Throwin' The "Oh"

00:01 It's time once again for a unique global perspective from the show that asks not what you can do for your country, but what your government is doing to you and other culinary fun facts. Throw in the O from Gitmo Nation East in Southwest London. I'm Adam Curry. I'm John C. DeVorek here in Gitmo Nation West, Northwest, by Northwest, in Silicon Valley North. Or wherever. Somewhere over there on the west coast. Somewhere from parts of... We used to have wrestling in the Bay Area before the W.W.A. F became WWE before they existed and there used to be this one guy that it was one of these traveling wrestlers I guess he went to all these various little areas and it was always from from parts unknown from parts unknown yet Wait, wasn't that something on like the the early tonight show didn't they say that as well from parts unknown? Maybe even on the radio

00:57 I think it was, it wasn't Ray Stevens, it was one of these other guys who was always like some sort of weird champion. And he always came from parts unknown. Ray Stevens actually was... I'm sorry. Go ahead Ray Steven Ray Steve Ray Stevens was this this blonde haired Wrestler that was supposedly the net he was the world champ or something and he was and he was supposedly from Reno Even though he lived in Hayward California you could see him driving around once so I had a big Cadillac and this is when the wrestlers didn't have these extravagant outfits that just had kind of like wife beater wrestling suits on

01:35 Yeah, Jen or just you know the whatever the trunks were but they it wasn't like as elaborate as it wasn't as much show business as it was still fake, but it wasn't you know done quite this way I'm hearing myself. Yeah. I'm sorry that was my fault you shouldn't be so anyway. Yes, so anyway Stevens was the master of climbing up to the top rope. Oh, and doing the big sling? Yeah, right. Superfly! Superfly! When I was in college, that's what we always were waiting for, because all we had was a Superstation WTBS through a terrestrial reception, like a coat hanger in West Virginia, mind you. And we'd always be waiting for the wrestling. It'd be, Superfly! Oh, shit! Oh, no! He's gonna do the Superfly! We lived for very little.

02:28 Yeah, apparently. There was also a guy, there was always an Arab that was a bad guy, the Sheik. You're right, there was always a... It was starting back then, there was always a horrible Arab. And he always cheated. Wait a minute, I have something for you. Wait a minute. Okay, here we go. Speaking of Arabs. I have a quiz, John. You ready? Go. Okay. The quiz is loading, one second. Okay, who who who made the following remark hold on the following remark Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-israel. Why wouldn't he be what is he an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House. Who was that who was quoted saying this in the Israeli my reef daily who was quoted as saying it I mean or who are they talking about? Yes, who said that who made that quote? Oh

03:29 I'll give you the quote again if you'd like to hear it, John, for Double Jeopardy. Obviously, he will influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he be? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House. Um, let's see, who would that be? Pat Buchanan. No, that is Benjamin Emanuel, father of Rahm Emanuel. You think that's a little racist, perhaps? Well... It's pretty funny. It's outrageous is what it is. So anyway, so the, well Rahm Emanuel's a character for sure. I hate to get in his way. So we had the sheik, the Arab, the Arab was the sheik and he had, I think he was one of her two or three guys who had this

04:14 There's a lot of these guys that weren't that competent. I mean until many years later where you had a wrestler like Ric Flair, who in his younger days was, you know, he was in the... My God, you remember all these names, John. Were you like a real fan? Were you into it? No, but anyway, how could you forget some of these guys? But anyway, Ric Flair was interesting because he was never in the WWE or F as it was once referred to. He was in the competitive conference or whatever you want to call it or show. And he was one of the most big he was always I remember reading some wrestling forums once and they kept talking about this guy never saw him then when I finally saw is it oh my god I mean he was actually something he was like an acrobat in his heyday I mean he would fly around and do all kinds of weird holds and spin around and grab you know just jump into the air grab a guy by his neck with his legs and skin

05:09 and flip around in some funny way and get the guy in some crazy hold and break his spirit. Anyway. And what really happened is then the entrances started to be the whole thing, right? The theme tunes and the chicks and the big explosions. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that a lot of these guys can't do that kind of thing. Because one thing, you can't do it if you're over so pumped up and so big. You're not very bendable. You're not well, you're not better, but you're also too heavy and you could really hurt yourself if you did some of the stuff. I'm sure Ric Flair hurt himself a lot too, but he wasn't a big fat guy. But anyway, I think in the early days there was always a few guys that were talented, actually could do athletic stuff, but most of them weren't. And so they had this supposed hold, which I suppose could be real, called the claw.

05:55 And I think it was, I think the Sheik and a couple of these other guys had it. And what they do is they couldn't really wrestle. They grabbed the guy in the stomach with their big hand. In the claw. And then they would be like, oh, they've got him in the, he's got him in the claw. Oh no, he's in the claw. It's all over now, sports fans. And this guy would just be squeezing his gut. So, um. I met Hulk Hogan. I told you I worked with him. Oh yeah? Yeah, on ABC's Circus of the Stars. I'm still trying to find video of that because that was fun. Hogan was the guy I think that actually made the WWE. He was the first mega global superstar in the arena. And I never saw him as much of a wrestler either. I mean his whole gimmick was that he was kind of meaty. He could run back and forth and bounce off the ropes. Well he was the good guy, right? He was fighting for all you Hulkamaniacs, all you little kids out there. You know the Hulk is for good.

06:51 Yeah, he was, but he was an evil character for a short time too, because they always have to do that. You gotta switch around. But anyway, so he wasn't very, I didn't think he was much of a wrestler, but he had... John, you can't say these things seriously. I don't think he was much of a wrestler. No, John, no, uh-huh, no kidding. No, when I say that, I mean that in terms of his ability to do all these crazy things in the ring, even though they're orchestrated, I didn't think he had a good variety. That's what I mean. So, he, but his whole act was I think was a throwback to something they don't even do anymore. In the early days of wrestling before it became highly commercialized, and I'm always wondering why, you know, I don't see this at all. You'd see the same scenario go as follows. You'd have a good guy and a bad guy.

07:38 And they go back and forth and back and forth and the good guys start to win and then he'd get the bad guy where he's just gonna beat him and he's gonna, the bad guy's gonna lose. And the bad guy would get on his hands and knees and beg for mercy. He'd beg and beg and beg and beg and the good guy would say, well, okay, I guess I'll let you. And then he'd come and sucker punch him. Right. Sucker punch him right in the gut. It sounds a lot like the early podcasting community actually. So anyway, so what Hogan, you know, he kind of evolved that into something kind of different. There was never the begging thing because he was always the good guy, but he had to somehow turn into something else. And so what he did...

08:18 Which I and he did of course he did it every time it was ridiculous the the guy whoever he was wrestling would be beating him You know and then he'd be beating him bad and he'd be beating him worse and worse and worse and then he'd get the guy and he'd He'd do something to Hogan or he'd you bang him over the head with a chair. He'd do something that would make Hogan snap The folding chairs are always good, yeah. Yeah, and so Hogan would like, he'd like you could see it, you know, supposedly. He has snapped into a different person and he's gone crazy. And so then he ripped off his shirt and he would be shaking and then the guy would come up and keep doing what he was doing earlier, which was pounding him. But it wouldn't budge him. Hogan wouldn't budge because now he's like, he's changed. He's morphed. And so into Hulk, Hogan, get the Hulk thing was kind of, you know, a reference to the comic book.

09:07 And so the guy would be pounding him, pounding him, pounding him, and then Hogan would do nothing but just stare at him and look mean. And the guy would freak, and then Hogan would go after him and just brutalize him, and then he'd win the match. uh... you know that was never as interesting or as dramatic as the guy begging for mercy and then sucker punching the guy as soon as he got mercy. It was just, you know, that, that... But you know, that scam or that theater I should say has now spawned three generations. My little nephews, you know, my nephew is nine, ten years old and Up until two years ago, I could not be a bigger hero by showing up whenever I saw him with something from The Rock. If I had a Rock t-shirt or whatever it was, then I was the hero. Yeah, that's another character that kind of... He didn't stay around too long because he had other things to do. Well, Jesse Ventura went on to an interesting career in politics.

10:03 Yeah, but he never really fully left the sport. In fact, even when he was the governor, he did some sports casting for the WWE guy, McMahon. When he started, McMahon has a weird ego. If you research him, he's the son of a global wrestling promoter from way back when, and he's the one who's kind of modernized the sport. But then he got a hair up his ass about the fact he could outdo the NFL, so he came up with this extreme football, the XFL. And the selling point was it was gonna be, the football players are all gonna be, it's gonna be similar to the wrestling, it's gonna be choreographed in some way. There's gonna be a lot of hot cheerleaders and the football players are gonna get paid a fixed salary. That'll fly. That's what I was thinking. I'm thinking, what is this guy, crazy? So he's gonna have, I don't know what he was thinking. So the best players they could get were all crummy.

11:06 I think they had a team in the Bay Area and it's one of these things that I just saw it coming, I saw it going, I never thought to buy some XFL football hats or a shirt or something. And of course they're collector's items now, right? Yeah, absolutely. It was a collector's item from the get-go. Are you just one big eBay at your house? I mean, do you just have... is everything just stacked up in boxes of cool shit? No, that's the point. I don't get it. You know, when some of these things come by, I don't, you know, take action. No, I don't have a lot. I don't do any eBay stuff. No, no. I think that you'd have so much memorabilia that you are like eBay.

11:43 Oh, oh, I got a lot of me- yeah, I got a lot of junk. There you go, junk! Yeah! There you go, junk. I got a lot of junk. That's what I meant. But anyway, so that thing was a fiasco and it was- but Jesse Ventura was one of the announcers. on the thing and he got himself into huge trouble with the media in Minnesota because he was still a governor and he was going on about media, you know, he was having to act like, you know, the phony announcers that they have on these things. So he had to have this tough voice and he kept talking about the puke media and how they didn't take much of their football league and they're a bunch of pukes. Really? Yeah, it went on and on. And so when he went back to Minnesota, you know, it was like, whoops!

