 Okay, one, two, three. Welcome, everybody. This Friday, late here in welcome. So those of you are watching on YouTube and Facebook, you continue to get a view of my various hotel rooms all over the world. We've now done shows from London, Zurich and Paris. I wanted to do I wanted to do a few shows from the Canary Islands, where I was at was attending a conference. But the internet connection was just way, way, way too weak to even contemplate trying to do that. So so no, it's been a while I apologize for that. It's been, I think a week since we had a show. So somebody saying it's about the perfect time to visit Paris. It's yeah, it's a beautiful day today. Unfortunately, I'm going to be here basically less than 24 hours. And I've got to give a talk tomorrow. So I'm not gonna be able to go and do all the fun stuff that I love doing in Paris, like going to the Louvre or going to the Mose d'Orsay or just walking around the city. So a little bit of walking, but but unfortunately, quick trip. No, no matter being here before I love Paris to great city. And continues to be beautiful, walked around tonight. And it's, it's gorgeous. Alright. Another topic. So I want to talk a little bit more about Judge Kavanaugh. And it looks like there's breaking news on that something related Kavanaugh that relates to Facebook, Amazon's $15 minimum wage. Maybe some other things we'll see. And of course, there's always the super chat that is accessible to those of you on YouTube. So if you want to ask a question, and you're willing to put some money behind it, then use the super chat feature on on YouTube. Alright, so it looks like Kavanaugh is going to be approved by the Senate. It is a Democratic senators now said that he would vote for Kavanaugh. And I think almost all the Republicans, maybe with one exception have said that they would vote for him. So it looks like he will be approved probably 51 to 49 or 50 to 50 with Mike Pence breaking the tie. But it's it, it looks like it's going to happen. It's, you know, it's the right thing. I've said this before. I'm no fan of Brett Kavanaugh. I don't think he's I'm not excited about him going to Supreme Court. He's way too political as a judge. He's he's had a career in politics. He's much too much a Republican, rather than a judge with a clear judicial philosophy. He is too much of a conservative. And, and I think would vote would vote over through Rosa versus Wade and maybe some other potential issues regarding civil liberties. But so I've never been too enthusiastic about Kavanaugh of the short list. You know, there was the short list that Trump had. You know, I don't think I would have been excited by anybody, any of them. But I think I think he and the woman who was ultra Catholic with the two that I was least excited about. And primarily with Kavanaugh, it's because of how political he's been. He was part of the Bush administration. He was part of the investigation of the Clintons and the Holy Peachman. Ridiculous fiasco. And anyway, that that's the reasons. And then again, his judicial philosophy is far too, you know, mainstream standard conservative for my liking, I think probably Gorsuch is a far better judge. But given all that, I think he's qualified, you know, he's qualified. And I don't think and I've said this from the beginning of these hearings, I don't think that that these allegations were grounds for voting against them. I actually don't think these allegations should have even been put by the committee. I don't think the allegations are relevant to the issue before us. That is the issue of whether he should be appointed the Supreme Court. I've said this before I said one more time. It astounds me. I mean, I was how people misrepresent my views about these issues. I was reading somebody, somebody wrote a let me just find this. Yeah, somebody wrote a on my comment under the video in YouTube and he says, um, treatment of the arbitrary as the possible is also disappointing. I discussed why, uh, Ford's claim is not arbitrary. It might be wrong. It might be unproven. It might be lacking, you know, almost any evidence, but I wouldn't say, but it was not arbitrary. Pistemologically, it's not arbitrary. And I never said we have to investigate. I said, you have to investigate if you want to know the truth, but I don't think the truth is relevant here. Uh, he's insistent on a trial for Calvinized ad lip. So again, I never insisted on a trial for Calvinized said that if you wanted to find the truth, you would have to take this to trial. But I said over and over again, I don't think it's relevant because I don't think something you did 30 something years ago when you were 17 is relevant in your fifties and a job interview for for the Supreme Court or for any other job. I don't think any employer should take into account the actions of a 70. I mean, showed up, you murdered somebody, or if