Obama Armbands

00:02 Balancing the ever-tipping scales of Gitmo Nation from opposite corners of the Constitution-free zone, this is No Agenda. Coming to you from Gitmo Nation east in the affluent suburb of Surrey known as Guilford, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. DeVore. Gitmo Nation north? Or actually west? I don't know. West. I'm in Silicon Valley. West, of course. That's Gitmo Nation west. West. Come on, you should know that. I mean, you know, it changes. It moves around. It's a moving target. It's not going to be Gitmo Nation anymore after the election. Oh no. What will we have to talk about then? I don't know. Probably something worse. No, no, no. It's going further into Gitmo Nation. Could be. Hey, it's good to be back in the UK, back into the news cycle. Boy, is it different.

00:53 Yeah, you were here for a while, and then you came back, and you took a couple of trips. And the thing was, we went, I don't think we talked about Chapeau, which would be our last restaurant review for those out there who hate the fact that we even discussed food. I'm getting so many positive responses to our food discussions, and indeed we have not discussed Chapeau, which I would have to say was one of our better meals. Yes, I would say I agree. And it was reasonably priced. and I got to have a wine that I haven't had for twenty years and I thought... Before we get to that, let's just start at the beginning. The beginning of the end. We walk into the joint and it felt like we had walked in the back door. Because you're literally, the minute you walk in, you're standing in between two tables. And all the action is at the other side of the room. So I'm like, wow, this is kind of weird. I'm still wondering whether we did walk into the back door. Yeah, absolutely. That's probably what happened.

01:54 And we got we got a great seat a little booth right by the window which was nice. There was no It's a weird place There was no, you know normally in almost every restaurant you go to even if it's a little place in in the middle of nowhere France there's a little Stand someplace where you know where you you know to go. Oh, but someone will check your name. Oh Yeah, it's like a podium. In fact, every restaurant has one. Now that I think about why. Yeah, with a greaser. Somebody could keep it in the back of their pocket, you know, the list. But yeah, there's usually a podium and you go to the podium and yes, yes, what can I do for you? Well, I have a reservation for two at 630 Name, Dvorak. Oh yeah, there you are. I wanted to ask you a question about that because I've seen you

02:45 do this a couple of times now, because you always take care of the reservations and you'll walk in and say, yeah, dinner for two or table for two. You never say reservation on a Dvorak. You always say, you know, dinner for two first. I do. Any particular reason? Yeah, I want to see if you can get in without a reservation. Okay, right. Check. I mean, of course I do it through OpenTable, so I need to get those points for the unknown reasons. I'm getting email now from OpenTable about points, but that I'm foolish because for whatever reason I'm hanging out with you too much, you're getting all the points. I should look that up. That was a fascinating email. Anyway, so yeah, I just like people who say, no, no, don't worry, I'll make the reservation for you. So anyway,

03:36 No, I usually do that. I always say, I go in there, I do this, and by the way, I've always done this. I go in and see if I can just get a table. So three, and then if there's no tables, they always say, do you have a reservation? Now, in the case of a situation where I want to get my points, I go in and ask if there's a... It's kind of nice to know if you can just wander into a place. So it's one way of finding out. Anyway, so I go in there and I say, three or two or four or whatever. And they say, oh yeah, yeah, we can put you over here. And I have a reservation.

04:14 and i said it's fun to you know i give my name and then they go back and they check it off the box and you have to have a as opposed to just taking the table because of a don't tell me how reservation to be this reservation still sitting there and with the name of or act on it i look like a stiff so the email i got was open table turns ten plus thanksgiving specials and one k points more points So, uh... I'm sorry, go ahead. Somebody sent me a note saying you get 50 bucks off on a, you get a coupon at all these restaurants. We gotta redeem that man because this is an expensive show. I haven't got it yet. You need 5,000 points for 50 bucks. I'm not there yet. 5,000 points. We need to go to some 1K point restaurants. That's what we need to do. I've only done that once. I've actually tried to slip a couple 1K restaurants in on our little soirees. I don't recognize any on the list.

05:19 So, what was interesting to me was that, I think it was like a family-run restaurant, seemed like a family of, what would you say, Koreans maybe? It looked like it, but if you look at the list, there are two French. François Wu. I'm saying. Yeah. I don't know, everybody there was Asian. We never saw anyone that wasn't Asian. place was packed up and the service was very interesting because although uh... efficient and prompt and attend they did mess up a couple things which was just unnecessary and dumb i had a list of four things they screwed up i let me see if we if we can uh... knock them off first of all

06:08 There was just getting the, getting situated, getting someone over in the beginning took a little long. There was some confusion. Someone came up to take a drink order after it had already been taken. Then we didn't get our palate cleanser which we expressly ordered. Right, they had a, this is one of the few restaurants, there's a thing for people out there who really care. There's a, in a higher end restaurant, this is not a high end place, it's kind of medium. But in high-end restaurants, they usually give you one of these things free and they're called an entremont. And they're a little piece of this, like usually a little sherbet, not a sherbet, nothing with milk in it, but like a fruit sorbet or something that just kind of got a lot of acid. Sacre bleu, mon entremont et mon derrière. It's got a lot of acid in it. It's supposed to cleanse the palate for the next course. And it's kind of a bulky thing. This one costs nine bucks, this palate cleanser.

06:58 Well, I think it would be funnier to have a restaurant that said palate cleanser, you know, and then they come out with a toothbrush. This restaurant did have some gimmicks. But anyway, then they, you would ask for the lamb, I'm going to say rare, and I'd ask for the beef medium. And although I did get the beef and you did get the lamb, they made the beef medium and the, or the beef rare and the lamb medium. Yes, which was annoying to say the least. Somewhat. I bitched. Somewhat, yeah. It wasn't bad, but the lamb should have been rare. Actually, the beef was good because it was rare. I don't know why you keep ordering medium. Well, I don't like rare.

07:49 You ate the thing up like you were just... I'm surprised you didn't eat me, you know? Excuse me, I didn't finish it and I said here, would you like this? I can't finish it. Oh, okay. Because it was just like grossing me out. But I didn't want to say, hey, I'm really grossed out by this, you know, piece of rotting flesh, bloody flesh on my plate. Would you like to harsh that down? And you always would do what you always do. Hey, um... Could you put this in a box for my dog? I really do have a dog. And then put the bread in there. And you're like taking everything off the table. Hey, this scrap here. Wait a minute. Wait, there's a crumb. Give that, put it in there. And I'm like, yeah, put the salt and pepper shakers in there. Go ahead, man. Put it all in the box. They don't do, by the way, they don't do that doggy bags in Europe. No, do not try this in Europe.

08:32 Do not try this in Europe. But I do have a dog. And we feed our dogs, all of them, scraps as much as we can. We make our own dog food. And so I'm not lying. I'm not taking the food home to eat it. It was overcooked. But here's the thing you didn't know, I didn't tell you this. They didn't put anything in there except the one piece of meat. Ah, they didn't put the bread in? You asked, you expressly asked for the bread. Exactly. Ah, what a cheap bastards. They just, I think they just fell off the list. Well, I mean it's just like they were careless. The service was extremely careless. But the food made up for it and what really... the appetizer, we need to talk about that for a second. Appetizer we had, then we have two separate appetizers and then a... I think I had... what did I have, John? We had something in the middle too. I don't remember. Okay. We had some sort of salad or something.

09:33 Yeah, but it was good. It was good. No, the appetizers were good. Yeah, but of course... Apparently not memorable. So the wine though, this was a funny moment where you had found what you would call a gem and I'll let you expand on what it was in a second. and uh... so the waiter comes over and say hey this is really amazing that this wine is on the menu you can't get this anywhere the guy's like alright we got it and then you took it one step further no no the guy made a snide comment no no no the snide comment came after that because he was being nice at first and then he went look I can't get this anywhere in San Francisco and then the guy said well maybe you need to go find a better place which tripped me out and when you're like snap

10:23 You had nothing to say. I didn't have a comeback. Zero comeback. You could have at least said, hey you Korean fuck, who do you think you are? Well, I did some research. Yeah. The wine's not available. Well where'd he get it from then? Oh, it's just some distributor came through town and they sold him, you know, half the wine list, but none of the local stores have it. I looked it up on the internet, as a matter of fact, this stuff is hard to find. It's been hard to find for years. Okay, so tell the audience what it was. It was a Chateau Canon from Canon Fransac, it wasn't from Saint-Emilion. And it was a 2005.

11:04 And so I think that it's one of these that I think from the new owners, I think the ownership's been changed. Although I wouldn't know because you never see this wine. You see a lot of other Francais and Canon Francais, which is a very specific area of Bordeaux that used to be extremely popular, apparently, at least if you read the literature, in the 1600s or something like that. Because it's a little closer to Paris. I've always liked these wines from this area because they have a distinctive flavor that's kind of unique and tasty. And Cannon is essentially the Chateau that they named the subdivision Cannon Franz Sac after because it was so good. And in fact, the wine was tasty. It was outstanding and a great value. It was, I believe, $60 for the bottle? Yeah, it was $60. If we were in Paris, that wine would have been probably $100.

