0:00 So Kelly's been the one that's come in that this was Sarah the middle one. And so this was this was classic Sarah, you know, so we're out, we're out doing a
0:12 around here at Digital Wildcatters. One of the VC funds had kind of thrown out, you know, hey, we want to cut a bigger check than you need, you know, would Chuck sell some of his shares? And
0:25 you know, we're potentially talking to 10x uplift on this. And so Colin was asking me that and, you know, hey, what do you, what do you think? I said, let me go ask Sarah. So talking to Sarah
0:40 last night, who is a, you know, freshman at Vanderbilt, right? And as I've said many times, she'll run the world one day. I don't know if we go to Freeville, but she will run it. So I call
0:49 Sarah. I'm like, hey, Sarah, we got a chance to sell some of our Digital Wildcatters share might be, I don't know, eight or 10x What do you think we should do she goes? Yes, Daddy, sell 'em,
0:58 and please don't go buy a plane with that money.
1:05 All right, so one week out, the election, one week out. Yeah, ramp capital tweeted out, you know, the best thing about this election is it's almost over and I tweeted back pretty optimistic,
1:21 aren't you?
1:25 All right, so - Yeah, I think there's been some states that have said it's gonna be days, two weeks, yeah. Which is just, I mean - It's been a circus and it's only getting more surreal.
1:40 Remember all of the negative stuff around Bush and Gore and how nobody could count in one day and it feels like we've only gone backwards right apart for the course. With more technology. With more
1:52 technology, exactly.
1:56 I sent out an article or a tweet and I have not read the article because I don't subscribe to Bloomberg, given that I'm a man of modest means, living on a limited pension. But basically, I think
2:11 the tweet laid it all out. Supposedly environmental activists are drafting blueprints, so let's call this environmental 2025 for the Harris administration when she takes office. And the blueprint
2:28 talks about using executive power limit, look, LNG, shutting down energy transfers, LP, Dakota access pipeline, push for a swift end, oil and gas production using special emergency authority to
2:45 bar crude exports, curb US public investment in foreign fossil fuel projects and a federal investigation of the oil and gas industries. approach to climate crisis. Mark, what do you think about
3:00 this? The reason I'm troubled by this, and I'm probably stating the obvious and I'll try to do it with an air of discovery, is just,
3:10 we don't know. I mean, you read this and you go, is she for this or against this? I know she said, no, she will not ban fracking, but we all know you don't ban fracking, right? You go to the
3:22 EPA and you twist what you did. You disincentivize it Yeah, you twist levers here and there so that it's economically impractical. So I don't know, I mean. Yeah, I think what's doable from an
3:39 executive action standpoint or an executive order standpoint is the primary concern because we saw quite a bit of rollback in 2021 in January of '21 when President Biden took office. I forget how
3:55 many executive orders were immediate rollbacks of some things that either related to immigration or other things that the Trump administration had put in place. I think the administrative agency
4:10 aspect of this and the linkage to executive action is probably primary concern. But I also think legislatively, one, what does Congress look like after the election? And two, consider the fact
4:26 that she did cast the deciding vote for watershed piece of arguably climate legislation, Inflation Reduction Act. And so I think from a principal standpoint, forget who said it, I think it was
4:43 Bernie Sanders said, her softened stance on a lot of these lightning rod issues, particularly related climate and energy, as her campaign was getting underway. was
4:57 consistent with what he believed politically was the right thing to do. So say what you gotta say to get elected. Yeah, and this goes back to something that just has really bothered me.
5:17 As much as we hate our two-party system and we hate the primaries and they serve a role, they vet. You have to go to the most extremist part of your party and tell them what you're willing to live
5:31 with and what you're not willing to live with and whether you're gonna honor that or not, that's, you know, that's facts for the jury, right? The voting public gets to decide whether they believe
5:42 you or not, but at least these type things get vetted through. We literally have somebody running for president in 2019 that said they would ban fracking who now says they won't ban fracking.
