Episode 3054 CWSA 12/26/25

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Good stuff.

Well, here's a special announcement.

There are still some Dilward calendars left, but not many.

So, you because I'm independently publishing now, uh, we had to guess how many to publish.

I got to tell you, we guessed pretty well.

We we made a good guess, which means that we sold almost all of them, which means that if you know anybody who wants one, they better order it right away from Amazon.

Amazon's the only place you can get it.

The Dilbert 2026 calendar.

Act now before they're all gone.

I don't think we're going to print more.

So, get your get yours.

Well, apparently there's some enormous storm coming or was already hit.

So, a weird thing happened which is because Christmas was on a Thursday, a lot of people said, "Okay, uh Friday we'll do, you know, the in-laws party and sat on Thursday we'll do ours." But some people moved it to Saturday.

But now it looks like everything's going to be snowed in.

So the people who moved their party to Saturday probably going to move it to Sunday.

So people are going to be celebrating the Thursday uh Christmas on Sunday just cuz the weird way that the the date hit in the snow.

It's going to feel weird celebrating Christmas three days after Christmas.

All right.

Well, I wouldn't say there's much news today, but there's stuff to talk about.

So, if you lower your expectations and say to yourself, you know what, there's not much else on TV or or on social media.

So, it's we're just going to be hanging out and I'll chatter about a few things that I find interesting that are in the news.

Where is that cursor?

There it is.

So, I saw in the Mario no post that Tesla is estimating that uh full self-driving mode on their cars could save 32,000 lives a year and avoid 1.9 million injuries.

Did you have any idea that uh automobile accidents were causing 1.9 million injuries per year?

The 32,000 I knew or the apparently 40 40,000 die and car crashes that was in the range of what I I knew.

But wow, a lot of people got injured.

So the thinking is that uh full self-driving would cut down on injuries by 80%.

I believe it.

All right.

What else?

So here's a little obscure story that I'll bet most of you have not been following.

It's about the 2020 election and it's something that the Rasmmanson Reports account has been hammering for like four years.

So, four or five years they've been posting on the same topic.

And here's the topic.

allegedly uh and there's a part that's not alleged, but the part we know is that there was a locked warehouse in Fulton, Georgia in which allegedly there were a bunch of ballots that got counted that are sketchy.

Now, I don't remember why they were sketchy.

They were either all the same or I don't know.

There was something about them that was presumed to be sketchy, but nobody could check it out because the room was locked and the a judge had been asked to, you know, force them to release it and unlock it, but the judge had not acted.

So years went by when Rasmosson would report uh it seemed like once a week.

Well, that that room is still locked.

Now, you might say to yourself, well, over all that time, if that room had anything in it that was controversial, there would have been enough time to uh you know, change them out or steal them.

Sort of like Fort Knox.

So, uh, apparently the judge, uh, Robert Mc.

Burnernney, who is being accused of being corrupt, but I don't know about that.

He finally approved access.

So, some cynics are saying that he waited long enough that the statute of limitations might be running out for whoever whoever did the alleged crimes.

That would be a crime of, you know, election and drinking allegedly.

But I asked Grock about that.

That's weird.

Somebody outside my house.

Must be a package delivery.

Anyway, um I asked Grock about the statute of limitations.

It says most mostly for election felonies it would be seven years but because everything takes years there might be a way for the bad guys again this is just speculation hypothesis you know allegations the bad guys could somehow find another way to stall for another two years and nobody would go to jail now I don't know if they can but in theory The reason that the uh I guess it was the government, some some element of the government of Georgia was blocking the release because they estimated it would cost $400,000 to unlock the door.

Now, what does that mean?

I have no idea.

Why would it cost the go the government $400,000 to unlock a door?

Presumably, the unlocking of the door was linked with some kind of audit that I guess the government would be involved in.

I don't really understand.

But given that the Republicans would pay anything to prove that the election was rigged, especially Trump, I don't think it would be hard for them to raise $400,000.

So, it seems to me a fake reason that it would be too expensive.

That must be just the excuse they're using.

So, there is a nonzero chance, and I wouldn't know how to put an estimate on this, but there's a nonzero chance that everything you suspected about the election will be revealed really soon.

I'm not sure what I would think if it turned out all the elections were perfectly legal because it doesn't make sense to me that if all the ballots were perfectly legal and Georgia wanted to prove that nothing was rigged, they would have just unlocked the door and they would have said, "Well, we're not going to pay for it, but knock yourself out." But they didn't do that.

They pretended like they didn't have the budget to do it.

So, that's really, really sketchy.

So, we'll find out if there's still anything behind that door.

I don't know that it's been unlocked yet, but maybe in the coming week.

Maybe they're waiting to get the $400,000 covered.

We'll find out.

Don't you believe that the arc of history Um, it's where they would Don't you believe that the arc of history is bending toward 100% confirmation that the election was rigged?

Do doesn't it feel like there's nothing that could stop that from happening?

Really all it took was Republicans to have enough time and enough, you know, enough influence that they could go look at the stuff they wanted to look at.

But I will warn you that a tremendous amount of allegations about the election have not been proven to be true.

So this this could very easily be, you know, disappointing, but we'll find out.

So, here's a very little small story, but Newsmax is reporting that uh Trump was asked somewhere about the AI boom and the bubble and could could the AI boom damage the economy, blah blah.

And Trump's answer was quote, "No, I love AI." according to the New York Times.

Now, have you noticed that that Trump has a very young brain?

I mean, he's conservative in sort of a, you know, old school conservative way, but whenever there's something that's new tech, um, he's unusually good at embracing it.

And AI is one of those things.

Crypto is another one of those things.

Um, even when he got in trouble for talking about CO, it's because he knew more than the doctors did about light being a a disinfectant and and just the way he jokes about things.

He has a very young brain and I've never seen that much experience paired with that much of a sort of a youthful approach to the world.

And I'm wondering in this case um how much it made a difference that he's got David Saxs you know who obviously you know make him comfortable with crypto as well as AI and uh you know a bunch of other people from Jared to um well you know you could name a few.

So he's got a lot of young adviserss, but he actually listens to them and he's clearly influenced by them.

So yeah, he's he's very youngrained.

Anyway, will the will the robots take all our jobs?

Peter Navaro, one of Trump's top trade adviserss or maybe his top trade adviser, he he's urging workers to consider going into the trades.

Would that be a good answer for you to go into the trades like go out and fix air conditioners and be a mechanic and be a plumber and all that?

I gotta say, I'm pretty lucky that I was born in a time when that wasn't something you had to do.

I would never be good at that.

I would be good at sitting in a cubicle.

Uh I would be good at typing things.

I'd be good at creativity, but I would never be good at fixing your AC.

So, I'm glad I don't have to make that choice.

However, it made me wonder what the future looks like.

And I'm going to make a prediction.

Prediction number one, I believe that in the same way that unions can make companies do things they don't want to do, right?

That a union can make a company do what it doesn't want to do.

And that's probably true for, you know, influence over the government as well.

because if your union was big enough uh it could influence voting.

So I believe there will be a robot union which is people not robots.

So maybe I said that wrong.

Let me say it a different way.

I believe there will form a new union that might be a collection of existing unions or it might be a new one.

and their primary their primary objective will be to make sure that you can't put a robot into the field as a worker unless you have at least one human uh in charge on site had to be on site.

So, have you ever had a plumber come to your house and they start working and then they realize there's a part that they need?

So, they have to stop what they're doing, go drive somewhere and get a part and come back.

Uh, and you've watched people doing service work in your house and you know, there's one person who might be doing demolition and and dragging stuff away and other person who's doing the carpentry or the hard stuff.

I see a world where a plumber would have one or two robots that show up at the same time, but the plumber would be in charge and this new union I'm talking about would guarantee that even if you knew you could do it with just robots, it just wouldn't be legal.

You just it wouldn't happen.

So, and even if you had your own robot, the law could be so gamed that you wouldn't be a you wouldn't be allowed to use your own robot even to do some plumbing at your own house.

So, I think that the laws and as well as the unions will conspire to keep people employed even if that's not the best idea.

But can't you just just imagine this?

All right, close your eyes and imagine the robots and the the one guy, the plumber.

Let's just say plumber.

Uh the plumber shows up and he's got two robot assistants, and he sends one of the robots to get a part.

the that robot gives you a self-driving car, literally goes down to the uh you know hardware store, picks up the part, and if you're not sure, it can send you a picture so you you know it's picking up the right thing.

Pays for it with some kind of digital payment.

Drives back.

Meanwhile, the other robot has identified where the leak is just by putting his robot hand on the wall and it can identify where the leak is.

And then when it finds it, it needs to maybe take down a piece of the wall.

So the the human plumber says, "All right, robot, uh, take out this part of the the sheetrock." And the robot goes, "And then you can see the leak." And then the the plumber says, "All right, I'm going to need some plumbers tape.

I'm going to need this and I'm going to need this tool." And even before he's done talking, his robot assistant has already gone to the toolbox and has those exact things.

Now, maybe the robot would do the work of, you know, wrapping up things and fixing things with the supervision of the human.

Or maybe before we get to that point, the human still does the work because it's maybe it's just slightly outside of what the robots can do, but the robots are learning like an apprentice.

So on day one, you get a cheap robot that can only fetch and maybe do some demo stuff and maybe get some tools, but as you do work, the robot learns the same way an apprentice would.

So your robot would become more and more valuable every time that accompanied you on a on a plumber trip.

So that's what I think.

But give give me some feedback on that.

Do you think that's reasonable?

So, the things I'm predicting are that the unions and the laws will guarantee that you have to have a human if a robot's doing some physical work.

Do you agree with that part?

At at least for, you know, the predictable future.

I think so.

And that would just make your your plumber is more effective.

All right.

How many jobs do you know where you ask for some service person to come to your house and you can't get them there in a week?

A lot, right?

Or there not a lot of situations where you want a service, but they're booked up so you can't get to them for a week.

Well, if you add the robots, maybe it's the same workers, but they can do three jobs a day as there too.