12:00 And by the way, when I say a reasonable price, that's all relative, obviously. And for these restaurants, that's a very good deal because for people out there who are wondering, oh, that's pretty high, I only pay eight. But the fact is the restaurants we've been going to until we downgraded, uh... and we've got to have a time period of my goodness until we downgrade it was like pulling teeth to find a wife under a hundred dollars in the uh... the total bill for this i'd believe was two hundred and thirty dollars about as expensive as the other restaurant with the previous one went to

12:37 Right, which was, which actually I think was a little cheaper and the restaurant, this restaurant, which was Isa, I think it was a little better. And it wasn't like a $250 bill for two people. You thought Isa was better than Chappot? No, no, Chappot was better. I say it was better and cheaper is what I'm trying to get to. and for people out there, you know, 250 bucks this meal had, we didn't, there wasn't anything that we didn't do except that we didn't have any after dinner drinks. Although I think we had a white, okay, we had a- We had a white wine to start with. We had a white wine to start with, a full bottle of wine, and then I think we had an after dinner sauternes or something. Oh, and of course, the pièce de résistance. Exactly. Which just blew us both away. The desserts, I think, did you get the sorbet?

13:25 Oh wait, the pièce de résistance for me was the guy slipping us a sauternes that wasn't the one we ordered. Oh yeah, true. Another faux pas. These guys have a lot of guts. A lot of guts. We should go back there and say, you know what, we thought you were pretty good, but you're off the list now! You're shitty service. Give it a check for those screw-ups. Very cute at the end there though, they give you a little hat of course, chapeau being French for hat and your bill is in there. I want to take a dump in it. It's a hat, it's an actual hat. Yeah, it was a real hat. But what was just awesome was the one dessert that I ordered. When you say hat, do you want to take a dump in it? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, when I saw that one, I was a little annoyed by the service but it evened out because the food was so good and at the end, let me get to it,

14:17 I had a banana strawberry kiwi kind of mashup, but what they had done is they'd kind of floated that in basil oil and it was an outstanding combination. I'm glad you remembered that because I actually forgot it, but now that you mention it, I was stunned by this dessert. It was one of the tastiest things, combinations of flavors. We're talking about classic, like, you know, combinations of like a custard, a banana, strawberry, something else, but with this basil oil, it just took this thing to another dimension for some reason. It was absolutely phenomenal.

15:00 And basil, I associate that with some Italian dishes, certainly more hearty, not something sweet. But when you combine it with those other sweet fruits, it is absolutely heavenly. Amazing. I was stunned. So anyway, that's our review of Chapeau in San Francisco if you happen to be going by. When you go in, if anyone comes in San Francisco and meets you... Tell them Dvorak sent ya. No, go in there and say, I understand your service is kind of crappy, although your food's good. Yeah. Hey, let me take a dump in that hat of yours.

15:38 How are you getting there? I don't know either. I've been alone. I came home. Check this out, man. It's like being on tour. First three weeks in San Francisco, then I rushed back to the surprise party in Amsterdam, then flew out almost a day after we got back for another full week in San Francisco, Los Angeles. And I come home and I've delayed flights and so I'm home late and everyone's kind of getting ready because Patricia, Christina and Dexter, Christina's boyfriend, they all went to Holland yesterday. So I've been home alone for two days. Me and the admin, the stuff that piles up in a few weeks time is just so, not just frightening but annoying. It's like an albatross.

16:24 Like what? What are you talking about? It's just stacks and stacks of envelopes that have to be opened and dealt with. And it's amazing, because when I go through it, the actual signal-to-noise ratio is very low. I mean, yeah, there's like basic utilities, a couple of bills, but honestly, 150 envelopes. And it's all kinds of bullshit that really doesn't need any attention at all, it's overkill. And you have to wade through all of it. Ugh, I hate it. You know what's interesting is I thought this was supposed to be eliminated by electronic email and things like that. Oh, it's junk mail is what you're talking about. Well, it's not even junk mail. It's just the vendors that I do business with, one way or the other, be it the banks, the banks are the worst. They send you so much crap. It's like, no, get a clue already. I'm not going to take the credit card. I'm not going to take your insurance.

17:24 In the UK, is this the same in the States where you pay for the water coming out of the tap and you also have to pay for the amount of water that goes down the drain? I don't know that we... well, there's a sewage tax, but that's... No, this is not a tax. They actually measure... well, they say they measure how much water you flushed. Don't even... you shouldn't have even mentioned it now that I think about it. Yeah. Paying for it both ways. Some idiot in Berkeley will decide, hey, there's a good idea. Yeah. Paying for it both ways. I never heard of such a thing. How do you measure it? Let me grab a bill, let me see what they say. Do they have a meter on your outflow? They have a meter on my ass so they can see how much is coming out. How much farting are you doing? They meter everything for carbon credits. Here it is, check it out. So, services, your water services bill for 15th April 2008 to 2 October 2008

18:25 191 pounds 80 consisting of water wait wait wait wait wait wait wait yes what's the period of time for 191 pounds which to us Americans is about 350 dollars yeah April to October April May June so a six-month bill six-month bill okay in that time 100 Oh, interesting. This is, so they're just, this isn't, oh man, I gotta go check my meter. So here it is. They, this is, how do they know? Well, they basically say, okay, you, the estimate that you use, you know how they do that where you get an estimated charge and then, you know, when you move, then they throw a $20,000 bill at you? So they say, well, we estimate in that period you used 100 cubic meters of water at

19:25 107 pence per cubic meter. Wow. So that's 118 pounds and then they say well since you used 100 cubic meters your wastewater was also 100 cubic meters at 51 pounds, uh, pence. They're just basically doubling y'all this is chicken. Isn't that horrible? By the way what if you just drank all the water and peed elsewhere? I bet I could prove it. I can prove I used that water and I pissed it down someone else's toilet. You've got to compensate him and bill him more. Could be. It's gonna happen. Gitmo Nation.

20:09 Well, that's pretty ridiculous. Yeah, how can the English public put up with this crap? Well, it's funny you mentioned that because The English public has snapped I came back and the whole country is in an uproar I'd already read about it. You know the last day I was in Los Angeles before I got on the plane I was like what the hell is going on? An absolute uproar I'm talking about 10 minutes of A 10 minute long discussion items, reporters live on the scene, at the top of the news, the 10 o'clock BBC News, not ITV or Channel 4, but the BBC News, all of the news outlets were doing it. You know, the BBC 24 News Channel. These two presenters, one of them, well you probably know both of them, one is Russell Brand,

20:59 He's the guy who hosted the MTV Awards, he's an English comedian, he's also in that movie, Forgetting Sarah, I think it's called. Kind of rock and roll looking guy, looks a bit like Michael Butler. Okay. And Jonathan Ross, who is of course, you know, the top talk show host, has his Friday night show, makes six million pounds a year. Jonathan Ross is the highest paid, quote, entertainer on the BBC, and of course the BBC is publicly funded. So people are always bitching about it. And Russell Brand is also reasonably, I think he's up there in salary. But anyway, they made, they did a show together. I think it was Russell Brand Show and Jonathan Ross came on. And you know, the here two guys who probably off the radio, they're really funny together because they're probably really good friends. But then they got together and it just became a trumping, one doing crazier than the other. And they called up an actor, Andrew Sachs,

21:56 who was Manuel in Faulty Towers and you know and so they're just talking trash into his voicemail because the guy didn't pick up and then at one point Jonathan Ross says well and he literally says this he says oh go ahead Russell just you know tell him that you fucked his granddaughter which apparently is true And then, you know, it just went downhill from there, right? So if anything, there should be an outrage because it was not funny. It was just dumb. But this has resulted in a huge, I mean, just, John, astronomical front page of the Financial Times even. You know, the BBC, it's gone too far and this has to stop and Russell Brand resigned. Jonathan Ross, you know, suspended for 12 weeks without pay.

22:42 The director general had to give public statements and everyone's... And now what's happening, they're saying, well the BBC clearly needs more and tighter editorial controls. It's really amazing to see what's happening. So from two ends, one, the public, they're so frustrated and angry that here was an opportunity, I believe, to yell at... Because basically, Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand are public servants if you look at it the way the payments are structured to the BBC. to just, you know, get pissed off like they were bank executives getting bailed out. You know, it's just huge outrage. So are you telling me that there was a pent-up hostility towards the BBC? I think towards authority in general and perhaps in particular people who are doing quite well doing seemingly nothing.

23:36 Well that's everybody in broadcasting. Exactly, but so now what's happened on the political side is it's really being, I can see it happening, they're grasping this. It's like we need stricter editorial controls and you know what that does to the DNA of a broadcast company? It makes everyone afraid to say anything. Right, it ruins everything. Yeah, and so the BBC was just basically You know, if you believe in Omi Wolf's shock doctrine theory, then wow, they got a clubbing on this one. Well, you know, the BBC has been pretty... I mean, it's been a weird operation for the last number of years in terms of its politics. They've been extremely politically slanted.

24:23 No kidding. And I don't know that the public, you know, so we have one of our talk show right wing talk show characters actually is more of a libertarian type, I guess, but who's popular successful is Michael Savage. And he has this thesis that, and of course anyone who listens to the show knows that I, and you to a lesser extent, but you know, right-wing talk shows are extremely popular and well-produced and it's a shame that the liberals don't listen to them because there's a lot of, besides the entertainment, there's a lot of information. There's a lot of learning. Well, it's not learning as much as, it's interesting perspectives that need to be addressed.