5:55 There's been no story of, man, I saw the power of American natural gas as I served in an executive role. We didn't have that in California. I didn't appreciate it.
6:07 No story on potentially why you changed your mind, just simply that you did. And it's disconcerting, 'cause this is really important. I mean, this is
6:19 global scale geopolitical lives depend on the United States having access to energy. Right, and these are the things that I think are within our either sphere of expertise or limited influence in
6:37 terms of things that we would advise people to really think through before they go vote. Yeah. It's Tuesday, assuming you didn't vote early. You know, it goes back think I to
6:54 hard push from the legislation to find as the IRA and we're starting to see some early speed bumps defined as the rollout of the charging stations or Ford continuing to lose money in its EV division.
7:10 A lot of manufacturers, auto manufacturers, either shifting new capital expenditures pretty far out to the right with indefinite timelines related to that transition but another hard push here up
7:26 against a set of realities that I think we've pushed as much as we've been able to push either from an affordability standpoint or from sheer physics and feasibility. So is this the time to double
7:43 down or triple down on that if you've got the power to do so either through executive action or through a coalition in Congress that then
7:54 puts more legislative layers on top of executive orders at administrative agency action. Well, I do know one thing, if that does reaccelerate, it's gonna cost a lot more. Yeah, and I wanna be
8:11 really clear here 'cause I am not waving the banner for either side on this. I'm happy to share with people what I think and what I would do, but my big concern here is we're not having a thoughtful,
8:29 honest discussion about this and the true ramifications. I mean, to your point that you just said, if we really are gonna electrify our transportation fleet, that's a lot of money, and we really
8:45 need to do a thorough analysis on payback, if you will, in terms of carbon footprint on that. how much are we truly saving in the way of CO2 emissions? Because you've heard me talk about this
8:60 numerous times, but you, I believe it's Volvo. You can go, one of the car manufacturers did a study. It's a couple of years dated now, but they did a study on exactly the payback in terms of
9:13 carbon footprint. And you can go read it, it's 145 pages. I've flipped through a lot of it But basically they're talking, call it five year paybacks on an electric vehicle being less carbon
9:28 intensive than an internal combustion engine. So an at zero. Yep. Exactly. As a consumer or as an emitter of scope three from an ice vehicle. Yeah, exactly. You zero that out over five plus
9:40 years. Exactly, 'cause I mean the manufacturing process and it comes down to how you're charging
9:49 the vehicle even in Europe where they have way more in the United States. of renewables than we do here. I think it was still a four-year payback, etc. So I just hate that we're not being
9:59 thoughtful in discussing this because look, I get it. Somebody may die from global warming in a hundred years, but I do know that more expensive energy costs today, less access to transportation
10:14 and the economic benefits that that affords in America today, costs lots today too. Well, as you've said, without energy or high energy, an affordably high energy crisis, people do die. Yeah.
10:28 And not to be too extreme. I just think the whole set of plank issues on energy and climate, at least to me, my read of it is they've been pushed way down kind of the rhetoric priority, because I
10:45 don't think, you know, either side is as equipped to deal with the facts and the data. You saw, I think it was Hurricane Milton, you saw Ron DeSantis come out inside off things like Chris Martz
11:01 facts about the, you know, where Milton ranked in the history of land falling major hurricanes in Florida over the entire history, provided the stats about frequency and intensity. And so having
11:14 that kind of fact-based
11:17 discussion in public has been largely missing from both sides. I think, you know, I did listen to the almost three hours of Trump on Rogan. And you're really what you heard is, and I think it's
11:35 an official policy promise or campaign promise that by January of 2026, your energy prices are going to be cut in half. Right Well, how does that happen? If, you know, we continue to, have the
11:52 types of friction and things like electric power generation. And what just is, is really the, the organic effect of, for example, adding a bunch of new generation in capital to the grids, like
12:07 we have an ercot. You know, I don't see how the rate base gets any relief, or the rate payers getting a relief from a rate base that's just valued higher than it was four years ago, 10 years ago.
