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Scott Adams (13:05)

So here's what I would like to see. I would like to see Stephen Miller and Elon Musk sitting in the same room and talking about this bill. Stephen Miller is, if you're, you know, pro Trump person, you would probably agree with this. Stephen Miller is one of the most capable, well spoken, smart, you know, MAGA people maybe of all time. Right? He's just one of the smartest people. But he keeps telling us that this is not a spending bill. Okay, I get it, I get it that technically it's not a spending bill, but really, are you telling me that the bill that determines how much you spend is not a spending bill? Now that's not Big words. They try to weasel you or they try to fool you into thinking one thing is another. It's a big bill with lots of spending that can be adjusted by Congress, and some people think it should be less so. For Stephen Miller to say publicly that we have to understand it's not a spending bill, and the idea is that future, future bills would be the place that spending is cut is so disingenuous sounding now. It may be. Maybe it's the best our community has. You know, maybe it's too late to change it. So he's just trying to try to get to the next phase with another bill. Maybe. But it does seem to me that the other bills are going to be impossible to cut in costs. Now, I'm no expert on the government budget process, but is it not true? Let's see who said this first? I think it was Publius. Publius, where are you? We'll get to it, but I'm not sure the other bills can even be cut unless you have 60% vote in the Senate. And since we know we can't get 60 votes, it doesn't look to me like the, the cuts are ahead, does it? So somebody's asking about Elon's black eye. Who knows? I mean, I, I think the correct opinion on his black eye is he's got a toddler. That seems like a perfectly, you know, good explanation. No reason to believe anything else. Yeah, so cynical Publius has a quote I'm gonna get to, but he asked. Cynical Publius asked on X. Can somebody explain how you get to the point where you could actually c something given that it would take 60 votes? And that will never happen. So correct me if I'm wrong. We have Stephen Miller telling us that the current bill is, quote, not a spending bill, but when we get to the ones that are spending bills, there is no chance in hell that we could cut it. Is that true? That's my current understanding. So imagine being Elon Musk. You've been asked to sacrifice so much, and you did, to come up with a bunch of doge cuts and a bunch of doge processes. And you do all that work, and then it looks to you like nothing serious got cut. Can you even imagine how you would feel about that? Well, I'd be flipping out. And if my mere complaining wasn't enough, depending on where I was in my manic phase, I might go just absolutely freaking nuts on whoever put me in that position. And that looks like the President. So can they ever work together and get past it? Yeah, it doesn't mean they will. But, yes, there's nothing that would stop them from, you know, know, figuring it out if they want to. So I'm not super concerned about that conversation. You know, I think yesterday Elon threatened he would decommission the Dragon Rocket, and Trump was saying they should save money by cutting all the contracts. Elon, none of that should be taken seriously. I wouldn't worry about any of it. But let me tell you what I think it is not. It is definitely not 4D chess. It is definitely not something that Musk and Trump came up together with and said, all right, you say this and I'll say this. No, it definitely wasn't that. And then Mike Ben said a video today in which he reminds us how important Elon Musk was to Trump's success, which adds a little fuel to this, because if you think, my God, you know, you're only president because I, you know, deliver free speech back to the country in the form of X, which is true if I'm a top financial backer. And if, if Musk is the reason that the other tech Bros. Felt safe to back Trump and I, I think that is part of it, then Musk probably was important enough that you could argue that Trump would not have been elected. We. It might have even been hard to hear from him without X. But let's check on some other people like Rand Paul. So Rand Paul is talking about this latest bill. He says, we've now increased spending at the get go more than all of Doge cuts. He said, I think Elon Musk did an amazing job and we're dwarfing it with new spending. And then he goes, this is Rand Paul. He says, this has always been a bill that was hijacked and conceived of by Lindsey Graham to explode the military caps. Well, I don't know about that. Do you think Lindsey Graham was trying to cleverly explode the military caps and that's what this is all about? Maybe. I mean, I wouldn't rule it out, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't have an instinct on that either way. But related to that, there's a CIA officer. Darn. I didn't write down what podcast this was on, but on a podcast recently, he said that. And I don't know that this can be proven, but the CIA officer says that bank account records would show that Lindsey Graham is laundering money from the Ukraine war back into his personal bank accounts. Now, I have not seen any evidence of that, and it doesn't surprise me when there's some ex CIA guy saying stuff that sounds sketchy. So I don't know if you can believe that exactly, but it's out there. So some of the mystery may have to do with Lindsey Graham and wanting to get money for Ukraine. At least Ukraine. Mario Novel did a post on X in which he described the fall of Rome as basically our exact current situation, that we overextended, which is what Rome did, had too much military need compared to other things. And apparently Rome just had massive inflation. And they, they took their little silver coin coins and, you know, they, they reduced the amount of silver in it and they kept doing it until there was basically no silver. And then they were broke and then they went out of business. Rome did. Some would say it didn't go into business, some would say it's the Vatican, I guess. But I was starting to think that every major power, unless they were killed by an army, were destroyed by their own spending because you reached some point where nobody can say no and there are just too many people who are on the take. So we're kind of there. How much would you want to see Stephen Miller and Elon Musk in one room with nobody else and just turn the camera on and say, all right, you guys talk about the spending bill and why the Doge cuts don't seem to be enough or why they're not there, and just see them, see them work it out. Because I would love to know if there's any middle ground there. And I don't think that Musk talking to Trump about the details of the bill. That doesn't seem like the right approach because Musk would be in the details and Stephen Miller is in the details. But Trump, he knows the big picture, of course. So that's what I want to see. I want to see Stephen Miller and Musk talk it out with while we.