he'd raped her, or if he'd done, you know, but but he didn't rape her, even if he did what he's accused of doing. He certainly didn't murder anybody. He probably got drunk a lot. He probably did really stupid things when he was drunk. That I have no doubt about. He probably lied to the committee, but you know, the context of this line is so it's so absurd, the whole procedure, the whole circus around this is so absurd, that the hearing should have never happened. There has to be a statute of limitations for not just criminal statutes of limitation, but also a statute of limitations around, you know, in a sense, job interviews for these kind of things stuff you did when you were 17 is irrelevant. So anyway, it's amazing to me how people listen to the show. And really, it kind of don't really get what I'm saying at all, at all. But maybe it's my lack of my lack of communication skills. We'll have to we'll have to work on that. So, you know, he's going to be approved. I think that's probably the right thing in the circumstances to do. I think it's tragic. And I think we're going to pay a heavy price into the future that the extent to which this has become a bipartisan issue. I think this bipartisan, this, this golf complete and not a golf between Democrats and Republicans, to the point of scheming and dishonesty and just voting almost down the party line and everything is is incredibly destructive. It never used to be like this. For the Supreme Court, you know, they did, they did disqualify Bork in in in the 80s, but that was primarily because of his legal philosophy. They didn't have to come up with, you know, these these kind of allegations. But the ugliness the ugliness of our political lives today, both on the right and on the left, in this case, it's mostly on the left, but it's in this particular case, but it's in both the right and the left. Remember, that to a large extent, Republicans started it by not by not considering the Supreme Court nominee that Obama Obama made, you know, in it was pure partisan politics understandable. But, you know, it wouldn't be surprising that Democrats will do anything to undercut in a Republican nominee, given what Republicans did with the Democratic nominee, Obama's Democratic nominee, where they delayed, they basically wouldn't even consider him. It said they wouldn't consider him until the until the election until until, you know, at the time, they were, it was unlikely that a Trump would win, but but they were hoping and indeed he won and they got to vacate that appointment and to appoint them on to nominations. So nominees. So, you know, in in in many respects, this has been going back and forth. But really, really, really horrible. The state of our political discourse, it's never been good. And, you know, one of the scariest things to me is when the political parties get along and get together and pass laws. I like gridlock, I like stalemate. But at the end of the day, there's going to be there going to be heavy prices to pay for for the hatred, the vicious hatred, not just in politics, but not just among politicians, but among the American public around these issues, because at some point, we're going to have to do something about social security, we're going to have to do something about Medicare, you can have to cut government spending, you're only going to be able to do that if you do it bipartisan in a bipartisan fashion, you're only going to be able to do it if you get the Republicans and Democrats together to do a plan. It might not be my plan, it might not be an ideal plan, but you have to do something to curb government spending in the next 10 years. If you don't, this country is history, it's toast, it's bankrupt, completely utterly. You know, we go into depression, we go into long term stagnation and really, economy is finished and over. And yet, given the rhetoric by both parties, unless one of the parties gets an overwhelming majority and can do whatever the hell he wants, then you can have to work together. And there's no possibility because the American people don't want, I mean, Republicans and Democrats seem to be at the point today where they hate each other's guts. Now, I would have some sympathy towards that if they hated each other's guts because of ideas. But it's not really because of ideas, it's, you know, it's superficiality, it's my collectivism versus your collectivism, it's my, you know, it's my statism versus your statism. There's no real, there's no real fundamental difference anymore between Republicans and Democrats. Anyway, Kavanaugh is going to be elected, so those of you Republicans can, can be happy. But it's, it's, it's really, I think the state of American politics is really sad and pathetic. And we're going to have to, we're going to have to, I don't know what we're going to do. You know, I really fear for the future of the country. politicians