Latest / Yaron Brook Show / Slush Fund; Harvard Grades: Ebola; Woke Dead?; Water & Data Centers; Massie/MAGA | Yaron Brook Show

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Slush Fund; Harvard Grades: Ebola; Woke Dead?; Water & Data Centers; Massie/MAGA | Yaron Brook Show · Yaron Brook Show

0:02
Speaker 1: A lot of them under the metal pistoles of edom, last,
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Speaker 1: self interest, and an individual loss. This is the book show.
0:20
Speaker 1: Oh right, everybody, welcome to you. One book show on
0:22
Speaker 1: this Wednesday, May twentieth. I hope everybody is having a
0:31
Speaker 1: a great week as we chip away May twenty twenty six.
0:35
Speaker 1: The time just keeps getting buy faster and faster. All right,
0:42
Speaker 1: let's jump in. I mean, we're all still waiting to
0:46
Speaker 1: see what happens with you on so no you on
0:48
Speaker 1: topic today because no news, right, I mean, there's a
0:53
Speaker 1: million rumors online about what is about to happen or
0:57
Speaker 1: what has happened and so on, but no, no real news.
1:05
Speaker 1: And uh so we'll wait and see. As soon as
1:12
Speaker 1: that hits, I'm sure I'll be here to update you.
1:15
Speaker 1: But the slash fund Trump slash Fund continues to make
1:20
Speaker 1: news and continues to be I think important in the
1:26
Speaker 1: sense that, let me just see you one second here.
1:34
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, in a sense that we keep hearing more
1:40
Speaker 1: about how corrupt this really is. So I think I
1:43
Speaker 1: think we talked about this, but now it turns out
1:46
Speaker 1: that not only are they waiving any cases they have
1:51
Speaker 1: against the Trump and Trump family and Trump businesses, diaresses
1:56
Speaker 1: they're waving as part of this deal. It's part of
1:57
Speaker 1: giving Trump one point seven to seven six billion dollars
2:01
Speaker 1: to hand out. They're also weaving all his tax liabilities,
2:04
Speaker 1: and then they're saying they're never gonna investigate him. I
2:08
Speaker 1: don't know how that can stand up to scrutiny. I
2:10
Speaker 1: don't know how future administrations will view this. But supposedly
2:14
Speaker 1: he as part of this whole thing, he gets this
2:17
Speaker 1: deal where they'll never go after him for tax evasion.
2:20
Speaker 1: I mean, there's great incentive and it's pretty crazy, the
2:26
Speaker 1: whole thing. The level of corruption here is truly astounding.
2:32
Speaker 1: We'll talk about the corruption in a minute, but there
2:34
Speaker 1: was today in the Wall See Journal there is a
2:38
Speaker 1: story about two January sixth police officers assuing to stop
2:43
Speaker 1: Trump's anti weaponization fund. That's what they call the slush fund.
2:49
Speaker 1: So the last to the ledges that Trump's administration's one
2:53
Speaker 1: point eight billion dollar competition program is going to have
2:56
Speaker 1: fund any courage active political violence. So the challenge in
3:04
Speaker 1: the constitutional nality, constitutionality of the compensation fund to quote
3:10
Speaker 1: the thing that they're calling it, quote a slush fund
3:15
Speaker 1: to finance the insurrectionist and paramilitary paramilitary groups, uh that
3:21
Speaker 1: commit violence all in President Trump's name, of course. And
3:30
Speaker 1: uh so so this is the lawsuit. It's filed in
3:33
Speaker 1: federal quote in Washington d c uh And uh, you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: the the big question is going to be the big
3:41
Speaker 1: question is going to be do they have standing? That is,
3:47
Speaker 1: you know, to to follow theosity, you have to have standing.
3:49
Speaker 1: You have to be affected by the law in some
3:51
Speaker 1: way that is detrimental to you. And it's not clear
3:57
Speaker 1: who has standing in this case. We talked about this
4:00
Speaker 1: the other day. It's not clear who can sue, and
4:04
Speaker 1: the courts are pretty strict. Swim Court has been pretty
4:07
Speaker 1: strict about this issue of standing. Who should be allowed
4:10
Speaker 1: to sue, who shouldn't be allowed to sue. Now I'm
4:12
Speaker 1: not an expert on this, and as this progresses, we
4:15
Speaker 1: might need to get somebody in here who is a
4:18
Speaker 1: legal expert and ask them about who they think it
4:22
Speaker 1: does have standing, that these guys have standing? Is this
4:26
Speaker 1: This strikes me as reaching right first of all, because
4:30
Speaker 1: the fund yet hasn't dispersed any money to January sixth protesters.
4:35
Speaker 1: I mean maybe after it does so you could sue,
4:40
Speaker 1: But it's not clear that in advance, you could do that.
4:46
Speaker 1: So it's going to be interesting. It's going to be interesting.
4:53
Speaker 1: They also are arguing in the court case that the
4:55
Speaker 1: fund endangers their lives but galvanizing supporters encouraging those who
5:02
Speaker 1: committed acts of violence in January sixth to continue to
5:06
Speaker 1: do so. Again, that seems reaching to me. I mean,
5:11
Speaker 1: I don't doubt that there's a concern there, but it's
5:15
Speaker 1: pretty far, you know, pretty far. And again, does that
5:19
Speaker 1: give them standing to sue? They are They're saying that
5:28
Speaker 1: payments issued from the fund could quote directly finance the
5:32
Speaker 1: violent operation of rioters, paramilitaries and their supporters who threaten
5:37
Speaker 1: their lives could all right, Is that enough? I don't know.
5:46
Speaker 1: The lawsuit also alleges that the fund violates the fourteen
5:49
Speaker 1: Amendment prohibition on the use of federal money to quote
5:53
Speaker 1: pay any debt or obligation, and could in aid of
5:56
Speaker 1: insurrection or rebellion against the United States. Now I think that,
6:03
Speaker 1: you know, if you know, a judge could say you
6:06
Speaker 1: can't use the funds to pay the Genu six riot.
6:09
Speaker 1: Is if he accepts that the insurrectionists and whether the
6:14
Speaker 1: Supreme Court will accept that, I don't know. But again,
6:19
Speaker 1: whether they're the ones appropriate to file this in the
6:22
Speaker 1: name of the fourteenth Amendment, I don't know. Separately, the
6:27
Speaker 1: lawsuit contends that the Justice Apartment lacks legal authority to
6:31
Speaker 1: create the fund, and you know, we will see. We
6:40
Speaker 1: will see. The Attorney General has defended the fund in
6:45
Speaker 1: an appearance in front of a Senate panel, and we
6:50
Speaker 1: should expect him to appoint the five member commission who
6:55
Speaker 1: will decide who gets the money in the next few days.
6:59
Speaker 1: I guess. So, you know, we will see. A Blanche
7:06
Speaker 1: basically did not rule out anything right When asked about
7:13
Speaker 1: whether they would provide compensation, whether the panel could provide
7:18
Speaker 1: compensation to those January sixth rioters who assaulted police, he said,
7:25
Speaker 1: I will definitely encourage the commission to take everything into
7:28
Speaker 1: account when determining who should get compensation. Anyway, we will see,
7:37
Speaker 1: we will see where this goes. We will see what happens.
7:42
Speaker 1: I mean again, I think this is something that the
7:47
Speaker 1: President needs to be impeached on. I don't think this
7:49
Speaker 1: is something the courts are necessarily going to be able
7:52
Speaker 1: to solve. This is so corrupt and the idea that
7:57
Speaker 1: January sixth, even people didn't beat up at least are
8:01
Speaker 1: going to get compensated for what they went through the
8:04
Speaker 1: American legal system. Many of them were found guilty under
8:09
Speaker 1: the American legal system, not they won't kidnapped into another
8:13
Speaker 1: legal system, you know. They this is Jewis and judges
8:21
Speaker 1: like everybody else, and they somehow get to claim that
8:27
Speaker 1: they being what weaponized, I mean, what messages this send
8:37
Speaker 1: to people who are interested in committing political violence. The
8:42
Speaker 1: future administrations will pardon them if they do, and maybe
8:47
Speaker 1: even compensate them, and that this is completely partisan. Democrats will,
8:51
Speaker 1: you know, pardon the guy who killed the CEO of
8:54
Speaker 1: United Health and maybe even compensate him, and maybe the
8:58
Speaker 1: killer of Charlie Cooke, and Republicans will do it, you know,
9:01
Speaker 1: for the people they like. I mean, it really is sick.