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Scott Adams (24:34)

Representative Thomas Massie, who's one of the few people, maybe the only one who reads these gigantic Bills he found in. In the bill, there's a provision banning state and local governments from regulating AI. Now, he points out that that would cause. That. That would cause states to have to accept a gigantic data center maybe where they didn't want it, But I feel like this might be necessary. In other words, if AI is really the difference between the country surviving and not surviving, then probably we need the federal government to remove as many restrictions as possible and allow our biggest companies to build whatever they need as fast as they can. So although Massie is. He's obviously, he represents his local constituents and he's doing a good job of it. I suspect the larger military need for AI is probably a bigger priority. So, yes, it will be bad for some local people who don't want that data center to be built near their house, but it's also good to keep the country safe. So, all right, so here's a cynical Publius. He says, how is it possible to achieve the bill Elon Musk, Thomas Massie, and Rand Paul want without 60 votes in the Senate? And he challenges people to come up with it. And I saw the comments, and nobody could. So we've got this weird sleepwalking toward disaster thing going on, where if you say something like, our current spending will kill us for sure, the answer will be, but look how good the priorities are for what Trump ran on. And then you say, okay, did you hear anything I just said? Our current spending will kill us all for sure. Yeah, but did you see how MAGA perfect all these things are? Okay, you're not hearing anything. The current spending will kill us all for sure. I don't know. I think you're ignoring how good this bill is for all the things that Trump ran on. No, the current spending will kill us all. And then repeat. It's like one side isn't even talking. Right. Are you having the same experience that one side is just ignoring the existential threat, which is guaranteed. It's not even a risk. If we were just a risk, then I'd say, well, I guess we're taking risk. No, we're walking directly toward a gigantic hole in the ground, and there's absolutely nothing that looks like it would stop us from falling in that. I think that's where Musk is. That's where I am as well. So, anyway, so I saw a clip. Yes. This morning, actually, I saw a clip where Trump says that we have a deal with China because he had a phone call with President Xi, and for some reason, he doesn't seem to be able to Clarify whether that deal was an entire trade deal with China or something smaller about rare earth magnets. And then I thought, well, obviously this is the biggest story in the country. I mean, it's bigger than the Mustang, so obviously it'll be just all over X if there's a giant trade deal with China. I can't tell. Do any of you know, I'm assuming that it's not a comprehensive trade deal, because that would be surprising. There are too many, too many elements in play. But it's just rare earth, Right? Do any of you know, I could have maybe checked rock before I got on. Somebody says that Trump is asking us to join him tonight to work it out on the ninth green. I don't know about that. Anyway, so stock market is up, which could be just a bounce response because the Elon thing looked like a big deal, but really isn't a big deal. So I'm just looking. They are trading state visits. I know that. But none of you know, right? None of you know whether there's a comprehensive trade deal, which would be the biggest thing in the world versus only rare earth. I don't know why Trump would be so vague about that. So I'm going to guess it's only a deal about rare earth because the other would seem like a bigger deal. All right. Well, according to Breitbart, the US Trade deficit has narrowed by record amount. I guess there were a lot of exports right after Liberation Day. Now, I wouldn't expect that trend to continue. I think that might have something to do with what happened because of Liberation Day and the tariffs and the uncertainty and all that. But maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe Trump found a way to narrow our trade deficit. We'll see. Keep an eye on that. Meanwhile, just the news. Ben Weeden is reporting that the Trump tariffs are