Coming to you not only from opposite ends of the globe, but
also opposite ends of the generational gap. It's time once
again for no agenda coming to you from the affluent suburb of
Surrey, known as Guilford in the United Kingdom. I'm Adam curry.
It's absolute.
Oh, hell yeah.
I'm John C. Dvorak coming up to you from the less than affluent
sections of Northern California. We're well known people that
have the real people.
I know man, this is the salt of the earth is in Guilford my
friend.
There might be some salt here, but that has nothing to do with
the population.
Hey, we didn't do our weather check. I've got a beautiful day
how you doing in? In San Francisco.
It's kind of foggy. Which means it could be really hot this
afternoon. It's been very hot in the last few days was 100. The
other day? Oh, crap. We've had some extremely hot weather.
Which always results in this fog. Now whether or not it's
going to burn off as another issue.
Now it's been nothing like that over here, obviously. But it is.
It has been nice. We have a nice day today. A little bit of a
breeze, a little bit of sun. Couple of clouds. It's nice
to see anything you were partying all last night. Tell us
about it.
Yeah, so actually, normally we record the show around what is
it probably around 5:30pm. My time it's about 9:30am your time
on Saturday. And I'd already sent John a note and said, Look,
I you know, we've been invited to this party. And it's in
Brighton, which is about an hour from here, down south right on
the coast, which is famous for a number of reasons. I think one
of them is some political conventions that take place
there. But Brighton does have some. I think some pretty big
historic significance. Actually. Beach does Brighton Beach.
Correct. And you know what the architecture and the beach and
interestingly enough, it being the gay capital of the United
Kingdom, it has a very interesting San Francisco vibe.
Hmm, yeah.
It really does. When you when we look I didn't know is the gay
capital?
Well, I don't know if it's the capital. But yeah, I think it
has that. That dubious honour. And it does have a beach anyway.
So this was a party that was being thrown by David Hill,
who's the president and founder of E three entertainment.
Basically, what they do is they provide all the entertainment
for the big Thomas Cook vacation packages, which is kind of
interesting, because, you know, that's everything from trips to
Disney Land, to the big cruise ships. And so Patricia and I
were invited by Yes, super agent Keith, who, and it was also it
was a charity dinner. So you know supper for sub two
children's charity. So it's one of those things kind of like a
rubber chicken type thing. But let's go see, let's go hang out.
Let's go to Brighton. Man was
it was it it? Was it a gay event?
Yes and no. I mean, a lot of like cruise, cruise theatre, you
know, Cruise Line Type theatre stuff with with dancers and can
can and so yeah, that was obviously two major camp
aspects. And yeah, I guess it was kind of a gay event in a
way. Which was usually can be pretty funny. I think the
funniest thing about this, which is our table, you know, you've
you have not met Keith Bishop, who we call super agent Keith.
But he's tied into it like 20 years at the BBC. And he's been
independent for a number of years. And so he knows everybody
and knows everything about everybody. And he has friends
like Mickey the news agent, Mickey kebabbed knife, all of
these shady kinds of figures who who travel in his circles and
you know some D liberties anyway, it was a it was a very
sorry it
sounds like a laundry list of personalities from the movie
Goodfellas
Well, there was one thing you know so it was exactly it does
kind of it and it was a bit like that and what was interesting is
so yeah, one of these roundtables where you sit with
10 people and I'm sure Keith bought the table for like 1000
pounds or whatever it is. And you know, you you you're kind of
interacting with people and then as the evening goes on now that
member This is a first for us kind of in the British culture
as the evening goes on and the wind flows more freely boy, you
know, things that kind of loose and pretty funny and there was
this one guy, Kevin the comedian. I don't even I don't
know his last name I do. I do recognise him from several of
those like stand up shows that they have over here in the in
the UK very similar to the states on television. And at one
point he said, Okay, here's what we're going to do. On the count
of three, we're all going to start laughing and and like
someone just said something really hilarious and everyone
will think we have the funniest table and the best place to be
and they all did it and it was it was absolutely something that
I think I will repeat. If I'm no matter where I am at one of
these chicken rubber chicken dinners it's pretty funny
because everyone looks over like crap man I'm at the wrong table
I should have been sitting with with those guys
it's like Woody Allen on the wrong train and star doesn't
memories
if only I had seen it I could comment
great movies should you actually that's a movie you should see
it's a lot of people believed it was the swan song to the funny
period of Woody Allen because it was about all the other movies
he did previous was this actually a lot of people
including myself think it's one of his best movies
you got a copy I'm sure you can rip one for me or do I have to
actually go through the process of finding it we'll talk later
so but anyway it was really nice the most amazing thing is
Brighton just in general I was completely blown away it's it's
a rather large city has fantastic you know it's only 25
minutes from Gatwick which is interesting because where we are
is also 25 minutes away from Gatwick but it's on the sea. It
has you know a lot of entertainment nightlife etc has
a fantastic pier that it has an old one that is still kind of
decrepit there in the sea, which is I think it because it's
protected then they don't get rid of it. But the new one is
just amazing, which is very much like a Coney Island type of
pier.
Believe that Gordon Ramsay did one of his Kitchen Nightmares.
I'm sure he must have there must be a tonne of places for him to
work on and his management skills there. It was really
nice, you know, and honestly, after just driving down there
and being around there driving through it a bit. Patricia and I
were like how we should consider moving here. I mean, it's like
there's no difference from from London except, you know, here's
actually it appears to be still very British. The architecture
is exactly the kind that we like, which as I said is kind of
like that San Franciscan, but also London terraced houses,
you've got to see you've got to beach. You've got Shoreham
airport 10 minutes away, which is good for daddio Gatwick 25
minutes away, it's like, oh, you know, that might be an option.
Why don't you do it?
Well, we're looking, in fact, it was funny because I said to
Patricia, as I was making my tea before the show, I said, Okay,
hang on. I'm gonna go do the show. Is Christina home. No,
she's out at Liz's house. Okay, could you please like not not
serve and I'll just close your email. She's like, Oh, great. I
was just had my cup of tea and I was ready to sit down and look
at real estate and Brighton. Okay, well, I guess I won't then
you know, one of those jobs because we can't both use the
internet at the same time for bandwidth intensive applications
if one of them is Skype.
Yeah, no, you should get a second line.
I've I've put it I put an order in months ago with Virgin, which
is the the Virgin Media. They bought NTL, the cable company
and you know, formerly known as NT hell, and nothing has changed
in that regard. You can't get them out. You can't get them out
here. Maybe in December. It's like okay, well, I'll probably
have brightened by how's the
connectivity and brightened? Have you checked into it?
Because I know that you're one of the reasons you wanted to
move in further was to get better connectivity.
I have a feeling it's gonna be a hell of a lot better. I mean,
compared to Guilford, I mean, Brighton is big smoke. I mean,
it's it's major. It's a real it's a it's a metropolis. It
kind
of blew me away. I'm sorry, you can get more house for your
money. Now I
think it's going to be about just about equally as expensive.
In fact, the vibe is from the people that I spoke there it's
like everyone from London is now moving here keeping a pet a tear
in the city of course for when you have your West End Show. But
I think it's well in general real estate here. They're there.
They're predicting the papers now that there's going to be a
9% decline in prices overall. 40% decline in actual property
sold. So good.
Yeah, wires market that's when you buy
not i think i think I'm gonna wait just a little bit longer. I
don't think it's quite there yet. Because meanwhile, of
course the interest rates for mortgages are going up. Crazy.
Yeah, that's, that's one of those deals. What do we call it
stagflation? I see it everywhere. Now, since you
taught me the word.
stagflation a classic.
Almost, in fact,
so how is it? Let's go back to the party. So you said this
party had fireworks? It was plastered?
Yeah, it was. Well, yeah, it was very British and patrician, I
don't really drink a glass of wine but then the near the end
there so everyone outside on the balcony and there was fireworks
there was a nice little display right off the off the beach. And
then everyone went back in and just started to drink and dance.
And I'm like, Dude, it's like midnight and I'm tired. I got I
got an hour to drive back and I'm not gonna sit around here
and drink anymore. And I mean, you just see people kind of melt
away but I'll tell you the British when they drink they're
funny. I mean, by the way, they're funny when that when
they don't drink but they're they're not annoying drunk. It's
just nicely drunk. And anyway, that's
that seems to contrast with the Irish
I have no no experience with the Irish. But there certainly
are more pubs in in London and you run into these Irish later
in the night, you know, they tend to be argumentative.
Well just look at the Lisbon Treaty. I think that that's
probably a genetic thing and has nothing to do with drinking.
They are definitely argumentative.
So while we're on the topic of the Brits, did you see that by
the way, if you get a chance to my blog posts that are up now,
which, of course by the time people hear this open, miss it,
but check the weekend stuff. So Martha Stewart was banned from
going to I read that from Inc to England, because she, you know,
was busted in the US for that ridiculous. insider trading
scandal. Yeah, and I guess she's a threat to society over there.
You they can't handle her. She's gonna come in there and
corrupters to the public. Well,
probably, but the I guess the law here is they don't hand out
visas to convicted criminals. So
this is crawling with terrorists.
That's not really true. John, just don't tell anyone over
here. Yeah, no, they're not convicted terrorists, okay.
They're the terrorists of the non convicted kind. That's it.
That's the deal is, if you're a convicted criminal, then you're
just then you're denied entry into the UK. And, you know, so
obviously, no one wants to touch that one. Because if they're
going to let Martha Stewart in, then you know, okay, so that's a
an exception to the rule. What other exceptions on it, they'll
never let her in. No one wants to deal with that shit right
now. And by the way, screw her. I don't want her over here
either.
Well, she has business interests. I believe she needs
to take care of.
No, I think she wants to start business interests. That's the
report I read.
At least you should just get a second citizenship.
Oh, yeah. I'm sure there's some rules about convicted criminals
for dual citizenship as well.
You can always buy one in Canada.
It's so funny though, to see Charles Koppelman, who wasn't he
a big week at Viacom, Charles Koppelman.
The name rings a bell? I don't remember.
So he's now the president of Martha media, whatever it's
called. But they're also living together if they're not married?
I don't know. So it's kind of funny to see that. Two different
statements show up in you know, Charles Koppelman never
mentioned is Martha's partner. making statements. But yeah, I
understand like, of course, you know, the woman's not a threat
to society, no more than what's going on in the city of London
right now with these traders who are jacking up the price price
of oil. You know, there are some guys that are onto that, John.