on in any case, unwilling to take on the difficult task of actually, you know, doing the right thing and, and, and shrinking, I'm at spending and passing regulations, passing deregulation or doing away with regulations at the, at the legislative level to actually keep this economy going and to keep us, to keep it happening. But it's not going to happen. So, so where does the country, where does the country end up? And it, it candid up, and it's not going to get up in, in a good place. So exactly when we face these major challenges is, is hard to tell, but the way we're heading the tribalism we're encountering, the, the collectivism, the brute, unabashed, explicit collectivism, we're going to pay a heavy, heavy, heavy price in the years to come for it. We're going to pay a heavy price for Trump and we're going to pay a heavy price, a price already are for the identity politics of the left, right and left are failing us and, and leaning us down a very, very ugly, ugly road. Well, one of the manifestations of this ugly road is, is happened this week in Facebook and article in the New York Times, I know, I know, I know, I'm not supposed to cite anything from the New York Times. It's, it's a rag and indeed, I believe it is an incredibly biased newspaper, but they actually write news and, and if you want to know what's going on in the world, there's very few sources to get that, you just have to discount the bias. But this story is about Facebook. It seems pretty accurate. I don't have any reason to doubt it. It didn't seem slanted to me, but then you never know, of course. So I'm giving it to you with the caveats that it comes to the New York Times and the caveat that I would tell you about any newspaper, anything came from. Anyway, it turns out that one of Brett Kavanaugh's best friends, one of Brett Kavanaugh's best friends is a guy named Joe Kaplan. And Joe Kaplan is Facebook's vice president for global public policy. And he is a Republican and he sits in Washington, D.C. and he's responsible for global public policy. So much for the, for the idea that Facebook is only has leftists in need. Joe Kaplan was hired in 2011 partially to establish some balance. So they hired somebody from the Republican Party to kind of eliminate the suspicions, not eliminate, but, but quiet down the suspicions that they were dominated by, by leftists. Anyway, Joe Kaplan is, turns out, has known Brett Kavanaugh for many years in Washington, D.C. I think they served in the Bush administration together. And he is a very senior person at Facebook, although he works in the D.C. office, not in the, it's interesting how all these companies have D.C. offices. Just an aside, we're going to take a quick aside here. Why do all the tech companies have D.C. offices? And I don't know if that Apple does, but Google does and Facebook does. Apple probably does. Why? Well, it's a famous story. You probably heard me tell it many times before. But the famous story of Microsoft in the mid 1990s and Microsoft in the mid 1990s had no Washington office and Microsoft in the 1990s paid, they spend no money on, what do you call it, on lobbying. Had no lawyers in, in D.C. nothing. Right. And they were literally bought in front of Congress and are in Hatch, the Republican from Utah stood up and yelled at them. You guys have got to get involved in Washington, D.C. You've got to open offices in here. You've got to do, you've got to act, you've got to be in D.C. And Microsoft just sponsored that meeting was, no, we're not interested. You've got nothing to give us. You leave us alone. We'll leave you alone. We're just going to leave it at that. And they walked out. And of course, you all know the story. A few months later, knock, knock, knock at Microsoft's door. We are here from the Justice Department. We're going to go after you for antitrust because you did to offer a product for free, for free, bundling. You bundled Internet Explorer with, with, with Windows. And Netscape doesn't like that because at the time we were all paying 75 bucks for Netscape. So, you know, and I won't go through the whole story. My Microsoft suffered through the, through the court system and then regulators in-house at Microsoft are proving deals for about 10 years, destroyed the company. At what was the lesson learned? Well, the lesson learned from Microsoft was you've got to be in D.C. They spent tens of millions of dollars today. They've got a beautiful building in D.C. They've got a lot of staff in D.C. And of course, Facebook and Google and the others know this and saw this and experiment. And we're looking from the sideline and they found their beginning have had offices in D.C. Now you might say, Oh, there are cronies. We hate those Silicon Valley companies. No, they just trying to survive. What are they supposed to do? They saw what happened to Microsoft and now they're trying to