25:07 He has this thesis that the reason American newspapers are doing so bad in terms of their losing circulation, they went through all the numbers over the last quarter. Even the Times, everybody's just like losing numbers, like there's no tomorrow, kids don't read these things. And the public is getting tired of it. And I think a lot of it has to do with what came out in a Pew research report showing the, doing an analysis of every story written about the Obama and McCain campaign with a, you know, even though we already knew this, even though there was some denial for a few years and the denials went away, which is that the media is extremely liberal.

25:47 And the Pew Research Report showed that 80% of the Obama stories were positive about Obama and 20% of the McCain stories were positive about McCain. And it was overt. We're not talking about something that was mild. It was overt. up you know positive writing about one guy and overt negative writing you know what I'd call this John because I totally agree with with what's taking what you're saying is taking place and really when you look at it the elite I call them that you know the elitist media and we're definitely Part of us is elitist, which is really West Coast, East Coast. It talks to a very small audience. The Jon Stewart Show has a very small audience, much, much smaller than the NASCAR country and Western media, what I call it, Rush Limbaugh or many other forms of news and entertainment, which is meant for a broad audience.

26:42 as a broadcaster it was hammered into me go broad go broad because you will wind up with no audience and I believe that's what's happening to these newspapers. That's his theory. That's my theory. Well it's his theory too so you're in agreement you guys should get together for a drink. Anyway the point is that you know the public... Excuse me, you wouldn't be jealous if I got together with him and had a drink? Get an autograph. Anyway, get a free book from the guy. He's always giving his books away. So anyway, the point is that the audience can only put up with so much of it because they have an opinion and they just keep having this stuff thrown in their face constantly.

27:27 A lot of it's just BS, and you can tell, and you know it after a while. I mean, you just sense it. The public is becoming more... It's becoming like Russia, you know, where the population before... In fact, to this day, they're extremely skeptical of any kind of reporting. Yeah, exactly. And you know, you have a public that's so skeptical because the media is not really doing its job, it's just promoting its personal agenda, even though they deny it because, oh, we're supposed to be so objective. But the fact of the matter is, you know, it's all, might as well all be like democracy now, where they just at least let you know where they stand. At least they're up front, yeah.

28:06 I mean, it's nobody's fooling anybody with that show. And instead of trying to trick you. And I think the public resents it at some point, or they get sick of it, or they just get tired of it. And I don't know. And the news choices, of course, which is what, you know, if you listen to the right, if you want to call them right-wing philosophers, but the people that are conservative that took over the country for a while. They had this thing, which I always thought, Richard Vigery, who was one of the great direct marketing people, but he does mostly political stuff, in history, wrote a bunch of books. He tells you how to do all this stuff. A lot of people have great skills and all they have to do is read their book. You can pick up all the tips. You can do it too. Vigery says that, and I've always agreed with this, he says it's not so much the way they write the stories, it's the stories they decide to cover.

29:00 Of course. And we run into that. In fact, I have a headline on my blog and all the other guys, all my other editors that blog there, you know, it's called, you know, under-reported news with a subhead. Why, ask yourself why you're reading this on a blog. And there'll be a lot of scandalous and interesting stories that you just, it's almost impossible to find. Many of them covered in the European newspapers and completely avoided here. Yeah. No, it's true and although I have, you know, I'm just imagining a little bit of this, you know, our numbers are shooting through the roof. I think people are slowly switching on to the idea that there is some alternative out there and there are other smart people and we're starting to brand ourselves appropriately and people are picking up on more information and there's more choices, there's more angles you can look at things from so you can start to define your own opinion.

29:54 But yeah, it's so obvious when you come from a broadcast background like yourself and I, when you know how it works. And play the... actually I was talking to Ron about this, because he was showing Augie, his son who's 26, he was saying play the flashback game. And so he loads up Fox News on one channel, then loads up CNN on the other and flashes back and forth with the last channel. and then all of a sudden becomes apparent, hey wait a minute, these guys are all hyping up Obama and those guys are all hyping up McCain. And only when you see it in that context does it really start to dawn on you and most people don't realize this is taking place and don't realize how it really works. You know, the ownership structure which, you know, there's rarely a guy sitting in a room with a white cat going, ha ha ha, you know, turn up the Obama.

30:51 That kind of trickles down through the big lever. Yeah, it trickles down through the DNA of a company and if you've worked in any type of media organization, you know what this is like. Oh, we don't do that here. We don't talk about that here. No, that's not really what they want. There's a very mystical they and you and I've always said who's they get they on the phone because I got a question. No, no, no. Yeah. Yeah, that shit by the way usually gets you fired. Well yeah, that you become, you become the, what was that movie with Tom Cruise that he played the sports agent? Jerry Maguire?

31:26 Yeah, Jerry Maguire. It's actually people who haven't seen that movie you should review or people he has seen should revisit it because it's only for the beginning because the guy's this gung-ho superstar and he decides to stupidly Reveal a memo that he wrote showing it as some of the ways that they can improve the company Big mistake And he's out. Yeah uh... you always have to be careful because is the companies are corporate them in corporate cultures are uh... are animals off their adeptus bills this trade u n spit you out they exist on their own and which he was interesting to me about the newspaper situation which i think is not discussed much but i'd by sure remember cuz i used to be uh... you know here we go again i waited a minute used to be lou grant

32:17 I used to be a paper boy. Ah, of course. And so, um, so was I, sorry, you were, Oh yeah. It must've been the last one anyway. So, um, and you, I was working for the old contributing and I remember the newspaper business back when I was a kid. Cause I think my dad would bitch about this cause he was like a liberal Democrat, you know, uh, union guy and pro, you know, labor. And, um, He would always say, well, you know, and he, the rule was all the newspapers were owned by right-wingers and all the reporters were left-wingers and that's the way, that's the balance that you had. And it could never really, you know, get too far out of control because you had a boss, an owner like Noland in Oakland who became governor.

33:06 uh... that one wasn't gonna let it happen but in today's environment it's like the owners are the liberals the rich you know they're doing a lot of people near the state just came out showing that the especially the hyper rich are all democrats the rich are all republicans and everybody else is a not that is a democrat but that the super rich are all democrats and i mean we can i can name names and so much of their actually socialists Right, they're socialists. They've got a lot of money in there. You know, Warren Buffett's in this category. Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, John Doerr. Right, all of them. Soros.

33:43 Soros, right. A good example. These guys are billionaires. So anyway, these people who own the media now are also, I mean, instead of the, we don't have the balance anymore. In other words, you don't have the owner who says, well, I don't care what anybody thinks in the editorial room. This paper is for the Republican. And here, you know, so then they put a, you know, we recommend you vote for this guy. Now, like I think the results have just come in. It's like 80% of the newspapers around the country, the USA, have endorsed Obama. and 20% of them, which are the hangers-on, the 20% endorse McCain. And you know, there's no reason for the thing to be... In the olden days, you'd never have that. If the Republican was the worst guy in the world, it would still be pushing for him. So the balance is missing. So now it's just all liberals. I'm sure you caught that Obama threw three journalists off of his plane, all three whose newspapers had endorsed McCain.

34:39 No, I didn't know this. Oh yeah, and it was under the guise of, well, you know, we need to let some other reporters on, and the reporters replacing them I think was like Ebony Magazine and Jet Magazine. No. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty funny. reporters by the way i i think well not reminded by the way that i was what you just described by the way is going to get worse yeah well i mean how much is it we only have a couple days left so does it make that no no talking about when obama if obama's elected all yes gonna be worse than the clinton administration for like you know marginalizing everybody in taking over the media and making those press conferences like really they're going to be embarrassingly fawning who do you who do you think would be a good uh... press secretary for obama

35:24 I would. Oh man, you caught me mid-swallow in my water. I could have been... I almost spewed on that. That was funny. I do have some thoughts about Obama. We'll get to that when we talk about the Obammercial. Maybe we should talk about it now. I can't remember where we were. Were we talking about your dad? About the balance? So yeah. We were talking about Obama's getting, he's gonna clamp down on the right wing or the conservative sides of the media and they're not gonna be in the press conferences, they're not gonna get any access at all. They're gonna be denied access. I mean that's what a president can do. I mean it began years ago

36:13 you know with you know by the name of his nixonian i'm not sure where it really began within a good eventually didn't bush eventually throw hell and out the world of the and that's why i know of pushing i think he was she resigned she was so disgusted with it all she she left she decided that they covered and i think she retired and i don't think she was i've been you wrote a book and stroke and she wrote a book which i have which i have on my list i really should read that because man she was there for everything But I think this guy's gonna be potentially beyond the rest of them, because he knows he can get away with all this stuff and everybody's gonna cheer him. Because all the liberal friends that I have that are Democrats, or most of them don't call themselves liberals, the real extreme ones are progressive, which is kind of a throwback term.