going to slash the deficit by $2.8 trillion over 10 years, according to the CBO. How many of you believe that? How many of you believe that the Trump tariffs will slash the deficit by 2.8 trillion over 10 years? I'm going to say no. Everything over 10 years is bullshit. Yeah, 10 years. In 10 years, we'll find ways to change so many things that, that this estimate will make no sense. But it's better than raising the, raising the deficit. So maybe. Don't know. According to the Gateway pundit, Representative Comer is subpoenaed. He's going to subpoena the Biden White House physician. Have any of you seen a picture of Joe Biden standing with his White House physician and the White House physician has a Dumb and Dumber haircut and he looks like a character literally from the movie Dumb and Dumber. And then Biden himself looks kind of dumb in the picture. And I thought to myself, how in the world can you pick a doctor who looks like he came out of the movie Dumb and Dumber? Like, how do you do that? Anyway, that's my only comment about that. Maybe you'll tell us something we need to hear. Meanwhile, according to the Daily Skeptic, if you want some good news, the global greening, in other words, how much vegetation is growing on the earth thanks to higher CO2, is it striking new heights? So you don't hear about that as much, do you? So the world is getting way greener and that has to do with CO2. Now, most of you knew that was going to happen. But the other things the Daily Skeptic, this is Chris Morrison's writing. Things that are also not mentioned so much anymore is that the Arctic sea level has not been shrinking since 2007, which would be counter to climate change predictions. And the Gulf Stream has not reduced, which would be counter to climate change predictions. And there's been a record growth in the Great Barrier Reef for the last three years, which is very counter to the climate change predictions. So if I haven't told you this recently, wait till you find out about climate models. In other news, the Washington examiner is writing about how you remember Ibram Kendi. He was the author and activist who was an anti racist and he got funding after the George Floyd stuff, he got funding to create an anti racist research center. So now that a number of years have gone by, how do you think the anti racist research center is doing? Well, you would not be surprised that they're closing down because they didn't get anything done. Washington examiner review of public records found that anti racism centers at five major universities got generous support after the 2020 George Floyd stuff and looks like none of them have achieved really anything of value. So they're all just closing down. Surprise. You never could guess. According to Neuroscience News, they can make AI be funny, especially with memes, but they can't make AI as funny as the best human can be funny. So AI can be funnier than some human who's not very funny. But the best funny human is still substantially better than AI. And as I've predicted, that will stay that way as long as AI is these large language model things, maybe when, maybe when we get some entirely new kind of AI, it'll be different. But at the moment, humans have the advantage. So I still offer purpose. Let's check in with the Pacific Palisades where there was a big fire in Southern California earlier this year and apparently nearly 300 residents have decided to sell their properties rather than rebuild and only 100 have begun reconstruction. Now why would so many people sell the most valuable real estate you could imagine after it gets cleaned up rather than stay there and build when they're so lucky to have such amazing real estate? The answer is it's California. So as a Gateway pundit points out, just, just the fact that getting anything done in California is a nightmare. A lot of people said, just give me my money and let me get out of here. So at the same time, California Democrats have issued a dance video in which they, several of them are dancing to Usher. Why did they create a dance video of cringy middle aged people who need to go to the gym? I don't know. Maybe because they thought they couldn't think of anything useful to do for the country. So they're like, I've got an idea. A dance video showing that white people have no, have no dance moves whatsoever. It was very cringy. You're gonna have to see it.