Yeah, Michael Greenberger is one of them.
So what I've read over here, and for people have not heard
previous episodes have no agenda. So the general Well, the
general thinking, one of the reasons why the cost of oil has
skyrocketed so quickly, is that there's still a loophole, very
similar to the one that the Enron used in the energy trading
crisis, where which ultimately resulted in rolling blackouts in
California, but that has not been closed for commodity
trading in oil futures. And interestingly, it turns out that
there's a huge amount of that going on in London City, which
is where, you know, we're the financial centre of the UK of
Europe, I would say arguably, and they've even introduced
something called the balls claws. Have you heard of this?
No, tell me it's kind of like a blocking action so that the EU
because the US is now trying to reach out and say to the City of
London, hey, you know, you guys got to have limits on on the
amount I think its limits on the amount of commodities your
trading and they also have to do more, provide more disclosure as
to what their positions are. And they have all kinds of because
the City of London is has its own law did you know that it's
its own entity? It's not actually it's not even may not
even be part of England as far as I know it has
some of that I don't know about that part. But yeah,
but yeah, you know, has its own mayor it has its own you know,
it's a square mile its own entity has its own tax laws that
I think is true.
Right. You should mention that people that when you know that
London, the Greater London is one thing but the City of London
is this little bitty piece in the middle. Yeah.
And it's just it's a square mile. And it's a square mile
that where all the banks are all the financial trading takes
place. They have their own mayor their own laws, and God knows
what else and so they have
their own they have their own police uniforms. Yeah,
their own police uniforms. They have their own I think they
don't all have their services, fire. Everything is all it's all
separate. Anyway, so they don't want the US meddling with what
they're doing. And so they're trying to block that. And in
fact, it was, I should look this up the European Union is also on
to this.
almost everybody's onto it except American press. The
American press has still been running stories about, well,
it's because there's a shortage. We're running out of oil, and
we're wasting it and we need to be more green.
And that green thing, it's starting to bother me more and
more now that I'm looking at, you know, what taxes are being
written and what examples are being given. I mean, is it all
does it all John just boil down to this one report, but the
IPCC, whatever those guys are called the International Kuva,
grand commission of whatever, who came out with a report that
said, you know, basically, we're burning up the Earth, is it? Is
it all based on that one report? Is that how all the co2 taxes
all of a sudden came into play while we were asleep?
Apparently,
I think it's all based on Al Gore's? Well, it's part
of the same thing. Al Gore was the public version of the IPCC
report.
Yeah, ya know, Gore has been instrumental in creating this
panic. They're like, what's changed? You know,
there was a funny report in the, in the Financial Times, I think
it was yesterday. And it was a review of one of Al Gore
speeches, because I guess he still goes around the world and
does these speeches with his famous PowerPoint? And
he flies around in his G five, you know, or?
Yeah, well, it gets better because a Hummer, and then the
Hummer is rolled out of the C 130. So But wait a minute, it
gets better, because, you know, he has a disclaimer, which I
guess is pretty normal that you had or not a disclaimer made me
to just a document this handed out to?
I think it's like a non disclosure, isn't it? Well,
actually,
it's part. It's not really non disclosure, me,
I know this for a fact. Right? Listen to this stuff.
But what but what it says it's part disclosure, where he says
that, you know, he discloses that he represents several
investments and firms in green technology, etc. And, you know,
for basically one of those forward looking statements may
not represent, etc. So it's kind of sounds like what he's doing.
He's going around, he's saying, we're all going to die, but
invest in these companies who are trying to keep you alive.
Yeah, I think there's a requirement for him to do that.
I think there's an SEC requirement because he has an
interest in all these things he's promoting. Yeah. And
there's some videos like that. It's like those crazy statements
you see in the bottom of certain kinds of press releases. Yeah.
He just covering his ass, basically.
Because he's doing that, I guess.
Yeah. Well, he's a shill for as you know, he's got he's making
money. I mean, he's, he went, he left public life, you know,
basically worth a couple million dollars. Now he's worth 130
million or something like that. Yeah, he's really worth a lot.
And it's
not just it's gotta be from the speaking engagements. It's and
from the investments. It's not from the movie, the movie
doesn't make anything. No,
no, no, that movie was just a promotional tool for his other
stuff. Right. I mean, basically, the movie was a is a would you
call an advertorial for all practical purposes? Well, it's
an outrage. It's an outrage.
I'm outraged.
I'm pissed off. You know, I'm just unlike. I remember when
this IPCC report came out, I was there when Al Gore presented the
movie for the first time at the Kleiner Perkins CEO retreat. In
what is it? I'm thinking Pebble Beach, whatever it is. Not
Pebble Beach. Anyway, doesn't matter. I was there, you know,
and I'm looking at this like, Okay, that's interesting. And
then I start reading a bit of the controversy about the IPCC
report, and all of a sudden you turn around and it's like,
there's tax increases and in petrol and everything you can
imagine all for this greenhouse. I'm like, Oh, well, that's kind
of that happened pretty quick.
Can we go from zero to 100?
I was too busy with like building a company.
Public just running around like chickens with their heads cut
off waving their arms about this stuff.
But without even really, I mean, there's no I'm gonna just the
last of ulterior research, but no one ever does anything with
it. Yeah. And by the way, how can people can predict how we're
going to burn up within the next 100 years? I'm obviously just
editorial. I know,
where are you going with this line? I was gonna I was hoping
to use this line myself. Here
it comes. They can't even predict the fucking weather for
tomorrow. Exactly. That's what I want to know.
They can't predict the weather for tomorrow.
Neither can I by the way, I can do six hours. I can see some,
some systems where you can reasonably predict when and
where it's going to hit but you know, 10 years 20 years out i No
way and I'm just talking when I'm not even talking
temperature.
But the other problem that we noticed is that anyone who comes
up with any counter argument whatsoever knows That immunised
Yeah, they're demonised airbrush shouted down. It's amazing. I
find I get the biggest kick out of it. I think it's hilarious
because the public I mean, we post a lot of stuff on the blog
about this. We have both sides of it because we have, you know,
we have an interesting round, well rounded group of bloggers.
But the funny thing is, is that it always gets a bunch of
comments because people are guarded coming in out of the
woodwork about this thing is a scam. And then the other ones
say, Well, yeah, and then there you then you have the true
believers. And you have these two guys shouting at each other.
But to tell you the truth, I think the public is pretty much
split down the middle on this and a probably more on the side
of sceptic being sceptics than then being true believers. I
think that's actually a minority.
I think it certainly warrants a little bit more investigation or
just a little bit more, because there is, you know, there are
some obvious questions. And before we just continue with all
of this taxation, and there's so much tax every everything you
do, you know, is there's a co2 tax on it. Like,
I can't be right. co2 tax I love it.
Isn't. Isn't that true? That's what it always boils down to co2
tax. Okay.
Your carbon footprint? Yeah, that's my favourite one. I have
been a nomenclature. Well,
here's how that happened. I know what happened there. What
happened was they first the carbon credits came into play,
right? So you could buy carbon offset your carbon usage. So to
offset your carbon usage, of course, you had to have a
calculator. And there's a million of these on the
internet, that and they all give you different answers, by the
way that calculates your carbon usage, ie your carbon footprint.
I think that's the genealogy there.
Yeah. Yeah, that's the beauty. I don't want to I consider myself
fairly adept at at marketing strategies, but this one here is
way over. I mean, this one's beyond this is almost like I
actually ran into the woman who did this by the web I student of
marketing. And one of the things I've always admired gold though
it's now kind of missing is you remember during the VCR days, it
used to be this thing called VCR plus oh,
yeah, the in the newspaper, you'd have a little scanner or a
little code Yeah,
because they figured that people were too stupid to to programme
their VCRs which was you know, not a bad thought. And they
decided to come up with this these coded numbers that you
could just take see it in the newspaper, then you just punch
it into your VCR and then it would record that show. Because
people were too dumb to put in the time date and channel. Yeah,
so So this thing became like a licenced system on all these
VCRs every VCR you know started to get them and it was called
VCR plus, and then the newspapers all ran the numbers
and it was amazing to me so I finally tracked down the woman
there was a woman who do dream this whole concept up who is a
marketing person and I had a lot long chat with her because I
admired basically just a compliment for pulling off a
spot like that because to me it was like wow, how do you make
that work? Because that's a lot of work yeah. And
it rolled out internationally then there was all over the
world they had that thing going
Yeah, course it you know once somebody you know I'm I don't
know what it just died I think I don't know what the licencing
fees were I actually would like to get a hold of her again to
find out what she thinks happened that that would kill it
completely. It's gone. I think what
happened is, is there were there were too many channels, too many
cable and satellite channels coming on board and you can
there was no effective way to get the information.
It could be and but the whole thing was it was a formula, you
know, is the channel this and that the other thing but anyway,
I think it was also because I think the Dish Network and re
ended and DirecTV they all have different channel numbers, so
the numbers probably wouldn't work. So how does that relate
to? to That's what I think that's where I think the same
kind of thing with carbon credits, carbon footprints. This
is all a marketing scheme because you know, this this Gore
is part of a carbon tradings company that, you know, trades
your carbon credits for some how I don't know how even how it
works, but what it relates to is the fact that you can manage a
worldwide marketing effort with something that's just made out
of thin air. I don't
think it's management anymore. I think, you know, these guys
probably went holy crap. Look what just happened? Of course,
you know, they may not have first of all, I gotta believe Al
Gore actually believes what he's selling. And he looks like he
looks like he believes what he's selling it so that's fine. And
it may be
good he should be. Yeah, you have to be a true gotta be
believer.
And I'm not I'm not saying I you know that I'm not concerned. I'm
saying that I I'm not too sure. And I don't see conclusive
evidence. I see a lot of other noise that I'd like to
investigate. Okay. So he believes in it. But this took
off. It's almost like a self fulfilling, fulfilling prophecy
in a way
you know, I don't think so. I you know, they Good, let's back
up a minute. When he was running for president in 2000, and even
when he was vice president under Clinton, he I think he wrote
some book when he was the vice president just before he, you
know, this was like, this would be a what, almost 20 years ago,
he had started on this on this road. With this, I could get it,
somebody can find it out, we can look it up on the net. But this
early book that he wrote was pretty much all whack jobs
stuff. I remember critiques of it back then about this guy's
crazy, right?
