We're Celebrities Get Us Out of Here!

00:01 The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, unless you live in Gitmo Nation. Time for your weekly review of our lives as we live them. Coming to you from Gitmo Nation East in the United Kingdom, I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Gitmo Nation West, Northern Silicon Valley to be exact. The place that doesn't exist. The place that doesn't exist, yeah. Yes, I'm sorry, I stepped on you. You are? John C. Dvorak. Yes. You may have heard of me. surely you've heard of me is what you're supposed to say oh is that the line yeah that's the line surely you've heard of me hey John how you doing okay what is going on in Gitmo nation north I don't know what have you been following Canada

00:50 Oh, because, yeah, they're going to have a revolution. They just mined! Yeah, no, it's pretty funny. They're very upset about this. I haven't followed it as closely as I'd like to. If I had gone up to Washington this weekend, I would have been watching the CBC News and I would have a better feeling for it. I do not understand why the Dish Network and DirecTV and even Comcast do not give us a feed of the CBC. It just doesn't make any sense to me. And I mean, the CBC's got all these great shows. and it would give us the CBC National, the news, which is better than our news by the way. It's an hour long news show that's quite good. And we could keep up with this. And people, you know, the Canadians are always moaning, oh, you know, Americans don't even know who our Prime Minister is. Well, we would probably if we had some opportunities to see what, because they watch our news. Yeah. Well, so anyway, the Prime Minister of Canada, what's his name again? Harper. Harper.

01:51 uh... i guess they wanted to kick him out well you see the event is is the other guy the opposition candidates steve on the on whose news to be a like it was a good news an accident of good enough for jeff rich actually to excel to also act to resolve it well not in the canadian version is flat it's weird for accident but anyway figures some way of doing a coalition Even though the Harper's Party got more votes than ever and it's solid in office, but these guys have figured out some scheme to actually... Yeah, to pool together, have a coalition and actually put Harper in the opposition. Yeah, to oust him, essentially. Yeah, put him out. So here's the crazy thing, here's what blew me away, and it just goes to show who really runs Canada.

02:48 The Governor General of the Queen of England came in and suspended Parliament. Time out, we're stopping play boys and girls. The Queen doesn't like what you're doing. I thought Canada was independent of the Queen. I don't know where I got this impression. Apparently, in the 60s, they tried to really sever the ties between the Queen of England and it was bring the Constitution home, I think was the slogan at the time. And I guess they never wound up doing it or not ratifying it or whatever. Sounds like the Canadians. Oh, shit! We started the process. I thought we did it.

03:41 You know? So apparently, so the Canadians, they've not gotten their act together. I don't know, this is the weirdest thing I've seen for a while and the Canadians are all you know and fits about it but they have such a, they're so, they have such a culturally such a deeply ingrained sense of humor I think based on their own history. I just have to see what they're saying at this hour has 22 minutes which is their you know. Yes, there's satirical shows. Yeah, and they have all the best, you know, the politicians are always on the show. In fact, Stefan Dion is like a regular. You know, they're always having him on. And he does and he plays along. I mean, all these guys play along. It's quite a funny show.

04:30 Well, it really does blow me away that this guy is a part of the shadow government or whatever. He was going to get kicked out and the Queen stops it. I mean, come on. And the Canadians just sit there and take it, I guess. I don't know what choice they have. I mean, you know. Strike? General strike? Stop? Organize? Get angry? They could organize. That's possible. And they have more, I mean, they have kind of a socialist bent. So it would be possible for them to organize. But you know, sometimes the socialism...

05:07 uh... angle is that it actually prevents you from uh... really taking action which is with the irony of socialism i mean that look at that the rain russia for example i mean that or even in china uh... under communist rule i mean unions are like for boat and so how does that work yes uh... well that the other status control the means of productions beat down those union guys Yeah, it's like in socialism you wait for the government to tell you it's time to go protest. Yeah, that must be it. They haven't been told. Speaking of satirical shows, man, it's too bad they don't have spitting image on anymore here. Remember that show? Yeah, you know that show they did, I love that show. That show, they played it in the US a couple of times I think on some PBS stations and very few remember, I think of all the listeners that we have, ten people have probably seen the show.

06:02 Except maybe some of those British did your two British Europeans that watch the show anyway I thought this show was Marvelous, I mean they they disguise made these what happened to this team of people that made these crazy puppets I have no idea. The puppets of course were fantastic, but the situations and the storylines which are very, very political was just awesome. But when they did him over here, they did a lot of Americans too. They had, I mean, I remember... They had Reagan, because it was in that time, right? They had Sylvester Stallone, I remember this. Yeah, Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Stallone, his mom, they had a puppet of her. There was a lot of Thatcher and Reagan.

06:42 so if anybody wants a description, these puppets would look like uh... they look like really high-end caricatures they were not trivial puppets I mean they were on the net, in fact there's probably some pictures of them on the net somewhere I mean they're pretty amazing yeah I don't know if it was a spitting image or the spitting image, I can't quite remember but uh... I think it was just a spitting image, that's what I recall but anyway yeah that's too bad, this would be the era to do it Yeah, no kidding. Uh... spitting image. Yeah, it is spitting image. 1984 to 1996 is when it ran. Oh yeah, it's all over Google. You can find it real easy.

07:29 There's really no satirical programs at all. Not in the US, there's not. If you think about it. They used to have some in the 70s, they called that was the week that was, that kind of became avant-garde and everyone had to watch it every day. And then when they had some mainstream comedy variety shows right in prime time when they had the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, they had Laugh In. There was a whole slew of these kinds of shows and they were all, they weren't dead satirical like that was the week that was. But they were, you know, they had some bite, especially the Smothers Brothers, which is being documented now on PBS here, like on a weekly basis, you know, called, there's a Censoring the Smothers Brothers series of these shows documenting all the censorship that took place that resulted in them quitting.

08:23 and and anyway after that there was a really anything now there's nothing except you know late night tv you can watch leno who's you know not very i wouldn't call him a biting satirist and uh... certainly not and uh... uh... letterman who's funny but it's got you know he makes side remarks about things but these guys are weak by comparison to these these biting shows of the past yeah well you still expecting image i'm pretty sure that was a bbc show yeah i was i was there there was tons of money for that and the charter probably was a little bit different. But I mean with, this hour has 22 minutes up in Canada which has been a show on forever and then there's a couple of spin-offs of it. Those shows are very political and interesting. We can't even come up with something like that. I mean I think there's nothing. I mean it's... Because people don't care anymore, John. They don't care. I think it's the... I blame the school system.

09:20 Yeah, I'm right there with you my friend. You know they don't teach these kids anything. They teach them some some kind of left-wing crap that's meaningless and then the kids are baffled because it doesn't make any sense to them you know and then They don't know if you give a typical high school Student if you if you give them the newspaper and say okay, what does this mean on the front page? You know let's say it's a proper newspaper. They wouldn't know they wouldn't have the foggiest idea not the slightest right and I've always thought that history lessons should start with today's newspaper and then, you know, pick a topic, any topic, and then work backwards and explain how it came to be. It's only a couple hundred years. I'm baffled by it myself.

10:05 uh... then you watch you know the the jay leno doing his jaywalking which is probably only piece of satire he does even though it's by no means satire it just becomes satire because of the public and he just had battle of the jaywalking all-stars on the other day and it was like you know people answering the i mean in all the questions were taken from a fourth grade book and the u.s. test for citizenship and you know these people couldn't answer anything they kept misidentifying photos you know one girl thought everybody was John F. Kennedy including Nixon and then one of them thought Alaska was an island and it was just amazing

10:45 And I really don't like it when they do that about Americans because first of all you could do about any country and however you edit it, it can always wind up being funny if you just take all the people who have the right answers out. Oh yeah, well you have to do that. Yeah, yeah, I know that but that's but that's not that's not satire. That's easy. That's low-hanging fruit It well, you know it started with a you know There's another group that came down from Canada and went to heart what's interesting about it to me And I agree with you and probably go anywhere I mean I'm still stunned by when you see interviews had done on European television of people and they were the other I remember when the EU is you know, they took all the barriers between the countries down so you didn't need a passport to go from Germany to France for example.