survive. It's an act of self-defense. Anyway, so Joe Kaplan is the lobbyist and chief, if you will. Global public policy is his title, Vice President for Global and he, he's a friend of Kavanaugh and during Kavanaugh's he sat like two rows behind Kavanaugh and was clearly visible on TV screens. And this became a big deal at Facebook. As the, you know, Facebook employees. What is a, what is a senior official from Facebook doing at Kavanaugh? We taking political sides. I noticed suddenly they're worried about taking political sides on the right when they, they, they so often take political side, a political side on the left. Anyway, there's this massive uproar now, at least according to New York Times and Facebook about Joe Kaplan going to the testimony of his friends. Joe says he's, he's, you know, one of Kavanaugh's, one of his best friends and he wanted to show support. And this is a big deal now. And in the beginning, Zuckerberg has said, look, he broke no company rules. This is, he didn't, wasn't there as a representative Facebook. He was on time off, although it's where they actually took the time off or later wrote it off as time off, but he wasn't representing Facebook there and so on. And this is not a peace people and people are writing and this is, you know, Facebook is, is, this is wrong of Facebook to do. It makes them feel uncomfortable. This is a Snoke flake generation, the nutty Snoke flake generation that, that is offended by somebody defending himself against, against a section of sexual sexual, you know, attack is offended by the fact that somebody might support his friend is offended, but won't work in the same company as somebody who won't, who, you know, who might have a different political view or might have a different view of the events around the Kavanaugh hearing. One of the, one of the guys that Facebook wrote this actually really good email, you know, Kaplan says ability and especially when times are rough, he texted this or emailed this, you know, and he said that we felt it was important to be with them at the hearing to express our love, but then last Friday, let's say, you know, the HR people said that Zuckerberg's remark about not making a big deal out of this basically remarks called stress and trauma and what painful this is the VP of HR. I mean, this is, this is the snowflake generation, many female employees were also upset when Facebook's chief operating officer Cheryl Sandbrook, who supposedly has made women's issue or personal platform and project I'm reading for the paper, did not publicly say something about this. You know, you know, she posted last Friday, she said, as a woman and someone who cares so deeply about how women are treated, the Kavanaugh issue is deeply upsetting to me. I've talked to Joel about why I think it was a mistake for him to attend, given his role in the company. But that, but that wasn't good enough. That wasn't good enough for staff at Facebook. So it's, it's, it's just this, you know, this crazy kind of witch hunt, I don't know if it's a witch hunt, crazy kind of creminations going on within Facebook, people are really upset. And I don't know how many, it's hard to tell if this is a majority of the people clearly is. It clearly is something that is shaking. Somebody wrote, let's say, Mr. If you need to change teams, company is to make sure your day to day life matches your passions. We will be sad to see you go, but we will understand. We will support you with any path you choose. But it is your responsibility to choose a path, not that of the company you work for. In other words, if you can't handle this, grow up. That's basically what Bosworth was saying. And then, of course, he had a back battle. He had a back battle them out there. So you're seeing this, the, and this is one of the things that the whole Kavanaugh thing brings to the forefront, I think. But really, I've, I've talked about many times on the show about this trend in our culture. And that is the elevation of emotions above reason. The whole hate speech, the whole offensive speech, the whole snowflake, safe spaces, micro aggressions. It's all about elevating emotion above all else. What's important is how you feel. What's important is the emotion that is invoked in you. Everything, everything is, is, is about emotion these days. And you saw this with the Kavanaugh hearing, right? Both Ford and Kavanaugh used emotion. It wasn't about facts, neither presented facts, neither presented evidence. I mean, Kavanaugh tried at least to present some evidence in terms of the diary and so on. But, but what he presented was anger. And I can understand his anger. And she presents an allegation and everybody felt sorry for her and everybody, you know, it seemed like a really sad story. But at the end of the day, it was, there was no grounds for it. And now people are demonstrating here on the basis of