Israel to Bomb Iran Nothing to See Here Folks Just Shooting Moose...

00:02 held captive by the invisible bars of the cage we call Gitmo Nation. Stranded at the outer markers of society, this is no agenda. Coming to you from the United Kingdom where the Atlantic storms have wreaked havoc on this tiny island, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. DeVoreg here in Northern Silicon Valley, otherwise known as Gitmo West or East Nation, depending on the way you're coming. Which direction you're headed, exactly. It apparently makes no difference. But it's boiling hot here, so I'm not complaining about the weather, that's for sure. Well, I am complaining about the weather, not to mention it. But that's because I made you turn off the fans and all of your cooling equipment so we could have a decent sound from you.

00:44 Yeah, well, you know, it'll be fine for a while. We've had a hot spell here. Yeah, well, it's been absolutely horrendous here and they're calling it the Atlantic storms. This is based on those hurricanes that we're getting down in Florida? Yeah, they don't even actually explain what they're basing it on, but I think that's the general idea. Of course, any storm that's coming off from the West is by definition going to be an Atlantic storm. But yeah, I think, you know, how can it not be related? There's, what is it now, four hurricanes that have been hanging around there? Yeah, they're pounding them.

01:21 You know, last year, was it last year, they had no hurricanes? Yeah. And then I think the, maybe, I don't know, when was, uh, I think since Katrina there's really been not much action and now we're having like a slew of them again. This is all random number theory. These things come in bunches. Meanwhile, there's lots of earthquakes going on. China had another major one, Myanmar, or Burma had another major earthquake. And my wife tracks these things. She actually looks daily. I do too. She tracks hurricanes or earthquakes? Earthquakes. Yeah. Now there's the USGC or whatever it is. USGS. USGS. Yeah, they have a website and they give you the depth and they give you Google Earth mappings. It's very cool.

02:07 Yeah, and they show patterns. I mean, there's like hundreds every day that are, you know, you wouldn't know if you're sitting on them. But there's a whole slew of them that constantly take place and there are patterns. And she's actually predicted two or three of the ones that hit later. Really? Yeah, she says that, you know, there's a pattern of this and she knows what if you keep, I guess if you look at earthquake data, every day for like 30 years. Yeah, you start to develop some neural network intelligence, I guess. Yeah, and you get, oh, this is interesting, this isn't usual, something that means something's gonna happen, and then it happens, and then you get a feeling for where it's gonna happen. She's pretty good.

02:47 Well, Patricia, she's worried of course about a whopper. The Pacific Northwest gets hit. The Pacific Northwest has earthquakes, but they don't have very many. They don't have them like in California. We have them routinely. We'll have an earthquake once in a while. And you feel it, and it's not a big deal. But in the Pacific Northwest, nobody's used to them. And when they have them, they have whoppers. There was a couple really big ones off Vancouver Island. Right. Like, uh, like, you know, for a whole week. And, uh, actually Patricia had some kind of vision. She said, Carmel, Carmel, California. I'm like, you mean like where Clint Eastwood's the mayor? She said, yeah, yeah, I'm getting something through about Carmel. I don't know, I don't know if you're gonna... So you're not the only one in the house. That's interesting. But she's legit, dude. Patricia's for real.

03:41 Well, we'll keep an eye on that. But Carmel's got no big buildings or anything. If they had an earthquake, all it'd do is knock over trinkets from the various stores selling junk. Well, maybe she was just talking about the location of some kind of big earthquake. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't an earthquake at all. Maybe it's something completely unrelated. I don't know. But I did go immediately to my seismology data. Let me see what's going on there around Carmel. I have a vision about Carmel. I sense there's going to be a slew of golfers. Have you ever really been there? I mean, I went through with Ron and I and Patricia and Marta. We went to one of those Kleiner Perkins off sites at Pebble Beach. On the way back, we stopped at Carmel. It's like Stepford Wives. It's really quite frightening. It's a cute little town. It's too clean, too pristine. Everything's measured and proper.

04:40 It's like the entire town knows what it is. It's a tourist trap. And that's what they do. Unlike a lot of these little towns, I don't know what they're up to because they have corrupt governments. Yeah, Carmel is clean. So I got a word for you, John, for this week. A new word. Gazundering. Is that a real word? Well, it's a word that the Financial Times uses. It's the counterpart to gazumping. That's a real word? I don't know if it's in the dictionary, but it's a word that's used quite regularly and both of them have to do with the housing market. So, gazumping, which I learned a couple years ago as we were looking for a property here.

05:30 Because there's no such thing as a property being an escrow in the UK. You literally exchange money and title on the same day and it could break, you know, 30 seconds before the deal it could fall apart. Yeah, I mean it's a very, very weird system. So there's no concept of a home being an escrow. and what uh... was happening during the housing boom is you know you'd make a deal with uh... with someone who's selling and then you didn't know you'd agree on a closing date and then someone else who come behind your back and gazamp you and hand you know like an extra fifty grand under the table or just above board on the price you know that's called a kazump now they have something called a gazunder gazundering where uh...

06:16 people are desperately trying to sell their houses and so let's say you have your house and this is happening certainly with higher priced properties but also just across the board. So let's say you have a house on the market for $500,000. Someone will say, okay I'm going to buy your house. Will you agree upon the $500,000? And then just before they're at closing they'll say, well you know really we're really only going to offer $400,000. And then basically you can take it or leave it at that minute. And this is running rampant, up to 30% is being underbid and people are taking it. Huh. What gets me about the whole thing is the

06:57 fact that the that that we're in a situation in California where all our prices are down about 25% and At least and you know, it's probably I still think it's bottoming out right now Do you feel that bottom John? Do you feel Dow 10,000 coming my friend? I can feel it and you can feel it in your butt. Not yet. It's still a big gaping hole Yeah, just got 60 more days and then they starts to go up. Okay, all right elections over. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get into that Tell me about the housing. So what gets me is that all these people that you know during the housing boom, they're all standing in line, they're over bidding, they're going crazy. Houses are on the market for two minutes and then they're over bid and you know everybody just needs you know there's just they go nuts. The market turns around, these same people are still looking for places to live, they pull out of the market.

07:50 Yeah. Why do people, of course, you know, this is a stupid question because we know the answer, but it's interesting, you know, herd mentality. When you have a buyer's market, the buyers, they all disappear. And when you have a seller's market, those buyers are flocking to get screwed, to get fleeced. It's almost as though everybody wants to get, you know, ripped off. It's unbelievable to me. So right now you should be buying property right now as we speak. No, I think there's still a good six months to go before you even start looking. This is going to go so much further. That's way too early. You have a place. I'm talking about people that haven't got a place, you're looking for a place. You not only have a good price, you have good prices right now, but your selection, you have a selection. You can get the house you want, not just any old place. Right. It doesn't make sense to me that now is a time, you don't have a place, you've been looking for a place,

08:42 You know, but now it's hard to get a mortgage, John. Yeah, I know the mortgage thing is a problem, but if you do, you can still get a mortgage. It's not as though there are no, there's no such thing as mortgages. No, but you know, it's like most people are up to their neck and trying to get rid of their, their, I mean, how many people have no mortgage, no debts and are looking for something and can actually get a mortgage? What's that market got to be today? Huge. No, please. I'm just saying, right now you have a selection, it's casual, you can get anything you want. I just don't, nobody even cares. They're just gonna wait until there's nothing left, when it picks back up and everything's going up again, then they're gonna get in and they're gonna get, it's just baffling to me. You know, my motto, buy low, sell high. Yeah, but we're not at low yet. We're not there yet. Well, you don't have to be at the dead low. Well, it'd be nice. It's too hard to pick.

09:38 Yeah. Well, you know, obviously this whole thing was not... That's what everybody's doing, by the way. That's what they all think, and they're all, they're all, I'll just wait till it gets to the bottom. You don't know what the bottom is. The bottom could be yesterday. By the way, we should thank Bubba Martin for doing our show notes. We haven't thanked him for a while. And now he mentions this every once in a while with his feelings. You guys aren't mentioning me. You're not mentioning me! That's on the devoreact.org slash cage match. You should go there and he's actually getting about half a million page views a month on that site now. Yeah, it's doing alright.

