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Jan. 1, 2016 - GabCast Bellgab.com
02:29:08
01 January, 2016

01 January, 2016

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This is the Gabcast, a podcast about Bellgab.com.
Call the show now at 623-242-CAST.
That's 623-242-2278.
Now, shut up, sit down, and listen to the damn show.
You've been listening to The Gabcast, a podcast about...
I can see this is going to go really well.
Wow.
Holy crap.
Hi, this is the Gabcast.
It's a podcast about Bellgab.com.
If you want to be on the show, the number to call is 623-242Cast.
It is 623-242-2278 if you're going to be on the show tonight.
And we got a bit of a late start here because, well, I was asleep.
And I, when I woke up, I literally woke up two minutes past when the show was supposed to start, and I thought I had another hour to go because I had my time zones confused.
So...
So, you know, that's just one of those things that happens.
And after what I endured last night being New Year's Eve, I think you can understand why this, that and the fact that I don't get paid for doing this.
All of those components coupled together can explain why this happened just now.
So if you want to be on the show tonight, the number to call is 623-242Cast, 623-242-2278.
We have Inglorious Bitch and Gravity Sucks from Bellgab here tonight.
Hey guys.
Howdy, y'all.
Pleasure to have you.
And that's what she said.
You know what?
I'm starting to.
You're not allowed to use that joke on this show.
I mean, that is just immediate banishment.
I'm sorry.
No, no, that's what she said jokes.
Am I in the chat room even?
Yes, they are, sir.
Okay.
At first, I don't think we were even on the air.
That's why I restarted the intro music because I was looking at the VU meters on the stream server and it was just flat.
So I was like, oh, crap, what in the hell now?
So I had to close that all out and restart it and then restart the intro music.
So I guess we're on the air.
I'm assuming we're on the air.
I think we are.
Yes, we are.
As I was getting ready for this show just a moment ago, I had to go to Bellgab and take a look to see the show notes that Gravity Sucks threw together.
And I saw, oh God, I had six private messages waiting to be viewed, two of which were from Falke and Michael Horn.
So, you know, those of you who are out there, someone somewhere is probably under the impression that I have a great life here and it's very stress-free and everything's just groovy.
Well, that's not the case at all.
So I guess the first thing we ought to talk about is just the what a lot of people would call the ongoing implosion happening at Bellgab right now.
I mean, I'm not sure.
Is it really an implosion?
That's what I was going to say.
I'm not sure to what extent I would agree it's an implosion necessarily, but there's definitely been a cultural change.
A lot of people get upset when you disagree with them.
And this is basically the internet.
Everybody's going to have an opinion.
I mean, the reason I jump in sometimes because I see a lot of people with opinions that I disagree with.
So I feel like I need to contribute.
But everybody else does as well because a lot of people disagree with even what I say.
And really, this is the conversation here is tame compared to some other places on the internet.
I think a lot of people are upset because certain posters aren't being banned and certain points of view aren't.
It's boring, Michael.
I mean, this would be the fantastic forum.
I mean, if that's people's, the slow lane is your lane, then cool, then go there.
But you want to keep a forum interesting.
Otherwise, there's no reason to come here if it's boring and everybody agrees with everybody else and everybody is super nice.
Well, the trouble that I have is you got people that have signed up that have signed up since Art quit.
They've never listened to the show.
They're coming on there just to troll.
It's 4chan people.
If you go on to 4chan, you'll see that people are logging on there using bell gabbers, people's names, and posting fake posts over there.
I read in passing that they were using my name over there too.
What are they saying?
Has anybody seen what they're saying?
I mean, I didn't spend any time over there.
I just looked around.
I've read, pardon me, I'm sorry, I'm yawning.
I mean, again, I just woke up.
But I did do a little reading over there.
I think it was shortly after Heather took over and started doing the show.
And yeah, it's pretty vicious.
But that's why I was sort of like, well, you know, I'm not so sure if I like this philosophy that says, if we think you're from, no, I'm burping.
Now, if we think you're from 4chan, we don't want you on Bellgab.
And I was thinking, well, you know, just last night I was a 4channer.
You know, I was on there reading what people were saying.
With the new people.
I mean, I may agree with them, I may disagree with them, but it's interesting to read what somebody else is going to say.
And like I said, for me anyway, it's interesting and it's fun to jump in and say, hey, I don't think you're right about this.
And everybody really has a different take on the whole Art Bell situation.
I feel he had options and that he didn't.
And because I point that out, that doesn't mean I'm not a fan.
It is a fan.
I'm a very disappointed fan because I really was hoping to get at least a year, a year and a half, two years out of art.
And we got five months, which is nothing compared to we waited two years and everybody, you know, a lot of people put in a lot of effort to bring him back to keep what is a Keith's Dark Matter Network going and even the Times Square ad.
That must have cost a lot of money.
And people were putting plastering whatever city they'd lived in, they were plastering Art Bell is returning.
And really, a lot of people were very invested.
And I feel that if he had done everything that he could have to stay on the air and it didn't work, then I would have understood.
But my understanding, and again, I don't live with art, so I don't know.
My understanding is he didn't even get security.
So if you don't get security, now as far as the police reports, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that there really is a stalker and Art really did file police reports.
But then you take that extra step.
You hire security, or he could have even whisked everybody away to the apartment he has in the Philippines until the whole thing got resolved.
I mean, that's my way of thinking.
And if he had done a few things, nothing worked, then it's okay to bow out.
But it just seemed to me that that was the first go-to.
And I think that's why a lot of people, oh, sorry.
What were you going to say?
Well, I do live with art.
And I woke up one morning.
I was like, Art, what are you doing?
Why aren't you doing anything about this?
Don't you want to be on the end?
And he's like, ah, piss off.
And so I can validate that, no, he didn't do anything.
I think that we could all understand if the circumstances that warranted his departure were there, but I just don't think they were.
And I was arguing with my wife about this the other night, and I was talking about how the problem a lot of people have with this is the fact that he didn't try and get some sort of a security apparatus set up.
And my wife is like, well, who wants to live that way?
And I'm like, well, when you have millions of dollars on the line and the livelihoods of people in the balance, I mean, here he is.
He's a 70-year-old man.
His wife and daughter are going to be around long after he's gone.
So if there are multiple millions of additional dollars on the table about to be made, which there were, we can say that because of the cumulus deal.
And he's never really safe because if he didn't address this, the cycle could return at any point.
I'd be afraid of even going out during the day.
I'd be afraid of somebody following me.
I'd be all paranoid and looking in my rear mirror, like, who's been following me?
Who took this same route to wherever he goes?
He does his food shopping or whatever.
I just feel like I know it's an inconvenience, but a lot of things in life are an inconvenience.
You just have to deal with it.
And it's different.
Art said that he lived like that once and he just didn't want to do it again.
That he had to have security guards in the past and that he didn't want to go through that.
He didn't want to put his family through it.
I think he's an old man.
I think like, I mean, I take him at his word that he said, hey, I hadn't slept for a couple of days.
I got to a point where I just said, you know, hey, I can't do this anymore.
I don't think there's anything more to it than that.
I don't think he took the time to say, you know, how bad am I going to be hurting Keith?
How bad am I going to be hurting Heather?
I think he regrets it now.
I really think he wishes he did something different.
He could still come back.
Everybody would, well, maybe I shouldn't speak for everybody, but I know I would welcome him back with open arms and a lot of his fans would.
It isn't that he's gone.
It's how he left.
I think that once he left and once he was gone for more than a day and lost all the radio affiliates, I think now that his incentive to come back isn't there.
But if they meant that much to him, he would have fought for them.
He initially said, though, that he didn't care about radio affiliates and the perception, the groundwork, the idea was put out there that, okay, well, if we're going to have affiliates, you know, this attitudinal thing was put out there that suggested that it was just sort of a secondary.
It was an afterthought.
Okay, if we get affiliates, fine.
If they want to carry the show, fine.
But they're going to stick to our rules.
You know, we're not going to bend how we're doing the show to suit them.
But then as the affiliates started coming on, I think that the affiliates actually became the primary focus.
Because how could it not?
That's where the money is.
Yeah, you know, for Keith, it had to be.
I mean, that was going to bring in the advertising dollars and everything else.
And what are the legal ramifications of him having pulled out like that?
Or are there any?
Because I can't imagine a big radio station like WABC is, you know, oh, okay, then it's not working out.
I mean, aren't there contracts signed?
I really don't know how that works.
MB, would you have some...
Did he sign with WABC?
I mean, was that it wasn't going to be a problem?
Was it a thing like they just flipped a switch and they were just going to run Art every night?
Had they run him at all recently?
Well, see, I don't know the world of radio, but my understanding was.
Well, then get out of here.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Let's get Bateman.
You know, seriously, if Bateman is around, if he can call in and explain it to us, because it would seem to me the way things work in New York and everybody being afraid of being sued over everything, even in social services, there's things that we have to do to avoid getting sued.
So I would think in the world of big business and radio, I mean, a contract is a contract.
And if there's millions on the line, or I don't know, it would seem to me like something was broken or maybe not.
Maybe there was like a 30-day bow out because I know that Keith was saying something about 30 days that he had to supply content for 30 days.
Well, here's the connection.
WABC is owned by Cumulus.
This is from Juan in the chat room.
So from Bateman's hints, he says they were making a deal with Cumulus.
Well, there's no hint that they were making a deal with Cumulus.
That was a done deal that they were pursuing and it was on the table and they were working on it.
And I knew that I'm on the inside.
I knew about that along enough.
But I did know about that along, but I had to keep my face shut.
So I couldn't say anything.
But yeah, they were working on that.
And let me tell you, there's another person whose day got totally screwed up as a result of that directly because of the implosion of any potential with affiliates.
There's an additional person whose day got really screwed up by this beyond just Heather and Keith that I'm not sure anyone is aware of, so I can't say.
But yeah, I mean, you said it.
He just didn't really think about how it was going to affect anybody else.
I mean, look, I don't care if you're 70 or 7.
If you have obligations, you have obligations.
And once he started doing this, it was an obligation in my view.
I'm kind of starting to see images of that dead horse beating Jeff in my head.
We were going to feel strongly because of who Art was.
If he was a mediocre radio show host, nobody would really care.
It was because we all have strong feelings.
And it was because we all want him on the air because I feel a lot of the anger is that he took something we wanted from us, which is his show, for no good reason, or at least no good reason in many of our heads, because it seems like there were workarounds that he didn't even try to explore.
It's like if I call in sick and I say, listen, highway A is closed by me or not sick.
If I call out and I say highway A is closed, there's a car on fire and the highway is like closed the rest of the day.
I can't go into work.
My boss isn't going to be like, oh yeah, sure.
She's going to say, well, what about highway B or C and what about public transportation?
There's always a plan B, a plan C, and a plan D.
It isn't as easy.
And then the next day I can't go into the office and say, oh, she wanted me to put my life in risk and go on a highway where there's a fire.
I mean, I can't say that.
I have to be responsible, like you're saying, whether you're 70 or 7.
You make responsibilities and you have to sort of honor those.
And I mean, there are times when you can.
Like, God forbid something had happened to him.
He was in the hospital.
Well, obviously, he can't do his show.
So that's an out.
But like I said, I just feel like there were so many other things that he could have done.
And he threw away all a lot of goodwill, thank you.
And also the work that Keith did.
I'm still supporting both shows, Richard, even though I haven't listened to it in ages.
And also Heather, because, well, another thing is, didn't she quit her job to go work for Art?
So, I mean, I'll give up 10 bucks a month to sort of keep things from imploding over there.
But I feel very disappointed about the whole thing and irritated.
I don't know about angry, angry, but irritated.
Like I said, it just seems like such a way so many people put in so much work.
You know, I have to tell you, I can't even feel angry.
What makes me even more sad is that I just feel indifferent at this point.
And that's largely, that's largely why I have sort of stayed back and just let everybody throw flames at each other on the forum.
It's fun.
It's fun reading.
I just really have this sense of indifference to the whole thing now.
I just don't care anymore.
I can't be bothered with it.
I really just can't.
I mean, after this two-year wait, he left SiriusXM.
And I agreed with his reasons for leaving.
Sirius is an abysmal company.
And I've been an Opian Anthony listener since 2004 from the time they came back to SiriusXM.
And they were for years complaining about the inefficiency, inefficiency, the unreliability of the streaming infrastructure that SiriusXM provides to its customers.
For years, it was just this incessant complaining.
Which begs the question, why did Art sign with them?
problems didn't start with art show or around the time that art began my understanding is that those problems have been gone well yeah you just said from 2004 those problems have been going on for years.
So if a cursory search could have, if Art knew going in that, and maybe he didn't know going in that online listeners were going to be so important to the whole operation at SiriusXM.
But a cursory Google search would easily have revealed that their streaming mechanism is abysmal.
And just a little asking around would have helped somebody ascertain that.
But maybe he just didn't realize how important the online streaming aspect of that show is going to be.
But that's neither here nor there, I guess.
But I did support his reason for leaving SiriusXM.
I didn't think he had any ulterior motives.
He just wanted people who want to be able to hear the show to be able to hear the show.
And when people who are paying for streaming access can't get the damn thing to work right, and you remember when it started up, it would stop after 90 minutes.
I'm sorry.
If I'm paying a company, can you believe this?
If I'm paying a company, what, $8 a month just to listen to streaming audio, just audio.
I mean, there's not a lot of bandwidth is cheap these days.
This isn't 1998.
And so if I'm paying a company $8 a month, $12 a month, whatever it costs to have online streaming with SiriusXM, if you have that only, I think you're going to pay $8 or $9 a month.
If I'm paying that just to have audio streamed to me from somebody that I'm in many cases going to be listening to passively, I should be able to press play and walk away and it should never stop playing for an entire month.
I don't care if I just press play and it plays throughout my house for an entire month, non-stop, even while I'm out walking the dog or I'm taking a shower.
It's not their business.
I paid, so you don't interrupt my stream and stop it after 90 minutes.
I mean, that should have been big, fat, huge red flag number one.
I just don't think that's that's what happens when you sign a deal without a lawyer who can really break down the caveats for you before you sign up.
I never understood why he didn't get a lawyer or two or three going in.
Because again, that's a really big company.