Any review of any of his books, maybe one of your columns.
No, you know, I just remember it was to deal with this stuff. It
was just really old, early book that was dead. He did when he
was at fight, or when he was running for vice president
initially, which would be 190. What was that? 94? Yes. But
anyway, whatever the case is balance. It goes back
ecology and human spirit.
Maybe. But whatever the case was, it's not like it happened
overnight. And so I'm thinking 1992, that book earthen value
92. Yeah. Well, there you have it with me. That's a ways back
that much. Oh, yeah, 1516 years ago. So it's not like this
happened overnight. This is a long term strategy was very
carefully orchestrated, which is the way all good marketing
schemes work. They don't, you know, they always look like they
am is like the overnight success, you know, some
apparatus, you find out they've been doing this for 25 years.
Yeah.
Now, that's, you're absolutely right. But anyway, I think what
they tried for a while is they tried to set up some they tried
to make the carbon unit into like a tradable commodity. It
felt like, you know, so you could trade your, the government
started that you could trade your carbon credits, well, we'll
produce, you know, less carbon this year, and China will sell
that to you for X, Y, and Z. And I think they tried to bring that
into trading systems. And maybe that's even done today. I don't
know.
I think there is a trading system out there. But the fact
of the matter is, if you think about it, from some logical
perspective, there's really nothing to trade me it's just
all air. It's literally air. There isn't. There isn't what
literally, it's it's like this, if somebody looked at this from
a distance, they would say, how silly you're trading? I mean,
it's like crazy.
Well, no, crazy. Isn't the taxes that are being put on on US
based on it?
No, the whole thing is nuts. Yeah. Not you know, but like
I've said, you know, people if they turn out, you know, I still
am dubious about the green thing when I sit over here, on top of
the hill, overlooking San Francisco. And I see every night
that cities lit up like a Roman candle, thinking, you know, how
serious are we about this, if we're in that much trouble, turn
off the lights in San Francisco dark in the place? Well, just
turn them off, turn off the entire city of San Francisco and
Los Angeles and Kansas City and New York. And I guarantee that
we'll be saving a lot of carbon. And there's a lot do WE ARE WE
serious about this? Are we just joking? Is this just just a
joke?
I don't know, man. I don't know. I'll tell you one thing. We
invaded Iraq. I'm sure you saw, I'm sure you blogged when your
guys blogged it that now all the big oil companies are now
finally after 30 years, they're allowed to do business with
Iraq, and they're allowed to set up oil fields. Yeah, no shit.
Oh, boy, isn't that great? Wow, isn't that fantastic? We
installed the democratic government and now we can do
contracts finally. So they're all doing these deals. They're
chopping it up exactly the way the plans always show that had
been available on the internet for years. And and the prices
are still high. Go figure.
Well, that was so high because of these traders in London and
Dubai ash, you know, yes, exactly.
And they're not anyone, even the European Commission, who I guess
are kind of boss when it comes to this said, Yeah, we should go
look at that. Because that's not right. And we should look at we
should have a report done by October 2008. A report? Yeah. So
then be discussed. Yeah. It's like going to discuss the report
in November. It's like, we need action now.
And then the Irish will vote against it. You know,
since you brought it up. Of course, that's the that's the
hottest topic in Europe is the Lisbon Treaty. And I've been
thinking about this about the whole idea of a referendum which
is interesting, and I've been looking looking into it and in
America, certainly some states, California, most notably I have
a lot of different ways that you can call a public referendum.
And which is known as I guess, direct democracy. But that's
kind of interesting, you know, when in these days of text
voting for your favourite American Idol or X Factor or
kicking someone out of the Big Brother house. That's an
interesting solution to change.
Ya know, in California, you can get put a petition together and
then get just about anything you want put on the ballot,
I say like a proposition. Is that what it's called, then?
Yeah, it'd be
a bribe. Well, that's the way it ends up. Yeah. But the exact,
you know, I think I have to think about I think it is a
referendum or something like that.
I don't think we I don't think we take advantage of probably
the multitude of possibilities that a referendum offers,
or they believe me in California, they take advantage
of all of it. I mean, the the number of petitioners you gotta
get is pretty high, which is the problem, but they're trying
everything. I mean, they've had anti gay marriage, they had the
prior, you know, that proposition 104, some years ago,
when they froze all property taxes, and that's still in play.
And there's a whole bunch of stuff, they've done it, most of
the stuff gets voted down. That's
why do you think, what do you think most of the guys noted
down? Well, because some
tends to be confused. Most of this stuff gets voted down,
because it's, it's always written in a confusing language.
So you California's or, you know, we see these things, so
much these these these propositions, that we're always
sceptical about being tricked,
which is exactly the problem with this is interesting. That's
exactly what like 40% of the Iris said, Said, I voted no,
because I felt like I was getting tricked. Because it was
too complicated. How interesting is that?
Yeah, well, it that's one of the problems that you have with
these things. They have to be simplified, and they have to
make sense. And then they have to have a bunch of people on
board. And then you have to worry about people who, you
know, that are against them, because they're vested
interests. And so they'll run TV ads that will try to make you
think you're being tricked, or they are, they will tell you to
do one thing and hope that you do another as it gets pretty. It
gets pretty intense. So 90% of the time that people just vote
no. And then the people go back to the drawing board. Some of
these things keep coming back over and over and over again.
Interesting. Well, I found out that in the Lisbon Treaty,
there's actually something called the European Citizens
Initiative. And that was it's one of the differences between
the original Constitution of Europe which got voted down by
the French and the Dutch. And it's turned into the Lisbon
Treaty is there as a method, and of course, the language is so
fricking ambiguous that I think that's where they fuck that up.
If you have a million signatures, and of course,
doesn't specify if that's written signatures, or
electronic signatures, etc. If you have a million of them from
Enough, enough significant member states, which of course
is not defined, then you can put legislation before the European
Commission, who then can ultimate A No, no, that you can
invite. That's the language, you can invite the European
Commission to put a legislative move towards European parliament
where a vote will be would be taken, which I think is a pretty
good move, except for the whole invited bit. It's like it
shouldn't be an invite. It should be, you know, like a
mandatory. But it's it's an interesting move just in.
Yeah, it sounds pretty, right. It sounds pretty wimpy. For one
thing, a million signatures has got to be a problem. No,
that's easy. I think that's really easy. Well, yeah, if
it was electronic, it would be but what if you have to actually
people sign things and then check. One of the things they do
here is that they actually go over that, you know, it has to
be signed thing, and then you have to do a check and
Johnny, here's where I got them. Here's where I got them. The
Eurovision Song Contest, which is a European Union initiative
has been since the inception of the European Union. And I think
1950 is done by SMS text voting. So if it's legal enough for the
Eurovision Song Contest, then surely it's legal allow for the
Lisbon Treaty.
I don't know about I mean, what's what's legal about the
Song Contest is just a you know, it's just a TV entertainment
show. Yeah, but like if anyone's legally binding, you know, or
anything that would be it's
a huge economic impulse if if you get if you win the contest,
and it's like the Olympics and the contest is in your country
next year? I mean, it's all bullshit. I'm not. I'm not
defending the Eurovision Song Contest. I'm just saying that. I
think there's an argument to be
made say that they allow you voting that the EU would fall
apart if they allowed text messaging petitions, because
people would be petitioning him for everything because you could
get by Yeah, you could probably get if you get on television for
10 minutes you could probably you know, initiate something.
Yeah, I'm liking that. is my point. I'm liking that. That
sounds like a good idea. Of course, didn't have nothing but
100 petitions a month.
Yeah, you're right is probably pretty funny. It would be great
but does not yet.
To remember, you have to do it from significant number of
member states. So that may mean,
again, you know, is it mean 10? Doesn't mean all of them? What
if it means only one person from each one? I mean, do you can you
have like a million or 999,000? From, you know, one country and
then 10 from here and 10 from there and 10 from here, and then
from there, that would be all?
Yeah, there's a one proposal that's out there for what they
call the fundamentals, it would have to be from a minimum of
four member states, which probably means for different
languages for different campaigns, not trivial, you
know, you do have to put some effort behind it to get it done.
But I think it should be it should be possible, you know.
There's a lot of people doing it already, you know, there's
they're treating it as law already. And they're putting
together all kinds of campaigns for trying to get their million
signatures.
I think you're overlooking something. Okay. You're
overlooking the fact that the EU is created to, to, to kind of
repurpose Europe as a fascist state. Not so they can be pushed
around by the public.
And I posed that exact language to a minister of European
Parliament earlier this week. And I said, a colleague of mine
in the United States says it sounded like a fascist state
takeover. And his his literal answer was, I wouldn't want to
go that far. Which I thought was pretty funny. I like okay. But
it's, I don't know. I mean, I'm looking at both sides of this.
And it's it's to me, it's just absolutely fascinating. I am
discovering that I'm, I'm a closet politics junkie. It's
particularly these days where you can download anything read
any any parliament member or Commission's member speeches,
voting records, you know, it's fascinating to look at this
stuff.
Yeah, well, when you're in the gulag, I hopefully have a
connection, we can still do the show.
Let me just mention one more thing, and I'll get off of the
topic is this is kind of funny. So after Ireland voted no, in
the referendum, obviously, politically, just to keep the
vibe alive, Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the UK had to
get this thing ratified. In the house of parliament, you know,
in order to save any kind of face, of course, it being in
close proximity to Ireland, etc. So they ramrodded this through
the Queen signed her, put her signature on it, which means the
Roy now has royal assent. And they're acting like it's all
been ratified, but it hasn't, because there's this guy, this,
he calls himself a Euro sceptic, Stuart Wheeler, you gotta look
this guy up. He's 72. He was, at one point, very wealthy from
business that he had done. But He is suing the government. He's
suing Gordon Brown and the government over the fact that
they promised to hold a referendum on the constitutional
document of the European Union. And, and the court actually
wrote a letter to the Parliament said, you know, you don't really
think it, I'm paraphrasing, but really strong language, like,
please don't really think that you're just going to ratify this
treaty, without the court's decision, whether it's legal or
not to have done this without a referendum. And that I think, is
highly interesting. And I'm really liking the Stewart
Wheeler guy for doing that.