11:30 and there was interviewing somebody who was in Germany and they asked him if he'd ever been to Paris, you know, and he said, oh no, I've never left my town, you know, I'm thinking, it's just like an American, you know, some Americans never leave their town, but I'm thinking, if I'm in Germany and Paris is like a two hour train ride, what am I doing sitting around this little burg, you know, I mean, I'd be going to Paris every weekend. Although the British, man, there's a large percentage that don't even have a passport, have never ever been off the island. Yeah, well I find that's the same way up in Port Angeles, Washington. You know, where right across is an hour boat ride, you go to Victoria, Canada, which is an incredibly cosmopolitan, well it's kind of a funky old-fashioned version of England cosmopolitan. But it's a gorgeous little city that's got all kinds of qualities that just aren't in the United States at all.

12:22 It's got a small Chinatown, a little theater district. It's just interesting. And 95% of the people that live in that town, which is to vote right away, have never been there. And they don't have any interest in going. You can ask, have you ever been to Victoria? No, I thought about it, kind of thing. That's the end of it. That's the pioneering spirit. Yeah, I think we have to assume that most people worldwide are not interested in floating around aimlessly. Meanwhile in the tiny borough of Guilford, the Surrey police shot and killed a guy. Oh really? Shot and killed a guy? I thought there were no guns in England. Yeah, yeah. Up near the, on the steps of the Guilford Cathedral, no less. What was he guilty of doing?

13:17 Looking suspicious and carrying something that looked like a gun. Yeah, it was kind of shocking. It was national news here because Guilford is not the kind of place you expect something like that to happen. The guy was apparently stressed out. But they had choppers after him and they thought he had a gun and they shot him, killed him. Bada bing. So what's the background of this guy? Did they do any research? Oh, we'll never know. It's Gitmo Nation East, man. We'll never know. We'll never find out. And you're right, you know, this is the country where the cops have no guns except in Guilford.

13:58 They say they have no gun. Yeah, really? You see these guys armed in Europe or in England at the airport. These guys are carrying like semi-automatic or semi. These things are probably fully automatic. You know, AK-47s. No, they're not. They don't carry AKs. Well, they're carrying some sort of a big looking nasty gun. BFG. It's a BFG. And they're walking around the airport with them. Have you ever seen the arms on those guys? Yeah, they're big. Yeah, they seem to be from the same clan. They've got these humongous muscles sticking out of short sleeves and then some form of incredibly large BFG automatic weapon. Yeah, so I'm sure someone will write in, you guys don't know your guns, and they'll tell us what they are.

14:49 But they're nasty looking, they're all, you know, flat black and look like they're cocked to ready to go. Just in case they have to like pepper the place for some reason. It's really, it's really getting bad over here, man. I tell you that. Remember we talked last week about Damien Green, the minister who they arrested? Yeah, what's come of that? Well, the papers have gone nuts because really the way, newspapers here, they're really important when it comes to political commentary. So, you know, they've gone completely apeshit over particularly the secretary of, you know, the home secretary, this woman named Jackie Smith, because, you know, no one's copying to have known it and, you know, she says, no, no, this was a police investigation, I had no knowledge of it, you know, it's really, really deep.

15:38 and what people are writing is, you know, is scathing and they're making all the right comparisons. So what's the public doing about it? Nothing! Sitting at home watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which by the way was a fantastic series. I have learned so much. in none of this you know the premise of the show right there for thirteen or fourteen celebrities into the jungle for three weeks and after do all kinds of true and jungle trials including eating live in right these are celebrities who are not particularly or or or don't happen to be working as it as a coincidence i'll tell you that uh... there were two people they they usually have some american celebrities in there as well uh... and this year they had george to k

14:49 But they're nasty looking, they're all, you know, flat black and look like they're cocked to ready to go. Just in case they have to like pepper the place for some reason. It's really, it's really getting bad over here, man. I tell you that. Remember we talked last week about Damien Green, the minister who they arrested? Yeah, what's come of that? Well, the papers have gone nuts because really the way, newspapers here, they're really important when it comes to political commentary. So, you know, they've gone completely apeshit over particularly the secretary of, you know, the home secretary, this woman named Jackie Smith, because, you know, no one's copying to have known it and, you know, she says, no, no, this was a police investigation, I had no knowledge of it, you know, it's really, really deep.

15:38 and what people are writing is, you know, is scathing and they're making all the right comparisons. So what's the public doing about it? Nothing! Sitting at home watching I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, which by the way was a fantastic series. I have learned so much. in none of this you know the premise of the show right there for thirteen or fourteen celebrities into the jungle for three weeks and after do all kinds of true and jungle trials including eating live in right these are celebrities who are not particularly or or or don't happen to be working as it as a coincidence i'll tell you that uh... there were two people they they usually have some american celebrities in there as well uh... and this year they had george to k

16:27 who is Sulu from Star Trek. Yes. Oh my. And he's like 70, 71 years old. He's a tough old bird. And then Martina Navratilova. I see, I sense a theme. What's that? Keep going. Well, I was just going to say, I thought it was interesting that Martina Navratilova was in the show at all. What is she, like nine or ten time Wimbledon champion? As it turns out, she felt that she was very shy. She's always been very shy her entire life. She goes in, she's at a party, she'll stand in the corner and then people have to come up to her. She doesn't mingle or anything like that by her own admission.

17:16 and they offered her and she said yes, you might as well see if she could stretch herself to the limits and you know what, she came across as a really, really nice lady. Yeah, I have a friend of mine who knows her pretty well and says she's a great person. Yeah, she came across as extremely nice and George Takei I just love, he's funny. Yeah, he's got a good sense of humor. Yeah, old queen of the jungle, very funny. As it were. So, uh... So that's what the public is doing? Yeah, I'm just saying that you said you learned something, that you just learned that Martina's a nice person and TK's funny? Yeah, that's kind of it.

17:55 Yeah, I know. The funny thing is it turns out that I think the Bush administration proved this too. That the people in power can pretty much do anything they want and you really must have to push people to an extreme limit. I mean, I can't imagine how the Russian Revolution or the French Revolution or any, I mean, I can see how the US Revolution kind of became, it was kind of developed. But nobody ever drove the Canadians to revolt. But the people who revolted big time must have been under amazing amount of stress. I mean... It's interesting you bring that up because last night was... and I've recorded both episodes for you and there's a couple more coming and I have them recorded I just got to figure out how to get on the DVD. There's a Channel 4 program here called The Ascent of Money and they actually explain how the French Revolution took place and it was a situation...

18:53 extremely similar to what's going on in the United States right now. Where a guy named Jean Law, who was a Scotsman, who lived in Amsterdam in the late 1600s, early 1700s, as he was like a gambler and got kicked out of Scotland or whatever. And he witnessed the East India Company being formed, which was really the first company that had shares. and subsequently were traded on the first what we would call a stock market all in Amsterdam. And he studied this for a year or two and then he went to Paris and he started the first, for all intents and purposes, French central bank, issued shares

19:39 and essentially just did what the Federal Reserve has done in the past 80 years or whatever, he just was printing up more shares, selling them and he owned like half of Paris, he owned fucking everything and it just became a bubble. And everyone was in on it, everyone had shares in the bank and all of a sudden there was like, you know, nervousness or whatever that just entered the market the way these things do. That's more your area when it comes to... Cycle. In fact, the collapse of the East Indian Trading Company falls right onto one of the cycle numbers, right on the money. Exactly.