37:02 uh... and they are so perked and being cut out of the deal for so long that they're going to be jimmy they'd be cheering hitler just to give you a perspective on how well i can say europe is certainly the net the united kingdom is looking at these last days uh... before the election and they are following it quite closely they have uh... uh... the reporters on the ground they have they're using studios in washington uh... with audiences and those are pretty funny actually because you know they'll have a panel of two or three obama people two or three mccain people one will be like a republican not affiliated with the campaign and there's usually one person who is actually in the campaign

37:41 But the audience, it's like, I love it. You can pick them out. The audience is so stacked. They went to central casting and said, give me some Republicans, give me some Democrats, give me some undecideds. And literally, the Republicans are great. They're like 16-year-old boys, full full suits, ties, you know, very articulate and very, you know, you just want to slap them upside the head, one of those little bastards. Oxford debaters. Yeah, exactly, on the debate team. And then you can see which ones are, I mean, you can just tell, right? It's totally stacked. But what's really interesting is the main thrust of the conversation I picked up on is that it's really the question about race, which I see, well, I saw less of that

38:26 in the US in the last four or five weeks than just a little amount that I've watched of coverage here in the UK. And they really go in depth into this question of race and are we going to get the Bradley effect, all these different things. And there was one woman who was, it was a news piece and I don't know who she was, And she said something really interesting. She said, just so... she was black. She said, just so you know, Obama is not an African-American. He does not come from slave roots. Ergo, he does not necessarily represent the African-Americans in the United States. And it didn't really hit me until I realized that that's really an interesting statement.

39:19 And it just shows you how racist people actually are, because they are judging, in many cases, judging his perceived culture and background based upon his skin color, and not really on his real background, which indeed has nothing to do with African-Americans' descendants from slaves. Yeah, no, this is a specific type of African American. He's obviously an African American. But this issue came up, you missed it probably, this came up in this election cycle during the early primaries when he was running against Hillary. This became a huge issue for a couple of weeks. It was brought up by the Sharptons or the, you know, the black

40:04 uh... did the other people that you know that marginalized one or is it is this one uh... is this one al sharpton tried to say off camera or i don't like the way it was i was just a jackson jackson right but it was but it was one of those guys they brought it up and it became kind of an issue he's not really black or he's and i think it was in the end may have been sharp timber it was one of these guys is that he's not black enough and then they started talking about the slave... But, am I crazy or is that the most racist thing you can say? It's pretty bad. I mean that seems like an outrageous racist comment to me. Well, nobody calls anybody on it. They're giving a pass on this stuff and that's just the way it goes. Now, and nobody, you know, was not going to give them a pass on it. It's like, oh, you know, bring it up some other time. Now the thing that's interesting is that I have a... Bring it up some other time. I'm sorry. Shut up. Bring it up some other time, will ya?

40:59 So, uh, so I don't, I should, if I could find it I'd send it to you, but somebody sent me a, and maybe we can play it next week after the election's over, but, although it wouldn't do any good. Uh, apparently, um, Howard Stern sent his man on the street into Harlem. And have you heard any of this? Um, is this, is this the piece where, um, where the question is, do you think that having Barack Obama and Sarah Palin on the same ticket would be good? Exactly. He went on, the idea was to prove that blacks are just voting for Obama because he's black and there's no thought at all involved in the whole thing, which is again another racist thing. And so he goes into the street and the idea was, he brings this guy out there, because you can do this with any population in the United States, so it's kind of artificial, because I mean Jay Leno's been making a career out of this thing called jaywalking.

41:50 But anyway, so the idea was you go into the street and you take some, just any casual person in Harlem, a black person. And you ask them a question about Obama and whether they agree with his policies, and then you reiterate McCain's policies. Yeah, I've seen this video. And then after they agree to that, you say, and you don't think it was bad that he has a vice president like Sarah Palin as his running mate, and see what they say. And they all agreed with McCain's policies, and they thought Sarah Palin was fine as his running mate, even though she's not. And the whole thing was ridiculous, but it's a typical... The more you listen to these kinds of things, and jaywalking that Jay Leno does is actually worse. It just makes you shake your head. The only thing I take issue with is people forget, and I see this with very highly intelligent people,

42:41 they forget that so there is an editor who put this together and obviously it's a lot less spectacular if you see a couple people answered quite intelligently and not falling for it and you just put all the idiots together. There are many examples of this type of video on YouTube. Tons. You know, it's like name a country that starts with the letter U. You know, it's like and of course if you think about America not a lot of people think about United States of America and you know they're like uh... utah yes yes yes i did say utah well there was as one kid roaming around i think we blog this one or i did uh... who goes there is some joker goes to some haughty college uh... some haughty private college somewhere in a gc hated the place he goes to the women one after another saying you know we are getting into sign a petition against a women's suffrage yeah

43:34 And you know he gets them all to sign. Oh, I have women's suffrage. Oh yeah, I'll sign that. You know those girls. That's the woman's right to vote. Right. And meanwhile this one girl's all for it. She's signing away and her boyfriend shouts out, you can't sign that. That's talking about, he knew it was about the right to vote and she was like, I don't know what he's talking about and she signs it anyway. And then finally there was the one girl who knew and you know i did group again you're right i mean these things are you do you do you edit them for a fact you can imagine what jay leno how much footage that they actually get our time before they find these incredible dummies who don't know but they really don't know anything so from that very perspective and and this is a unique perspective the john and i have because we know how television works and how it's how it's made and i've and i probably know more of the dirty tricks

44:28 because MTV is full of them and they're not considered dirty or bad by the way we just do it as a force of nature. The Obama-Marshall should be on this topic and thank you for for sending me the link so i could watch it in its entirety and it would be able to watch this in high-def by the way how did that look at high-def because i thought it wasn't it wasn't special but i guess but the uh... the tone in the color of it uh... it felt to me like it was one of those red red filters and it wasn't in film but it was it was video that was you know i'm drawn into film what what did you think it was that wasn't going to be i think that was the just a bad uh... uh...

45:12 What do you call it when you... I think it was just a bad copy. No, I mean not a copy, but you know that was ripped to flash, the one you looked at. Right, but still, when I looked at it, it felt to me like they had put some form of nice effect into the entire piece to give it kind of like that film look. Well, you know, it's possible. I mean, I would initially guess it was the transcoding, but now that you mention it, and this is just a guess because I never looked at that little version that you have, it's possible that there was something going on like that that when it was transcoded became more apparent.

45:49 Well, I'm all... you know what? It wouldn't matter if they did it, then I would be able to see it, because I just know. And I can always pick up on these things, and with the knowledge that, you know, that video of the horrible Obama-Hugin singing that was done by Jeff... was it Zucker? Yeah, the NBC guy. NBC guy, but also they specifically thanked the Red Corporation, the Red Lenses, whatever it is, people who make that. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, because it was, you know, they had the Steadicam operator, another famous guy who does a lot of, you know, is director of photography and a lot of different movies. Anyway, so of course there were no credits, which is what I really wanted to see, but it looked like, you know, I like the way they did that. Yeah, well, you could tell that production, here's, before you give your analysis, let me just say what I thought, which is that I thought the thing was extremely Hollywood,

46:48 at the beginning. You tell that they use some expensive people and Obama's team, whoever they is really running things, are really adept at getting who they need to get to make this guy look the best he can. And then I thought they kind of blew it at the end with that live thing. I thought that was like lame. Well, that wasn't on the video because I only have the whole video. I didn't have the switch over to live. I did hear audio of it when they switched to a Was he in Florida? Yeah, he was in Florida. It wasn't one of the biggest groups, there were some empty seats, which obviously they didn't have the right people there to fill those seats up. And it changed the tone. And I thought the whole effect that was being developed throughout the regular party... It was good, and then they ruined it with that.

47:36 Then they ruined it with it and he's up there, you know, with the same old, same old. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like feature creep. It sounds to me like the production team was, okay, we're gonna make this beautiful video and then we're gonna switch live via satellite to Florida. It'll be a beautiful thing. That feels like a director who was just given a little bit too much rope. Could be. But I think whatever impact the first part of it had, which I guess is all you saw, I didn't know that that other part wasn't at the end. I would have gotten you a copy. And then it was like, wow, what an amazingly well-produced, good, you know, the guy wasn't pushing it too far, it was just well, it was tastefully done. And then they throw you into some horrible convention live thing with him yelling and screaming like Hitler on top of a podium.

48:28 I'm thinking, geez, this wasn't what I was looking for. Yeah, I thought the casting was really well done. I liked the You know, you always put people on that could be the people watching, that's the whole point. Not a bad audience by the way, 30 million, so about 10 million per network. That's probably tenfold what these networks usually get during election coverage. So, very good deal for everyone all around. I think the price was still quite reasonable, you know, 3 million to reach 30 million. So, steal. Yeah, I think that's a really good deal. What I did not like was the writing.

47:36 Then they ruined it with it and he's up there, you know, with the same old, same old. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like feature creep. It sounds to me like the production team was, okay, we're gonna make this beautiful video and then we're gonna switch live via satellite to Florida. It'll be a beautiful thing. That feels like a director who was just given a little bit too much rope. Could be. But I think whatever impact the first part of it had, which I guess is all you saw, I didn't know that that other part wasn't at the end. I would have gotten you a copy. And then it was like, wow, what an amazingly well-produced, good, you know, the guy wasn't pushing it too far, it was just well, it was tastefully done. And then they throw you into some horrible convention live thing with him yelling and screaming like Hitler on top of a podium.

