plenty of time to pour my warm cup of coffee. No you don't. You don't always have time. You've got to be ready.

Well, we've got a great show today. Let's start off with Joe Manchin killing the Build Back Better bill. So Biden's Build Back Better bill got blown to bits. That's right. Biden's. And actually it's just shelved because Joe Manchin was a big no.

Now here's the thing. How do you view this? What is the way you interpret the situation? Well, Michael Shellenberger had an interesting take on it, which I agree with totally. That it was progressive dogmatism that killed it. Progressive dogmatism. Progressive dogmatism would be the opposite of what? That would be the opposite of science, economics, rational pragmatism, right? And I think that is accurate. And specifically it's accurate because a lot of it was clean energy related. And it was just the wrong analysis.

If the Build Back Better bill had included, let's say, expansions of nuclear and natural gas, do you think that maybe they could have gotten a Republican vote? Maybe not, because it would still be inflationary. But they'd be a lot closer, because at least they'd be compatible with science. You know, if you're not even compatible with science, and you're the party of science. Now remember when I say, hey, be compatible with science, your first thought is, Scott, they think they are. They think they're compatible with science. No they don't. No they don't. Because even the Democrats now understand that the only reason we are where we are is because we still have some nuclear. We'd better get some more soon. And that natural gas made a big difference in our CO2.

So anybody who actually looked at the data and looked at the science would not have put together a bill that looked this way. There would have been much more focus on the things that are scientifically and economically demonstrated, nuclear being chief among them.

So here's the story I see. I see that Joe Manchin took his party seriously. That was the problem. Joe Manchin took his party seriously. It's the party of science, right? And so he said, well, let's look at the science. The party of not being all crazy like the Republicans with all their conspiracy theories and whatever the Republicans are blamed for today. They're the party of being rational and empathetic. You want empathy and science. That would be the things that the Democrats would tell you that they're all about.

And so Joe Manchin apparently, calling their bluff, said all right, let's say those are our highest priorities: science and empathy. Using science to be the best we can for citizens. What would that look like? And it doesn't look like the Build Back Better bill.

And by the way, how do we avoid noticing that his last name is Manchin? I mean somehow that's important. I don't know. In our simulated world, somehow that should be a signal that he's a character in a play.

Anyway, Goldman Sachs lowered its growth GDP estimates and the stock market's taken a hit, I think last I knew. Because the market is interpreting this as bad. So in Goldman Sachs' take, they said, well, you know, there won't be all this money going into the economy. And then when they talked about inflation, this is the only context they talked about inflation. That because of inflation it would be harder for this Build Back Better bill to ever get passed in the future.

What's left out? There's something sort of big left out, right? The effect of inflation on the economy. This is Goldman Sachs. Did they forget inflation? No, they didn't forget it. They talked about it in the wrong context. The only context they talked about it was in a political context, whether it would be harder to pass a bill. I think you're supposed to include what that would do to the actual economy if your goal is to talk about the economy.

So here's Goldman Sachs obviously signaling that they're making a political decision and not any kind of economic decision. Because an economic decision would look like this: There would be a lot of stimulus added to the system, that's on the positive side. But on the negative side there would be extra inflation added to the system. And we've looked at these two factors and we've decided that one of them is bigger than the other and therefore we're in favor of it or against it. That's what an honest analysis would look like. Did they do that? No. They said there won't be as much growth, true. And that t