12:26 You know, they were just giving it to him. And so he actually, I think they made his life pretty miserable. It was kind of stupid. He could never make up his mind what he wanted to do. I mean, he actually had a lot of potential as a politician, but I don't think he had it in him. Well, people seem to be pretty happy with him, with the job he did as a politician. Oh, I don't know. If you talk to people from Minnesota, I don't think they're that jacked up about it. But now they put in Franken. I mean, obviously Minnesota's our crackpot state. Is he finally in now? I mean, is it official? Is the race over? Or is it still counting? There's a suit going on, but I think he's going to win it. It's inauguration weekend, John.

13:12 Yeah, I heard that. Who's getting in? Well, I'm practicing throwing the O. Have you seen MeVEO today for the weekend? No, I haven't yet. Fire it up, man. While we're talking, just go take a look at it. Because I've essentially claimed... Oh, I'm claiming the whole thing. I'm throwing the O left and right. Good. So we John sent me an image Friday, I think while we're having some kind of meeting that's when we're always on Skype sending each other silly stories and Pictures and it's called the back channel. Yeah, it is. Yeah. There you go. I'm throwing the oh, right you like it. Oh

13:53 Yeah, you kind of made it look like a... Well, wait a minute, go to the end. Or no, in the beginning. It's right in the first segment. Yes, right at the beginning, but it's more of a square that you're making. You didn't make it a perfect O. Well, no, wait a minute. I'd do it again. That was just kind of the start. And also I didn't want... It looks more like an onion. I'm throwing the onion, everybody. So this is the new Obama salute, which consists of making an O with your hands and holding that above your head. Yeah, I'm totally convinced this is going to take off. That's why I immediately started the wave, man. I did a 20 minute interview with Maggie on Daily Source Code yesterday. It was fantastic. Oh yeah, fantastic.

14:40 Well, I first saw that O thing on an obscure blog and somebody was grossed out by it, which is that image that I sent you. But as soon as I saw it, I said, I can see this catching on. Very similar to it. There you go again with the C. Your O is not O-ish enough. Well, you don't think I actually want to do the C-O salute. I mean, I'm just trying to bring it to everyone's attention. Yeah, well you did that. That's good. That's my point. But anyway, I think it would be cool if the, well in some surreal sense, it would be cool if people, you know at the Obama rally with at least 2 or 3 million people that are going to be at this thing not seeing anything except the giant screens which will be all over the place I'm sure. If they started doing it, so everyone was like, oh, oh, kind of like Queen, radio goo goo, radio gaga.

15:35 throw me the oh no and I think that'd be cool if they were doing that don't you think I think it's gonna be it's gonna look very cool in 40 years from now when people are researching the the great rise of you know but we also be good I think the fourth Reich I think Obama in fact should when they have these military things you should throw the good nine green reduce the goose step I don't think he would look good doing it wouldn't it but he could do a little twist to it like you know little love Beyonce like uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh

16:13 I think if you had a military group going by with doing the goose step, goose step, goose step, goose step, and then they would all throw the O on, bam, just bam, they throw the O and then they go back to the goose step, I think would be extremely photogenic. Oh, you're tripping me out. Don't you think it would be cool? Yes! I think it's frightening, but yeah, it would be cool. It would fit right in line with the expectations, wouldn't it now? Yeah, for us anyway. Oh my goodness. For us and our crazy audience that thinks that... Who by the way we love dearly. Love you dearly, audience. Yeah, in fact if you could get more of your ilk to listen to the show then we'd be... Yeah, we'd love you even more. So I estimate I saw... I'm gonna... well it's hard to estimate but at least 20,000 people in London today and I'm looking at bbcnews.com at the homepage

17:11 Obama begins historic rail trip missing girl and man seen on CCTV The secret below Grand Central Station funny. There's nothing about all these people who are Who are demonstrating in the capital? So you have a big demonstration going on or was that today? Yeah, that was today. It was interesting You know, I finally found some websites that that are kind of organizing these demonstrations and and so they had an announcement for today assembling at Trafalgar Square which is, oh man, 10 minutes from here. So I took the kids up to go take a look. But it seemed like a lot of people were really talking about the demonstration that's coming next week on the 24th which is interesting because the demonstration is going to start at the broadcast house, that is the BBC

18:02 People are apparently now really pissed off about the either one-sided or complete lack of reporting on the conflict in Gaza. Is this organized by that communist group, the International Answer, or any of these people, the Workers' Party? Who's behind it? Generally speaking, these kinds of things aren't even organized by people who are actually interested in what they're trying to get the protesters to bitch about. Well, I do like the fact that they're protesting the BBC. I think that by itself is pretty cool. Let me see if I can find... I had the link somewhere. Stopwar. This is it. Hold on. Who's organizing? Globaldayofaction.org

18:49 Yeah, bullshit. So there's probably the same guys. They have a link. They actually have a pretty good online. They're pretty well organized. They're organized. No, they have a really good... I actually tracked most of their sites down once years ago when they were in San Francisco doing it with that little sign that said answer A.N.S.D. You know? Oh yeah, yeah. And that thing is like... I kept seeing it. I said, this is odd. and turn out to be the world's workers party it's a front and uh... which is a about now communist organization uh... you'll all style old-school And they had a slew of sites that linked to other sites, and so you could find all these various sites, but they always had a drop box for giving donations. The drop box would always be traced back two steps back to the World's Workers Party. Well here we go. This is the Stop the War Coalition. Does that sound familiar?

19:45 The Stop the War Coalition was formed on September 21st 2001 at a public meeting of over 2,000 people in London. The platform statement above was ratified at public meetings. They seem pretty organized. I'm sure if you track these guys, if you track that back two or three steps you're gonna find these same people. Okay. Well, you're gonna find, you know, Wesley Clark. He's gonna be somehow involved. Officers. Let's see the officers. Andrew Murray. Lindsey German, Robin Best, Steve Bell, Andrew Bergen, Communication Workers Union. Yeah, oh yeah, okay, here we go. Interesting. The STWC Muslim Network, Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation, University and Colleges Union, Media Workers Against the War.

20:39 They're all the same there's a Pole pole dancers anonymous. Oh Dude, I gotta tell you this story So I had to go to Guilford last night to drop off a couple things and pick some stuff up including Christina's car Which I'd conveniently parked in the lot behind my buddy Michelle Harper's Club, you know the pole dancing club. I got ten parking tickets and So I took Dexter with me, Christina's boyfriend. Why did you get 10 parking tickets? Well because I parked it there illegally for two weeks. That's 2 times 5 working days and I got a ticket for every day. Why was it illegal? I thought it was your buddy's place. It was a parking lot. No, it's just a place I know I can park. It had nothing to do... It's not his. I mean it's right behind his place. The council owns it. So I took Dexter with me.

21:27 So he could drive Christina's car back, back into the city. And my buddy Michelle had just come back from Thailand so I called him up and said, hey man, are you in the club? He said, yeah, come on by. I said, I got Dexter with me and he's 19. Don't worry about it, it's not a problem. So I took Dexter, 19, in for his first pole dance, for his first private lap dance and I got him two girls to do a lesbian show for him. You should have seen his face. It was the cutest thing ever and then he comes out from the private booth right with these two girls and And there was no one in the club. It was it was us right because it was early It was like 10 o'clock and it so it's us and 10 girls around us, and they're all like oh He's so cute wasn't his first time and Dexter does like well in this country. Yes What did your daughter say to that

22:23 Well, that obviously was part of the mission was to piss off my daughter, you know, put her on edge a little bit, you know, let her know that, you know, we're still men. No, she was cool because, you know, I came back and I said to Patricia, I said, all right, let's see what he tells her. And so this morning, Christina says, oh, well, Dexter told me about the lap dance. I said, oh yeah, what'd he say? Oh, that it wasn't all that naked. Dude, they're like completely naked spread eagle. And I said, did he mention it was two girls? No, he didn't mention that. Like, we're having so much fun with this. It's so mean. What a dirty trick. No, it's great. I've got something over him now. Forever. He's indebted to me. Yeah, I guess.

23:08 So last night they had, you know, there's a, I don't know if you watch Battlestar Galactica. Um, no, not really. Good. Before you say anything, and I hate to tell, I know a lot of people watch this show, I think it's one of the most dreadful science fiction things ever put on. I thought it was bad the first time it was on the air years ago when they had, you know, the Klan from Bonanza run in the group and then it, It's when they restarted the show like a few years ago. I watched the first episode because it's gonna be a big deal and I wrote a scathing piece on it. I should probably find it and blog it. I remember that. This is a couple years back, isn't it? It was a number of years back. Yeah, I think I remember that. And it was so horrible that I just said this is bad. I would maybe tune in once in a while just to see the hot blonde. There was some invisible blonde who played by, I can't remember her name. I should remember it but I can't.

24:05 uh... actress uh... just really was great and on camera and she would be she'd be in some guy's brain as you come out and she'd torment him and that was kind of funny But I couldn't stand the stories, they were slow moving, they were stupid. And so I got, so one of my bloggers, one of my editors apparently blogged up that it's gonna be the last season or this, I thought it was gonna be the last episode last night. And it turns out to be the last of many last episodes. And what happened, of course, they found Earth and it was blown to smithereens and they were all disappointed. It was post-Obama, clearly.

24:41 Yeah, absolutely. So when they said it all happened 2000 years earlier and meanwhile, so I turned the thing on, figure out maybe this is worth watching. So I start watching. There's nothing that comes of the whole episode except the stupidity of the show. And I'm turning that maybe somebody can explain this to me. But one of the characters in the story, in the story who represents, I guess, the government or something within the group of these stupid ships. He's standing there wearing a suit and tie. Like, he's wearing like an Armani suit with a, you know, an Armani...

25:18 White shirt and a tie that from the looks of the width is from like two or three seasons ago You know in other words when it was probably shot, but yeah right about 2005 and I'm thinking I'm looking at this going what the hell what is the who's doing this show that they would have some guy in a in a suit and tie which apparently would have been from 2000 years earlier by the timeline and he's wearing a suit and tie like it's normal and nobody's saying anything to him. And I'm thinking why is the guy in a suit and tie? Why does anybody have a tie in this show? A tie, yeah. What is the year that this

25:57 Supposedly, I guess I don't know 2200 or something like that. I have no idea if I guess it's something like so functional ties You know they make so much sense Ridiculous, you know it's essentially a phallic adornment from its traces back to various. You know movements within the fashion industry over time, but anyway, so So I do right away. I'm irked And then I try to watch the story, which has got all kinds of crappy background music. So no matter what anybody does, they're having a hit or an orchestra hit or they're, or they got dun dun dun, or they got some horrible music or something, some crazy sounds to make it creepier than it is.