10:13 Yeah, it's amazing. So the reason why I say we're not at the bottom, John, is this is, you know, this weekend, you know what's taking place as we speak. The US government is putting together the bailout for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and that'll all be announced on Monday. And then we're going to see maybe kind of the direction of where the bottom is. This is, I mean, this is so big. And, you know, please, let's just not mention the 800 trillion dollars of derivatives. That's gonna start unwinding. You watch. Well, you know, this already, I think a lot of it already has unwound. No way, not the derivatives. That has not unwound at all. Well, I do, yeah, well, no, I mean the markets, yeah, the derivatives thing is an issue. John, 800 trillion dollars, yeah, that's an issue. It's huge.

11:06 Yeah, you know, I'm so out of anything that has anything to do with stocks. At least the oil is falling like a rock. Yeah. Ah, gee, that, really noticed that at the pump. Not. I have. My local gas station right around the corner has been going down 5 cents, has been going down a nickel a day. Really? What's it at now? Every day it goes down a nickel. What's it at now? What's it at? What's a gallon? Right now, of premium, the most expensive obviously, I can get for $4.03. Okay. Down from $4.90. Jeez Louise. I suspect by the end, by the time we do the show next week it'll be under four bucks and then it'll be down back to where it belongs. Well, it's never going to get to the course, the whole joke is it never goes back to where it started. But I think it'll be around $290 probably within six months. Hmm, okay. $325 maybe. Yeah, I'm just doing a comparison here. It's all messed up because now the pound is so weak all of a sudden.

12:13 Yeah, as expected. Yeah, like 10%. Well yeah, I guess you're right. But now China's out of money. Did you read about this? Oh, China's out of money? China's out of money. Start the printing presses, you guys. That's the conversation right now in China because the sovereign wealth fund has been tapped out basically by us. and uh... and so you know that now there's no this calls for more cash in chinese are going to really want to ask what you know we get we got no money so now they're talking about maybe going to the printing press but they are a but they already have twelve percent inflation so may not be a good idea i wouldn't think and there was a good idea

12:57 But it's fun. I think Monday is going to be a very interesting day. All this news is going to come out. It's a weekend deal with the Treasury, with the Federal Reserve, with the two CEOs are already out at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We got a lot of incompetent management people floating around. They're out with the golden handcuffs. Or parachutes, whatever they are. Those guys always make out. Of course they do. So what's in the news this week besides grim financial outlooks? That's pretty much it, John. It's all just fucked. That's all we can talk about here. We just had a Republican National Convention. Did you watch it? Yes, I did watch some of it, of course. Obviously, we talked about the surprises.

13:46 Yeah, it wasn't a great show. It was, and it was of course overshadowed by, probably purposely so, by Gustav and... Well maybe to you guys, Gustav was a big dud here. Listen to how we're talking about it. It was a media dud, that's for sure. It was the Kohotek of hurricanes. The Ishtar of tropical storms. We'll come up with a million analogies until one sticks. That's what we do. It was pretty much Gustav, a lot about Palin obviously, but really in the news now it's all about this country being broke, the gas companies raise their prices between 23 and 30 cents, percent, I'm sorry. There is a real looming food crisis.

14:40 shortage. Oh yeah? Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that the big box grocers can't get. Like what? Like fruit. Particularly fruit. Fruit is getting difficult. I'm not quite sure why. Well yeah, I mean on a global scale I'm not sure where it all comes from, who they're buying from. That's all very confusing but yeah, there's a shortage of it. We don't have any food shortages here. Okay, at least not in California because we grow our own so it's not like a big deal. We're in an agricultural state Yeah, but also just the prices of food. I mean it's all over the papers. You know it's up 50% some categories up a hundred percent I mean, that's that's pretty significant. We don't have that going on Hmm well we do here, and we don't know that but we don't know that it's going on there And you shouldn't care either Screw yeah, screw you you limey's

15:41 huh well that's interesting yeah yeah it is it's uh... well you know ever since the Alistair Darling, who was the chancellor, he's like the CFO, like the chief financial officer of the country. The ex-checker? Yeah, the ex-checker. Ever since he came out and said, well, you know, this will be the worst political, worst economic climate we've had in 60 years, and we're looking at 2 million people being out of a job. I mean, that didn't help. Everyone's like freaking out. Well, that's like these guys who said the gas was going to go to $200 a barrel.

16:17 I mean, what is the point of these prognostications, you know, when it's all just guesswork? How long are you going to rub that in my face? I think we got pretty close to 200 a barrel. You know, it went up quite a ways. I'm not rubbing it in your face. I'm talking about the guys like Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers and all these guys. Well, they're lying. They're probably on the inside. They probably knew exactly what they were doing. You think they're lying to the public? Why would they do such a thing? For gain, obviously. No, I'm not going to rub it in your face. I mean, it's just a coincidence that you agreed with him. But you have a gloomy outlook. I can see why now with these British... We do have the news over here that the British economy seems to be in the toilet, but that's about it. Not too much detail. Well, now, so it's not just... It's all of the Eurozone is going into a recession. That's really what the big deal is.

17:09 and what's, you know, essentially what has been happening in the States has been happening over here. The European Central Bank has been lending banks money for, I don't know, since all this started, 2007 probably, and now the total amount that they've lent out to banks is something like six or seven hundred billion dollars. Yeah, there's like four hundred billion euros. that they've lent out. Now the European Central Bank has said, okay, that's it, we're closing up, and now everyone's freaking out. And that's in the papers too. So yeah, it's not really good news. Well, you know, I don't know. Well, we do know one thing, we do know one thing, we've been hoping, at least the financial people here have been hoping that the

17:57 Europeans lower their interest rates and the only way they're going to do that is to get into a recession. Lower their interest rates because that moves money out of Europe into the dollar, which pumps up the dollar and get our dollar back to where it belongs. Ideally, the euro and the dollar should be one-to-one. and uh... you know it's defected it got as high as a buck and a half as a bunch of forty five or whatever it is ridiculous and now and now there's like something like fifty billion uh... moved out of russia ever since the georgian conflict so that you know they're hurting now they had to intervene to uh... i stopped the rule from dropping well i didn't know that either that's a front page today the financial uh... yesterday actually financial time i guess it's ready to financial time telling him and they got some good stuff

18:43 They're paying attention to things like, oh I don't know, finance? You mean as opposed to the Wall Street Journal with all its features and Christmas buying guides. Exactly. Isn't that a Murdoch property now though, the Wall Street Journal? Yeah, but it was turning into Christmas buying guides way before Murdoch bought them. So I'm gonna put together a Christmas buying guide for the blog. Oh, of gadgets or just stuff in general? Yeah, gadgets. Well, mostly gadgets. Yeah, you know, you know, attachable hard disk for Christmas would be cool. You know, we have a new client. Was it Brookstone? Is that the kind of like the... Yeah, Brookstone. The guys who make the gizmos. Yeah, like kind of like the outdoorsy sharper image is what I always call it. Right, sharper image went broke. Yeah, but Brookstone didn't.

19:35 No, Brookstone's got a lot of cool stuff. They may have a lot of little tools. I consider it less flashy. It's high-end kind of utility stuff. Yeah, it's very functional. Barbecue stuff. Barbecue thermometers. All that really important stuff. Grill scraper. Automatic grill scraper. And they always have a Roomba, one of those cleaning robots. I have Roomba. People who have those, by the way, love them. Really? I've considered getting one, but I always thought it would probably be fun like the first 20 times and then it would break or I'd step on it or it wouldn't work. Everyone I know that has one, they just love them. Really? All this is a rug sweeper. I mean, it doesn't really do much. I mean, just, you know, it's kind of an expensive rug sweeper. Does it clean?

20:31 Well, I mean, how much cleaning can it do? It's only so big. They have the one that's kind of intriguing to me is the one that washes the floor. You know, I'm kind of tempted to get one myself. My floors are always so dirty. They actually contacted me. Remember they came out with their new model maybe a year ago or a year and a half ago? Was that the floor washer? It might be. Either that or it was the upgrade of the original Roomba. And they contacted me and said, hey, this is really cool and you should talk about it on your show. I'm like, yeah, send me one. I'll talk about it. Well, you have to pay for it. Yeah, you know I fuck you. You don't know how it works like a sales pitch You should be talking you should be giving us free publicity Because we're doing so cool. I an ad yeah in fact even giving you one is cheaper than an ad what are you?