And like WABC, I mean, these people mean business because there's millions of dollars involved.
And there are people who are very cutthroat in the world of business.
I don't know.
I was very sad when, yeah, when he went off.
And another part of the reason why I'm sad is because I can't stand George Nori and I kind of love that they were getting all these terrestrial affiliates.
And I was like, yeah, he's sticking it to Nori's Tupremato or I Hate Radio, whatever company he's with now.
So vicariously, I was getting my cheap thrills that way as well.
Then it all went down the tube.
What we all dreamt of since the inception of Bellgab in April of 2008 was about to happen.
Art was about to sign again probably a multi-year deal with a major talk radio syndicator and go head-to-head against George Norrie nationally.
I mean, it was everything.
That's a wet dream come true.
It was everything we hoped for.
It was the culmination of everything we had hoped for for all of these years.
Gone.
Just like that.
Gone.
That's it.
And that's why I can't even feel angry.
And it's taken some time for my thoughts, for me to collect my thoughts on all of this.
It's taken about two weeks, a good full two weeks for me to really collect my thoughts on this and assess this situation for myself and decide what I think about it.
And that's how I feel.
You know what?
It's just indifference at this point.
I'm going on with my life.
I'm not, you know, I have a business.
I'm in school.
I have a family.
I need diapers to buy.
Well, and that's another thing.
I mean, oh, God, I'm so sorry Belgab makes money.
Oh, God, I'm so sorry that people are saying mean things about art, and that just indirectly contributes to the website making money.
Oh, boy, my apologies.
That's this design to make you money.
So, am I supposed to?
I guess what I'm supposed to do is I'm supposed to watch the temperature of the forum, gauge the temperature of the forum, and then make a determination as to whether I should shut the ads off or not, because it's not ethical to make money in those moments.
I didn't create this situation.
I didn't create this situation.
I'm just here minding my own business and woke up one day to see a message saying that art wasn't going to be on anymore.
So, you know what?
The situation was created by external forces.
I am irrelevant to the situation.
And, yeah, I'm going to make some money.
Sorry.
I'd like to know what the people complaining about that.
I'd like to know what they do for a living.
I'd like to know how they make their money.
I'm sorry that I was smart enough to put into place a system that allows me to get paid on a monthly basis by doing just about nothing.
But I can tell you that there were many, many years before that that not a dollar was made.
In fact, on the contrary, lots of dollars were spent, lots of time invested, none of which I was compensated for.
So now it's making money.
Sorry.
Sorry.
What do you want me to do?
I mean, okay, so I'll just turn all the ads off and I will just go ahead and start paying the server bill out of my own pocket every month because that's what's ethical, right?
Well, it is.
Do you think that people really are angry, or it's just one or two people saying that?
I don't know.
I've seen a couple people going on about it, just incessantly prattling on about it.
I think that's their new obsession.
Yeah, I think you've got two people that are obsessed out there.
Well, maybe three if you count the rabbit art fans, but you got one group of people that think that art's not telling the whole truth, and they're going to post until they get the truth, damn it, and until they get the truth that they're happy with.
And I don't think, I mean, they can write up what they want art to sign and see if they'll sign it, but I think he's told the truth as he sees it.
I mean, if we want to talk about ethics, let's talk about having people quit their jobs and then pulling the rug out from under their feet.
I mean, how ethical is that?
If we're going to have a big, fat conversation about ethics, I've got a few other topics I could bring up in that regard as well.
I agree there.
I hope that art goes ahead.
And if they do fold, I hope that he pays Heather a sizable.
She deserves it.
She deserves several thousand dollars.
Oh, I'm talking tens of thousands.
Well, I don't know about that because I don't know what kind of money the operation was making, but she should.
I'd say it'd be fair to hand her a check for $20,000.
Well, that's tens of thousands.
Okay.
Point taken.
You know what?
I'm now going to disconnect you on Skype.
Good day to you, sir.
Okay.
I know you had trouble with eating on the side.
Well, you know, that's it.
So you can understand the problem here.
I couldn't even do the time zone conversion tonight to get on this show and get started with things.
I started talking about the people with.
I started talking about the people with obsessions.
I think you got one other group out there that their whole view on life is that they sit there and they think they're either in a role-playing game or in a person versus person game and a PvP situation.
And that's how they view every interaction they have with life.
What's PvP?
Person versus person.
Okay, I thought that was like a porn term of some sort.
Okay, carry it.
And so I think that they, I don't think this is the only chat room they troll.
I think they go in there and it's like they're racking up points.
And, you know, you don't have cheat codes.
If you had cheat codes, man, they'd be here 24-7.
I think they come in there, and their kicks is to go ahead and get as many people riled up as they can and see how many posts they can post.
And, you know, that's how they get the rocks off.
I don't get it.
I mean, I just put them on Ignore.
I'm so glad that, you know, I was one of the people that helped talk you out of turn that thing off because now I've got people on Ignore.
I never used to.
I used to have two people on Ignore because they had animated GIFs.
You know the truth?
If I had turned that off when these events happened and everything that they precipitated occurred, I would have re-enabled the Ignore feature.
So don't worry.
I'm not that.
I do adapt and adjust in certain circumstances.
So while I'm not in there micromanaging what people can say, I would have at least gone back and seen what was occurring and re-enabled.
I go into threads that I used to enjoy just going in and reading, even people I didn't agree with.
And now 80, 90% of my screen is, you know, you're ignoring this user.
Ponyboy Sunset in the chat room says that, where is it?
I think she's talking about her refund because she canceled her Midnight in the Desert time traveler subscription.
And she says that she said that Keith was awful.
Ponyboy, if you'd like to call in and talk about that, that would be lovely.
And by the way, I haven't specifically said Sredny Vashtar was supposed to be on the show tonight.
He's missing an action.
He just didn't answer his Skype, that limey bag of dirt.
So I don't know where it's at two in the morning here.
Yeah.
To be fair to Sredney.
I'm sorry, I don't accept that.
What?
To be fair to Sredney, MV didn't answer his either.
No, that's right.
Did he try to call me?
No, no, no.
Gravity was.
We were panicking.
You were panicking?
Good God, really?
For this?
Didn't MV call you yet?
I was like, no, did he call you?
That's too bad.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I was just laying in bed with my little daughter just holding her clothes.
I look at the phone.
It's 8.02 p.m.
I'm like, all right, got another hour to go.
I meant to ask, did I screw things up by asking you if it was 8.30 if it was 8.30 Eastern Time because Gravity said maybe I threw you off with that?
No.
I'm just not with it.
I just, you know, I don't know.
I don't know if anybody listened to the quote-unquote drunken karaoke thing last night, but I was hitting it really hard and heavy.
Yes, you were.
Yes, you were.
Yeah, I hope I didn't say anything incriminating.
Oh, dear lord.
I hope I didn't reveal any of my secrets.
There are several people that asked me on Bellgab if there's a copy that can be downloaded.
I did record it.
But there was no, we were so drunk that we never even got around to the karaoke.
But another problem was that, because this, that thing, that drunken karaoke thing, my buddy, Tom, has an FM radio station in his basement.
He's had it there since 1994.
I've known him since 97.
And so on the Saturday following every major holiday, he has everybody over and everyone just sits around partying and talking on the radio.
But it's also streamed on the internet, of course, as you know.
And so that's not here at my place.
That's at an entirely different place altogether.
And all I do is just join my stream with his and then I drive over there whenever we do that.
And all night long, I had been conversing with people and yelling across the room really loudly because the music's on and everybody's talking.
And I had been doing that for like an hour and a half.
And after an hour and a half of yelling and screaming across the room at people with cigarette smoke in the air, my throat was so sore, I was kind of glad we weren't going to do any karaoke at that point.
I don't know that I could have taken it.
And I'm still, even now, I can feel it.
It's just, I think there are about two pounds of cigarette residue lodged in the corner of my throat.
I'm just sort of, I'm doing neck exercises trying to work it loose.
You know, really, there are only two people in the whole dark matter thing that I feel sorry for.
And those are Heather, because of the way the rug got pulled out from under her feet, and the person that was handling the affiliate relations, which, again, I don't believe that person has publicly mentioned the fact that they were doing that.
So I don't want to say who they were.
Other than that, you know, Art's situation, his involvement doesn't really warrant any further commentary.
And Keith, well, yeah, Keith.
You know, whatever.
So, I mean, that's pretty much where my sympathies end, honestly.
I feel like, you know, I haven't really said that.
I don't even know if I should, but you remember that gab cast where Keith called in and everybody sang Kumbaya.
I wasn't around for that.
You weren't?
You're that much of a noob?
Yeah.
Well, what happened was Belgab got hacked so that it was automatically redirecting to coasttacoastam.com.
And it was like that for a solid 24 hours.
And Belgab didn't actually get hacked.
It was the domain name registrar that got DNS workers.
Yep.
And so Keith accidentally tweeted some snide comment about how, well, you know, too bad MV doesn't have the balls to contact me and get some help or something like that.
But he didn't mean to tweet it.
He DM'd it.
He thought he was DMing it to somebody.
And then Art kind of jumped Keith for that and said, you know, it's about time you stop being a dick with people when you're communicating with them on social media because Keith Rowland is a dick to people on Facebook.
He's a dick to people, or at least he has been on Twitter, even people that are on his own network making nasty comments about the quality of their shows or whatever.
I mean, if you're going to do that, just take people off.
You know, you can't bring people onto your little network and then go behind their backs making nasty comments about how they do their show.
I mean, if it warrants nasty comments, they shouldn't be on your network.
Or if you're going to make nasty comments, do it directly to them, not publicly for other people to see.
It's not for public consumption.
And so Art went and he chided Keith for making nasty public comments about people.
And Keith quit.
That was the last major speed bump in the road as we were.
We had gotten the bumper music thing had been worked out.
That was a major roadblock where it looked like, okay, this thing may not happen because Art can't get his bumper music together.
The costs are probably going to be too much.
And that was resolved.
And then this thing happened where Keith tweeted that about me and Art jumped Keith and then Keith quit.
And so then we had that Gabcast episode where Keith called in and everybody sang Kumbaya.
And because everybody knew that I don't like Keith, because I didn't like the way he treated us when the spec sheet was on.
The spec sheet was the first show to be carried on the Dark Matter Radio Network, the tech show that I did with Curtis.
There wasn't a single other show.
It was carried live.
And I think we only did two shows.
And on the second episode, I said, I made some little offhand comment about how much I hate Verizon.
And I said, if I were a terrorist, I would drive to where Verizon is and I would suicide bomb them.
And because of that, Art flipped out.
He separated.
That's why you don't listen to art.
To this day, the reason you don't listen to art or Midnight in the Desert by going to artbell.com is because of me and my little terrorist comment.
Because Art needed to separate himself from the horrible, slanderous thing.
That comment was even referred to as slanderous or libelous.
I mean, can you see the flippant nature with which that word is thrown around?
This is libelous.
That's libelous.
Libel, libel, I mean, it gets to a point where you can't even pronounce the word you say it so much.
Yeah, obviously you were joking, number one.
And number two, for something to be libeled or slandered, doesn't it have to be a lie?
Well, because if I say something, that's the truth.
It's not like I went on and I said the CEO of Verizon is a child molester.
I didn't say that.
That's not, that would be libel.
All I said was, if I were a terrorist, I would drive to wherever Verizon is and suicide bomb them.
That's how much I hate them as a company.
So that's why that whole thing happened.
I thought that it was Keith that decided to make that call, but it turned out later on that it was actually Art himself that made that call, which was supremely depressing and disappointing to learn, really.
Because in my way of thinking, here's a guy that for years has had people on his radio show telling everybody that the government wants to kill them and any number of other crazy things.
But that comment was over the line.
I mean, the Heaven's Gate cult committed suicide because of what they heard on Art Bell's show.
So, but my terrorist comment went over the line.
But as soon as that decision was made to do that, Keith went and sent out an email to all the broadcasters who at that point were now on Dark Matter Radio Network.
There were about three or four telling them that they need to watch it when they make libelous or slander.
I mean, going behind our backs without even talking to us and telling everybody on the network that they need to avoid making libelous or slanderous comments on the air and all of this other bullshit.
And I didn't like that.
I felt, and Keith didn't even send this email out until a week later, just an hour or two before the spec sheet was set to air again.
He didn't make any communication with any contact with me whatsoever.
And I didn't like that.
And to this day, I don't like that.
That's not a way to do business.
That's not the way you handle things.
I thought it was really underhanded.
And so I didn't like Keith from that point forward.
And then we had that Gabcast episode where Keith called in after he blew up.
Art blew up on him.
Keith quit.
We had this Gabcast episode, everybody sang Kumbaya.
And I regret doing that because in total honesty, my feelings hadn't changed and they haven't changed to this day.
And I only did that because I felt like the infighting that was taking place at that moment, all the hatred being directed at Keith because of how many people knew that I felt slighted by him.
And so I guess they vicariously felt butthurt about it too.
All of the people knowing that, I just felt like all of this infighting and all of these negative feelings everybody's having toward one another is it's not making it more likely for art to get back on the air.
It's hurting the chances of art coming back.
And so I sang Kumbaya.
I took one for the team.
That's what I did.
But I want it known that I regret that now.
And that is the only time I can think of in the course of podcasting that I have been actively dishonest in what my real feelings were about something.
I didn't want to do that.
I really wanted to tell him to go pound it, but I just couldn't do that because isn't it just nuts that some fat douche from Missouri that no one knows outside of this whole bellgaby.
Nobody knows me.
I'm a nobody.
Isn't it amazing that some random fat dude in Missouri could be this intertwined in whether art winds up coming back on the radio or not?
It's just mind-boggling.
And so I felt like, okay, I'm going to have to sing Kumbaya and play nice here because it's pretty apparent that if I don't, it's not going to make it more likely for art to come back on the air.
Quite the contrary.
And I can assure you that when I informed Keith that Curtis and I were no longer going to be doing the spec sheet, he didn't break down in tears.
I can put it to you that way.
Yeah.
Not a particularly respectable guy, I don't think.
And I'm sure he feels the same way about me.
But I'm not deliberately rude to people online, at least, not until they give me a reason to be.
I'm not rude to people when they ask me how to tune in the stream or how to contact art or any of these other mundane things that you are going to have to respond to from people when you're handling public relations.
