, a good drawing of a robot there in the comments. Thank you.

Well, well, well. Let me start with the funniest tweet of the day from Glenn Greenwald. You all know about Obama having a big birthday party, his 60th birthday party, and he invited a lot of what the New York Times call sophisticated vaccinated people. So unlike your Sturgis, where there's a bunch of unsophisticated people, Obama's birthday had sophisticated vaccinated people. Much safer.

Well, Glenn Greenwald tweeted on this perfectly and said, there was a photo attached, he said, here's Biden's climate czar John Kerry arriving on his private jet to attend Obama's maskless party. It's all there. Everything you need to know about the world in one tweet. The climate czar on a private jet, and Obama's got a maskless mass gathering. So how about the rest of you? How was your maskless mass gathering? Was it as good as mine? That's right, we didn't have one.

So everybody's mad about the hypocrisy, and I guess they should be. There's some CDC official, but not all of them, finally said this. He said that we will all be exposed to the coronavirus by the end of the year, maybe next year. Now what does exposed mean? Exposed. We'll all be exposed to the virus, mostly the Delta variant, I think.

Does exposed mean that if you have a vaccination and you are exposed to it, do you carry any of the virus with you still? A little bit uncertain, because we know that vaccinated people do not only carry the virus but can have as much viral load as someone who's not vaccinated at all, at least in some cases that we've determined. But does that mean that, let's say you're vaccinated and you don't have any symptoms but you got some virus, are you going to put off as much? I would think not, logically, because if you're not coughing you're not spreading it as much. And if you're not gasping for air because your lungs are not working, maybe you're not breathing as much. But you'd still be putting off plenty. I mean, if you had the same full viral load, just breathing would be a problem, I would think.

So I tend to agree with the CDC guy who says we'll all be exposed, because I don't see anything in the works that would change it. Do you? Is there anything happening that would change the fact we'll all be exposed? Because it doesn't look like we're even close to something that would look like shutting it down. And you'd have to shut it down sort of everywhere all over the world for it to make a difference in any country, assuming borders open up again. So I just don't think we can get there. And I feel that we should be a little more honest about that.

So the reason to get the vaccination is not to stop the virus but to stop it from progressing in your own body.

There's a, I guess Israel has a new drug for targeting the coronavirus. It looks pretty promising because the way it works, and they've tested it in a small test so we don't have any randomized controlled trials yet, but in a small test a whole bunch of people who were very sick left the hospital in five days or less. And I guess 93 percent of 90 coronavirus cases that were serious in several Greek hospitals, they had to test it. The Israelis had to test their COVID drug in Greece because there wasn't enough COVID in Israel. Israel did such a good job that they didn't have, they couldn't do a test of it there. So they tested it there and it was hugely successful.

What it does is it targets the cytokine storm, whatever that is, the thing that makes you so sick is that your own immune response goes nuts. So apparently this drug just calms down your immune response, presumably just from the virus, I don't know. But gigantic potential. But how long does it take? I don't think this is going to get some kind of emergency authorization, so maybe it doesn't matter. It might take too long.

I'd like to give you an update on my personal quest to make masks impractical, at least in certain places. So was it yesterday? Yesterday I went to a restaurant and did not wear a mask. Now a mask was required, and if they had asked me to put it on I would have. But as soon as you sit down, I think it's probably the same everywhere, as soon as you sit down at the table and they bring you a glass of water or even before they do, you take your mask off. So the only reason for the mask is to stand at the hostess stand for five seconds and then walk twelve feet to where you're going to take your mask off in the same space the whole time. Kind of ridiculous.

So I tried to see what would happen if I just didn't wear a mask and the host had to see me without a mask. What would the host do? And the answer is the host ignored my maskless state and seated me. Also ignored the entire party in front of me that checked in just before me, all maskless. The restaurant just has already given up. They've given up.