20:16 So exactly and it was funny because I was watching this documentary which I think you'll enjoy it was well, you know a lot different from the things you might find on the internet, you know about the money masters and all that. Yeah. Well, the money masters is a piece of crap for my team looking it over and checking doc and documenting some of their claims, but but let's go let's Stop right here. And and and let me tell you one thing. I straight up get a dvd recorder you will not have one i have one i have one i have one that's like I mean, I've got to connect the Skybox because I recorded it on the Skybox because it's on like season pass like a TiVo automatic record. Yeah. And so I can output it. I just have to output it and reroute it to the DVD recorder. I have one. I got one upon your recommendation. I hope by the way that it isn't a different region or anything like that. No, no, no. They use region zero on these things. Oh good. So I got it. So I'm going to hook you up.

21:14 Yeah, if you have the, you know, my experience, generally speaking with equipment like this, if you buy the D-recorder, you actually have to connect it to something for it to be useful. Yeah, thanks. No, but... Thanks, John. I'll take your advice. I appreciate it. But anyway, you were going to talk about the collapse of the East India Company on the cycle. Yeah, there's I don't have in front of me, but it's it's over. It's just like a classic year I mean, it's just bang boom, you know, there it is I forgot but that but that in all for all intents and purposes was that collapse in France of the Jean-l'os central bank The collapse of the shares that they were the only shares that were being traded and it was it was like any classic boom and everybody had had their stock and then you know just it came flying back and then they you know

22:08 The price went from like 9,000 florins to 5,000 in one day. Let's start about our thing. The price of oil is now 40. Isn't that unbelievable? So anyway, I bought into the double short on oil. You got the ETN? No, yeah, the ETN. Which by the way, Andrew and I are going to do a special disc for... I'm not sure what we're going to charge for it on ETFs and ETNs. for people that need to catch up to this, because these ETFs in particular are just on fire in terms of the popularity. But anyway, so I got out of my ETN, I think I got out about 120 or so.

22:49 And he went up another 15 point cents, which is I don't know what, I mean I was thinking the oil was going to hit 50 and it was going to maybe settle in a little bit, and then it dropped another 10. Boom. Boom. It's probably, the guy who's the head of Iran publicly says they're budgeting for oil at 30. Yeah, and I'm hearing that gas in a year from now, actual gas at the pump could be as low as $1. Yeah, I find that hard to believe. Because if you settled in at around a $2 range, it's already hit, around here I can get premium. for under two dollars it just hit me I just bought some the other 201 then I saw it at 199 and I suspect it might get down to 150 160 which is you know which which will crank the economy up because people don't realize that the price of energy is a lot to do with the you know the economic well-being of a country and because you know the energy it's like if it's cheap

23:42 It's energy. I mean, it results in direct production of products and whatever. Energy is... that's the basis of everything. Yeah. Every single thing in our lives is all based on energy. So I'm looking at my DTO as after I leave it and here's the key... I did some more research than usual and, you know, as opposed to my normal research which is talking to you and then making a decision. So that's the way to go. So what was the name of that brokerage, banker? It starts with a G, it's like Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs. When they said something about oil is going to go to 200. Who do you think the largest single holder of the exchange traded note, double short oil is?

24:31 Yeah, well, there's... Of course, that's what they do. They buy the opposite direction, they come out with a recommendation, all the suckers. I learned that the second day I had my level 2 trading screen. I was reading research, I'm like, oh yeah, this is good, I'll invest in that, and then boom, I got fucked. I'm like, huh? And then immediately, this is a stupid game. If you're not on the inside, you can never win. Well, I learned this a long time ago too. I mean, I never thought I was going to be so blatant. But I mean these guys are just ridiculous. And CMBC is in on the whole game. Well, somebody there is. So anyway, but I learned years and years ago, because I would always, I remember there was a, during a boom of some time back, 40 years ago, there was this company that was being touted by Merrill Lynch, who was always the one company, every time they were like really pushing something, I was very skeptical. They were pushing this company called Sterling Homex.

25:29 And Sterling Homex is this company that was one of, there was an era in the United States where everybody, everything was gonna go prefab. I remember that housing. It was like a boom a boomlet of prefabs We're gonna manufacture all our houses in factories, and then was it called sterling what sterling home X I think is STI or LING dash home X and Merrill was pushing this stock like there was no tomorrow people were bloated up with it and of course the company goes bankrupt and about two weeks later, or a couple months later, and it was just like, wait a minute, weren't you, and then it turns out that those guys were on the other side of the deal. They were out.

26:12 Yeah, you know, I got a thing for it. And where's the SEC with these scams? Where's the SEC with the Goldman Sachs telling everyone that oil is going to go to 200 while being short? Well, dude, they haven't even taken anyone to task over the ratings agencies like Moody's. You know, oh, we had a software fault for two years. I mean, there's no oversight. They're not doing anything. They're all in on the game. Martha Stewart goes to jail. To jail, exactly. Exactly. And they shoot an innocent guy on the Guilford Cathedral steps. And I guess now they're going after Mark Cuban for something. Well we talked about that two weeks ago. Yeah, I know, I've been bringing that up and people are fascinated by your theory.

26:55 Oh, about smartest guys in the room? No, no, about not so... Oh, about Loose Change. Oh, that's what it was, yeah. Was it Loose Change? Yeah, 9-11 Loose Change, the second edition or final edit or whatever, the one that Sheen was... I don't know, did he actually ever wind up doing the voiceover? I thought he did. I don't know. I don't watch that stuff. Now, I'm pretty wary of what's going on. I think right now, now that we have the bailout is now up to 8.4 trillion dollars which has been lent, spent or otherwise disposed of. Given away! Yeah, I'm pretty sure that this is just keeping it afloat until Obama comes in, then boom!

27:37 They're just gonna drop it all. Nah. Because he's the right guy to convey the message, whatever it is, which I presume is going to be, you know, some change in the monetary system. All your base belong to us. Yeah, for real. Well, you know, here's what's happening in Europe. This is a very interesting way of tackling the bailout and I think this is even funnier. People are jumping into this head first. So, Gordon Brown has proposed it and it'll cost the UK 1 billion pounds. In Italy they're already doing it. What they're offering to homeowners is, okay, you pay a set rate, so maybe 4% on your mortgage

28:16 and you don't have to pay whatever the differences of your arm going up, your adjustable rate mortgage for a period of anywhere from six months to two years. And then of course you get a balloon payment at the end of that, you have to pay the piper somewhere. Right, you know I had a sense that this whole thing took place prematurely, this collapse. I thought they wanted to... I think that No, I disagree, I disagree. It's exactly on time. What they messed up was the Lisbon Treaty. That was supposed to be in effect as of October so that they could do all this financial mumbo-jumbo and now what these guys are talking about is they're operating under the Lisbon principles.

29:02 Don't you love it? Yes, well we have to approach this under the Lisbon principles so completely not ratified because Ireland said no all it is a legal document for this I and into the way that we're freaking out about it. I'm convinced John this was you know the timing is perfect, but Europe wasn't ready for it yet because they didn't have the Lisbon Treaty in place So, what do you think the end result's gonna be? Because it seems to me that, you know, everyone's talking about depressions. I don't think this is leading to one. I think this is gonna put it off, hopefully, so I can have my cycles thing fall right into place. Not that I wanna see a depression. Anyway, the...