9:05
Speaker 1: I really think that at this point the pardon powder
9:11
Speaker 1: power of the president should be repealed. We should have
9:14
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment around that. We should really think about
9:20
Speaker 1: about how to rein in this kind of corruption that
9:25
Speaker 1: we're seeing from Trump. I don't think anybody ever imagined
9:27
Speaker 1: the level. I mean, I'm not even talking about the
9:29
Speaker 1: inside of trading. You know, they're being revelations about the
9:34
Speaker 1: number of trades that Trump has done just straight in
9:37
Speaker 1: the stock pocket, buying and selling stock based on clear
9:41
Speaker 1: inside information about what he was going to do to
9:45
Speaker 1: either improve the fate of a company or not. I'm
9:48
Speaker 1: not even talking about that. This kind of I don't know,
9:52
Speaker 1: support for political violence and is truly astounding. And the
9:58
Speaker 1: question is going to be, Oh, one day Trump will
10:01
Speaker 1: be out of there. Hope sooner rather than later, But
10:04
Speaker 1: one day he'll be out of there. What a future
10:09
Speaker 1: politicians learned from this? Do we after Trump revert to normal?
10:15
Speaker 1: Do we go backwards? Or is this now opening up
10:21
Speaker 1: opening us up to more and more and more corruption,
10:27
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worst politicians? How do we how
10:29
Speaker 1: do we avoid becoming Russia where basically put In does
10:34
Speaker 1: whatever he wants and controls the pro strings in whatever
10:38
Speaker 1: way he wants. We'll talk about elections at the end
10:43
Speaker 1: of the show, but at the end of the news segment.
10:46
Speaker 1: But uh, how do you what about the next family?
10:53
Speaker 1: What about the next president, whether Democrat or Republican. And
11:00
Speaker 1: then once you get into corruption at the level of
11:05
Speaker 1: vote rigging, re vote manipulating, which I think we're on
11:13
Speaker 1: the precipice of, then what then one party rule and
11:21
Speaker 1: you know, whoever is willing to be more corrupt as
11:23
Speaker 1: the one who's going to get into power and they're
11:25
Speaker 1: going to dominate, They're going to become rich, and they're
11:27
Speaker 1: gonna Yeah, I'm going to make a prediction that I
11:35
Speaker 1: think that whether in this coming election twenty twenty eight
11:38
Speaker 1: or twenty thirty two, Don Junior is going to run
11:44
Speaker 1: thirty two thirty six. So next ten years, Don Junior
11:47
Speaker 1: will run for president. I think this is too good
11:49
Speaker 1: of a gig for the Trump family that they could
11:52
Speaker 1: get richer than Putin, who is rumored to be the
11:55
Speaker 1: richest man in the world. They could get richer than Bezos,
11:58
Speaker 1: and richer than all these guys given us as going.
12:02
Speaker 1: There was some stat I saw about how much money
12:05
Speaker 1: has flowed into Don Junior's private equity fund since Trump
12:10
Speaker 1: became president, and it's gone up like two hundred and
12:12
Speaker 1: sixty five percent anyway, and not good, not good. And
12:34
Speaker 1: again it much will depend on what follows Trump. What
12:38
Speaker 1: are the lessons learned? And I fear that the lessons
12:41
Speaker 1: learned are that you can get away with it. I mean,
12:45
Speaker 1: think about it, all his prosecutions, all the audits of
12:49
Speaker 1: the irs, all of that is going away as well,
12:53
Speaker 1: all because a contractor working for the IRS when he
12:57
Speaker 1: was president leaked his tax return. And now we're getting
13:03
Speaker 1: this fund which he can do with as he wants,
13:07
Speaker 1: and we're getting IRS. I mean, there's never been anything
13:10
Speaker 1: close to this, anything like it in American history. Ever.
13:18
Speaker 1: You can come up with examples of compensating people for
13:21
Speaker 1: all kinds of stuff, nothing like this, nothing even close
13:24
Speaker 1: to this. We're particularly given the benefit Trump gets himself.
13:28
Speaker 1: Give me a minute, all right, Harvard University, Harvard University,
13:48
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny. So one of the challenges IVY League schools,
13:52
Speaker 1: in particular to Harvard, has been what's got great inflation?
13:58
Speaker 1: And I remember this going back to when I taught
14:00
Speaker 1: at Santa Clara University. We were much tougher graders than Stanford.
14:09
Speaker 1: In Stanford, a significant number of people got a's, and
14:14
Speaker 1: I was pretty stingy with the number of a's I
14:16
Speaker 1: would give up. And I think generally like second rate
14:21
Speaker 1: third rade universities are far more tough on grading than
14:24
Speaker 1: the IVY leagues. Now this is bizarre. You could say, well,
14:32
Speaker 1: they're just unbelievably brilliant at the IVY leagues. Every single
14:37
Speaker 1: one of those students is unbelievably smart, and therefore, by
14:42
Speaker 1: the very fact that they are smart, they deserve an A.
14:47
Speaker 1: Or you could say, it's an IVY League university, the
14:53
Speaker 1: courses should be hard, should be really really tough. So
14:58
Speaker 1: that's even smart kids it's at an IVY League are
15:02
Speaker 1: going to once in a while get a BOC because
15:05
Speaker 1: to really get an A in a class, you have
15:08
Speaker 1: to be exceptionally smart, not just average smart for IVY League,
15:12
Speaker 1: but exceptionally smart within the IVY League, because the whole
15:20
Speaker 1: reputation is not just based on who they admit, but
15:24
Speaker 1: on the quality and rigor and high standards demanded by
15:31
Speaker 1: the university in the classroom. But is that, you know,
15:40
Speaker 1: is there any basis for that? Well, the fact is
15:44
Speaker 1: that Harvard issues Harvard grading, they issue about over you know,
15:51
Speaker 1: they've been years where they've issued significantly over sixty percent
15:56
Speaker 1: of all grades of being a's last few years, over
16:01
Speaker 1: the last five years, they have Harvard around sixty percent.
16:07
Speaker 1: In the past, going back to two thousand and six,
16:09
Speaker 1: they were closer to twenty percent. I mean, it could
16:13
Speaker 1: be that since two thousand and six to today, the
16:17
Speaker 1: students at Harvard have just gotten much much much smarter
16:27
Speaker 1: and therefore deserve higher grades and more knowledgeable and harder
16:31
Speaker 1: working and more invested. Or it could be professors have
16:37
Speaker 1: gotten lazier, more accommodating of students, more caving under pressure,
16:43
Speaker 1: more wanting to please. Sixty percent a's up from twenty
16:49
Speaker 1: five percent twenty years ago, makes no sense, no sense anyway,
16:59
Speaker 1: Harvard has found a solution. The solution is not backbone
17:03
Speaker 1: for the professors. No, no, no, that would require personal
17:05
Speaker 1: responsibility and actual backbone. Now, the solution is a mandate
17:14
Speaker 1: dictated from above that caps the number of a's in
17:19
Speaker 1: a course. So Havior today announced that in an undergraduate
17:27
Speaker 1: classes only twenty percent of the grades can be a's.
17:34
Speaker 1: Now in particularly small classes, I'm not sure what that means,
17:37
Speaker 1: but in particularly small classes where they might need more
17:41
Speaker 1: variability or something, they can add four more above the
17:45
Speaker 1: twenty percent, but generally twenty percent, as should be the standard.
17:54
Speaker 1: And this gives the professors out. They can start giving students.
17:58
Speaker 1: They can start giving students No. Eight grades and say
18:03
Speaker 1: I had no choice. The administration forced me. I have
18:06
Speaker 1: no balls, I have no courage. I can't stand up
18:10
Speaker 1: to you students. But the administration they forced me. I
18:13
Speaker 1: have no choice. I'll fire me for gu ouens. Now.
18:17
Speaker 1: One of the things that I found particularly funny here
18:23
Speaker 1: is that the cap does not apply to a minus
18:31
Speaker 1: that is twenty percent, as the other eighty percent could
18:34
Speaker 1: be a minus. Duh, right, Michael Mike dial says, I've
18:46
Speaker 1: gotten an A in every college course I've taken as
18:49
Speaker 1: an adult, I guess I get a lot smarter when
18:52
Speaker 1: when than when I was a teen. I never for
18:55
Speaker 1: me to get an A was like WHOA. I mean,
18:58
Speaker 1: it was a. It was a. It was I mean,
19:01
Speaker 1: at how University in Israel, I had a class that
19:05
Speaker 1: I took, sixty percent of the students failed failed. Not
19:13
Speaker 1: a single student got an A. I passed the class.
19:18
Speaker 1: I had a sixty seven. I don't know what you
19:22
Speaker 1: kind of sixty seven A C A D plus and
19:27
Speaker 1: I think it was like the third highest grade in
19:29
Speaker 1: the class. And they didn't they didn't rank on a cove.
19:33
Speaker 1: So if you got a sixty seven, you got a
19:34
Speaker 1: sixty seven that went into a transcript as a sixty seven.