21:24 He's with a bunch of... yeah, well that's the problem. Oh, that's going to be the news this week. So it's perfectly timed, of course, on the 9th. Everyone, you know, new iPods come out so the entire world, the whole world press will be consumed with new iPods and the next day they turn the fricking, they flip the switch on the Super Collider, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. You think there's a connection? Of course! What do you mean, of course? No, there's no connection. I like the idea though. Apple's in cahoots with the black hole manufacturer. Yeah, but the data's good. It's the tenth day of the ninth month of the eighth year of the millennium. Whoa, yeah. There are actually two lawsuits. One American lawsuit, one European lawsuit. They tried to stop it. What the hell, yeah? Yeah, and I don't know why.

22:19 because the black hole thing and because there's not enough information, the suits claim there wasn't enough information about what could really happen and they sued under the European human rights laws that you have the right to not being hurt by... the Luddites you have the right to not being hurt by atoms colliding at light speed there's some protocol in the Lisbon Treaty about that I'm sure That was actually interesting that Sarkozy, the French president and current, of course they have the presidency of the European Union, he used the Georgia conflict

22:59 to pimp out the Lisbon Treaty. And in this article that I was reading he said, well you know, we really need the Lisbon Treaty so we don't, you know, stand as a stronger front against, you know, big aggressors and, you know, really trying to turn that. It seems like all of this was so coordinated but the only thing that messed up is they didn't get to ram the Lisbon Treaty through because then they would have had their European army And everything else was, you know, just went ahead as planned and Europe is trying to catch up but they can't because, you know, they don't have all the votes in for this European, what is it, United States of Europe plan. It's just a disaster waiting to happen. It's Gitmo Nation, my friend, that's what it is. The European Army, that's a winner.

23:45 Well, and Ireland was right. You know, that Russia and the Europeans, I can see why Russia's getting a little freaky. They're going to have to rearm and then they're going to have the European army and we're going to be sitting back here, we're going to kind of pull out and go and be kind of laughing under our breaths except for the fact of the mess that's going to end up. creating but we should be or actually we'll probably be egging them on. Come on you guys, you're gonna let Russia push you around? What do you mean probably? Cheney was just, not just in Georgia, he was in the Ukraine. He's, you know, they're building this pipeline that surpasses Russia. A billion dollars... Bypasses, bypasses. Bypasses, I'm sorry, yes.

24:27 uh... a billion dollars is being pledged which of course is all about arms you know so yeah we'll we'll give you a billion dollars which basically a big credit big credit card good at haliburton and uh... you know right going to be must be used by the time of thirty oh nine that's it's like a gift certificate only who's you have to have to pay interest on it well you know will will don't read this will only define print about defaulting Yeah, it's totally, I mean Chaney, the Ubermeister himself went there. That's pretty spectacular. That's funny because we didn't get much reports about that here because we had the conventions going on and everyone was all preoccupied with Sarah Palin, Moose hunting. Exactly, we're talking about Moose hunting and where's baby Jane. By the way, what kind of name is Trig?

25:21 They got a bunch of whack job names for that family. Willow. Hold on a second. Excuse me, my sister's name is Willow. Willow and Bristol, I mean come on, these are hippie names. We have Adam, Tiffany and Willow. Well, Adam is like a normal name. No, it's not. It's biblical. I got it exactly and I got pestered. Pestered to death as a child. I was afraid like, oh, my name's Adam. Yeah, all right. Where's Eve? Where's Eve? Oh, there it is, John. But Trig, Trig is a little out there. Trig? What does that mean? Is he going to be a math major? I'm not getting it. Trig, like in trigger? Trigonometry. Yeah, that could be.

26:09 But yeah, so while you were watching the greatest show on earth, meanwhile behind the scenes Cheney was... stirring up trouble. Cutting deals. Well that's what this whole NATO thing is about. It's not about... well yeah of course if you're attacked then we'll all come to the rescue. But it's obviously about here's the weapons we're going to sell you. We're not coming to anybody's rescue. Well, that's the joke of it. We're not going to go into a war with Russia over one of these little two-bit countries that, you know, borders Turkey. We're just going to make a lot of noise about it. You know, well, I think we should. You know, you guys got to back off. Well, it's all about the pipelines.

26:58 That's what it looks like. But the fact of the matter is, setting up this little conflagration which is going to take place because the Europeans have got to form this big giant, you know, one big country with their own big army, is, you know, you can just see it's asking for trouble. The Russians don't like this idea. Things are going fine. Of course they don't like it. Of course they don't like it. But, you know, so typical. We have our own hemisphere, so we don't care, you know, we'll, we can, we just, So it's really big in the news now about what's going on in Georgia, you know, because again, there is actually some good reporting going on. Proof now, and they have pictures everywhere of US military training the Georgian commandos months before the attack. Two, you know, Virginia-based, not Blackwater, but Blackwater-like companies been in there for the past year. You know, it's pretty clear that this was all set up.

27:58 And oh, here's the best part. So there was rumor of Israeli jets being positioned on one of the two other airfields besides the George W. Bush airport or whatever it is. So a friend of mine, he actually trained with a lot of those guys who do those types of missions. He says he hasn't been able to reach him for like six weeks. No, really. Yeah, so he thinks he's convinced something's going to happen. Well, I told you about the Dutch operatives, right? Didn't we talk about that last week? We must have. I don't know. Do it again. It was the Dutch Secret Service had leaked out and made the front page of the paper. They pulled back some secret operatives from Iran lickety-split because they heard that an attack was imminent. And so this leaked out into the newspaper. And that actually did make some international headlines here and there.

28:54 Hmm. An attack? This was before the Russian thing? No, this is last week. Oh, this is now. Yeah, we're expecting another attack. Well, no, this would be an attack on Iran. The operatives were in Iran. Oh, okay. I'm trying to follow. Okay, so put it all together. You've got Israeli jets, you know, guys. I got a hundred dollar bet with a guy that I said that we're not going to bomb Iran. and he says, yeah, it's a done deal. And I said, I don't think so. I think the Israelis might do it, but we're not going to. Well, that was the story, is that the Israelis would do it with US markings painted on, but like water paint, and then they'd come back to the base in Georgia and they'd wash them off and it would be a big mystery. Just to... Hello, you're bombed to shit, but you don't know who did it.

29:47 So the Israeli bombers are going to come out of Georgia to bomb Iran? Yeah, that's the story. If I'm not mistaken, what do they have to fly over to make this work? Yeah, I looked at that. Because Georgia is up against Turkey, and they're way at the bottom in the middle of nowhere. Now hold on a second, because don't they have to go over to Azerbaijan or... Maybe. Or maybe even the Ukraine? No, the Ukraine is north of there, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, I'm bringing up Google Earth. which will probably fuck with the connection but it's worth it i do this all the time anyhow how cool is it to have a little earth may you can just see all the shit you understand it so much better people should do that you know go go go look at georgia on google earth and surf around and look at some of these places and then you see it on the news you like okay i get it yet no people need to do that did you geography especially in the united states it's it's almost embarrassing how

30:42 People don't have a clue by anything. I mean it's almost like pathetic Guess who we got here? Yeah, I'm zooming George is down. Okay. Yeah, they had to go over as your by John or they could shoot over part of now That's not gonna work. They won't go over to go over as your by John and they give me that's it's George. It's Georgia as your by John as her by John and By ran is right there. Yeah, so it's the next country over so they have the one Yeah, they can go straight from, they could go over Armenia, be a little shorter, but Azerbaijan looks like a good route. Yeah, and then there's, you know, if they can get, actually if they could get

31:28 We can't quite... if they could go over Azure by John and hit that body of water there, what is that, the Caspian Black? The Caspian Sea. And then they could come out of the Caspian Sea and Tehran is right there at the bottom and they could just bomb the crap out of it and then come back and... So it's... But they're gonna bomb the facilities. Where are those facilities, do we know? No. No, we don't. If you go from Tbilisi to Tehran, it's 550 miles. That's a no-brainer. So that's that's why they're stationed there. Right. So I do think they're gonna hit him. Coming out of Israel, they have to go over too many things including Iraq. Exactly. That's why. Yeah. Interesting. But they're not gonna they're not gonna hit, they're not gonna nuke. There's a big difference. Yeah, no, they're gonna just probably do bunker busters. Yeah, because the nukes don't work. You are aware of this, right? Tell me. You promise not to laugh?