29:41 I mean, there's... Well, you're asking a question. I'm totally convinced still that we're going to have a boom. And then, oh, I'm watching the Kramer. You ever see Madden? Yeah, Jim Kramer, of course. I don't watch him that much because he makes me shake. And so, you know, I think, I always look at the coffee and think, you know, it's the coffee. I'm drinking too much coffee and then I realize that this guy's got, you know, he's just the way he is. He's wired. So he's, he made a couple of interesting comments. He actually predicted, he took back a bunch of his stuff that he said before, which he does commonly. And then he said, and he used to, and in fact, they recorded it. I should have sent it over to you. You could have played it.

30:17 A couple of moments where he says, and then you know what this means is when Obama comes in there's going to be a boom. And he said use the word boom. Which is what I've been thinking too, but this time, you know, this boom will lead to a bust and then when the bust happens, a real bust. You end up with all this money that they've been throwing into the system, you know, the eight trillion. There's nothing left. I mean now all you can do is just... Well, that eight trillion wasn't even there. That's got to be... Okay, can I give you my opinion? Here's what's gonna happen. First of all, there's a lot of rumblings now about the way the 8.4 trillion is going to be paid for is through a value-added tax in the United States. I think that's highly feasible. I haven't heard that much here.

31:03 Oh, it's a rumor on the interwebs. Well, look, the rest of the world does it. Yeah, yeah. We've got 17% in the United Kingdom, 19% in most European countries, Belgium 21% value-added tax. So that would be one way to get it back. But I don't think that... I don't see a boom happening. What's happening right now is Because of the lack of credit facilities, farmers can't get loans to buy fertilizer. We're going to have a supply problem. There's just no doubt about it. There's going to be some essential supply problem, I think, when it comes to food.

31:42 And the dollar, there's no faith in it. They're propping that up, then when Obama is sworn in, boom, they'll drop it like a hot potato. No more propping up of the dollar. And that's when the new money system will come into play. and it may even be called something else but we'll certainly have a different reserve currency and I'm pretty sure it's going to involve carbon one way or the other. Well the carbon thing is hopefully going to be dropped. Let me write the date down here for your crackpot prediction. It's not that much of a crackpot. Once again, there's rumors now about the United Kingdom going to the Euro. If they wait any longer, the pound will be equal to a Euro. Then they don't have to worry about it. Yeah, well that's the whole point.

32:39 No, I see bad times ahead. I see really, really dark days. That's the way, that's the typical public attitude at the bottom. We're at the bottom. No way we're at the bottom. We're at the bottom. This is what the bottom feels like. And it always brings up this gloom and doom thing, so when things start to pick up, you say, well I guess I was wrong. And then you'll jump in at the wrong time during the boom, and then that's when they pull the rug out from under everybody. And the public has to be involved. I mean, the public has to take it up to shorts. That's the way it always works.

33:21 And, you know, in this situation, these banks and all this other stuff, the public is, you know, so far as being taxpayers are concerned, have been getting screwed. But we don't have the real sense of being personally screwed over. which is really necessary to really do this right. Well, what are you talking about? Of course people are screwed over. The 401Ks are hoes. They're getting kicked out of their homes. What do you mean? The public is very much feeling... Oh, no, I mean the number of people that are getting kicked out of their homes is minimal. And it's played up a lot in the media. And there's a lot of houses for sale that have never really, you know, there's a whole development up north of me here.

33:57 that was built out and then just before they were gonna start selling them they'd the whole thing collapse another trying to give these places away but the promises nobody's moving in the circuit deteriorates can interesting to watch something like this go downhill because they can't maintain it so now weeds are growing everywhere and you know that i saw a a documentary on uh... on a their companies now that uh... that go around all these houses and they, you know, I guess the bank hires them and they drain the swimming pools so they don't become cesspools of mosquitoes. They paint the lawns in some cases. They paint the lawns green. Oh, that way when you fly over it doesn't look too bad. No, when you drive by you can't tell. It's like, oh, that's nice. That's pretty good.

34:43 Let's spray paint the dirt green. They probably think it's actually not a bad idea. If you can get some kind of paint or some sort of substance that you can spray on dirt that would also have like a weed killer in it so that you don't have the weeds popping through this stuff. That's not a bad thought. I like it. I wonder what they've got. Maybe somebody out there knows about this, if that's how they're doing this, because that's not a bad idea. Anyway, I have in my notes that after a new president is elected, the stock market's supposed to go crazy in a positive way. That was your prediction, which has not taken place. It's not, no. When he gets in, he has to be in. Oh, okay. Boy, are you going to be disappointed. I don't think so. I think the day he gets in, this thing's going to start to move.

35:29 The fundamentals aren't there, John. Fundamentals don't mean anything. As a country, America has already had a $10 trillion debt in four months. It's almost doubled. China is not going to lend us any more money. They've lost billions. I'm just telling you, we'll wait and see. We've got until January and then when it gets elected, I, you know, Obama, Hussein, Obama. No, no, no. Pakistan and India have something to do with the strategy. Well. Yep, there's something and that would be mainly because, doesn't, so the Chinese have a pact with Pakistan.

36:16 I think they've been pretty, they're neighbors first of all, but they've... Yeah, and the Russians have a pact with India, and they were selling them, the latest news, they're selling a bunch of nuclear reactors for power. What does Pakistan have? Does Pakistan have anything in the ground? No. You mean oil? Yeah, anything like that? I don't think so. I think they're pretty dependent on, you know, hard labor to do what they do, I don't know. I do know this, by the way, just as an aside. If you buy Basmati rice, buy the Pakistani ones as opposed to the Indian ones. It's just a cleaner product by five washings at least. Really? Yeah. Well, they have these Muslim cleanliness laws in the food business, and so they don't let, they're not as careless as the Hindus. No offense to the Hindus out there,

37:15 The rice, I mean, it's like the stores we have over here. There's a couple of Hindu stores and there's a couple of Pakistani stores, and the Pakistani stores are generally cleaner, even though they tend to scowl at you. But the rice, but the rice is... But we're not generalizing at all. No. The rice, but the rice is, so you get, you know, there's Basmati rice, which of course takes a special technique to cook, which people don't seem to understand. Well, I'll document it. Well, it's boiled. It's a boiled rice. It's not like a Chinese rice where you would like typically with rice you Chinese style cooking rice take a long grain rice and you put like a cup of rice and one and a half to two cups of water and then you slowly boil it and then the water all the water in the pot sucks into the rice there's no water left.

36:16 I think they've been pretty, they're neighbors first of all, but they've... Yeah, and the Russians have a pact with India, and they were selling them, the latest news, they're selling a bunch of nuclear reactors for power. What does Pakistan have? Does Pakistan have anything in the ground? No. You mean oil? Yeah, anything like that? I don't think so. I think they're pretty dependent on, you know, hard labor to do what they do, I don't know. I do know this, by the way, just as an aside. If you buy Basmati rice, buy the Pakistani ones as opposed to the Indian ones. It's just a cleaner product by five washings at least. Really? Yeah. Well, they have these Muslim cleanliness laws in the food business, and so they don't let, they're not as careless as the Hindus. No offense to the Hindus out there,

37:15 The rice, I mean, it's like the stores we have over here. There's a couple of Hindu stores and there's a couple of Pakistani stores, and the Pakistani stores are generally cleaner, even though they tend to scowl at you. But the rice, but the rice is... But we're not generalizing at all. No. The rice, but the rice is, so you get, you know, there's Basmati rice, which of course takes a special technique to cook, which people don't seem to understand. Well, I'll document it. Well, it's boiled. It's a boiled rice. It's not like a Chinese rice where you would like typically with rice you Chinese style cooking rice take a long grain rice and you put like a cup of rice and one and a half to two cups of water and then you slowly boil it and then the water all the water in the pot sucks into the rice there's no water left.