So, suddenly uh suddenly your your human plumber is making twice as much money or not twice as much.

Let's say 50% more.

All right, you agree?

So, um, there's another AI company that's being skeptical about the robots.

Let's see if I can find that story.

May maybe I didn't write that down.

But, all right, here's a story.

So, I think this was in the Wall Street Journal today that the headline is even the companies making humanoid robots think they're overhyped.

So, you know what I've been saying for forever, so I believe I was ahead of the curve, is that if robots could do more than one thing, they would already be deployed.

But we keep seeing these demos where the robot is trained to do exactly one thing, like iron a shirt, but that skill does not it doesn't go to anything else.

You can't you can't just give it an AI brain today and have it figure out stuff.

You would have to specifically train it for every little task.

So that's why you do see robots in warehouses because a warehouse is a very limited training set.

Uh if you get this command, go get this box, you know, carry this box over here and put it there.

So, it's such a small domain that a robot could work in a warehouse.

But I've been saying for a while if you if you have any experience with the large language model AIS, which are the dominant parts, that they don't really have any hope of becoming general intelligence.

There's nothing that they're doing.

the AI the AI industry.

I don't believe there's anything they're doing that could logically lead to a general intelligence robot.

And and I think that some of the experts are saying it too.

You know, now that they've all been overfunded, they they can tell the truth.

But there's this one guy, I guess he's a head of a AI company called I don't know, his name is Velici and he's skeptical.

So he says the same thing I do that you can train them to do warehouse tasks.

But did you know that for every $100 you would spend on a robot, um, only about $20 of that is a robot and the rest of the the rest of the money is for protecting humans from the robots.

Now, I think that means physically so that the robot doesn't, you know, accidentally run you over or something.

So, here's my question.

Um, Elon Musk is very pro robot and I wonder what does he know that the other top people in the industry don't know.

Now, it's always a bad idea to bet against Musk when he's making a prediction of the future.

You know, he might be off by timing, but it's a bad idea to bet against him.

He very clearly believes that that the Optimus robots will be general purpose robots.

And uh apparently uh his version of AI is way ahead of the other AIS.

But is he way ahead in a way that would give us general intelligence or is he just way ahead in the way that we can never get general intelligence?

you know, maybe his will hallucinate less or something, but what does he know?

Is he going about it in a completely different way?

Now, I know that he trained his cars with video, but again, that's that's a limited domain.

So, as as varied as the possibilities are for a car, I mean, there's a a trillion different things that a car could have to do, you could probably get to a trillion.

So, you could tr I think you could train a car on a trillion different possibilities and then it would be better than a human, but it would still be trained for a narrow domain, which is driving safely.

So, I get how we can uh get to self-driving cars.

That That makes total sense.

You You just train them with video instead of language.

But how do you get to a butler?

You How would you ever get to a butler where there's something new every day that has never seen?

What does he know that we don't know?

Do does his AI have a like a secret um like a skunk works that nobody knows about that's getting close to it?

And I've said this before, but it's a really good tip.

If you think that you'll have a robot butler in one year, you would already see it, right?

because I can't believe that uh that the robots would be launching in one year and they didn't know how to do it yet.

Does that even make sense?

You know what do you think there's any possibility that a big serious you know high functioning company would say oh yeah in a year we'll have robot butlers but we have no idea how to do it at the moment.

No big company would do that, you know.

Not Tesla, not anybody.

So, if you're not hearing today that they have one in the lab that has general intelligence, and you're not, I don't believe there's going to be one in a year.

I do not believe.

So, I want to be wrong.

I want to be wrong.

How many of you agree with my assessment that if they can't do it today, it's not going to be a product in one year?

Would you agree with that?

Well, once again, unless I guess I have to say it one more time, um, in a sense, I'm betting against Elon Musk's prediction, but what he knows about this topic is, you know, a thousand times more than I know.

So, does he know more than I know, or is he just being is it just wishful thinking?

And my guess is he knows more than I know.

So therefore, oh, I guess I should um I should reveal this every once in a while.

I do own Tesla stock.

So I want it to work and I desperately want Elon to be right and me to be wrong.

And I literally have my money bet I actually bet my money against myself.

I bet my money on Elon instead of myself, which probably is a good bet.

All right, enough about that.

Um, I'm just going back to the front here.

So, have any of you had the experience that AI has already ruined your You.

Tube experience?

Apparently, there's a way to fix that by blocking the videos that were downvoiding them somehow.

And then You.

Tube will learn what to not give you.

AI slop.

So AI slop, if you haven't heard that term, is AI content that is sort of impressive but not really something you want to see too often.

So that's called slop.

So when I go to You.

Tube, let's say two or three years ago, if I went to You.

Tube and I saw a topic that I was interested in, it was made by humans and it would keep me interested for, you know, an hour.

But today, if I see something that interests me, um, it's almost always slop and it'll be this, you know, this boring robot voice and the Andes is a mountain rage and it's just sort of repetitive and not interesting and and and there's so much of the AI crap that searching through it to find something that's not AI, there's just too much work.

So that's one of the reasons that I just stopped watching You.

Tube mostly, not completely.

And I do videos on X because if you go to X, you go to the side menu on your app, one of the options now is video.

And what they do really well is they only feed you video that the algorithm thinks you would be interested in.

So that's not AI.

So, I will catch up on all kinds of politics and technology and AI stuff and Tesla stuff and I don't have to do anything.

I just hit the button once.

It just goes from video to video and I can listen to it all day.

So, You.

Tube's got a problem.

Anyway, um, one of the Let's talk about the Mara Lago raid.

I know that's old news, but Mike Davis has an article about it in Fox News.

So, here are some of the things to just summarize the whole Mara Lago raid for the the classified documents.

Um, did you know that the FBI agents allegedly lacked probable cause, which would be sort of a crime?

So, I think what something that we learned from the uh now released files somehow we would learn this is that the FBI said they didn't know what the uh didn't know what the probable cause was, which would make it completely illegal to do a ra that kind of a a raid.

but they were allegedly uh pressed by the Biden administration to do it anyway.

Now, I think they're still in the allegedly category, but getting closer to fact.

Uh secondly, and this part I don't I'm not convinced about this, but some say that the real reason for the raid was that Trump had some uh uh records about Operation Crossfire Hurricane, which would implicate the old Obama and Brennan people.

And so they were trying to really get that.

So, it looked like it was about classified information, but really it was about making sure that Trump did not have documents that would incriminate Democrats.

Do you believe that?

That is just that is just slightly too far into conspiracy theory for me.

Very possible.

I wouldn't rule it out, but I say I don't believe there are any documents that show that.

Are there have there been any whistleblowers who said the real reason is because those crossfire hurricane documents?

By now, there would be a whistleblower, right?

And I don't believe we've seen one.

So, I'm going to say maybe.

All right.

And then there's some issue about the judge who was not very uh not very neutral.

And I guess they did the bad guys, the Democrats did some uh judge shopping and they found this guy uh Judge Bruce Reinhardt of the s Southern District of Florida.

So he's the one who signed a warrant, but just six weeks earlier he had recused himself from some Trump Clinton lawsuit.

And the reason was that he had as a civilian in 2017 he had written a Facebook post viciously bashing Trump.

So the Department of Justice apparently found the the one person you could guarantee was anti-Trump and that's the guy that signed the warrant.

Now again, judge shopping is not illegal, right?

As far as I know, it's not illegal.

It's just not ideal.

So, we'll keep an eye on that.

So, Russell Brand has been charged with new allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Right News is reporting.

I think I told you that when Russell Brand was originally accused of those things several years ago, I guess um that I happened to be booked for his show.

So, I went on his show while he was right in the middle of of all the accusations and he was losing everything as he was being demonetized.

And let me tell you, I thought my interview with him was gonna be a lot of fun, but he was not really in the mood.

He was not in the mood to have a lot of fun.

And I completely understand that, but he's being hit again with new new charges.

Um, and I don't have an opinion about who did what or who's guilty of what.

I will give this you this context that I think is useful every time this kind of a story comes up.

And the context goes like this.

Pretty much every rich and powerful um man is is accused of falsely of sex crimes.

Pretty much all of them.

So, if you've got somebody of his um his notoriety, especially if he's known to be a sex addict, especially if he's seemed to be siding with one part of the political aisle, the odds of him having a false accusation were 100%.

Now, that does not mean that these allegations are false.

It only means that you should not judge it by the fact that they exist because there was a 100% chance that someone like him would be falsely accused even if there were any real things he ever did.

So that that's the only thing I'm going to add to the story.

And trust me, you could talk to any if you privately talked to any, let's say, rich CEO.

I'll bet you every one of them would say, "Yeah, you know, my secretary or you know, some employee accused me." And often it's people you never met because I told I told you I've been accused of sexual abuse by someone who lives in Canada I've never met.

Right?

So they they called the people I worked with and one woman did the the crazy woman.

She called the people I worked with, the people in my restaurant where I owned a restaurant and told them that I was a terrible rapist and that on a regular basis I would travel to Canada and rifle through her possessions and then sexually abuse her.

Now I promise you this is nobody I've ever met.

This is pure crazy woman.

But the people who received the call, how do they know?

How would they know if that's real or not?

So that's that is the world of high-profile people.

But this makes me ask the following question.

How did we go from an environment of me too every single day to it doesn't really get in the news much?

Did something change?

Is it possible that the the CEOs have learned, you know, just don't do anything that would get you in trouble?

Is it possible that the Mike Pence rule where you just don't allow yourself to be alone with a woman, uh, are many or CEOs doing that?

Because I have to admit um when I first heard the Mike Pence rule that he would not go to lunch, for example, even a business lunch, he wouldn't even do a business lunch with a woman by herself unless he brought his wife.

And I think we all laughed at that, right?

Haha.

You know, old Mike Pence, you know, it's Mike Pence don't live in the past.

You know, women women are part of the workforce.

you know, if they want to go to lunch for business should be exactly like a man.

And it didn't take me long to realize he was a smart one.