19:40
Speaker 1: I mean some classes I got a's, but A was
19:43
Speaker 1: like a treat A was like, yeah, I really know
19:46
Speaker 1: this stuff, I really really know this stuff like sixty
19:53
Speaker 1: seven is I know, more than half of it to fail.
20:01
Speaker 1: Students got less than fifty and sixty percent of the
20:04
Speaker 1: class got less than fifty. It's just it's just stune.
20:11
Speaker 1: And look, and I wasn't at some dumbass university. This
20:15
Speaker 1: was the Israel Institute of Technology, one of the best
20:19
Speaker 1: technological schools in the world. So now the professors can
20:27
Speaker 1: give twenty percent a's but unlimited A minuses. And everybody
20:33
Speaker 1: predicted on this committee that made this recommendation that yeah,
20:40
Speaker 1: most of the a's will now turn into A minuses,
20:43
Speaker 1: and now there'll be a huge, great inflation among A minuses.
20:46
Speaker 1: God forbid, your child gets a B at Harvard, like
20:49
Speaker 1: a be at Harvard should be like, yeah, that's so cool.
20:52
Speaker 1: I got a B at Harvard, like a B a
20:56
Speaker 1: Texas State. Eh, but a be at Harvard with all
21:01
Speaker 1: these smart kids around, that should be good. Yeah. I
21:09
Speaker 1: mean it really is insane, right, it really is insane.
21:16
Speaker 1: Faculty voted on this today, oh yesterday, around seventy percent
21:21
Speaker 1: a faculty voted in favor of the A grade cap.
21:26
Speaker 1: Seventy percent of the professors were like, yeah, this gets
21:30
Speaker 1: me off. I don't have to be responsible anymore. I
21:33
Speaker 1: can just the administrators. They forced me, don't come to me,
21:37
Speaker 1: you complaining students. Now, students oppose this. They're very upset.
21:46
Speaker 1: I mean, it'll reduce the GPA, and these are spoiled
21:51
Speaker 1: kids who are used to having four plus GPAs. I
21:56
Speaker 1: never understood how you can get more than four. But anyway, Yeah,
22:00
Speaker 1: these students, you know, expect to be told that they're
22:05
Speaker 1: perfect all the time. Anyway, the student opposed the cap.
22:12
Speaker 1: They argued that it would discourage academic exploration and increased stress.
22:19
Speaker 1: So they're wide about discouraging academic exploits. You know what
22:23
Speaker 1: I call academic exploration among students on a test, I
22:28
Speaker 1: call that not knowing the material, getting the answer wrong,
22:35
Speaker 1: and expecting an A in spite of getting the answer wrong. Yeah,
22:39
Speaker 1: two plus two, I'm exploring the possibility that it equals eight, exploring,
22:46
Speaker 1: and I should get a grade. I should get an
22:47
Speaker 1: A for the exploration. And it's going to increase stress. Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: life stressful. You know, you should study hard. That part
23:01
Speaker 1: of what school is. It's about studying and working hard
23:06
Speaker 1: and figuring out what you know and what you don't know.
23:09
Speaker 1: And yeah, stressing about the stuff you don't know, and
23:13
Speaker 1: that causes you to study heart. One student said, you're
23:19
Speaker 1: punishing students for their peers performance. Getting a bee is
23:23
Speaker 1: not punishment. Getting a bee is just a objective reflection
23:27
Speaker 1: of what you know. And if you know less than
23:30
Speaker 1: your peers, you should be rewarded less. But this is
23:34
Speaker 1: the insanity of the egalitarian mindset. I shouldn't be told
23:41
Speaker 1: I'm worse than my peers. I shouldn't be told I
23:46
Speaker 1: should be told constantly and reinforced at him just as
23:48
Speaker 1: good as everybody else, he says. The student says, and
23:55
Speaker 1: you aren't raising rigor, you're just forcing relative grading. Yeah,
23:59
Speaker 1: you're just forcing objectivity and grading. You're forcing justice. You're
24:04
Speaker 1: forcing grading based on what you actually know. What to
24:11
Speaker 1: actually communicate. Now, because students are very concerned about this,
24:21
Speaker 1: the administration has decided to delay implementing this. I mean,
24:25
Speaker 1: the cowardice of these people buggles the mind. A lot
24:31
Speaker 1: of stuff in the world right now just boggles my mind.
24:36
Speaker 1: How of it is delaying implementing this until the fall
24:38
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty seven, so that students can breathe, they
24:42
Speaker 1: can let it sink in, they can buy Sam Harris's
24:45
Speaker 1: meditation app they can, you know, maybe sign up for
24:50
Speaker 1: some yoga classes, and they can mentally prepare themselves for
24:54
Speaker 1: the fact that sometimes some of them in some classes
24:59
Speaker 1: might get a A minus instead of any Well says well,
25:10
Speaker 1: but but but what if twenty percent actually do outstanding
25:13
Speaker 1: work more than twenty percent do actually outstanding work, then
25:17
Speaker 1: it's not outstanding anymore. Like it's just give me a break.
25:21
Speaker 1: In any population, in any group, as smart as they are,
25:26
Speaker 1: if you set the standards high enough, then you're not
25:32
Speaker 1: gonna get more than twenty percent being exceptional. We're not
25:39
Speaker 1: that equal. We're just not. Now. I agree that there
25:48
Speaker 1: shouldn't be a CAP. I'm against a CAP. I believe
25:54
Speaker 1: the faculty should go a pair of a pair of
25:58
Speaker 1: balls and actually stand up to students and actually grade
26:03
Speaker 1: based on ability. And if there are zero a's, then
26:08
Speaker 1: they should get zero a's. What this will do is
26:11
Speaker 1: every class will get twenty percent as every single class.
26:13
Speaker 1: I guarantee it. And if the whole classes of a A,
26:19
Speaker 1: the whole class should get an A. But allow me
26:21
Speaker 1: to be skeptical about that. So, yes, you shouldn't have
26:27
Speaker 1: an A CAP. You should have professors grading based on merit. Now.
26:37
Speaker 1: Harvard is hoping other schools follow through, because otherwise, if
26:42
Speaker 1: everybody gets a's in Yale and nobody gets a's in
26:44
Speaker 1: Harvard only twenty percent, then maybe people will be it'll
26:48
Speaker 1: give a competitive advantage to Yale. Yale does not have
26:57
Speaker 1: implemented CAP, although Yale reports about which was released in April.
27:02
Speaker 1: We talked about this has has UH has found grades
27:08
Speaker 1: no longer communicate what students have learned. Grades no longer
27:15
Speaker 1: communicate what students have learned, which reminds me that I
27:18
Speaker 1: just finished. I just finished grading the tests and giving
27:25
Speaker 1: final grades to my students at the University of Texas
27:29
Speaker 1: in the University of Austin in Texas, and I end
27:33
Speaker 1: up giving more a's than I ten students. Four got a's,
27:38
Speaker 1: which is more than I expected. I thought I'd only
27:41
Speaker 1: be giving three a's, and we got a bunch of
27:46
Speaker 1: bees and B minuses. Actually only one got an A
27:51
Speaker 1: if you count eight minuses. Three got A minus. We
27:54
Speaker 1: got some B plus's, b's B minus, and I think
27:58
Speaker 1: one C. So not a normal distribution. But it's only
28:03
Speaker 1: ten students. It's how to force a normal distribution into that.
28:06
Speaker 1: But pretty good, pretty good, great inflation obviously because I
28:11
Speaker 1: had three as three as. Anyway, the year Committee recommended
28:19
Speaker 1: grades like we mean it. We should grade like we
28:23
Speaker 1: mean it. Yeah, you should. You should grade like you
28:25
Speaker 1: mean it. Grade should reflect the knowledge the student has
28:31
Speaker 1: of the material. All right, reminded to ask questions. Let's
28:43
Speaker 1: let's talk about ebola. There is any bola upbreak in Africa.
28:52
Speaker 1: This is something that happens, you know, sadly, tragically, fairly often.
28:58
Speaker 1: It's the seventeenth outbreak since nineteen seventy six, so in
29:04
Speaker 1: fifty years it's the seventeenth, so we can so it
29:16
Speaker 1: happens right about every three years. You get any bola outbreak.
29:23
Speaker 1: Some of them are you know, worse than others in
29:27
Speaker 1: a sense of the number of people dying and the
29:28
Speaker 1: number of people getting infected in the range you know,
29:33
Speaker 1: the scope of who gets hit. So far, we've got
29:38
Speaker 1: six hundred suspected cases, one hundred and thirty nine deaths,
29:42
Speaker 1: but the doctors on the ground believe that it's much
29:48
Speaker 1: larger than that. Sadly, they found people testing positively bola
29:55
Speaker 1: in a wide geographic area, which suggests that the virus
29:59
Speaker 1: is already spread, including uh In in cities for example,
30:05
Speaker 1: Uganda's capital has two cases of eubola, and once it
30:08
Speaker 1: gets the cities, it's really bad. Ebola typically breaks out
30:14
Speaker 1: in rural areas. It doesn't it's it's hard to transmit,
30:20
Speaker 1: so so it usually affects just the rural areas. Mortality
30:26
Speaker 1: is not that high, number of effected is not that high,
30:29
Speaker 1: and then it'll die off. But once it gets into
30:33
Speaker 1: a city where you have a much greater population density,
30:37
Speaker 1: of course, transmission can be much more significant. The thing
30:42
Speaker 1: about ebola is it doesn't get transmitted by the air.