12:22 And I want to think it's mostly focused on gasoline. And, you know, we talked about it a couple of months ago, really drill baby drill. There's a very low level of understanding about how the US
12:40 oil and gas industry works. And there's been no incentive to drill baby drill just given the fact that there are a bunch of private actors who are placing investors. priorities at the top of their
12:52 list, and capital restraint and capital discipline and returns, that's not going to change unless there is some offsetting and it has to be more than offsetting incentive to
13:08 continue to increase domestic production from here. And it's, as you know, it's a global, it's a global and complex set of markets between crude and refined product, for example. And if some of
13:22 these restrictive measures that were
13:26 highlighted in the Bloomberg piece come in place, you know, the unintended consequence in some cases is prices go up, not down. Yeah. And I mean, I think you're absolutely right on that and I
13:39 want to make sure we make this point is drill baby drill is not going to lead to, we can talk all we want to about how tough the government is if you want to go. well today in Texas or Oklahoma or
13:53 for that matter, New Mexico, Montana, you can go get it drilled. Right. A little bit of a pain in the ass. Got to fill out some forms. Big whoop. I mean, we are not being burdened hugely by
14:06 the government. Now, there are certain things that the government could do to make it better. Federal lands allow pipelines to be built here and there But at the end of the day, I mean, it's
14:20 investor driven. I think just to bring up the power side of it, I think one of the most ominous factors is this notion that an ERCOT is fighting back pretty hard because it's already impacting major
14:37 utility areas like San Antonio, where you have the potential for EPA regs to come and force. normal generation to be essentially net zero at the facility, which adds a lot of capital in terms of
14:55 emissions capture and disposal. And so I think it was the ERCOT president that said, if these regs are put in place, you're basically going to make 12 gigawatts of coal-fired generation in ERCOT
15:10 and in economics. So you lose true base load So what steps in to replace that from a reliability tier standpoint, that's got to be gas-fired generation. But if you're foisting those costs on
15:26 combined cycle plans, for example, then again, I don't see how power prices go down with that type of really changing the playbook Yeah, well, I mean, if I'm advising the
15:40 Trump Vance side of it, I'm not saying drill, baby, drill, and prices all be cheap.
15:48 My whole point is we're gonna put the regulatory environment in place so that the energy infrastructure can be built so that we can achieve the future you want in terms of AI embedded in everything,
16:03 digital access to this and that. If we don't, and then I'd wrap it in national security too, the ability for us to deal with less, need for foreign oil, et cetera.
16:22 Particularly when it comes to the same thing with critical minerals too, I'd be, hey, we're gonna mine stuff here so that we can all have our iPhones that we want without using slave labor, et
16:33 cetera. I'd be wrapping it in that. And so where I would be making the case that it's gonna be cheaper is with availability, Ultimately, the end products will be cheaper. because if we don't have
16:50 availability, it's gonna go someplace else and that gets into national security type issues. I think that's the case that the Republicans could honestly make. So basically making the case that we
17:03 can produce all the inputs to tech
17:08 cheaper than sourcing it from places that have much more black standards in terms of both climate and human rights. The cost, if you will, is human rights, potentially strife with other countries
17:26 in terms of embargoes, it's that, as opposed to I'm gonna tell the folks out in the Permian Basin to drill from oil and that's gonna make gasoline prices go down Now, that may be too large and too
17:45 nuanced. a story to tell, but I think that's the story that needs to be told, because if we're not going to build pipelines, build electric grid lines, et cetera, we're gonna either outsource
18:01 all that AI stuff and - Or we're not gonna have it. Or we're not gonna have it. So got a nice little unexplained outage last night for about three hours late at night. Did you ever get an email on
18:12 what happened? No, never even got a response to my tweet. Huh,
18:18 but you're - I did, it's usually better than my grid. I did see in
18:26 the Entergy Texas Twitter profile that it's only monitored during business hours. And I guess 943 pm. is not regular business hours, I thought. Probably not. I thought utilities were
18:42 247,
18:45 365 Silly me, let me, let me, let me.