So, I don't know what is, you know, may maybe it was probably religious and partly being faithful to his wife, but man, that is a good way to protect yourself.

You just don't ever allow yourself to be alone with somebody who might accuse you.

That's not a bad rule.

So, could it be that so many people kind of took that to heart that the rate of me too went way down?

Maybe.

Or was it never real and it was always a sort of a news related thing?

Well, let me say it a different way.

Maybe the rate of me too has always been the same, but when it was in the news, uh, the people who were the victims of the me too were far more likely to pursue it.

But once it falls out of the news, then maybe they feel, you know, there'll be retaliation or, you know, they'd rather just move on with their life.

So, is it my imagination?

So give me give me a comment here.

Is it my imagination or is it real that the metoing thing was just every day but now it just sort of shrunk and you don't really hear I mean you still hear about it but it's like way less.

Why would that be?

Why do you think that would be if it's true that we're hearing about less?

Well, I guess some New York Times reporter is suing the big AI companies.

In this case, this would include X.

So, Google X Open AI.

They're suing over chatbot training.

So, I guess they're worried that the chat bots read their books without permission and got trained on them and they think that's some kind of a copyright violation.

Now, you've heard this before.

It's sort of an old story that authors uh but I guess they're not doing a class action in this case which has some extra risks for the AI companies allegedly.

So I ask it I ask AI about my books and it generally it knows well here's what it pretends to know.

If I ask AI, you know, what's on page whatever of my book, it can't do it.

So, it's not trained that well.

If I ask it to summarize my book, it can do it, but it takes a summary from other people's comments about the book.

So it is legal for uh the AI to look at public comments like a review of the book or what somebody said about it on social media for example and usually they that's enough to piece together what the book was about.

So, in a sense, AI, at least in my case, uh, finds a workaround that doesn't look like a copyright violation to me because there's there's no problem quoting a reviewer or something.

So, I asked Gemini today um if it was true that John Bogle, who is the famous Vanguard index fund guy, is it true that he once used uh my financial advice in his book?

because I was wondering you who I have influence and according to Gemini um it could tell me the page number and the book and I think it was year 2010 that his book took my nine-page personal finance advice and he just included it in the book because he thought it was so well done.

It was really well done.

Um, and that was I think mostly right, but when could give me the page number, I'll bet that was a hallucination.

So, I don't know.

I've not I cannot confirm that his book included my financial advice.

I can confirm that a few people asked for permission to reprint that.

So, whether he did or not, I don't know.

Anyway, um did you know that I have I've had an influence on personal finance?

How many of you knew that?

That's one of the weird areas that I had an influence.

You know how I've told you that one of the ways to be influential is to be the person who writes it down.

Whatever it is, if you write it down, you become influential.

if you do a good job of writing it down.

So, because I'm a cartoonist and I'm really good at summarizing, I found a way to write down all the advice you would ever need for personal finance in just nine bullet points.

So, the the breakthrough was not that I knew more than anybody else.

The breakthrough is that I figured out how to do it in nine bullet points.

that would be in the order.

This is the key part.

They would be in the order that you should do them.

Nobody did that before.

Everybody else just said this is a good idea, this is a bad idea, good idea, bad idea.

But it was overwhelming.

So I got rid of the overwhelming part by just saying if you don't know anything else, do this.

I think number one was make a will.

if you have if you have uh people you're trying to take care of.

But of course, you should do that first.

Why would you leave yourself exposed?

So, I don't know if AI got that right.

Well, Jasmine Crockett, your favorite Democrat.

Yes, I said Democrat.

She She's got a new technique.

that is so it's so bad that it's almost good.

So she was asked Breitbart News was reporting this.

So in some interview recently um she was asked if she accepts the idea that the current administration has vastly reduced illegal border crossings.

Now, would you agree that one of the most obviously documented total facts is that the Trump administration has in fact reduced the number of illegal border crossings?

Now, how can she possibly say that that didn't happen?

Uh, okay.

I'll get back to that.

Well, here's what she did.

So, she didn't want to give credit for what is an immense accomplishment.

So, instead, she said, "We know that this administration has not been the most honest when it comes to reporting numbers." So instead of saying yes, obviously they stop border crossings, she questioned whether the data was accurate.

Oh my god, I I hate it and I love it at the same time.

It's so bold that you would even go that direction, but if you assume that the public isn't really following things closely, she says, "Well, you know, they they cheated on the jobs numbers." I don't know if that's true, but she said the jobs numbers were fake.

So, if the job numbers were fake, couldn't it also be true that the border numbers were fake?

No.

Because we would definitely notice that the border numbers were fake.

If the border was exactly the way it had been, you don't think we would have noticed.

It's harder to notice unemployment or employment, you know, especially if you're talking one or two percent.

But it's not hard to notice that the border is wide open or totally closed.

But the the husba of even saying that it might be a data reporting problem by the administration, that's pretty bold.

So apparently there's a giant tanker, oil tanker that um is one of these shadow fleet trying to illegally move oil from Venezuela.

And so the Coast Guard started chasing it down and instead of surrendering, which you would expect them to do because they're literally up against a military.

So instead of surrendering, they decided to do a U-turn and and make a run for it.

Now, obviously, they're not going to outrun the Coast Guard.

So, there's a little bit of a mystery as to why they haven't surrendered because the the staff of the of the uh the vessel, they're not military, you know, they're just underpaid seaman, so to speak.

So, why would they even take a chance?

It's not their oil, you know.

I mean, I suppose there's some risk of penalty to them if they give it up, but do they what do they think?

Do they think they're going to outrun the Coast Guard?

So, part of the story, Wall Street Journal's reporting on this, is that the US is just waiting to bring some more military assets in so they can do a proper military takeover of the boat if they don't voluntarily surrender.

It looks like they're not.

So, did you know that uh there's such a thing as a maritime special response team?

So, apparently the US military has a group who are specially trained, an elite force for boarding hostile ships.

And I guess what they do is they bring in a bunch of helicopters.

And that, you know, the helicopters keep everybody busy.

Then the special elite team, they repel down presumably.

I I I don't think the helicopter lands.

I think they probably repel down.

And then they use their superior weaponry to make it to the bridge and then basically take over.

And then there's some speculation that they're looking for a captain who would know how to run the boat after they the ship after they take it over because it's it's not that common.

to know how to operate that kind of a ship.

So, it might be hard to find somebody who's willing to, you know, be the be the new captain.

Would they be seals?

I don't know.

Maybe they would be a subset of seals, but the seals were not mentioned in this story.

Anyway, as part of that story, I keep hearing it said that if the Venezuelan oil shipments are shut down or even seriously degraded, that it will collapse the economy of Cuba because Cuba is already a basket case and it depends on cheap Venezuelan oil.

So if the cheap Venezuelan oil gets cut off or or seriously degraded, some people say, "Oh, the Cuban economy will collapse." To which I say, "There's never been a time in my life when the Cuban economy was not on the border of collapse.

Do you believe that they're going to collapse?" Every time we hear this, things don't collapse.

At least not completely.

So, it seems like there's always a workaround for everything.

But the thing I still don't know is if the Trump administration thinks they're getting a twofer and that they're going to find a way to do regime change in Cuba the hard way just indirectly by putting pressure on their their sponsor.

Don't know.

All right.

Uh, according to Politico, the US Immigration Customs Enforcement people that we know as ICE are buying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of surveillance tools um so that they can find the uh the non-legal residents.

So that would include uh let's see social social media monitoring tools, facial recognition software, license plate readers, and services to find people where people live and work.

So let me take you back to something I've been predicting for 10 years.

If you think you can protect your privacy, you can't.

your your privacy was always going to disappear and it wouldn't matter who's in charge.

And the reason I say that is that the utility of taking your privacy away is just too high.

So the government, whoever the government is, is going to say, well, you know, we really need to, you know, we really need to uh do this for the illegals.

Then the next thing you know, you're gonna say, "Well, we have all these tools, you know, why don't we also sell it to the police force?" And I don't think it will ever matter if the Democrats or the Republicans are in charge.

I think in every scenario, just the usefulness of taking away your privacy for law and order uh will be so high that you don't have a chance.

It will just disappear.

And and I'm not saying that's a good idea.

I'm just saying it's inevitable.

So, you know, if you're worried about it happening, maybe what you should worry about is not doing anything that can be discovered that that you would want to be discovered because a full lack of privacy is just guaranteed in the future.

I mean, that's before you have a robot in your house.

How much privacy you could have with a robot in your house?

All right, let me ask you this.

Let's say you've got a an Optimus robot and the police say if we could get that robot to spy on you that we could find out, you know, if you're doing anything bad, would Elon Musk say, "Nope.

Even though you have a warrant, I will not I will not turn on the ability to monitor people through the robot, which would be presumably not that hard.

But even Elon Musk can't defy the Department of Justice.

So if the Department of Justice says, "Oh yeah, this is a totally legitimate use of a warrant.

You've got a robot.

We can listen through the robot.

We are ordering you to make that robot a spy.

Would he do it?

I don't know that he would have a choice.

I think he would go to jail if he didn't do it.

So yeah, as soon as there's a robot in every house, you'd better not break any laws.

All right.

Surprisingly, there's a report that Zalinski is going to meet at Mara Lago on Sunday to try to reach an agreement.

Now, that surprises me because the most recent comment from the Russian envoys was that they're not they didn't make any progress recently and they're they're not close to a deal.

But there are some hints that they might be close to a deal.

One of the hints is that Trump probably wouldn't take the meeting unless he thought it's close enough that he could push it over the edge.

Now, he's an optimist.

So, just because he thinks they might be close, that doesn't mean they're close, but it's worth a try.

So, remember, he's got uh, you know, Kushner and Wickoff working on this, and they're very good at what they do.

So maybe we're we're in for a surprise.

But according to Axios, here are some of the things that are the the biggest sticking points and why we might be closer to a deal than we think.

Uh one is that Ukraine needed security guarantees.

And apparently the US is willing to push some legislation through Congress that would give them security guarantees without NATO.

Now, what would that look like?