48:28 I'm thinking, geez, this wasn't what I was looking for. Yeah, I thought the casting was really well done. I liked the You know, you always put people on that could be the people watching, that's the whole point. Not a bad audience by the way, 30 million, so about 10 million per network. That's probably tenfold what these networks usually get during election coverage. So, very good deal for everyone all around. I think the price was still quite reasonable, you know, 3 million to reach 30 million. So, steal. Yeah, I think that's a really good deal. What I did not like was the writing.

49:11 I thought the writing really fell flat, it didn't grab me at any moment, you know, it was too many examples of people, there was not enough, you know, the setup was good, the opening was good, the whole opening scene in the office. Well, you might have something there because when I watched it, I was trying to be, I wasn't going to take sides. I was going to watch this thing and I thought the thing wasn't poorly written. But when I read the postmortems and I listened to some of them and people brought up some of the ludicrous aspects of the presentation, including this woman who has a fairly new SUV and seven kids with the little stickers on the back and she has a big refrigerator and each kid has their own rack where they have their own snacks and each one and they have to like budget their snacks because they're running out of money or whatever I'm thinking. What are you kidding me? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And do they have their uniforms on?

50:07 because i remember the little bit and surprise they didn't have their arm band so by the way that's what we're gonna do we're gonna bring out some obama arm bands i think they're they would be great awesome it's gonna be a hit i gotta get a hold of our t-shirt guy and he'll i'm gonna see if he can do arm bands for us so we'll probably sell those i gotta find out whether we can use the logo or not i looked into it i did find the company that made it they did all the branding for the obama campaign oh who um i'll look it up Okay, we should bring that up to our listeners because it's interesting because it's extremely Madison Avenue.

50:43 They got the logo, they got the certain font that they use commonly. Those posters like the Obama, you know, hope, dope, smoke, whatever those things say, those were done by independent artists on the side. There's a lot of independent art that kind of came into the campaign and they've adopted. But in fact, the actual messaging, and you can see it at the Democratic National Convention, it's extremely, you know, it's art directed. and you'd, you know, everyone would hold up the same poster and then they'd hold up another one and there'd be a bunch of them. I blogged this and I showed a lot of examples of it and these goons would come in with their, you know, they were looked like one of those guys that works on the roadway. You never see a homemade sign in the background unless it's an extraordinary one.

51:27 Well, they would take go they would hustle over there and grab the guy and I don't know if they beat him up But it's possible they clubbed him and then they give regular a's them they tased him Give him a regular sign that he's supposed to be holding and so it was extremely orchestrated to kind of a sick I mean, I thought it was it launched a lot. There's a lot of soullessness to the to the Democratic National Convention Here's what I missed John in the in the writing. Okay, because I see this as a show and And the McCain-Palin part of the show, you know, it's like on happy days. Sometimes you just don't see a lot of Richie. That's just the way miniseries work.

52:06 So, now we've got the funds, we've got Obama, right front and center. But there was no motivation, there was no, you know, we're the youngest country, look at Europe, they're three times as old as we are, we have a very dynamic, great, you know, force, we love to get the shit done, Americans are awesome, the young people are really gonna make stuff happen and we're making this change and we have this hope for them. It wasn't! It was all for people who, the way I felt the writing was. It came across as, okay, you know, yeah, I'm middle class, you know, let me be upper middle class. You know, save me. That's basically what it was. There was no inspiration for the country.

52:49 No, the messaging is all, and people have pointed this out before, most of Obama's messaging is negative. Not negative campaigning, I'm talking about negative messaging. The country's screwed up, you know, we've got to turn around, we've got to fix things, we've got to redistribute the wealth, we've got to make things more fair, it's all these bad things. He's not saying anything bad against McCain, even though he does. He calls him Bush every time they turn around, which seems like an insult if you ask me. So, Obama's not doing any negative campaigning? Well, I think calling John McCain Bush is negative campaigning. Yeah, that's pretty negative. You know, the thing about... So here's the latest trip he's on. And I want to remind our listeners that neither John or I are voting for either candidate.

53:36 They're calling me a socialist. Well, yeah, I do remember in kindergarten, I do remember sharing my toys and giving my friend half of my peanut butter sandwich. And like, that is, that is, I don't understand why they don't rip into him on this. That's a really bad analogy because it's a little different when the teacher forces you to give up half of your peanut butter sandwich. That's, you know, there's a big difference. Yeah, no, that's a good point. But, uh, well, I mean, he gets away with anything he wants to get away with, because let's face it, this is a long, uh, I mean, it's decided by the people who'd be criticizing him that they're not gonna, he gets a pass on everything. So, so I've got, you know, I know John McCain makes no chance unless, unless there's an interesting twist at the, just at the very end, the final series

54:27 the final in the series, unless they have rigged the voting machines and then John McCain wins, that would be a very interesting turn in the whole plot. But I'm just going to presume that Obama becomes president. So I'm really looking into what he's doing. And I'm looking at the plans, which are all on the website, barackobama.com. And really, what I'm seeing is doubling of the military, doubling of homeland security resources, And I see new internet everywhere, databases everywhere. And it's right there. There's stuff in there about working with private industry and government to create a new, safer internet. I'm like, huh? And you can see all these little things that he's done throughout his career as a senator.

55:19 You know, these little bills that are put in, these one paragraph bills basically creating some kind of commission for this or commission for that or who's going to determine what's safe on the internet. You know, there's another commission. And he's passed all these bills and it's like, to me it seems like a beautiful puzzle that's now coming together. And I look at this policy and I'm like, wow, you know, that's sure hope and change, but you know, there's a lot of details on what he's going to do with tax credit refunds, refundable tax credits, and his health insurance plan, but not a lot of detail on all this other stuff. And it seems

55:58 It seems quite far-reaching in many cases. Yeah, well it could be militaristic for all we know. I mean, nobody's gonna, you know, nobody breaks any of this stuff down. They're just, you know... Working 14 hours a day for Obama. I mean I got a note from somebody the other day that was like yes when you for me Yeah, it's for you. Well. You know I would like to get together sometime You know but I'm down in New Mexico. He was a person from the Bay Area I'm down in New Mexico working 14 hours a day for the Obama campaign boy I would go when this elections over and then you have your next-door neighbor who's like at Obama camp and And these people are just, I mean, amazing job of creating a bunch of volunteer, I mean, this just shows you by the way that volunteerism is alive and well and not many people take advantage of it. But people do like to get involved in movements

56:50 that are historic or even interesting or fun and literally work themselves to death on behalf of somebody else who they'll probably never meet or they might meet in some sort of a line, you know, where they're all standing there and you guys basically give him the fist thing, bing, bing, bing, down the line as fast as he can to get out of there. And that's it. So I'm thinking what a thankless job. So, um, you know, and I like Barack Obama, I like him. He seems like a good guy, you know, he's programmed and he's being run by, well, what you would call the shadow government. Well, you would call Brzezinski. Yes, absolutely. Well, yes, for sure. And I'm thinking that there must be a way to hack into the system. Because if we could, if we the people could truly get him to do the things that we want,

57:49 That would be pretty awesome. Yeah, that's never gonna happen. Well, I don't know. Maybe there's a way to hack in to reprogram his thoughts. As soon as he gets in office, they drag him aside, three goons grab him and they inject him with something. Yeah, that's right. And then you never see him again in public. You'll love this. He's always giving speeches. This reminds me of that Star Trek episode. Wait, wait, wait. Before you get into that, before you get into that, I gotta tell you this. As a part of the plan, He has worked and will support and will make available four billion dollars for the avian flu. Yeah? That freaks me out. Why? Because there is no avian flu.

58:36 Well, there definitely won't be if they spend a billion dollars. Four billion dollars. Okay, you're so correct. Four? I said a billion. Four billion? Four billion with a B. Four billion dollars is set aside. I think there is an avian flu and I think our little operation, Adam, the Avian Flu Elimination Project, is going to need some funding. Damn, you're so right. We must get on this immediately. Oh my goodness. Okay, yeah, the Star Trek episode. Yeah, the Star Trek, one of the older ones. Everyone who's seen Star Trek, you know, the original series, probably seen it a million times, but this is the one where they show up on this planet and the place is fascist.

59:20 And then they find the guy who's running the place, everyone's wearing Nazi armbands and whatever. And the guy who's running the place is some guy from the Federation or whatever they, or whatever they, I forgot what it's called. But he's one of the Star Trek guys. He's like a guy that was sent out on a different mission. And next thing you know, he's now essentially a fascist. And then they determined, of course, that he was, he just did the fascist thing to try to straighten out what was an out-of-control society. And he got carried away, and then some evil people, because he became so popular, they drugged him and made him do their bidding.

1:00:00 you know behind a glass wall and they had to rescue him and then take him off these drugs so he could say no you know we got I did so he give his last speech and say this is all wrong wrong wrong and of course and they shoot him the bad you know the bad guys do and then they arrest the Nazis and it's just it was actually a per one of the better stories it was very interesting it's um Wizard of Oz Well, not really. Okay. In a way, in the metaphoric sense that the seeming power really is powerless. Yeah, well that's true. The guy was a phony, but he wasn't like... The difference is that one was unwitting and the other one was, you know, volunteer, so it's slightly different. The Manchurian candidate.