18:48 I think one of the most interesting dynamics that has unfolded here over the last few months is
18:57 some of the most influential, particularly in the tech world, really definitively picking sides or doing things that show that maybe cynically that they're hedging their bets. For example, the
19:10 Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, not endorsing a presidential candidate, which has caused a bit of
19:21 mainstream media firestorm. But if you think about the alignment here, and we talked about it in the context of increasing momentum on the nuclear side, is there a force that kind of moves the
19:37 stuff
19:41 more constructively in that?
19:45 I think the heads that they're thinking of is primarily related to those that have been vocal supporters. Trump is the anticipation that there's gonna be a fairly immediate regulatory cost burden,
20:01 timeline burden impact in their favor. And so I don't know if it's more than that if there's some political handicapping that makes it slimed up, I just find it interesting that at this point in
20:18 time, a couple of weeks for the election, we've got old political affiliation or alignment behaviors being broken pretty prominently by some pretty big names. Yeah, the thing I found interesting
20:34 about the whole basis saying is just the ultimate lack of self-reflection I mean, you have not heard one intellectually honest. Democrat come out and say, you know, maybe we just nominated someone
20:47 that's not
20:53 any better than the evil Donald Trump, you know? I mean, there's been no reflection on this. It's been on par with spoiled children. Hey, man.
21:06 Hey, Brax here, we don't know where Kirk is still, but we got Colin. Grab a chair. Talking about your favorite thing Yeah, we're talking politics, so I'm sorry. I know you're sorry you're
21:18 missing. I'm not on politics. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, but this feels like a spoiled child sitting there saying, I deserve 50 to100 million a year 'cause that's what Bezos is having to pay to
21:35 run a money-losing operation so that I can go call half the country a bunch of Nazis.
21:43 Well, I mean, and so I get the whole point of, there's a conspiracy, they're sucking up to Trump at all, but you would think one person would just say, you know what, we're trying to run a
21:55 business here and we're taking half our customer base and throwing bombs at 'em.
22:03 Maybe we should be more responsible than that. I like to think maybe there's a bit of an altruistic motive as well I've always believed editorial boards are fine. I think with respect to political
22:16 opinions, anyone who's credible in journalism and is writing an opinion piece, is writing from their own personal or individual perspective. I think this move away from
22:34 presidential endorsements by editorial boards really separates the institution and ultimately
22:43 creates, should create more trust because they get back to their, again, very naive and probably completely ignored in this whole calculus of not endorsing. But the institutions that, you know,
22:58 50 years ago, 25 years ago, were relied upon as, as purveyors of the truth and the facts. And so the politicization is just arguably lean pretty hard one way over the last 25 years. But if we can
23:15 kind of roll that back and maybe reverse course to where you separate the institution, they gain their credibility back and they start practicing more traditional fact-based journalism Yeah, opinion
23:30 sections are fine.