What exactly would a US security guarantee be unless it meant we would put boots on the ground if Russia got adventurous?

Well, I don't know.

But one of the things it could be is an open-ended, you know, we will respond.

But that what we would plan to do is give the Ukrainians the good weapons that we've never given them before.

So suppose we said, uh, here's the deal, Russia.

We have held back our best weapons because then it would look like we're part of the war if we give it the good stuff.

But if we give them a security guarantee and you move on them militarily, we will instantly take the controls off and they can have everything except our nuclear weapons.

So suddenly you will not be facing Ukrainian weapons, you'll be facing the most optimized American weapons.

And if you look at what companies like Anderil are doing to make our weapons smarter, cheaper, that would be quite a threat and it would not guarantee that there would be any boost on the ground, but it could be quite a good quite a good incentive for Russia to stay away.

So, I'm just speculating that there is a way to create a security guarantee um that would be sensible.

I wasn't sure there would be um and that if Russia responds militarily that there would also be sanctions of course and maybe the sanctions would be worse if they could be worse.

Um then the other thing that that uh Russia wants is it wants complete control over the Donbass.

So it sounds like they're not flexible on control of the Donbass, which would require, I think, Ukraine to actually pull out of some part of the Donbass that they have not yet lost, and Russia would have control over what they already have, plus a little extra.

Now, here's what the US seems to have counterproposed.

Since the word that's being used is control, is it possible that you can find a hybrid situation where Russia feels like it has enough control to be let's say safe from a military buildup there or safe from something bad happening.

But that uh I guess Wickoff and Jared Kushner have suggested that they turn that into the Donbass into a free economic zone so that you reframe it.

I like this part.

You reframe the Donbass from a military zone to an economic zone.

And you say, "How about we make this the one place that you can make some money and there's not going to be any war.

If that works for you, it works for us.

We don't need to put any missiles there.

You don't need to attack it.

But you could have something like control.

Do you think there's any hybrid situation in which Russia would say, "All right, that's enough control because we're worried about security.

We're worried about the US putting some missiles there and we we would agree not to." Maybe maybe I think there might be something there.

And let's see.

Um and apparently there's some issue about a ceasefire because Russia doesn't want to do a ceasefire until they have a deal.

But Ukraine is saying we can't have a deal because of our laws unless we have a referendum.

and the referendum ended in voting to give up that control of the Donbass.

But it looks like the Russians understand that if the if the referendum is the only way to get there and the only way to have a referendum is with a ceasefire, that might be negotiable.

So maybe that's something that they would cave on.

So anyway, I'm just speculating that it's possible.

I'd probably still bet against it, but it's possible that they're close to a deal.

And then I saw in where did I see this in the amuse account on X pointed out I don't know what the source of this is but Amuse is good on sources that the European Union has committed to this blows my mind that the European Union has deals to buy Russian energy through 2027.

So that would be that would imply that Russia could continue affording the war for at least two more years.

So it's possible that Russia, you know, might want to make a deal, but maybe they could wait another two years and see if they get more control over the Donbass you if they don't care about the casualties.

So it just blows my mind that Europe is still, you know, attached to Russian oil.

Then um apparently there's some people in the administration who think that if we make peace with Russia and that would be a four-way peace, you know, Europe, US, Ukraine, Russia, that if we can make peace that Russia has such unlimited natural resources that everybody can make a ton of money.

But the counter to that is that the entire uh economy of Russia is about the size of Italy, Italy's economy, and is sort of shrinking.

They've got a demographic problem.

But the biggest problem that Russia has is that if you're a legitimate business person from the West and you built a company that made money in Russia, the Russians would steal it.

they would literally just steal your company because Russia is basically a criminal organization pretending to be a country.

So do you think it's and they don't have that many resources that are that are unique.

So the thinking is that if you thought Russia was this gold mine of natural resources, well, it does have some natural resources, but it's not essential to run the the world.

Uh, and it's so risky to do any kind of business in Russia that you'd be crazy to try.

So, one question is, can we really sell the idea that doing business with Russia is good for them and good for us?

I can see why it would be good for them because if if an American company comes in and, you know, let's say, you know, builds this really successful energy enterprise working with the Russians, the Russians would steal it.

You they would nationalize it.

They would jail the CEO.

They would just steal it.

So, we'll see if uh the We'll see if that's even a a path they can take.

Hey, everybody makes money.

We'll see.

Well, over Christmas, if you weren't paying attention, uh the US launched strikes on the Islamic State targets in Nigeria.

Apparently Nigerian ISIS has been killing literally massacring Christians and Trump really doesn't like that.

So he had warned them that the bad guys that if they kept killing Christians he was going to respond militarily.

Allegedly Nigeria's government approved it so it wasn't a violation of their sovereignty.

Um, but and we don't know how many people were bombed or if it was missiles.

I'm pretty sure no American boosts were on the ground and no American casualties.

Don't know that for sure, but I'm sure he did it from a distance.

Anyway, it makes me wonder, under what authority can Trump order an attack on Nigeria, even if the government of Nigeria says yes, what authority allows him to do that?

Can he just tell the military to attack anybody he wants?

Now, you know, arguably there's a good rationale for it.

I I'm not I'm not arguing that he shouldn't have done it, but how do you justify that legally?

I know.

I suspect the anti-war people will have something to say about this next week.

And again, I'm not opposed to it.

If if there were no casualties on the American side and it made a difference, we don't we don't yet know if it made a difference, but potentially might have been a good play.

You know, I've told you now quite a few times that when Trump has options, he always picks the strongest one.

Even if the war powers act, even if it's not the optimal strategy that every time he picks this the quote strong strategy, that pays off because the next situation where he's negotiating, nobody will think he's bluffing.

You see what I'm saying?

As long as he always picks the strongest play, even if it's not the optimized play, then every time he he has to deal with somebody, they're going to say, "Oh, damn it.

He's not bluffing.

If he says he's going to bomb us, he's definitely going to bomb us." So, even if he isn't.

So, it's a real It's a real good play persuasion wise, the literally murdering priests.

I also don't know know the scale of it.

Obviously, there's no amount that's right.

There's there's no amount that's the right amount of killing Christians.

But I do wonder what is the scale?

I mean, is are they killing a 100 Christians a day?

How bad is it?

Arguing about the legality is laughable.

Yeah, I would say I'm more curious than arguing about it.

I wouldn't say I'm arguing about it.

All right, Polar investments.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's all I have for you today.

And uh if you want to hang out for another minute, I will be happy to sip my coffee and hang out with you just cuz you might be lonely.

I know there are a few birthdays today.

How many of you have a birthday today?

At least two of the locals people have a birthday, but we've got uh what 5,000 people watching.

out of the 5,000 people, how many how many are having a birthday today?

I'll bet it's quite a few.

So, there you go, Deb.

Happy birthday to all the birthday people.

Your brother does.

All right.

Did anybody get a pet for Christmas?

Did anybody get like a kitten or a puppy?

If he did, I want to see a picture of it.

A, it's a lonely day for you.

Well, that's why we're here.

You need not be lonely because I'm here and all of your friends are here.

I'd like to see a robot do this.

Well, I don't know if that was a good show, but kept you busy for an hour.

Sex kittens.

Yeah, they count.

You wish you got a puppy.

Over 52,000 Christians have been Wow.

Well, that's in Africa in general.

That's all of Africa, not Nigeria, right?

That's a lot.

52,000 Christians.

Yeah.

No medical advice, please.

It's your understanding that what?

Oh, your kid showed up.

Do I have a lot of close friends from school?

Not from school because I don't live anywhere where my school was.

But let me tell you this.

Um, I am so blessed, so blessed to have people that I trust completely in my life because when you get in my situation, you have to you have to trust people to do what you need to be done and not take advantage of you.

And I have a I have a very high trust social situation.

very high trust and that is quite a uh quite a relief.

You're always alone on the holidays, huh?

Sorry about that.

I know you said it doesn't bother you, but it's not what I want for you.

Yeah.

No, I had no problems on the holidays whatsoever.

You reap what you sow.

True enough.

No, don't send gifts to my caretakers.

But thanks for offering.

Oh, you're enjoying your Sunday home.

All right, people.

I think we've done enough for today.

So, how about we say bye for now and I'll catch up with you tomorrow.

Bye for now.

Where's my cursor?

Looks like it is.

Check it out.

Tesla down.

Bitcoin flat.

Spider

flat.

Won't be much action today.

Come on in. We're almost ready for a

show.

Happy Friday.

You're gonna love it.

All right, we'll get the locals comments

going here

and then we'll do the ever popular

simultaneous.

[snorts] I think my cat picture is

especially good today.

There we go.

We're cooking now.

All right, people. Come in. Come in.

Come in.

I wonder if some of you delayed to skip

the simultaneous sip.

Do you?

Well, it's going to happen anyway

cuz I know why you're here. All you need

is a copper mug or a glass, a tanker,

chelerstein, a canteen jugger flask, a

vessel of any kind. Fill it with your

favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join

me now for the unparalleled pleasure of

the dopamine of the day. The thing that

makes everything better. It's called the

simultaneous sip. It happens now. Go.

Good stuff.

Well, here's a special announcement.

There are still some Dilward calendars

left, but not many.

So, you because I'm independently

publishing now, uh, we had to guess how

many to publish. I got to tell you, we

guessed pretty well. [snorts] We we made

a good guess, which means that we sold

almost all of them, which means that if

you know anybody who wants one, they

better order it right away from Amazon.

Amazon's the only place you can get it.

The Dilbert 2026 calendar.

Act now before they're all gone.

I don't think we're going to print more.

So, get your get yours.

Well, apparently there's some enormous

storm coming or was already hit.

So, a weird thing happened which is

because Christmas was on a Thursday,

a lot of people said, "Okay, uh Friday

we'll do, you know, the in-laws party

and sat on Thursday we'll do ours."

But some people moved it to Saturday.

But now it looks like everything's going

to be snowed in. So the people who moved

their party to Saturday

probably going to move it to Sunday.