38:03 And the Pakistani, or I'm sorry, the Basmati-style rice, which is a different rice altogether, which is more fragrant, it's a very different rice, is boiled. So you take a cup of rice and then you put it in like a gallon and a half or two gallons of water and you boil the crap out of it until it's just one second away, it's like gets a little al dente, it's just a little bit almost finished, but it's not quite, and then you dump the water out. down the drain, and then you, by the way, the rice has to be washed two or three times before you cook it, and then soaked for like 15 or 20 minutes. Only the soaking I think is optional, but the argument is that it keeps the grains from breaking when it's being cooked. But anyway, so then you dump the water out, and then you put the rice back in the pot, and then you cover it with a towel, and then you let it steam to completion.

38:56 And then it'll be, it's the most perfect rice there is. It's unbelievable. And that technique is just like, was I think derided as boiled rice some, I don't know, during the war, World War I. And so nobody who's, no Americans, and I can guarantee no French people, know how to use this technique to cook rice. And that's the way you cook basmati rice. Have you ever had Indonesian rice taffle? Yeah, I have. Because the rice you described there sounded a bit like that. It could be.

39:31 I mean, I don't know, I never asked. But I first picked up this recipe from when I, we went to the, by the way, while it's steaming, under the towel, you can put some butter in it and then let the butter kind of melt and then you stir it in gently afterwards. You generally get it so almost the grains are almost individual. So if you could lift it up with a fork and all these pieces perfectly cooked would just fall all over the place. You've made me hungry now. It's delicious. I think there's no rice, I don't even, and it's quick. The whole process for making Basmati rice, a rice dish, and you put saffron into the liquid, you can do different things to season it. Man, there's nothing like Uncle Ben's, you open that pack to two inches, throw it in the microwave for two minutes, kaboom. The whole process for making Basmati rice is about a 12 to 15 minute process.

40:18 So I'm always amused by Uncle Ben's instant rice, which takes as long. The rice has been ripped clean of any nutrients and it's horrible and it's mushy and it's terrible. People should learn how to cook. I call it Iranian style rice. The Iranians are the ones who do this rice the best. They're fanatics about it. They have a lot of different kinds of variations of the rice. They grow rice in Iran in a couple of areas where they make some killer rices that are just impossible to get a hold of.

40:55 It's very hard to produce, but the opportunity is very apparent, John, that there's going to be a lot of demand for quick, simple, yet elegant, good-tasting meals in a cooking show. You're almost the perfect candidate for it, you know? Yeah, well, I can do the rice, that's for sure. The funny thing about rice, which has always amused me, is that the Europeans had never really got a clue. I mean, there weren't a rice culture. And they have like, you know, yeah, you can get the risotto, which is a stirred, you know, kind of gooey rice that you make with these rice sheets. Oh man, if you get the wrong risotto, it's really, really horrible. Yeah, and even if it's right, it's not that good. And I mean, it's interesting, it's kind of a filling, because it's so starchy. I've had really good risotto in two restaurants, both in the United Kingdom, of all places, where the risotto was always on the menu.

41:51 Gordon's restaurant, what the hell is the name of it? It'll come to me. As well as the... Okay, I'm two for two. There's two restaurants I've had in the UK. It was really good. Man, I had this great wine last night, DeVore. Oh, you would have loved it. What was it? I don't remember. Gordon Ramsay's restaurant. Yeah. But they eat it here all the time. It's like the favorite dish. You know, the favorite appetizer. Well, I'm not saying it's a bad thing to eat, but it's not a rice dish by any means, at least the way I think about it with the Asian rices. Most people here cook rice Chinese style. Some people cook Japanese style, which is a gooey rice that forms lumps. It sticks together a little bit more. Yeah, it's sticky, sticky rice.

42:42 But most people cook Chinese style, I remember there's different ways of doing it and it's always the same, which is, and typically with long grain rice, this grown in California or Texas. People then go and they'll buy some Basmati rice and cook it that way and it is just terrible. I mean for one thing, they never wash it enough. Basmati rice needs a lot of washing, except the Pakistani stuff doesn't, it needs half as much. And they never soak it, and then they, it's just anybody, because the first time when I was in college I was fascinated by my understanding, oh, Basmati rice, the world's best. I didn't know how to cook it, and so I cooked it Chinese style, and then I said, this is the worst rice imaginable. It stinks. I mean, it was horrible, and I never went back to it until I rediscovered it at an Iranian restaurant.

43:34 I don't think I've ever really had rice that I thought was horrible, honestly. Oh, try cooking basmati rice Chinese style. You'll see. I mean, it's unbelievable. Anyway, that's my rice story and I'm sticking to it. The Supreme Court is now handling the quest into Obama's birth certificate. Oh, really? Yeah. Huh. I wonder what would happen if it turns out that he wasn't born in Hawaii, the whole thing was a scam, and he was actually born in Kenya. Well, when you think about it, what do we... Can you turn on your speaker a little bit, John? I mean, you don't have headphones on, do you? No. You're getting bounced back too much? Okay. Yeah. There you go. Yeah, a little bit. We don't know anything about this guy. We really don't. Yeah, no, I know. We do know that he's picked all the old cronies to be in his cabinet.

44:30 I was looking into Richard Gates's background, who is the current Defense Secretary. You know who he worked for back in the 70s? Who? Zbigniew. Oh, Zbigniew, your buddy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. He's the inside guy then. Why doesn't he just put Zabrinsky on one of his, you know, just make him his chief of staff and get it over with? Nah, he likes, he's pulling the strings, man. That's what he does. That's what he's the big kahuna, big man on campus. He's making it all happen. Yeah, apparently. So we'll see. We're gonna get a boom and then a bust. No, we're gonna go down further. The next bottom is 72-86 and then I'm calling Dow 6000. Yeah.

45:22 Yeah, you and a couple of friends of mine is calling Dow 6,000. I'm not seeing it. We got to break through this barrier first and this wishy-washy up and down 300 points per day. And now we're going to bail out this auto company bailout. Man, is this unbelievable? Have you followed any of that? Of the hearings? I should have been listening to the hearings, but these guys are whining a little too much for my taste. But, you know, the fact of the matter is they bail out, first they bail out these financial institutions and then the car companies get screwed in the deal because these guys hoard the money. And the car companies just want loans. They're not looking for free money like these other guys. It was funny, during one of the hearings they kept saying bailout, bailout, and then actually one of the auto people corrected himself and said, I mean loan.

46:19 We're asking for this bailout, I mean loan, and it's my favorite. I drove a hybrid car here today, so they've learned, right? They're all putting their corporate jets up for sale, and I drove a hybrid here. I drove a Chrysler hybrid test vehicle. It was really great. Well, the thing that bothers me, there's a piece of news that came out claiming that the only reason they were flying corporate jets was, and they couldn't fly commercial, is for security reasons. Give me a break. I guess so, you find out the guy's a CEO, a GM, and you got something wrong with your car. Hey, that Saturday night bought's a piece of crap, what are you gonna do about it? You know, there wouldn't be security reasons, they'd be harassed on the airplane, I suppose. I don't know, I saw Bill Gates' flight commercial, and you know, he was the world's richest man at the time, and nobody was, you know, once in a while somebody would come up to him. I was on a plane once with Jimmy Carter.

47:09 Jimmy Carter's got the right approach. And I talked to the stewardesses about it afterwards. For one thing, it took me forever to get to the airport. The traffic was a mess. I couldn't figure out what the deal was. So I get to the airport. I'm on this plane to Atlanta, Delta. And Jimmy Carter's on the plane. And Jimmy Carter, he gets on the plane, of course that meant their security was screwing up the roads. Anyway, so Jimmy Carter, he's booked in first class with a couple of Secret Service guys. Babes, a couple of babes. Yeah, that would be nice, but no. Jimmy Carter goes through the plane and introduces himself to every single passenger.