23:33 But there's a technology aspect, a disruption, obviously, that makes newspapers really bad businesses today. But I do think that you know, the distortion of what the platforms and the
23:46 institutions have been about historically what their legacy is based on, trying to get that back and regaining trust is kind of, that has to be part of it. And in fairness, what happened is when
24:03 you look at the distribution pipelines, you used to have one paper per city, you had in effect three major networks that broadcast stuff. And so advertising dollars that supported your business
24:27 were based on viewership, popularity, your ratings, right? Yeah, weren't you a Nielsen family? I was a Nielsen family when we were young. I also realized very quickly not to write down what I
24:37 was watching on HBO 'cause my mom saw it So weird, but. But no, and so it was based on popularity. So there was at least some market forces to play it down the middle and be fair and be a straight
24:53 arrow. And then when we moved to a world where literally, I mean, us two bozos can go in the air and have an audience, advertising dollars became less about popularity numbers and more about
25:07 intensity And so - Well, you can't watch a mainstream popular news show, whether it's MSNBC or Fox, without every break being just dominated by pharmaceutical. Yeah, it's - Yeah. Us in New
25:24 Zealand are the only two countries on the planet that allow pharmaceutical ads. And I've heard anywhere from 50 to 75 of money spent in advertising is pharmaceutical dollars. And I doubted that till
25:41 one night. I was kind of watching it and, you know, it's, it's true. You start counting the ads. It's a lot of pills. So
25:52 the kind of the substantive energy issues or the energy policy dimension of preparing to vote, I think is one of the most important things And the fact that you raised this Bloomberg piece talking
26:11 about what, you know, really the special interests and the lobbyists groups on the progressive side are getting prepared to do. And some of the, you know, extreme, seemingly extreme measures
26:24 that
26:26 I don't know what the split is between legislative and executive action, but I got to believe as much executive action as can be taken will be taken if, you know, if, if all this. that's alluded
26:38 to going on behind the scenes is true. You know, think through that, because as I enumerated earlier, we've already seen very early examples of
26:51 platitudes and ideals running up against reality of implementation, both from a feasibility standpoint, but also from a cost standpoint. Yeah, yeah. And I would like to think that most people,
27:03 when they get in the booth, they vote their true self-interest. I know I do, and that's not to say, and we've been talking a lot about what might happen if Vice President Harris wins the election.
27:20 I do think that
27:24 you had a three-hour window of time to have a conversation with Joe Rogan. The, really the policy exploration stayed at a very, very high and superficial level.
27:39 like January of 26, your energy costs will be cut in half. Okay, well, give me the basics of how that works. Yeah, no, I think fair criticism of Rogan for that three hours, 'cause I watched it
27:51 too, was he probably didn't push him probe enough, but that's what Rogan does with everyone. And in fairness, I think I learned more about Trump, just letting him free flow, you know, than I
28:07 necessarily do in sound bites of people yell at each other. There wasn't, there wasn't necessarily a lot new there that you haven't heard for Trump to attention paying been you've if
28:17 the past eight, nine years. Although I will say the Lincoln bedroom story was interesting, 'cause I hadn't heard him say that. And, you know, and so being in awe of Lincoln and understanding
28:32 what Lincoln was going through, and you know, it was duly pointed out that it. He said the wrong child's name, it was Willy that wound up dying while the Lincoln's were in office, not Tad, but I
28:45 thought that was new.
28:48 I thought his dissertation on tariffs from the 1880s and 1890s might ultimately be misguided, but at least it showed there's some historical basis for what he's thinking through It's not just
29:06 knee-jerk. Yeah, and there were a few hyperbolic illustrations like the giant Chinese car manufacturing plant that he worried in Mexico that was basically going to put Detroit out of business and
29:24 we'll have 200 tariffs on anything To the extent that there's
29:32 an incentive to avoid that by manufacturers will cite your facilities like we've seen in the past cite your facilities in the US. and employ US. labor, right? I think that's the tradeoff. But
29:47 just in terms of the best ever, the most ever.
29:54 We've all bought a house. Every time you buy a house, your real estate broker is like, Oh, these are the greatest schools. This is the greatest shopping right here. This is the best street.
30:04 There are very consumable, easy-to-translate basic facts about whatever policy issue, particularly as it relates to energy. But I think would go a long way in connecting with, Okay, I get it.