He's my hero.
And you see, like, 72 He's like, fuck it. I'm just gonna sue
these guys in and everyone's everyone's Pooh poohing it. But
why would not be a freak out? If the court said, You know what,
it's illegal. You have to do a referendum in the UK.
What do you think would happen?
Well, I think it would be voted down immediately in current
status. And you know, this, this, look, what it boils down
to is exactly what you said, everyone's sceptic, everybody
loves Europe. Everyone in Europe is into the whole thing. We like
working with each other. We like playing soccer against each
other football, if you will. We like going each other's
countries and doing business and all that stuff is great. And we
see all the benefits, but we don't trust these fuckers you
know, it's a it's a bunch of legal speak, no one understands
what it's about. Everyone's running around as 1000s of these
guys, they sit in Brussels, they sit in Strasbourg, they, you
know, it's like we didn't elect them. You know, it's
distrustful. So there's a, you know, somehow someone has to
figure out how to turn all of that scepticism into a positive
pro Europe positioning we're feeling I guess, and
how about this is something I'm not quite getting? You know,
they are they've already taken down it throughout Europe, you
can travel from one country to another pretty effortlessly.
There's no more though.
Excuse me, excuse me, except for the countries who have a
protocol. So the United Kingdom had a specific protocol when
they joined, which is another thing that pisses me off. And
they said, Yeah, we'll participate in Europe, but we
don't none of that let everyone travel around shit. We only let
people in that we want to let in
Well, I don't blame him for that. But anyway, so But
generally speaking, once you get to the continent, you can freely
go from country to country to country without, you know, the
kind of until you get out of the EU, you know? Yeah, you don't
need a passport, you don't need to, you know, they don't you're
not stopped at every border on the on the train with some guy
coming in looking at everything in your papers, please, you
know, and then you know stamp in your passport
left and right. And you could use the same money everywhere.
On the other hand, the money has been been
normalised pretty much. And so and there are trade agreements
are in place, what what would what's wrong with just stopping
where you are right now and just going with it, as opposed to
adding, you know, this bureaucratic overhead? I don't
know, getting why all this other stuff even has to be passed?
It's done most of it,
I can give you the answer. Good, because that question has been
posed directly. And here's the answer that Barrasso the
president current President gives, He says, it's for
immigration policy. So who do we let inside the borders of the
EU? Because of course, now you have a whole bunch of entry
points. It's about terrorism and safety. There you go. Big hit
words. So how do we protect the EU from terrorism, and it's
about financial stability, which is, of course, the central
banking and where a lot of the distrust is right now. So it's
for those Oh, and of course, the universal human rights. And
that's what it's about. It's about those.
So let's go over these dis dis issues. Let's start with the so
right now, anyone who wants to come into the EU is a free pass.
Is that what they're saying that they're worried about? I mean,
right now, if I'm a terrorist coming out of Pakistan, let's
say from the from an al Qaeda camp, I can go move right now
and to Hamburg. Just what effortlessly?
No, I think what they're saying is that there are
inconsistencies every country has his own policy is own
security and anti terrorism measures. They want to harmonise
all of that. So everyone's working off the same playbook.
So yes, I think that you can easily enter one country or
Look, dude, I can fly from almost anywhere and land almost
anywhere and get in. Okay, it's all kind of academic anyway. But
you think you can fly in from Pakistan?
Yeah, I think well, yeah, I think these things are booked.
It's not hard to get into any country. If unless, you know,
unless you're going through the main airport. Yeah, it's gonna
be a little more complicated. But that's really what it's
about. It's about harmonisation. About each country having, you
know, it's all about databases to John, it's all about sharing
the information, which is a huge point, no one wants, you know,
their government to share, you know, their, their, the personal
data of their citizens with other countries yet, and you
know, unless they really understand what's being done
with it. That's what it is, you know, it's all about, in a way,
locking down the global borders of Europe. That is certainly one
of it. And I can see where if you want to have that kind of
unify uniform protection, you've got to have, you've got to set
it up. And it's got to be legal.
So I wonder if Martha Stewart can get into Paris.
But I'm sure that she will. Who's the member? The
photographer was the filmmaker who married the 13 year old.
What was his name? The American.
Roman Polanski. Yeah, by the way, I would recommend before
even talking about Roman Polanski. Anybody out there to
find a copy of the documentary that had just been finished
about this case.
I heard you talking about that. Somewhere. It was on a twit.
Again. Yeah. No, I don't. Yes. Well, yes. The technology show.
Yes.
Whatever the case is. I would recommend people watch this
before they make any comment because it turns out to be a
little more interesting story then we're led to believe. Yeah,
anyway, but the point you Yeah, but he wasn't you know, is it so
the answer is yes. I think it's easier to get into one country
depending Yeah, I think Martha Stewart could probably get into
Amsterdam. No problem. She could jump in the back of my plane.
I'd land that bitch right here. No,
she couldn't jump in the back of your plane because you're taking
off from England. No, I be in Amsterdam. Totally. And they go
over so you could fly her in if you if
absolutely absolutely not a problem.
So maybe that's what she should have done. She should have
gotten her she should have just gone to to France instead of
England directly. Got
schonell No big no, no. Because it remember England has their
own protocol they get to deny who you get
to okay but she could fly in on your plane it would
be illegal but she could get in that's my point. Okay, it would
it would not be illegal process.
So you when you fly into England on that little plane to yours
you don't check into anything you just fly in yet. Adam
Carolla landing in a new land. And
I'm glad you asked No, you have to as one of the, in fact the
only country in the union, you have to fill out what's known as
a Gen deck a Gen declaration, and you have to send that in 24
hours before the actual flight takes play, the inbound flight
takes place. Now you can land at any number of airports where
they have passport control. So if you'd you know, 10 minutes
from where I usually land is Biggin Hill, you land there, you
show your passport, and then you can go wherever you want, you
can take off again, fly anywhere you want in the UK. So if you
have a field that doesn't have passport facilities, like
fairoaks, where would I the one that I use? You fill out the
general declaration, you send it off the tower, fax it to the
authorities, but dude, you know, it's like, you know, it's not
like they're there. By the way, they are there often to check.
But certainly not every single time. I mean, on a Friday or
Saturday, yeah, they're almost always there. Because that's
when everyone's going off to France and coming back and
forth. And they're checking all kinds of things. But during the
week now, I've never, never had anyone check on me.
So you could so Martha should get a hold of you.
No, no, absolutely not. So then there's the other one, John,
tear it. So it all comes down to I think really, the financial
one is the main one, it's all about the European Central Bank.
You know, it's all about the numbers, keeping inflation in
check, keeping that, you know, your the GDP numbers in check.
They're all set targets have been that way for many, many
years. So everyone, you know, so all the EU countries are trying
to keep their, their economies balanced. And that's what it's
about. And it's not a bad thing. You know?
Yeah, no, it's not a bad thing. If except for the fact that, you
know, I don't think that the German should be telling the
French how to make cheese. So let's back go back to this
Martha Stewart thing has nothing to do with cheese. It does. And
when it boils down, I guarantee cheese is going to be involved.
So let's get back to the Martha Stewart thing. Martha Stewart
has come up in the news anyway, why didn't Martha just fly to
France? without making a big? What did she do? You don't need
a visa. I mean, I can fly to England. I can get on a plane
tomorrow. And boom, I'm in London. And that's the way I
stamped the thing when you walk in. And while I'm sorry. She
goes to France. And she's there floating around for a few days.
And she gets on the channel and she goes to England. And then
she comes in and they see her and they say oh, yeah, my Bombay
stat. I mean, I don't it seems to me that somewhere along the
line, she announced she was coming in, some bureaucrat
picked up on and then they put put her on the no entry list. I
mean, she didn't think she was bumping against the border. It
wasn't happening when she was trying to get into it. It
happened before she even tried to fly.
That's very interesting. That's very interesting. Well, it
sounds like she tried to acquire a visa. Why you don't need a
visa? Well, no, hold on a second there. There is a lot of shit
going on with the visas right now. Because the US there is a
visa issue there is in the visa issue. I'm not quite sure what
it is. But the US now has is demanding that anyone who comes
into the US has to have a passport and you know, a new
machine readable passport. And what they're saying now is or
with the request is what I've seen at the European Union
level, is they want all European Union countries to reciprocate.
And that's when the visa issue goes away. But there is a visa
visa issue in some cases. But you're right. But I would say
you're probably right. Why the hell is she raising the visa
issue before she even flew? Because typically, you wouldn't
even think of he just got on the plane that you go, right.
Yeah. Yeah, Something's fishy about the story. No,
no, I know how it would happen. So here's here's what happened.
She booked a plane ticket. Right? The airlines are obliged.
Now, I'm sure you know this to send all passenger data to the
United States prior to the flight.
Right. This is the Yeah, in fact, I've written about this on
the blog. And they've actually added some new providers were
essentially very similar to the way it was in the Soviet Union.
Where there's you can't get out of the country without you know,
permission. It's almost you know, it's an exit kind of
situation. You know, we have exit restrictions now. Wow. In
fact, there's two articles on the blog that ran this on
Saturday or Sunday. Let me read you the this the headline,
dude, we are so living in a science fiction movie. Well,
I mean, it's just the Soviet Union. It was the same way
people get to just get used to it. Starting today, you may not
travel around the country, or even go around the country as an
anonymous American any more. Americans would prefer to fly
without showing ID will be turned away by airport security
beginning June 21. Blah, blah, blah. New Policy blah, blah,
blah. And then we get the Martha thing, which is a exit control.
Yeah. You know what?
I'm sorry. Do you have an article very? Well, no,
I'm just saying Martha Stewart's thing was I claim as this
version of exit control, which is what you had in the Soviet
Union. That's why people couldn't get out of the country,
and also instal the fascist countries have had exit
controls, which I suspect to eventually have it with the EU,
where you can't leave the EU, your way you can go to you can
go through the EU, but you won't be able to leave it. And
without, you know, having to write papers.