47:48 Seriously, he goes down one aisle and he takes, you know, he does a real good shakes hands with everybody and says, hi, how you doing? I'm, you know, you may, you know, have heard of me kind of thing. It's hilarious. Surely you've heard of me. And he comes back around and then he comes back around the other way and he meets and I talked to him for a couple seconds, you know, yeah, how you doing? You know, no, it's good to see you on plane and whatever. I forgot what I said. It was something stupid. And so then he goes back and he sits down and I talked to the stewardess about this, what's the deal with him coming? And she said this, I thought it was genius. She said, Carter comes on the plane, everyone knows he's on the plane, so he introduces himself to everybody on the plane, and by the way, she's been on a number of planes with him. So we're talking 200 passengers or just in first class? No, 200 passengers. He goes out and does the whole thing. It takes about half an hour. Half an hour at least, yeah. But it's during the ramp up, so it's not like, you know.

48:40 He introduces himself to everybody on the plane, she says, because once they meet him, they're not going to bother him. Because before that, people would come up and want his autograph and they want this and that, you know, and he couldn't get any sleep. He likes to sleep on the plane. and so now he does this and I thought what it was a great idea and I think everyone who's that famous, although I don't think there's too many in that category, should do the same thing. It's actually kind of cool. Well typically celebrities don't introduce themselves to anyone on the plane, get hammered, grab the stewardess's ass and then wind up fighting and arrested and diverting to another airport. That's pretty much the way it usually works. Certainly with the supermodels.

49:23 I flew once when Fergie was still married to Andrew. She flew British Airways when she was still a member of the Royal Family. Huh. Yeah, to New York, I think. What happened to her? She was like trying to become a celebrity in the United States and eventually just became a, you know... Yeah, well, she did Jenny Craig. She made a lot of money in that and she wrote a book and she made money on that. I think she did a video, made money on that. And there was a kind of reality type docudrama on her a couple months back here. It was at her home, it was like living with Fergie. So yeah, I would have to say she gets pushed away into the archives.

50:09 Yeah, the Royal family for good reason. I saw her on one talk show once and she seemed, you know, like that typical upper class, boring British style of, you know... She was no Diana, man, I'll tell you that. A person that wasn't of any interest to anybody. She seemed like a nice enough person but she didn't seem to have much going on. Nah, we should wind up on celebrity rehab, you are. Celebrity rehab? Talking about celebrity rehab, I understand that our friend Amy Winehouse is about to die in rehab or something. What's the deal? John, it is a cold day in hell when you're ahead of Amy Winehouse news. What is going on? They came over here. I mean, normally we don't get a lot of Amy Winehouse stuff unless she's clicking on death's doorstep.

51:01 and that was kind of the fear, or maybe what it was, was I was too lazy, I lost my remote control, and I ended up watching Extra, which is one of the worst shows on television. Extra, Extra! And you know, which is all... Flashy gossipy stuff. Yeah, most of it's paid for, you know, paid for the minute. And I think she was mentioned as something wrong with her. There seems to be a couple of news articles. Let's see, Amy Winehouse still hospitalized as hubby sent back to jail. Now there's a headline for you. This is what you don't want you... You don't want to read this about yourself. This is the definition of a bad day. Yeah. She's been hospitalized since November 23rd. Wow. Yeah.

52:04 That's a shame because she's a talent. Well, you know, you can only apparently she's gonna know who knows blame it on the Afghani drug trade. Yeah that and actually getting involved with these drugs that you know, so what else going on over there? Is there anything that in the EU happening. I mean, I guess the Lisbon Treaty is like, uh, I was, there was a special on, I was watching BBC America and they're like, they're the Irish or, you know, they're trying to resell them on the, on the, on another vote and they have all kinds of... Oh yeah, no, no, oh yeah, they promised it. ...why they should be voting yes, how much good it's going to do. And the Irish weren't even in World War II for God's sake. They're pretty much isolationists.

52:47 Well, that's one of the main reasons, because they felt that they didn't want to be locked into some kind of tax scheme Europe-wide, and they definitely did not want to be a part of a European army. Which, of course, is exactly the two things that are in this treaty. They'll probably vote against it again. I don't think so, man. People are so stupid. They'll do a whole media blitz, they'll really work it, and... Do you think the Irish can be convinced that it's good for them to sign off on this deal? I think that they... No, but I do believe that whatever they do in the referendum, I'm sure they can get the votes they need. It was close enough, you know. Now we are getting a new EU president, the Czech.

53:37 this Czech guy who is actually, he seems pretty interesting, he's pretty much spoken out against the Lisbon Treaty, specifically. What him as a boss for? That doesn't make any sense. Well it rotates, you know, that's one of the things they wanted to stop in the treaty is they want to have one president, you know, none of this rotating shit because clearly, you know, that doesn't fit the agenda. So, it's nuts. Well I know it's going to be responsible for World War III. Okay, hit me. It's going to be at some point, you know, there's still animosity, cultural animosity between a lot of these countries, you know, ever since, you know, the 10th century. I take you right back, you know, it's not going to happen between the European countries. It's going to happen between, it's going to be India, Pakistan, it's going to be China with Pakistan, the US and Europe with India.

54:34 I'm not quite sure how Russia fits in, where they're going to fit in. But I think it's those big three. I think that's what's brewing. That's what's happening in the background. Everyone's got to be pissed at each other about the money system and that whole region. Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, India, that's the next theater as far as I'm concerned. No, that place is always, they're always battling each other. I don't see that as causing the kind of mess that you get when the Germans and the French go at it. Man, wouldn't that be funny to see that happen? You know, could happen. Yeah. I mean, but you might, you know, but we have to remember that media has changed a lot and the public has, you know, reacts differently than they used to to things. And I don't know. But historically, but I'm just looking at it from a historical perspective, these Europeans are always fighting with each other, you know, and it gets pretty nasty, you know, it gets pretty bad.

55:35 Well, for, I, I, you know, what I'm seeing is this just, it's all lackluster. You know, no one gives a shit, no one wants to fight, no one wants to do anything. I take you right back to I want, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. That's all people want to do. They want to drink, they want to, uh, you know, they want to watch TV and then, and they want to see the football game. And that's about it. People don't give a shit. They just let it all happen. No one's paying attention. What happens when they, everyone's talking about Amy Winehouse. When, including us. What happens when the Muslims get majority control of France? That'll be interesting. Well, this is already happening all over Europe because people are so lethargic. The Netherlands, great example.

56:13 You know, I hear people complain all the time, oh man, we got more scarves in our government than we have on street corners. What's going on here? Well, you lazy bastards, you didn't run for anything. You didn't vote, you didn't run for anything. And these people who did, they're smart. They say, hey shit, there's an opportunity. I'm going to represent my community. Boom, they're in, they get voted for. It's the same everywhere. Well, throughout Europe. It's the same in the states. No one sticks up and says, oh I'm going to run for mayor or senate or governor or anything because they actually have any ideals. Yeah, people don't run much. They should run more.

56:56 They bitch a lot. People could complain. My stepson's dumb, sorry. Where's the organization of the Democratic Party? Where are all the field offices? Where's the organization for the Republican Party? Yeah, sure, we've got the Obama bots and they've got their little email network and stuff. But really people who care and are out there and doing stuff, it doesn't exist anymore, John. Well, not to mention it, I don't know where these things are. I mean, there's like a back room somewhere and then there all this, you know, the, these guys that are just perpetual politicians move into an area, they take over the town and they start to rob it.

