EPISODE NUMBER: 10133 (July 24, 2014)
GUESTS: Elon Musk
SEGMENTS: Darth Vader for President | Tip/Wag - “True Blood” & Washington D.C. Court of Appeals | Elon Musk Pt. 1 | Elon Musk Pt. 2 | Sign Off - Goodnight
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Elon Musk Discusses Mars
SUIT REPORT: Dark Suit | White Shirt | Light Blue and White Stripped Shirt|
VIDEOS: Thursday, July 24, 2014

Darth Vader for President

• Nation, the 2016 presidential election is closer than you think, unless you think it’s about two years away.

• But the race was just rocked by a bombshell poll conducted by statistical savant, and cockiest guy in your fantasy football league, Nate Silver.

• In 2012 when he was still working at the “New York Times”, Silver nailed every one of his election predictions.

• Now he’s over at ESPN. But he’s still doing vital analysis. Case in point, his recent poll comparing the favourability ratings of Star Wars characters.

• Yes, Nate Silver is now officially in a galaxy far, far away from journalism.

• The Star Wars results were then picked up by “The Washington Post” who further crunched the numbers, and found that Darth Vader is polling higher than all potential 2016 presidential candidates.

• A group of broadly outlandish unbelievable characters are less popular than the people from as Star Wars.

• You got Emperor Palpatine running even with Marco Rubio. Now many people expected Palpatine to do better against the Florida senator, but remember in Florida they’re suspicious of anyone wearing a hoodie.

• On the Democrat side, Hillary Clinton is trailing well behind Yoda. Who at 900 years old still gets fewer Fox News questions about his age.

• Now some will say that lumping two unrelated polls together is like comparing corelian apples to mandalorian oranges - look it up - ball’s in your court Jon Stewart.

• These numbers don’t lie. So based on these results, I’m officially endorsing Darth Vader for President of the United States.

• Lets face it, the electorate is becoming more and more diverse, and there’s no question he [Darth Vader] is a strong black candidate.

• He’s got a plan to put Americans back to work with a massive infrastructure program. Plus Lord Vader is a veteran fighter pilot who knows what it’s like to work in an oval office. So vote Vader - Binks 2016!

Tip/Wag - “True Blood” & Washington D.C. Court of Appeals

Wag of the Finger - True Blood

• I’m hooked on the HBO show “True Blood” and it’s all thanks to Fox News anchor Shepard Smith, who dropped a few subtle hints about how much he enjoys it.

Shepard Smith: “Do you watch that show “True Blood? [...] Sunday is episode 2 of “True Blood” [...] “True Blood” is back. [...] I’m telling you, don’t drink the V, come on, don’t drink the V. [...] Don’t drink the V [...] Thank you, Mike, don’t drink the V. [...] Do you not watch “True Blood”, because you can get all amped up on V and do all kinds of weird things.”

• Yeah. All kinds of weird things. Like that one time Shep gave out his HBO Go password and then demanded people watch “True Blood” while holding a knife to Brit Hume’s throat.

• Which is why I am so sad to give a wag of my finger to “True Blood” for making my blood truly boil with last week’s episode in which the vampire snuck into a benefit for Ted Cruz in a transparent Hollywood attack on republicans.

• Well played Hollywood. That is the most devastating critique of a political ideology since Karl Marx published “Das Kapi-Taint”.

Fox & Friends: “Sunday night’s episode of “True Blood” was a Conservative bashfest. But the vulgarity of attacks has many asking did the show go too far? [...] Folks need to understand that TV is all about attitude implantation. It’s all about creating feelings inside of you. Here is the thing, most people don’t actually know who Ted Cruz is. They tend to vote based on the feelings that they have, largely implanted by the entertainment industry.”

• TV entertainment drives our political discourse. Remember no one was talking about income inequality until the debut of “Two Broke Girls”.

• But we should not be surprised at all that Vampires are Democrats. After all, they scream when they see a cross.

TipWashington D.C. Court of Appeals

• I want to make sure I got my plastic tarp down because the next story makes me so happy I might start leaking news juice.

The Cycle: ObamaCare suffers perhaps its biggest setback yet.

Fox News: A federal appeals court ruling the Affordable Care Act as written only allows insurance subsidies in states that set up their own exchanges.

CBS This Morning: Coverage for millions of Americans enrolled under President Obama’s healthcare law may be in jeopardy.

Fox Business: Big blow for ObamaCare, and we’re accurate in saying it is a huge blow for ObamaCare.

• That’s how you know a news organization is trustworthy. They make the extra effort to point out when they’re being accurate.