Those are the types of questions you're going to have to answer for people when you are the public communications face for an organization, as Keith has deemed himself to be.
So if you're going to do that, you've got to be able to communicate with people without coming off as an idiot when you do it.
Hi, Pony Boy Sunset.
Hey, I was going to say this is White Crow, but I just can't do it.
You just got to, you haven't smoked enough cigarettes yet to get down to that.
Okay, I'll try.
This is White Crow.
White Crow.
AK Willie says MV kind of holds grudges.
Well, yeah, I do.
When people wrong me and I didn't deserve to be wronged, at least I don't feel like I did.
And they don't really do anything to correct it.
Yeah, I kind of do.
And I don't know.
I think Keith is an asshole.
Okay, there I said it.
Fuck him.
Go ahead, Ponyboy.
Oh, hey, I'm going to, can I get in on that action?
Yeah, please.
Okay, so, like, and I was really quiet about this, and I've been bitching about it on the forum.
I got into it with Keith about my account because he screwed up my account and upped my price.
So now explain this.
You canceled it $5 a month price.
Before, I never canceled anything.
What happened was all of a sudden I had no more access to it.
I didn't do anything to my PayPal account.
It got canceled somehow.
This was before Heather.
This was before Art quit.
Oh, excuse me, hung up his microphone or whatever the hell he's saying.
I don't want to, you know.
Anyway, what happened was I just had no more access.
I listen every morning.
I'm like, what the hell?
So I email him.
I'm like, what's going on?
He's like, well, it's obviously on your end.
Like, he was condescending.
Look, I'm not stupid with computers.
I do my own show.
I'm not a moron.
Okay.
So I write back.
I said, I didn't do anything with my account.
He said, well, you're going to have to cancel and resubscribe.
So I say, no, you'll up the price.
And he's like, I'm like, that's not fair.
I've been a subscriber since June.
Never answered me.
Up the price.
So I canceled as soon as this shit with Heather started.
I'm like, nope, I'm out.
See ya.
So I canceled.
Came out of my account on Christmas Eve.
I'm like, really?
You're kidding me with this.
Now I understand.
People are like, you're complaining about $8.
So there was a technical problem with you accessing the archive, and the solution to that problem was determined to be that you needed to cancel and then resub.
Yep.
He couldn't fix it.
Really?
But then he ignored you when it came to adjusting the price on the other end.
Right.
And I'm like, wow.
And my first thought, and I was quiet about all of this, and now I just don't care.
My first thought was, wow, this is what you're doing to people.
You guys aren't making enough money.
So you're going to hose me for $3 more.
And I was pissed.
And again, it's not about the money.
It's about the treatment.
I have the money.
I don't care about that.
It was about how I was being treated.
And you have no right to treat anyone that way.
If you don't like people, you shouldn't be doing that job.
You know, I mean, like, I was really angry about the Christmas thing, though.
And I was like, I'm telling everybody I can possibly tell because people need to know.
And that's what happens when you do bad business.
Do you think he knows who you are?
And the reason I'm asking is because I had something similar happen where I, you know, how it's supposed to re-up every month?
Mine didn't.
So I contacted Keith and he said, just, I forgot, just like renew it or subscribe, resubscribe again.
That's what he said.
And I said, yeah, but now I've been before Art Bell was even on the air, I was already subscribed.
So I don't want to pay the extra money.
And he sent me a link and I used that link and it resubscribed at $4.99.
So I'm wondering, again, conspiracy theory, is it like, does he know who you are?
And maybe he was being vindictive because he was wonderful with me.
I've never had a bad experience with him, but everybody else seems to.
It's possible because I've spoken out against it.
But then again, I mean, I've done radio with Bill and Nancy.
So really, I mean, you know what I'm saying?
I like your conspiracy mind.
You know this, but I don't think it was personal because I know other people have had the same problem.
And maybe it was and I just don't realize it.
But I'm still going to speak my mind.
He can suck it.
Frodo in the chat mentions that Keith took the link to Bellgab off his site.
So did MV2.
I didn't do that until I found out he did it.
And believe me, I wasn't going and looking at artbell.com to see if the link was still there.
I do have a life.
And the only way I found that out was because I was over there.
What is that?
Midnight Riders.
Is that the name of the other forum where all the old ladies sit around and wag their fingers and everybody?
It's a paranormal forum now.
Oh, that's great.
Yeah.
The world doesn't have enough paranormal forums.
That's where you want to go to talk about what happened to you in the night.
Everybody's nice there, Michael.
No, that disagrees.
So I was looking at that forum to see what their reaction was to the current circumstances with art.
And I saw that they had actively contacted Keith and asked him to remove their link from artbell.com.
That's how viscerally angry those people were.
And I thought, what the hell?
So I went to artbell.com to look at it and I saw that it was all gone.
Both the links were gone.
I'm like, what in the hell?
Do you realize how much traffic bellgab.com was responsible for sending to that fuck that you can say fuck?
It's fine.
Say it with me.
Do you realize how much money at the onset of this whole thing when they open the floodgates for people to sign up for time traveler subscriptions?
Do any of you people out there realize how much traffic bellgab.com sent their way?
Do you realize that for almost two months up in the top right-hand corner of Bellgab, where we normally have a quote from some forum user, we instead had a direct link for people to go and subscribe and become a time traveler?
I remember that.
And the second art hangs up the mic, Keith pulls our link down.
Fuck that guy.
Yes.
And you know what?
Schadenfreude, look it up.
There's a lot of that going on right now.
And when I look at Keith's world falling apart around him, yes, Schadenfreud is the word.
Thank you.
I have a question for you, MP.
Do you think that the network's going to tank?
Because I do, and I think it's already happening.
Yeah, I do.
Unless I mean, define tank.
I mean, I would say it already has.
If it gets to the point where nobody on there can make a living by sustaining it, like if the P if the principles involved in the Dark Matter Radio Network cannot continue to pay their power bill through their involvement with that network, then yes, it has failed.
And I think it will.
I mean, in the sense of, God, I just derailed.
You answered my question.
So I suck.
That's great.
You know, Ponyboy, you wanted to host tonight.
You wanted to co-host tonight.
And everyone is seeing right now why she wasn't.
No, I'm kidding.
Exactly.
Why can't.
No, it's totally because I'm gay, right?
Oh, my God.
You know what?
It's because you're not gay enough.
You said you were bi, actually.
I didn't realize that until recently.
Oh, yeah, I was yanking somebody's chain about that because actually that all started because of the Rose Girl thing.
That started because I got accused of some really nasty things.
And I'm not sure.
Answer back.
By the way, there's an entirely tangential conversation we could have.
Yeah, I was going to say, thank you so much for that, by the way.
I was cracking up when it happened.
I had left work and I Miss C and I are like Facebook friends.
So I'm getting these messages.
She's like, oh my God, you got to see what's going on.
I'm like, what's going on?
Frasia says Keith was a real prick about adding links to artbell.com for other forums/slash chats.
I know of a couple that asked him to add a link and he refused except for Bellgab and Bain's site.
Believe me, Frasia, he would never have put a link to Belgab were he not instructed to by art.
That I can guarantee you.
Absolutely.
Oh, I know what I was going to say.
They let the news girl go.
That was kind of my first clue that things were really going badly.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I don't.
Is she getting paid?
Hopefully not.
She had to be.
I mean, Leo was getting paid.
Why wouldn't she be getting some money?
She would have to have been if they let her go.
I mean, because nothing would change if she weren't.
Right.
She on her website, she said that she's been released from her non-compete.
So you don't sign a non-compete if you're not getting paid.
Wow.
They made her sign a non-compete.
That's funny.
Oh, my.
Are you serious?
She really said that?
Are you joking with me?
No.
If you go to Hanaskeptic.com, she says, I've been released from my non-competition.
My mind was just inverted.
Like, my brain just flipped and I could feel my head sort of jerked back because my brain flipped.
I cannot believe that.
After what we just watched with Art for two years, not speaking into a microphone, they're making people sign non-competes.
Really?
You got to be fucking kidding me.
Unbelievable.
I didn't know that.
Michael.
Unbelievable.
Well, I don't know.
Whatever.
Again, indifference.
And Schadenfreude.
And karma.
Karma and Dharma.
Well, should I hang up on you before you can with me?
Well, generally, I like to be the one to hang up, but you know, I know that you've been a little psychologically wounded recently by Keith.
So if you want to save yourself anything further, I'll let you be the first to go.
Well, I'm all right with that, but thanks for having me.
Thanks, Ponyboy.
Yeah.
Bye.
That was her story of attempting to cancel her and reinstate her time traveler subscription.
That's really something.
I mean, okay, there's a technical problem that can only be resolved by you canceling your account and then resubbing.
At a higher price.
At a higher price.
And then when you do it, oh, hey, you know what?
We're not receiving your emails.
We don't know why.
That sounds like Verizon.
That's amazing.
Well, just don't talk about what you'd like to do to Verizon because I'll have to ban you from the Gabcast and move everything over to juicyinternetpodcasts.com or whatever it is that'll end up happening.
I'll come up with some horrible 23-letter domain name and move everything over to that.
What do you say?
Okay.
623-242-CAST.
It is 623-242-2278 if you want to be on the show.
I'm going to go ahead and type that in the room now.
623-242-2278 to call the show.
I guess I'll dig into the show notes that Gravity sucks furiously through together.
So let's talk about Faulky's thread.
It's gone over a thousand pages.
Hold that thought because White Crow is on the line.
Hey, buddy.
This is White Crow.
Is it?
This is the real one.
This isn't Star Mountain.
This isn't Star Call.
How you doing, man?
White Crow.
Did you have a good Christmas?
Good New Year's Eve?
I hope you did.
Great family?
Yeah, we got a big family.
Yeah, that's good.
That's all that's going to happen.
I have a question for White Crow.
Yes, sir.
White Crow, do you have a bet ready for tomorrow with Gabby?
Oh, yeah.
Sunday?
I have my strategy all worked out.
There is no way she is going to take advantage of me again.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
And if I don't know, I'll guarantee you a lot of other people don't either.
It's all part of your site, MV.
You have an NFL chat.
Like six people actually go there.
I don't know.
It must be a good income source.
Again, with my income, you know, everybody is throwing that at me.
I probably, I literally read, I swear to you, probably I'd say 1% of everything that gets posted on Bell Gab.
There's just no way to keep up with it.
You can't possibly read more than that.
You like stalk me around and you banned me four times.
I mean, what?
You have a fixation on me?
What do you mean?
You're not banned right now, are you?
You're calling into the show.
Everything's groovy.
I don't know.
I just, yeah.
Everything's groovy.
So, you know, you guys, with Keith, Keith Art, UMV, you guys are all kind of high-strung.
You know, you're reactionary, guys.
What do you mean?
Well, you're what Keith and Art do, they have these little feuds back and forth, and within hours, they're folding up everything.
And it's just the way the guys are.
You media type guys, aren't you all kind of like that?
I don't know.
I mean, Sean Hannity hasn't been very volatile.
Rush hasn't been very volatile.
Michael Savage hasn't been very volatile, although he's probably been the most volatile of all, but still, relative to this, he's been as stable as a rock.
They have the wisdom to have professional handlers.
You know, there's really something to be said for that.
I mean, it should have been understood after the way things went with SiriusXM that there were certain aspects of this operation that entirely needed to be handled by professionals.
Absolutely.
But again, he wants to stay in the small world that he has, the way I see it.
That's very attractive, not being in the public eye.
But in the age of the internet, that isn't going to apply.
Instant information to everybody.
You know, back in the day.
I have all my internet pages mailed to me.
There's a service.
They print up the pages you want to see, and they're mailed to you at a reasonable speed.
I don't know what the problem is with that.
But yeah, I mean, if Art would have had, you know, like take Rush and the drug deal that he went through and getting addicted.
He had to fill in guest hosts and it was all orchestrated.
He came back and nobody talks about that today.
You know, Art would have had some professional help.
He had this problem with the stalker.
They would have handled it for him, get security, or get a remote location for Art and his family to move to.
He has one.
Gravity sucks that says that I am an addict like Rush.
An addict?
What am I addicted to?
The drama.
This is a nicotine.
I quit smoking.
Did you really?
Yeah.
For how long?
Good for you, Micro.
For how long?
I think four days now.
Okay, well, then you haven't quit.
You're trying to quit.
The patch is wonderful.
Well, it is, but don't go to sleep with it because if you do, you'll have dreams that your head has been replaced by a hippopotamus foot.
Really horrible, crazy, whacked-out dreams.
I swear to God, if you want to experience LSD, but you don't really want to use LSD, go get a lot.
If you're particularly, if you're a non-smoker, go get the lowest strength nicotine patch you can find.
Put it on, go to sleep, and enjoy.
You're going to need higher strength if you're a smoker.
I've tried LSD.
I'm not going to comment on that.
Let's just say, let's just say sometimes you can see the music.
Why?
Why do you ask?
It's nothing like LSD.
So you have tried LSD.
Is that what you're telling the audience, the listening audience?
Yeah, man.
Like, cool.
Yeah, man.
You slip into this hippie parlance as soon as someone asks you that.
Yeah, dude, man.
I'm legitimately asking you, have you tried LSD?
Have you?
I just.
Well, you're answering it in a facetious way.
I mean, have you.
I mean, what experiences did you have?
What's something that you recall from those times?
Very enjoyable.
That's it.
You took a substance that many have credited with enabling them to see God, and the only thing you can say about it is, it was very enjoyable.
Thank you.
I'll take my answer off the air.
Well, you can watch four hours and be fascinated by it.
I don't know if I would have to.
You don't sound like you would have been a lot of fun to trip with.
You sound like you would have just pulled out pages and started doing accounting and shit when you're tripping.
You know what?
This guy is a real bore.
I'm leaving.
Okay.
Well, anything else, White Crow?
Nope.
I got nothing.
All right, buddy.
I hope you had a good holiday.
Well, you already said you did.
So I take that back.
All right, man.
See you.
If you want to be on the show, 623-242Cast.
It is 623-242-2278 to be on the show tonight.
So the Falkey thread.
It's sort of a seminal moment in the existence of that entire discussion.
The general musings of Falke 2013 has now surpassed 1,000 pages.