what? And now the claim is, now the claim is we're supposed to, we're supposed to accept anything a woman says, any accusations a woman says on face value, because she's a woman. And again, this, this is I think related to the whole individuality of the left, the whole idea of oppressive classes and oppressed classes have, you know, their, their words, you know, have more truth value, right? Because remember postmodernism and the whole new left agenda, there is no such thing as truth, everything's subjective. So you have to give more value to somebody who's been oppressed than to somebody who is a white male and so there's no regard for truth. There's no regard for facts, because there's no regard for reason anymore. We live in a culture where reason is being relegated to unimportant. It's relegated to a little bit of science, a little bit of tech, but even the tech industry, you know, look at these people. I mean, I mean, even if, even if everything Ford said about Calvin is true, I mean, get a grip. First of all, this is 30 something years ago. Second, okay, it's horrible. It's not nice, but it's not affecting your life. It's not something you should personally. It's just, it is really, really scary to see people, intelligent people, people who work at Facebook are not idiots, completely break down and and and it's pure emotion. And of course, the leadership at Facebook has no moral basis by which to defend its position. The position is no big deal that Kaplan was there. So it constantly has to backtrack and has to compromise and has to appease the majority. So it can't stand up and say and take a strong moral stance. It can articulate a strong moral stance. It can't be pro reason it can't take a position is even if the position is a neutral position, it can't take a strong, neutral position. We don't have the fact that it's okay to disagree. The struggle today in the world today is the the the battle with the emotion. And you're seeing that in this example. hearings you saw that in the demonstration, people getting arrested and all this stuff. And for for for evidence, no respect, there's no respect period for fact, reality, relevant for for contact, for for what this for what this for reason represents for the mind for for what the Supreme Court represents. And therefore, what it is, was not relevant in in a value of that. And and as a consequence, parts about the ship, about this, this and all of that exists in the context of emotions. I mean, try versus your trial, to your emotions, my fear against your fear, my love against your love. And there's no, there's no talking about there's no facts because nobody's listening. Everybody's just obsessing about the specific emotions that that are that are involved. You know, the people hate Kavanaugh, not because because he's a, you know, some people because he's a white male and they train to hate white male, some people because he's a Republican and people have been trained to hate right, but white Republicans, some people like, okay, one other topic. So again, emotional reason. Let's let's talk a little bit about yeah, Internet, although we saw somebody it this is French Internet, but it's it's a W hotel. It's supposed to have good Internet, but it's not stable. So when I did a speed test, there's enough bandwidth to do up and download and everything. Actually, the upload speeds were quite good. And what we're doing here is uploading. It's the fact that Internet wireless, particularly in hotels, is just unstable and goes in and out. And what you see is sometimes the video is great. Sometimes the video is great and it works fine. And then other times it's just awful. And that's just the inconsistency of hotel wireless connections. Have to talk about Kavanaugh, the Kavanaugh hearings and the Kavanaugh thing again. Tech, Tech, Taco says speed tests are not the same as video. I'm not trying to understand that. I thought I thought video is video is just one thing that travels and anyway, I don't know. Carry the stream to somewhere. I'm trying to get technical advice from my YouTube followers, but I'm not getting I'm not getting anything very successful. I want to talk about Amazon's I don't know if you heard, but Amazon is now paying all its warehouse employees, all its minimum wage employees or its minimum, the people who paid low salaries. They have raised the minimum wage you can get in Amazon to $15 an hour. Now, this is again an example of how politics and business are into one and how politics and business ain't separable. And so think about all the all the flack that Amazon has been getting from from the Trump administration. And from Bernie Sanders, not an accident to both Trump. The about the poor workers and the low income and you saw Tucker Carlson, Amy Peacock was in Tucker Carlson talking about this Tucker Carlson attacking, attacking Amazon for paying its employees