You'll love this one, John. So this is from the Surrey times,
okay, so Surrey is the what do you call it is the part of
England where where we live, and mobile device that can be used
to check the identity of suspects stopped by the police
is set to be tested in Surrey police officers across the
country, we'll be using handheld fingerprinting units as part of
a national pilot scheme known as lantern. So what this thing is,
is you can get you'll get stopped on the street, or a
traffic stop or whatever. It's an electronic fingerprint
reader. And of course, the article misses the whole point,
they say, Well, you know, so now all of a sudden, your
fingerprint will be taken, and then you'll be scanned. And then
if you're wanted for anything, then they nab you. But of
course, the point is, and they even say it here, hold on, I
should read this. The mobile fingerprinting units work by
electronically scanning offended fingerprint, which is sent using
encrypted wireless transmissions to a database from their
fingerprints can be cross matched against the seven half
million prints held on file. So the thing that they neglect to
point out here is of course that your fingerprint has just been
scanned and it's on file.
Yeah, right. So get make sure you can get everybody's
fingerprints on the in the system.
But how did that but that's like science fiction, dude. There's
like, I'm surprised
I'm not taking the DNA from people as they walk by, you
know, they can just stick a thing in your mouth.
That's happened to place two babies damage taken the baby's
DNA. We already talked about this weeks ago. Yeah, newborn
baby's DNA. First thing has done is it's taken putting in and
database has been happening for decades.
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this is just part of the whole, I
don't know, what the what is, what the point is, to be honest
about it. I mean, control issues, obviously are part of
it. I mean, it's like the exit controls. I mean, you just don't
want people rolling around. But I don't see what it's how it's
beneficial to the economy or anything. It doesn't does some
other thing going on here.
Well, isn't it well, okay, so the conspiracy theorists, they
may says, Well, of course, it's to keep you afraid and keep you
diligent?
Well, maybe it should easily keep you voting for the right
party. You know, I've always believed that half of these
things, these these, all the surveillance stuff is
essentially, to me, what it always boils down to is not for
anything other than control. So you have, you know, you can see
who your political enemies are, it'd be very easy to do if you
can, if you can, now they have this new thing that just passed,
which is that they the US government was requiring all the
credit card companies to turn over all the data, another
result of the purchases you make Chris's will drive people back
into cash, which is probably better anyway. Anyway, they say
take this, we blog, this one, too. I just I think I'm getting
pretty depressed here.
Sound like my wife, she's like, Would you please stop with I
don't want to hear about it anymore. Stop, stop, stop. Like,
I don't want to be afraid of the future. And you
know, the funny thing is, is I remember I was at a direct
marketing conference once and they need the head at the time
of Federal Express. made the comment he says, you know, we
have all this data, we can pretty much put a dossier
together on anybody and then tell you who they're sleeping
with, you know, if they have an affair going on. And then you
know, the because the data is just such that you can you can
do with data mining technology, you can figure out what people
are up to Federal Express who said this? Yeah, the guy Federal
Express said,
but we don't do know right now. God, I'd hate to do that. But
he says it's really he said, it'd be very easy to do if you
wanted to, I mean, they do certain kinds of profiling. I've
mentioned this before, I think on this show, which is they
profile you're expending. And it's always amazing to me,
because when I tried like all of a sudden I'll show up in Korea,
and you know, in the computer sees Well, this is interesting,
and they started to track me. And so when I was in Korea, this
last time I did two purchases in a row that one of them was a
little sketchy. So they froze it, and then they will open the
account up, you know, shortly thereafter, but they're always
worried. You know, they look for certain patterns that they think
are suspicious and I've challenged people to do this.
And people have written me back saying they they've done it and
it does work and it's the Following process, you take your
American Express card. And then you go and buy two tanks of gas
in a row with two separate two separate, you know, purchases by
two separate purchases right in a row one than another. And then
you go to a locker or a footlocker or someplace and buy
a pair of Nikes and an iPod, your car, or that would probably
do it too. It doesn't take much, but then your cart is deaf is
frozen right there. And then the guy from Federal Express
actually is the one who told this group about this particular
process. And he says it's, you know, what it is, is that as
soon as somebody steals a card, like especially a kid, the first
thing they do is they fill up their tank, and then they fill
up their friend's French tank. Yeah, of course. And then they
go bites tennis shoes, he says is a standard pattern. Yeah. So
people have actually done this. And oh, well, I mean,
look, look at your, I'm sure you have a Costco card or something
like that, you know, they're totally giving you the biggest
discounts on buying stuff that you know that you want that and
they're totally locking you in, those guys have more data on you
than Federal Express.
Well, Costco, you have to use a credit card generally mean you
you because you're
talking about the incentive cards, you know, the membership
cards, stuff that you get special discounts if you
card there, I think you've but here's the point. If the US
government now is requiring all these credit card companies to
give them all their data, well, you've got a powerful, very
profiling anybody you can tell what party they're voting for.
You can tell what stock they're buying. You can you really see a
lot of what they're up to, and then you can use it for for, you
know, crowd control.
So surely our credit card companies are denying this
request. Oh,
no, they're in and, you know, they're all over it, and it's no
problem.
They're gonna hand it over. Really? Yeah. Well, you
know, the government wants it you do it. The just like the
latest thing they just got house the Democrats are robbed
spineless Democrats have passed the bill that says that FISA,
the bill that says that the telephone companies can give up
all his data that they were legally required not to give up
to various privacy laws that were passed, specifically aimed
at the telephone companies. And so they've been given a free
ride. That No, they won't be prosecuted from, you know,
I don't understand how that happened. And I see some severe
disappointment amongst Obama supporters, because what I
understand was he in effect, endorsed it and say, yeah,
yeah, he signed off on it's fine with him. So you know,
how about Ron Paul tells me he signed against that.
Well, of course, he did. And we don't even have to ask Dewey for
how outrageous is that? This was a huge debate. This was we've
got them yeah, we've got him by the balls. And what happened?
How did that how did that flip?
Yeah, the probably because of people having these dossiers I
mean, this is the reason that the government is tries to get
as much information they probably have, you know, the
goods on everybody you know, if you want you to get this all
this data, especially credit card data, you can you know,
intimidate anyone
so any this is this, is this Visa, MasterCard, American
Express discover, I mean, all these guys are turning over our
credit card data to the government. That's a fact I
don't they I don't know that they've started yet. But the the
there was this was it has been passed. Oh, let me see if it's a
law. Yeah, well, let me find it as on the blog. I don't know if
I blogged it to be honest by might have. That's an outrage.
The trouble is the blog is getting to be kind of nutty. But
the
world is going nutty. John, that's what's happening.
Yeah, there's the domestic spying one.
What does that happening? And then the here's the danger, you
know, so I'm one of these schmucks who smokes a couple
joints, I go to YouTube and Google Talk about it. And I
started watching these videos about how, you know, it's the
evil banking families who are taking control of us, and you
know, we're all going to be, you know, essentially, we're living
we're already living in the matrix, you know, we're enslaved
to, to our, to our homes and cars and jobs. And is it really
true or is that just all perception?
Well, I mean, I think it's going it's it's a trend, I don't think
it's true at all. So I'm not doing Yeah, but you're sweating,
you know, but that God now what next?
Yeah, but imagine you were going through this, half a billion
people in Europe, you know, imagine you're going through
those feelings, and then all of a sudden, here's all this
language that shows up and all these documents and by truck
now. That doesn't sound right.
Well, that's why they got to take the public out of the
picture.
How do you do that? How do you do that? They're doing it the EU
is showing how to do it. They're leading the way I mean, except
for this, this this little thing that happened in Ireland. The EU
is showing us how to do it. You know, you just Wouldn't a bunch
of have not elected like you said here it is. It's Iran on
June 19. Senate housing bill Reiter requires tracking Oh,
yeah, this was slipped in to another bill, but into a
Christopher Dodd bill. Senate housing bill requires eBay,
Amazon, Google and all credit card companies to report
transactions to the government. Oh my god. This is an unreported
rendus under unreported under reported news, nobody's really
talking about this hidden deep in Senator Christopher Dodd 630
page. Senate housing legislation is a sweeping provision that
affects the privacy and operation of nearly all
America's small businesses. The provision, which was added by
the bill's managers without debate, of course, would require
the nation's payment systems to track aggregate and report
information on nearly every every electronic transaction to
the federal government. By the way, they're all electronic
transactions now.
Like this is fantastic. Yeah.
Says according to Dick Armey says, quote, this is a provision
with astonishing reach and it was slipped into the bill just
this week, not only does it affect nearly every credit card
transaction in America, such as Visa, MasterCard, discover and
American Express. But the bill specifically targets payment
systems like eBay is PayPal, Amazon and Google Checkout that
are used by many small and businesses. The privacy
implications are breathtaking. So why don't you Well, of
course, nobody's writing about this
now was this. This was a part of what Bill, specifically
the 630 page Senate housing legislation, Christopher DODDS
big bill. Oh, man.
So that's that's even separate from from FISA. Yeah,
yeah, this is another thing. But this again, was not, you know,
the general media did it wasn't debated on the floor. No, this
is a you can find this@freedomworks.org I mean,
and there's a link to the bill, by the way, itself, at Freedom
works.org. And I got this by the way off of a Twitter. One of my
my Twitter sent me this link, and I'm just reading it the same
way you did was shocked. And at first I said it begs is this
bullshit.
As one of the typical John C. Dvorak responds through email,
but this was on Twitter, you say bullshit on Twitter.
I said BS, okay. Good, man. But anyway, Sunday, June 19.
I'm looking, I'm looking at it right now. This is cool.
Freedom. works.org. I haven't seen this site before. It's a
good site. Wow. So it has this been passed? No. I'm sure it'll
be passed. Wrong. And there may be time to stop. It
seems unlikely. If they can't stop that other thing that Obama
signed off on how they're going to stop this,
where's the outrage over that? I mean, that just makes it just
doesn't make any sense. I don't understand. And this is, this is
the thing that freaks me out is whenever there's language like,
well, you know, of course, you know, under certain
circumstances for a national security against terrorism with
like, I just don't want to be safe. No, I'll just live
dangerously. I'll take my chances.
You gotta be careful. You know, you're you're already asking for
trouble.
What do you mean? Well,
I mean, for one who lives in Cornwall can't get into the
United States anymore. Because he was he was a musician who was
arrested for smoking pot in the 80s or the 70s. And he can't get
into the country. Now.