30:46
Speaker 1: The virus is transmitted only through bodily fluids, so contact
30:52
Speaker 1: with with blood, with with fisis urine uh saliva. That
31:00
Speaker 1: is the way it gets transmitted. So it's not you know,
31:05
Speaker 1: every bola patient typically transmits it to two other people.
31:09
Speaker 1: Compare that to measles, where typical measle patient infects eighteen
31:15
Speaker 1: other people. COVID nineteen was six other people, Ebola two. Right,
31:25
Speaker 1: so so much easier to control. If you can identify
31:29
Speaker 1: carriers and isolate them quickly, then you can manage you
31:35
Speaker 1: can manage the outbreak pretty well. Here the challenges, and
31:39
Speaker 1: it's often the case with ebola, is that the area
31:42
Speaker 1: in which the ebola is being identified is typically a
31:48
Speaker 1: war zone. It's typically in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,
31:54
Speaker 1: and you know it's in East or West Africa, but
31:57
Speaker 1: the Democratic Republic of the Congo is massive and a
32:01
Speaker 1: constant civil war, gang's violence, very difficult to go in
32:07
Speaker 1: there isolate people figure out who's got it. It's it's
32:13
Speaker 1: it's a it's a pretty dangerous job that the doctor's
32:16
Speaker 1: engaged in, and of course it's hard to get medical
32:24
Speaker 1: treatment to people. Now. The particular, the particular type of
32:28
Speaker 1: evola that we're talking about here is one that does
32:31
Speaker 1: not have a vaccine and really does not have any
32:35
Speaker 1: treatment other than just to deal with the symptoms and
32:38
Speaker 1: make sure people stay hydrated. It's not as big of
32:44
Speaker 1: a killer as some other strains of this virus, but
32:49
Speaker 1: it still kills or is it about fifty percent of
32:52
Speaker 1: the people who get a fifty to seventy percent, But
32:56
Speaker 1: you can get fifty or seventy percent in Africa where
33:00
Speaker 1: treatment is so so people who actually get shipped to
33:04
Speaker 1: the United States and get treated here, their mortality rate
33:09
Speaker 1: is more like twenty percent. So the quality of the
33:11
Speaker 1: treatment makes a big difference. Other types of strains like
33:17
Speaker 1: zion strain has a ninety percent fatality rate if untreated.
33:22
Speaker 1: But there they have treatments. There is, for example, a
33:27
Speaker 1: a a vaccine. All right, what else did I want
33:32
Speaker 1: to say? As said, not very contagious. So really, if
33:38
Speaker 1: you stay out of Central Africa, which I generally recommend,
33:43
Speaker 1: if you stay out of Central Africa, your chances are
33:46
Speaker 1: of getting this disease almost zero. The even people in Africa,
33:58
Speaker 1: if they just are aware of how the disease is
34:00
Speaker 1: transmitted and just stay away from bodily fluids people who
34:06
Speaker 1: might have it, then you're not going to You're not
34:09
Speaker 1: going to get it. So there's always a little bit
34:13
Speaker 1: of a panic around Ebola because it's so deadly. I mean,
34:17
Speaker 1: imagine Ebola with transmission like COVID or Ebola with transmission
34:25
Speaker 1: like I don't know, one of the childhood diseases like measles,
34:29
Speaker 1: although I don't think we've ever seen a virus quite
34:31
Speaker 1: you know that that kind of a virus, but you know,
34:36
Speaker 1: then you're talking about a real catastrophe. But for most Americans, uh,
34:42
Speaker 1: there really isn't anything to worry about unless you're traveling
34:46
Speaker 1: to that that we region region, and they still expect
34:56
Speaker 1: a lot of people to die from this. They expect
34:58
Speaker 1: this particular outbreak to last a while, primarily because of
35:06
Speaker 1: the difficulty in reaching cases and screening people, and so
35:12
Speaker 1: you'll hear a lot about it. But again, as long
35:14
Speaker 1: as you're not in Africa right now, particularly in Central
35:17
Speaker 1: Africa right now, you are, you know, you'll probably find
35:22
Speaker 1: if this gets to be a big issue, if there's
35:26
Speaker 1: some any kind of suspicion about risk and so on,
35:31
Speaker 1: will definitely bring We'll briefly bring adult doctor Adul John
35:38
Speaker 1: to talk about it and give us more information about it.
35:45
Speaker 1: But yeah, given it does not transmit through the air,
35:50
Speaker 1: and patients only really spread the virus when they're symptomatic.
35:56
Speaker 1: As a consequence of that, the risk of this blowing
35:59
Speaker 1: up and risk of this coming getting outside of Europe,
36:03
Speaker 1: outside of Africa are very very small, but could last months.
36:16
Speaker 1: All right. There's an interesting editorial today in the Wall
36:22
Speaker 1: Street Journal that I thought was worth commenting on. We've
36:24
Speaker 1: talked a lot about over the years about woke, peak woke,
36:28
Speaker 1: how big woke is, and a bunch of a lot
36:32
Speaker 1: of the consensus seems to be out there that with
36:35
Speaker 1: the Trump administration's attack on de I and on E
36:39
Speaker 1: s G. And you know the attack on the universities
36:44
Speaker 1: and all of that that maybe Woke has you know,
36:49
Speaker 1: peaked a few years ago and his significant decline and
36:52
Speaker 1: is going away. Remember a lot of companies are doing
36:55
Speaker 1: away with their DEI departments and processes and all of that.
37:01
Speaker 1: The certainly the transgender movement seems to be in decline
37:07
Speaker 1: in terms of influence and everything else. So I think
37:13
Speaker 1: it's important to ask the question, is it indeed in decline? Maybe?
37:20
Speaker 1: But is it gone? No? And maybe has it just
37:25
Speaker 1: morphed into something a little different. So for example, we
37:32
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that at commandcement addresses that mentioned AI,
37:40
Speaker 1: people were booed, but it's also true that people are
37:44
Speaker 1: booed for being, if you will, anti woke. A good
37:49
Speaker 1: example of this is that NYU New York University. He
37:58
Speaker 1: is a professor at New York Universe, sorry, a professor
38:02
Speaker 1: at y yok University. Jonathan Hyde, well known social psychologist,
38:07
Speaker 1: delivered the school's commandment address, and he was blued booed repeatedly,
38:16
Speaker 1: and several students walked out. I mean, of course, Height
38:22
Speaker 1: is the one who called students who called the ny
38:23
Speaker 1: U to cancel speech, called him out. He wrote a
38:30
Speaker 1: book called The Anxious Generation, and he, you know, attacked
38:40
Speaker 1: ideas like the anti racism, attack, the social justice, the diverse,
38:43
Speaker 1: the dei. So he was he while he is a
38:48
Speaker 1: left of senna, he called out the crazy left, He
38:52
Speaker 1: called out woke, woke, and the consequence of that is
38:55
Speaker 1: that people walked out, people booed. And it's not the
39:02
Speaker 1: only place across the country you're seeing the left still
39:08
Speaker 1: active and strong among young people, primarily among young people. Well,
39:16
Speaker 1: maybe some of the language has changed, and maybe they're
39:19
Speaker 1: less visible on the issues that we associated in the past
39:23
Speaker 1: with woke. It's important to note that nothing fundamentally has
39:29
Speaker 1: changed in what they are learning in school. The woke ideology,
39:36
Speaker 1: the intersectionality that dividing all of humanity into oppressors and oppressed,
39:45
Speaker 1: the rabid egalitarianism, and the identity politics did not spring
39:55
Speaker 1: out of nowhere. They didn't just appear, and they shouldn't
40:01
Speaker 1: have been a surprise. They were a direct consequence of
40:06
Speaker 1: what these students are studying in school. They are the
40:10
Speaker 1: direct application of what professors are teaching at our universities
40:18
Speaker 1: and what the professors are teaching at our universities has
40:21
Speaker 1: not changed, and then it has not changed. It would
40:25
Speaker 1: be surprising if the students' beliefs changed dramatically. They are
40:32
Speaker 1: heavily influenced by what they're being taught, so a lot
40:41
Speaker 1: of the stuff that kind of peaked under Biden is
40:45
Speaker 1: still there and strongly. So it might now have morphed
40:52
Speaker 1: into more of the you know, anti Israel advocacy. They
40:58
Speaker 1: might be more quiet about certain issues, and universities might
41:05
Speaker 1: be scaling back some of their DILGBTQ plus whatever pride stuff,
41:14
Speaker 1: but nothing fundamentally, it's really really important. It's changed the issues.