30:18 This has got a pretty good probability of actually being workable. And I don't know that the failure to deliver over a four-year term based on some grand promises ever. you know, really that big of
30:36 a deal. But this is, particularly as it relates to energy and energy policy, it's pretty important stuff. Yeah. We get right. Because we're already on a bullet train to continue to push a
30:50 transition model that has, you know, run into some
30:58 pretty significant points of friction. 'Cause I got three last things I want to talk about just real quick. One, the EV mandates, do they wind up mattering in Michigan? Do you have an opinion
31:11 there? I just think it's going to be,
31:16 over time there's going to be a recognition of primarily just the complexity and the timeline of the infrastructure. And they can't voice that burden on, you know, lower - and middle-class people
31:31 who, by and large, can't afford. an acceptable alternative, although they're getting cheaper given what's going on in the EV market right now. Right. Can't afford all the changes that need to be
31:45 made to switch from that vehicle. And if Ford lost through the first nine months of this year, and Ford's pretty important to Michigan, and Michigan's pretty important to
31:57 Ford, in Ford Blue, which is the ICE division of their business, they made37 billion, and in the EV division, through the first nine months of this year, they lost the same amount. Yeah. And,
32:12 you know, I've said it before, and we used to say it about a lot of things, you know, everybody can hold their breath underwater for a minute, let's see who can do it for 10. Right. And I think
32:22 that is a kind of a microcosm, not only because it so directly impacts the profitability of our multi-year period of. major corporate presence and automotive presence in Michigan, but it certainly
32:38 affects
32:40 the labor force, union negotiations, et cetera. So, Ford's already told you and other manufacturers already told you, we're gonna defer a lot of these area plans we had in the euphoria of all the
32:56 IRA related incentives to go out and do this stuff. Right, yeah. I think the market will decide, do I think those things ultimately go away, you may not go away, but they're gonna push out a
33:09 number of years and there's gonna be all kinds of exceptions to them. And I don't know that it's ultimately gonna swing one way or another, but I do think there was a growing realization when you
33:20 heard union workers
33:24 talk about the presidential race and who they were voting for and historically unions have been very democratic, just the recognition of Trump and the mandates and stuff. So it was more of an issue
33:39 than I think it got credit for nationwide. But again, I'm not down in Michigan. Second thing I wanted to bounce off you, how worried are we about this? And I'm just going to start reading a list
33:52 of things and then I'll summarize it. Ballot boxes have been set on fire in Oregon and Washington, Lancaster County and Pennsylvania came out and said there are 2, 500 suspicious voter registration
34:07 applications. You had a ballot box fire in Phoenix, Arizona. Homeland Security has said there have been numerous ballot box destructions. You've got the federal government suing the state of
34:22 Virginia over whether they can remove people that has self-designated themselves as non-citizens off the voter roll.
34:33 You actually have a lawsuit going on right now in Detroit where they didn't keep ballot box surveillance film. They just destroyed it. Stuff. How worried are we about all these things? And I'll
34:52 even go first just 'cause I don't wanna put you on the spot.
34:56 I don't know that any of this stuff is big enough to actually matter and sway the election somewhere or the other. Just, it's shit we don't have to have and it just needs to either side having, you
35:11 know, a claims of a fraudulent election. Why can't we just put rules in place? I don't balance. Yeah, we have. Same day rules in place. You know, I don't know. I voted absentee one time I was
35:26 overseas. It was in the '92 election. Yeah And, you know, It was a fairly involved process. I was thinking about this morning. You know, it is
35:42 one of the most fundamental rights that American citizens enjoy.
35:49 Should it be as easy as, you know, just going to your Amazon app on a whim, on an impulse buy? Should it be that convenient to exercise the right to vote? Now, obvious exceptions are those who
36:04 don't have access, those who have physical limitations, those who, you know, are in
36:14 a situation over a long term to have to be able to vote via other channels, whether it's absentee. I think the notion of drop boxes out in the middle of the public that are not. obviously all that
36:34 secure in the cases that you went through. I think those are problematic, but COVID really opened
36:44 the bottle and the genie got out and it's gonna be really hard to put back. Unless there is a national referendum, do we have enough support for a constitutional amendment, probably not to make the
36:60 voting process? You know, I've heard great ideas that ought to be a national holiday, you know, you vote in person, if you can, again, those exceptions for those who are disadvantaged or don't
37:11 have access should be made, but the consistency of the process and security of the process ought to be guaranteed by having a sound process and it's something that is turned into maybe too strong of
37:24 a term, a bit of a free-for-all. Yeah, and mistakes are too high I mean, and you mentioned it, it's not just one side. shenanigans. Yeah. That was not implied to mean either side because quite
37:39 frankly, the Lancaster County stuff maybe, I mean, when we ultimately dig into it, it may be trying to register Amish folks. And that potentially is done by the Republicans. So I'm not, I'm not
37:53 busy right now, but I said to myself, it would have been convenient to just go down the street and vote early. And I, I said, now I'm, you know, I'm gonna go back to voting on Election Day.