32:35 Alright, go. Oh, I know what you're... Yeah, the nukes don't work right. The nukes don't work. October 14th, it's coming. I thought it was the 18th. No, it's alright. By the 18th, you'll know all about it. Don't worry. There's nothing that's going to happen by the way. So we followed up on your flying saucer thing and there's a bunch of references all over the internet including some crazy people that have posted YouTube videos talking about this thing. Yeah, I've seen that. But it's very unclear. It says over Alabama in the southern hemisphere. Well, I mean, the Alabama thing wasn't clear to me either.

33:14 It may not be Alabama, it may be the name of the vessel. Well it could be the name of the vessel, there's also, isn't there a space station? Oh, not a space station, yeah, isn't there a, don't we have an Alabama... Not that I know of. Yeah, we have something. So anyway, this flying saucer that you collect, that your buddy uses... Hold on a second. I didn't say anything. Oh, you mean the ship that's coming? Yeah, okay. Yeah, on the 14th of October, it's supposed to be over the southern hemisphere someplace. It's supposed to hang around for a while. According to all the reports that you get from all these crackpots. So, it's not gonna happen. What are they gonna say? What are they gonna say all these people when nothing comes of it? Oh well. Oh well. I think there's gonna be some good stories about why it didn't happen. Well, you weren't ready or some bullshit. No, I, you know, this is a... I've been following this stuff for a while. This is a pretty strong message that's coming. So I expect something to happen.

34:20 Let's turn it around. Let's say something does appear. What are you gonna say? Oh, it's not gonna happen. I'm not even considering it. Okay, well, all right. There you go. I mean if something appeared I would go wow, that's huh, that would be my reaction. And how do I spell that? Is that G-H-R-M-P-F? Well, who knew? So, okay, I'm looking back at the map again, so I'm thinking what their route would be. I think they'd go over the Caspian Sea. Of course, they've got to go out over the Caspian Sea and then come down. Right. Because for one thing, you can fly low and the radar signatures are going to be minimal and the water's going to soak up a lot of the radar. And yeah, it's perfect.

35:13 But how much does it suck? I mean, this is so fucking stupid. Well, we're not, you know... What? What do you know? There's absolutely no reason to do it! Well, we don't know that they're actually going to do it. It may be an exercise. Just like the armada that is now in the Black Sea for an exercise. Could be. I mean, it's disconcerting that they pulled the Dutch secret police out of the area, but... or the Dutch intelligence, whatever they call themselves. How many guys are in Dutch intelligence? Both of them have been pulled out. There's one guy to carry the magnifying glass and uh... I don't know. Well, there's lots of jokes like that. About the... You know the Dutch Air Force? That they were grounded recently? Not a single plane could fly. Yeah, they ran out of coal. These are the jokes we make about our armed forces.

36:17 cool that's cute yeah, come on, you've heard these jokes, we do this with the Belgians all the time, it's like well you know the Belgian army, they couldn't go to battle because no one could find the bullet you know, the old one bullet gag is being used a lot exactly so okay, what else is going on that we don't know about over here in the USA, because we're more concerned about Sarah Palin moose hunting I don't know, let's talk about Sarah Palin for a little bit. I'm still totally enchanted by her. So the vpilfsite.com, vpilf.com is like buzzing. Yeah. That was a smart move by that guy. I have to bring it up now. I haven't subscribed to it yet, but yeah, it is good. But you know, there's no really sexy pictures of her anywhere. They're all photoshopped. Yeah, I know. I keep waiting for something real to pop up.

37:14 There was a good article in some, I was going to blog it but then I realized it was a little too much, too fae as it were. It was a bunch of fashion designers discussing the three women in the campaign, Cindy McCain, Michelle Obama and Sarah. And they talked about how she dresses down and makes a point of it and doesn't want to put on airs or dress too sexy she actually dresses like you know the kind of the the on purpose dresses like a midwesterner although she probably you know and they say the only thing that she can do to improve her she should probably ditch the glasses they all say no I like it has oh here's a funny t-shirt Sarah Palin, Bab- Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln.

38:16 So funny yeah, I did catch call Rove a couple times on Fox News man. He's like he is the wizard isn't he he's Kaiser I love that guy Kaiser I never appreciated him so much until listening to him dissecting. He's a deconstructionist Yeah, he is breaks which I admire because he'll take apart. He did a thing on the speech uh... which i have i taped it is my son has become kind of a fan of his two for his deconstruction ability but he took apart i think it was mccain speech and he did it he says he hated twelve paragraphs about this is three paragraphs about they had the whole thing broken down by paragraphs which i don't know how you can do in a speech but i guess you can and uh... and then he talked about what he taught what points he hit when he hit him in what what order he had a man how

39:01 literally did this and how much more he did that indicating that they're going to go in such and such a direction and It was quite it was it was interesting. It's very he's very calculating Hmm. Hey, I'm looking at the at the drop site. Have you looked at that? Not today. Okay drop that IO slash no agenda and there's a San Francisco unions tax a health surcharge on food. Have you heard about this? No They scanned it here. It looks like it's a check for one vegetarian spring roll, one Japanese curry shrimp stir fry, and there's regular tax on it, and then there's a health surcharge of 70 cents. What is that? We support the new union contract which brings better health and welfare benefits and pay increases for all union workers.

40:02 These new and better benefits will increase our cost of doing business by more than $10,000 a month beginning September 2008. More than $200,000 over the whole year 2009. To partially recover these additional costs we are charging a 3.5% health and welfare surcharge on every customer receipt. This surcharge is already being implemented by most reputable restaurants in San Francisco to help them stay afloat in these difficult times. Wow! So in a hotel you're gonna get your food bill, your tax bill, your health surcharge, your gratuity. It's just gonna be half the money is just gonna be in phantom shit. Yeah.

40:41 Well, the problem is that when I'm looking at it, it's almost about a third of what the tax is, or more. Actually, it's more. It looks like about 40% of the tax. I mean, it looks like whatever the tax is, another 40%. 40% of that would be the health surcharges. It should be a flat fee. It shouldn't be a floating fee. It shouldn't be a percentage. Because they're not paying the workers on a floating basis. There's a flat difference, right? Oh, really? I don't know. I have no idea. I'll have to look into it. You were wrong about... I was calling from Market Watch last week. Market Watch, yeah, yeah, yeah. You said, you wrote that you were wrong about your prediction, that it would stab... Yeah, I was wrong. I thought it was just gonna merely suck. It really, really sucked. I didn't know it was gonna stink to high heaven or be, you know, beyond that, which it, I was stunned how bad it was. Yeah, it was, it was quite bad. And pointless.

41:49 I mean, I think it's an embarrassment to the company to have that ad out there, even though there's a bunch of people that have written comments, oh, I think it's cute. It humanizes Bill Gates. What are you talking about? But Microsoft, that's an enterprise company. That's where they make their money. This is dumb. It's almost like an ego trip for Gates. I don't believe that. It's almost like, what kind of an ego trip? And then he humiliates himself with that clown card? which actually have posted on the blog? No, it's got to be some kind of ego trip. It is. I mean... What does he need? He doesn't need... Gates is not the type of person that needs an ego trip. I don't know him personally, but doing this kind of stuff, you know...

42:37 it's it's not like it's the first time he'd ever broken through the kind of genius boy wall. Remember, we're a lot closer to perhaps what he is like and what he does and what he stands for than most people who are going to see this commercial. Who is it intended for? Is it intended for the general population who's going to make a choice between Windows or Mac? Is that what this is about? And then it's just spinning wheels. It's unnecessary and stupid. He had the The cute little video with Balmer where they're driving around with a Casio song. Remember that one? Yeah. So he already did his kind of like goofy thing and he's done some goofy things throughout his tenure at Microsoft. And he's not even at Microsoft anymore. Isn't he gone? Yeah, right.

43:27 That's what I keep saying every time he keeps cropping up. They ran all these retirement stories about him for a good month before he was quote-unquote retired. Well, how come he can't stay retired? I mean, what was the point of all these media people falling all over themselves to write stories about Bill Gates' retirement, end of an era, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, he's still there. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. But it wasn't funny. End of story. It was like toe curling, you know, just like, ugh. It's embarrassing. It looks like Seinfeld faxed his performance in. Well, you gotta wonder about him and the relationship between him and, what's the guy you like so much? Who I think is probably the real brains behind the Seinfeld series. Come on, what's his name? You watch his show. Larry David? Larry David, yeah.