41:20
Speaker 1: The egalitarianism, fundamentalist gaitarianisms be taught at our universities. That
41:26
Speaker 1: is still there and it will continue to be applied
41:30
Speaker 1: to new issues, and young people will continue to have
41:33
Speaker 1: distorted and perverted view of the world. Maybe we won't
41:37
Speaker 1: call it woke, maybe we'll call it something else. But
41:42
Speaker 1: when you see the political views of young people as
41:48
Speaker 1: manifest in the election of Mamdani and of democratic activists
41:54
Speaker 1: all across the country, it's spooky. They've gone from campus
42:03
Speaker 1: demonstrations and crazy stuff in the classroom to political activism
42:10
Speaker 1: and actually getting people elected in positions of power Withynney
42:20
Speaker 1: crazy ideas. D I has not gone away, you know,
42:28
Speaker 1: businesses and corporations. Suddenly the universities are just changing the name,
42:32
Speaker 1: changing the way they apply it, taking away the DI
42:36
Speaker 1: label and slapping a different label and the same practices.
42:40
Speaker 1: And yes, this quote has bought them from racial quotas
42:44
Speaker 1: in a sense, they're using other standards. But you know,
42:52
Speaker 1: the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party, plus you know,
42:58
Speaker 1: the the work elements of it, are only gaining in power,
43:05
Speaker 1: only gaining in power. We have uh a, you know,
43:10
Speaker 1: unbelievable crazy left wing candidates, I mean in californ from
43:14
Speaker 1: from California to Michigan to Maine, I mean Maine. We've
43:18
Speaker 1: got a Democratic candidate who had a swastika on just
43:22
Speaker 1: horrific stuff he has said. And but that's where the
43:26
Speaker 1: Democratic Party is right now. On the other hand, we
43:30
Speaker 1: have a Texas sex Texas sex therapist and housing activist
43:37
Speaker 1: who said she turned an ice detention facility into a
43:40
Speaker 1: prison from American Zionists. So the whacko's are out. Maybe
43:52
Speaker 1: they're off the campus, but they come from the campus
43:56
Speaker 1: and they get their supports on the campuses. And look
44:03
Speaker 1: this is affecting the right as well. The fact is
44:07
Speaker 1: that young people left and right are just more wacky,
44:12
Speaker 1: just crazier, less rational, more emotionalist, and that is a
44:18
Speaker 1: consequence of what they're studying in school and what they've
44:21
Speaker 1: been studying in school since kindergarten. We've elevated emotions above reason.
44:28
Speaker 1: We don't teach kids the importance of thinking, and then
44:31
Speaker 1: we don't grade it. We teach them that what's important
44:37
Speaker 1: is how they feel, how they emote, and what we
44:42
Speaker 1: get are craziest emotional emotions, spewing crazies on both the
44:48
Speaker 1: left and the right. And while coming out of the
44:53
Speaker 1: universities it's mostly it's mostly left, but you know, if
45:00
Speaker 1: you're male, it's probably mostly right. So don't believe the
45:10
Speaker 1: hype about the end of woke. This is a fight.
45:15
Speaker 1: Nothing will change as long as we don't change what's
45:20
Speaker 1: being taught. And notice that Harvard, while capping the number
45:24
Speaker 1: of a's, it's not changing what it's being taught. Maybe
45:32
Speaker 1: it suggests Alcado their students a little less, but it's
45:35
Speaker 1: not changing what they're taught. The postcolonial intersectional garbage that
45:44
Speaker 1: they begurgitate, and that's the origin of the craziness on
45:51
Speaker 1: the left, and ultimately it's the source of the craziness
45:57
Speaker 1: on the right. All right, there's a big a lot
46:04
Speaker 1: of people talking about as part of the AI, the
46:07
Speaker 1: attacks on AI. One of the big issues that has
46:10
Speaker 1: emerged is the issue of water. AI centers use water.
46:19
Speaker 1: All data centers Basically they use water in two ways.
46:24
Speaker 1: They use water directly for cooling, especially what's called evaporative cooling,
46:31
Speaker 1: and they use water indirectly through the electricity that they use.
46:37
Speaker 1: Power generation itself consumes water, so AI consumes water. In
46:46
Speaker 1: the United States, data centers directly consume about seventeen point
46:49
Speaker 1: four billion gallons of water. That's of twenty twenty three,
46:54
Speaker 1: and that number is going to ramp up. I mean,
46:56
Speaker 1: it's gonna be more than double. It's projected to be
46:58
Speaker 1: between thirty eight andventy three billion by twenty twenty eight.
47:02
Speaker 1: That's that's soon in five years, more than double. So
47:07
Speaker 1: thirty eight to seventy three billion. So right, So this
47:19
Speaker 1: is a lot of water. Now is it a lot
47:23
Speaker 1: of water? Is it? Well? I mean, if you're in
47:29
Speaker 1: Virginia or Michigan, I don't know, probably even Louisiana, probably not.
47:40
Speaker 1: I mean those are places that have lots of water,
47:44
Speaker 1: and you know, thirty eight to seventy three billion gallons
47:48
Speaker 1: is not that much. Now, it's true that if you're
47:51
Speaker 1: in Arizona, Utah, Texas. Yeah, these are places where what
47:59
Speaker 1: is gas It could be a challenge. You've got a
48:05
Speaker 1: new claimant to an equifer, that equifer that the city
48:09
Speaker 1: or the town is using or that is used for agriculture,
48:13
Speaker 1: and now you're putting strains on limited supply of water.
48:16
Speaker 1: And suddenly this should be a big consideration in terms
48:22
Speaker 1: of where you put your data center. But most of
48:30
Speaker 1: it is just unbelievable exaggerations. Data center are now worse
48:37
Speaker 1: than other industrial uses. And some on the modern cooling
48:42
Speaker 1: designs that are going to be implemented in the new
48:44
Speaker 1: data centers actually dramatically reduced the amount of water being used.
48:50
Speaker 1: They create closed loop zero water for cooling systems. So
48:59
Speaker 1: you know, people are using this as you know, one
49:03
Speaker 1: of the anti AI excuses to go after this new
49:06
Speaker 1: technology and to go after progress. This is the luodites
49:10
Speaker 1: making stuff up. I mean, here's the reality. Do you
49:16
Speaker 1: know how much water California spends are uses, how much
49:25
Speaker 1: California's uses in its almond industry. You know, California is
49:32
Speaker 1: a massive grower of almonds. Now, I don't know how
49:35
Speaker 1: much you know about almonds, but almonds consume huge quantities
49:41
Speaker 1: of water, huge and California, a state that regularly goes
49:48
Speaker 1: through droughts, is the biggest grow of almonds in the
49:54
Speaker 1: United States. It uses California almond grows use about one
50:02
Speaker 1: point six trillion gallons per year. So that's one thousand,
50:09
Speaker 1: six hundred billion gallons as compared to the high end
50:14
Speaker 1: projections of something like was a ninety billion, No, seventy
50:19
Speaker 1: three billion, seventy three billion. This is one thousand, six
50:28
Speaker 1: hundred billion. It's orders a magnitude more. Of course, if
50:36
Speaker 1: water was actually competitively priced in California and almond growers
50:41
Speaker 1: actually had to pay the value of the water that
50:46
Speaker 1: they use, the actual market price for the water that
50:50
Speaker 1: they use, they would go out of business. It doesn't
50:57
Speaker 1: really make sense to grow almonds in a region that
51:04
Speaker 1: has droughts pretty much all the time. So the only
51:13
Speaker 1: reason California can grow this number of almonds is because
51:18
Speaker 1: their water is subsidized. It's subsidized. I mean, almonds are
51:29
Speaker 1: in a different universe than data centers. California, almonds use
51:37
Speaker 1: orders a magnitude more water than US data centers in
51:41
Speaker 1: a state that is right for lack of water, known
51:46
Speaker 1: for lack of water. Now what do they do with
51:49
Speaker 1: these almonds? These almends are primarily exported to China, and
51:54
Speaker 1: they'refore heavily subsidized. But if we just had capitalism capitalism,
52:00
Speaker 1: remember capitalism, free markets, these kind of perversions and distortions
52:04
Speaker 1: wouldn't happen. If water was privately managed, privately sold, there
52:12
Speaker 1: would be no almond industry in California. California would use
52:18
Speaker 1: water more judiciously because it would be far more expensive,
52:26
Speaker 1: and it would be used for crops in agriculture and
52:30
Speaker 1: activities more broadly then more efficiently used water because water
52:34
Speaker 1: would be expensive, and indeed, the price of water in
52:38
Speaker 1: places like Texas and Arizona and California and Utah would
52:41
Speaker 1: be high and that would factor into the decision about
52:44
Speaker 1: where to put a data center. And states in which
52:48
Speaker 1: water was plenty four prices would be low and it
52:50
Speaker 1: would factor into the decision about where to put a
52:55
Speaker 1: data center. What creates these distory is the fact that
53:06
Speaker 1: water is provided by the state, run by the state,
53:14
Speaker 1: organized and sold by the state and therefore is perverse
53:21
Speaker 1: and distorted, and the pricing is distorted and is used
53:24
Speaker 1: to redistribute wealth, redistribute wealth from some to others. California
53:28
Speaker 1: is a great example. Redistribute wealth from farmers and from
53:32
Speaker 1: people who want to take a shower to almond farmers.