Here's a sign you should put on your gym. You ready for this? Here's the sign I want on your gym. It says masks are mandated by the state. If you don't wear a mask we'll ask you to put one on and that's all we'll do. That's the sign. Masks are mandated. If you're not wearing one we will ask you to put one on and that's all we'll do. Message received, right? And then you just go to the gym without your mask and they'll say, hey, put your mask on. And then you say thanks for reminding me, and you just go on with your business. Wouldn't that work? I know we'll find out. I think.

Well the IPCC has a new report on climate. Let me guess, huh? Do you think the IPCC will say we're doing a great job on climate and everything's getting better? Do you think that's what they came up with? Or do you think they waited several years for a new report and said, you know it looks exactly the same as the last time we reported on it? You think that's going to happen in our world? Or just maybe, just maybe, will the report look like, can I bring a special guest in? I believe some of you know him. His name is Dilbert. Dilbert, can you give us the highlight summary of the new IPCC report on the climate? We're all going to die. We're gonna die, die in a giant fireball. We're all dead. See? Yeah, that's pretty much what the report said. We're all dead.

Well Michael Shellenberger has a different opinion on that in terms of the risk. He agrees of course that humans are a factor in climate change and he agrees that things are getting warmer and he agrees that there will be weather disruptions maybe as much as predicted. But here's what's different. Do you know how many people have died from the heat in let's say the last hundred years? Well I don't know the number but I know the number used to be really big and now it's really, really small because we have air conditioning. As soon as you invent air conditioning it can get pretty warm outside. People live in the desert. It's really warm out there but they use air conditioning. Seems to be enough.

Likewise for almost everything that you know would be a real world problem from climate change. We're really good at mitigating things. We're good at predicting. We're good at moving things. We're good at communicating, transporting, planning, managing. We're good at stuff now, not like the old days. So indeed while the planet might indeed get way, way worse and certainly we should be addressing it, it's very unlikely it's going to make any difference that you notice.

But you need to scare people or they'll all be dead. You only have two choices. If you don't scare people they won't do much about it and presumably we just slide into some bad situation where maybe we are all doomed. But if you scare the pants off of enough people they'll do something about it and then you'll probably be fine. So I'm very much in favor of scaring other people but I'm not sure how scared you need to be. You and I don't need to be that scared but the scientists, let's scare the scientists because they'll work harder, try to do something about it.

So here's my question. What happens to mass suicides and depression when your IPCC report comes out and every news station reports that we're doomed to die in a fireball? Now I'm exaggerating a little bit but it sounds pretty bad, right? If you just read the report it sounds like our future is non-existent. So what does that do to depressions and suicides? Well I'll tell you what I felt like. I felt like taking my own life, like actually literally when I read the report. I was like, okay, well there's no point. There's no point in even trying. Might as well just go out and take your life. And it wasn't until I saw Michael Shellenberger's tweet thread that I retweeted, so you can find it in my Twitter feed as well, then I started thinking, oh okay, they're just doing this to me again. Again. Scaring me again. Making it look like life is not worth living. So thanks for that.

Apparently Pfizer is maybe a few weeks away from FDA approval for the vaccine. And remember I asked people if they'd be more likely to take it in a little Twitter poll, unscientific one, and a lot of people said yes, that if it was FDA approved they would take it. You know they have all the data already, right? Did you know that they have all the data for FDA approval and they're telling you that it's a few weeks away from approval? Nobody is telling you, nobody that it might not get approved, right? Zero people have told you, well we're not sure if it'll get approved because of the data. In fact the data very clearly says, apparently, or I'm assuming it would be reported if this were not the case, apparently the data says yeah it's good. It's good for approval. So it's probably just the paperwork and the lawyering and stuff that's going to take weeks.

But if you knew that it was FDA approved effectively even before it's officially approved, does that change your willingness to get it? FDA approved in all the important ways because the data looks good. All right. Well a lot of you were not holding off only for that reason but I do think this will make a pretty big dent in the number of people getting vaccinated, I would imagine.

This is more the school of unintended consequences. All right, the school of unintended consequences. Mask mandates appear to be leading toward school choice because a number of state school people are putting together plans to say if masks are required then students should be able to go take their funding and go to another place if they don't want to be in a masked situation. Now who saw that coming? Not me. If you had told me that masks will accelerate school choice I would have said, well I don't see how exactly, but looks like it's going to happen. Looks like that made a difference.