44:25 I actually find Larry David, I like Larry David, but I find the show hard to deal with him. Oh, no, I thought you liked the show too. I like certain ones of the show, I mean there are certain episodes like the Dead, I think he had some, the Dead Relative show was good. I mean he has occasionally, but it makes, the problem with the show is it's not really written. It's ad-libbed. It's a throw, it's like our show. You know, if you don't like listening to two guys just go, you know, talk about whatever they feel like, then you're not going to like this show. You are definitely not going to be digging this show. But that's kind of what his show is like and I find its lack of structure to be bothersome. Yeah.

45:08 But I like him, I mean, he's the genius behind the Seinfeld show. Well that's what I mean, I think that Seinfeld, although he has a certain type of humor, his stand-up is a certain observational humor, things that make you go, hmmm, which is, you know, and I think that's what he's really good at writing, but then coming to basically a commercial about nothing, because I think that's what they were going for, I can just hear the phone call, you know, yeah let's do a commercial about nothing. But the payoff will be about Vista and I'll shake my booty. They never had a logo for Vista, they never showed what the commercial was about. It was just like a typical, you know, if there was a commercial for anything, it was a commercial for vaporware.

45:52 you know, or false promises, or you know, dead ends. At the very end there's a Microsoft logo, isn't there? I thought it went to black and there was a Microsoft logo. Yeah, there's a regular Microsoft logo at the end. Right. Not only that, but it's a small one. Right. So it's just a brand thing. Did the stock move? Did anything happen? I doubt it. Who knows? Who knows, man? It should have tanked. I didn't say move up or down, I said did it move? I'd be heading for the, as they like to say, I'd be heading for the exits. Oh my god. Yeah, it totally is weird. I agree. Well, it's definitely into the category of what are they thinking? Yeah. Which actually shocked me. I thought they would at least have something that was, you know, promoting a product or selling something. There's one thing I wanted to say about a continuing theme on Twit.

46:50 that I heard came up again last week and I hope one day I'll be invited onto the show so I can actually talk about it as well. How do these guys, and this is about the bandwidth metering and I'm completely with you on just meter it. It doesn't mean that it has to be a bazillion dollars, it should be able to be metered in a reasonable cost. But the... there's such a huge misunderstanding, I think there's enough smart people on that conversation each time this comes up, that it is not free. The amount... the speed and the amount is... it's not the same thing.

47:31 So, you know, when you have people downloading 50 gigabytes of data of movies or whatever on a daily basis, at a certain point you have to get a bigger router. You know, this costs real money. These are millions and millions of dollars for these big machines that sit there at these exchanges and that pass off traffic to an ISP's members. How come that is so poorly understood by that group? It's baffling but now you're that but every time I bring it up I get a slew of hate mail and Twitters from people saying you're full of crap it you know and just like I Basically, even though I maintain this position But I've been as I mentioned I think on a cranky geeks recently. I've been maintaining the same position for the last decade

48:19 I mean, this is not a new argument with me. But nobody wants to, you know, I mean, it's a foregone conclusion. The one thing that's changing is at least people are agreeing that it's probably going to happen someday whether we like it or not. That we're going to have to meter the net. But yeah, I know that there's two assumptions that seem to be underlying the argument against it. One, if you meter the net, your bill's going to go skyrocket. My argument is just the opposite. Your bill's going to go down. Go down, absolutely. Because finally you'll just be paying for what you're really using. What people... I mean, John, you and I were there in the early days when, you know, NOx would get filled up and transit lines were bursting at the seams and the whole fucking thing came to a crawl. The whole net would slow down.

49:02 And this was built with, okay, granted all these telcos got subsidized and they stole that money and didn't actually build out the infrastructure properly and just threw it into marketing of free for all, come all you can eat. I mean, yeah, a lot went wrong there, but it did It does actually cost money if people are consuming more bandwidth. It's not the speed or the perceived size of the pipe that's the real deal. That's not what it's coming from. It's all of these exchanges, well they're less and less now, but it's the exchanges, the peering agreements between them, the cost of transit where you don't have a peering agreement. That's real money that has to be paid there.

49:40 And it's for equipment, you know, big, big, big routers, switches, big machines. I've built a NOC, I know what goes into this and I'm just astounded at this conversation. It comes up every month, at least once. Yeah, well the other thing is of course, and also if you pass traffic through the big giant sites like May East or May West, the big government sites, you actually have to pay to go in and out and you have to pay by the bit. Yes, hell yeah. But I can already predict what's going to happen. It's so clear to me that the big ISPs, the big networks, they're going to start acquiring content into their networks. It'll be available outside, but even just acquiring... So if you have popular content, for them to get that content, there's a cost. It may not always be an actual out-of-pocket

50:32 cost it can be in a in appearing in agreement or some other kind of uh... agreement that you know set up between networks but eventually it's just gonna be cheaper to them without even charging the customers anything to just bring it inside their network or expand their network and and make that big right i don't see that happening across the board but they're just gonna have to go to that model so they're gonna start acquiring these big you know uh... big content uh... aggregators or providers or whatever servers are that I think they're going to want them inside their networks. Now, will they actually know what to do with them? Probably not. Other than, hey, at least it's saving us money. Because it's going to have to come from both ends. It can't just come from the customers.

51:17 Well, at some point IPTV... I mean it's like, you know, it's like internet telephony. Well, you brought this up and Comcast already essentially does IPTV. I mean a Comcast cable box is not receiving an analog signal, it's receiving a digital signal, so it's already IPTV. Right, but that's the... The cable measure. I'm not sure that's true, but the point is that People like Comcast will have a selection of what will amount to IPTV Television that they can meter in you know, I'm not metered the IPTV stuff, but they can they can Segment off like the premium stuff so you can you know order a right HBO movie or whatever? All right. In fact, they have all this pay-per-view crap now all over the place Everybody's got it and that's that's really just interface and it's the same thing, you know, but but true IPTV it seems to me

52:15 is an open network. Yeah, you can subscribe to all those channels from your Comcast, but you should be able to also go to Sweden. But isn't IPTV then exactly what MeVeo is doing? Aren't we in essence then an IPTV provider? Well, I think everybody who sends stuff over the net is an IPTV provider. But the stuff that Mevio is doing is designed to be looked at on a computer. It's not designed to be looked at on a TV, which is what the TV is in IPTV. And that's what I'm talking about. And I think that will never actually work. It will. And what's going to happen is I'm going to be able to sit here

52:55 In fact, I think it's not that far from being implemented. Well, actually in Asia it's already implemented, but I should be able to sit here. I should be, if I say I'm Swedish and I move to San Francisco and I want to keep watching my channels in Sweden, I should be able to go on the computer and then say, yeah, I want to subscribe to, you know, whatever channels the Swedes have. And it should be able to open up a connection and then I should be able to watch it on my regular television set just as though I was in Sweden. No, no, but technically, yeah, but where's the business model? There's no way to do sales on that, so you're going to have to pay for it.

53:31 Yeah, you're gonna have to pay for it. Right, so what do you... so this is... thank you very much. So to see the Swedish chef cooking show, which of course is the only thing of any value you're gonna get... That's the muffins for God's sake. Anything of any value you're gonna get from this wonderful IPTV setup you have in your living room, you're gonna have to wind up paying, you know, $2.99 to watch an episode. And we know that's not gonna work. It'll work, but it's not going to sustain the production necessary to create that type of programming. I'm not convinced of that, and I'll tell you why. A friend of mine who I've used as the model for our discussion about Georgia, who are from Russia, and actually from Georgia, I would go over to their house once in a while, and they have the Dish Network

54:19 like I do, they get the same dish and everything and... Well stop, they're already paying. That's where they're paying for it. So that's done. So there the business model is clear. That's the whole problem. But that's because you're paying for the hardware. So... Well they're paying... I don't know the hardware is free, it's the monthly charge that's... For the whole setup. So you're paying a subscription fee so, you know, the way it works is the swedish company is getting paid a monthly fee from the dish network and the dish network goes and tries to sell that to their customers when you're talking iptv i just don't see that model john i don't see enough revenue to actually create that kind of product you know to be able to create five to eight minutes of uh... an online uh... episodic show it's it's still hard work but it's doable. The show's already produced

55:08 It's local television from Stockholm. Okay, so then... So essentially it's like a sling box arrangement. Right, so how many gigs is that going to be? To watch that in good definition, you probably want HD. Why the hell not? We're going to go there eventually in your scenario. So how many gigs is that going to be? Let's see, HD half hour should be around 7 gigs. 7 gigs, right. So if these guys at this Swedish state-run television are going to send that to you, it's probably going to cost them a couple bucks in transfer costs. I'll pay two bucks. It's not going to be enough.