26:36 And you don't know now, at this point in the story, you don't know who the Cylons are because they've all morphed into human look-alikes. And now they've discovered the 13th tribe is apparently Cylons and maybe we're Cylons, which is where I think this is headed by the way. Which is going to be quite annoying. But I'm not gonna watch it anymore. I've had it I can't stand this show, and I don't have much respect for people who think it's a good show. It's extremely slow-moving with all these dramatic BS Pauses and this supposed relationships between this person and that person. It's just terrible Are you practicing this rant for a twit tomorrow because that's like that's where you're gonna piss off the most people I don't think people talk about but but

27:19 Yeah, maybe I am practicing because I could bring it up again because I know it because I know there's a bunch of I don't understand you just like you just want to piss some nerds off. That's what you're into. It's a good show. It's a good show. You love it. You love pissing off nerds. You sure do. She's really pretty. Hey, is it just me, John? Or whenever I hear someone say stimulus package, does that make you laugh? I will now because I've had a stimulus package for many, many years. And I'd like to show it to you. Bye bye. So I was watching this television last night. I saw something that made my heart stop.

28:04 And I figure it's probably somebody's either coming with an Adobe plug-in or something to create. CBS had one. They had the spot art for an upcoming show. You know, next on CBS, da da da, and the art showing the characters, there's three or four characters, was done in exactly that Obama style with the cream blue and red, you know, photos that have been turned into this, you know, the poster that says hope and whatever. You know, that cream blue and red. Sorry, I just came to a screeching halt.

28:41 You know what I'm talking about? Yes, of course I know what you're talking about. Why are the networks now using this? This is basically a callback to Obama. Well of course, they're getting into it. Everyone's trying to do something to attract viewers and make money. I thought it was pandering. No, I don't think it's pandering. No, no, I disagree with you. It's not pandering. You know how media works. We're even doing it. We're doing, what are we doing? Inauguration for change. Wait a minute. Inauguration for change. If anybody out there has any, knows what this plugin is or what they're doing to get this effect, because I know it's, I doubt if it's being done by hand. I'm sure somebody's come up with a quick way of doing it. I would, send me a link. What kind of plugin do you expect this is though?

29:30 Is something where you can just send or it could be like a series of? One of those recordings that you can put into Photoshop It's somewhere you take a photo and you push the button and then boom it turns into this yeah turns into the blue cream and red posterized I could I can't I can see how you can do it with it's probably something you can drop right into Apple photo booth as well. You know what I mean, maybe yeah, maybe could be illustrator to I'm not sure I So, uh, I kept my notes from last week. Okay, we might as well follow yours because you never are interested in my topics. Yeah, okay. So let's start with... Cocksucker. You know, after I'm done with my three notes... Yeah, then we can get to mine, okay. Well, I actually do some preparation for the show. You know, I have some heart.

30:24 So, the things we forgot to talk about last week was that there was something about German measles, apparently. Yeah, they were claiming an epidemic of German measles in Britain. I don't even have those notes anymore. Yeah, it's like 3,000 people have the measles and they're claiming an epidemic and it's just another way of forcing people to take vaccinations. So they can inject us with nanotechnology to be tracked. Um, okay. So that... Think about it, dude. This nanotechnology stuff is for real. Okay, so there's a website a guy just sent me. Mm-hmm. It's in the vaccinations, you see. Yeah, okay. Michiel, um... Go ahead, man. Go get your flu shot. You gotta get another one, John. I already got my flu shot. There's a website called... You need an upgrade. Obama... conned me.

31:28 Obama icon dot me. Is it Obama dash icon? It shows up here as Obama icon dot me But it could I don't know if that's is that a domain because it shows up on the top at the top layer Of the browser as Obama icon me dot paste magazine calm. Oh, hold on dot me dot paste Obama icon me no dot in this case. Oh, oh

32:17 But did you try typing in Obama Icon Me? Yeah, I tried. It didn't resolve. No, this doesn't work either. No, but you don't have it right. Obama Icon Me, all one word. Yes, I got that. Dot paste magazine. Yes, dot com. Yeah. And I get it doesn't resolve. No, something's wrong with your machine. Yes, of course. Skype me the link, will ya? Oh, there's a thought. I keep forgetting that you can do that. Mr. Technology. Anyway, back to the... So that's the website that does it? Well, it's a website that does it. I don't know if it's the website. I already have it from someone on Twitter. I don't need your stinking link. Oh, somebody sent it to you? Yeah. Probably the same... okay. It's Obamaicon. It's not Obama icon. It's Obamaicon.

33:07 Ah, Obama icon. There you go. Oh, I see. Oh cool. Okay. Alright man, this is for you and me. This is what we're gonna do for our No Agenda album art. This is fantastic. Oh, this is great. We'll do it for the next t-shirt too. But send me a picture of you throwing the O. Oh yeah, there's an idea. So we'll both be throwing the O and then we'll... I have to get drunk first. Hey, I'm coming out in a little over a week. We got to plan some dinner. How does that... where's the connection there? It's because I'm gonna get you drunk! I'll get you hammered. I'll get you throwing up. I'm coming out. You're getting drunk? I'm on my way. Hell yeah. Seriously though, I'm coming out the 26th. So let's plan something for 27 and 29 or 30 or something like that.

33:58 Not 29, I got a board meeting on 29. 30th. 27th, 30th. I'm flying back to 31st so we can do the show on Sunday. My Skype friend says it's pronounced Michael, it's that simple. Even though it's spelled odd. So, um... Anyway, back to the German measles thing. That reminded me of something going on in the States, at least it was last week, I haven't seen much of it this week. An outbreak all over the country, at least news stories cropping up everywhere, almost everywhere. Of German measles? No, rabid raccoons. Really? Yeah.

34:35 rabid raccoons all over the place and there was a you know but on most don't most raccoons carry rabies with them anyway at least that's what I was always told it's all made I want to get bitten by a raccoon because you know then you have to go get a rabies shot No, not that I know if they're right you have rabies they act weird they come out during the day they challenge you You know to what to a duel To five-card stud what are these animals doing do a biting contest? So what is the epidemic of... Hundreds. There was one story in one of the newspapers that says if you see a raccoon, because apparently they'll attack porcupines, with porcupine spikes all over his face and nose and body, stay away. That would be the clue, wouldn't it? Hey, he's got porcupine quills sticking out of his face. And then the last item I had on my list of three says new consumer product.

35:39 Mm-hmm. I don't know did we have some kind of brilliant idea. I must have had something that was so it was must have been so profound We should end the show but then not stop recording because we wind up in trouble that way Because it sounds like we had a billion dollar idea there Yeah, there was it was so profound that I didn't feel the need to even write down what it was about Yeah, because it was so profound obviously because I've come to the conclusion. That's the way I take notes and that I've always believed that if I just write down just a general, something general about it because I don't need to put the details on because it's so profound, I never remember what it was. So that's a tip for you note takers out there. Don't do that. So I don't know what it was. I can't remember either. I really can't. So okay, now your list. Well let's start with Fantastic Water Landing, nice ditch.

36:36 By the pilots of US Airways in the Hudson River. That was pretty spectacular this week. Right. And of course then they immediately sequestered the guy and gave him drug testing. Well, dude, he's been like, he's just a quiet guy, you know, because what they're doing right now is telling him this is the story. This is what you must repeat. This is what happened. This is how I went. There were a flock of geese, flock of geese, flock of geese. Which is totally possible, but I've been, you know, aviation stories interest me since I'm an aviator. And the two, here's three things I want to know. One, I did not see any, you know, when you have these migrating flocks of birds and geese is like the worst kind obviously, there's a lot of warnings that go out. I mean, there's no TAMs, which means notice to airmen.

37:27 And, you know, anywhere you're flying, air traffic control is going to be all over this all the time. They'll say up to 4,000 feet, you know, you got migrating birds, and they're real careful about it because if you really do run into a flock of anything almost, depending on size of aircraft, yeah, it's messed up. Can't find any of it. They say that he declared an emergency, which I'm sure he did. Now, I've got, you know, I'm a member of all the ATC stream sites where you can listen to air traffic control all day. which is kind of on the same level of interest as your wrestling fascination. And I can't find any recording anywhere or, you know, archive not online, stuff like that, or, you know, there is no archive. So I'd just like to know if the actual circumstances were there, because it was so quick, you know, it's like, oh, it was a flock of geese. And I'm just not seeing any official reports and there's definitely questions in the aviation world as to, okay,

38:29 Second, when you have an airplane in this kind of trouble for six minutes, you would have expected, certainly around New York, that there would have been something scrambled or you would have read that someone was put into action, but none of that. And for the Greenies out there, did he dump all his fuel? Because I presume that he took off heavy, completely loaded, had to have dumped tons of fuel into the Hudson, I guess. in order to keep this thing floating because that's the only reason I can see why the airplane floated is because he had dumped his fuel.

39:05 Well, there's two things about that they did talk about one is that kerosene is lighter than water so that's Not necessarily gonna sink it but the yeah But I think safety precautions if you have enough time you're instructed to dump your fuel Right and they'd have to be dumping it right over the bridge because he went right over that bridge. Yeah, and which doesn't sound like a good idea and they also the air buses have a special feature that Unlike the Boeing planes where they lock up the... you push a button. And it locks up the cargo and all this. There's apparently like a bladder or something inside and they just said it locks air. Yeah, you can look this one up. And it was like a big deal because according to one of these, my wife was listening to the chat in the Seattle area which has, because the plane was eventually going to Seattle so there's a lot of people talking on all the talk shows out there. And some pilot called in talking about this feature of the Airbus that it could seal off the bottom so if there's a water landing, the plane can

40:06 continue to float. Yeah. Cause you can't bust up the bottom. And he was commenting that when this feature was developed, Everybody in the industry was laughing at it, thinking what a stupid idea like that's going to do any good. I mean, what's the point? And so meanwhile now they're all going, wow, that's cool. And so what I missed, no one came out with a life preserver on, no one put it on. I know, that's why I blogged that picture that's going around. No one's got their life preserver on. And you know the placard, the card in the seat back in front of you? It always has the beautiful slides that are like inflated. None of that. They inflated one of those rafts, it overturned and then floated away. I mean this... When it comes to the water landing, the water landing itself, fantastic. I mean great job. The plane didn't disintegrate. I mean hallelujah.