So people are going to be celebrating

the Thursday

uh Christmas on Sunday

just cuz the weird way that the the date

hit in the snow.

It's going to feel weird

celebrating Christmas three days after

Christmas.

All right. Well,

I wouldn't say there's much news today,

but there's stuff to talk about.

[snorts] So, if you lower your

expectations and say to yourself, you

know what, there's not much else on TV

or or on social media. So, it's we're

just going to be hanging out

and I'll chatter about a few things that

I find interesting that are in the news.

Where is that cursor? There it is.

So, I saw in the Mario no post

that Tesla is estimating that uh full

self-driving mode on their cars could

save 32,000 lives a year

and avoid 1.9 million injuries.

Did you have any idea

that uh automobile accidents were

causing 1.9 million injuries per year?

The 32,000 I knew or the apparently 40

40,000 die and car crashes that was in

the range of what I I knew. But wow, a

lot of people got injured.

So the thinking is that uh full

self-driving would cut down on injuries

by 80%.

I believe it.

All right. What else? So here's a little

obscure story that I'll bet most of you

have not been following. It's about the

2020 election

and it's something that the Rasmmanson

Reports account has been hammering for

like four years.

So, four or five years they've been

posting on the same topic. And here's

the topic. allegedly

uh and there's a part that's not

alleged, but the part we know is that

there was a locked warehouse in Fulton,

Georgia in which allegedly

there were a bunch of ballots that got

counted that are sketchy. Now, I don't

remember why they were sketchy. They

were either all the same or I don't

know. There was something about them

that was presumed to be sketchy,

but nobody could check it out because

the room was locked

and the a judge had been asked to, you

know, force them to release it and

unlock it, but the judge had not acted.

So years went by when Rasmosson would

report

uh it seemed like once a week. Well,

that that room is still locked.

Now, you might say to yourself, well,

over all that time, if that room had

anything in it that was controversial,

there would have been enough time to uh

you know, change them out or steal them.

Sort of like Fort Knox. So,

uh, apparently the judge,

uh, Robert McBurnernney, [snorts]

who is being accused of being corrupt,

but I don't know about that. He finally

approved access.

So, some cynics are saying that he

waited long enough that the statute of

limitations might be running out for

whoever whoever did the alleged crimes.

That would be a crime of, you know,

election and drinking [clears throat]

allegedly.

But I asked Grock about that.

That's weird.

Somebody outside my house. Must be a

package delivery.

Anyway, um

I asked Grock about the statute of

limitations.

It says most mostly for election

felonies it would be seven years but

because everything takes years

there might be a way for the bad guys

again this is just speculation

hypothesis

you know allegations

the bad guys could somehow find another

way to stall for another two years and

nobody would go to jail now I don't know

if they can but in theory

The reason that the uh I guess it was

the government, some some element of the

government of Georgia

was blocking the release because they

estimated it would cost $400,000

to unlock the door.

Now, what does that mean? I have no

idea. Why would it cost the go the

government $400,000

to unlock a door?

Presumably,

the unlocking of the door was linked

with some kind of audit that I guess the

government would be involved in.

I don't really understand. But given

that the Republicans would pay anything

to prove that the election was rigged,

especially Trump, I don't think it would

be hard for them to raise $400,000.

So, it seems to me a fake reason that it

would be too expensive. That must be

just the excuse they're using. So, there

is a nonzero chance, and I wouldn't know

how to put an estimate on this, but

there's a nonzero chance that everything

you suspected about the election will be

revealed really soon.

I'm [snorts] not sure what I would think

if it turned out all the elections were

perfectly

legal

because it doesn't make sense to me that

if all the ballots were perfectly legal

and Georgia wanted to prove that nothing

was rigged, they would have just

unlocked the door and they would have

said, "Well, we're not going to pay for

it, but knock yourself out." But they

didn't do that. They pretended like they

didn't have the budget to do it. So,

that's really, really sketchy.

So, we'll find out if there's still

anything behind that door. I don't know

that it's been unlocked yet,

but maybe in the coming week. Maybe

they're waiting to get the $400,000

covered.

We'll find out.

Don't you believe that the arc of

history

Um,

it's where they would Don't you believe

that the arc of history is bending

toward 100% confirmation that the

election was rigged?

Do doesn't it feel like there's nothing

that could stop that from happening?

Really all it took was Republicans to

have enough time and enough, you know,

enough influence that they could go look

at the stuff they wanted to look at.

But I will warn you

that a tremendous amount of allegations

about the election have not been proven

to be true.

So this this could very easily be, you

know, disappointing,

but we'll find out.

So, here's a very little small story,

but Newsmax is reporting that uh Trump

was asked somewhere

about the AI boom and the bubble and

could could the AI boom damage the

economy, blah blah. And Trump's answer

was quote, "No, I love AI." according to

the New York Times. Now, have you

noticed that that Trump has a very young

brain?

I mean, he's conservative in sort of a,

you know, old school conservative way,

but whenever there's something that's

new tech,

um, he's unusually

good at embracing it. And AI is one of

those things. Crypto is another one of

those things. Um, even when he got in

trouble for talking about CO, it's

because he knew more than the doctors

did about light being a a disinfectant

and and just the way he jokes about

things.

He has a very young brain

and I've never seen that much experience

paired with that much of a sort of a

youthful

approach to the world.

And I'm wondering in this case um how

much it made a difference that he's got

David Saxs you know who obviously you

know make him comfortable with crypto as

well as AI and uh you know a bunch of

other people from Jared to

[snorts]

um

well you know you could name a few. So

he's got a lot of young adviserss, but

he actually listens to them and he's

clearly influenced by them. So yeah,

he's he's very youngrained.

Anyway,

will the will the robots take all our

jobs?

Peter Navaro, one of Trump's top trade

adviserss or maybe his top trade

adviser, he he's urging workers to

consider going into the trades.

Would that be a good answer for you

to go into the trades like go out and

fix air conditioners and be a mechanic

and be a plumber and all that?

I gotta say, I'm pretty lucky that I was

born in a time when that wasn't

something you had to do. I would never

be good at that.

I would be good at sitting in a cubicle.

Uh I would be good at typing things. I'd

be good at creativity,

but I would never be good at fixing your

AC.

So, I'm glad I don't have to make that

choice. However, it made me wonder what

the future looks like. And I'm going to

make a prediction.

Prediction number one,

I believe that in the same way that

unions

can make companies do things they don't

want to do, right? That a union can make

a company do what it doesn't want to do.

And that's probably true for, you know,

influence over the government as well.

because if your union was big enough

uh it could influence voting.

So I believe there will be a

robot union

which is people not robots. So maybe I

said that wrong. Let me say it a

different way. I believe there will form

a new union that might be a collection

of existing unions or it might be a new

one. and their primary their primary

objective will be to make sure that you

can't put a robot into the field as a

worker unless you have at least one

human uh in charge on site had to be on

site. So, have you ever had a plumber

come to your house

and they start working and then they

realize there's a part that they need?

So, they have to stop what they're

doing, go drive somewhere and get a part

and come back. Uh, and you've watched

people doing service work in your house

and you know, there's one person who

might be doing demolition and and

dragging stuff away and other person

who's doing the carpentry or the hard

stuff.

I see a world where a plumber would have

one or two robots that show up at the

same time, but the plumber would be in

charge and this new union I'm talking

about would guarantee that even if you

knew you could do it with just robots,

it just wouldn't be legal. You just it

wouldn't happen.

So, [snorts] and even if you had your

own robot,

the law could be so gamed that you

wouldn't be a you wouldn't be allowed to

use your own robot even to do some

plumbing at your own house.

So, I think that the laws and

as well as the unions

will conspire to keep people employed

even if that's not the best idea.

[snorts] But can't you just just imagine

this? All right, close your eyes and

imagine the robots and the the one guy,

the plumber. Let's just say plumber. Uh

the plumber shows up and he's got two

robot assistants,

and he sends one of the robots to get a

part. the that robot gives you a

self-driving car, literally goes down to

the uh you know hardware store, [snorts]

picks up the part, and if you're not

sure, it can send you a picture so you

you know it's picking up the right

thing. Pays for it with some kind of

digital payment. Drives back. Meanwhile,

the other robot has identified where the

leak is just by putting his robot hand

on the wall and it can identify where

the leak is. And then when [snorts] it

finds it, it needs to maybe take down a

piece of the wall. So the the human

plumber says, "All right, robot, uh,

take out this part of the the

sheetrock." [snorts] And the robot goes,

"And then you can see the leak." And

then the the plumber says, "All right,

I'm going to need some plumbers tape.

[snorts] I'm going to need this and I'm

going to need this tool." And even

before he's done talking, his robot

assistant has already gone to the

toolbox and has those exact things. Now,

maybe the robot would do the work of,

you know, wrapping up things and fixing

things with the supervision of the

human. Or maybe before we get to that

point, the human still does the work

because it's maybe it's just slightly

outside of what the robots can do, but

the robots are learning like an

apprentice. So on day one, you get a

cheap robot that can only fetch and

maybe do some demo stuff and maybe get

some tools, but as you do work, the

robot learns the same way an apprentice

would. So your robot would become more

and more valuable every time that

accompanied you on a on a plumber trip.

[snorts]

So that's what I think. But give give me

some feedback on that. Do you think

that's reasonable?

So, the things I'm predicting

are that the unions and the laws

will guarantee that you have to have a

human if a robot's doing some physical

work. Do you agree with that part?

At at least for,

you know, the predictable future.

I think so.

[snorts] And

that [clears throat] would just make

your

your plumber is more effective.

All right. How many jobs do you know

where you ask for some service person to

come to your house and you can't get

them there in a week?

A lot, right? Or there not a lot of

situations where you want a service, but

they're booked up so you can't get to

them for a week. Well, if you add the

robots,

maybe it's the same workers, but they

can do three jobs a day as there too.

So, suddenly

uh suddenly your your human plumber is

making twice as much money

or not twice as much. Let's say 50%

more.

All right,

you agree?

So, um, there's another AI company

that's being skeptical about the robots.