55:47 It's gotta be enough. No! Do you know what normal CDN prices are before you get into huge volume? We're in huge volume. We've driven that shit down to a nice level, which is, I mean, actually a very good level. It's so good I'm not even allowed to talk about it according to our contract. But most people, if they can get below 40 cents a gigabyte, they're doing really good. So you're talking, you know, three bucks right there just to send it out. Exactly.

56:24 Well, here's another thing that's going on. I was talking to the guy who was responsible for, I have to get his name again, this famous internet architect who's actually responsible for all the congestion algorithms that we use. He says that there's a model out there that they're working on, it works as follows. He says, there's no reason, he says right now the problem which you described adequately is not workable. In other words, why should me, the provider of the 20, of the 7 gigabytes of content, have to send, and say we have two customers, John and Adam, why do I have to send a copy to you?

57:09 on a request and then send another copy. You're about to invent peer-to-peer networking and the proxy scheme because I've looked at all of this. That's exactly what all these huge proxy server ideas were about and they just never came to fruition. It's never really happened but you're absolutely right. What should happen is the content from the Swedish chef should be sent over to Comcast and comcast stores that there and puts it into a this is what they're working on this is how this is the only way it's going to work in their model not saying i love it but the only way they know how to do business and they're gonna start acquiring that and presenting it to you in a different way in their own way because it can't actually and it's not even a copyright thing it's just that an economics thing and and by the way these guys i don't know if they still do but uh... in the early days of the web man proxy servers

58:01 Remember how much trouble they were? Because everyone had them to try and cut down on bandwidth. Yeah, they didn't work. And you know, you'd wait and suddenly you'd have to call IT. Hey man, can you blow out the proxy because I got to refresh this page for a presentation. Yeah, we actually had there's some of that. It's like, it's like that WordPress cache that we play around with. You have to do use it once in a while because you get too many hits and to Not only is it a no-brainer, it's a non-starter. It's not about the technology. We've got the technology. We've got the technology for the program, and we've got the programming. It's there too. There is no way to connect all those bits into a viable business model at scale, right? So that you can actually sustain that type of programming. And even if it's an additional, just sending it out, that's a logistical nightmare.

59:17 Well, you yourself just said Comcast is doing that already. Well, I said I think that they're probably still doing some proxying, but I don't know if they do it on large files. In fact, I don't know if that's done anymore at all because it may just be prohibitive. I don't know, maybe the amount of data is too prohibitive to even set up proxy servers for the media assets that we're downloading these days. It's huge. We're going to have a bunch of people writing in. Well, yeah, by the way, please. for the hate mail you're writing to me right now, this is not like I actually want it to be this way. I'm just saying this is what I see happening. And maybe we'll even get to a scenario where it'll be like, you know, very analogous to the phone providers where you're going to get, you know, if you hook up to a certain network, you'll get a certain package and it'll come with, they're going to do it. They're going to do the content packages you watch. It's just not sustainable for them anymore.

1:00:16 All I know is that there's gonna be a way of my, like the woman who watches Russian television. they get like 10 channels off the dish and they have a different menu. I don't know, I mean, as I'm looking at this going, wow, this is not even, doesn't even look like my dish network. Right, but think of how beautiful the distribution is. It's one uplink and everyone can download it basically from the satellite. It's a very different type of distribution mechanism. It's also not cheap by the way to sustain that, but it's doable. At least it's, you know, there's no real I don't think there's a... well, you run out of channels, so there's a set amount of channels you can utilize. There is a bandwidth issue. But it's for the total offering and not incremental per new audience member. That's really what it's about. This is the thing that people really don't see. And I think Google will do it too. I think Google's totally going to go into the content business, which is going to really mess with their current business model, but they're going to figure it out.

1:01:19 And I think they probably have enough money to do that, but maybe they'll do it during this recession. They're going to get into content, I'm sure of it. Because they've got the distribution, they've got a fantastic distribution mechanism. Well, I don't have any doubt they're going to, or I know they're thinking about it. But the problem is they have to go look at Yahoo, who's been toying with content for 20 years, and it's just a joke. I think even if they could figure out how to get the Swedish cooking show cost-effectively to people, I think even that will make them the winner. They don't even have to have a business model, just make it cheaper to actually distribute it. They're already going to win. Now what are you doing? I'm chewing on pistachios. Alright, enough of this. Alright. I'm going to have to rethink the whole thing. Let's talk about Hillary Clinton. She's dropped off the radar.

1:02:19 Yeah, because she's going to do what she has in the background to sink Obama. You think she's really doing that? I don't know. What do you think? I mean, what's her chances of ever becoming the President of the United States if Obama wins? Hillary Clinton? Yeah. No. The only chance of her becoming President of the United States... Well, there's no chance, actually. uh... now there's one long shot chance here with a one long shot chances obama is eliminated before the before the general election which would make her the i think that the family and i had a chance he says that's not going to happen just now that's the only scenario i can see well the other scenario is that uh... became wins and he's a one-term president and she runs in twenty twelve and and then she's you know you can't get the job possible but if they've uh... if obama wins

1:03:13 He's gonna, whether he does a crappy job or a good job, it doesn't make any difference because he's gonna be the selected, he's gonna be the candidate in 2012. I mean, the last time the Democrats had this situation was when Jimmy Carter was in for one term and then he came, when he came to the convention, Ted Kennedy tried to bump him off the ticket the way Hillary would have to do with Obama because he was doing such a crappy job. And it was not effective. He still didn't get on and they ran Carter again. And he lost to Reagan and that's what, you know, would, so Hillary knows she's out, you know, at least eight years from today. And she's not gonna get in in 2016 or whenever the next one is after that. So she has to submarine Obama's campaign if she wants to be president. If she doesn't want to be president, which seems unlikely,

1:03:59 Then she'll help him, but she's like not gonna help him. I can't believe we're already talking about the 2012 election Might as well 2008 yet Because it's gonna get interesting now we got two months of dirty politics ahead of us It's gonna be really I think it's gonna be just a lot of mudslinging and a couple debates I think there's three debates scheduled maybe four only one for the vice president Which will be the one that packs them in because everyone wants to see you know if this woman can you know and Joe Biden can have a fight because it'd be funny well, and I Want to interrupt you so I totally agree that

1:04:40 And I think, but I think it's being orchestrated for different reasons. I think we are going to see a great two months. It's going to be fantastic television. There's going to be a lot of cat fighting and one-liners and some awesome... We know that McCain has some writers now, so we can expect some... And surely some of that stuff that Palin had was written. I mean, it was... Come on! The difference between a pit bull and a hockey mom, lipstick. I mean, great lines. And I think we're just going to have a lot more of that because at all cost we do not want to be looking at Wall Street or any there's no warships over here in the Black Sea just keep on enjoying the show folks just keep on looking ain't that Sarah Palin cute everybody hey

1:05:26 Yeah, well there's obviously elements of that. Meanwhile Cheney and Bush get to be stirring up trouble. They didn't even show up man. Bush calls in, he does a fucking video conference and Colin Powell didn't show up and you know Cheney didn't show up. Of course he was you know out there making cutting deals in Georgia and messing with Putin's head. That's interesting. Yeah, well they, you know the claim was that they didn't show up because they weren't welcome. But you might be right, actually it may be more sinister than that. Oh, it has to be. I mean, those guys, they love flaunting their stuff. You know, and now with the distraction of the convention, they can go off and do all kinds of stuff. They can do anything. They can do anything. Well, you know... well, I won't get into that. What? Well, you know, the whole hurricane thing.

1:06:18 Well, the hurricane was a yeah. Well, that was a laughable they started that man. They fired up that hard He comes out and he makes the announcement that this is going to be the storm of the century worse than Katrina I know you've actually been they evacuate the whole place. Yeah, and see how good we don't evacuate anybody See how good we done it. We done real good and it's all blackwater John there It was all blackwater guys down there doing the evacuee. Is that right? Mm-hmm Someone sent me an email. I should see if I can hold on it someone sent me an awesome Well, that means it as they evacuated people they were putting bugs in their house. Who the hell knows? That'd be pretty funny. No place you live in New Orleans. Check your house have it checked for listening devices They were placing a thermite

1:07:07 Yeah, right so they could blow up the town. That's right. That's right, baby. WTC7 group, they're working there overtime. Hold on a second. All your houses have been rigged for to be blown up. Here it is. Okay, so here's this email from this Michael guy. And I'm going to forward this to you because it's really too long. And he actually responds to the LA Times photo of the Blackwater guy leaving the scene of the medical marijuana bust. Remember that? Vaguely. Yeah, well it was a bust on a medical marijuana shop and the New York Times had a whole bunch of pictures and one was a picture of a guy with a Blackwater shirt, you know, armed.