41:01 They showed on CBS, they showed some of the other attempts to make water landings and it's just like rarely successful. And they showed this one where it looked like the guy... I'm sorry, I have to correct you. That is not true. 90% of water ditching is very successful. I mean everyone walks away or lives. So that's not true. Well, that's the way they portray it. Well, of course, because what they're showing, they're showing that 747 that the wingtip hits the water and it goes cartwheeling. Yeah, but it was hijacked, you know, the guy, there were like hijackers in the cockpit and the pilot just lost control at the last moment. But still, this is an A-bus 320, has a much lower approach speed. In fact, you can fly it right up to the stall speeds. That's about 150 miles an hour, which seems fast, but for an aircraft that size, it's not.

41:53 Whereas a 747 has a much higher speed. They've released a video now, I don't know if you've seen it, it's a stationary camera on the Hudson and you see the plane just as it's hitting the water. That thing comes to a standstill within a plane length. And the engines of course got ripped off immediately there at the bottom of the Hudson. So, you know, when you're doing it with an aircraft smaller, that's when your chances are larger. But still, it's 90% because these statistics are known of all water ditches are successful. Okay, well, that's good to know. Anyway, yeah, nobody came out with their life vest, which I still think is somewhat baffling. And the other thing is, is that

42:37 Yeah, what did cause this problem if it wasn't the birds, if there was no evidence of birds? Well, I just like the evidence. I'm okay with... It sounds very believable, but you know, when there's birds, a big flock, that's a real fluke. You know, that's a real... And this time of year, I mean, there's just a lot of things. I'm like, well, I'm not looking for a conspiracy. I'm just saying I want to know more because I'm really interested and it always takes months. I think it would be nice if we knew who was on board that maybe someone would like to... I do know there were several Bank of America executives on board, actually. Well, it makes sense since they were going to Charlotte, which is where Bank of America is headquartered now. On the very same day that Bank of America received another, was it $20-30 billion?

43:17 Yeah, something mm-hmm. What's kind of suspicious? I like the the flight tracker flight aware calm so it has departure time scheduled 3 o 4 p.m.. Eastern actual departure time 326 arrival time estimated 438 actual 332 Flight time duration of flight 6 minutes and It's great though. You see the whole dogleg and you can see there's there's a point where he completely deviates from his track And I think that's his decision point, but it doesn't have an altitude or anything. I'm just interested in you know with all types of Mishaps, you know, you just want to know what happened because you learn from it but but it's with most mishaps you're always hearing

44:05 Yeah, we don't know the exact problem yet, but how come I can't hear a recording? This stuff is recorded, you know, all air traffic control. It would be cool to hear it. Well, let's go back to the theory that these bankers were like a target of some sort. And let's say, and I'm not believing any of this by the way. I have an article here about it, hold on a second. Just for the purpose of argument. If you wanted to not kill these bankers, but you wanted to scare the crap out of them or show that you could kill them. You'd put him on a plane with the absolute best pilot in the world. Which he happens to be this guy, is the guy, right? He's a highly decorated pilot. He teaches how to ditch a plane.

44:51 And so you put him on that plane and then, you know, see, you know, scare the crap out of them. And then they see what happens if they play ball. They may have been reluctant to. I mean, they probably already showed a little reluctance to buy the Merrill Lynch. So I like it. Oh, John. John, I love it here. Here's an article. Hold on a second. There's something about it from Nation and World. What is that? Some Commie rag, John? No, wait a minute. Seattle Times. Yeah, Commie rag. Oh, I just gotta load it for a second. Oh, it's loading very slowly. Someone must really like it. Oh, here we go. Darren Beck. Doesn't say much about... Oh. Huh. Salesman... There was a Joe Hart, salesman with investment firm ING. Molly Shugle.

45:59 Shugle, a Bank of America executive, came to regret her choice of three-inch heels. Okay. Maybe that's what it all... You gotta get women out of these three-inch heels. That I'll teach him. Damn it! Five inches are nothing, damn it! Hey, after change.gov, we now have recovery.gov. Oh really, that's a new one? Yeah, it hasn't launched yet. But this is for the stimulus package.

46:35 Yeah, I'm sure they're gonna be taking more donations for the Obama campaign. Is that ever gonna stop? Nah, they keep taking money. When are we gonna stop hearing Obama giving campaign speeches? Did you see the latest one he gave to his daughters in the form of the Hope letter? Yeah, in Parade Magazine, which is distributed door-to-door around the country. It's like 80 million people read this. I mean, getting something in Parade Magazine is distribution to the masses. And, of course, the private letter that you're going to send to your daughters is published in Parade Magazine. I mean, give me a fricking break. It's one thing to take your future son-in-law for his first lap dance, but this just takes it all. Yeah, well, you're a lightweight by comparison to this crowd. Really, really. I have so much to learn. Hey man, but I read the stimulus package.

47:33 And it's pretty interesting, John. There's lots of money to be made. Well, let's make some. What are we doing sitting here talking to each other? Well, because that's the easiest... Let's talk more action. Let's talk more do. But I just wanted... So this is the preamble. I don't know if this is intended for civilians to read or if they really think senators and congressmen are complete morons. Because right on the front page, since 2001 as worker productivity went up, 96% of the income growth in this country went to the wealthiest 10% of society. While they were benefiting from record high worker productivity, the remaining 90% of Americans were struggling to sustain their standard of living. They sustained it by borrowing and borrowing and borrowing. And when they couldn't borrow anymore, the bottom fell out.

48:29 This plan will strengthen the middle class, not just Wall Street CEOs and special interests in Washington. I mean... Wow, it says that? This is a front page, baby. Front page. Wow. It's pretty bold. It's pretty bold. Yeah, just a couple things I just highlighted, if anything strikes you. So first of all, I love the fact there are no earmarks in this package. Well, not yet. That's the whole point of an earmark, is it comes after this part. But the executive summary says there will be a historic level of transparency, oversight and accountability. It will help guarantee taxpayer dollars are spent wisely and Americans can see results for their investments. That's what recovery.org is all about so you can track who's getting what. And I think a lot of the big money is going to energy. $32 billion

49:26 to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology. What the fuck does that mean? Is there something wrong with the national grid? Is it not right? I don't know. Works for me. Why don't you read that again? So $32 billion will go to transform the nation's energy transmission, distribution and production systems by allowing for a smarter and better grid and focusing investment in renewable technology. I mean, that is... that's just a bunch of horseshit. That's nothing. It means nothing. Renewable technology.

50:13 What's renewable technology? Like rewritable optical disks? Wind power. No, but that's under a separate multi-billion dollar heading. Well, the most renewable energy that I know of is wood. No, no, renewable technology. No, no, renewable technology. Not energy. Technology. Technology. What's renewable technology? That doesn't make sense, that word. What is renewable technology? Get me some of that. That's a good question. I don't know what renewable technology is. Somebody maybe... It's rewritable optical disks. It's renewable. It's all new again. Flash memory would be... Flash memory. Okay, here's something. Did you know? Fact! For every dollar invested in broadband, as in broadband internet access... Is this in that same paper? Yes! I'm just reading verbatim, man. For every dollar invested in broadband, the economy sees a tenfold return on that investment. What?

51:18 How do you document this? Most of the investment in broadband in my regards makes me spend more time wasting time on the net, surfing the web. Well, we need to put scientists to work. That's not you, by the way, people. That's not you. We need to put scientists to work looking for the next great discovery, creating jobs in cutting-edge technologies and making smart investments that will help business in every community succeed in a global economy. For every dollar invested in broadband, the economy sees a tenfold return on that investment. So, John, there's ten billion... By the way, and it says who?

51:55 The office of the president elect Bonehead. Now this is an actual document from the house, okay? This is the actual plan that has been submitted. I just like the way they throw it, you know, it's like people throw out these stats, these statistics and there's no documentation to indicate... Well of course not, which is why I bring it up. I hope I'm starting to piss you off. So anyway, $10 billion will be going to science, facilities, research and instrumentation. scalpel and stuff and six billion six billion to expand broadband internet access so business in rural and other underserved areas can link up to the global economy then there's a whole bunch of stuff about roads bridges transit 10 billion for transit and rail to reduce traffic congestion which seems like nothing 10 billion is nothing in the train world

52:45 Oh, here's my favorite. $20 billion for health information technology, which I presume will be renewable, to prevent medical mistakes, provide better care to patients, and introduce cost-saving efficiencies. Now, they tried this in the United Kingdom with the National Health Service, and this thing is already, I think, 3 billion pounds over budget, does not work, is not implemented, it's an albatross for the Labour Party. And the same, because this is like the world's largest IT project. This always fails. You get all these big contracts and Oracle and Microsoft and everyone tries to work together and they all mean well and it's always years late, billions over budget, and by then we're dead, doesn't matter anymore.

53:43 But I just thought $20 billion dollars to, you know, who's that going to? I don't know, but I think we have to find some way for it to go to us. Here it is, Reliable Efficient Electricity Grid. It's another one. $11 billion dollars for research and development, pilot projects, and federal matching funds for smart grid investment program to modernize the electricity grid, making it more efficient, secure, and reliable, and build new power lines to transmit clean Oh God! And build new power lines to transmit clean, renewable energy from sources throughout the nation. Because we don't want no dirty power. We want clean power running through a clean new grid. I'm just amazed. I didn't know the grid was in trouble.

54:36 Well, apparently it is. And $2 billion for the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee and Grants Program to support US... What? $2 billion. This is great, man. You'll love it. For the Advanced Battery Loan Guarantee and Grants Program to support US manufacturers of advanced vehicle batteries and battery systems. Because America should lead the world in transforming the way automobiles are powered. Well, you know, that was early on it was predicted that, in fact I remember watching some talk show six months ago.