I am just like awestruck.
It is something to take in, isn't it?
Just the thought that this one man, this old fat man in Martinez, California, has generated this much conversation on a forum about Art Bell.
And I'll bet you the last 100 pages have been since he quit posting.
Really?
And he thought other people are putting his YouTube videos in there.
He thought that by leaving the forum, well, he hasn't really left the forum because I get private messages from him on an almost daily basis.
But he thought that by no longer posting, that everybody's going to get tired of talking about him in there.
I think that perhaps it has had the opposite effect because by not being present, he has dehumanized himself, thus giving people more emotional shielding from the negativity that they have in their own minds.
That was a horrible way to word that.
People don't.
Yeah, people don't feel guilty about saying nasty things about him because he's dehumanized himself by not being there.
Well, people are posting as him, and they're a lot more interesting than when Falke posts himself.
That, plus, I think that Falke has revealed way too much.
I think he should have crafted his online persona to be somebody that we can feel compelled to support.
And instead, it's like he's showing us all the warts and flipping us off, and he doesn't care.
Let's take a call real quick because on this show, people notoriously refuse to hold.
Hi, you're on the air.
Hi, my name's Lou.
No, I wasn't sure.
Is this Lou She?
Remember, it is indeed.
Oh, hey, buddy.
Thanks for your responses.
Oh, you got it.
There are other networks now.
PSN, I forget the name of the one that Jazz Londo and the Mud King are on.
So something or other.
My point being, I mean, I realize this show is about Art Bell, or arguably, but there are other topics, other relatively related topics.
I'm just throwing that out.
Maybe you guys want to talk about it.
Maybe Don or maybe you want to disagree.
I'm going to hang up.
I'm not sure I understand the point you're making.
Are you saying we should be at this moment talking about something different?
Well, Falky, I guess I've heard enough of, but that's I don't mean to be rude about, although I enjoyed that little YouTube video about the guy.
No, my point is that even if Dark Matter Digital Network goes away, I guess, which is still possible after the 30 days or after all the subscriptions wind down to virtually nothing, there will still be shows to talk about.
That's my point for you.
Well, I agree with you in principle that no internet podcast needs a network.
And there really is no inherent advantage in being a part of a so-called network unless there is a figure on that network that draws huge numbers.
And then from there, those numbers, those listener numbers can trickle down to the other shows that are on the network.
And that's what you have going for you.
If you are one of the broadcasters on such a network, as was the case with the Dark Matter Radio Network, and Art was that draw.
Now that he's not there, there's no draw.
And that being the case, the people who are on the network, there's really no reason to be on it.
I don't know what kind of listeners people are getting.
I mean, I don't know what kind of numbers the thing is getting now.
I have no clue.
But when you can just put up your own, well, look at what they did with podcasts not included.
The Go to Hell MV show.
That's what it should have been named.
I've always maintained that.
The show should have been named F-U-MV.
But look what they did.
They went and they set up their own website.
I don't know how they're streaming the show live.
They might be doing that on Prairie Ghost's stream.
What is it?
The Deep Talk Radio Network.
Is that what it is?
There's Deep Talk and there's PSN Radio.
Yeah, I mean, other than, and even the live stream aspect of it, you can easily set that up on your own as well.
And if you just do a great product, if you do it consistently and you entertain your audience, you don't need to be on a network of any kind.
There's just no advantage to it.
I mean, as someone downloads your show, are the ones and zeros that they're downloading going to be fancier ones and zeros?
No, they're going to hear your show.
And you will have total control, too.
Right.
If you want to do a live show, and the benefit is, I agree, like you said, if you've got a big-name person that is the draw and you get plunked in behind them or right before them, then you get a lot of traffic to your show that you normally wouldn't get.
If you've got trying to do a live show and you're trying to do it on your own feed, people have to remember to go to your website at that time and go ahead and start the stream.
But if you're on a network, you start the stream and then you just listen to the next show.
Yeah, I can see the total upside with Art being there, but if he's not there.
I mean, look at it this way.
If Art hadn't been there, how many people would have ever signed up for Hoagland?
I don't know.
I got to tell you that I think that because it was so unexpected, the concept of Hoagland ever doing any kind of a talk show where he is the host, I mean, that's not something anybody ever really considered.
And when Art announced that Hoagland was in fact going to be the person doing the show after his, everybody sort of scratched their heads and cocked their head to the side and said, what?
And well, Hoagland would go on.
It's like somebody put a quarter in him.
There wasn't a lot of intro viewing, at least not when he was on with George.
He would just go on and on and on.
So I did see him as somebody who can carry a show and wouldn't even need a co-host.
But if he had his own stream on his own website.
Oh, yeah, no.
Yeah.
No, I think he needed to be on Dark Matter to sort of be relevant.
I don't know, man.
I think that if I think he, well, initially, yes.
But I think given time, if he had just been given time and that initial, you know that people on Velgab would have been listening, and that would have been a pretty sizable audience right out of the gate.
And although I will say that he may not have done so well with subscriptions, because I know a lot of people subscribed and continue to subscribe to Hoagland just to support the Dark Matter Radio Network, but it's not because they necessarily support Hoagland.
So if he were off by himself doing his own thing entirely from top to bottom, who knows how successful it would be.
I agree entirely that out of the gate, it wouldn't be nearly as successful as it at one point at least was at the Dark Matter Radio Network.
But then I saw someone the other day say that Hoagland has thousands of subscribers.
So I mean, does that really just come down to art being there?
I mean, that's hard to say, I think.
I do think those numbers would be lower if he were doing it on his own for sure.
But I think he could probably make a living at it.
Well, I know, I can't say I know a thousand people, but I know quite a few people that are only subscribed to Hoagland's show to support the network.
Hmm.
And that's because they don't have a donate button to just donate to.
I don't understand why they don't.
That puzzles me.
Is there some it wasn't Keith's idea, I guess.
Huh.
Yeah, that's, you know what?
That's it.
Right there.
Okay, well, let's see.
So the Falkey thread hits a thousand pages.
I think that's worth talking about.
I think that.
Do you guys realize the brilliance that is me?
Do you understand the pressure I was under to eliminate that thread?
I mean, you take a look at the poll, it's sitting at 72%.
I view that poll as a bit of performance art.
And I hope that, like, when people see Bellgab for the first time and they go to the Falkey thread and they see this poll up at the top that well over a thousand people have voted in that demands the thread be removed from the forum, and yet the thread is there and you're sitting there reading it.
I hope that causes people to see that and say what that's weird.
Maybe there's something to this place and and that sort of presents them with some sort of an attitudinal approach to the whole place and how it's run.
That makes it interesting and well, to me the Falque thread is like the spinal tap of Bellgab.
It's all parody but a lot of people don't get it, the what.
The same way that a lot of people maybe watch the movie and it was halfway through and they were like oh, okay.
And I think a lot of people go there and they think that people are being serious, like Willie isn't pooping into a box, he doesn't have a poop box empire.
But those are things that happen on the Falkey thread because it's funny and it's all satire.
But, like I said, people go there and they think oh uh, people are being horrible to Falkey, but he seems to enjoy fighting with people, or he wouldn't.
He wouldn't be making videos calling bellgab members out.
Yeah, that's.
Yeah, i've gotten called out.
You know what?
That is why?
Because the Falkey thread was gone for a long time.
I I think it was gone for almost a year, maybe over a year, and then people started sending me links to videos he was doing on Youtube where he was making entire videos about what a bag of shit I am, and he was calling out specific bellgabbers.
And I thought well, you know, I I banned all of his trolls and even him to protect him.
Just to you know, you get rid of the moths by, in addition to getting rid of the moths, getting rid of the flame.
And so that was why I banned him, along with his trolls, and I deleted the Falkey thread.
And then I i'm apprised of these videos that he's making and I say okay well, I guess he kind of wants to be a public figure and this is the play pen he wants to continue rolling of, the pig pen that he wants to continue rolling around in.
And so I brought the thread back and there it remains and, by the way, a lot of the, a lot of the, a lot of the people who were some of the loudest, most vocal critics, demanding that the thing be removed, ended up being some of the thread's heaviest participants.
Isn't that just a hoot?
Go figure.
Star Mountain, go ahead and call in again.
I had you on.
You shouldn't have hung up.
I was going to bring.
Even Star Mountain won't hold.
Can you believe that?
And she sent me a message, a PM message before the show saying, MV, are you mad at me about something?
And I was like, what?
No.
Why would you think that?
What?
I think she thought she was being ignored today.
I don't know.
Why?
She asked you a question right after you posted in the Gabcast thread.
Uh-huh.
And it went unanswered.
She said, Am I being ignored here?
I have no idea what that is.
I didn't see any of that.
I think I just missed it entirely.
Well, you need to put notifications on, sir.
How could I be mad at Star Mountain?
Well, you know, the thing is with notifications, it only sends you a notification about the first new message that you haven't seen.
But if there are one new message and then a succession of 20 new messages after that, you don't get 20 notifications.
You just get to check with Keith to see if he knows how to fix that.
Well, I asked him if there was any way we could use WordPress to fix it.
I got you.
And he hasn't gotten back to me.
I'm going to have to subscribe as a time traveler in order to get help, I believe.
So back to the Falky thread.
In the Falky Thread, and I don't know because so many people are posting fake, fake, falky emails in there, or inboxes, I should say.
One of them says that you made a donation to Falki so that he can go to the Woo-woo Con and that he doesn't need donations anymore.
Because you say it ain't so?
MB, I did send Falki a donation.
Yes okay, I wanted to say that is honorable of you, sir.
You think so, or do you think it's enabling?
It's very enabling.
Well now, that sounds sort of like a pejorative term.
Uh, elaborate on that.
Well, sounds like you're invested in this sir, my god, the claws come out.
If Falkey keeps getting money from people, he's not going to change his ways.
He has no reason to.
Well, I just feel like you know what, after all these years of Falkey being a participant in Bell Gab, after all the traffic that surely has been generated at his expense and I enjoyed when you had him on, he actually sounded very charming.
And add to that, beyond all of the traffic stuff, I kind of like him.
I mean I don't have a problem with Falkey.
I mean I, I would hang out with him, like if I lived nearby him and he wanted to go hang out somewhere.
Like hell yeah let's yeah, we'll go.
Uh, let's go grab a bite.
I would totally.
Yeah, you know you'd be paying for lunch right well, I mean, he is on public assistance, yes and so, but I think that uh, there would be times when maybe he's doing a little better, his bills maybe for the month, were less than normally is the case, and so he might.
He might be willing to buy my, my hot dog.
No forever, the optimist, I only eat hot dogs.
Do you eat four at a time, like him?
Uh no, what I do I?
I, I just want them long, So I don't.
Oh.
I mean, I'll eat four at a time, but it's just like one giant continuous hot dog from end to end.
See, that's how I do things.
So, yeah, I don't have any personal hatred toward Falke.
I don't even dislike him.
But again, I'm not emotionally invested in any way in what happens in that thread at all.
That's another example of my utter and complete indifference is what happens in the Falkey thread.
I couldn't care less about how he has spent his money, whether he has spent his money appropriately or whether he enjoyed lactating prostitutes at one point.
I don't, I couldn't care less.
I thought you didn't read the thread.
What?
I thought you didn't read the thread.
Well, I will tell you that I just perused it today.
I perused it today and I saw the screenshots, which I think are from SF Redbook that somebody posted where he's talking about lactating workers.
What's the term they use?
Providers, yes, providers.
That's a weird.
That's such a sterile clinical term.
Provider.
Campsey says, MV burned.
Well, you know, I do, I do, I will say the only thing, this is as specific as I will get in terms of my reading tastes on Belgab.
I do visit the forum, okay?
I visit Belgab, okay?
And so the Falkey thread has just reached a thousand pages.
You could imagine that sometimes it's going to come across my radar.
And it did today as well.
Everybody's laughing at me.
So I will say that my faith in you has been mitigated.
I feel that with all the traffic he drives, I'm glad to see that you made a donation.
You're going the opposite way.
He didn't ask me for it.
He didn't.
Nothing.
I just thought, you know what?
And I didn't even, I'm not the one who publicly announced.
I didn't tell anyone I did that either.
I don't even know how everybody found out.
Oh, he had somebody posted in his thread.
Oh, did he?
Yep.
Yeah, I sent Falke a donation.
So what?
Let the guy go on his trip.
I'm sure it'll result in some interesting YouTube videos that'll spawn hundreds of additional pages in the Falkey thread.
Van Diven Enterprises will be fine in the end, no matter what.
Well, you know, if his knees hurt after he goes, it's going to be your fault because if you didn't give him the money, he wouldn't have had to walk that far.
You think I could be sued for that?
I don't know.
Are these dots that can be connected?
I don't know.
I hope that Star Mountain calls in again.
I'm so bothered that she thinks I'm mad at her.
That's because you don't want to answer my questions.
Which questions?
Did you consult the CFO of Vandevin Enterprises and talk to your wife and see if you can get away?
Okay, let me.
Are you married?
Gravity Sucks?
No, sir.
Okay.
So that's why you're asking me such a stupid question.
If you were married, I can assure you you wouldn't be asking me if I consulted my wife to find out if it's okay if I send free money to some guy she's never heard of in Martinez, California, who has 100 YouTube subscribers and has a girlfriend named Kathy who was recently kicked out of her house.
No, I didn't run it past the wife.
Are you going to send him a 1099?
Is that I think you have to pay somebody more than $750 in the course of a tax year.
So I can assure you the donation was not that much.
It was somewhere south of $750.
Okay.
I'll let you decide.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I've been corrected.
Fat George in the chat says almost 300 Falke subscribers cough in parens.
And it's $600.
Oh my.
Okay, so yeah, I think we've kind of covered the Falke thread thing.
I'm interested in predictions that you guys have for 2016.
They could be predictions in politics, predictions in technology, predictions in sports, entertainment, whatever it is.
Oh, hold on.
I have a very special guest.
Sorry, I had to use the cough button there.
Very special guest at this moment, ladies and gentlemen.
The actual, this is not an imposter.
This is the actual Star Mountain.
Hi, Star Mountain.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah.
Why would you think I'm mad at you?
You have, for years now, been one of my favorite Bell Gab posters.
I love you like a family member.
I would never be mad at you.