John, let me tell you something. People like me, that, you know,
they snuff them out in a huge public way. They don't pester
them with little shit like that. You know, because they know that
it'll only fuel more. They'll become a martyr. You know, they
don't want that. I finally get my 52 virgins. No, man. I don't
want that. But you know
what? I? You haven't been arrested for anything anyway.
No, I
haven't. But let me say John,
I really just Wednesday, Wednesday, they're gonna let
stop people from coming into the country who have parking
tickets.
It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen. Or they
make you pay the parking tickets before you can stand dude, dude,
that happens in Holland already. That's how that's that happened
to me. 20 years ago, you show up at the Dutch border. This is pre
all this Europe stuff. And they literally made me pay parking
fines on the spot before they let me in the country. Wow.
Yeah, that's a while ago.
We'll get back to that any minute. That's a good way to
click parking tickets. You know what they've done here in the
United States, which is really interesting. Is they've
privatised all these parking, you know, like in San Francisco.
It's not run by the city. It's run by a company and so they're
not they're not accountable to anybody.
Do this is happening all over all over the world. Now. Now in
in Amsterdam, you can park paying with your GSM phone. So
you park in a spot. You go to the little metre thing. It gives
you a code you SMS some code, and then it's paid for, of
course, handily, they know exactly where you were at what
moment and how long, you know. And of course, that data safe.
Just like you're just like your credit card data. And now this
is a these modern, I mean, yeah, I can see the convenience.
But they shouldn't be charging for parking anyway, I think the
parking thing is that, you know, parking was never meant to be a
profit centre. It was meant to keep traffic moving. So you'd
have like, in France, you had the blue disc and all these
things where you just, you know, you'd they say, you'd make an
agreement, you know, you'd be out of there in an hour or so in
the resource. Yeah, but now it's like in San Francisco,
especially around the the media offices. It's it's so funny,
because the metres which by the way, they're all MTF photos of
this nobody's parking there, the park a mile away, because it's,
you can't park there, though. It's 25 cents for five min, five
minutes. The metres right out in front of the officer 25 cents
for five minutes and all around is 25 cents for firemen. By the
time you load up to have like 15, you've already blown the
five, first five minutes, and I don't even see any. And if
people actually use these parking spots, they these metre
boxes will be so full a quarter so quickly, that you know they
would be clogged and you wouldn't be able to use them at
all. I mean, the whole thing is a joke.
So do they process the fines? Is that how it works? They take
them they collect the five bucks by the way, and they collect
that these these commercial companies? Yeah, you're kidding
me. So it's not like it's not like a city thing. It's an
actual commercial company thing.
Yeah. And that's why the prices have been jacked up to the to
extreme. And the fines are extremely high, because you
can't really fight it. You could go through the court system,
because there's still you know, there is a way to protest, but
nobody can you know, that's not going to happen. You might as
well just forget it.
Hey, John. Oh,
it's like you're a smart guy.
Who I have in high regard. So obviously, we get the government
we deserve. So what do we need to do to change that?
Well, the first thing you can do is stop voting in guys like
Gavin Newsom, who's obviously behind this thing. I mean, these
mayors are these these these do good Democrats and these phoney
baloney Republicans are both parties are full of crap.
They're obviously in bed with each other, they wouldn't have
passed that thing where Obama's in on it. And you know, it's
just ridiculous. We got to find alternative people who aren't
crazy. And the problem is the if you look at who runs the
political spectrum, like in San Francisco, you have these nut
jobs, running against two or three people who have some
creds, and the guys with the creds are the ones who put put
these 25 cents for five minute parking metres. And I mean, you
can't win. I think it's hopeless, actually.
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, we've got kids, man, what they gotta
grow up in some kind of society.
There are little towns around the country that are okay. In
fact, little, you know, I mean, there are places where there's
no parking metres, you
know, you're promoting separatism.
Just get out of these places. Yeah, they want to exploit the
public, but that way, screw them. I don't do business there.
I mean, I don't see why anybody does business in San Francisco
with these. You mean just you can't even park to visit one of
these companies in that area where there's the 25 cents for
five minutes. I mean, you know, you if you had to do business
there, there's no way without spending like $20 for parking or
10 depending if there's a baseball game it goes to 40 You
can't do business there because you can't park here but that's
easy to public transportation is a joke and especially in San
Francisco I mean the whole thing is ridiculous so it's no wonder
nobody wants to do business in San Francisco.
People still do business you know that's where we're money is
made that's it's whatever you Metropolis you know, if you want
to make a living you gotta go
there, fight it. We have to get out of the cities that are there
that are onerous like this and do business elsewhere. You can
do plenty of good business outside of San Francisco. I
don't know.
You know, it's hard to get people. It's hard to get staff
you know, the location of the MVNO offices was certainly
determined by what type of people will type of personnel we
wanted to attract.
You could have moved to Alameda for that matter, because half
the people that work at Mieville live in Alameda or in the East
Bay
interesting yeah, I guess we could have
and Alameda is amenable. They got a bunch of this where you
know, my sequel guys are in Alameda. There's a whole bunch
of companies in Alameda. And there's no they don't have these
onerous parking metres and all the rest of it. Crap. I'm
surprised they don't have you know, they're Jakey willing to
charge us five bucks to get across that bridge is
unbelievable. You know, it's not a San Francisco is not a
business friendly city. People should reject using it as such.
I was looking at a little more meta level in San Francisco.
Obviously, when I'm asking that type of question.
You know, there's even restaurants in that area south
of market. In fact, the one place we like to go which is
free in Gaul, French plays Yeah, I mean you can't do you know
they have if you go there for lunch, the metre maids are
flying around. They're trying to get you to get Yeah. The gate.
Yeah, seriously,
it's patrolling lunch. Yeah, they're trying to get you damn
them out to get me. So that's it. That's only that's our
recourse. We got to vote Yeah,
there is no recourse recourse is rejection? Yeah.
Well, we're not doing a very good job with a lot of things
happening right now when it comes to rejection.
Now I think the public is has been cowed. There's just been so
beaten that they just don't care
what that said, I feel really bad about that.
When I mean, I just think is a fact. Yeah, that's why I think
it's been going on for a while, of course, it's
been going on for a while and television and the whole Britney
Spears Lindsay Lohan, you know, distraction culture is rampant.
And everyone loves that, because let everyone be occupied with
all that stuff. Now, meanwhile, you're paying 25 cents for five
minutes parking.
Right? In a metre that, you know, have these. I don't know
what the deal is with these metres? Well,
this does come back to what we talked about the very end of
last week show where you said that? No, if he didn't even say
No offence, you just offended me outright and just said, Look,
you don't matter. You know, you know, honestly, to you said you
didn't matter either, which was, you know, heartening to some
extent. But still, I got a lot of responses from people on
that. And they said, you know, it does matter because you got
you guys, you and I John, you know, we open people's eyes to
other stuff and, and they do become aware, but it just seems
like there's no action. You know, it's a lot of posting,
we're posting a lot, you know, but how about some real and by
the way, I'm the biggest perpetrator of that because I'm
not doing anything. And just sitting here complaining and
observing,
ya know, we that's the two of us. I mean, I think we serve a
useful purpose for the system, because the system needs to blow
off steam. So it keeps people that think at least something at
least people are complaining at least people are noticing and
which is part of a really idealistic version of a kind of
a fascist system as opposed to the old Soviet style where if
you if you're a protest, or if you're somebody says something
bad against me kills you, for example, you know, you end up in
jail, doesn't this is better, this
is better. People get the blow off steam. They don't change
jack shit, but at least they feel better about it because
they complain for a little while.
Yeah, but the joke of it because we still have more prisoners
than they have in Russia. But in Russia, they know better than to
say anything.
Yes. And 70% are black. Of the 10% of the population that's
incarcerated.
Hmm. Yeah, well, you just gets the Latinos are trying to catch
up the ones that are coming in from Mexico the race. So, but
the point is that,
so it's true then. And look, I'm just trying to get around this
office. True. So we're all we're truly fucked. That's it.
You need to do that system needs. Guys like us? Yeah.
But how can guys like us change something? Can we motivate
anyone? We have something?
No, we have. We can't even get somebody to
pay us a dime. Let alone save the world.
Yeah, right. We get no money from the no agenda show and we
can't get it.
You know, I want I want in the hopeless last night. They had a
raffle. And I run a one a three day, Disneyland Paris trip for a
family of four including Eurostar. Rail, transportation.
And I was really Yeah, and Patricia and I were like, No, we
have some other plans. Like, we can't really, you know, take a
whole bunch of vacations because, you know, it's like
stuff is busy, Nevio and etc. And I said, Well, why don't I
give it away and no agenda? And she said, Well, that won't work
for anyone less they live in the UK. I was actually thinking
about giving that away and trying to well, you
it's probably there's also different kinds of laws about
giving stuff away, you know, but just if you want to give it to
somebody said, you bring my kids over there, we can all go with,
you know, we can do it.
I'm gonna give it to you. But we're not because you don't make
a difference in the world. I want to give it to someone who
was really making a difference, not just the the hot co2 you're
emitting my friend.
Well, then maybe you should find you know, we should do create as
a gifting. We should find somebody that's worthy. And then
give it to them. Well, that's
a good idea. I bet you that would make a lot of money.
It would be like, I don't know about that. But it would be like
the Nobel Prize. Okay.
Sure. The Nobel Prize Nice. Oh, my God. There was a there was a
documentary here on Friday. Speaking of Nobel Prize about
Bill Gates. So I guess bill is really on his final film
farewell tour. At least that's the way it's been. You know, he
was over here he met with Gordon Brown. You know, everyone's
saying this is his big farewell his swan song. And now he's
going full time into the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Yeah, he's
working for Warren Buffett now. Yeah, exactly.
And ended the commentary from I believe John Battelle because
they interviewed two people. Battelle which i By the way, I
didn't find to be the the best two people to interview on the
on the subject of Bill Gates, the Tao and some other
journalists who have seen on the net with an AR can members name
it might pop up. And according to Patel, all that Bill Gates
wants is a Nobel Peace Prize. That's what it's all about.
He'll do anything to get the Nobel that's a
good I liked the theory of interest there, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah. Could happen. Yeah, it could happen. Why not? Well,
maybe gotta give it to somebody. They might as well give it to
him. He needs the money. Maybe it should? Well, yeah,
he's given he's given his fortune or what?