1:00:47 Well, there's that too. By the way, if anyone hasn't seen the Manchurian Canyon, the original one which shows up on TV every once in a while, the black and white movie with Frank Sinatra. is much better than the second. The second, you know, they do these, you know, they redo these movies and they change the story, the original story and the novel, by the way. If you want to read a good book, read The Manchurian Candidate, the book. It actually has a lot of interesting, there's a lot of interesting, it's well written, let's put it that way, and a great read if you haven't read it. Rather than read this new stuff, go back and read some classics. but Dementia in Canada is one of them. But the original movie, of course, was never successful because it came out just as John Kennedy was assassinated and the thing had to actually be shelled. I don't think it ever made any money. But it is a great, great film. I got a question for you. Yeah? The show has been on, has been going for over a year now. We actually forgot to celebrate our one-year anniversary. Honey, I'm sorry. Lo siento.

1:01:52 I think somewhere around episode 20 we were talking about China in the Congo. Oh yeah. And right now... Well, and in Africa, throughout Africa. Right, but specifically they're in the Congo. There's 750,000 Chinese workers now in Africa. Yeah, because they can't find workers in Africa apparently. And, you know, they promised to build hospitals, schools, roads, you know, all this stuff in the Congo in particular. Roads very important because they've got the red mud and I actually know a little bit about that. I can remember getting stuck in the red mud as a kid in Uganda.

1:02:31 and so you know they move in quite aggressively they need the gold they need all the minerals there's a now what's the stuff that this in the in mobile phones johnson other mineral either palladium or uh... mali uh... uh... no not a couple of cobalt but uh... it's i don't know i mean there's a bunch of that you know what you're saying it's not but i thought was palladium and maybe i'm wrong now with this it was something on the bbc but i forgot what it was it sounded like cobalt So, you know, obviously very important for China, because most of our mobile phones come from China. Look at your iPhone. I'm thinking that... I use a Nokia E71. Ah, so do I. They come from Finland. Yeah. Where, by the way, the Internet has the regulation Australia's getting.

1:03:22 But anyway, so the Chinese move in pretty aggressively. This has only been going for about a year and in fact if you know, well if you've been listening to the show you know that John and I are a fan of Confessions of an Economic Hitman, the book, John Perkins, the author of that, who spells out how this works and I was looking through some articles today and I saw that Bechtel, that's the company that John Perkins worked for, was all over... No, actually no, he worked for a small consulting firm, it wasn't Bechtel. he worked with him. I thought later he worked for Bechtel. I don't know, maybe. I don't remember that. Well, he references Bechtel many times in the book. And so I read that Bechtel is in there setting up huge contracts. They're basically kind of like a go-between team. And the way John Perkins explains it is so first, you know, the economic hitmen go in, they find

1:04:14 They find out who they need to bribe and they give them hundreds of millions of dollars and they sign off, they basically sign their countries away. And then those contracts go to mainly US companies and if they default on loans and the IMF and they take everything away. I mean it's a huge scam basically. And what the guy specifically says is that when that doesn't work, then they send in the jackals. The jackals being, you know, black ops, CIA type stuff. Troublemakers. Troublemakers to stir shit up and to throw people from power. And when I look at what's going on now, where it's exactly the reverse of the 90s, where

1:04:56 I think if I'm saying this right, the Hootsies were getting their ass kicked by the, no, the Tootsies were getting their ass kicked by the Hootsies. Hoot-toos and Tootsies. I like saying Hootsies and Tootsies, it's easier to remember. The H's and T's. Now the T's are kicking the H's ass, and it feels like jackals all over this thing, John, and it feels like this time China's involved as well. Well, I think China's our competitor in this deal, and I think the problem we're having is that China is like, you know, they're doing a bunch of stuff we can't do. I don't know, maybe we're partnering with them. I mean, it's always possible that behind the scenes, you know, we let China... Or, or, or, this could be the front. It could be. Now, you know, this could be where the front, the war between the US and China takes place.

1:05:44 I'm thinking it's more likely that there's some sort of an agreement in the back room that lets... because one of the things we could never do in Africa in particular was support these creeps who hated us anyway and pull the economic hitman stunt that we could easily do in South America. Well, we tried but we always seem to fail. Yeah, we always screw it, it never works. We can't do, the model for Africa is unknown to us. But the Chinese have an interesting model, which of course I elucidated before, and just to bring it up again, they basically scam these people. And this was introduced to me by a German entrepreneur some years earlier who started to see it back, I think this was a while back. He said, and he outlined exactly what the process is.

1:06:35 And as soon as he did, it made sense to me that every time I looked into it, this is exactly what was going on, which is the Chinese find some government, no matter how horrible these people are, do a deal to build their infrastructure out. And in the process, as part of the deal to build out the infrastructure, they are allowed to bring in duty-free anything they want. their own workers and so they flood the place with a bunch of supposed workers who set up little communities and towns and stores and then they take all these duty-free goods which nothing can compete with. This is why the German guy was irked because you can't compete with duty-free when you're paying 50%.

1:07:15 for the same thing and they bring in a lot of this stuff's inferior. They bring all this crap in and then they start flooding the market with products that are duty, that are cheap as part of this process to build out their infrastructure, build a dam, do this and do that. But they never complete the project and let this situation go on forever where the Chinese start importing just tons and tons of stuff, people and they end up taking over the country for all practical purposes, at least economically. and uh... it's an it'd be something we would agree we don't have the it's just that we would do it in my crazy but is that not exactly what's taking place with uh... europe in the united states are the chinese doing exactly that aren't they bringing stuff inconsistently maybe they're taking us over very quietly economically in the background just by importing all this stuff and they've got all kinds of you knew uh...

1:08:10 They've negotiated, I'm sure, with all these sovereign wealth funds. I'm sure they've negotiated many of the import contracts. Maybe that's their whole modus operandi. Well, the problem with doing that to us, first of all, is they're not doing it as a cheat. In other words, slipping in some crazy ideas so they can get the stuff in duty free. I mean, there's already duty free. And the other thing is most of what we're paying them with It's not minerals, it's not, you know, I think the Canadians ship them a lot of logs, but we don't really ship them anything that's anything other than essentially debt that they own. Here, take some of our credit cards. Take some of our debt. Oh, by the way, can we borrow more money from you? So I'm wondering who's scamming who in this deal. Well, it takes two to tango, I guess.

1:09:04 Well, it all shakes out in the end and at some point is an unstable situation. And of course, my thinking is that we're heading for an economic crisis, but not until we have a nice bull market. Right after the election. That's my guess. Yeah. So anyway, I bought, I don't want to get into the stock market stuff, but I did buy an exchange traded note. So is that for the upside or the downside? It's a downside. It's a double short actually. And it is an exchange traded note which is one of these crazy financial vehicles and this one is created by the Deutsche Bank in Germany. And if anyone wants to know what it is, you can look it up. It's DTO. It's an oil short. It's a commodity.

1:09:53 But it's not, it's a short. But it's done as an exchange traded note, so you just trade it openly on the market. But it's structured like a... credit default swap, in other words, it's one of these crazy things that it doesn't, you know, it's like one of these investment concepts, right? So apparently, when you buy, I would recommend people just somehow get one and buy it and sell it, I don't care. But you wanna get it long enough so they have to send you the document which explains it. So it came in the mail the other day.

1:10:32 And I've been itching to get a hold of one of these things, because I know the exchange, all these crazy ideas that have been these financial vehicles or whatever you want to call them. I've always wanted to get a hold of one of the documents that explains how it works. So what's the value of one of these ETNs? An ETN, well that's it's kind of explained, there is none in fact. It's the whole thing is something like a house of cards so you have to get in and you don't want to hold them forever. Although they expire, this one expires in 2036. But you can trade it on the stock exchange. But anyway, so I got the document finally, it showed up. Holy mackerel. So is this, you got, this is like you're kind of betting against the house where you say, okay, I'm going to put 5,000 into this ETN and you have a mark point where you bought in and then depending on what it does, you win or you lose? Yeah, pretty much. Okay. So tell me about the document.

1:11:27 The document is the size of the Manhattan phone book. It costs like ten bucks to ship me this thing. It's huge. And now I've realized that no matter what happens with this ETN, this document has got to be the greatest cocktail party conversation piece ever. Because I've gotten documents from companies doing IPOs and you've seen these things. Is it really thin paper and really small print? No, it was small print but it's not necessarily thin paper. But it's just regular, you know, laser jet paper. But the thing is so big and it's a convoluted mess. No, you wouldn't, it would take you a year or two to read it. And it's, if you could. And it's one thing after another and how the bank does this and that and ugh. Anyway, it's worth the price of admission just to get

1:12:18 This big piece of paperwork in the mail, holy crap, I didn't know it was this complicated. But that's what a lot of these crazy investment creations are. They're just like some... I'm sorry, it's like these guys say, nobody can understand them. I was watching CNBC Friday as they were wrapping up. Oh, Erin Burnett, God, I'm in love with her. I love her so much. She's everybody's favorite. Oh my god. I could live with her. I would worship her. I could. I wouldn't even have to have sex.