Oh, that was...
Oh.
Why would you think that?
I'm a little hurt.
I'm a little hurt that you even thought that and went to the trouble to type out a message to me about that.
But that's not quite cold.
Okay.
Well, let's talk about what your doctor told you the other day.
So he said that the tests were positive and no?
Okay, let's move on to another.
Yeah, it's twins.
Oh, my.
Well, Godspeed.
Really?
What I was calling to talk about was.
Well, now, I know that that wasn't why you called, but you know I've got to address that with you.
This is true.
You know that I'm not going to just leave that matzah ball floating around.
I've got to make sure you know that I love you.
It's my fault.
It was my fault.
It was my misunderstanding.
I want the listening audience to know this incident was entirely Star Mountain's fault.
I'm Michael Van Dieven.
Entirely.
That's okay.
Well, that's water under the bridge.
I don't even remember what we're talking about now.
You see how quickly that goes away?
What?
Huh?
Hello, you're here.
What I wanted to talk about is now that the bruha is done and over, let's move on and let's start making Gabcast Gabcast on its own.
Make Gabcast famous for its self, not someone else.
Gabcast is one of, if not the top forum on the internet.
It's got to be.
You mean it's one of the top podcasts, you think?
Forums.
It's been around since 08.
Oh, you mean Bellgab?
Yeah, Bell Gab.
So restate what you're suggesting we should do.
I got confused by that.
Maybe we should get a brainstormed thread.
Oh, you're saying to change the direction of Bellgab itself as a forum?
Yes.
Belgab is coming into its own.
And yes, the podcasts help.
But I think Bellgab can really, this is a good launching point for Bellgab to be Belgab and change it to Gab Gab or Praise Gab or MVGab or, you know, something.
Ooh, MVGab.
I like the sound of that.
A vape cab.
A vape cab.
Thought you would.
Anyway.
I think that you are entirely correct that something is going to have to change.
It can't stay.
You know what?
Here's the thing, though, as I see what's happening in the Art Bell thread at the moment, and I see people saying, this is an Art Bell forum.
I can't believe that this is being allowed and that you people are saying this is Bell Gab is so much more than Art Bell.
And it has been for years.
Art Bell is probably 5% of the subject matter discussed on Bell Gab.
Brick just came up with the name, and it's like, duh.
I mean, it's sitting there right in our face.
Gabcast.com after the Gabcast.
I thought that's a good idea.
But that's a little bit self-congratulatory.
I mean, as a regular host on the Gabcast, I would feel like it's a little bit shamelessly self-promotive.
Exactly.
I don't know.
Well, it's your baby, but not really.
I mean, that's the reason.
That's the reason I never even like.
If you go look at the board where all of the podcast threads are located and you see the Michael Van Devens Radio Train Wreck, it's not stickied.
The spec sheet, when Curtis and I were doing that, that was never sticky because I just always felt like it was a little bit low rent to promote myself and what I'm doing above and beyond what other people are getting.
And the only reason the Gabcast got the additional promotion that it's received is because it's the forum's official podcast, but it was never because I was ever a part of it.
Yeah.
And that's a little sidetrack here.
Why is a sticky call a sticky?
It has a little push pin in it.
Because a sticky thread will never move down as its contents get older.
It sticks where it's at.
Yeah, it stays to oh, Star Mountain.
Could you please just stop it with your noob questions?
I'm just kidding.
Yeah, that's what a sticky is.
When you sticky a thread, it just stays up at the top forever.
I'm always learning new stuff.
I'm just messing with it.
It's boring if there was anything.
Yeah.
Have you seen her avatar?
No.
What is it?
You need to check it out.
It looks like a bird, but it's not a bird.
Oh, my.
Okay.
Well, I'll have to take a look at that.
Labramouth bravity.
Don't tell him it's not a bird.
He's supposed to.
Oh, that's a cool macaw.
That doesn't look right.
Anyway, yeah, just.
Well, we need to.
I think that we need to do something.
I mean, I even thought about, well, maybe should we go back to GeorgeNorrySucks.com?
I mean, at least he's still doing a radio show.
It is, isn't it?
I don't know.
It's backtracking.
That was a reflex.
I'm going to bring him the name again.
That was a reflexive consideration on my part.
Yeah.
And if you've noticed, the Art Bell thread has just gone leaps and bounds pages ahead of Nori Sucks.
White Crow says MV needs professional handlers.
Yeah, I think praisemv.com.
Oh, my.
Someone suggested praise.mv, and I went and looked at that, and it's 250 bucks.
So, no, thank you.
Oh, that's right.
It does cost you to change your name, doesn't it?
Well, to buy the domain name.
It's just, I could buy any domain name I want, and then that could be what people type to get to what currently is Belgab.
But, yeah.
I'm sorry, Star Mountain.
I have to hang up on you.
We have another caller.
Okay.
I'm sorry.
All right.
Don't be sorry.
Please, please, will you not be upset with me?
I already was, and it wasn't your fault.
So, okay.
Well, it is true that it was entirely her fault.
And I'm just, that's really all I wanted to make sure everybody understood.
Hi, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello, hello.
So that is what I hung up on Star Mountain for: to bring that on dead air.
If you want to be on the show, the number to call 623-242-CAST.
It is 623-242-2278.
And I again ask the audience, if you call in, we don't have a system that puts people on hold like a traditional talk show, because this isn't really a talk show, where you bring all the callers in and then you got a phone bank and you select which one you want to go to.
We just answer the call and you're on the air right away.
But sometimes you'll be there hanging as we wait for the right moment to start talking to you.
So if you call in and you're brought on, just stay there until we actually get a second to jump in and see what it is you want to bring to the show.
Oh, here we go.
Here we go.
I think, well, this is someone else.
Is this Jackstar?
Traditional talk show.
You have to wait.
Oh, there's it.
Yeah, well, let's wait for his device to catch up.
Okay.
Hello.
Hello.
Hey.
Hey, how are you?
How's it going?
Who is this?
It's Jackstar.
No, it's not.
If it is, can you hear me okay?
I hear you, but you don't sound at all like Jackstar.
Well, I've had some changes in my life.
Maybe one of them just dropped.
Well, it doesn't sound like anything dropped.
Actually, it sounds like they're being securely cupped at the moment, which is why I didn't think it was you.
Well, it's actually me.
How are you doing, Michael?
I can tell now that.
Hey, how's it going, buddy?
Not so bad.
Not so bad.
All right, so the main reason why I called, you've exhorted me so far.
It's great.
I've got the new name for your site that you want.
Although I kind of am skeptical.
Well, you do realize if you present me with a good idea, somebody's going to run out and buy it right away, right?
Well, yes.
You think I'm going to run over here and hit hover.com really quick as you're talking to me?
No, somebody.
Yes, it's that good.
It's so good that you're going to buy it immediately.
Let's hear it.
Are you ready?
Okay.
Dead horse stables.
Dead horse stable.
But that's very inside.
I mean, I realize you thought you were providing a valuable contribution to this effort, but I'm going to have to reject that one.
Oh, that makes it even better.
I'm just going to call it that from now on.
Boy, that's really going to be inside.
It's everywhere you go.
So what's your take on the current mood of the forum?
What are your thoughts on everybody's attitude?
I want to echo what you said before.
Oh, good.
And you were talking about the indifference.
Like, I am in complete agreement with you.
Somebody in the chat room said, Jackstar, call in.
And I was thinking, no, no, because your lips were repeating the thoughts that have been in my head ever since I heard.
I could care less at this point.
Like, whatever.
Oh, my God.
I got things to do.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll always look back on Art Bell and say, yes, I'm an Art Bell fan.
But when I'm saying that, I won't be thinking of what happened recently.
That will not be part of the big picture of what it is that lends to me calling myself an Art Bell fan.
I was just about to say, I think now is an excellent time, given that it's New Year's Day.
We've got to revisit what it means to be a fan.
Now, it's my understanding that word means that a person is a fanatic.
Okay, so I guess I.
Yeah, I mean, at one point I was an Art Bell fanatic.
You could say, I suppose we all were.
And, like, we're all here in the chat room, so I don't think any of us can claim any sort of amount of indifference to some extent.
Although, I want to mention that I am supremely indifferent whether or not Art Bell comes back or even why he left.
Doesn't even matter to me.
Oh, my God.
You know, I'm sad to say that I'm sad to say that's kind of how I feel too.
And I don't feel that way because I chose to feel that way.
You can't control.
You can't control how you really feel about something.
It's like going up to somebody and demanding that they love you.
Nobody can just love you because they were ordered to do so.
It's an organic thing.
You either feel a certain emotion or you don't.
And I just can't feel it.
After what we've witnessed, if it were announced tomorrow that Art's coming back, it would be a complete afterthought to me.
Yeah, I wouldn't even log on to find out that.
I mean, how would I know?
So you're saying you're not using...
Okay, well, thanks.
Thanks for the loyalty.
You're saying you wouldn't even log into Bellgab to become aware that that was happening.
All right, great.
People have posted on the site on many occasions that Arbell has come back, and when I see that post, there's been this transition where I read it and then my eyes transmit the words to my brain, and then my brain thinks, is it real?
Is it true?
And then, no, it's not true.
Of course not.
And the repeated hammering of that he's back button, even though it's not, I mean, it's still triggering that program response of just making me more and more actively indifferent to whether or not the man comes back at all.
Like, if aliens came to his house and took him away in a ship, number one, how would I know that?
Number two, would I believe it?
Well, no.
Number three, even if they did, I wouldn't care if he came back.
Oh, my lord.
He can just, like, beam it to us then, can't he?
Just for the record, I totally believe everything Art has said about what's occurred on his property.
I don't have any reason to disbelieve him.
I really don't.
I totally believe that there is somebody giving his both Art and his family problems.
I just disagree with the ho-hum response to it, you know, which was just to give in to what the person demands, supposedly, and not present any response in terms of security.
That's what I disagree with.
Perhaps that was one of the demands.
They said, you got to quit and you got to do it abruptly and you got to make everybody mad and you can't get any security.
Or we're going to, or we're going to, you know.
Well, that's a very, that's a very granular demand, I mean.
And you better change your napkins to pink napkins, better hope that's not what he said, otherwise they're coming for you.
Jackstar, if we find out that you're using pink nap, anything other than pink napkins, in the Art Bell home, it's gonna be treble.
Well, the sky is the limit when it comes to speculation, isn't it?
Why is there?
Why does there need to be a ceiling?
Yeah that's uh yeah, that's what people do on a forum, I mean, without speculation.
What are people gonna gonna do?
Well, I mean, even in reality, since there's not exactly an info dump of true information, I mean there's, there's a lot of holes to any kind of narrative.
So, you know whatever, apparently that's okay with everyone, so I guess it's okay with me too, whatever.
So I mean beyond just, I thought you were gonna present me with an overall direction the forum could go in, as opposed to just some name.
Well, I we're that's.
That's like cleaning out the Augian stables, trying to present a direction.
Well, that would be the surest way to make sure it didn't go there.
I still like the idea for the name, just register that domain name.
I don't know what that costs, but it's got to be less than a subscription to something else and then just use it and see what happens.
Find something that you like and then make pizza, pizza I like pizza, I like apple cider.
Can't you link to a number of threads on the phone?
It's just gonna be a series of consumable goods.
That's the only thing I can list consumable.
Well, you can't change it back to Georgenori sex.com, because that'll just make his name, his name, show up in search engines more, and that's hardly the effect we're looking to engender, is it?
I guess I don't know.
Again, I think we should give time.
Give it time.
I think I think that's the right approach.
As I said previously, I think that what more likely is going to happen is that the future direction of the show will probably end up being determined more by the users than by any external artificial force that says, here's what we're gonna do.
It's just a matter of really what needs to happen is we need to come up with some sort of a name that allows that to occur, but at the same time changes the name of the forum and that's pretty tricky, talkgab.com, what I don't know.
Any number of directions we could go.
Let's see.
So, predictions.
Do you guys have any predictions that just sort of have come to mind for you?
They could be predictions about Belgab.
And I really want you to have serious predictions.
I mean, not to try and be funny, like predicting that Falke is going to become an administrator at Belgab in 2016 or something like that.
No, I mean, serious stuff.
I would say in the area of technology, I predict, boy, this is going to cause people's eyes to glaze.
But hey, I'm not doing the spec sheet anymore, so there has to be some level of release for me, okay?
Okay.
I predict that the hard drive manufacturer Seagate is going to lose approximately 50% of the company's value and they're going to begin to tank.
And the reason I say that is because if you go out today and you buy a solid-state hard drive, whose name is on it?
It's either Samsung or a bunch of also RANs, really.
And they're nowhere to be seen.
They're not manufactured.
Western Digital is not the company anybody's going to.
I'm sorry, Seagate is not the company that anybody is going to in order to buy a solid-state hard drive.
And anytime you ask somebody what kind of a solid-state hard drive should I buy, nobody's going to say Seagate.
And in my shop where I fix computers all day long, just in the last six to eight months, I have started replacing all traditional hard drives with solid-state hard drives because they've finally gotten down to that price point where you can kind of do that.
And it's reasonable, it's feasible, it makes sense.
In 2016, that's only going to continue.
Right now, you can spend about 50 bucks and get a 120 or 128 gigabyte solid-state hard drive, whereas that 50 bucks is going to get you a terabyte in a traditional hard drive.
I think that in 2016, those two are going to come really close to parity where you get the same amount of storage in a solid-state drive versus a traditional hard drive for whatever the money is that you spent.
So I think 2016 is the year that Seagate implodes.
Do you guys have any predictions you'd like to throw at me here?
Well, my favorite one is that the Cubs are going to be in the World Series.
Okay.
Now my eyes are glazing.
Go ahead.
I don't know if they're going to win it, but I believe that they're going to be in the World Series.
But that's not really, you know, I got to say, that's not really.
I mean, yeah, that's a prediction, but there's a limited number of baseball teams.
So you could just randomly pick any team, and there's a chance you might be right.
Here's one I called into Heather last night with.
I think oil is going to drop below $25 a barrel, but by the end of the year, it's going to be back up over $35.
Why do you think that?
The Saudis are dumping as much oil as they can on the market to try to destroy the shale industry here.
Iran is, with all these sanctions being lifted, they're going to be able to start exporting.