55:14 with some people from Detroit discussing the fact that these cars are all going to be electric. You know, the whole hydrogen thing was a smokescreen. That's never going to happen in a million years. But they all, you know, paid lip service to it. But behind the scenes, this electric car idea was what everyone was kind of gravitating toward. Nobody wants to talk about the mess. Yeah, but we just gave we just gave all these yeah No, of course what happens when the batteries are gone, right? But we just gave these guys billions of dollars now We're gonna give another two billion to figure out how to do the batteries. I mean, they've been pulling their pods for all these years Yeah, that's a giveaway. Just it's a giveaway the whole thing is

56:03 This kills me 300 million for grants and loans to state and local governments for projects that reduce diesel emissions. Diesels burn so fucking clean these days. They're trying to get rid of diesel. They've been trying to yeah, I know the first day started with the with requiring so-called low sulfur diesel and Then that's what jacked up the price of diesel if you go to the pumps you go to sell what you looked up there during the heyday of the bullshit oil prices and you look at there and you go why is diesel more expensive than premium gasoline when it used to be you know the price of regular or cheaper and And so then, you know, somebody will ask because of the diesels being, you know, has to have special, you know, low sulfur. All right. I guess when I'm, you know, I could read through this whole thing and there's 600. I don't know why they're trying to get rid of diesel. It doesn't make any sense to me. Well, because they're clearly going for the whole electric vibe. You know, this is what all these guys, this is what all these guys invested in. You know, this is what Kleiner Perkins built their Green Tech Fund for. It's for everything I'm reading here. Yeah. Everything.

57:09 Of course John Doar is at the will be at the inauguration on I think he's actually on stage at the inauguration No, oh yeah, one of you know those side seats dude He's way deep inside. Yeah, well I know he's a big, he managed to get them to, he got a lot of money for him. Yeah. And he's trying, I know he's always been angling for a Democrat to get in so he can become an ambassador or, I mean he was hoping to be Secretary of State or something like that. Maybe he'll be the technology advisor because they're going to move that other guy to the FCC or something. John Doerr would be a great person for that job. But I also think it would be, why don't we get him the ambassadorship in the Bahamas?

57:48 Because you know then we can go visit. Well, let's make it someplace more interesting than that. Well, it's nice and warm They got beaches. Well, where do you want it to be? Well, never mind. I'm not that I think you should be the ambassador to France Here it is wireless and broadband six billion. You know, I if he gave you a door who we both know Becomes the ambassador to any place. He won't even sit give us the time of day. Yeah, you're right. You're right. I So NASA 600 million now we're paying for NASA that way Biomedical advanced research and development pandemic flu cybersecurity 900 million to prepare for a pandemic influenza 900 million a billion dollars to prepare for something that has killed 150 people in a decade support advanced development of medical countermeasures for chemical biological radiological and nuclear threats and for cybersecurity protection at Homeland Security

58:48 You know what I'm seeing is apart from about 50 billion, nothing is going into people's pockets. It's all going into... and the small business combined isn't even $800 million where they're throwing into small business. But all these billions is all going to big companies. Oh, this is my favorite. This is my favorite. Transportation Security Administration Explosive Detection Systems. $500 million to install aviation explosive detection systems in the nation's airports, improving security and making life easier on travelers by speeding security lines. Well of course they can only put those things in the big airports.

59:37 So and there's so many feeder airports that if you wanted to get past- But what is it? Can't you just get a fucking dog? Just put the dog there. The dogs are great at this. You don't need 500 million dollars. Get a dog at every airport to sniff the luggage. That's what they do. Actually, the dog probably does a better job. That's what I'm saying! Dogs are fantastic at sniffing out anything, really. I was like, you know, every once in a while, I was in Seattle and there was a guy with his dog, you know, wandering around. It's always hilarious because the dogs look like they're having a great time. They love it, of course, because they're like, oh, I gotta get me some explosives. Smells like bacon! And so they're roaming around and it's like I always ask the guy what kind of a dog it is. I say, what kind of a dog is this? Is that a bomb dog, a fruit dog? There's three kinds. There's a drug dog, a bomb dog, and a fruit dog. And a fruit dog. Yeah. The fruit dog you can always recognize by his tutu. And so anyway, the... And they're always like, oh, here's a bomb sniffing dog. Oh, cool. And he's going around, he's sniffing, sniffing. He's not finding anything.

1:00:41 Hey, something great for you in California, which you'll be very happy with. $850 million for hazardous fuel removal and other efforts to prevent wildfires on public lands. What? I know how to pick them. $850 million dollars, that's almost a billion John, for hazardous fuel removal and other efforts, some efforts, to prevent wildfires on public lands. Wait a minute, let me finish the marketing spin, I'm not done yet. Making these investments today will create jobs in the short run but also save long-term costs of fighting fires in the future.

1:01:22 Yeah, jobs in the feeding weeding it's called So basically these new jobs are creating a reading do labor But that's 800 and... okay, so it's split up between 550 million for state and local volunteer programs. So you volunteer but someone's getting paid 550 million for hazardous fuel reduction efforts. You don't even have to succeed, just make an effort, which states and communities have determined are of the highest priority. And then the Federal Forest Service wildfires, I'm sure they need a lot of money, so $300 million to them. So it's very comprehensive, but I do not see... I just do not see a lot for, you know... There's some things in here, they're extending Cobra. Well, we'll see. This is just the first pass of it, this is what's going in.

1:02:22 $20 billion to provide nutrition assistance to modest income families and to lift restrictions that limit the amount of time individuals can receive food stamps. Oh, you're gonna be needing that folks. I'd be very happy that's in there. More food stamps. So they're gonna add $20 billion to the food stamp program. Yeah. Well, they're really extending it, I think, is what they're doing. So it may not be hard cash outlay immediately, but they're gonna extend it. So you can stay on for stamps longer. But I urge all of our listeners to download this stimulus package. I think I should just groan every single time I say stimulus package. So you know where your money is going. Yeah, down the toilet. Did you watch any of the financial services hearings?

1:03:24 or any of the confirmation hearings. No, I didn't mention it. I like to watch that stuff too. It's unfortunate I missed it all. There was, let me see if I can find it here. Yeah, this is it. You know Congressman Alan Grayson? No. Have you ever heard of him? So he, you gotta listen, you want to listen to something for a second? Hear him grill? Yeah, let's play it. Okay, he grills the Federal Reserve Vice Chairman and what he's going after is, remember we talked about this, that there's been two or three trillion dollars that was handed out to banks, but the Federal Reserve refuses to tell the public which banks. Right, because they don't want to tell you which banks are in trouble. Well, exactly. So, let me see if I can...

1:04:08 Get this going here. So here he is. This was earlier this week. And by the way, Barney Frank, who's the chairman of the Financial Services Committee. What a dick! Oh yeah, he's terrible. I'm surprised. You know, this is just another example of where New Yorkers are screwed up by continuing to re-elect people like this. This is the guy who they were running a prostitution ring out of his house while he was being screwed by rent boys. You know, the guy does have a little bit of history of weirdness.

1:04:51 You've mentioned several times in your testimony the importance of transparency. Can you explain why that's important? I think the committee has talked about that several times, that it wants to see a strategy for how money is being spent and understand how it's being spent and have reporting. He's totally setting him up. You've got to listen to it. from institutions that it's being used for the purposes desired. And so in order to give assurances to Congress and American taxpayers that it's being used for appropriate purposes, we want greater transparency and accountability. Is it fair to say that when hundreds of billions of dollars of the taxpayers' money is being spent, the taxpayers have a right to know how? Yes. Mr. Cohen, how much has the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve increased since September 1?

1:05:47 It's increased from around 800 billion to about 2 trillion. And what was that money spent on? That money was lent to banks, investment banks. spent on lending through the commercial paper market and it was lent to foreign central banks that lent dollars to their banks to take pressure off the US dollar market. So he's literally admitting that we gave money to foreign banks, which trips me out. So it wasn't spent, it was lent. Which institutions received it and how much for each institution?

1:06:27 I don't know which institutions, which specific institutions received it, but by categories of institutions, that's captured in our balance sheet that we publish each week. There's Barney Frank going, he's interrupting because this is the big point. So he immediately interrupts this dick. But I think I would you're going to hold a hearing on this, Mr. Chairman. And I think I would be very, very hesitant to give the names of individual institutions. In fact, I think it would be a very bad idea because I think it would undermine the utility of the facilities that we're giving. But I think we should say more about the categories of institutions.

1:07:09 Mr. Cohn, you just said that $1.2 trillion has been lent or spent, as the case may be. That's $4,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. Don't Americans have the right to know how you spent that money? Yes, they have every right to know the purposes for which we spent it, the types of spending, the types of lending that's going on, the types of collateral we're taking and what we expect to accomplish with that. All right, well, specifically, I'd like to know how much was given to Credit Suisse and what you got in return. How much was given to Citibank? What you got in return? If you put out $50 billion to Credit Suisse, the taxpayers need to know that.

1:07:48 I'd be very concerned, Congressman, that if we publish the individual names of who was borrowing from us, no one would borrow from us. The purpose of borrowing is not to support individuals, it's to support the credit markets. Has that ever happened? Have people ever said, we will not take your $100 billion because people will find out about it? We said we will not publish the names of the borrowers, so we'll have no test of that. Well, what gave you the authority to say that? Isn't that something that we should be deciding, not you? I think you gave us the responsibility in the Federal Reserve Act to oversee the stability of the financial system through our lending facilities to be the lender of last resort and we are trying to execute that to the best of our abilities. And you're saying that that entitles you to keep secret the expenditure of $1.2 trillion, $4,000 for a man, woman and child in this country? I don't think we're keeping it secret. I think we're releasing a lot of information about it.