Are those those those are on the the interviews that he's done
with the BBC or on YouTube? And I've? And are there are no,
other than YouTube, they're on the BBC sites. They're not I
would have been, I would have put them on the blog. But the
BBC site is at least one of these channels, they won't let
you embed, which is stupid. But anyway, and I find it hard to
watch Bill now that he's reminiscing because he's he's
changing his story a lot, you know, and it's just like, No,
no,
he's building his legacy. And then he wants to go, I think you
know what I think it is, I think he really fears that he'll miss
the limelight of being bill which of course, he pretty much
ran away from from the limelight. But I think he I
think he's gonna miss it. There's something about it, that
he's, he's, he's struggling with internally.
I think you might be right, because he really does enjoy
being technology
and being a celebrity and being involved in it. And
right, in fact, I was on a flight once, you know, you
always suppose he flies coach. But the fact of the matter is,
nobody lets him fly coach. So he's always shoved into first
class. And, and I was on a flight with him once, not with
him, but on the same flight. And I was sitting right behind him
and chatted with him for a minute or two. But it was
interesting that he, people would keep coming up to him out
of the blue. Just out it just constantly and say, and he as he
was doing his email, which is apparently what he does all the
time. And he and they're just saying to him, that's pretty
much the same thing. Thank you so much for inventing the
computer. And thanks for everything you've done. And he's
all like, Listen, this is going to Gen videos. Oh, you're
welcome. You know,
that was it was he's been told I did that before breakfast,
sonny.
I think he's been told this so many times that he he thinks he
believes the future. Yeah.
I can see what that would happen. You know how I bet if
you went out on the street and ask people in America who
invented the automobile, but everyone say, either an American
or Henry Ford. Right? No one would say a German.
Well, they if they can remember Henry Ford, there may be some
people out there that say, you know, Jack Toyota, I mean, you
don't know what the American I mean, Toyota, Tommy Toyota, we
should start popularising that Tommy, Toyota, the inventor of
the automobile.
A bit sure we could make a wiki page out of it and would stick.
Tommy Toyota, we dispute the claim to the inventor of the
automobile or we think was Tommy Toyota.
Yeah, Tom, let me tell you what, he did it in 1880. Well, and
again in 1970 Hey, man,
you sent me an article you want to talk about you still want to
talk about that or not? I don't know. What was it? You sent me
your market wide, which I'd read already your MarketWatch article
about Microsoft and Yahoo?
Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't think it's the last topic. He I
wrote a good article for anyone out there wants to read it's
done in market watch. And if you
don't, if you say humbly, with all modesty, he wrote a good
article.
It was it was a good article. It was an open letter. Kind of, but
it wasn't really but it was a to the shareholders and complainers
about the Yahoo. Microsoft deal. It dawned on me that the weird
thing about this soulless moaning and groaning is that,
you know, they jumped over Jerry Yang, for what for not wanting
to sell his company, why will Google's gonna start a company
put their lives effort to it and just dump it?
Well, this is the whole culture, John, you know, I read that. I
read that and it's the whole culture of Silicon Valley. It's
the whole culture of all the blogosphere that surrounds it.
It's all about the only thing people get excited by these days
is who's buying who or who's investing in who there's almost
no love for the technology itself anymore. The minute
something cool comes out instead of like, wow, this is freakin
cool. You know, you get, well, you know, they could strategize
with this company, and they'll probably insert ads this way.
And then they can ramp it up and they'll scale and they'll be
sold off to Google.
Yeah, yeah. No. Silicon Valley thing. I mean, people in in in
Michigan don't think like this. Know, the way the media get all
over it. I mean, the whole thing was triggered to me by a friend
of mine who wrote something.
You know, I'll tell you why. John, let me answer the question
before you tell me about your friend that wrote something.
Okay. The reason why is because talking about Yahoo being sold
to Microsoft is a hell of a lot more exciting than talking about
boring old credit card data that's being given to the
government. Okay, that's the bottom line.
Well, there's that element. They don't even tell you about the
boring credit card data at all. That's the bills. Yeah.
Because they're all following the Yahoo Microsoft merger.
Well, it is becoming you know, not you mentioned it is
essentially a version of Britney Spears.
Thank you. Now it my point. Exactly. It's all porn for the
masses. Absolutely. That's what it is. And we crave it. We
frickin crave it. It's all we want.
The funny thing MarketWatch editor I said about you know,
because I've written about Yahoo, Microsoft numerous times.
And I said, you know, Can we do one more thing because I got
this open letter. I want to write in this as you can.
Apparently these readers can't get enough of it.
I was just gonna say a bet. If you wrote an article and the
article is Yahoo, poop, poop, poop Microsoft, and the article
had 18 words and he repeated them constantly and three of
them in three sentences. It was like poop. It would still get
huge numbers because people are just looking for that shit. They
just want to read poop about Microsoft and Yahoo. In fact,
why don't you to put Microsoft here try this Microsoft? Yes
Yahoo Britney Spears? I bet she is going to be the best read
article ever. You can do it John. I bet she just somehow you
can relate Britney Spears into Microsoft.
Posting a posting on the blog where the headline is Microsoft
Yahoo Britney Spears porn.
Nazi you're going too far. That's like your April 1. Your
April Fool's joke. You went a little too far on that too. It
might be right do it subtly, but somehow we know what screw it
work. And Amy Winehouse. That's more sophisticated.
Okay, working is passe already?
No, no, no, no, man. No, she's so hot work. And Amy Winehouse,
somehow into a Yahoo Microsoft story. I guarantee you most of
us ever. It'll be a task to try it out. It'll work.
I might do that. Actually, I can do that. I could do that as a
column. Because I could. It's essentially a rewrite of that
porn call. Um, I wrote years ago about how using porn in the
headlines always gets you a lot of readers. And essentially the
column was you know, had porn in the headlines. But it wasn't
about porn. It was about the effect of using it in the
headline. I can probably do the same thing here.
But that's too easy. Because porn, that it's just too easy.
I'm not going to use porn. I'm just saying what I could use an
Amy Winehouse, Microsoft, Yahoo. And probably get and it's
essentially the modern use of the word porn. It's been updated
now. Now we have no personalities in this idiotic
Yeah, non merger prediction from the beginning, by the way, it
never happened. You know,
what's, what's funny? A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on
my blog. I don't post that. And there's a lot of love. The shows
get posted automatically. But I don't necessarily post a lot on
the blog, but sometimes I do. And then instead of, I can't
remember exactly what it was, but let's just say it was
Microsoft Yahoo. And instead of putting Microsoft and Yahoo, I
did Microsoft and a plus sign. And then Yahoo. And I got so
many more search result hits from that just by putting a plus
sign instead of using the word and it was significantly
interesting. Hmm. So I think it should be Microsoft plus Yahoo
plus Brittany, maybe even do n equals after that just just to
fuck with people. In fact, that's gonna be the title.
That's exactly what it is. It is Microsoft plus Yahoo equals
Britney.
There you go. That's gonna be the title of this show, by the
way.
Okay, Microsoft plus Yahoo equals Britney. That's a good
title.
You watch. You watch through the roof. Donations will come
pouring in through
donations. We don't even have a donation thing set up we're too
lazy.
I'm not Yes, exactly. We're just like everyone else. We're
insignificant and lazy.
Or insignificant and Lacey complainers lazy. We complain
about being lazy. This terrible horrible.
Keeps us off the street.
That's the worst case example. I don't have to do as though this
kids will be like this.
Don't you have to do twit today? Is that coming up? Yeah, that
is Coming up, I'll be tucked out. So that's good news for
you. I love when you go. In fact I always bitch about by doing
twit you're always complaining bitterly. It's not you
know what, if anything is promoting Dude, what are you
talking about? I'm promoting it.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I put dry promote this and then in the Leo
now mentions the show which is, you know, plus took him a while.
You know, based on your conversation on Twitter last
last week. I saw a lot of postings of people saying, Man,
do they don't even pay Dvorak? Anything? Yeah, we don't pay you
a lot. But we do pay you something. I mean, come on.
No, no, I wasn't talking about getting paid from me that
people? Are people living the no agenda show.
I know if that's how people interpreted it. They interpreted
it as in you don't get paid by at all for anything.
I don't I don't get paid by anybody. I'm actually living on
my mom's money. That's horrible thing to say. That's not the
point is is that no, that was a misinterpretation. I don't know.
People should listen, right? I don't even know that they
associate I didn't know anyone even associated this show with
me Do
you would be amazed to find out how poorly not just how poorly I
think people listen to this show in particular. But really, maybe
how poorly we we communicate what we're saying? Because
people really sometimes walk away with a very different
impression than I think that I think I have about what we what
we said on the show and like, wow, how do they pick that up?
How they get that angle? From what we were saying it
was in writing to? I mean, a lot of my columns, I've had this
happen, she'll say, How can you say bla bla bla bla bla bla bla.
And I'm thinking, I never said that. And I usually send it back
a note, because I do answer all my email. I say, Look, pal, show
me exactly where you need to quote from him. I say, Well,
where did I say this? Specifically? You tell me where
that is. And they can that's the last I hear from him. Because
it's these I don't know, people read poor. I mean, you think
that if we're talking about somebody, they would, it would
be clear because we are actually saying it and they're listening.
And their take is harder to misinterpret. But the stuff
that's written is even worse. But you know, I mean, if you
think you get people not understanding, you got to see
when you write something out, and then the kind of response
you get from characters. Dvorak said, bladder lab land, I never
said it was unbelievable. And it's
all more of the system's steam blowing process, that we're
proud to be a part of.
It it's weird to me that, you know, sometimes it's almost as
though people are looking for something they're looking for,
they're looking for. I don't know what a project. Maybe they
can't read. I think maybe the public's becoming illiterate.
Well, that's I think that's probably a fact. I bet you
there's data on that.
My might be telling you it's distress thing. I don't see how
anyone can misinterpret what we say on this show. We're pretty
straightforward about it. And you'd be
amazed you would be amazed. No one's ever emailed you something
that you said holy crap.