And we've got so much oil in storage right now that there's just a glut of oil.
And it costs the Saudis about, well, some people say as low as $1 to $2 a barrel to pump it.
I think it's going to go down below $25.
I think it will recover.
I have read that the Saudis only need crude to be at $9 per barrel in order to maintain profitability, which is just nothing.
Whereas these shale guys, they need it around $70, $75 a barrel.
And so there's definitely some truth to that, what you just said.
But the other thing that a lot of people forget is that the Saudis want to stick the, they want to stick a thumb in the eye of the Russians for their support of Iran.
And so that's another reason the Saudis are pumping so much oil out is to try and bring down the cost per barrel so that they can hurt Russia where it hurts the most, the pocketbook, because an overwhelming percentage of the Russian economy depends on oil production and sales.
And boy, do they sell a lot of it.
I think it's either 75% of Russia's exported oil goes to the EU, or 75% of the EU's imported oil is from Russia.
It's one of those two.
But they sell a lot of oil.
And the lower that number goes, the lower that cost per barrel price goes, the more the Russians feel it in their pocketbooks.
And so, yeah, there's definitely something to be said for all of that.
And the other thing is, I know a lot of you are familiar with John C. Dvorak, who is one of the co-hosts on the No Agenda Show.
He's also a syndicated columnist, and he used to be a frequent guest on Leo Laporte's Twit network until Leo Laporte decided to ban John C. Dvorak from being on there.
But Dvorak says that back in the 70s when they had this oil crisis and OPEC decided that they were going to screw everybody over because of their support of the Israelis and stop shipping oil here, stop shipping oil there.
A lot of these OPEC countries lost big because what happened was when they stepped out of these markets, other players stepped in to fill the supply void.
And to this day, there are markets that OPEC countries can't get into that they can't sell oil in because of what happened in the 70s during what we refer to as the oil crisis.
And so the Saudis said to themselves, never again will we step out of any markets.
Never again will we start cutting production and playing that game because in the long run, it hurt us to abandon certain oil markets.
And so that's John C. Dvorak's theory as to why the Saudis aren't cutting production.
And boy, they have the purest, cleanest oil in the world.
I mean, this oil that we're sucking out of the ground here, there is just an enormous amount of processing that has to occur in order for it to be viable on the market.
This oil they're pulling out of the ground in Saudi Arabia is the richest, cleanest, purest, crude.
It's almost just ready to go as it's sucked out of the ground.
I mean, it's just ridiculously perfect.
And actually, I think it's some of the most pristine oil reserves in the world.
What comes out of Saudi Arabia, they have to do very little with that oil.
And so, yes, the Saudis definitely want to stick it to the Russians.
I think that it would be wonderful to see oil go below 25 a barrel.
But in addition to the rate of production that we see now that's not being cut back at all, you also have to factor in that really the economy is just not doing all that great yet globally.
I mean, I know that we like to pretend that unemployment is at 5% or whatever, but if we really, but, you know, they take all these people who stop looking for a job and they remove them from the calculation.
So they're not even counted when the unemployment rate is being determined.
So we get this false impression that the economy is so much better than it really is.
But in reality, I think it still stinks.
Everywhere I look in my personal life, people I know are struggling everywhere who weren't struggling a long time ago.
And when the economy sucks, oil consumption goes down.
And when consumption goes down, prices drop.
So that's another reason prices are down.
And I think you're right.
I think they're going to continue to drop.
They've just recently hit new lows, as a matter of fact.
I think it got down below like 38 for the first time in forever.
I think it's down below 30 right now.
Oh my God, that's so unbelievable.
You remember during the Clinton years, it got down to like 19 or 18, maybe even lower.
It was crazy.
I remember paying not even a dollar for a gallon of gas.
I mean, that seems like such a foreign universe to me, but I'll bet you right now here in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, we have routinely some of the cheapest gas prices in the country here.
There's Cape Girardeau, and then if you drive 10 minutes north, you'll be in Jackson, which has even cheaper prices.
And there have been many times when I have been watching national news, and they have said the cheapest gas prices in the country right now are in Jackson, Missouri, 10 minutes away from me.
I'll bet you if I were to go there right now, I'll bet you I'm thinking gas is been a while since I've bought gas.
I'll bet you we're at about $1.50 a gallon.
Wow.
Maybe less.
That's $2.22 here in New York.
Yeah, I think $155 is the lowest that's seen right now down here.
And Glorious Bitch, what do you see coming our way in 2016?
Well, I think we're going to continue to get stupider as a nation, which is a nation.
Well, in the regard of, like, not to pick on millennials, but it seems like kids coming up today are just, they don't know anything about our history.
For example, many do not know who we fought in the War of Independence.
They don't know, for example, why we celebrate July 4th.
Things that basically you should know as an American, they don't know.
But they're not even concerned.
This is, it's funny.
It's cute that they don't know.
They laugh.
So to me, it bothers me, but I don't know if maybe this is a generational thing, and maybe this was always the way it is.
But it seems to me like people are just getting stupider.
I had read, I don't remember where, what site, but somebody, a little girl had sent Lincoln a letter.
And this was back in, you know, the 1800s.
And I read that letter.
It was written by a 12-year-old girl.
She sounded like a college graduate.
And 12-year-old kids, today, everybody's playing video games.
It just seems like nobody knows anything.
Nobody can focus for more than a few minutes on anything.
And it's because of the way that we're being, I mean, I'm not going to even throw conspiracy into this.
It's just people don't give a shit anymore.
And they don't give a shit.
I guess they see their kids or maybe not getting the education that they should.
And, well, they don't care.
Well, that's one prediction.
And the other one is: I really hope that Trump makes the presidential nomination.
He, in a Erasmus poll that was done last Wednesday, excuse me, Monday, he was basically neck and neck with Clinton.
So I'm keeping my fingers crossed for that.
And he hasn't even really started attacking her.
Full strike.
Oh, I can't wait to see.
Can you imagine seeing the two of them on a debate stage with one another?
We don't need another Clinton or another Bush in office.
It's more of the same.
I voted for Obama twice.
And I'm going to be back now.
You know what?
This is a little microcosm of what's happening all across the country.
Here we're listening to someone who voted for Barack Obama twice and is now saying she hopes that Donald Trump is the next president of the United States.
And I tell you what, you people out there that think that none of the Hispanics are going to vote for Donald Trump, or I think Muslims probably are going to stay away from him, but I think Hispanics and blacks are going to vote for Donald Trump in large numbers because those are two of the groups that have been hurt the worst by the economic circumstances that we find ourselves in the midst of right now.
And by the way, how insulting it is to Hispanics to say that because they have brown skin and speak Spanish, that they would be just fine philosophically with the idea of people illegally flooding across the southern border.
That's insulting to them.
And I know a lot of Hispanic people who came into the country legally, filed all the paperwork, paid all the fines, and I can assure you they are not pleased by the concept of people flooding into the country illegally, getting on social benefits after doing so,
and then to add insult to injury, being granted amnesty by hack politicians like Marco Rubio, like Paul Ryan, and all of these other Republican rhino shits who really are in no way connected to the base of their own party.
I mean, I really do believe at this point that the Republican Party wants a different base.
It wants the base that the Democratic Party has, but they've already got the Democratic Party.
So what do the Republicans at the national level think they're going to do?
It's not much of a difference anymore.
I just feel like both parties are sellouts and it's all about lining their pocket, getting money and getting power, and they don't give a rat's ass about their constituents.
They'll lie.
Did you hear the latest change to the immigration thing that Obama's pushing through by executive mandate?
Oh, God.
No.
I don't even know if I want to hear this.
It's going to make me so mad.
Anybody that's here on a student visa that graduates from college automatically gets a work permit.
Well, let me say this.
I do feel like when people come here and they are brilliant and they demonstrate that brilliance in college, they go through the four-year program, they get a bachelor's degree or they get a master's degree, whatever it is they do.
I do think it's a shame that those people would go back to their home countries and start companies and end up competing with us on the global market.
And actually, the problem is, okay, how do we allow those people to stay here and help us compete in the global economy without them driving everybody's wages down to $3 an hour?
That's the only problem.
I don't want people coming here and bringing their third world with them.
Right.
And that's what we have a lot of.
So if we could find a way to get these students who are brilliant, masterful people and make them a part of our economy and make the United States a stronger nation in the global economy, if we can find a way to do that without those people coming in here and ending up working for 50% of what a Native American, yes, an Indian chief.
No, I mean, a native-born American would have ended up being paid for that job.
If we can find a way to avoid that, then I think it's great.
But I think you would agree too, Gravity Sucks, as long as we could eliminate that problem, right?
If there was a process where each candidate was reviewed and there was something that came along and said, you're not going to be able to bring your family members over here because you got your visa or whatever.
But before it was, we need all these immigrants to come in because they're doing the jobs that Americans won't do.
And now it's, okay, we're going to let all these college graduates stay because the people graduating college can't get a job now anyway.
So we're going to put another 100,000 people a year in the mix and let them compete in a work in a workforce to where you got probably a realistic rate of 18, 19% unemployment.
Well, here's another possibility.
Maybe we stop universities from bringing in college students from foreign countries.
That would bring our college costs way down right away.
Universities would have no choice but to lower their rates.
That's why the cost of a college education is so much right now because there are too many people trying to get one.
It's supply and demand.
Anybody can get a student loan, so anybody's going to try to go to college.
It's really frustrating in so many regards.
But I feel like as long as we have this system here that's allowing these people to come here and go to school, get a degree, become successful, it just adds insult to injury for them to then turn around and go back to their own countries and compete against us.
And Trump was talking about one example of that where this guy comes over here, he goes to school, and he goes back to India and starts a company that has 5,000 employees.
I mean, that could have been our company.
That could have been an American company employing Americans.
So I do agree with the idea of keeping people who are company starters, but I don't want to keep people who are just going to go work in the assembly line at my local widget factory, you know?
I'm so behind Donald Trump.
I am so 100% hoping.
And you know what's funny?
TrumpGab.com.
Yeah.
No, you know what's funny that a few years ago, if you had even suggested that Trump would run for president, I would have laughed and I would have said, nobody's going to vote for him.
But now I'm ready to vote for him.
If I could work for his campaign, I would because I'm so tired.
Like I said, I just feel like Americans get it up the butt by politicians.
And we all fall for the rhetoric of, oh, are you a Democrat or you're a Republican?
And then they keep people at each other's throats so that we don't really see what they're doing, but our lives are all collectively getting worse.
I don't feel like my life is improving.
And I have a graduate degree and I live paycheck to paycheck.
And I know a lot of people who are social workers have a lot of the people I know have master's degrees.
Forget college degrees.
They have master's degrees and everybody's living paycheck to paycheck.
Like you said, Mike, they're struggling just to pay their bills.
Forget about being able to put money away for retirement or put money away for savings.
A lot of people have to rate their savings every time they have any sort of a crisis in their life.
Then it's like, well, thank God that savings is there.
But what happens when it's spent down?
I see people in the chat room saying, oh, my God, Trump, what a freak show.
Oh, my God, Trump, what a disaster.
Are you kidding?
Well, those aren't really arguments.
So, you know, if you want to call in and discuss the specificity of your revulsion with Trump, that would be lovely.
You know what's unique, though, MV?
Is that I don't hear anybody saying, we got to have Hillary Clinton.
We got to have Hillary Clinton.
And I don't see her drawing crowds of 8, 10, 12,000 people either.
No, 35,000 people showed up to see him in Mobile, Alabama.
35,000.
Are you telling me there's not something happening here?
I mean, something's happening.
I feel really bad that I just said those words into a microphone.
Hi, you're on the air.
Hello.
Somewhere.
Hey, there's Willie.
Hey, man.
How's it going?
Oh, I'm hurting, brother, but man, your voice is soothing.
Oh, thank you.
I got to turn the volume when Inglorious Bitch starts talking.
Wow.
Oh, geez.
Well, I have told her that.
I have told her to try and talk less, but she just doesn't listen.
Are you reading that?
What's that?
She's really pissing her off.
Actually, I can hear it in her voice.
He's messing with you.
He's messing with you.
It's okay.
I was being sarcastic.
I said, are your ears bleeding yet?
But I'm joking.
Okay, Willie and I too hard.
I thought we were going to have a little bit of a scrappy for a minute, guys.
Well, you know, I've been driving around here trying to get free Wi-Fi, so it's kind of been in and out on the show tonight.
But I did catch one thing that she said.
She said that it's all sarcasm and stuff that we see on the Fankee thread.
And I'll tell you what, I have maybe told one or two lies on there, but as far as the boxing stuff goes, nothing 100% true, man.
I bought a place on Eric.
Yeah, like, I don't know.
A little while ago, I don't have plumbing or anything like that, but I always got lots of beer, and so I've made use with the boxes and everything else.
I thought about getting one of those incinerator toilets, but man, they're scandy, and I've just kind of, you know, put two and two together, and I've come up with a good little system.
So that's 100% true.
So you're dumping into a box, but you have a cell phone.
Okay.
Yes, yes, yes.
Oh, man, it's hard to dig a hole up here in the freaking middle of winter time.
Well, you know.
You know, I think that maybe you could take the battery out of your cell phone and use it to start a fire.
Oh, I start fires, believe me.
But as far as digging.
Only metaphorically, right?
No, I mean, not in a variety of stuff.
Oh, don't say that.
We'll have Keith calling up to wag his finger at us.
Let's be calm, please.
Yeah, yeah.
But no, totally, once it thaws out up here, man, I'm going to dig a septic tank.
That'll probably be the first thing I do.
Let me ask you this, AK, Willie.
If the Falkey thread went away tomorrow, would you continue using Bellgap?
I would.
Not that it will.
I'm just asking a theoretical set of circumstances here.
I would.
I'd be disappointed.
But, you know, there's other things on there where, you know.
Yeah.
I mean, like, I've listened, I've been on there on the Richard Hoagland deal, and I haven't actually even heard a word that he said on the show, really.
I just kind of read what everyone else is putting down.
So as far as Bellgab goes, I give damn less about our belly.
You know, it's just cool.
Oh, my.
Listen, you got to do the gab cast, and then, of course, talking to people online and stuff.
I don't care who's on the radio, to be honest with you.