Let's see if I can find that story.

May maybe I didn't write that down.

But,

all right, here's a story. So, I think

this was in the Wall Street Journal

today that the headline is even the

companies making humanoid robots think

they're overhyped.

So, you know what I've been saying for

forever,

so I believe I was ahead of the curve,

is that if robots could do more than one

thing,

they would already be deployed.

But we keep seeing these demos where the

robot is trained to do exactly one

thing, like iron a shirt, but that skill

does not

it doesn't go to anything else. You

can't you can't just give it an AI brain

today and have it figure out stuff. You

would [snorts] have to specifically

train it for every little task. So

that's why you do see robots in

warehouses because a warehouse is a very

limited

training set.

Uh if you get this command, go get this

box, you know, carry this box over here

and put it there. So, it's such a small

domain that a robot could work in a

warehouse.

But I've been saying for a while if you

if you have any experience with the

large language model AIS, which are the

dominant parts, that they don't really

have any hope of becoming general

intelligence.

There's nothing that they're doing. the

AI the AI industry. I don't believe

there's anything they're doing that

could logically lead to a general

intelligence robot.

And and I think that some of the experts

are saying it too. You know, now that

they've all been overfunded, they they

can tell the truth. But there's this one

guy, I guess he's a head of a AI company

called

I don't know, his name is Velici

and he's skeptical. So he says the same

thing I do that you can train them to do

warehouse tasks.

But did you know [snorts] that for every

$100 you would spend on a robot,

um, only about $20 of that is a robot

and the rest of the the rest of the

money is for protecting humans from the

robots.

Now, I think that means physically so

that the robot doesn't, you know,

accidentally run you over or something.

So, here's my question.

Um, Elon Musk is very pro robot

and I wonder what does he know that the

other top people in the industry don't

know.

Now,

it's always a bad idea to bet against

Musk when he's making a prediction of

the future. You know, he might be off by

timing,

but it's a bad idea to bet against him.

He very clearly believes that that the

Optimus robots will be general purpose

robots.

And uh apparently uh his version of AI

is way ahead of the other AIS.

But is he way ahead in a way that would

give us general intelligence

or is he just way ahead in the way that

we can never get general intelligence?

you know, maybe his will hallucinate

less or something, but what does he

know? Is he going about it in a

completely different way? [snorts] Now,

I know that he trained his cars with

video,

but again, that's that's a limited

domain. So, as as varied as the

possibilities are for a car, I mean,

there's a a trillion different things

that a car could have to do, you could

probably get to a trillion. So, you

could tr I think you could train a car

on a trillion different possibilities

and then it would be better than a

human, but it would still be trained for

a narrow domain, which is driving

safely.

So, I get how we can uh get to

self-driving cars. That [snorts] That

makes total sense. You You just train

them with video instead of language.

But how do you get to a butler?

You How would you ever get to a butler

where there's something new every day

that has never seen?

What does he know that we don't know?

Do does his AI have a like a secret

um like a skunk works that nobody knows

about that's getting close to it? And

I've said this before, but it's a really

good tip.

If you think that you'll have a robot

butler in one year, you would already

see it,

right?

because I can't believe that uh that the

robots would be launching in one year

and they didn't know how to do it yet.

Does that even make sense? You know what

do you think there's any possibility

that a big serious you know high

functioning company would say oh yeah in

a year we'll have robot butlers

but we have no idea how to do it at the

moment.

No big company would do that, you know.

Not Tesla, not anybody. So, if you're

not hearing today that they have one in

the lab that has general intelligence,

and you're not,

I don't believe there's going to be one

in a year. [snorts] I do not believe.

So,

I want to be wrong.

I want to be wrong. [snorts]

How many of you agree with my assessment

that if they can't do it today, it's not

going to be a product in one year?

Would you agree with that?

Well, once again,

unless

I guess I have to say it one more time,

um, in a sense, I'm betting against Elon

Musk's prediction, but what he knows

about this topic is, you know, a

thousand times more than I know. So,

does he know more than I know, or is he

just being is it just wishful thinking?

And my guess is he knows more than I

know.

So therefore, oh, I guess I should um I

should reveal this every once in a

while. I do own Tesla stock.

So I want it to work and I desperately

want Elon to be right and me to be

wrong. And I literally have my money bet

I actually bet my money against myself.

[gasps] I bet my money on Elon instead

of myself,

which probably is a good bet.

All right, enough about that.

Um,

I'm just going back to the front here.

So,

have any of you had the experience that

AI has already ruined your YouTube

experience?

Apparently, there's a way to fix that by

blocking the videos that were

downvoiding them somehow. And then

YouTube will learn what to not give you.

AI slop. So AI slop, if you haven't

heard that term, is AI content that is

sort of impressive

but not really something you want to see

too often. So that's called slop.

So when I go to YouTube, let's say two

or three years ago, if I went to YouTube

and I saw a topic that I was interested

in, it was made by humans and it would

keep me interested for, you know, an

hour.

But today, if I see something that

interests me,

um, it's almost always slop

and it'll be this, you know, this boring

robot voice and the Andes is a mountain

rage and it's just sort of repetitive

and not interesting and

and and there's so much of the AI crap

that searching through it to find

something that's not AI, there's just

too much work.

So that's one of the reasons that I just

stopped watching YouTube mostly, not

completely. And I do videos on X because

if you go to X, you go to the side menu

on your app, one of the options now is

video. And what they do really well is

they only feed you video that the

algorithm thinks you would be interested

in. So that's not AI.

So, I will catch up on all kinds of

politics and technology and AI stuff and

Tesla stuff and I don't have to do

anything. I just hit the button once. It

just goes from video to video and I can

listen to it all day.

So, YouTube's got a problem.

Anyway, um,

one of the Let's talk about the Mara

Lago raid. I know that's old news, but

Mike Davis has an article about it in

Fox News. So, here are some of the

things to just summarize

the whole Mara Lago raid for the the

classified documents.

Um, did you know that the FBI agents

allegedly lacked probable cause,

which would be sort of a crime?

So, I think what something that we

learned from the uh now released files

somehow we would learn this is that the

FBI said they didn't know what the uh

didn't know what the probable cause was,

which would make it completely illegal

to do a ra that kind of a a raid. but

they were allegedly

uh pressed by the Biden administration

to do it anyway.

Now, I think they're still in the

allegedly category, but getting closer

to fact.

Uh secondly, and this part I don't I'm

not convinced about this,

but some say that the real reason for

the raid was that Trump had some uh uh

records about Operation Crossfire

Hurricane, which would implicate the old

Obama and Brennan people. And so they

were trying to really get that. So, it

looked like it was about classified

information, but really it was about

making sure that Trump did not have

documents that would incriminate

Democrats.

Do you believe that?

That is just that is just slightly too

far into conspiracy theory

for me. Very possible. I wouldn't rule

it out, but I say I don't believe there

are any documents that show that. Are

there have there been any whistleblowers

who said the real reason is because

those crossfire hurricane documents?

By now, there would be a whistleblower,

right?

And I don't believe we've seen one. So,

I'm going to say maybe.

All right. And then there's some issue

about the judge

who was not very uh not very neutral.

And I guess they did the bad guys, the

Democrats did some uh judge shopping and

they found this guy uh Judge Bruce

Reinhardt of the s Southern District of

Florida. So he's the one who signed a

warrant, but just six weeks earlier he

had recused himself from some Trump

Clinton lawsuit. And the reason was that

he had as a civilian in 2017 he had

written a Facebook post viciously

bashing Trump.

So the Department of Justice

apparently found the the one person you

could guarantee was anti-Trump

and that's the guy that signed the

warrant.

Now again, judge shopping is not

illegal, right?

As far as I know, it's not illegal.

It's just not ideal.

So,

we'll keep an eye on that. So, [snorts]

Russell Brand has been charged with new

allegations of rape and sexual assault.

Right News is reporting. I think I told

you that when Russell Brand was

originally accused of those things

several years ago, I guess um that I

happened to be booked for his show.

So, I went on his show while he was

right in the middle of of all the

accusations and he was losing everything

as he was being demonetized.

And let me tell you, I thought my

interview with him was gonna be a lot of

fun, but he was not really in the mood.

He was not in the mood to have a lot of

fun. And I completely understand that,

but he's being hit again with new new

charges.

Um, and I don't have an opinion about

who did what or who's guilty of what. I

will give this you this context that I

think is useful every time this kind of

a story comes up. And the context goes

like this.

Pretty much every rich and powerful

um man

is is accused of falsely of sex crimes.

Pretty much all of them. So, if you've

got somebody of his um his notoriety,

especially if he's known to be a sex

addict, especially if he's seemed to be

siding with one part of the political

aisle, the odds of him having a false

accusation

were 100%.

Now, that does not mean that these

allegations are false. It only means

that you should not judge it by the fact

that they exist

because there was a 100% chance that

someone like him would be falsely

accused even if there were any real

things he ever did.

So that that's the only thing I'm going

to add to the story. And trust me, you

could talk to any if you privately

talked to any, let's say, rich CEO.

I'll bet you every one of them would

say, "Yeah, you know, my secretary

or you know, some employee accused me."

And often it's people you never met

because I told I told you I've been

accused of sexual abuse by someone who

lives in Canada I've never met.

Right? So they they called the people I

worked with and one woman did the the

crazy woman. She called the people I

worked with, the people in my restaurant

where I owned a restaurant and told them

that I was a terrible rapist and that on

a regular basis I would travel to Canada

and rifle through her possessions and

then sexually abuse her. Now I promise

you this is nobody I've ever met. This

is pure crazy woman. But the people who

received the call, how do they know? How

would they know if that's real or not?

So that's that is the world of

high-profile people.

But this makes me ask the following

question.

How did we go from an environment of me

too every single day

to it doesn't really get in the news

much?

Did something change?

Is it possible that the the CEOs have

learned,

you know, just don't do anything that

would get you in trouble? Is it possible

that the Mike Pence rule where you just

don't allow yourself to be alone with a

woman,

uh, are many or CEOs doing that?