53:35
Speaker 1: So when there's a drought, you who want to take
53:37
Speaker 1: a shower a band from taking a shower. Water is restricted,
53:43
Speaker 1: and the almond growers they continue to get their water anyway.
53:56
Speaker 1: It really I mean, if people care about water, they'd
54:00
Speaker 1: be complaining about almonds. The fact that they're making water
54:04
Speaker 1: an issue with AI means they care about AI, not
54:07
Speaker 1: about water. They hate AI. They's just the anti progress,
54:10
Speaker 1: anti development, that's what drives them. Just to give you
54:14
Speaker 1: another example, there are four hundred golf courses in the
54:18
Speaker 1: Arizona Desert. Four hundred golf courses in the Arizona Desert.
54:24
Speaker 1: These four hundred golf courses in the Arizona Desert use
54:28
Speaker 1: forty two billion gallons of water annually. Forty two billion.
54:36
Speaker 1: That's more than all the data centers used today in
54:39
Speaker 1: the entire country, never mind just in Arizona. And I'm
54:44
Speaker 1: fine with that. If it's priced. If it's priced, and
54:51
Speaker 1: it's not just you know, it's not just what do
54:57
Speaker 1: you call it, determined by who lobbies and who has
55:03
Speaker 1: more power in state capitals or whatever. All Right, Finally,
55:11
Speaker 1: a representative Massey was defeated in his primary and he
55:17
Speaker 1: blamed Israel for it. He actually said he he he
55:22
Speaker 1: was a hard time finding his opponent to congratulate him
55:27
Speaker 1: because he couldn't find him in Tel Aviv. So they
55:31
Speaker 1: continued continued blame Israel for it. That that continued, you know,
55:36
Speaker 1: even as he won. Trump wins again. This is a
55:42
Speaker 1: victory for Trump right, and the gropers and the far
55:51
Speaker 1: right are freaking out that it was an election that
55:54
Speaker 1: represented Israel first. So we will see the entire Republican
56:10
Speaker 1: Party is you know, obviously, the anti Israel part of
56:17
Speaker 1: the Republican Party is still not influential enough to win
56:23
Speaker 1: in the primaries, or not influential enough to overcome Trump Right,
56:33
Speaker 1: but it is growing and it's going in influence and
56:38
Speaker 1: it's going to have an impact on the Republican politics,
56:41
Speaker 1: just like the anti Israel part of the Democratic Party,
56:44
Speaker 1: which is big enough now to win primaries, is going
56:49
Speaker 1: significantly and as already having a profound impact on the
56:53
Speaker 1: policies of the Democratic Party. Are the direction is growing
57:01
Speaker 1: influence of anti Israel and anti Semitism in both political parties,
57:08
Speaker 1: with the Democrats way ahead right now, but the Republicans
57:11
Speaker 1: trying to desperately catch up. And that is tragic, tragic,
57:23
Speaker 1: you know, for Israel, obviously, but from America, from America,
57:26
Speaker 1: to be to revert to anti Semitism, to revert to tribalism,
57:34
Speaker 1: we would you see the tribalism, but this type of
57:36
Speaker 1: expression of tribalism is pretty sad and pretty pathetic. Anyway,
57:47
Speaker 1: Massey loss Trump one. Generally, Trump had very good election
57:52
Speaker 1: again yesterday in Georgia. A number of Republicans who stood
58:02
Speaker 1: up the Trump about the election fraud in twenty twenty
58:06
Speaker 1: were ousted in their primaries in favor of MEGA candidates. Indeed,
58:13
Speaker 1: the Georgia primaries yesterday went overwhelming lye overwhelmingly towards MEGA
58:19
Speaker 1: even when their runoffs it's basically two different MAGA candidates
58:22
Speaker 1: running against each other. Now, this in Georgia in particular
58:28
Speaker 1: might not bode well for the Republican Party in the
58:31
Speaker 1: actual elections in November, because remember Georgia which you would
58:38
Speaker 1: consider a solid red state, has two Democratic senators because
58:44
Speaker 1: Republicans keep insisting, Republicans keep insisting to putting up crazy
58:48
Speaker 1: mega candidates against Democrats, and independents don't want Mega, and
58:55
Speaker 1: moderate Republicans don't want Mega, and they just can't build
58:58
Speaker 1: a big enough coalition to defeat the Democrats. So it
59:03
Speaker 1: could very well be than in spite of the fact
59:05
Speaker 1: that Republicans are hoping to pick up a Senate seat
59:07
Speaker 1: in Georgia, they might not be able to because they're
59:13
Speaker 1: putting out candidates that might not be electable. We'll see,
59:19
Speaker 1: we'll see, and uh you know, we'll see what happens
59:24
Speaker 1: in the House as well as the Republican candidates become
59:27
Speaker 1: more and more and more you know, radicalized around MEGA
59:34
Speaker 1: and at least in the South, I don't think the
59:36
Speaker 1: Democrats are quite as woke crazy. It'll be interesting to
59:40
Speaker 1: see if they can if they can beat the Democrats
59:42
Speaker 1: as solidly as one would expect in a in a
59:45
Speaker 1: in a pretty red state like like Jeojia. Uh so,
59:50
Speaker 1: uh you know, there's a Megas basically, even though MAGA
59:55
Speaker 1: still represents a small part of the Republican Party, it
1:00:00
Speaker 1: is the part of the pupping a party that votes
1:00:02
Speaker 1: in primaries. And even though MEGA generally seems like at
1:00:08
Speaker 1: this point seems to defend independence, which Republicans need in
1:00:13
Speaker 1: order to win, in spite of that, MEGA is dominating
1:00:18
Speaker 1: the GOP and you know, Trump's approval ratings falling off
1:00:25
Speaker 1: a cliff. But the Mega are loyal to Trump. They
1:00:31
Speaker 1: are hundred percent loyal to Trump, and it doesn't matter.
1:00:34
Speaker 1: And here's what really worries me. What worries me is
1:00:39
Speaker 1: not the particular positions that these MEGA candidates have, because
1:00:43
Speaker 1: I think a lot of them won't win. And even
1:00:45
Speaker 1: if they do win, I mean, the amount of damage
1:00:48
Speaker 1: they can do from legislation is very small. Legislation is
1:00:52
Speaker 1: just too complex and requires too many pieces. Where can
1:00:56
Speaker 1: they do damage? They can do real, real, real significant
1:01:02
Speaker 1: damage when it comes to elections. So imagine twenty with
1:01:11
Speaker 1: a Georgia election board and Georgia Republican politicians who are
1:01:18
Speaker 1: loyal to Trump above reality, above all else, and who
1:01:24
Speaker 1: challenged the elections in Georgia in Trump's favor. Imagine that
1:01:28
Speaker 1: happens in several states. I mean, the thing about Mega,
1:01:35
Speaker 1: the thing they've learned from Trump is MAGA has no problem, lying, cheating, deceiving,
1:01:43
Speaker 1: has no problem with corruption as long as they beat
1:01:48
Speaker 1: the Left. And that's scary just in terms of the
1:01:54
Speaker 1: kind of constitutional crises, election disagreements. It is scary when
1:02:03
Speaker 1: it comes to the future elections and the future of
1:02:08
Speaker 1: America and the two and the two party system that
1:02:12
Speaker 1: we have. Uh, it does not look good. It does
1:02:16
Speaker 1: not look good. And these people are gaining the basically
1:02:25
Speaker 1: taking control of the entire Republican Party, not just at
1:02:28
Speaker 1: the federal level, but at the state level as well.
1:02:31
Speaker 1: And it's a state level. It scares me because that's
1:02:34
Speaker 1: where elections get determined. So with the fraud and corruption,
1:02:42
Speaker 1: add to it the total domination of a MAGA that
1:02:45
Speaker 1: is completely obsessed with Donald Trump and won't question anything
1:02:49
Speaker 1: that he does. It's a real question where we're heading
1:02:54
Speaker 1: and and and how any of the bad stuff can
1:02:58
Speaker 1: ever be ever be reversed given the direction in which
1:03:01
Speaker 1: the country is heading. Scary stuff, all right, I did
1:03:08
Speaker 1: promise to do some positive stories. Huh, I guess I forgot.