Well, your indifference is duly noted, and it's echoed in many corridors.
Do you have a prediction, please?
Absolutely.
I have a feeling that you're going to be working for Falke by this time next year.
Well, that would be a 2017 prediction, sir.
We want 2016.
Although a lot of people perhaps could see the inherent validity in what you just suggested, still, that doesn't qualify as a 2016 prediction.
Well, it is a leap year.
I don't know exactly what that means, but I heard somebody tell me that last night or something.
I can't remember what was going on.
It means that February will have one additional day.
Oh, okay.
That's all it means.
I mean, that's really good.
It's a day of work.
I wonder why they chose February.
Or I should say Feb.
I wonder why they chose Feb as the day that occurs.
Why not make December 32 days long?
That would rock, wouldn't it?
I mean, if you just had an extra day to the holiday season at the end of the year, no, let's put it in February, really?
Really?
Put it at the end of December.
Let's have 32 days in December.
What's the difference?
It's not going to hurt anybody.
It'll just require a few lines of code and a few computer programs here and there to be reworked.
But it'll be Y2K all over again.
Wouldn't that be a hoot if we just created a new Y2K?
Look, we don't care what's happening with the computers.
We're going with 32 days in December, so shut it.
That would be awesome.
I saw somebody in the thread in the chat room just a little while ago that said they see Trump as the chemotherapy to Obama's cancer.
And I think it goes so far beyond that.
I see him as the chemotherapy to Obama's cancer, the George W. Bush cancer.
Yeah, Clinton to a lesser extent before him, but Clinton.
He is the chemotherapy to the political class cancer in general.
We're governed by an entire class of people who are more concerned with doing favors for their donors and maintaining their power than they are and appearing nice while they're doing so than in doing what's best for the American people.
And I think in order for things to get straightened out, in order for things to get put on the right track, it's going to take somebody who is fundamentally different from anybody we've ever had before as the chief executive of this nation.
And that sure as hell isn't Hillary Clinton.
That's what I thought about Obama.
I was like, oh, he's not a Washington insider.
His mother was a single parent.
This is, you know, he's one of the people.
And it didn't work out.
So I'm just hoping that, you know, the old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.
I hope Trump isn't the second coming of Obama, that he sounds like he does not come from a background that would lend to that even being a possibility.
I just can't see that even being a possibility.
The background that he comes from, he's a sharp-toothed, he's an animal.
Yeah, he is.
I mean, he smells blood in the water and he knows how to turn that into his own benefit.
And I want to see that philosophy applied to the methods by which this country is run and operated on a daily basis.
And it currently isn't.
We're governed by people who are consumed with looking nice, with getting good press.
With being PC.
The woman who started the Corcoran Report, I read her biography a few years ago, and she was saying how Trump tried to screw her over because they had made a deal during lunch and he reneged on it.
But fortunately, she kept the napkin that he had written on.
So she was able to make sure that he had to abide by what he had agreed to.
But the point being is that he is an animal, but maybe that's a good thing.
I mean, in terms of being on the world stage, because I feel that America's reputation has fallen far.
Like years ago, it does seem like we had more national pride.
Now it's just, I don't know.
Imagine this.
Trump gets the Republican nomination.
Hillary's the Democratic nominee, which I think is still in question, by the way.
I think Elizabeth Warren is waiting in the wings to see if Hillary ends up getting indicted, which I predict she will be.
And I know that absolutely.
And I know nobody agrees with me on that because no, for the email server.
I entirely believe she's going to be indicted.
The FBI is currently investigated.
Comey is a Republican, but beyond that, he's not a party shill.
He went against the Bush administration when it came to various aspects of the Patriot Act.
There was something, John Ashcroft was in his hospital bed, and they thought he was dying, actually.
And there was a provision of the Patriot Act that was supposed to be reenacted.
And I don't remember what the provision was, but I think it allowed it either allowed the government to collect certain information about people or it allowed them to conduct a certain type of warrantless whatever.
I don't remember what it was.
But Comey knew that they were headed over to John Ashcroft's hospital bed during the Bush administration, by the way, of course, since Ashcroft was the attorney general.
They were headed to the hospital, people from the Justice Department, to Ashcroft's hospital bed.
Ashcroft.
Ashcroft.
I started getting confused.
Should I have said Ashcroft or Ashcroft?
It's like when you repeat a word again and again and again and you lose sight of how to pronounce it.
I think it's Ashcroft, John Ashcroft.
They were rushing to his hospital bed to get this paperwork signed so that that provision could be reenacted.
And Comey got in a car and raced his ass over there to prevent that from happening because he thought that provision of the Patriot Act was unconstitutional.
And he prevented it.
Well, the whole thing is really.
And so Comey is no party hack.
He is a Republican.
Yes, he was originally placed into the FBI.
I believe he was originally placed into the FBI by Bush.
And he was retained by Obama.
And he will do, I believe, what's right under the law.
I have seen a few people on TV talking heads who are reputable people, including Rudy Giuliani, who has worked closely as a former prosecutor.
Anyone you can name in law enforcement on the national level that has a name, Rudy Giuliani probably knows them pretty well, and he has publicly stated that he believes if Comey recommends an indictment to the Justice Department to Loretta Lynch, the Attorney General, he believes she will honor that and she will indict Hillary Clinton.
My prediction was similar, but I don't think that I think the Department of Justice will not indict.
I think the FBI will recommend charges and they'll have a solid case, but I think Obama's going to override them.
Well, you know what?
That begs an entire series of additional questions.
And those questions are, what policy positions is Hillary Clinton currently taking that she otherwise wouldn't take, but for her fear that she could lose favor with the Obama administration and be indicted.
So not only is she controlled by her donors, not only is she controlled by her lobbyists, not only is she controlled by the people who are donating to the Clinton Foundation, she's also controlled by the Obama administration who could throw her in a tin can anytime they want to.
Exactly.
So what policy positions is she continuing to take that she otherwise wouldn't have?
Do you think we've gotten the truth on Benghazi?
Truth in what way?
As far as the military was ready to send people in and they were told to stand down?
I don't know.
But I do think that I do think it's pretty clear she lied to the family members of the people killed and told them that it was the video, it was that anti-Islam video on YouTube.
And we're going to get that guy who put that video on YouTube.
Even though I'd like to know under what law you can imprison somebody for posting a video that offends a prophet from the year 700 AD.
But okay.
I'd like to know how you get around the First Amendment there, but okay.
But she knew all along that it was just, it was an attack by militants.
It was a planned, coordinated attack, and she made it sound like it was some sort of organic uprising in the street that occurred as a result of the outrage that happened after that video was posted on YouTube.
So we do know she definitely lied to them.
And there are numerous other lies.
All she does is lie.
Like when she landed in Bosnia and she said she was being fired upon and she had to run for cover, it turns out that when she landed, what actually happened was that whatever party was meeting her brought her tea and her staff members.
Yeah, it was like the equivalent of the Girl Scouts met her at the airplane.
Yeah, yeah.
I think she's an abominable character.
And I think that the people, the people of the United States, who, the citizens of this country who refer to themselves as Democrats, this should be a very sad day for them.
That the best their party can do as their nominee is this hack, this tired, worn-out old hack, Hillary Clinton, who's embroiled in scandal, who is offering nothing new.
She brings nothing new to the table.
And I was going to say a moment ago: oh, the irony that here we are in 2016, if Trump is the Republican nominee and she's the Democratic nominee, we will have debates in which the Republican candidate opposed the Iraq war and the Democrat voted in favor of it in the Senate.
Wow.
Now, talk about cognitive dissonance.
I wonder how people are going to reconcile that in their own minds as they're looking at this electoral process this time around.
I'd like to know all the Republicans who are still carrying water for the Bush administration and saying that the Iraq war was a good thing to do, including Jeb Bush, who, by the way, should just get out of the race.
He should take all of that donor money that he's spending and give it to St. Jude Hospital, St. Jude Children's Hospital.
Do something with that money that will actually have some benefit other than just simply enriching the pockets of lining the pockets of corporate media broadcast entities who air his commercials.
That's all that money is being used for when it could just, he knows he's not going to win.
Well, maybe he doesn't know, but everyone around him knows.
Everybody observing this process knows.
So just someone get his ear and please inform him that the money could be much better spent elsewhere.
They've spent $60 million thus far in this primary campaign trying to get Jeb Bush to be the Republican nominee for the presidency.
And it's just not going to happen.
He doesn't sound, he doesn't sound intellectual.
He doesn't sound articulate.
He doesn't sound strong.
He doesn't sound any different than any politician.
That's the problem.
People are sick of politicians.
And everybody just instinctively knows in their own subconscious as they're looking at this process.
Everybody knows that in order to fix what we have right now as problems, it's going to take a transformative figure.
It's going to take somebody who is markedly different from anyone that's come before.
And Jeb Bush ain't it.
And he's even standing on a debate stage with a straight face saying that he supports his brother's Iraq war policies.
Even now, even with what?
12 years of hindsight.
He's, I mean, I, okay, I can forgive somebody who supported that war back in 2003 at the time because we were still coming off the heels of 9-11 and that whole mindset.
And people just wanted to go out and bomb the Islamic world and we didn't care.
It's just, you know what?
Are they brown?
Okay, do they have Qurans?
Okay, you know what?
Bomb them and their jalabas, please.
Let's get that going right now.
I mean, they could have listed any crappy nation in that part of the world and the American people would have gotten wholeheartedly behind bombing it.
At least 50% of them would, at least enough to give the president a mandate, as he had, to go into Iraq.
But with 12 years of hindsight to look back on that and still stand on a stage at a debate and say, yes, the Iraq war was the right thing to do.
If you want more Bush-era policies, as we've gotten for the last eight years with Obama, by the way, Obama's administration, in my way of thinking, has just been a continuation of Bush-era policies.
And in some ways, he's furthered them with the domestic spying programs.
A lot of that, you need to go watch that documentary.
Well, it's not the one that was really popular in theaters about Ed Snowden.
That wasn't that Ed Snowden movie, the one that was really successful in theaters.
That's not the one I'm talking about.
There's another one on Netflix that you can go watch that gives you the history of the NSA's domestic spying program subsequent to 9-11 and how it all happened.
And it was just amazing to me the number of things that the Obama administration did to augment those policies, to further them beyond, above and beyond what the Bush administration ever could have dreamt of.
So we've gotten a continuation of the Bush administration through Obama.
And I'm just, I don't want any, I've had enough of it.
And if you elect Rubio, you're going to get more of the same.
I don't trust Ted Cruz.
He's got the most punchable face in politics.
When I look at Ted Cruz, his face just has a, it's, it's, he speaks like a Southern Baptist minister.
He has this cadence and delivery that seems to suggest that what he's delivering at that, you know, I like I, when Obama was running for the presidency, and he still even does it to this day, he would get into this cadence where he would sound like a 1960s civil rights leader.
And we're going to make America great today because that's what the people need.
There's just a certain thing he does where you can tell that the model for that way of speaking is the 1960s, the quintessential 1960s civil rights activist.
That's how he's speaking.
And when I hear that from him, I cringe and I have that same cringey feeling, that same douche-chill sensibility hits me when I hear Ted Cruz speaking in his Southern Baptist minister voice, which, by the way, is entirely rooted in his belief that the way you get elected as a Republican is to be a Bible-pounding fundamentalist.
And I am, you know, I guess I no longer call myself a Republican, but I will tell you that I am so finished with religious fundamentalists in my politics.
And that all started with George W. Bush.
Did you know that George Bush called up Jacques Chirac as he was beginning this run-up to the Iraq war, and he was trying to get all these international people on board and build this coalition?
And in the course of trying to convince Chirac to go along, he began quoting Bible verses to him and telling Chirac about certain things that aren't even in the Bible that Chirac was utterly and completely confused by.
As he's holding the phone up to his face, he's got a crowd of people standing around him, also hearing the call, and he's looking at them, and they're looking back at him, and everyone is just confused.
And finally, the call ends, and he looks at his people, Chirac does, and says, I have no idea what that guy just said to me.
But he wants me to go to war with Iraq based on something he found in the Bible?
I am through with that in my politics.
And the whole Ted Cruz candidacy is entirely designed to appeal to that crowd.
And I think that anyone who thinks that that's what you have to be to become a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, they're living in the past.
They're living in the 8, 10, 12 years ago.
That's finished.
Things have gone so far beyond that.
I don't think most people vote on abortion anymore.
I don't think most people vote on prayer in schools.
I don't think most people vote on those types of issues anymore.
We're just sick and tired of lightweights running the country and feeling that their mandate comes from God.
And that's what we had with George W. Bush.
I don't want any more of it.
Rand Paul, that's just not going to happen.
I mean, he doesn't seem credible.
And I think Rand Paul's problem is that he doesn't have any personality.
And every time he answers a question, he gets down into the really granular specifics of the Constitution and the history of things.
And people's eyes just begin to glaze over.
And that's what you were talking about earlier, Inglorious Bitch, that people just don't want to be troubled by detail.
They don't want to be troubled with nuance.
They just can't handle it.
And so when you got a guy who talks to people that way, it just doesn't work.
And that's why so much of what Trump is doing is just so masterful in terms of his understanding of how to use the media, how to manipulate the process by which the media operates.
He understands how to say things, what to say, how to say it.
He understands just exactly how much detail to give.
And I truly believe he's going to be the Republican nominee.
And my saying that isn't because I support him.
It's because I believe he's masterful at manipulating the media, making himself the focal point of all attention.
You go on any cable news talking head show tonight or any night, who do you think they're talking about?
Oh, I mean, if you go, when he's in New York City, there's more reporters outside of Trump Towers than show up to a Bernie Sanders or a Hillary Clinton event.
They're just waiting for him to walk out the door.
He understands that people vote on emotion, which is the same way that I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know this, but I had heard somebody who is a lawyer say that.
A lot of times people, they acquit based on emotion, not based on the facts that they just heard.
And they convict.
Yeah.
Yes, yes.
That's what I meant to say.
I'm sorry.
And I think it's the same way in politics.
People basically choose their team, and this is, I guess, kind of like, you know, even on the Art Bell threat.
You pick your team and you defend your team no matter what.
You don't listen to what the other person is saying.
You just keep repeating what you're, you know, the mantra of your team.