1:11:27 The document is the size of the Manhattan phone book. It costs like ten bucks to ship me this thing. It's huge. And now I've realized that no matter what happens with this ETN, this document has got to be the greatest cocktail party conversation piece ever. Because I've gotten documents from companies doing IPOs and you've seen these things. Is it really thin paper and really small print? No, it was small print but it's not necessarily thin paper. But it's just regular, you know, laser jet paper. But the thing is so big and it's a convoluted mess. No, you wouldn't, it would take you a year or two to read it. And it's, if you could. And it's one thing after another and how the bank does this and that and ugh. Anyway, it's worth the price of admission just to get

1:12:18 This big piece of paperwork in the mail, holy crap, I didn't know it was this complicated. But that's what a lot of these crazy investment creations are. They're just like some... I'm sorry, it's like these guys say, nobody can understand them. I was watching CNBC Friday as they were wrapping up. Oh, Erin Burnett, God, I'm in love with her. I love her so much. She's everybody's favorite. Oh my god. I could live with her. I would worship her. I could. I wouldn't even have to have sex.

1:12:57 Just just to lay next to her. Yeah, I'm sure you wouldn't get any from her either anyway, so Bernanke was on and Bernanke around two o'clock Friday afternoon Eastern Time He he starts doing this live speech and they already have the speech so at a certain point when it gets kind of boring or long or whatever you know they just tune out and then they start talking about what he hasn't even talked about because they've been sent the speech ahead of time and and essentially what the message was is that they can't find a way to put into place a US government backed, government sponsored enterprise. So what they're saying is, you know, the pyramid of mortgages

1:13:47 that exists today, you know, kind of winding up with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, that that cannot exist without explicit backing from the government. And they're talking about this way of doing it called covered bonds. Have you heard of this? No, but I'm sure it will. Yeah, so essentially, you know, there's bonds that the US government guarantees and so that would be the vehicle. I mean, it's really, it's quite interesting to see because that is one of the big changes that they're making now into the new global economic order as Sarkozy and Gordon Brown are calling it and Merkel. I believe in Merkel.

1:14:35 Andrew Horowitz wrote in his online news thing or blog, the Disciplined Investor, he, I'm going to blog it too, which is that apparently $60 billion of that bailout are going to salaries and bonuses for the executives. Oh yeah, this guy's getting $500 million. Absolutely. Absolutely. And the New York Times had a great piece where a reporter called into an employee conference call So somehow he got the... and this is... what a huge lack of security these things are. Oh yeah. The stuff that's discussed on conference calls is just outrageous. And we're probably really bad at it at MeVEO.

1:15:19 So he called in and the question was asked, so what are we going to do with the money? Well, we're going to make acquisitions, we're going to hold on to it for better times, but basically, no, we're not giving this to any smaller banks. This is not moving down the line. We're keeping it. So we can do business and acquisitions. Acquisitions, of course, mean fees and bonuses. Right. But what's very... I'm just saying it's a scandal. What's really interesting is that Barclays Bank here in the UK, which I also bank with, they went out and they raised 7 billion pounds, like 12 billion dollars from the Saudis, from the Middle East, because they didn't want to take the government money. They refused it and everyone's like really tripping out over this. And so they gave a really sweetheart deal to some Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds

1:16:17 And so they're still independent, they don't belong to the government, which is a very interesting move. Yeah, well they'll probably still be in business someday. Exactly. I was quite happy to see that. Well I know that Wells Fargo, when the government came calling, they They said no, we don't want your money and they said no you're taking the money and you're giving us so many preferred preferred stock shares even though it turns out that It wasn't as good a deal as Goldman Sachs got and they some of these same offerings in other words the taxpayers have to pay the premium because they're Treasury secretaries and ex-goldman sachs guys looking after his own people up, you know, I'm sure so is his little assistant the guy doling out the money Neil cash and carry

1:17:05 And so they didn't want it, but the argument was interesting to me was, well, everyone of you banks have to be in on this because if some of you buy in and some of you don't, then the public will know which banks are insolvent and sketchy. And we don't want anyone knowing anything. Which of course is like kind of insulting to the public, is why is the public, you know, well you may have a run on the bank, nobody has a run on the bank, I mean, because we have the FDIC, so your money's insured, you're always gonna get it. But I think it'd be nice to know which banks are flaky. Of course. It's total protectionism. Anyway, what else?

1:17:45 That's a depressing topic. So, just a quick swing back to the Congo. The one thing that's really irking me is that regardless of which news channel I'm watching and I would expect a lot better from the BBC. Here's what I'm really outraged, forget Jonathan Ross and the other fellow. I'm really outraged that every single report You know starts by saying well, it's really bad in the Congo and here's so-and-so who has details on why this is taking place and then you see five minutes of Horrible pictures of children, you know, there's no food. They're on the run. They're gonna go die in the bushes and the woods It's it's horrible hundreds of thousands. They don't actually give you any information about why this is happening and

1:18:33 None of them, not a single story, not anywhere can I actually get some information about what is taking place. Because they don't actually know is my belief. And I really think that this has China and us written all over it. And we should be outraged about that. That's what we should be outraged about. Well, you know, I bet you if you read it, if you go into, and I hate to say that you have to do this nowadays to get information. I believe that if you go into the African blogs or you go to some of this more specialized information coming from, you know, other types of reporters, you're going to find the facts.

1:19:16 Although the problem is a lot of it's going to be slanted, but I think at least you can get closer to it. Obviously, I'm able to find some information, but what I'm talking about is that they'll go into depth about all kinds of bullshit, but this seems to be a really important one. It's the top of the news, but really it's only the top of the news because there's frightened-looking people falling over each other and children crying and being trampled upon. It's porn, it's news porn. They're not actually giving you any information or anything we can do to change it. And where's Bono? Can you fix it? Bono and Bob, come on guys, get out here, we need some help. Where's Bono? We gotta call up Ted Leone and say let's do Live 9. Nah, that's the cynic in you.

1:20:08 Ah, it pisses me off. Remember We Are The World? Oh, the whole thing is a scam. USA for Africa? That was 25 years ago, John. 25 years ago. Look at, turn on the television! What have we done? What happened? Well, the same thing... Something's bullshit! And the same thing with Hands Across America. Do you remember that one? Oh, my God! Oh, you gotta tell our listeners. A lot of people don't know about that. It was too long ago. Hands across America, there was, this was about, I have to get the date, you might want to look it up on Wikipedia. Yeah, you talk about looking it up. Yeah, get me the date. But anyway, so I actually met one of the guys who was the original designer of the whole process. And the idea was we're going to have, we had too much poverty in the United States and we're going to pull together as a nation.

1:20:55 and we're going to eliminate poverty and homelessness. And I think homelessness was maybe when the word first started to become popular was during the Hands Across America thing. So they decided they're gonna have to make a big event out of people starting on the West Coast holding hands. one after another after another into a long stream across the entire country like the Great Wall of China from one end of the country to the other all holding hands and there was like little buttons and stickers and pins that had... Yeah, well, everything but the armband and it was like little people holding hands. It was very collectible now. And it was called Hands Across America and it was going to be the beginning of the end for homelessness. And it was just another big bunch of bullshit. May 25th, 1986.

1:21:45 Yeah, there you go. 7 million people held hands in a human chain for 15 minutes along a path across the continental United States. Participants paid $10 to reserve their place in line. The proceeds were donated to local charities to fight hunger and homelessness and help those in poverty. You know what would have been cool? If you could hook up a big-ass battery to one end. Do you think it would go through all the tell those people and jolt the guy? Tase him dude. Well tase him. Well, the problem was is when it all is said and done there were gaps They never made it that that was like it was a disappointment because we didn't pull it off, you know, we failed fail Well, they didn't feel making a lot of money. That's a big meme now these days fail. Oh

1:22:37 Have you noticed that? Yeah, it's a meme. No. Yeah, you see Photoshop pictures of Bernanke and Paulson in Congress and then behind them a guy holding up a sign, FAIL. Really? Yeah, it's a meme. It's a good one. Yeah, it's fun. Well, I have to start using it then. Yes, we should use it here on this very show. We need to propagate. FAIL. Sometimes this whole show is FAIL. Actually, I don't think we really had a totally dog show. Not really a real dog show? No. No, we've been pretty like, well, you know, it really depends though. And gosh, it's so important for me to be somewhere else away from you. Well, did not for no other reason that your connection is better. I'm convinced that's my router. I got to fix that. Get a new router. But I don't know if I'm going to be in San Francisco before the end of the year. I'm going to be in New York. Got to do some sales stuff. Hitting the road.

1:23:31 Well, New York's a short trip for you. It's a good trip. Yeah, right now there's only four hours time difference between London and New York, which is... Yeah, no, if I lived in New York, I'd probably be going back and forth to London or Paris constantly because it seems like a good weekend thing to do. It's inconvenient from here because it adds another four or five hours and it's just, forget it. Well, ergo having my own aircraft. Right. Well, for you, I mean, going to Paris is like, you know, or, you know, Holland's got just an hour or so for you, right? How long does it take? Holland, Rotterdam about an hour. Paris would be about, I don't know, an hour forty-five. Yeah. Have you landed in Paris? Yes. Do you go to the wine country? Like Bordeaux would be a nice little place to fly. No, I've not done that yet. That's a little further. Where most pilots from the UK go if you just want to go to France is Le Touquet. Where's that? That's a coastal

1:24:34 It's in Normandy or something like that? Now I'm confused. I don't know if that's what it's called. I don't think it's Le Touquet. Maybe it is Le Touquet. That's how they pronounce it here, Le Touquet. I think the place to go if I were you, or if I was visiting and you wanted to go somewhere, I think Champagne. Well, the good thing is there's airfields everywhere. I mean, and you can almost just say, okay, I want to land somewhere over there and it's going to be an airstrip. Well, I'm sure there's a bunch of airstrips in the Champaign area. Oh yeah. Which is rams and those, you know, ebbernay. Grass strips, you know, just the kind of stuff you can bop in and out of and you pay the guy whatever you, you know, it's basically donation.

