S15 EP149: Hour 3 - Weirdos, Normies, Fracking, and AI

Erick Erickson closes Open Line Friday with the cleanest explanation yet of why Americans hate data centers: it is not the water, the power bills, or the fake claim that vibrations cause miscarriages, it is that the arguments against fracking failed while the arguments against data centers are landing, and the only difference is the messengers. The oil men who fracked lived in the community, went to the local church, sent kids to the local schools, and fixed what their neighbors complained about. The AI CEOs are coastal creeps who tell you on camera that the machines will take your job and you will love it, with Dario Amodei's wife and Jeffrey Epstein and The Economist's "labradors for the machines" piece as exhibits. He also takes callers on seniors getting crushed on fixed incomes, Social Security reform and the George W. Bush plan Republicans were too scared to pass, and the Justice Department's new rule restoring gun rights to rehabilitated nonviolent felons.

Topics:

• Fracking versus data centers: the same earthquake and flaming tap water playbook, why the fracking industry beat it, and why Meta is the only AI company that understands communities
• Dario Amodei of Anthropic, the reported Jeffrey Epstein investment pitch, The Economist arguing humans could become pets to superintelligent AI, and Erick's answer that AI is iterative, not creative, because it has no soul
• Nuclear power in the 1970s as the cautionary tale: engineers made terrible spokesmen, the fear won, and other countries passed us
• Caller Ron in Tulsa on the senior squeeze: 2.5 and 2.8 percent Social Security increases, gutted Medicare dental, a $5,000 dental bill, and why Erick cannot insure three full time employees after Obamacare
• Caller David in Jacksonville on the Social Security trust fund's 2.6 percent return, and Erick on George W. Bush's 2001 and 2005 reform plans that would have doubled benefits if Republicans had not lost their nerve
• Angie Nixon says for profit prisons are modern day slavery, and Simone Sanders tries to hand her an exit ramp on the Democratic Socialists of America that she refuses to take
• The GOP wipeout warning: Patrick Ruffini on the five point Democratic bias in pre Labor Day polling, Ken Paxton losing the money race to James Talarico, and why the DSCC abandoning Florida is bad news for Texas Republicans
• Caller George on the Justice Department final rule restoring Second Amendment rights to nonviolent felons, and why the left wants your vote restored but not your rifle
• Scott Bessent on 6.5 percent nominal growth, Atlanta Fed GDPNow at 4 percent, tankers running dark through the Strait of Hormuz, and tariffs coming off beef and probably Canada
• Penn State's fraternity cocaine ring, the pledges assigned to bag it, the ringleader they call Pablo Pledgescobar, and what the whiteout is going to look like this year