Well Biden's approval is down a little bit. So he was averaging in the low 50 percent approval for his first six months but now according to Quinnipiac he's down to 46 percent and then some is 43 percent, blah blah. So he's down in approval and it appears to be that the coronavirus performance is the reason. Now is Biden responsible for the Delta variant and where we are now? Not really. I mean I don't know that he could have done something much better. If Trump had been president what do you think we would be looking at right now? Better or worse? Probably about the same. Probably about the same.

But here's the weird thing. I do think Trump lost because of the virus. A lot of smart people say that and it feels right because the virus caused a lot of rule changes and it was the rule changes that allowed the kind of turnout we got. So really I'd say the virus determined who the president is. It's really the first president ever elected by a virus, well as far as I know. So not only did the virus elect Biden but now the virus is going to make sure that Biden or probably his successor doesn't get re-elected or doesn't get elected.

So do we have a system in which people get informed and then vote and choose politicians? Or do we have a system in which a virus determines who's the president? Because that's what's happening. The virus is deciding. It's not even us. And I would like to point out that the war against this virus is going about as well as the war on drugs and the war in Afghanistan. It's been a while since we won a war. Has anybody noticed that the United States in its warring is not doing so good lately? Yeah, maybe did a good job in Syria or something but we're not really so good at winning wars conclusively, are we? Yeah, there's no money in winning a war, somebody says. It's a problem. Yeah, calling everything a war is probably, somebody says Gulf War, you know the first Gulf War we won but did we if it just led to problems later? Did we?

All right, so let me go back to that message. All right, so Mark Dice did a video which you just have to see. I tweeted it and it's on YouTube, in which he stopped people and asked them to sign a petition to put unvaccinated people in jail. To put unvaccinated people in jail. How many people signed the petition without a second thought? Yeah, just what you thought. You don't even have to watch the video, do you? A lot of people signed that petition without a thought. They didn't do it without asking questions. They did it without showing any second thoughts. All they did was say, well it's good for me. Go to jail. It's good for me so why don't you go to jail? That's it. That's it.

So are you worried that we will slide into prison camps for the unvaccinated? Are you worried? I'm not worried about that really but it is true that you can get some portion of the public, around 25 percent if you know what I mean, to do just about anything without anything that looks like thought. I mean they actually look like automatons. Would you like to sign this petition to kill everybody in your family? Why not? I don't see why not. It is really scary.

Oh the video is blinking. I don't know if it's blinking on anybody else's screen. Yeah, female camps coming. Yeah, now you understand why people accepted Hitler. You can accept almost anything if it's gradual. And gradual doesn't have to be that gradual, right? It just starts as, well you know this group of people certainly is a problem. And then you can talk about that group of people in a bad way and get away with it. And next thing you know you're putting little restrictions on that kind of people. The next thing you know it's a Holocaust. You can slide into anything. You just get used to it after a while. Yeah, it's the boiling frog situation exactly. And dehumanization. Well that's about the scariest thing you'll ever see but in terms of entertainment it's really good. It's very entertaining.

So let's see what we got here. That is just about all the news there is. And I didn't want to be all gloomy today because it's been pointed out to me that I've been less than my optimistic self. By the way has anybody noticed that? Does anybody think I've been less than my optimistic self lately? Yeah. And oh interesting, there does seem to be a mixture of opinions about whether I've been less optimistic lately.

You know I think that the Trump administration was an optimism-based administration and it was easy to be swept up in that. I think I was. Now I still say the golden age is coming and I do think things are better than ever and will continue to be better than ever. And we look at the fact that airlines will become electric. I mean that's happening. So a lot of the things you're worried about for climate change, I'm not so sure that that makes a difference. I think that we will invent our way out of climate change and we will mitigate our way around it and we'll be fine. But I'm glad that all the scientists and engineers are worried that way a little. That way they'll do the work.

All right, the most depressing thing is the illegal immigration. Is it? Because if you don't really have a pl