1:25:13 It's fun, yeah. It's like, feel happy. Is that what people do? I mean, you're flying over France and there's a little airship, you land and give the guy, you know, some money and he lets you sit there. How do you get a... what do you need? You don't have a car or anything. There's no car rental place in an airstrip. Oh, no, no. John, this is aviation, man. I mean, this is the hardcore stuff. Now, you can usually, like, rent a car. In the States, you can do this all over the place, you know. Same in many of these smaller fields, you know, for... in the States, it would be five bucks. you can rent a car is basically someone's car. We miss you, there's no cars up there. It's just a car, that's how it works. Sometimes it's like a real proper budget, but usually it's, or it hurts, but yeah, usually it's just a car. And they have local restaurants and they have hookups. If you go to the Isle of Wight, when you're arriving, you can say, hey, we're going to the

1:26:10 uh... the lobster pub okay we'll have a cab ready for you and you land cab takes you up there doing the and you have uh... some lunch it's nice and we gotta do that when you're over here and that's not going to have to cook on my own dot something about this i want to bring in a little paranoia and is what i was thinking about this all i think i'm thinking uh... it can be i want you to run this past your wife because she's and she seems to be more in agreement with my views and often when I consider something to be a setup. Well, that's because you guys are from World War II. So anyway, I'm thinking, well, maybe they gotta keep an eye on Adam. So what are we gonna do? He's gonna move into this new place. How are we gonna do this? Well, I'll tell you what, why don't we listen in on what he really, you know, some of his tastes, and let's get a place and let's wire it up with microphones

1:27:11 And how are we going to make him buy this place? I know exactly how to do it. Let's put an aga in it. Put an aga in it and I'll tell you, this idiot's going to buy the place. And he'll be in there, we'll have the whole place wired and we can listen to his conversations 24-7 just in case. and uh... bingo how many i could know reason i thought of this to be not that i'm good thinking in in in these terms normally is because what a coincidence that out of the blue house of yours that my wife has appeared on the market she's in on it she's she's a shield she's part of this uh... black flag operation

1:27:50 Out of the blue, just as you're looking for a place, there's another house with the stove you love. Which are rare, by the way. This is not, for people who want to know about this stove, I've never heard of anybody even owning one. Now we have two of them. And it shows up and you like being reeled in. So here's what I say, here's my thinking. You gotta get a, there could be hardwires which is harder to deal with than bugs that are sending out transmissions. You have to bring an expert, a bug expert to go through your house and make sure the place isn't wired for sound.

1:28:33 No, I think quite the opposite. I need to find the main transmission unit and then I gotta jack that shit into the net so we can stream that for a fee. I'm... I totally... That would work too. This is good. But I'm just saying. Anyway, that was a thought that passed my mind, you know. It's not like I'm, you know, paranoid as you are, but... No. Run it past your wife and see what she thinks. Okay, I'll ask her. I think she'll, uh, she may give it some thought. I don't know. I don't know. She's coming back in about an hour or so. Man, outrageous audience again last night. Her first live show. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, it was like 35% market share. It's unbelievable. Well, that thing probably has legs then. She'll be making money for a few years on that deal. Yeah, well, she starts Hollinscott Talent in February.

1:29:26 So it's just, you know, she just bops from one to the other. It's awesome. And she's so multi-talented. Well, you know, it sounds like easy money. I keep telling her, she's buying me my next plane. Yeah, you can get a nice... what do you think you're gonna get? Well... What do you got in your eye? You got a twin engine in mind? Uh, not necessarily. There's... You can really blast around in one of those things. Well, but... yeah. I don't know. I mean, I like the Piper Meridian, which is pressurized, single engine, turboprop, which, you know, the requirement is it has to have steps in the back that open up, otherwise my wife won't fly with me over the ocean. And so, and I want to get high enough so that, you know, there's no turbulence, so that's when I know I need pressurized. But also... What's the ceiling on that thing? 22,000 feet.

1:30:19 I don't think that's high enough, but okay. Oh yeah it is. It's right in the middle of the clouds at 22, isn't it? No, no. 22,000 feet? No. You're way above the clouds. I remember one time I was flying across country on some, one of the first 767s and they typically fly around 36,000 feet. and we're bumping all over the place. It depends on where you are. Obviously, mountainous terrain will give you different height results. And the pilot says, we're going to go up to 42,000 feet because the 767 just shoots right up to 42,000 feet where there's no turbulence. And we shot up to 40 and it was just like smooth as... And I'm always thinking you need to get to 42,000 feet to avoid all turbulence.

1:31:03 So you know those clouds sometimes you see when you have that turbulence, it's really the Columbus-Nimbus cloud and it reaches up to 42,000 feet? The Nimbus? Yeah, the Nimbus. What's crazy is, you know, so you see those at the bottom, so you're flying around at a couple thousand feet, and if you were to fly into one of those, you actually, this has happened before, you can get sucked up to 40,000 feet and then blown down again. Wow. Oh yeah, nobody ever wants to fly into one of those regardless of how big the airplane. Yeah, I've heard that, that a Nimbus is a cloud that you fly way around. I was in Texas once flying out of Dallas on a pilot, it was a DMD-80 or something like that and the guy really liked it.

1:31:49 And he went and he flew around. It was a huge pile of these nimbuses. They were all over the place. And so he was flying and banking heavy banks and going around one, going around the other. It was actually one of the most fun flights I've ever been on for a commercial flight because this guy was just really taking it. And we, you know, missed every one of them. He just went around and he was like there was a little map I guess he had of how to get through the mess. And never went through a cloud. He didn't want to hit one. It's called radar, John. Oh, okay. The little map. How does that work? The weather radar. so uh... but anyway he was flying it was actually quite interesting. Which by the way a lot of people don't understand that you know the whole point of being an airplane in the sky is that you can actually not fly into the rain cloud. You know sometimes unavoidable the direction you're going but lots of times also you know it's like I don't want to go you know it'll take me five minutes longer if I just go around it. Right. That's pretty common stuff but yeah so um... but basically he did not want to fly through it. No.

1:32:51 But it was telling you the view, because you get to see all these big nimbuses, which I think is one of the prettiest clouds there are. It's just a beauty. Spectacular. And if it happens to be a nimbus, which has decided to become a thunderstorm, where you see the light inside the cloud, you know, it makes it look like a light show, ping, ping. It's quite a sight. One time I was flying into Chicago, this was actually the other really great sight I ever saw from an airplane. Actually I saw a number of things from an airplane. I also saw the Aurora Borealis. But I was flying into Chicago one time. That's when you were in search of the crystal skull in the... The crystal skull. So anyway I was flying into Chicago and there were about 50 funnel clouds in the sky. Yeah.

1:33:38 They were all over the place. I mean it was just the weirdest thing I've ever seen. I've had those next to my plane. A little mini funnel cloud. It's really kind of frightening when you see a little, you know, just the beginning development of a funnel cloud. Yeah. It's kind of scary. Well anyway, it was like, but this was very early in the morning and they were lit with a kind of a golden color. It was just like, wow, where's the camera? Anyway, enough of that. Hour and a half, my friend. I guess we're done. Yeah. So we got the election coming up now. You want to do a special broadcast right after it? Yeah, I'm thinking that, let's see, it probably will have to wait until Wednesday because Tuesday it'll be, you know, like really early morning, Wednesday morning for me, I think. And who knows, you know, who knows what happens.

1:34:33 We may go into recounts, there may be all kinds of stuff going on. Well I'm sure they're gonna demand recounts here and there, I mean that's a foregone conclusion. But, um, and there's like apparently a number of states, like Mississippi, have 20% more registered voters than the population. Have you seen Hacking Democracy? Have you seen that HBO special? No. Oh, you really need to see it. It came out, I think it was over a year ago. uh... and it's a basically these grandmothers and don't think really old grandmothers but you know sixty-year-old grandmothers and and they go to find out if if the voting machines actually can be manipulated and well i want to put the most spoil the ending for you yeah right but it's uh... it's about it you should uh... there's a link from curry dot com i've got to check it out from the daily source code i talked about it it was really phenomenal hacking democracy really uh...

1:35:34 will surprise you with what's possible. Well, I'm, whatever the case is, you know, whether it's Obama and Sarah Palin winning. I'd be all for that, man. I get horny no matter who I think of. And, or it would be, you know, McCain and whoever he's, I guess Biden's running with him, I'm not sure. So. All right, my friend. All right. Okay. Well, I'm going to be here for, I think, at least another week, so probably, well, after the election. That's when we'll do the next show. Maybe the day after the election. Okay. Until then, coming to you from Gitmo Nation East, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm up here in Northern Silicon Valley, also known as Gitmore Nation. I'm John C. Dvorak. We'll talk again next week, right here on No Agenda.