1:03:13
Speaker 1: I'll try again tomorrow. What can I say, I'll try
1:03:16
Speaker 1: again tomorrow. This is what you know came off you know,
1:03:27
Speaker 1: the pages of the news today anyway. Yes, I need
1:03:35
Speaker 1: to get more positive stories and I need to focus
1:03:39
Speaker 1: that on my morning prep. Positive stories where they come from,
1:03:43
Speaker 1: I do not know, usually tech and biotech, but we
1:03:47
Speaker 1: will see. All right, we are again way behind, I
1:03:53
Speaker 1: mean way, way, way way behind on the super chat,
1:03:57
Speaker 1: so I don't know what's going on. Maybe if I
1:03:59
Speaker 1: have some cositive stories, you guys will come back to
1:04:02
Speaker 1: supporting the show. But please consider asking questions, Please consider
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Speaker 1: we stay motivated to keep doing all of this. We
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1:04:22
Speaker 1: Robert thank you, and Steven thank you, Mike thank you,
1:04:27
Speaker 1: But far from enough. We're halfway to the first hour goal.
1:04:30
Speaker 1: We just finished the first hour, so we're way behind.
1:04:34
Speaker 1: Exit just did a sticker. Thank you for that. I
1:04:37
Speaker 1: appreciate it. Let me remind you about our sponsors, Dinn Institute. Well,
1:04:47
Speaker 1: I think I think that's over now, so I have
1:04:50
Speaker 1: to find out what the iron industry wants me to
1:04:52
Speaker 1: be pitching these days, given that the OKONN promotion has
1:04:56
Speaker 1: just passed. So mind you, Alex Epstein is number one
1:05:02
Speaker 1: voice in the world and issues of energy electricity and
1:05:05
Speaker 1: a lot of that relates to these AI centers. And
1:05:07
Speaker 1: of course he is becoming becoming a a major defender
1:05:15
Speaker 1: of AI as a technology and as an industry in
1:05:21
Speaker 1: the world out there. And I think we'll be lobbying
1:05:23
Speaker 1: in Congress from more freedom for your companies and against
1:05:27
Speaker 1: some of the proposals to regulate and control the AI industry.
1:05:34
Speaker 1: So check Alex out at Alex Epstein dot Substack dot com,
1:05:44
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Speaker 1: My former business partner, Robert handashot is UH it's it's
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Speaker 1: you can check out playlist sponsors Robert hand a Shot.
1:06:32
Speaker 1: I think you'll enjoy the interview. And finally, Defenders of Capitalism.
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Speaker 1: Defenders of Capitalism UH, this is a program of Michael
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Speaker 1: All right, and don't forget to become Patreon supporters. I
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Speaker 1: dot com. You're on bookshow. All right, let's jump in
1:07:27
Speaker 1: with your questions. And today looks to be a particularly
1:07:31
Speaker 1: short show, all right, Mike says, I had rolled in
1:07:37
Speaker 1: Ohio State in nineteen seventy. I didn't have enough knowledge
1:07:40
Speaker 1: then to understand how Unamerican and anti reason the curriculum was,
1:07:45
Speaker 1: but I sensed then many of my professors were full
1:07:47
Speaker 1: of crap. That was nineteen seventy, Mic, imagine imagine what
1:07:53
Speaker 1: it would be like today. I mean, they were relatively speaking,
1:07:59
Speaker 1: you know, crazy patriots and defenders of the enlightenment of reason, individualism,
1:08:07
Speaker 1: and political liberty. As compared to what you would find
1:08:10
Speaker 1: in universities today, you would be horrified, truly horrified. And
1:08:15
Speaker 1: the better the university, the worse the content that they're teaching.
1:08:23
Speaker 1: Euven says, today Christmas came early for Israel's biggest critics. Yeah,
1:08:27
Speaker 1: I did, Santa Claus is ben Vere. Yeah, today ben
1:08:32
Speaker 1: Via went out and Israel. You know, every few months
1:08:36
Speaker 1: there's somebody organizes this big a flotilla of boats to
1:08:44
Speaker 1: go to Gaza, hundreds of boats, so dozens of boats.
1:08:48
Speaker 1: And the latest one was off of the coast of
1:08:50
Speaker 1: Turkey heading towards Gaza, and it was bordered by by
1:08:56
Speaker 1: Israeli navy and turned around and uh, a couple of
1:09:02
Speaker 1: hundred of the organizers were arrested and brought to Israel.
1:09:06
Speaker 1: And today ben Vere, who is a messianic, bar baric
1:09:15
Speaker 1: Jewish nationalist, but of the worst kind, a real racist
1:09:21
Speaker 1: and and and just a despicable, despicable man. Anyway, today
1:09:26
Speaker 1: he confronted the people being arrested, He ridiculed them, he uh,
1:09:32
Speaker 1: you know, uh, threatened abuse and just a disgusting display.
1:09:37
Speaker 1: And this has been broadcasting all over the world, of course,
1:09:40
Speaker 1: and everybody, everybody can see it. And he now represents Israel.
1:09:44
Speaker 1: He's a member of N'taniell's government. Sadly, uh and uh
1:09:49
Speaker 1: he's been condemned, even by Natanielle. Even nataniel condemned his behavior.
1:09:55
Speaker 1: And you know this is uh uh. This is the
1:10:03
Speaker 1: problem that Israel does have bad people, really bad people,
1:10:07
Speaker 1: and some of those bad people, because of Ntonia and
1:10:10
Speaker 1: because of the way coalitions are formed in Israel, many
1:10:13
Speaker 1: of those bad people are in the government and they
1:10:18
Speaker 1: do horrible things. And bank View is a good example
1:10:20
Speaker 1: of that. And he is likely to be back in
1:10:23
Speaker 1: the government in the future if NATONIAO wins. Sadly, all right,
1:10:33
Speaker 1: Remo was not a freedom and the main force behind
1:10:37
Speaker 1: instrumentalism in finance. And was this difficult and problematic for
1:10:41
Speaker 1: you when you were in a finance professor. I don't
1:10:46
Speaker 1: know if he was a leader, if he was one
1:10:50
Speaker 1: of the people. I don't know the history of it,
1:10:53
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't know. But it was clearly that view
1:10:56
Speaker 1: of kind of paparian stomology dominated the field of finance.
1:11:04
Speaker 1: It wasn't too much of a problem because you know,
1:11:08
Speaker 1: you still I mean, I still could come up with
1:11:13
Speaker 1: ideas and test them empirically, which is what they cared about.
1:11:16
Speaker 1: And I could do that and did that. I probably
1:11:18
Speaker 1: didn't do it as much as they wanted me to,
1:11:21
Speaker 1: and didn't write enough papers for for for what they like,
1:11:26
Speaker 1: But I got a few, and I got a few
1:11:27
Speaker 1: publications and some of the top finance journals. But yeah,
1:11:31
Speaker 1: I could. I could play the game if you will.
1:11:33
Speaker 1: It wasn't super inspiring and it wasn't super interesting, but
1:11:37
Speaker 1: it was certainly a way to play the game. I
1:11:47
Speaker 1: like numbers. Doesn't Cassidy flip on the War Powers resolution
1:11:52
Speaker 1: show that the supposed had grown ups in the GOP,
1:11:54
Speaker 1: or at least as petty as Trump. Yeah, I mean
1:11:58
Speaker 1: he flipped. I don't know what he originally thought, but
1:12:02
Speaker 1: he flipped to the right position. By the way, so
1:12:05
Speaker 1: this is the right position to have because Trump went
1:12:09
Speaker 1: against him. Say he's going against Trump now, given that
1:12:12
Speaker 1: this is actually the right position, the position, position that
1:12:15
Speaker 1: all Republicans should have, I'm not going to blame him
1:12:17
Speaker 1: for it. Maybe this is the position he always had.
1:12:20
Speaker 1: Maybe this is the position most Republicans have and they're
1:12:24
Speaker 1: afraid to express it because of Trump. What it really
1:12:27
Speaker 1: shows is the extent to which Trump controls them by
1:12:35
Speaker 1: through the threats of a prime of supporting primary challenges,
1:12:43
Speaker 1: and once that threat is irrelevant, like with Cassidy, maybe
1:12:47
Speaker 1: they're voting. Maybe he just voted what he really wanted
1:12:51
Speaker 1: to vote. Either way, it's pathetic. Either way, these people
1:12:55
Speaker 1: are pathetic and Center of Republicans in particular awful. I mean,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: I mean, tell Us didn't even vote for this, and
1:13:08
Speaker 1: he's not running again, so they're so afraid that if
1:13:12
Speaker 1: they cross Trump, they will have no future in the
1:13:14
Speaker 1: Republican Party. Remo says, value for value, Thank you, Remo.