38:02 And if I have to wait in line for two hours, that's what I'm gonna do. Yeah. Is there not that my vote is going to swing Montgomery County, but right? Yeah, the, you know, the, the issue I
38:14 have is I am loathe to change the Constitution. I mean, the fact we've had the limited number of amendments that we have, I think is a relatively good thing. I mean, you look at certain states
38:30 where anything. Yeah, the Constitution gets changed. Yeah, Texas has, I think, been amended 516 times since its inception on something a little bit over 700 proposals. Yeah, and we're even one
38:48 of the better ones. I mean, there are some states, I think, with even more than that. So I'm loathe to do that. And the Constitution is specific that the state legislatures determine the voting
38:59 procedures and all, but I still cannot bathe on a reason for not having the show an ID. That was, you know, Rogan's talked about that quite a bit, and he described it as his steelman, and he's
39:17 examined it and tried to come up with an alternative to the argument as to why you would be opposed to voter ID other than whether you want to cheat. And there just know Now, the one thing - There's
39:32 nothing within kind of rational boundary of analysis that would suggest otherwise. Because - I did read - Functioning in this country. Yeah. In any transaction or any access to planes, you know,
39:48 to
39:51 transacting with your bank, to getting pulled over. Right. Or buying insurance. Well, the one thing I did read a tweet, and I wish I'd saved it 'cause I want to credit the guy. The guy said,
40:05 Look, he said, It's not ID an show to have should we, agree I, goes. He.
40:10 The problem is if you make that the law, then you start looking at groups you want to disadvantage, ie, let's target minorities. You go to the minority area and you get rid of the DMV in that area
40:26 so that they can't, They don't have easy access to get one. then it leads to all the problems in America. I can't fly, I can't do all that. And that to me is at least a somewhat reasonable,
40:42 albeit far-fetched
40:47 reason. 'Cause I mean, certain groups have been disadvantaged in history and you went after neighborhoods and you figured out how to put an economic chokehold and strangle on them And so, okay,
40:58 maybe that is the case. But at
41:07 the
41:09 end of the day, I still just, I think if you're against voter ID, you just wanna cheat. Yeah, I mean, forever we've had allegedly full access to
41:18 voters or citizens when you need to contact somebody through the Social Security Administration the IRS or?
41:29 multiple centralized
41:34 capabilities that would allow a uniform or knows it a separate national voter ID based upon whatever means you have, you make access and completion to successfully securing a national voter ID, you
41:54 level that playing field because it's got to be equal at the end of the day. If the government can't charge voters, unless you have a voter ID card, and civil libertarian in me is worried about
42:05 centralizing that database, but practically speaking, they already have it. I mean, numerous, numerous government officials say, we got a list of who's a citizen and who's not. So anyway, well,
42:19 it will be interesting, are you going to give us a prediction?
42:24 We should, we should put it on the record. I mean, it doesn't mean you're rooting for it, just what is your prediction? I'm not going to predict the outcome. I do think it comes out to what
42:32 happens in Pennsylvania, from an electoral vote standpoint. Yeah, I mean, it's, I think Nate Silver says, whoever wins Pennsylvania has a 95 chance of winning the election. I haven't looked at
42:45 the state level betting market
42:49 statistics, but you look nationally and the Trump lead keeps growing. Right We have to remember that it's going to come down to a swing state or two, more than likely. That's my prediction.
43:08 You know, trying to correlate with rally sizes and media appearances and - Comedians, Jokes. Polls, et cetera, comedians, jokes. It's just devolved so much into the kind of ugly and - Well, I
43:23 mean, what it comes down to is if Trump in 16 and 2020 hold by about three to 4 both times. And so, the reason for that is you're either embarrassed to admit that you're voting for Trump or
43:41 somebody calls you and you're like screw you, right? And so if he's under polling by three to 4, Trump
43:50 wins.