Because I have to admit

um when I first heard the Mike Pence

rule that he would not go to lunch, for

example, even a business lunch, he

wouldn't even do a business lunch with a

woman by herself unless he brought his

wife. And I think we all laughed at

that, right? Haha. You know, old Mike

Pence, you know, it's Mike Pence don't

live in the past. You know, women women

are part of the workforce. you know, if

they want to go to lunch for business

should be exactly like a man.

And it didn't take me long to realize he

was a smart one.

So, I don't know what is, you know, may

maybe it was probably religious and

partly being faithful to his wife, but

man, that is a good way to protect

yourself. You just don't ever allow

yourself to be alone

with somebody who might accuse you.

That's not a bad rule. So, could it be

that so many people kind of took that to

heart that the rate of me too went way

down?

Maybe.

Or was it never real and it was always a

sort of a news related thing? Well, let

me say it a different way.

Maybe the rate of me too has always been

the same, but when it was in the news,

uh, the people who were the victims of

the me too were far more likely to

pursue it. But once it falls out of the

news, then maybe they feel, you know,

there'll be retaliation or, you know,

they'd rather just move on with their

life.

So, is it my imagination?

So give me give me a comment here. Is it

my imagination or is it real that the

metoing thing was just every day

but now it just sort of shrunk

and you don't really hear I mean you

still hear about it but it's like way

less. Why would that be? Why do you

think that would be

if it's true that we're hearing about

less?

Well, I guess some New York Times

reporter

is suing the big AI companies. In this

case, this would include X. So, Google X

Open AI. They're suing over chatbot

training.

So, I guess they're worried that the

chat bots read their books without

permission and got trained on them and

they think that's

some kind of a copyright violation. Now,

you've heard this before.

It's sort of an old story that authors

uh but I guess they're not doing a class

action in this case

which has some extra risks for the AI

companies

allegedly.

So I ask it I ask AI about my books and

it generally it knows

well here's what it pretends to know. If

I ask AI, you know, what's on page

whatever of my book, it can't do it. So,

it's not trained that well. If I ask it

to summarize my book,

it can do it, but it takes a summary

from other people's comments about the

book. So it is legal for uh the AI to

look at public comments like a review of

the book or what somebody said about it

on social media for example and usually

they that's enough to piece together

what the book was about. So, in a sense,

AI, at least in my case, uh, finds a

workaround that doesn't look like a

copyright violation to me because

there's there's no problem quoting a

reviewer or something.

So, I asked Gemini today

um if it was true that John Bogle, who

is the famous Vanguard index fund guy,

is it true that he once used uh my

financial advice in his book? because I

was wondering you who I have influence

and according to Gemini

um it could tell me the page number and

the book and I think it was year 2010

that his book took my nine-page personal

finance advice and he just included it

in the book because he thought it was so

well done. It was really well done. Um,

and that was I think mostly right,

but when could give me the page number,

I'll bet that was a hallucination.

So, I don't know. I've not I cannot

confirm that his book included my

financial advice. I can confirm that a

few people asked for permission to

reprint that.

So, whether he did or not, I don't know.

Anyway,

um did you know that I have I've had an

influence on personal finance?

How many of you knew that?

That's one of the weird areas that I had

an influence. You know how I've told you

that one of the ways to be influential

is to be the person who writes it down.

Whatever it is, if you write it down,

you become influential. if you do a good

job of writing it down. So, because I'm

a cartoonist and I'm really good at

summarizing,

I found a way to write down all the

advice you would ever need for personal

finance in just nine bullet points.

So, the the breakthrough was not that I

knew more than anybody else. The

breakthrough is that I figured out how

to do it in nine bullet points. that

would be in the order. This is the key

part. They would be in the order that

you should do them. Nobody did that

before. Everybody else just said this is

a good idea, this is a bad idea, good

idea, bad idea. But it was overwhelming.

So I got rid of the overwhelming part by

just saying if you don't know anything

else, do this. I think number one was

make a will. if you have if you have uh

people you're trying to take care of.

[snorts]

But of course, you should do that first.

Why would you leave yourself exposed?

So,

I don't know if AI got that right.

Well, Jasmine Crockett,

your favorite Democrat.

Yes, I said Democrat.

She She's got a new technique.

that is so

it's so bad that it's almost good. So

[snorts] she was asked Breitbart News

was reporting this. So in some interview

recently

um she was asked if she accepts the idea

that the current administration has

vastly reduced illegal border crossings.

Now, would you agree

that one of the most obviously

documented

total facts is that the Trump

administration has in fact reduced the

number of illegal border crossings? Now,

how can she possibly say

that that didn't happen?

Uh,

okay. I'll get back to that.

Well, here's what she did. So, she

didn't want to give credit for what is

an immense accomplishment.

So, instead, she said, "We know that

this administration has not been the

most honest when it comes to reporting

numbers."

So instead of saying yes, obviously they

stop border crossings,

she questioned whether the data was

accurate.

Oh my god,

I I hate it and I love it at the same

time. It's so bold that you would even

go that direction, but if you assume

that the public isn't really following

things closely, she says, "Well, you

know, they they cheated on the jobs

numbers." I don't know if that's true,

but she said the jobs numbers were fake.

So, if the job numbers were fake,

couldn't it also be true that the border

numbers were fake? No.

Because we would definitely notice that

the border numbers were fake. If the

border was exactly the way it had been,

you don't think we would have noticed.

It's harder to notice unemployment

or employment, you know, especially if

you're talking one or two percent. But

it's not hard to notice that the border

is wide open or totally closed.

But the the husba of even saying that it

might be a data reporting problem by the

administration,

that's pretty bold.

So apparently there's a giant tanker,

oil tanker that um is one of these

shadow fleet trying to illegally move

oil from Venezuela.

And so the Coast Guard started chasing

it down and instead of surrendering,

which you would expect them to do

because they're literally up against a

military. So instead of surrendering,

they decided to do a U-turn and and make

a run for it. Now, obviously, they're

not going to outrun the Coast Guard. So,

there's a little bit of a mystery as to

why they haven't surrendered because the

the staff of the of the uh the vessel,

they're not military, you know, they're

just underpaid

seaman, so to speak. So, why would they

even take a chance? It's not their oil,

you know. I mean, I suppose there's some

risk of penalty to them if they give it

up, but do they what do they think? Do

they think they're going to outrun the

Coast Guard? So, part of the story, Wall

Street Journal's reporting on this, is

that the US is just waiting to

bring some more military assets in so

they can do a proper military takeover

of the boat if they don't voluntarily

surrender. It looks like they're not.

So, did you know that uh there's such a

thing as a maritime special response

team?

So, apparently the US military has a

group who are specially trained, an

elite force for boarding hostile ships.

And I guess what they do is they bring

in a bunch of helicopters.

And that, you know, the helicopters keep

everybody busy. Then the special elite

team, they repel down presumably. I I I

don't think the helicopter lands. I

think they probably repel down. And then

they use their superior weaponry to make

it to the bridge and then basically take

over. And then there's some speculation

that they're looking for a captain who

would know how to run the boat after

they the ship after they take it over

because it's it's not that common.

to know how to operate that kind of a

ship.

So, it might be hard to find somebody

who's willing to, you know, be the be

the new captain.

Would they be seals?

I don't know. Maybe they would be a

subset of seals,

but the seals were not mentioned in this

story.

Anyway, as part of that story,

I keep hearing it said that if the

Venezuelan oil shipments are shut down

or even seriously degraded, that it will

collapse the economy of Cuba because

Cuba is already a basket case and it

depends on cheap Venezuelan oil. So if

the cheap Venezuelan oil gets cut off or

or seriously degraded, some people say,

"Oh, the Cuban economy will collapse."

To which I say, "There's never been a

time in my life when the Cuban economy

was not on the border of collapse.

Do you believe that they're going to

collapse?"

Every time we hear this,

things don't collapse. At least not

completely.

So, it seems like there's always a

workaround for everything.

But the thing I still don't know is if

the Trump administration thinks they're

getting a twofer and that they're going

to find a way to do regime change in

Cuba the hard way

just indirectly by putting pressure on

their their sponsor.

Don't know.

All right.

Uh, according to Politico,

the US Immigration Customs Enforcement

people that we know as ICE are buying

hundreds of millions of dollars worth of

surveillance tools

um so that they can find the uh the

non-legal residents. So that would

include uh let's see social social media

monitoring tools, facial recognition

software, license plate readers, and

services to find people where people

live and work.

So

let me take you back to something I've

been predicting for 10 years.

If you think you can protect your

privacy,

you can't.

your your privacy was always going to

disappear and it wouldn't matter who's

in charge. And the reason I say that is

that the utility of taking your privacy

away is just too high. So the

government, whoever the government is,

is going to say, well, you know, we

really need to,

you know, we really need to uh do this

for the illegals. Then the next thing

you know, you're gonna say, "Well, we

have all these tools, you know, why

don't we also sell it to the police

force?" And I don't think it will ever

matter if the Democrats or the

Republicans are in charge. I think in

every scenario, just the usefulness

of taking away your privacy for law and

order

uh will be so high that you don't have a

chance. It will just disappear.

And and I'm not saying that's a good

idea. I'm just saying it's inevitable.

So, you know, if you're worried about it

happening,

maybe what you should worry about is not

doing anything that can be discovered

that that you would want to be

discovered because

a full lack of privacy is just

guaranteed in the future. I mean, that's

before you have a robot in your house.

How much privacy you could have with a

robot in your house? All right, let me

ask you this. Let's say you've got a an

Optimus robot

and the police say if we could get that

robot to spy on you that we could find

out, you know, if you're doing anything

bad,

would Elon Musk say, "Nope.

Even though you have a warrant, I will

not I will not turn on the ability to

monitor people through the robot, which

would be presumably not that hard.

But even Elon Musk can't defy the

Department of Justice. So if the

Department of Justice says, "Oh yeah,

this is a totally legitimate use of a

warrant. You've got a robot. We can

listen through the robot. We are

ordering you to make that robot a spy.