• Now the last time I declared ObamaCare dead I dropped balloons and then twerked with the Grim Reaper.

• That’s all been done. But like voting to repeal ObamaCare, we are going to do it again.

• And this happy news brings me to the tip of the hat to the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals. You see, in a 2-1 vote the court this week ruled that residents of the 36 states that have not set up their own ObamaCare insurance exchanges cannot get federal health care subsidies, because the exact words of the Affordable Care Act say that subsidies are available to people who are, “enrolled in through an exchange established by the state.”

• And because it’s written exactly that way, the court ruled that subsidies are only available on state-based exchanges, not on the HealthCare.Gov exchange. And they base it on the well established precedent, “You forgot to say, Simon says.”

• 5.6 million people could now lose their insurance because of this phraseology. I believe this is a triumph of typo over intent.

• This ruling is just the latest in our nation’s long history of legally binding typos. Who can forget the brief, dangerous period when Americans only had the right to keep and bear rams.

• As constitutional originalists, all Conservatives believe that when you make a typo, you have to stick with it. I mean why else would anyone name their child, Reince Priebus?

Interview - Elon Musk

Stephen: Now I can’t begin to tell you the excitement I get over the things you do.

Stephen: [...] You one of the founders of Pay Pal. You’re a scientist, you’re an inventor. You created the initial concept for Solar City, the largest provider of solar power in the United States. Space X, Tesla and you also designed something called the “Hyper Loop”, which can transport riders from L.A. to San Francisco in 35 minutes.

Stephen: At what point do you tip over from visionary to super villain?
Elon: I’m wondering that myself, actually.

Stephen: [...] Because the future you’re giving us is the future that I saw, in “X-men” on Saturday night. And when I walked out to my Tesla - because I have a Tesla. [...] And the door handle came out, and I just felt like it was my friend.
Elon: Yeah, we kind of want the car to be your friend, actually. In fact, with the new version of software coming out, you will get to be able to name your car. Like it’s a pet or something.
Stephen: Really?
Elon: Yeah.
Stephen: What would you name your car?
Elon: I have named my car, Old Faithful.
Stephen: Don’t name it Old Yeller, or you’ll have to shoot it.

Stephen: Why is that [reusable rockets] so important?
Elon: The main thing that it is important is that we want to achieve full re-usability with rockets. The way rockets work today, they are single use. And you can imagine that if you had an aircraft or car that was single use. Not many people would use it, because it would be too expensive.
Stephen: This seems to me is the kind of rocket we need to be able to go to Mars.
Elon: That’s right.
Stephen: Because you can’t go there and build another rocket. You have to land, suck some hydrogen out of the water and soil, pack it back in and off you go.

Stephen: You’re the only company actually sending payloads up to the International Space Station, right now. [...] What is the name of the company that is doing that?
Elon: Space X and then - Orbital Sciences is our competitor. For they also take cargo to the space station.
Stephen: So they’re two you are doing it?
Elon: Yes, although we’re the only company that brings stuff back in terms of cargo.

Stephen: How long before you are sending men up or women?
Elon: We hope to be sending people up in about 2 to 3 years with Dragon Version 2, the spacecraft is able to land propulsively and with precision.

Stephen: You recently made all the patents for Tesla available to everybody. So you are not going to prosecute people if they use our patented technology of Tesla. Why are you giving away the store like that? Why are you being the Edward Snowden of you?
Elon: I’m not sure if this is the right analogy, but if we are all on a ship together, and there’s some holes in the ship and we are bailing water out, and we have a great design for a bucket, then you know, even if we are bailing out way better than everybody else, we should probably still share the bucket design, because we’re all going to sink.

Stephen: Last question. You’re a future man. Where is my jet pack?
Elon: Actually if you look on YouTube there is a lot of interesting video.
Stephen: I don’t want a cat in the jet pack, I want to get in the jet pack. Have you worked on a jet pack of your own?
Elon: I haven’t, no.

Elon: [...] But you know, something I think would be great to have, is that an aircraft should have vertical takeoff and landing.
Stephen: Like a Harrier?
Elon: Kind of like a Harrier, but it’s better to move. [...] There is a real opportunity to have a vertical takeoff and landing, with a electric supersonic jet.

Stephen: What is the next thing, what are going to blow my mind with?
Elon: Well, what do you wish there was?
Stephen: I wish there weren’t any cables. I wish that computers didn’t have to be typed into. I think the mouse on the keyboard is terrible. It’s a terrible interface, that I should have a relationship with the machine and I would have a discussion of my needs and it would do it.
Elon: … right.