceutical costs I don't know what

the idea is for that

are we just telling the pharmaceutical

companies to lower the cost how does

that work well I hope it works

but it seems to me that our

pharmaceutical companies should be

giving us great deals in the United

States and overcharging other countries

to pay for it I don't know if that's an

option but I'd like to see it doctor

will say need to make an appointment the

the telemedicine doctors don't say that

because they don't make appointments so

obviously there are cases where you do

have to have somebody go in for the to

be checked out in person but the

telemedicine model is not built that way

the telemedicine model is trying to fix

things on the phone yeah whenever that's

practical I also wonder about the cost

of insurance let me ask you this have

you ever heard of the phrase

self-insured it refers to big companies

that are so big they don't need

insurance for a building for example

because even if the building blows up

the company itself is so large that it

can afford to pay for a new building so

self-insured it means that you're such a

big entity that any part of you can fall

apart and you still got plenty of money

to fix it yourself you don't have to pay

an insurance company for that and it

seems to me that the government has that

going for them if the only thing you did

with health care was remove the profit

from the insurance companies and say the

government will pay for whatever you

need because the government is

essentially the insurance company - but

there's no profit in insurance from the

government they simply print more money

or raise your taxes or whatever they

need to do if they need more money but

there's no insurance industry profit if

the only thing you did to healthcare is

say okay this half of the country

doesn't need insurance because the

government will act as though they are

they insure even though there's no

insurance involved wouldn't that take

down the cost of health care 30% am I

wrong how much is the insurance cost on

top of the actual service it's law right

just 30% high or low I don't even know

but I would guess that there's there are

lots of gains that could be made anyway

[Music]

I'm just looking at your comments right

now that is universal health care yes I

just described a single-payer system but

what I'm asking is why doesn't the

single-payer system automatically take

30% off the costs because it gets rid of

insurance somebody's saying 50 percent

[Music]

more than 30 percent people are saying

somebody's saying 70 percent I'm not

going to buy that the government is not

competent to execute I wonder if the

government even needs to be very

involved if you have a single-payer

system what how much does the government

actually get involved except for writing

the checks and they need some kind of

auditing to make sure they weren't

getting screwed but if you had the

single-payer system running parallel

with a private system wouldn't you

always know who's getting screwed if you

had those two systems they could both

look in each other and say wait a minute

where are these single-payer people

paying less than we're paying over in

this free market and then suddenly

things would would adjust all right

Brian Danes

there's your shadow anyway I want to

frame everything I said in terms of

ideas today as just out of the box

thinking I'm not presenting them as good

ideas there may be perfectly good

reasons why nothing I said is a good

idea but I don't know those reasons if

somebody does let me know and I will

talk to you later