Not as much on this show. As I get from what I when I write
something,
yeah, well, I can see where that would. That would happen. Right
on right. I don't write that much. Because I know I'm not a
great writer. And I certainly get misinterpreted whenever I do
write something so
well, you must get a lot of interesting input from the daily
source code. Well, what's interesting show by the way, you
don't plug that much on here, which you should yeah, should I
guess? Dennis is one of the original podcasts his resume is
probably been on the air more than anything ever
since July or August 2004. To be more or less precise. So I just
did episode 771 which you know, there I think there are people
that are creeping out or creeping up to two or if not
have certainly surpassed that number. And you'll get there to
pretty quickly if you just look at the at the no agendas, of
course, you know, I do this by myself, I don't have a producer.
It does involve hours and hours of of pre production before I
just do one show. I mean, it's like two hours of of pride to
just sit down you know, I gotta listen all these voicemail
comments because I it's a really a show that I put together with
input from everybody else. So everyone else calls in.
I'm not I don't fully understand why you don't get an intern to
do to help you produce that show. Because I know it's the
show is is over produced. It sounds like you have a staff of
people doing it. But I know that you're doing it all yourself. It
seems to me that it might be good to train a couple of people
did they would love to work for you.
Yeah, I've thought about it you know, it's it. The problem is is
it's very organic. Yeah, and maybe I think that's part of the
success of it is that you know, I'm there's I'm deciding what
the what the agenda is. I mean, there's a million things a
million people that call in. I like the most challenging voices
are my favourite you know when someone contradicts me or or as
against me, that's my favourite part, but it's just, I just need
to hear it, you know, the show is who I am. So I have to listen
to all those things and, and be able to figure out where I want
to take it, you know, based upon what's what's incoming, I just
don't see how to do it I've tried, I've tried other people
helping me out, it just doesn't work doesn't feel right. And
then we come through kind of a process
to be a guy. It used to be in radio, they used to always, you
know, just have a DJ, and you have a guy working the controls.
And it used to be a guy. And I think they still have this type
of personality, but a person radio person, I was called a
combo man. And he would work the board, he would do all the
engineering, he would do all the talking, he'd run, play the
records, he do everything himself. And these guys are, you
know, usually in small markets, because he didn't have couldn't
afford to have two people working the same, you know?
Well, that's exactly the point, John, that that's, that's,
that's how I learned to do it to do everything yourself. And then
what happens is, the minute you get into a situation at a bigger
station, or there's more money, then you say, Hey, man, I want
to produce or that's all these guys do it. I want to produce
her. And then before you know it, you become complacent, you
get laid back, you start missing stuff, you know, because you got
more time on your hands. It's not a good process for me.
Yeah, okay, well, that's fine. You should still have an intern
anyway, at least doing getting your tea or something.
True. I definitely know I need an intern. I should, in fact,
thank you. That's what I'm gonna do, I have to get myself a
personal assistant. And the only thing that person has to do is
get my tea, and take care of my administrative duties of the
household. Because, boy, that's the thing that really hurts. You
know, all those little things that just have to get done. It
just takes away from all of the time for production. But
production, I gotta do it myself.
Yeah, you gotta do what you got to do. But you still need an
intern
training. Would you want? Would you want someone scanning the
stories for you for? For Tech? Five? Wouldn't you feel like,
you know, someone might miss out on something?
Yeah, well, I mean, the tech five news scan, I believe is
serves two purposes. One, it makes me keep up a little more
than I normally do with the news. And so it's probably
better than ice, I'd have to scan them all anyway, because I
figured out how I'm going to do that. And Mazal read all these
look at all these news stories and see which ones that catch my
eye. And I also look for a different dimension, and someone
else might look at that makes it my, you know, stuff I'm
interested in, it's about me. And so it'd be, it would be hard
to do, I would do a show where somebody else was doing all the
everything. And I could just come and be a talking head. It
doesn't bother me to do that. But generally speaking for that
particular show, it's mostly me scanning the news and then
finding the five or six, kind of offbeat or interesting news
items or trend items, or I'm always looking, I have a
different perspective. You know, I'm always looking for redundant
stories and why is this thing being covered? It's like the TIM
RUSSERT thing. Tim Russert died last Friday, not this last
Friday, but the Friday before and he was being eulogised. For
over a week, day after day, night after night. It was
unbelievable. I mean, Sydney Pollack, I believe died during
the same period of need exam, get a mention anywhere, and he's
probably as culturally important as anyone. Absolutely. And or
probably more so than Tim Russert, to be honest about it.
But you're nothing you're not gonna have. So they show this
went on and on and on. And it's like, you know, this kind of
show. I mean, those are the kinds of things I'd like to
identify these kinds of strange things that happen. And then
comment on them or at least mentioned, I'm going to see
what, because I find it peculiar. By the way, if anybody
wants to, you know, I still find that Russert preoccupations,
something unusual, but it was actually a rush limbaugh of all
people. And then everyone knows I listened to right wing talk.
Rush Limbaugh actually explained it. In some symbolic way, it was
an unfortunate I can't tell you what he said exactly. But it was
it was like he believed because he was baffled by it to have
this never ending coverage. And have one TV personality. I mean,
TV personalities die all the time. But he explained it as
some sort of by the end of an era and that's why it was
important to keep covering it in the end of an era of of a type
of broadcast and we're gonna see again and he had went on and on
about it. I thought it was absolutely right on the money.
It wasn't Tim Russert that there was there were lamenting, it was
the end of this era where you have a kind of a If this type of
commentary or this type of interview style, it's over. Wow,
it's all gone. highly partisan.
That's interesting.
Yeah, he felt as he said, he felt that it was like it is very
interesting analysis. I was very stunned by he said that Ruster
even though he was a liberal, and he was reworked for you
know, that senator in New York, what's his name, that puffy face
guy can't remember his name offhand. But anyway, he's always
he's always Democrat,
the Republican or the Democrat,
the Democrat that puffy face, guys, but years ago, he was so
we had kind of list. He was peculiar. And he was extremely
liberal. But But Russert was a liberal as a speech writer and
always a liberal. But when he did this, he you know, it was
almost as though we had this liberal guy who could present
himself very objectively, in the middle as a middle of the road
or, and he did a really good job. And that is over. There's
no more guys like that. We now have, it's either gonna be you
know, right wing guy or a left wing guy was just obviously left
wing and, and so that was really what he believed was why he was,
you know, so sad
that I read somewhere that, that they want to bring back the
equal airtime, regulations that
comes and goes, yeah, that Fair, fair. The fair,
fair to call them. And I know what you're talking about.
The fairness or fairness doctrine? Yeah. Yeah. They've
been bitching about the fairness doctrine. If this happened, the
people that were running late on the show now, but I have to
explain this people. There was not be until 1987, there was a
thing called the fairness doctrine and broadcasts in the
United States. And that means if you came out, I think Obama is
the greatest guy in the world, the fairness doctrine and
required that somebody else come from the other party and say,
Well, I think that, you know, McCain is the greatest guy in
the world, and then they would bounce. Okay, that's fair. So
everything was everything was broadcast over the airwaves,
since they're licenced by the government had to be balanced
and fair. And so they pulled the plug on that during the Reagan
administration and just said, Screw it. What's the point of
this is stupid. And so the Fairness Doctrine was taken off
the books and 1987 And that's when rush limbaugh was who,
again, not to extol him as a genius, but as a marketing guy,
he must be because he paid John jumped right on it. He was the
first one. He's the one who actually established you know,
biassed political diatribe on the on the radio. And so he was
in early and then and meanwhile, and of course, the other guys
who have cropped up or all tend to be that are successful are
all right wingers. I mean, every one of them. There's not I mean,
the Air America tried to do something, but they could never
get any traction. And there's not really anybody who's not
either conservative or liberal, right wing or extremely right
wing, that do talk radio with much success.
And then of course talk and then of course, John, there's us
exam, well, we're not licenced, but anyway, so that so they, so
now they're thinking, Well, you know, the fit because I couldn't
compete literally, the Democrats can't come up with anybody
that's either funny. Or, you know, I mean, the the joke of
it, of course, is that they don't realise that they have
probably more leverage with Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert,
and they're on television. But they don't seem to realise that
if they pull the plug on the Fairness Doctrine, that takes
you know, John Stewart and Colbert are going to be screwed.
So let me ask you, this will be Saturday Night Live and every
every every, everybody will be free one screwed.
So let me ask you this. Rush Limbaugh and Jon Stewart. Are
they significant?
Well, Rush Limbaugh Yeah, I think they're extremely
significant. I think Limbaugh to almost an extreme, he has 15
million listeners a day. And he can actually, I mean, it's not
like, you know, he can change things necessarily, because he
sure couldn't get Clinton, you know, out of office when he ran
for reelection didn't have any effect at all. But with 15
million in viewers, you can kind of make people think a certain
way about things. That's a lie or listeners, that's a lot of
people.
So that's our goal, John
15 million
15 million it has. It'll never happen.
I don't think so. It'll never happen. We get a million it
would be like, Wow,
a million still wouldn't be significant.
No, I don't think it would be I wouldn't be significant in the
true sense of the term, but it would be interesting.
How frustrating it is.
I think we could sell some ads. Okay, I'm done with you now. I
gotta go eat seven. Damn, I bring up anything commercial.
You always hang up the phone, but
no, not at all. It's just like, we beat that one. It's a dead
horse. There. is no money in this
row, we should probably put up a donation button I think now will
help.
Yeah. You know what, here's what it is. Here's how it works. If
no one's going to help us out while we do this, then we've
just got to take it to radio. That's the threat.
Yeah, that would be Yeah, they wouldn't like that.
No, we did. Of course, you'd be seen as traitors and betrayals
betrayers of new media.
Yeah, and actually, it is new media is better.
Oh, it's totally better. Because look at this, this show would
not be on the air anywhere, ever.
Yeah. Especially not running 149
We got to stop for guys
that the rest of the show Oh, God, no, even though most of our
listeners say, yeah, you can make it real long. Because they
listen to it back and forth on their car. You know, they burn
it to a DVD. But this is like our CD have been two CDs, two
CDs.
I'm even going to compress this at a lower mp3 bitrate than
normal. It's just gonna be such a huge file. But let's stop.
Yeah, I think so.
Let's see what people think about this leg. How do you like
that length? Ah, take them minutes.
Yeah, well, we'll, we'll still do this again. I know what we'll
do it again next week.
Excellent. And we hope you'll join us from the curry manor in
the United Kingdom. I'm Adam curry.
And from still foggy, Northern California. I'm John C. Dvorak.
We'll talk again next week right here on no agenda.