43:52 The guy that did the polling in the Romney-Obama race, everybody had that as a 5050 toss-up and Obama won by 3. The
44:06 same guy that was the only one that really made that call and said no, Obama's got this by about 3. The same guy has come out and said it's a toss-up race. It truly is a 5050. And so the early
44:19 indications seem to be that Republicans are voting early now more so than they ever have,
44:29 Ultimately, are these new voters that are energized to go out and vote for the Republicans? Or is this just stealing people that used to vote on election day? Yeah, I saw a Democrat rebuttal to
44:40 that where they showed early voting break out where there was a surprising surge in the proportion of Republicans. I think it was in Nevada. And the rebuttal was, we'll look at the registrations in
44:53 this state while registrations don't necessarily translate to you actually going through a process of voting. So I think if it's within a percent or two nationally from just the collection of polls
45:08 that I think are reasonably good, then I think you're right. I think, you know, I think that creates a path for Trump to win the electoral count, so. But frankly, the interesting thing is gonna
45:24 be the House. I mean, I think the Republicans take the Senate 'cause they win West Virginia, they win Bond.
45:30 So, they, you know, assuming crews holds on in Texas, and I can't get a read on whether that race is really close or Ted's just, you know, chicken little to raise more money. But assuming, so
45:44 it looks like the Republicans will have the Senate's just question of how big they get to 55 or they're hanging out at 51, the House is going to be interesting, you know, because there were
45:55 definitely some seats picked up last time, like in New York, the five congressional members in New York that because Lee What's His Face ran such a good race for governor, he had some coattails
46:10 that maybe those coattails don't exist. And the equity markets love gridlock So
46:17 if there's no clear legislative mandate, I think, you know, that's from a self-interest standpoint, ultimately a good thing.
46:29 but go vote, go vote, get your popcorn. It's gonna be a heck of a show. You didn't ask me about my pen. I was staring at it and eyes are up here. All right. Looks like a guitar pick. What is
46:47 your pen? It is a poppy. It is a poppy because in Great Britain, they celebrate Armistice Day, November 11th And
47:01 it is the celebration in the end of World War I. Kind of almost our memorial day. So there's a lead-up period to where the poppy up to the 11th. Yes. Because I've been in London on Armistice Day,
47:13 which is cool, because everybody's got a poppy on it. Yeah. I knew all that history. Major League Baseball, in fact, on Memorial Day has gone from full custom kit, custom kit, uniform camo
47:26 armed forces to now. They just have a poppy on their jerseys. And that was
47:35 Memorial Day's one manifestation of Remembrance Day, which is where the poppy
47:43 originated. So, yes, so I will be wearing it up till the, wearing it proudly up till the, oh, Laura just got back from London and she brought us all. She didn't bring to? I will get a poppy
47:59 for you. I think I have one somewhere in a drawer that I'm emptying out as I move. As you move, so. Yeah, well, we, hopefully we'll have some clarity by the time next week we'll roll around.
48:14 Next Wednesday and hopefully we can talk about it. Hopefully we're not in a bunker somewhere. One thing I would, you know, there's one dynamic here that if Trump wins, you know, he's done after
48:25 this term, Obviously, you know, how does that factor into some of the things legislatively that
48:35 do or do not get done. Which I think is the anti-Trumper's best argument was, hey, because at the end
48:47 of the day, you sit there anytime you hear something anti-Trump, you go, well, did it happen last time? No. But I do think that the argument back is he's not gonna be running for re-election,
49:01 so he'll be unfettered, and he won't have the same type of people around him. He had last time to
49:10 check and hold him in line. I think, I do think that's probably the best line of argument on things. So it will be interesting to watch. If you enjoyed today's show, please forward it to a friend.
49:22 We'll be back next week Hopefully we'll have a president we can talk about.