1:13:20
Speaker 1: CP Milkin says, thanks for telling the truth. They appreciated.
1:13:23
Speaker 1: Jonathan Harrison says Minneapolis paid out seven hundred and twenty
1:13:27
Speaker 1: five thousand dollars in compensation to write is who were
1:13:30
Speaker 1: arrested in twenty twenty. This is a terrible president, but
1:13:34
Speaker 1: is already old. Yeah, there's probably lots of that kind
1:13:37
Speaker 1: of stuff that's happened, nothing on the scale of what
1:13:40
Speaker 1: Trump has done, and nothing on the scale of giving
1:13:45
Speaker 1: competition to people who arrested trying to overturn an election.
1:13:50
Speaker 1: That is a direct attack on the very system of government.
1:13:53
Speaker 1: I talked about this yesterday in the United States. So
1:13:56
Speaker 1: again I consider January six worse than their Minneapolis and
1:14:02
Speaker 1: Chicago another and the ore agaon riots as bad as
1:14:05
Speaker 1: those were because of their profound impact on politics. But yeah,
1:14:14
Speaker 1: it's it's horrible the justice when justice is not served,
1:14:18
Speaker 1: and justice, sadly for political reasons both Republicans and Democrats,
1:14:22
Speaker 1: is not served way too often. Jess says, it's almost
1:14:27
Speaker 1: one am, and you Deli and I can't sleep. Well,
1:14:30
Speaker 1: I'm here to at least entertain you while you don't sleep.
1:14:35
Speaker 1: Loan the center. Now that your UATX course is done, well,
1:14:39
Speaker 1: it's on the questions and an exam. Sure, let me
1:14:41
Speaker 1: just pull this up. I mean there were basically three
1:14:47
Speaker 1: questions essay questions. Let me I'll read them to you.
1:14:53
Speaker 1: Let me just get this right here. The three essay questions.
1:15:00
Speaker 1: Question number one, what is capitalism and a sub subsection
1:15:06
Speaker 1: of that. Discuss Rand's definition and how it contrasts with
1:15:09
Speaker 1: more conventional views. Discuss where the America today is capitalist.
1:15:14
Speaker 1: Discuss the difference between capitalism and the mixed economy. Second question,
1:15:23
Speaker 1: why did capitalism arise in the modern West and what
1:15:27
Speaker 1: did it achieve? So subsection of that is discuss the
1:15:32
Speaker 1: changes in ideas, culture, institutions and the interaction between them
1:15:36
Speaker 1: that brought about the rise of capitalism. And discuss what
1:15:39
Speaker 1: capitalism achieved. And then the third question, why is capitalism
1:15:47
Speaker 1: viewed negatively and ultimately rejected? What would need to happen
1:15:51
Speaker 1: for this to change? Discuss the major economic, political, and
1:15:55
Speaker 1: moral objections to capitalism and how you would answer them.
1:15:59
Speaker 1: Discuss alternative offered by Rand. Discuss the moral status of
1:16:03
Speaker 1: capitalism in your view. So that is those are the questions,
1:16:20
Speaker 1: the questions I asked. Now you should write the down
1:16:26
Speaker 1: and see how well you would answer them. Moulten Splendor
1:16:29
Speaker 1: one hundred dollars. Thank you, Moulten Splendor. Moulten Splendor has
1:16:32
Speaker 1: been doing really really good on the super Chat the
1:16:36
Speaker 1: last few days. Thank you. He says, your capitalism talks
1:16:41
Speaker 1: stress economic and individual freedom, but I don't hear you
1:16:45
Speaker 1: say much about how courage, confidence, hard work and self
1:16:49
Speaker 1: reliance is required. I'm sure having an entitlement title meant
1:16:55
Speaker 1: view of life is easier, but it doesn't make you
1:16:58
Speaker 1: happier almost successful. That's absolutely right, But imagine what would
1:17:04
Speaker 1: happen if you lived under capitalism, and you had an
1:17:11
Speaker 1: entitled view of life, you would fail. You would fail
1:17:16
Speaker 1: at everything, you would fall flat on your face. I mean,
1:17:21
Speaker 1: capitalism is the system, among other things, that rewards courage, confidence,
1:17:29
Speaker 1: hard work, and self reliance and penalizes entitlement, penalizes it,
1:17:36
Speaker 1: penalizes vice, and rewards virtue. One of the things that
1:17:41
Speaker 1: makes capitalism moral. One of the things that makes capitalism
1:17:45
Speaker 1: a moral system is that it rewards virtue, rationality, honesty, integrity,
1:17:59
Speaker 1: and the rest of the virtues. And as part of that,
1:18:02
Speaker 1: you know, courage is an aspect of integrity, and confidence
1:18:07
Speaker 1: is pride, and hard work is probably also just pride right,
1:18:12
Speaker 1: and self alliance is independence. Capitalism is the system that
1:18:18
Speaker 1: is built around virtue. And to the extent that you
1:18:25
Speaker 1: practice vice, entitlement, laziness, cowardice, you will not be successful.
1:18:34
Speaker 1: You will not be successful. But notice that the virtues
1:18:37
Speaker 1: are self interested virtues, the virtues related to egoism. They're
1:18:45
Speaker 1: not virtues, not Christian virtues. Capitalism does not award Christian virtues.
1:18:51
Speaker 1: It awards egoistic virtues, and it penalizes egoistic vices, egoistic vices.
1:19:04
Speaker 1: So that is, you know, I think I talk about that.
1:19:11
Speaker 1: If I don't, I should, But that is, uh, you know,
1:19:14
Speaker 1: certainly a crucial aspect of capitalism and what makes it
1:19:28
Speaker 1: more all right, let's see, thank you Moulten splendor Kim.
1:20:01
Speaker 1: When people are apathetic to real injustice, is that due
1:20:06
Speaker 1: to nihilism? I mean it could be that they can't
1:20:11
Speaker 1: really understand injustice. They don't have a sense of what
1:20:16
Speaker 1: justice requires and what justice is. So, you know, it
1:20:22
Speaker 1: certainly could be motivated by nihilism, but it could also
1:20:24
Speaker 1: just be motivated by you know, if you're grown up
1:20:29
Speaker 1: with social justice as a standard for everything, then you
1:20:32
Speaker 1: miss on the real injustices. So nihilism is suddenly one reason.
1:20:39
Speaker 1: The other reason is a lack of understanding of what
1:20:41
Speaker 1: justice is. John, thank you for the Stickerdlen, thank you
1:20:47
Speaker 1: for the sticker. Roland. I use water at home for
1:20:51
Speaker 1: cooking and brushing my teeth. I don't know that's allowed.
1:20:55
Speaker 1: Although I'm naturally intelligent, so I hope I'm fine with
1:21:00
Speaker 1: the powers to be Well, if you're naturally intelligent, you
1:21:03
Speaker 1: might not be fined with them because you're skewing the
1:21:07
Speaker 1: distribution you're getting. AI's when you know you're better than
1:21:12
Speaker 1: our people, you know that's not good kidding. Harrison says,
1:21:17
Speaker 1: good news. Antisemits are being wrecked at the ballot box
1:21:20
Speaker 1: while they're being defeated. I don't know about wrecked. Certainly
1:21:25
Speaker 1: on the Democratic side, it doesn't seem that that's the case,
1:21:27
Speaker 1: not yet anyway. And even on the Republican side, they're
1:21:32
Speaker 1: making a lot of hay and they're attracting a lot
1:21:35
Speaker 1: of attention. They're getting more votes than you would think
1:21:38
Speaker 1: given how antisemitic they really are. Moulton says, this is
1:21:45
Speaker 1: what I was hoping you would say, and also hoping
1:21:47
Speaker 1: you would stress more in your capitalism talks. I make it,
1:21:51
Speaker 1: made a note of that. That is that is something
1:21:55
Speaker 1: I should I should bring out more in my talks.
1:21:59
Speaker 1: Thank you, Molten splendid. All right, guys, thank you all
1:22:03
Speaker 1: the super chatter is really appreciated. I will see you
1:22:07
Speaker 1: guys tomorrow. Tomorrow is Thursday, I think it's the same time,
1:22:14
Speaker 1: so three pm East Coast time, and certainly on Friday
1:22:18
Speaker 1: and Saturday Saturday, we've got a show with Nikos. Remember
1:22:21
Speaker 1: Nikos's show is on Saturday instead of Sunday at three
1:22:25
Speaker 1: pm East Coast time. We'll be talking about the manosphere.
1:22:29
Speaker 1: The manosphere. All right, that should be a sexy topic.
1:22:33
Speaker 1: All right, everybody, thank you, have a great rest of
1:22:37
Speaker 1: your day, See you tomorrow.