57:32 and uh... nobody seems to notice i miss a california's values the media was as a matter of fact we're so broke and it's been somebody pointed out that we've double our size of government even though we're in debt you know the last few years and it's like uh... what's the end is every time there's a scandal is always some middlemen there's more like the school systems around here are top-heavy with bureaucrats and they're getting credible salaries in the one little city that went out of business voleo uh... went uh... bankrupt and then they revealed what they were paying these people. I mean the chief of police was making like a half a million dollars and these other guys are deputy were making four hundred thousand a year and clerks were making hundreds of thousands it's like they were robbing these idiots. Just like the 8.4 trillion dollar robbery. We're all idiots. It is a robbery. It's a complete robbery.

58:29 And you can't even get somebody like McCain who was running and who could have, you know, positioned himself against all this stuff. He was part of the sellout. He was like part just a stooge. It was ridiculous. No wonder he couldn't even come close to winning. So, can we fix it? No, we're screwed. Totally hosed. I can't even get into the Christmas spirit. I have no Christmas spirit going on. Well, it's too early. No, it's not. They put the lights on in the town and everyone's, you know, they got the bells out and the Santas and they're doing their thing. And it's probably this deflationary spiral or whatever it is where everyone's just staying indoor. You know, it's just nothing's going on. It seems like total deadlock. I don't know, man. Well, I remember last week we made our predictions about the Black Friday.

59:26 Ah, did you get the actual numbers? It probably wasn't that bad, was it? No, it was good actually. I predicted it was going to go down 5%, you predicted 20. 20, yeah. And it actually went up, depending on who you talked to, between 5 and 7% up. It went up between 5 and 7%. Unreal. Yeah. That's big. And where do those numbers come from? Who produces those? I don't know. They come from here and there. Probably the Commerce Department. You don't think that's important? No, I mean, their numbers are consistent. I don't know where the numbers come from off the top of my head. I could look it up and find out and I'm sure that, you know, since everyone uses these numbers and from what I could tell, because I went, you know, looked around, these places were doing a hell of a business. Three people were killed. I was going to say that's the thing we should do next season. We have to do the body count for Black Friday.

1:00:12 God, man, you know people just they so they break the door down this guy is squashed underneath the door They're just running over the door and then and then everyone's in the guy's dead Squashed like a bug squash and then and then they want to close the store and people say no screw you man. We want our cheap Xbox 360 yeah, we don't give a shit if he's dead I got a deal here There's only a couple left And it's like the other thing was, is like, there's something about the Walmart employees had locked arms. I'm thinking what are these guys working minimum wage, locked arms against an angry crowd of people bearing torches trying to kill Frankenstein and you're locking arms? Hell, I'm getting out of the way. They must be chipped at Walmart. There's no other way. Yeah, I know it makes no sense that these people were pushing in and they're going to bust down the doors. I'm, you know, you people have got to get a little more experience with crowd behavior and how dangerous a moving crowd is. I mean, this is particularly,

1:01:16 I mean, you can get killed. Also a lot of people don't know about the corporate culture of Walmart, which is indeed very cult-like and a little bit scary. They have these huge company meetings and auditoriums. Whenever people travel, including the highest executives in the company, they stay at really cheap hotels slash motels. They sleep two people to a room. It's all about cutting costs and it's a very Yeah, it's kind of a militaristic culture in a way. You know, I've run into other companies, there's a number of them, that used to go to trade shows a lot. You know, and say, oh yeah, well, I'm at such and such motel here in Las Vegas. I'm saying, why don't you stay at one of the main places? Well, they put us up because we got a real good deal, and of course we're two people to a room. And I'm thinking,

1:02:09 I'm thinking more along the lines of a typical liability issue. I mean, if you're starting to put two people in a room and you're a corporation and you irresponsibly put two people in a room and one of them happens to be a pedophile, a rapist, or just a masher or somebody who, you know, there's risks there or just, you know, or wait, I mean it's out of control. I mean, whatever 10 cents you saved could be wiped out, you know, a hundred fold with a lawsuit about somebody, you know, doing something, throwing up. I mean, there's a million possibilities. The lack of privacy, I mean, it's just... I've never ever heard of any problems like that with Walmart and they've been doing this for a long time. They probably shoot the person in. Well, the Walmart police is always on the lookout, of course.

1:02:59 I'm just saying, I think it's a bad idea. If you're spending, send less people. If you're so cheap that you have to put people in a crappy motel two up, why don't you put three in there while you're at it? Get a rollaway. Get a rollaway. Get a rollaway. They always have a rollaway. Every place has a rollaway. You can get a third person in there once you go that far. It just makes no sense to me that these companies do that. I mean, there are ways to get her, I mean, another possibility for, I've always thought this was a good recommendation, instead of dictating what people should be doing with their travel budget, give them a travel budget of X amount of money and let them spend it the way they want to. If they want to double up to save money so they can have some leftover at the end of the year for their travel budget, fine. MTV used to do that.

1:03:51 It was Viacom then, yeah. So you could split the cost of a first class ticket and take someone with you and go coach. There was all kinds of things that they did. It was kind of cool that way. Yeah, I think it's a good policy and it lets people be creative and it also is less work for the company. You're just responsible for ending up in Vegas. You have to be there for some show, let's say. And you can stay wherever you want. If you want to stay at the Bellagio, go ahead. If you feel like throwing your money at it. Or if you get a deal. Why should it all be determined by the corporation? Putting everybody up in the same stupid motel so they can share a ride? It's all for the cost. It's all for the company. Hey look, they link arms. You don't think that was a bad idea? Boy. Thousands of environmental campaigners marched on Westminster today to demand more to be done to combat climate change.

1:04:43 Hey, that's a dead horse. So their government's robbing them blind, making them poor. Let's go march for climate change. There's some screwed up priorities there. Oh, it's about the third runway at Heathrow, of course. Oh yeah. Those things are always just a scam. You know, you get a group together and you pressure Heathrow about the third runway until you get bought off. Really? You can make money out of that? Oh, I mean, there's a lot of these pressure groups that do nothing more than go into a corporation with a large contingent of idiots that go along with the program, you know, these protesters. And then they go into a corporation and the next thing you know, they have a big contribution to their organization and then they go off to some other corporation. They don't bother these people.

1:05:37 I mean, this was always the accusation against Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition. That he was essentially, you know, it's a legal form of extortion. And go from one company to another and claim that you're looking into this or that and then either get told to shove off and you either have to do it, you know, a lot of it's a bluff. or you protest against the thing, you make a big stink, give the company a black eye. And it's not worth the company's PR efforts, they just as soon give you the money. It's a good way to make a living. I was just going to say, my brain is spinning. I'm in overdrive here. It's like, oh, opportunity. Yeah, it's a real good way to make a living. I mean, if you have the lack of scruples to do it. But yeah, when you see something like this about Heathrow, about the runway, I can't guarantee it, but 90% there's a good chance that it's somebody's operation that needs to get

1:06:39 you know, a little more funding, let's say. They could use a little donation if you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I hear you. I hear you. Well anyway, just to finalize UK news, they did their annual Queen's speech or whatever and then they present what laws they want to put into effect, which include lots more CCTV coverage all over the country. How much more can they put in? Oh, you'd be amazed. The big drive, so you know, they're on this prostitution thing we talked about last week. Now they want to change the licensing laws where lap dancing clubs are now deemed as places of sexual encounter. Which, there you go, that's the queen calling. Yeah, queen's calling. This happens every week. Hello? Can you call back in half an hour?