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Scott Adams (39:04)

Over at UC Berkeley. As you know, the President of the United States is giving some pressure on the funding to various entities that are not doing enough to battle anti Semitism and dei. And so the University of California's staff members are going to do a first of its kind lawsuit, a class action lawsuit against Trump for their research funding cuts. And they think that they hope that this will become a model so that others can use it to get their funding back as well. So obviously the funding is for very important stuff, otherwise they wouldn't be fighting so hard for it. Let's see, here's one example. One of the lead plaintiffs is a history professor named Christine Filho. And I guess her funding was cut by a corporate quarter million dollars and the funding would have gone to a study to study Greek Orthodox Christians in the 19th century Turkey. So those of you who are depending on the results of a study of 19th century Greek Orthodox Christians in Turkey. Well, you're going to be very disappointed because it looks like that funding has been cut. But also, that's not the only thing that got cut. I mean, it's not all like worthless sounding stuff like that. Here's one, the director of the Climb Project Climate at UC Berkeley Law Initiative. What they wanted to study, but it got cut, is they wanted to study using drones and robots to find cheaper ways to monitor methane emissions from landfills, which is a major contributor to climate change. So did we really need drones and robots to measure methane from landfills? Because I thought we had all these climate models that were so well tuned they could tell you what the temperature will be in 80 years. And you're telling me now that I needed a robot and a drone to get accurate enough information to know if the temperature goes up in 80 years. I'm going to say that probably we don't need that, but got caught. In other news, interesting engineering is reporting that Amazon is building an indoor, I guess a gigantic test place for robots. It'll be in San Francisco and it will be a humanoid park. So humanoid is because the robots are human form and, and it's like a custom indoor obstacle course to get the robots ready for delivering packages for Amazon. But to me it sounds like a playground for robots. How much, how much training would you have to give a robot until it knew how to deliver a package to every kind of different doorway and steps and every, every kind of weird situation? And, and then of course they're going to get robbed, right? What happens if the robot has a package and a bad person runs up with a mask on and just grabs the package out of the hands of the robot? Is the robot trained to do what? I mean, it's not going to fight him. So there are a lot of questions about these humanoid robots. I don't know. I feel like there's some better solution than humanoid robots, but maybe not. Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, Iran has ordered thousands of tons of ballistic missile ingredients from China. Great. So that should go well. Thousands of tons of ballistic missile ingredients. So it doesn't sound like Iran is giving up anytime soon. And in other news related the Washington Times, Bill Gertz is writing that China has long held a military doctrine, I guess you might call it, in which they're trying to affect the brains of the other side. So there are a whole bunch of different ways they can do it. But the thinking is that the old way of war, where you would Send, you know, hordes of people in one direction and they would all get mowed down or stuck with swords. Doesn't work so much anymore. So they're going for various cognitive weapons. And makes me wonder, would you even know if somebody hit you with a cognitive weapon? Because some of them just make you angry or they hurt your morale. So cognitive weapons, it's coming. And according to Politico, China is helping Russia pull ahead in lethal drone race with Ukraine. How many drones do you think? Well, according to Politico, Veronica Melka Zerova, Ukraine managed to make, let's see, up to a million tactical drones in the first years of the war. And they're aiming to produce 2.5 million tactical drones and 30,000 long range strike drones. Just 20, 25, 2.5 million drones. Now, I guess most of the good drones are the ones that can't be jammed because they run on these enormously long fiber optic cables, which doesn't even seem like it would work. I can't believe that they're really drones that are attached to a cable. It doesn't seem like that could work, but it does. And meanwhile, let's see. And then the Russia drone producers, I don't know of how we know this can make up to 15, this is long range one. So they'll make more than 30,000 and they'll make up to 2 million small tactical drones. So what happens when there are so many drones that all the humans are killed the moment they walk outdoors because we're sort of there? Apparently the Ukrainian soldiers, if they're on the front line, they can never go outside because they can't see the drones. And the drones are pretty good at picking off anybody who walks outside. So apparently there's a mental health problem on top of being on the front lines of you of the Ukrainian war, which sounds like a mental health problem by itself that you can never leave your little enclosure because the minute you walk outside they just kill you. And I think that works both ways, by the way. I think the Russians can't walk outside at all. So what happens if, if you add like another million drones to that 2025 or maybe 2026 is going to be lit, the entire sky over. Ukraine and Russia are just going to be solid drones. So it seems like their little cables would get mixed up. Well, according to Breitbart News, Oliver Lane is writing that Trump is going to threaten both Russia and Ukraine with sanctions if either them don't get serious about making peace. To which I say there can't be any sanctions left. Are you telling me that there are sanctions left that have not been used that are so good it would make them seek peace for the first time? I don't believe that. I'm going to have to hear some examples of what those sanctions would be. I don't believe that at all. And even if they sound good on paper, it's got to be the kind that are easy to thwart. So it's going to be something like we're going to sanction the people who buy oil from Russia and then we'll find out that 80% of the oil is bought by China and we don't want to sanction them because, you know, they'll sanction us and blah, blah, blah. So I don't think we have anything. My best guess is we have no leverage whatsoever for at least on Russia anyway. So that's my take for say, I think your Elon and Trump situation will work itself out. If what it does is it gets us serious about cutting the deficit where we have not been serious before, then I would say that's a step forward. But at least we're talking about it with a little more seriousness than we had before. So I'm going to take the win on that, not for me, but for the country. And that's all I got for you today. So everybody else, I'll see you tomorrow. But if you're on Locals, I'm going to say goodbye to them privately in 30 seconds. All right, Locals.