1:08:44 It drives me crazy. But that's the whole thing. He's saying the Federal Reserve Act, which was enacted in 1913, these are private banks. This is not part of the government. They just got a contract. And this guy, I like this Alan Grayson, he's right on man. He goes on, he just smothers this guy. But what really pissed me off is the number one question comes up and we all know the question is going to be who did you give the money to? And he goes on and he says, what kind of assets did you receive? Well, I'm not gonna tell you that. Were they marked to market? Well, no, they weren't. Well then why don't you just make it public so we can actually put a market value on that shit and we know what we've got. I mean, the guy is right on and it's just blah.

1:09:24 And then of course we look at the news and it's all about... And of course giving American taxpayer money to foreign banks. Foreign banks, man! How can you even just skip over that one? Oh, it's to save the system, to save the entire system. Yeah, the foreign banks, they like... So I read a fantastic quote which you will love. I saved it. Hold on a second. Where... Here it is. This was... Let's see if I have a date on it. It's only not long ago. This is a quote from the Honorable Dr. G. Gono, who is governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. And he's talking about what is...

1:10:17 Well, first of all, Zimbabwe just issued their first $100 trillion banknote. Which now we have to go after that as well, John. I've got people that are trying to get me to beat you on this one because you beat me on the $100 billion note. But the $100 trillion is what we have to get now. So you're... okay. Well, anyway, so... I want to get the quote here for a second. Okay, so what he's saying is it's interesting to see that the United States and United Kingdom's governments are going down exactly the same path we went. Here in Zimbabwe, we had our near bank failures a few years ago and we responded by providing the affected banks with the troubled bank fund, which is exactly what they're talking about now, exactly what TARP and what this new bank that they're setting up is going to be.

1:11:12 for which we were heavily criticized even by some multilateral institutions who today are silent when the central banks of the UK and the USA are going the same way and doing the same thing under the very same circumstances thereby continuing the unfortunate hypocrisy that what's good for the goose is not good for the gander. So there's your future, ladies and gentlemen. Go look at the 100 trillion dollar note and get used to it. It just amazes me. Have you been watching CNBC at all, Jon? No. God, man, you really should make an effort to watch Squawk Box. It's probably pretty shitty because it comes on really too early for you on the West Coast. Yeah, I get five in the morning or something on the West Coast here. My God. I mean, they're just... I can record it, though. I can record it. You should, because now they're just yelling at the government. What's the guy, Mark? The pudgy guy?

1:12:11 He literally is like he lost it maybe Tuesday or Wednesday and he's like I can't believe this government people who can run businesses are getting screwed and they're giving billions no trillions of dollars to complete morons he's like yelling on the show it's just fascinating to watch and of course he's he's absolutely right. Shipping rates hit zero. Sorry. Shipping rates from Asia are now you can now it's free shipping So if you order a container, free shipping. That's how this is. Where did you read this story? This is in the Telegraph. Wow. Charles Trek, broker at Transport Trackers in Hong Kong. We have seen trade activity fall off a cliff. Asia to Europe is an unmitigated disaster.

1:13:01 Well, there's a couple of things. I was just gonna say I want you to finish but I'm sure I'm coming back from San Francisco and a container ship was coming through but half empty with a bunch of empty stalls and they come there's not what like they drop something off someplace before they get to know and so they it was coming through and I saw that and then the other day from where I can see the train tracks way down the hill and there was a train pulling Pulling those those cargo containers, and I always like to look at the tracks as an economic indicator because sometimes they store cars There's all kinds of things you can pick up on it goes by I Usually I know I've seen this train before it goes by every day at certain hour I mean, I don't obviously catch it every day, but I didn't see it for a few weeks, and I goes by probably about

1:13:53 40 cars with four containers each and perhaps another 50 cars empty. Empty, yeah. I mean it's the supplies are just stopping. Well it's shit man. Honda has now extended the closure of their UK plant to April or May I think. So we're stopping by. We finally given up on the Buying crap from China in non in a non-stop. Well, this is specific. This this reports on Korea Taiwan and Hong Kong not quite entirely China A report from... Go ahead, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'll just give you some more data points. A report by ING yesterday said shipping activity at US ports has suddenly dived. Outbound traffic from Long Beach and Los Angeles, America's two top ports, has fallen by 18% year on year, a far more serious decline than anything seen in recent recessions. This is no regular cycle slowdown, but a complete collapse in foreign demand. So it's both ways. So here's what I'm thinking.

1:14:59 If their shipping is free, let's buy a bunch of stuff and have it shipped over here. Exactly! It's like the early days of Amazon, you know? It's like, get free shipping! Free shipping. If we had a couple of people in Hong Kong or anywhere, I mean we could ship for free. It's just no one wants to buy our shit. We'll have containers full of free shipped shit. Well, I think we should be buying stuff for ourselves. What we'll do is we'll create a buying club. In other words, we'll get a hundred people and we all want to buy like some, you know, whatever, you know, art, antiques, I don't know. A Korean bride. Put them bitches in a container.

1:15:35 and load up a container with some of this. It doesn't even have to be full, obviously. No, it doesn't make any difference. You know what? We could just ship over one item in a container. Free. Oh man. And the guys opened the thing up and said, what do you got here? I bought a pen. But look, it has a laser. And this is what we talked about weeks ago. It became difficult for the shippers, and you were surprised when I gave you this news, but it turns out to be pretty true. It became difficult for the shippers to obtain routine letters of credit.

1:16:11 At the height of the financial crisis over the autumn, causing goods to pile up at ports even though there was a willing buyer at the other end. So it's a double whammy. So they had buyers, they couldn't ship it out, now the buyers are gone and now they're just stuck with shit that they can't get rid of. Damn. Well, the lack of letters of credit probably did somebody a favor. Yes, but not for manufacturing, which of course is relatively important. Yeah, I've noticed. The net closes even tighter. The Germans now by law all internet traffic will be filtered to protect the children. Oh, it's always the children. Yes. Well, yeah, it's specifically the children. So they did the test, you know, there's a guy in Finland that's making a big stink. And so because in Finland, they're going to protect the children with a, you know, don't, you know, kind of a watch list.

1:17:06 And so this one guy's been researching it, I can't remember his name, I'm sure somebody else, it doesn't take much to find it. He finds that the watch list, the band list is bullshit. There's like one, two, three maybe potential overseas bands. you know, US-based child porn sites which, you know, we should probably crack down on ourselves. Which seems relatively easy to crack down on an illegal website, you know. Yeah, especially when they're on a list. This shit is underground. It's not really publicly accessible. It's, you know, it's underground. In fact, it's at most departments of justice. These are the true people who I believe are the ones that are the actual child molesters.

1:17:47 Well, I let so anyway, so this guy finds that this list is a bunch of like lists the pool mostly as as typical Political it's like you know something about it's political. It's all political banning, but they're under the guise of child porn Yeah, so what do you think happens to this guy? He gets oh wait wait wait? Let me let me guess either a he took too much Tylenol B His plane crashed. There was a robbery where he was shot in the face. Any of those? No, he gets investigated for being into child porn. Oh, of course. Oh my God, I forgot that one. That's actually the first thing they do. You're right. Jesus. Well, so let me just say to the listeners.

1:18:35 that you have to understand that the reason we have to fight this type of idiocy is because once the filters are installed, then the only fight is what's on the list. And that is, you know, they just ramrod that. You know, they ramrodded a third runway at Heathrow yesterday and the country went fucking berserk. How did they do it? I thought that big runway was controversial. They didn't even have a debate. It's one guy got so pissed off he picked up the holy scepter or whatever it is, the mace I think it's called.

1:19:13 which lays on the table in the middle between the government and the opposition parties, the shadow party, whatever, and that represents all the power of government. That is the power given by the people. The guy walks over, picks it up, and takes it back to his seat. And then he got named, which means they call out your name and your shame, and he's been banned for five days. But he said, we were promised a debate. We didn't even get a freaking debate. Hmm. Well, I don't know what they're gonna do with the extra runway anyway, they're not gonna have enough traffic there to need it. Um, I disagree Okay, of course, you know, it's about the hub traffic. It's it's not about what they need now it's about what they'll need in ten years from now if they don't want to lose out to Frankfurt and

1:20:08 Amsterdam is still a player but they also have their problems but Frankfurt and Munich they're becoming the big hubs and what you're going to see is that when people need to go somewhere they no longer will stop in London they're gonna stop in Frankfurt and there is a huge economic risk in that and that's just aviation I mean that's just how it works you know right now if they all that have to do is allow for more movements at at Heathrow and they could reduce pollution, is what I'll call it, because most planes at busy times are circling for 15 to 20 minutes above London. You know, if you just allow for more movements, which is not... you don't need another runway for more movements. You can have more movements, you really can. You can do more. But they won't even allow that.

1:20:58 And all the greenies are out and it's a huge, you know, and then celebrities are buying up pieces of land where the runway would be. That's a good idea, but... So what's the... how come Paris never became a hub for all this traffic? I don't know. Oh, never mind. Strikes. Of course. Yeah, bingo. You got it. I was gonna say French, but that makes as much sense. Well I guess that's it for this week. Do we have anything that we missed? Do you have anything else? Yeah, I think I got one or two more things. Press TV, how do you regard them as a news source? It's Iranian, I think it's a press TV. I think it's an Iranian news organization. Yeah. So you're not familiar with them? I may have run into it once in a while but it's nothing I've

1:21:55 Follow I don't see it as a source for me. Hmm. Well, they've got pretty extensive coverage of stuff And here's something that caught my mind my eyes. Sorry man arrested for Obama assassination plot We didn't get that news. Of course not a man has been well, I'd shall I give you the details? Yes Send me the link while you're at it. Well, okay, and then I won't read it. Oh So our listeners can go screw themselves. Go find your own damn link. Hold on. I want to send you the link. I'm just trying to find my Skype window. Where the hell is it? It's usually on the screen. No, no. I removed the big chat window because it's a pain in the ass. Hold on. Where are you? Here we go. Let me send you that real quick.

1:22:41 Okay, a man has been arrested for threatening to assassinate the US President-elect, saying Barack Obama appointed Jews in key posts. The Secret Service took 42-year-old Stephen Joseph Christopher into custody in Brookhaven, Mississippi, Friday on charges of threatening to kill Obama. I love what this guy says. It's not because I'm racist that I will kill Barack. It's because I can no longer allow the Jewish parasites to bully their way into making the American people submit to their evil ways. But I'm not racist. This guy's just nuts. Obama's a puppet of the Jews? He snapped. Yeah, he did, obviously. And Microsoft now getting fined again by Naley Cruz.