1:07:52 And so this guy, he's, you know, he, I'll just send it to you, hold on. We can't even talk about this whole thing, you just gotta read this. You won't believe it. He says these guys are fucking everywhere. Everywhere. It's a good business to be in. And then there's, I keep reading about, do you hear about this Gulfstream that crashed? It belonged to the CIA and it had three and a half tons of cocaine on it? No. There's some good stories out there, man. Yes, but let's talk about Sarah Palin. She hunts moose. She shoots guns. There's no coke on this Learjet. Please pass on by. It's really true. It's really, really true. Well send me the link. It's an email. I just sent you the whole email. It's not the link. No, it's like a personal thing. He wrote up this whole story.

1:08:54 For example, in Iraq, when his company is unloading shipments at military sites, the people who offload and manage the supplies as well as their disbursements to the troops are not US military personnel. These are a bunch of redneck KBR contractors who deliberately lose, steal, and overbill the military. Oh, he goes on to this whole overbilling thing too. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. We're being ripped off by these guys. Of course. So do you find it interesting? I don't know if anyone's ever pointed it out that Blackwater is actually named after... I'd like to find out when they named their company because it seems to be connected to the Whitewater scandal. So you have Whitewater, Blackwater. I mean, it's just like... it's a pun. I think there was a different... there's a different reason why it's called Blackwater. I think I looked that up once. It lists something else.

1:09:47 I love it when you're typing away there. It's eating pistachios, I guess according to this one guy. Well that's interesting. Blackwater.com goes to yeah.com. Can't believe those guys didn't have that. They didn't have the URL? No, they have blackwaterusa.com. There's a reason I read this somewhere. Henry Rollins is doing shows now. Have you seen any of those on Democracy Now? You know, I can only stomach democracy now for about five minutes. Yeah, but Henry Rollins is pretty cool. That woman is so dour. Yeah, her performance, I would say, is indeed... It's like, we know it's all fucked up, but at least I'm laughing about it. Yeah, I know, she's depressing, she's dour, she actually makes herself look even worse by having this... It looks like she never washes her hair.

1:10:49 I've never, Amy whatever the hell her name is, Amy Winehouse. No, it's not Amy Winehouse. It's Amy something. And I bitched about her once on the blog and I got a bunch of all these people writing me, you're just, no, that's where all the facts are. And I have to say, once in a while she'll have somebody on that's just a fascinating interview and they let it go forever. I mean, they let them tell their story. They don't cut them short. It's not soundbite oriented. and you know, okay fine, but generally speaking, you know, it's kind of a crappy production that is depressing. It's not, you know, and it's unnecessarily biased onto one side. I mean, it's very progressive left wing, which is fine, I mean, but you know, it's not objective news anymore than Fox, you know, in that regard. And Fox is more objective, I think, than these guys. You should look at some of the news articles they've got.

1:11:44 on Blackwater, and some of the press releases. Embassy's contract security staff saves Polish ambassador. Blackwater saves 600 lives. Wow, unbelievable. Well, it's a mercenaries. Somebody decided to go, you know, say, look, mercenaries are a good business. Let's start a company about it. You know, let's make you just do it right. Let's professionalize it and let me tell you they're not the only ones and now and as I've been seeing this commercial on television for the past week and It's of a new video game called mercy. It's actually it's mercenary 2 and and it's really weird because instead of a huge explosion like trailer that you would expect they have a very kind of mundane type song and

1:12:33 uh... the words are very freaky of course if you look at it in context with uh... with uh... with images and you know it's a mercenaries in there bomb an oil uh... oil rigs in their you know in black hawk and uh... apache helicopters and it's like mercenary to like you know we're totally conditioning the next uh... blackwater recruits Right, or whoever the competition is. There's probably got to be a more onerous... I mean, Blackwater may just actually be just a smoke screen for some really worse operations. Yeah, I have the... I don't have it here. I had the paper... in the paper downstairs, it had that whole thing about the companies that trained the Georgian commandos. Oh, the company that trained the... oh yeah, the Georgian commandos, yeah.

1:13:24 You know, like the Americans, like us, you know, because they're paid for by the Pentagon. It says it right there in the paper. What are we doing paying for armaments in Georgia? I mean, come on, I pay taxes. I should get to ask. Fucking crazy. You know the thing that bugs me, is slightly annoying is when you hear about the you know the green zone in Iraq and wherever you know these guys are living you know and they have fact that they bring in catering services whatever happened to the days where the army actually had a cook. Oh yeah, you were on KP patrol. That was nicknamed cookie. Yeah, you had KP, you had kitchen patrol and you had to peel potatoes. Yeah, those guys had to peel potatoes. Now they have a catering service that comes in and you know and they have a McDonald's and they have all these different kinds of options.

1:14:11 You know, I'm surprised they haven't got butlers. Some of the top guys probably do, but they're probably not army butlers, they're probably like hired butlers. Yes, of course, they're from the Hilton Hotel Group, of course. But I told you about Basra when I was there, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, you know, huge salad bar. Yeah, it's all commercial. Coke machines everywhere. Yeah, how is this like any sort of, you know, you know, people say, well, we're in a war, we're in a war, we're in a war. What kind of a war is this? Well, it's the kind of war that keeps the economy going. That's, that's, thank you. That's what this is all about is keep the economy going by going to war and then, you know, that's good for a big American industry. Well, I don't know. There's something about it is that there's something wrong with this picture when they have, you know, when they don't have KP.

1:15:19 They don't. I know, they don't have KP, and every once in a while you hear about some catering truck turned over, you know. Here we go, I've got the US Army spokesman said, the goal of the program was to train the commandos for duty in Afghanistan as part of a NATO-led international security assistance force, right? The contractors, MPRI and American Systems, both based in Virginia, recruited a 15-man team of formal Special Forces soldiers to train the Georgians at the Vashvari Special Forces base on the outskirts of Tbilisi, part of a program run by the U.S. Defense Department. There you go. We need to train more people than we should. And they probably had one of those jails over there, one of those Gitmo jails.

1:16:08 in Georgia. That could be. That makes sense. That would be one reason to protect the place. Right. But John, just to wrap this up, isn't this all so fucking wrong? I mean, this has to stop. We've got insane psychopaths running the White House. This shit has to stop. It's out of control. You've got a fucked up crazy Dutch guy running NATO, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. We know about him, trust me. You know, you've got, everyone's going out of business everywhere. We're, you know, so bad that China can't even afford to pay for the wars that we're starting. This has to stop! And it's not going to be Obama or McCain. It has to come from somewhere else. You're a smart man. It comes from the collapsing economy. Is that where it comes from? When the economy collapses, you end up with a, that's just simply what's going to happen.

1:17:03 And then that's all the wars. I mean, you look at the CIA list of companies or countries in debt, you know, we're down at the bottom. We're number one with the most debtors and the numbers like not even close to the guys just above us. You know, if you look on their fact list, it's a really funny thing to look at. You go, holy crap. I mean, the whole thing is it's just right now it's just bailing wire and, you know, and and chewing gum, holding the whole thing together. Yeah. So you think when the collapse comes, which I think starts Monday, I'm gonna set my watch by it. I think the collapse starts... No, you have to have a boom before you have a bust. I keep saying this. No, we're just gonna have a...

1:17:38 A splat. It never happens that way. Well, maybe, you know, there's a lot of stuff that hasn't ever happened that way this time around. So it's all, it's a new game. Actually, you could, that's one argument that there's no defense against, which is if you study all the economic cycles and all the depressions that have taken place, you know, in every century, they always have a different twist to them. There's no two are identical. I mean, there's some similarity sometimes, but every once in a while it's like, wow, how did that, that's pretty weird. Yeah. I think we're going to go into hyperinflation personally. Because that's the only way we can pay off these debts. I think the easier way is just to pack it all in and say, alright, that was fun, we stopped this, reset moment, reboot, here's the Amaro, everybody.