Would he do it?

I don't know that he would have a

choice. I think he would go to jail if

he didn't do it.

So yeah, as soon as there's a robot in

every house,

you'd better not break any laws.

All right.

[snorts] Surprisingly,

there's a report that Zalinski is going

to meet at Mara Lago on Sunday to try to

reach an agreement. Now, that surprises

me because the most recent comment from

the Russian envoys was that they're not

they didn't make any progress recently

and they're they're not close to a deal.

But there are some hints that they might

be close to a deal. One of the hints is

that Trump probably wouldn't take the

meeting unless he thought it's close

enough that he could push it over the

edge. Now, he's an optimist.

So, just because he thinks they might be

close, that doesn't mean they're close,

but it's worth a try. So, remember, he's

got uh, you know, Kushner and Wickoff

working on this, and they're very good

at what they do. So maybe we're we're in

for a surprise. But according to Axios,

here are some of the things that are the

the biggest sticking points and why we

might be closer to a deal than we think.

Uh one is that Ukraine needed security

guarantees.

And apparently the US is willing to push

some legislation through Congress that

would give them security guarantees

without NATO.

Now, what would that look like? What

exactly would a US security guarantee be

unless it meant we would put boots on

the ground if Russia got adventurous?

Well, I don't know. But one of the

things it could be is an open-ended, you

know, we will respond. But that what we

would plan to do is give the Ukrainians

the good weapons that we've never given

them before.

So suppose we said,

uh, here's the deal, Russia. We have

held back our best weapons

because then it would look like we're

part of the war if we give it the good

stuff. But if we give them a security

guarantee

and you move on them militarily, we will

instantly take the controls off and they

can have everything except our nuclear

weapons.

So suddenly you will not be facing

Ukrainian weapons, you'll be facing the

most optimized American weapons. And if

you look at what companies like Anderil

are doing to make our weapons smarter,

cheaper, that would be quite a threat

and it would not guarantee that there

would be any boost on the ground, but it

could be quite a good quite a good

incentive for Russia to stay away. So,

I'm just speculating

that there is a way to create a security

guarantee

um that would be sensible.

I wasn't sure there would be

um and that if Russia responds

militarily that there would also be

sanctions of course and maybe the

sanctions would be worse if they could

be worse.

Um

then the other thing that that uh Russia

wants is it wants complete control over

the Donbass. So it sounds like they're

not flexible on control of the Donbass,

which would require, I think, Ukraine to

actually pull out of some part of the

Donbass that they have not yet lost, and

Russia would have control over what they

already have, plus a little extra.

Now, here's what the US seems to have

counterproposed.

Since the word that's being used is

control,

is it possible that you can find a

hybrid situation where Russia feels like

it has enough control to be let's say

safe from a military buildup there or

safe from something bad happening.

But that uh I guess Wickoff and Jared

Kushner have suggested that they turn

that into the Donbass into a free

economic zone so that you reframe it.

I like this part. You reframe the

Donbass from a military zone to an

economic zone. And you say, "How about

we make this the one place that you can

make some money and there's not going to

be any war. If that works for you, it

works for us. We don't need to put any

missiles there. You don't need to attack

it.

But you could have something like

control.

Do you think there's any hybrid

situation in which Russia would say,

"All right, that's enough control

because we're worried about security.

We're worried about the US putting some

missiles there and we we would agree not

to." Maybe maybe I think there might be

something there.

[snorts] And let's see. Um

and apparently there's some issue about

a ceasefire because Russia doesn't want

to do a ceasefire until they have a

deal.

But Ukraine is saying we can't have a

deal because of our laws unless we have

a referendum.

and the referendum ended in voting to

give up that control of the Donbass. But

it looks like the Russians understand

that if the if the referendum is the

only way to get there and the only way

to have a referendum is with a

ceasefire,

that might be negotiable. So maybe

that's something that they would cave

on.

So anyway, I'm just speculating that

it's possible. I'd probably still bet

against it, but it's possible

that they're close to a deal.

And then I saw in where did I see this

in the amuse account on X pointed out I

don't know what the source of this is

but Amuse is good on sources that the

European Union has committed to this

blows my mind that the European Union

has deals to buy Russian energy through

2027.

So that would be that would imply

[snorts] that Russia could continue

affording the war

for at least two more years. So it's

possible that Russia, you know, might

want to make a deal, but maybe they

could wait another two years and see if

they get more control over the Donbass

you if they don't care about the

casualties.

So it just blows my mind that Europe is

still, you know, attached to Russian

oil.

Then

um apparently there's some people in the

administration who think that if we make

peace with Russia and that would be a

four-way peace, you know, Europe, US,

Ukraine, Russia, that if we can make

peace that Russia has such unlimited

natural resources that everybody can

make a ton of money.

But the counter to that is that the

entire uh economy of Russia is about the

size of Italy, Italy's economy, and is

sort of shrinking. They've got a

demographic problem. But the biggest

problem that Russia has is that if

you're a legitimate business person from

the West and you built a company that

made money in Russia,

the Russians would steal it. they would

literally just steal your company

because Russia is basically a criminal

organization pretending to be a country.

So do you think it's and they don't have

that many resources that are that are

unique. So the thinking is that if you

thought Russia was this gold mine of

natural resources, well, it does have

some natural resources,

but it's not essential to run the the

world. Uh, and it's so risky to do any

kind of business in Russia that you'd be

crazy to try.

So,

one question is, can we really sell the

idea

that doing business with Russia is good

for them and good for us? I can see why

it would be good for them because if if

an American company comes in and, you

know, let's say, you know, builds this

really successful energy enterprise

working with the Russians, the Russians

would steal it. You they would

nationalize it. They would jail the CEO.

They would just steal it.

So, we'll see if uh the We'll see if

that's even a a path they can take. Hey,

everybody makes money.

[snorts] We'll see.

Well, over Christmas, if you weren't

paying attention,

uh the US launched strikes on the

Islamic State targets in Nigeria.

Apparently Nigerian

ISIS has been killing literally

massacring Christians and Trump really

doesn't like that. So he had warned them

that the bad guys that if they kept

killing Christians he was going to

respond militarily. Allegedly Nigeria's

government approved it

so it wasn't a violation of their

sovereignty.

Um, but and we don't know how many

people were bombed or if it was

missiles. I'm pretty sure no American

boosts were on the ground and no

American casualties. Don't know that for

sure, but I'm sure he did it from a

distance. Anyway,

it makes me wonder,

under what authority

can Trump order an attack on Nigeria,

even if the government of Nigeria says

yes,

what authority allows him to do that?

Can he just tell the military to attack

anybody he wants?

Now, you know, arguably there's a good

rationale for it. I I'm not I'm not

arguing that he shouldn't have done it,

but how do you justify that legally?

I know. I suspect the anti-war people

will have something to say about this

next week.

And again, I'm not opposed to it. If if

there were no casualties on the American

side and it made a difference, we don't

we don't yet know if it made a

difference, but potentially

might have been a good play.

You know, I've told you now quite a few

times that when Trump has options, he

always picks the strongest one. Even if

the war powers act, even if it's not the

optimal strategy that every time he

picks this the quote strong strategy,

that pays off because the next situation

where he's negotiating,

nobody will think he's bluffing.

You see what I'm saying? As long as he

always picks the strongest play, even if

it's not the optimized play, then every

time he he has to deal with somebody,

they're going to say, "Oh, damn it. He's

not bluffing.

If he says he's going to bomb us, he's

definitely going to bomb us."

So, even if he isn't. So, it's a real

It's a real good play persuasion wise,

the literally murdering priests. I also

don't know know the scale of it.

Obviously, there's no amount that's

right. There's there's no amount that's

the right amount of killing Christians.

But I do wonder what is the scale? I

mean, is are they killing a 100

Christians a day?

How bad is it?

Arguing about the legality is laughable.

Yeah, I would say I'm more curious than

arguing about it.

I wouldn't say I'm arguing about it.

All right, Polar investments.

[snorts] All right, ladies and

gentlemen, that's all I have for you

today.

And uh if you want to hang out for

another minute,

I will be happy to sip my coffee and

hang out with you just cuz you might be

lonely. I know there are a few birthdays

today.

How many of you have a birthday today?

At least two of the locals people have a

birthday, but we've got

uh what 5,000 people watching. out of

the 5,000 people, how many how many are

having a birthday today?

I'll bet it's quite a few.

So, there you go, Deb.

Happy birthday to all the birthday

people.

Your brother does.

All right.

Did anybody get a pet for Christmas?

Did anybody get like a kitten or a

puppy?

If he did, I want to see a picture of

it.

A,

it's a lonely day for you. Well, that's

why we're here. You need not be lonely

because I'm here and all of your friends

are here.

I'd like to see a robot do this.

Well, I don't know if that was a good

show, but

kept you busy for an hour.

Sex kittens.

Yeah, they count.

You wish you got a puppy.

Over 52,000 Christians have been Wow.

Well, that's in Africa in general.

That's all of Africa, not Nigeria,

right? That's a lot.

52,000 Christians.

Yeah. No medical advice, please.

It's your understanding that what?

Oh, your kid showed up.

Do I have a lot of close friends from

school? Not from school

because I don't live anywhere where my

school was.

But let me tell you this.

Um, I am so blessed,

so blessed to have people that I trust

completely in my life

because when you get in my situation,

you have to you have to trust people to

do what you need to be done and not take

advantage of you. And I have a I have a

very high trust social situation. very

high trust

and that is quite a uh quite a relief.

You're always alone on the holidays,

huh?

Sorry about that. I know you said it

doesn't bother you, but it's not what I

want for you.

Yeah. No, I had no problems on the

holidays whatsoever.

You reap what you sow.

True enough.

No, don't send gifts to my caretakers.

But thanks for offering.

Oh, you're enjoying your Sunday home.

All right, people. I think we've done

enough for today.

So, how about we say

bye for now and I'll catch up with you

tomorrow.

Bye for now.

Where's my cursor?