1:07:39 You know man, 15 minutes I'm done with you. Anyway. That was a solicitor. Oh really? Yeah. Is it a lawyer solicitor? No, no. We don't have lawyer solicitors. No, the thing is these boiler rooms are so blatant now that when they pick up, when they say, usually they mispronounce your name. is this uh... john uh... depends on you know you know it's a little bit of a look at the day i was he didn't think much about the comes up on the computer screen if anybody wants to know how these things hello is mister did they look at the front of the only one guy and they say well i'm gonna say this guy dead dad for it to the board of the war and the war yeah yeah that's what i would say whatever they pronounce i find highly annoying is that he mobile does this a lot eighteen t does it as well i'm sure all carriers do it

1:08:27 you're in a foreign country and you get a text message which costs, you know, 50 cents. And it's like, win an Xbox 360. What the fuck is that? You know, stop. It cost me money to receive this stupid message. And you'd think that they would have... It's not that hard to figure out that I'm in a different country. Maybe not a good time to bother me. That's hilarious. Well anyway, so these people pick up and it's all computerized. By the way, I worked in a boiler room once when I was in college. And what was cool about it is that one thing I learned of one scam, which is not on the boiler room side, but on the corporate side, there was some company that bought a bunch of, a huge buy of a bunch of tickets to some Warriors game for the benefit of some, you know, the fireman or something. And then they called you guys to unload them? No, they bought the tickets and then they, when you went to deliver something, you gave them a receipt

1:09:25 I wish I could remember the details, it was too long ago. But you gave them the receipt and then they had to return the tickets, they wouldn't pay, and they kept half of the receipt and said they lost it. Oh no! Yeah, so they kept, so they basically took, and I mentioned this to my supervisor, oh yeah, those guys, they do that every year. And so, but anyway, so I was the number one sales guy. for one day and I guess like just everybody was buying and then of course the random number theory came to pass. It turned out it was just a random number event. Because I couldn't sell anything after that, it was weird. But the thing about old-fashioned boiler rooms is they weren't as noisy as the ones today. So when these people call you, like this last call I got, you pick it up and it sounds like they're at a football stadium. I mean, there's so much ambient noise, because these guys are so cheap, they can't put people in a soundproof booth. Yeah, soundproof booths are good headsets.

1:10:21 they always wait because they have systems in place where if an answering machine picks up, they know it's an answering machine. So I'm always, if I get an unidentified number, I'm always trying to answer in one of those ways that I can pretend to be an answering machine. Hello. And then I wait. I'm not here right now. If they're like, hi, I'd like to tell you something, I'm not here right now. Or if you could have something hooked up and you just hit a button. Yeah, but anyway, there's too much of this. There are these callers and they're all done on obviously the same computerized system. They're wrapping through and you always have the one where it rings and you pick it up and they never pick it up because the machine had cycled onto the next number. Somebody else picked up before you did and you have one clerk that's selling. And then the other thing that's kind of amusing is they all work off scripts.

1:11:19 And so whatever you tell them, they have a branch. If he says no here, didn't go to page three, then they start picking up the script again and they start reading it. And these guys are very insistent in boiler rooms that you read from the script. So if I'm bored, once in a while, I'll start to chat with the guy, because I know it's killing him, and try to get him off script as best I can. So I had this guy call me a couple weeks ago. Selling of all things wine. Oh boy. You were the wrong guy to call on that day. Well, the guy was a jerk too and I looked up this company and I should look it up and tell everybody what it is because you ever get called by these guys. This place is ridiculous. They sell unknown, in this case it was an unknown, little known grove wine which is one of the cheapest wines you can get in the Bordeaux area that typically any grove in the absolute best year, if you pay 20 bucks you pay too much.

1:12:19 and generally speaking, you can get them for 12 bucks a decent bottle. And he had some gravel and he was picked by this guy, this famous guy, and this and that, and he went on and on. They're $35 a bottle and you should buy five cases. He says, I was thinking five cases, I don't even ever heard of this winery. And then the guy's really adamant, well I don't think you know anything about wine, that's the problem. If you did, you'd buy this wine immediately. You know, why don't you just buy a case? You know, I'm thinking. I was baffled by the fact that I said, no, I'd like to taste the wines. I got wine stores all around me that get better deals than this by a lot. And he went on and on and on and on. Then he became like the, I think he had a supervisor watching him because I couldn't get rid of him. And I had to actually hang up.

1:13:15 at some point. And so he was obviously being tested. Somebody was watching him, his every move. So did you actually get to lay into him? Did he finally figure out that you actually know what the hell you're talking about? I told him I didn't know what he was talking about, that this operation's a scam, and you know, oh, you don't know anything about anything. He always had some snarky answer, and then he got mad at me for being an idiot. You know, this is a sales thing where first you're sweet talk to the person, then you change your approach because you never know. Some people might like to be abused, and so as a last ditch effort, you start insulting the person, and maybe, okay, I'll buy, I'll buy, stop insulting me. I don't know what that's... I'll have to remember that next time I'm at an advertising agency. Yeah, try it. It's just... Hey, you idiot! You don't know how good we are! You don't even deserve to be advertising on our programming, damn it! So anyway, and then the guy said something else and I said, well...

1:14:07 I can't buy and I just hung up on him because I couldn't take it anymore. Because he wasn't going to recognize the fact that I wasn't going to buy, A, under any circumstances, and he was wasting his own time. He's supposed to be making money as a salesperson. I had to assume that there was somebody, he was just being trained or something, I don't know what it was. But if anyone out there ever gets a phone call about wine, do not ever buy wine from some solicitor online. You're going to get ripped off. Alright man, I think we're done. Yeah, we could be done. I do want to remind everybody that seeing as this is the holiday season, please, since you probably can't find it on television anymore, maybe one or two stations still running, but you should definitely have a look at It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart. Very recognizable story these days. So we have some t-shirts by the way. No we do not. Our friend at Angry Shirts.

1:15:14 Is oh from angry fair? No? Yeah, go to angry shirts calm you actually go to no agenda Yeah, dot dot angry shirts Really calm yeah, this will mess up the connection. Oh, I see 1695 Yeah. I don't know. Hey, I like the logo. Let me just copy that. Now we have a logo. Yeah, he sent me a note saying, you know, I just made up a logo because you guys apparently don't have one. Yeah, we do now. We do now. Yeah, it's true. We do now. Great. So it's... This is pretty funny. I like these. What is this? Proud citizen of Gitmo Nation. That's funny. I like it. Yeah.

1:15:58 So, and I decided what we should do is we're gonna bring a T-shirt, these are limited editions, we're gonna roll them out for a month or two maybe. And then we're gonna just do a new one and the old ones are gonna be discontinued and that's gonna hopefully get people to collect them. So here's the only thing, shouldn't there be a URL or something or some place to go to maybe on the back of the t-shirt? Is it only on the front? No, we're gonna, I wanted to make sure that, this is a test. I just want to do something simple so it would be, you know, people would wonder what it was and then you might have to ask the guy wearing the shirt, what the hell is that? What do you mean, promise that it's a test? What are you talking about?

1:16:38 Brown citizen of what? What is this? So, um, then they'd say, well, there's a pod show named No Agenda. You can go to, you can find it at curry.com and you know, blah, blah, blah. Dvork, dvork.org? Dvork, dvork. Dvork.org slash blog. I guess, you know, you could have put that on there, but no. All right, man. You really got to turn down your speaker next time. I get a lot of slap back. It's interesting you don't use headphones. I do use headphones when I do the Tech 5 and some other stuff, but when I'm doing these back and forth podcasts, it's just easier for me not to. I should try that next time. And it's an hour and ten minutes, and you know, with the headphones on, I mean, it's just like your ears get sweaty, you get fungus.

1:17:30 Full of fungus in Gitmo Nation East. I'm Adam Curry. And I'm John C. Dvorak here in Gitmo Nation West, also known as Northern Silicon Valley. We'll talk to you again next week, right here on NO Agenda.