1:23:35 Oh, going after him again. She's relentless that woman. Going after him again for $450 million because... Hey, they got a pot of money, might as well steal some of it. Might as well get some of it, right? It's basically the cost of doing business in Europe. Now it comes with a hefty fee. And for the John and Adam Reading Club. I have not read this book, but I read a review which I kept in the Financial Times. Maybe you've seen it, John. Niall Ferguson, The Great Liquidity Crisis. No, so what come on read it though. Yeah, well what he's saying is He wrote this book a while ago. I think but what's happening now, and he's talking about a 94 year cycle He's saying everything that is happening now is a copy of what happened between the two world wars And we're doing everything exactly wrong once again. You better get your book out man. Well. You know I still have yeah, I still have the

1:24:41 The kind of not alone in the belief that there's going to be a mini boom. There's the train. There's the 1030. Yeah, the 1030 just drove. The 1028. This is like the guy is just constantly tooting his horn. There's no reason for him to be honking this horn. That's the definition of tooting your own horn right there. Yeah, he's just basically, uh, there's some, there used to be a number of years ago, there used to be some idiot that did this about two in the morning. And then I think enough people complain because there's actually houses down along the tracks. And, um, I mean, they're not right on the tracks, but I mean, they're, they're so close to this guy who honk and he must think is just hilarious. I don't know where he is. He never showed up anyway. So, um, it, well, the thirties were, uh,

1:25:35 Yeah, maybe. I mean, there's some... I mean, the problem is everything... if you start looking at everything, and I recommend people trying to get an understanding of how fractals work, and you either can read Mandelbrot's material or you could... there was a really good Nova on this that kind of gave us some perspective. I have read up on fractals. It is really fascinating, and especially when you look at fractals, it can trip you out. Well, they trip you out anyway, but if you start to see things as self-iterative in some funny way, so everything is kind of always going to be a certain way, and it's going to repeat in a fractal-like pattern, which can be pretty complicated. By the way, I was thinking about fractals. I just was like, a visual fractal image was, I'm at Costco, and there's a young mother

1:26:27 holding her young daughter in her arms and her young daughter in her arm holding a doll. Right, oh gosh, yeah, yeah. I'm looking at that going fractals. Fractal, that's it. Fractal, yeah, you're right. All I was missing was the baby was the little doll. The little doll. The baby doll, yeah. So what you're saying is that this is, well, that really the universe and life is a fractal and that we're now in the 94th year fractal of something, of another piece of fractal that came from the French Revolution fractal. Right, something like that. I mean, so it's like, you know, so it's like, well, you know, none of it should be surprising. And when somebody comes up with the observation that this is just like such and such, well, yeah. But if everything is going to always be just like something.

1:27:16 And if you really take that to the extreme and you reverse it, you got to smoke some weed then it really works. So that is a fractal of really the earth which is a fractal of the universe which is a fractal of God I guess. So we're all little pieces, it's like a fern right? If you look at a fern, you'll see that the leaves of the fern are exactly the same structure as the fern itself. Right, but snowflakes are one of the better examples too. But you know, actually this NOVA show had a very interesting thing. A guy decided that forests are fractals and he could calculate the number of trees in a forest and then rock, which is valuable in determining CO2 usage in terms of the carbon credit crap.

1:28:05 And so he decided that a forest was a fractal, and he could determine the size and the number of trees in the forest by taking a fractal of the forest, in other words just a chunk, and then iterating it in a fractal-like way. And then they would do this as a test on certain areas. And then actually go out and count the real trees just as a way of doing a census to see if this theory was correct because who needs to be counting trees, right? You just take a chunk. Millions of Obama jobs counting trees. And it turned out that it was. It turns out that forests are fractals. $800 million for counting trees. It could be.

1:28:49 Anyway, so it's it so yeah, so people should familiarize themselves with this with the basic notion of fragments You start to see things that you can you can see things a little differently I think it really helps from a fit just on a philosophy philosophical perspective I think it should become a catchphrase of sorts John I think that we should be calling fractals on all kinds of stuff and you know I like what you said when you're looking at the the mother with the daughter with the baby with the doll and you immediately say, fractal, you know, you should actually just like invasion of the body snatchers, you go up to the mother and go, I'm telling you when I saw it, it was so cute. It's like a babushka dolls, you know those Russian dolls. They're fractals. It's a fractal, exactly. Fractals are your friend. So, anyway, it's interesting. Mandelbrot had some very interesting things to say, including the fact that he was laughed off the stage basically when he came up with his theories of fractals.

1:29:49 and how important they were. What is the theory of fractals and what really is their importance? Well, I can't tell you exactly, I can't explain the theory, I can kind of understand it before I can explain it. Okay. But it's essentially that everything is self-iterative in a way that all nature, and this really refers mostly to nature, it's self-iterative in a way that you can actually formulate a structure that is mathematically accurate because no one's ever been able to, there's all these things over time that they said, look, A mountainside, you take a look at it, crumble down, say, you know, you can't, there's no math that can explain what you're looking at. Whereas mathematicians say you can explain everything with math. And fractal theory says no, that's not true. You can explain that with math if you use fractal math. If you look at the way fractals work, you can explain, you can actually explain these natural phenomena, things in nature like a mountain.

1:30:47 With this modeling that this guy's developed and I mean what we think of as fractals in the computer business there because there's Mandelbrot's little designs that he makes where you have he has a few takes one of these formulas puts it in and it just starts to iterate and makes this really funky looking thing a screensaver you mean Yes, that kind of thing. It's a screensaver. This whole theory is based on a screensaver, ladies and gentlemen. I just want you to know that. And, you know, essentially, now that people are starting to think in terms of fractals, for example, the reason, if you don't know this, that if you look at a cell phone, a mobile phone from a few years ago, it used to have an antenna. Some of them would come out.

1:31:29 All the antennas now are fractal antennas and they're inside the phone because you don't need an antenna when you have what essentially is a fractal antenna which is a bunch of little things all... which comes down to the energy within the ether which I'm sure is a fractal... also has these same fractal properties and that's how maybe we're all connected or how everything starts to come together as we start to understand all that wireless shit. I'm going to really be sad when the new age people get a hold of this theory and they start to come up with their

1:32:05 Crackpot Hold on but when technologists get a hold of it and start to really understand it it could be very exciting We could get some fantastic shit out of well. That's how we got the fractal antenna right that's exciting We improved text messaging that is a good job That's that's a way mate that should be another 800 billion on the bailout these stimulus package But to come up with a good three-sentence explanation of fractals, I think it'd be valuable. I'm sure there's one out there. And I don't have it. But... Well, I think you should start getting your material out. I mean, you already announced on Geek Brief TV that you were pretty much going to quit the technology reporting journalism business gig and move on to finance.

1:32:56 So you got to get going man. I think you're gonna be great You know you and you've surrounded yourself with the right people Andrew Horowitz myself included and you should get moving on it you got you got in I know if I wasn't such a lazy bastard I'd be out halfway there by now. Well actually the thing's almost done, so let me just I'll crank something out shortly Don't do me a favor All right, here's don't worry about that you have to worry about that. No. I I know dear. Thank you. Love you, too Mean it Okay, here's a URL for you. I've seen that, I saw this about a year ago, but it won't go away, it keeps coming back. This is, there's two YouTube videos and you have to look at it, John. This is a doctor who originally was in his... I've seen this a million times. Well, let me set it up and then you tell me why it's fake.

1:33:48 He was looking for a cure for cancer and what he winds up doing is he found out, this is what he claims and what he's showing in the videos, that if you aim a frequency beam at salt water at a certain frequency it ignites and you can light and burn the salt water. I have to say the videos are pretty convincing. Sure. The only thing missing is Penn Jillette. Well why do you think it's not true? Well, I mean it's possible if you put a pulse of energy into anything that is like let's say whatever amount of, massive amount of energy, you can get a percentage of it to reflect back to you in some way which is less than the energy you expended to begin with, which means it's a useless exercise.

1:34:41 which I suspect might be going on here. Okay, so what you're saying is there's so much energy that has to go into creating the frequency that you don't get enough energy back? Yeah. Saltwaterburns.com. Assuming that this is not a complete scam, which is what I suspect actually. Really? I mean saltwaterburns.com this is where you you you lose your um I'm not look I didn't say oh boy I'm I'm buying shares I just said hey man I know I'm look John I got other things to do as well you know I could go sit with my wife we can watch EastEnders you know we can watch the repeat of Celebrity Big Brother which reminds me

1:35:22 Are you going to set up that Slingbox? Yeah. A dedicated line anytime soon with the channel controller? Yes. All I'm waiting for is Virgin to deliver. They still haven't. Yeah, that's typical Virgin. You know, the airline, I love the airline. But when it comes to the cell phone service, they're fucking donkey dicks. And it just customers, it is not the Virgin customer service because it's purchased companies. They bought NTL, the cable company, which everyone knows as NT-Hell. They slapped Virgin on it. I must say they did. You know, there are two commercial campaigns running here. One is for Virgin where they have, what's the girl from Thelma and Louise and Kill Bill, Emma, come on, the tall blonde, beautiful.

1:36:07 Yeah, yeah, what's your name? Yeah, what's your name? Uma Thurman. So she's doing commercials for Virgin, Samuel Jackson, and really stylized great commercials. But the one that blew me away is for the insurance company Aviva. And it's and it's a new name. I forget what you know, they're like first National Insurance blah-de-blah whatever their name is But you're watching television and all of a sudden you see Bruce Willis in an action scene and And he said well, you know Would would any guy name whatever his real name was, you know, Bruce Willen Thorpe or whatever? would you think he could become an action star and then you see a

1:36:53 Alice Cooper and he says Vincent Fournier, you know, that's not really a rock gods name And then Ringo Starr, you know, would anyone you know think that Ron Starkey whatever his real name was, you know that he could be a huge pop star and it's like there's like eight celebrities and you're watching this you're like you think it's like a promo for the Oscars or something and it's like Sometimes a name change is important. First National Insurance bullshit is now Aviva. And it's just mind-boggling. This must have cost millions to put this together. Really one of the better commercial campaigns I've seen in a long time. So long story short, yeah, I'm gonna get that for you. Once Silly Virgin shows up and installs the connection and then I got the box down here.