too little, right, too little. And the implication was that something would be done to go after Amazon. Congress is going wants to go after Amazon. Trump certainly has talked often about going after Amazon. Now, the flip side of that is Amazon could say we don't care, like Microsoft did in the early 90s, but Amazon also has vast contracts with the government. Amazon's cloud services provides massive services to the US government. And of course, they don't want to have the government pressure them on price. They don't want to have the government maybe withdraw from Amazon cloud services. There is competition to Amazon cloud services. But they they just, you know, the government is waving a gun at them. It's not quite pointing at them. It's not quite pulling the trigger. Trump hasn't done anything. But rhetoric matters. The bully pulpit matters. Threats matter. So the fact that they have been harassed by Trump for all these months, the fact that the Democrat who could pay his employees more but doesn't, all of that, you know, all of that is, I think, ultimately causes Amazon caused Amazon to say, OK, you know, we'll raise the minimum wage to 15. We'll do what you want. And by the way, Amazon said, we are now going to lobby for a nationwide $15 an hour. Because if we're going to have to raise it to $15 an hour, we should damn would like our competitors to raise it to $15 an hour. But then soon enough, it is, it becomes you advocating to penalize your own competitors. And ultimately, this is a game that everybody uses, including really sad and tragic to see this happening. It's sad and tragic to see Amazon playing the game. But on the other hand, you know, what choice do they have? Choice, choice. And that's why once they did make the raise, the only way they could deal with losing a competitive advantage is by trying to get the government to raise the minimum wage on everybody. Right. It's sad, really, really, really, really sad. And all of you, all the people who supported Trump in his attacks on Amazon, all the people who supported Tucker Carlson and their attack on Amazon. Now you get the consequence. You get more cronyism, more entrenchment, more government, ultimately, not explicit government intervention, but implicit government intervention where they don't even have to pass a law. Business already cooperates with them. And at the same time, business is lobbying for all kinds of other things at the same time. It's truly, truly out what they also did with the eliminated bonuses and stock awards to the same employees. So on the one hand, the employees are getting a higher fixed rate, but they are losing their stock awards and their monthly bonuses. You know, is that a good trade off? It's like, I'm not sure it's good. It's certainly not good for Amazon, right? Amazon would above market prices. Amazon cannot pay its workers $100 an hour. Why? Because then it can't compete. It can't compete. So Amazon is in a position where the only way it can raise the minimal wage to its employees is by decreasing their wages, decreasing the, you know, using the bonuses and the stock awards, which is, you know, part of the reason you get bonuses and stock awards is to incentivize, is to motivate. It has an important function in the company. But again, politics and business, politics and business should not go together in the only way, the only way to separate politics and business is to make the people with a gun unable to use it. In other words, the only way to eliminate cronyism is to cripple government. Or basically to limit government to its proper function, to make it impossible for government, make it impossible for government to use its gun on business, make it impossible for government to regulate, to control government. The only way to get rid of cronyism is to separate economics from politics. It's a separate economics from politics. And until we do that, we will have cronyism because business has to defend itself. It has to defend itself. So, you know, it's sad. It really, when I read this about Amazon, it was sad and inevitable because when the right and the left unite against you, you're going to give in, you're going to capitulate. And even Amazon is great of a company as it is, as much as I love Jeff Bezos, as much as I love everything Amazon does. Even Amazon has caved. It's the split between reason and emotion. Oh, those poor employees who don't make enough money. And to think about the welfare state, to think about the taxes, to think about the lack of productivity and growth because of regulations, because of controls, because of all this garbage. That requires thinking. That requires studying. That requires knowledge. That requires reason to emote, to feel. That's easy. That's easy. And that's what everybody plays on. That's what Trump plays on. That's what the Democrat play on. That's what everybody plays on.