1:18:25 Amaro. Here's the Amaro. Yeah, I guess the Amaro could save the day. No, it won't save the day, but it's like a company going, we have to go into receivership, I think. That's what we need, a form of Chapter 11, and then we come out, except the way we come out is with, alright, now we're all going to give you this new paper, which here's the new controlled circulation of that paper, so we're basically just resetting everything back to zero, and we'll start all over again. That's what the Brazilians did when they went from the Cruzeiros to the Real. How'd that work out for them? It actually worked out very well for them. I mean, now, at one point, the Cruzeiros thing, I have some of these notes because when I first went to Brazil, they were still using these things.

1:17:38 A splat. It never happens that way. Well, maybe, you know, there's a lot of stuff that hasn't ever happened that way this time around. So it's all, it's a new game. Actually, you could, that's one argument that there's no defense against, which is if you study all the economic cycles and all the depressions that have taken place, you know, in every century, they always have a different twist to them. There's no two are identical. I mean, there's some similarity sometimes, but every once in a while it's like, wow, how did that, that's pretty weird. Yeah. I think we're going to go into hyperinflation personally. Because that's the only way we can pay off these debts. I think the easier way is just to pack it all in and say, alright, that was fun, we stopped this, reset moment, reboot, here's the Amaro, everybody.

1:18:25 Amaro. Here's the Amaro. Yeah, I guess the Amaro could save the day. No, it won't save the day, but it's like a company going, we have to go into receivership, I think. That's what we need, a form of Chapter 11, and then we come out, except the way we come out is with, alright, now we're all going to give you this new paper, which here's the new controlled circulation of that paper, so we're basically just resetting everything back to zero, and we'll start all over again. That's what the Brazilians did when they went from the Cruzeiros to the Real. How'd that work out for them? It actually worked out very well for them. I mean, now, at one point, the Cruzeiros thing, I have some of these notes because when I first went to Brazil, they were still using these things.

1:19:09 And I have a couple of 500,000 Cruzeiro notes with a picture of some guy's head and there's 500,000 on there. I would like to get some of that African money that's like this. Anyone out there can get me some bricks of that Mugabe money, I need it for the collection. Anyway, so seriously, I wish somebody would get me something. People go there and they're, ah, you know, I forgot. So anyway, so I'm gonna go ahead So they switched at one point, they said, okay, we're going to drop this whole thing. The banks there, you know, figured everyone got in, all the ducks were in a row and they came up with this real, which means real, obviously. And it was linked to the dollar one-to-one and it maintained the one-to-one ratio to the dollar for almost a decade. Of course, then it all of a sudden, you know, and then it became two.

1:19:56 $1.00 and now I think it's floating around $3.00 maybe or $2.50, not sure. Whatever it is, maybe it went the other way with the dollar falling. But I have to look it up. But anyway, it worked out for them. Considering what they had before, the hyperinflation they were having, at the time was you, in fact they always said do not cash your dollars in except, do it within a couple of hours of your purchase because it was like a couple of, two, three, four, five, 10% a day. It's just the money which is becoming worthless so fast.

1:20:35 It can happen here, it can happen here, it happened in Germany. I'm looking for this word, is some phrase someone turned me on to a while ago, it was like NERAS or NERAS or is apparently some law or some program that Clinton put in place that could reset the entire economy. Have you heard of this? No, never heard of it. Shit, now of course I can't find it. But I guess, yeah, I guess so, the complete economic collapse, but that could take a long time, man, to crawl back. That could take 5, 10 years to come out of that. 10 years. 10 years to come out, yeah. But then, you know, we did that in the 30s. We almost had, we had close to the same thing in the 70s. It took 10 years. You know, you get a lot of good music. The 30s were a good era for music, so were the 70s. And then you have a lot of good movies.

1:21:24 entertainment is quite good, a lot of restaurants open up you know people rethink their lives it's just not horrible but better not to do it. Well if there's going to be a lot of people with no jobs we're already at 6% that sucks. Yeah I know that, and then you have riots which is no good. Food riots probably. That's coming, I know that's coming. Okay, the real right now is a buck 71. So it's actually gone the back toward the right way because of the weak dollar Yeah, that's pretty good actually Yeah considering consider this thing has been in business for a while and they've it's you know It's better than it was with those cruiser rows and the whatever they had to or they I think they changed a couple of times during that hyperinflation period

1:22:18 The Brazilians got the reputation, and people should note this, for having the world's best banking system because the banks had to deal with this hyperinflation thing. And so they essentially are set up to deal with a really flaky economy. And to stay in business, they have to, you know, they have a lot of, it's very modern, the way their systems work. And, you know, I've always thought, well, maybe it's a good, safe place to put your money. except for the fact one of the big banks folded but there's two I think two major banks in Brazil that might not be a bad place to put money if you've got into a hyperinflation situation. That was kind of interesting that John McCain's son was had just resigned two months prior to the collapse of the Silver State Bank. Did you catch that? No. Yeah. I thought that was was his name Andrew I think.

1:23:18 Yeah, I didn't notice that one. Yeah, he was uh... I think he was actually in... He was like a big kahuna there and he resigned two weeks ago. I'm sure sniffing the impending doom. Well, yeah. It's a good time to get out. You don't want to be part of it. Yeah. I'm sure that's not going to get a lot of ink. Duh. No, there's a lot. Actually, the best... Most of the interesting McCain stuff... Weird stuff is all on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Yeah, here you go. July 29th Here we go. On the eve of President Bush's signing of the housing bill this week, which will regulate as well as bail out mortgage behemoth Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and create a $300 billion program to expand the Federal Housing Administration's capacity to guarantee mortgages, comes word that Andrew McCain, son of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, has resigned today from Silver State Bank's board of directors. The bank cites personal reasons for Mr. McCain's sudden departure. Yeah, you think he had any inside info there?

1:24:24 He's getting out while the getting's good. Oh man, we don't have the right connections at all. No, we should be on a couple of bank boards. It actually is pretty easy to set up a bank I found out. Why don't we set a bank up? Let's not. How about just set one up in the Cayman Islands or something? That sounds like a really bad idea. I don't like that at all. Gibraltar. I don't want to be a banker. That's no fun. There's about, what are these, there's these different places where you're supposed to be safe havens or something. There's some islands over there off the British coast, there's I think Gibraltar, there's Cayman Islands, there's a whole bunch of these places. Yeah, but still, you know, the basic business of banking just doesn't appeal to me. Alright, I'll have to go elsewhere to find my banking partners. Yeah, you do that, John. You do that.

1:25:28 Yeah. Alright, we done? I don't know, are we done? I guess we are done. I mean, I think this show was kind of slow moving. There's something slightly depressing about it. I think it's these topics that you brought up. What do you mean? Then maybe you should come prepared. What did you have on your notes? All I had was Hillary conundrum. What was the conundrum? Oh, the fact that she has to, she can't really want Obama to win. That's the conundrum. And the other one, I do have this other note, Obama. Somebody pointed this out because he, Obama did the, the o'reilly show the only i saw snippets of it which took a lot of guts on his part to be honest about it but o'reilly keeps smiling and it kinda one of these slice miles as though he got obama to say something that's coming up next week although it could be just a teaser yeah but i get the sense that obama did something said something stupid but i don't know but the but the thing that somebody pointed out in analyzing obama's uh...

1:26:24 response to O'Reilly, who's kind of a dick, was that if you didn't notice this, Obama apparently doesn't have the capacity to ever admit he's wrong. He's never done that and you won't find any evidence. That's because he never is wrong, man. Are you crazy? He's never wrong. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Yeah, so that's coming up this week is that when he's airing that full interview I've only seen like little bits of Bob showed a little bit of it on Thursday And then he's gonna show the rest on Tuesday and Wednesday I think right yeah, and I'll probably just Tivo it and see what it is It's probably you know I don't know anyway John t-minus four and counting I hope that I get to talk to you next week. They fire that thing up on Wednesday. Oh you all right the Hadron Collider yeah

1:27:15 So, uh... Yeah, which could suck it if it did, if the thing disappears into its own black hole. I'm going first. You'll be sucked in with it. Alright, so hopefully, uh, talk to you next week. Alright. So, from Gitmo Nation West and Gitmo Nation East, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. Dvorak. We'll talk again next week, right here on No Agenda.