1:37:45 And I already have the sling box and then you're gonna be good to go man, because I'll have uh, I'm trying to get the 50 megabit line. Um, that'd be nice. Yeah, they're not sure if they can get me that because of where we are, but there's the 20 megabit for sure, which is not bad. Well, so we have a sling box in Detroit. We've got one in Hawaii. Mm-hmm. I haven't been on Hawaii yet. I usually use Detroit. Oh, Hawaii is pretty funny. If you get on the news show, I was watching some news show on one of the stations in Hawaii and they have a sportscaster or weatherman, I can't remember which now. who is the size of a house. This guy is like a Samoan. He is so big and he sits on this set and he's like, he takes over the whole set. He didn't get the Al Roker memo yet. It's huge. I mean this guy's unbelievable. It's just the weirdest thing. You'd only expect to see something like that in Hawaii. But we need somebody with a sling box in Hong Kong.

1:38:44 And I'll say it really does help. It's really appreciated because we get more information. We learn more about what's going on and what's perceived as important in local markets. I mean, wow, what a difference with the national bullshit that's being spewed. Somebody would be it would be good to have Costa Rica. I think would be cool and I'll take a Russian sling box. I'll take an Iranian sling box. I'll take a Polish sling box Yeah, the problem is getting stuff in English from some of these But yeah, but it doesn't really even matter just just to be able to tune in a kind of you know primetime news time and just you can see what the stories are I mean that kind of works. So anyway

1:39:33 So the guys that started the Slingbox company, they sold the whole company to Dish Network. And I just say, they had their one year, they had to stick around, so now all those founders are gone, so they're gonna come up probably with something else somewhere. Some new idea, you think? No, no, no. I thought that idea was pretty creative. When I first heard of it, I thought, I don't know, is that a good idea? But it turned out to be very workable. I think what they should do is they should do more of that community aspect, although I'm sure there's all kinds of legal ramifications that make it difficult, but this little community which is perfect because you and I benefit, no one else does, is beautiful, man. And now, what's the guy from Detroit? I forgot his name. No, we have it.

1:40:21 Is Detroit or Chicago? No, it's Detroit. It's across from Canada. So, you know, I actually sent him an email. I said, thank you again, man. I just want you to know how much I'm enjoying this. He said, yeah, no problem. Although, you know, my brother and my brother-in-law and my sister or whatever, you know, they're moving. And so now they're going to be using it. You'll have to fight for access. And it's true. And I was like, oh, crap, someone's already on it. I can't watch. Yeah, well, typically people get tired of that. I mean, I only look at it once in a while when I want to just look at some Canadian stuff. But I'm going to have one probably set up in Port Angeles where we get two or three Canadian stations up there plus Seattle. Right, and you're going to give me access to that, right? Yeah, and it'll be off of a fiber optic line so it'll be like great. Hot shit. You could set up a... Well, this should be able to create more accounts depending on your bandwidth.

1:41:12 I guess that's where the whole legality comes in. You can share it and you can't share it. You can only use it, you know, that would be broadcasting, I guess, technically. Yes, again, they don't like promoting the idea because there's some something amiss. I mean, I think it was funny that the Dish Network bought them in the first place because what they managed to do, because, you know, here's the problem I've always said, it's irksome to anybody out there who gets a satellite. Why can I buy the local stations off of the Dish Network? From the Bay Area where I'm where I am or from Seattle where I am But if I wanted to buy the Seattle stations from down here in the Bay Area I can't do it and if I want or if I wanted to like buy New York What if I just wanted New York local station so I could watch New York TV because I go to New York a lot, right? I can't do it and why and you talk to him, but we can't do because it's against the law. Yeah. Well, how is it against the law?

1:42:06 So they come up with, I mean it makes no sense, so they came up with this, so they bought the sling bucks which is kind of a way of circumventing the law but it's just idiotic that it's against the law. I mean why is it against the law for me to sit here in the San Francisco Bay Area and watch New York television if I want to? Well, I think you should put that to the President-elect. Yeah, well he'd probably make it worse. He has reserved $650 million for the digital switchover for coupons. Yeah, I got my coupons by the way. Of course you did. Isn't that for aged people who have no money? Hi, Rochester! I'm sorry. Yes, that's you. Aged people with no money. There you go. So you got your coupon. Lovely. I got my two coupons and I'll tell you the thing about them is as soon as you get them you go, my God, why are they wasting this much money on these things? You get the things, they look like the most advanced high-tech credit card you've ever seen. It's a credit card?

1:43:07 Yeah, it's a card a hard credit card with an embossed number, and it's got a big hologram on it Oh this stinks. Oh this stinks scan that puppy for me man. What the fuck is that? So they've got your name, and you've got a credit card? No, no, your name's not on it. But your name probably is associated with the number somewhere. And here's what's weird about it if you want to get one of these boxes, I mean the selection at the Best Buy and all the local stores sucks Because if you do any research you find you want the channel master there's one or two. You get the basic unit. You don't get anything good. You can get a good one if you go online and if you go online they ask you for the card number. So what do I need all the security on the card for if I'm just typing it into a box ordering it online. You get the hologram.

1:43:53 They could have given us a barcode and a number and that would have been fine. It would have saved a couple of bucks per person. I mean, these are the most expensive cars I've ever seen. They're gorgeous, by the way. Who makes them? Who's doing the... Oh man, what a scam. So someone's made these cars. There's a back-end system. Who's the back-end system? It's on the card. Do you have the card there? No, they're downstairs. They're around somewhere. You should take a look at that. I'll see if I can figure it out. But I mean, I showed it on the Cranky Geek Show and I took it to the office and I show people these cards. Nobody of course orders but me because you know, I think it's just, you know, you're basically getting some free electronic gear that might come in handy if you have an old monitor or something. Hey, can you put me on Cranky Geek's the 28th? Probably. Yeah, I'd like to do the show. If you're sure that you'll actually show up.

1:44:46 Oh, please. If you assure me that there's actual audio on the fucking show, I'll show up. So, uh, anyway, so I got these- Just gloss over that one. You guys lost the audio. I just- it's a sore point. You lost the audio. Who did that? How did you lose the audio? Who- I mean, is this because- is this a Mevio production? I- I'll talk to you about it. I'll- I- you know, it's a sore point with me, so don't- Just answer the question. Is it- is it because of Mevio production? Because somebody screwed up. At Mevio? Well, it has to be Mevio. We're- we're producing it. Yes. Do we know the person who screwed up? Yeah. Is he fired? No. Has he been flogged? Can we humiliate him publicly? I think he should be flogged, but we will get to that later. Anyway, so... John, this is what people... they're so antsy now, they want to know. Just tell me what... I don't need to know who did it right now in the air. Who... what happened?

1:45:38 Don't know what happened apparently it's flipped the wrong switch because the weird thing about it was during the We were streaming the thing and they were the sound was going out But for some reason it wasn't being recorded the video is being recorded in the sound wasn't I have no idea how you can even do that? Jeez, jeez Louise. Did you freak out? I've just felt annoyed because it was actually pretty good show so You know another show come along so yeah, you can be on the 28th so So anyway, so I'm dragging these cards around, of course nobody has ordered these cards and so now everybody of course went online to try to get one. I think just, I don't know if they're going to be able to get one by the end of the... They have an expiration date on them too which makes it even more dumb. So they send out these expensive cards with the hologram and all the security crap like you need it. So wait a minute, so they also had to put terminals at all these outlets, they had to have card readers.

1:46:35 No, but nobody does. All they do is they just type in that number. That's the joke of it. Oh my God. Anyway, I just thought it was a complete waste of government money. This is the taxpayers should be up in arms about this. They are cool looking. They're collectible. They're cool looking. You get to take a look. I'm going to put them in a frame. I'm going to take the whole letter. I'm going to frame it and put it up as an example of government waste. All right, I'll do one more. We got to go, man. I'll do one more story for you. This is from New York Magazine. an interview with Gene Lang who's a manager at a hedge fund and he says here's how he's hedging on the economy.

1:47:27 Preparations in Lang's case include a storeroom in his basement in New Jersey stacked high with enough food, water, diapers and other necessities to last his family six months, a biometric safe to hold his guns, and a 1985 ex-military Chevy K5 Blazer that runs on diesel and is currently being retrofitted for off-road travel. He has also entertained the idea of putting an inflatable speedboat in a storage unit on the west side so he could get off the island quickly and is currently considering purchasing a remote farm where he could hunker down. If there's a financial system breakdown, it could take a year to reset the system and in that time, what's going to happen? Asked Lang. If New York turns into a scene out of I Am Legend, I want to be ready.

1:48:14 Yeah, these are the guys that are making our decisions in the hedge fund level. Isn't that amazing? What a nutball. Well, apparently there was a lot of discussion about that, about certainly investing in guns and high-speed inflatable boats at the end of 2008. And not just him, but like hedge fund managers. I mean, they're all probably made of the same wood, right, these guys? Yeah. They're all nuts. Yes, indeed. Alright, alright. That's it. Yeah, I think there we go. I think we're done notes for next week now man We covered everything and you know what I think everything went much better because I didn't open up the chat room and the phone bridge and all that shit just the stream with a lot of people Well John that was fun. Thank you very much. You're quite welcome You do it as a public service. I know but it's still appreciated on a personal level. I

1:49:27 We'll have a new t-shirt design next week. Can it be something with throw in the yo? I'm gonna do the Obamacon thing with our pictures. And listeners, feel free to work on that as well, because I'm not too good with the photoshops. Wouldn't that be great for a t-shirt? I think so. Have the two of us Obamacon on the front? Could be. Yeah, okay. Welcome to Gitmo Nation. Speaking of such and which and of that from Gitmo Nation East in Southwest London I'm Adam Curry, and I'm John C. DeVore here in Silicon Valley North also known as I don't know what Gitmo Nation West West we'll talk again next week on no agenda