And it's all based on emotion.
I guess maybe humans, we don't really think things through or we don't reason.
We lost that ability some time ago.
And now everything is based on just feelings.
And I think that Trump understands that.
And he knows, like you said, he's masterful about manipulating his image.
But also, I feel that he's misquoted.
A lot of the times, I don't think he said anything about putting, I think he said about the Muslim that not that he didn't want to let Muslims in into the country.
But somehow that got spun into he was saying that he wanted to put them in concentration camps.
And somebody who had been a survivor in a Japanese concentration camp was being interviewed.
Like, I couldn't even read that article because it pissed me off.
So I was like, next.
But a lot of things, again, like I said, people don't have reason abilities because you have to listen to what somebody is saying, not the way the media is spinning it.
But people just read what they read.
They have that visceral reaction, and that's what they go with.
It was amazing how they manipulated that Muslim thing in the media.
Because Trump, in his speech, when he announced that proposed policy of not allowing Muslim immigration into the United States, he said, until our leaders get their heads wrapped around what in the hell is going on.
He didn't say permanently we should ban Muslims from entering the country.
Now, this is the brilliance of Trump.
A lot of people have come out and said, well, his policy might have been a little more palatable had he come forward and said that we should ban people from certain countries.
Yes, that would have been from a strict policy formulation standpoint and from a statesmanship standpoint.
That's how every predictable politician that's ever come before would have done it had they decided to broach the subject.
But that's the brilliance of Trump.
He knows that if he words it that way, nobody is going to be talking about his proposed policy position because it's just not going to do it.
I mean, but if you stand in front of a crowd of 10,000 people and say you want to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the country until our leaders get their heads wrapped around what in the hell is happening, that's going to get some news.
And that's going to get everybody talking.
And for three weeks, even now, people are still running off the momentum that he got in terms of people talking about him from saying that in that way.
He is still benefiting from that.
And by the way, I know when you listen to Jeb Bush or people of his stripe, he clearly thinks he's got his finger on the pulse of how it is that the American people think.
But I can tell you, he does not.
And as evident, as evidenced by the fact that just a week later, after saying that, Trump's polling 10% higher than he was before.
And by the way, anyone who's going to walk around and say that this is a nation that loves Muslims, you're sick in the head, or there's something wrong with you because the American people do not like Islam.
And that's not a commentary on whether they should like Islam or not or whether they should have a problem with Islam.
I'm just telling you that this is a nation packed full of people who hate Islam and they feel justified in feeling that way.
Now, whether they are justified or not, that's an entirely different discussion that would take a long time to delve into.
But this is a nation of people who are not friendly toward Islam, who are not friendly toward Muslims.
That's not to say we're a nation of people burning down mosques, which, by the way, the mosque in Houston that burns to the ground, it turns out to have been burned by a devout Muslim who prayed there for seven years.
Thank you.
And you know, there were just tons of people hoping and praying it was some white guy with a Make America Great Again ball cap.
Yeah, and a wife beater too.
Yeah.
Oh, God, please let him be a Trump supporter.
Oh, God, please.
Oh, no, he's brown and he's a Muslim.
God.
Well, try again.
Drop another Plinko chip and see where that one lands.
Maybe he'll hit the 5G center spot.
I'll have to see what happens.
It's been interesting watching the Trump campaign.
I truly believe he's going to be the nominee.
I think.
I hope so.
I hope he is too.
And I think that if it's anybody else, if it is anybody else, it'll be business as usual.
We will continue growing the national debt.
We will continue allowing China to screw us over in international trade.
We'll continue allowing them to manipulate their currency in the course of doing so.
We'll continue to allow illegal immigration to flow into the country unabated.
We will continue all of these horrible things that people are just fed up with.
And yeah, Trump's getting people riled up on emotion, but why shouldn't someone be emotional when thinking about the fact that their own child is probably going to have a hell of a hard time finding a reasonable job that can sustain them in the future?
Yeah, you can goddamn well bet people are a little emotional about that.
And education as well.
Yeah.
Yes, people are emotional about that.
Sorry, I didn't know that politics was only supposed to involve issues that people are ho-hum about.
I didn't know that you're not allowed to invoke the emotion of your constituency, the emotions of your constituency in running for political office.
That's a new phenomenon, new concept I've never been apprised of.
Tell me more.
I just finished a really nice poli psy class.
Throughout the course of that whole semester, I didn't hear a peep about that.
So, yeah, that's new to me.
But apparently, evoking emotion in the course of trying to get elected to political office, that's only a problem when Trump does it, I guess.
Did anybody see Barack Obama's candidacy in 2008?
It was totally emotional.
I mean, there were very little.
It's all emotional.
There were very few policy specifics that he had anything to say about.
I mean, and the ones that I recall, like closing Guantanamo and not getting into foreign wars when there's not a specific national security interest, he broke all of those promises.
The ones that I can remember, he broke.
So, I mean, anybody remember Libya?
Hello.
Does everybody forget that it was Barack Obama that tried to get us involved in a war in Syria?
And the American people rejected it?
Closing down Guantanamo was another.
Yep.
He totally didn't do that.
And especially, I mean, I'm sure that his feelings, his true feelings are that he doesn't want to close Guantanamo.
And those feelings were only exacerbated when it was determined that the information that they got, if you believe the official story, the information they got that led them to Bin Laden was something that they extracted from somebody at Guantanamo.
So do you think that Obama, after pounding his chest about what a great warrior he is for having gotten bin Laden after Bush before him for eight years and even Clinton before him, couldn't do it?
Suddenly Obama does it.
It turns out the info came from Guantanamo.
Who thinks he's going to go and close Guantanamo after that?
Nobody.
Yeah, plenty of people do think that, but he's not going to, no.
And V, you had said a few minutes ago that there's a, I guess, hostility towards Islam in America.
There was a poll done recently, like a week ago, and I wanted to mention it, except I didn't have any facts on it, but now I just looked it up.
It's on the Christian Science Monitor.
And it says 8 in 10 Americans say it's important for religious freedom to be protected for Christians, but not so much for Muslims.
And the number drops to 6 in 10 when it comes to protecting the religious rights of Muslims.
See?
So there you have it in the Christian Science Monitor from two days ago.
This country hates Islam.
It just hates Israel.
They hate what it represents because years ago, I don't think people really thought anything about it one way or another, but we've come to associate it with terrorism or with somebody going to a Christmas party and killing everybody.
You know, you come to associate it with violence.
And whether that association is fair or not, in some regards, I think it is fair because everywhere I look where terrorism is occurring, Islam is involved.
And okay, oh, there's got to be someone who's going to come out of the woodwork and present me with the Timothy McVeigh case.
Okay, we get it.
I was in the ninth grade when that happened.
I mean, is that how far back we have to go?
Oh, well, let's talk about the IRA.
Okay, that's old news, too.
I'm talking about the world we're living in right now.
I mean, the IRA is not even post-9-11, right?
The IRA, that whole mess was mopped up well before 9-11 even happened.
So how far back in history do you have to go to make your silly, specious little Christians are terrorists too?
Argument.
I'm sorry.
I can't have a conversation with somebody who thinks that way or wants to present that to me as the foundation of their case to tell me why I and the overwhelming, an overwhelming chunk of Americans who feel that way are wrong.
I mean, okay, yeah, here's, let me tell you this.
I'm married to a Muslim, and my wife actually supports Donald Trump in many regards.
She's a little worried about his Muslim immigration thing because she's afraid that it might make it really hard for her family members to come visit here.
But she agrees with that policy position in principle.
Can you believe that?
Now, I'm sitting here telling you that, and I realize that, yes, I have, as a result of, you know, you can make anybody believe anything if you beat them enough.
They'll eventually agree with you.
So, yes, there is that.
But my point earlier, that I think you're going to be really surprised by the number of blacks and Hispanics that end up supporting Trump.
I won't go across that line and say that.
I won't go across that line and say that about Muslims, but when you listen to somebody like my wife, but granted, she's extremely Americanized.
I mean, if you met her, you wouldn't even know she's not an American.
Her accent is so clean.
She doesn't wear a hijab or any of that stuff.
You wouldn't even know she's from a foreign country if you met her.
I have a co-worker in my office.
She's from Africa.
She's been here a few years.
She wants to vote for Trump because we were talking about it in the office.
And of course, the office is very split.
But she was saying she will vote for Trump.
She's black and she's from Africa.
So yeah, you're right.
I think people in general, it doesn't matter about race or color.
People are sick of seeing this country deteriorate.
And I feel like Trump seems like the only one who would really make a difference.
It will be business as usual.
If Santorum or Christie or Clinton or if any of those people were elected, it would be business as usual.
Santorum is the reason I wish everybody would quit having orgasms over what happens in Iowa next month.
Does everybody realize that Santorum won in Iowa back in 2008?
2012?
I mean, 2012.
Or no, it was 2008, I think.
It was 2008 or 2012.
One of the two, Santorum won.
Can you believe?
I think it was actually when McCain ran.
So it was 2008.
Santorum was the guy in Iowa.
So can we stop assigning so much weight to what this big giant cornfield in the center of the United States thinks?
I'm just really, and by the way, this caucus process, you think you understand how a primary election works?
Go look at how the caucus process works in Iowa.
It is the most cumbersome, convoluted, confusing mishmash of haphazard chaos.
It's the stupidest thing ever.
I mean, let's employ the most complex process we possibly can in determining who it is we support as the nominee.
That's what we're going to use here in Iowa.
That's what somebody apparently decided at some point.
I think that I think you're really going to be surprised at the people that come out of the woodwork to vote for Trump.
And I think that the support he has in the polls is understated.
I think the support for Trump is much higher than he's being polled at.
I think all of the, you know, there's a science behind polling.
People go to college for many years to learn how to be pollsters and work for the companies that do that professionally and make a lot of money doing it.
And so there are algorithms, there are axiomatic, there are rules that you use in deciding what the results of polls are going to be.
I think all those rules, they've all been turned on their head this election cycle.
And I think that these traditional mechanisms that are used in order for pollsters to determine what the results of their polls are going to be, it's all worthless.
And I think that you're going to just be so shocked.
I can't wait.
This is going to be such an exciting year.
I'm so optimistic.
I couldn't be happier.
And thank you for tuning into the Donald Trump Hour.
I want to tell everybody that I want to tell everybody that it's been our pleasure bringing it to you and ask that you tune in next week for another edition of the Donald Trump Hour, where we will explain to you why it is that your political viewpoints are wrong and ours are correct and why you should in fact be deported from the country.
No, why you should in fact agree with us.
I was talking to my wife the other day, and I was like, you know, I really am just hoping that there's some circumstance in which you could be deported if Trump gets elected.
I really just am hoping that finally my woes come to an end and I don't have my fingerprints on any of it.
I can say, sorry, babe.
You know, you know, that Donald Trump, he sure is a feisty one, isn't he?
But there's your plane.
And there's a Starbucks over here.
The line just opened up.
So there's the walk.
Yeah.
See ya.
Enjoy your flight, honey.
That's the future I envision for myself.
Now, my wife and I, you should hear the political discussions we have in this house.
I sometimes wish that I keep telling her, you know, you really gotta, you gotta come on the podcast and shoot the bullcrap with me a little bit sometime.
Let's just talk about life.
Let's talk about just existing.
Let's talk about politics.
Let's talk about rel, you know, all of these things.
Because she comes from such a vastly incongruent background relative to my background and that of just about everybody listening that I think you would really be fascinated by the political arguments that we have in this house.
And for me to be of the mindset that I am and be married to somebody who's a Muslim, I mean, if you saw my Twitter feed right now and you found out that that guy is married, M. Van Deven, by the way, M VanDeven, if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, if you saw what I say on Twitter and then juxtapose that with that guy is married, you would never have any clue that I'm married to a Muslim.
Really, the only reason I'm saying these things and I'm posting those things on, I just want to keep the NSA off my ass.
So, you know, there has to be a counterbalance.
And so I'm doing what I can do.
What?
I'm doing what any reasonable, responsible head of the household would do in this situation.
Well, I think this was a fun show.
I think this was an entertaining show.
I am entirely thrilled that the two of you decided to volunteer to host the show tonight.
And I want to remind everybody, anyone listening right now, if you're a user at bellgab.com and you would like to be a host of this show, as Inglorious Bitch and Gravity Sucks are at the moment, you can easily do so anytime we announce that there's a gab cast coming up in the gabcast thread at bellgab.com.
All you have to do is jump in there, raise your hand, and say, hey, I want to host.
And as long as you're within one of the first three people that say so, then guess what?
You're in.
You're in like Flynn.
So that's something you can.
That's something you can place in your little calendar there out there.
Okay.
Anyway, MV, I enjoyed it again.
Me too.
That's all you had to say.
We thought you were going somewhere with that.
No, I do have a question for you, MV.
What's that?
You said something in one of the last two podcasts about you and Evelyn starting the train wreck back up.
You know what?
I'm glad you mentioned that, and I will quickly say that I feel like we took out some trash with this episode of the Gabcast.
And while their yes is going to continue being a gabcast, I'm going to begin focusing most of my efforts on the train wreck show with Evelyn from going forward.
I think that's the way forward for me.
I enjoyed that show.
I never listened to it when you were doing it, but I've gone back and a lot of people have said that.
I just did not listen to it.
But that's where their sentence ends, actually.
They don't qualify it the way you did.
I've downloaded the episodes and they're quite good, I think.
Thanks, buddy.
I appreciate that.
Evelyn and I started doing that back in 2009.
And we're so different from one another, and that's why it works.
If you go get someone to do a show with you, if they match your views, if they come from the same background as you, if they sound the same way you do, it's not going to be a good show.
You need someone who's extremely different from you.
And that's what Evelyn is.
I mean, she's 79 years old.
Yeah, she's very different from me.
So that's what I'm going to focus my future efforts on is the Trainwreck show.
This will still keep going, of course, but that's my plan for 2016.
And hopefully Evelyn hears that and it gives her a boost because she could really use a job, you know?
So that'll give her something to do.
And I'm sorry SV was missing in action.
I don't know what happened to him.
He just didn't answer.
But as you pointed out at the top of the show, it's something like 2, 3 a.m. where he is.
Yeah, they're five hours ahead.
Yeah, what do you want, you know?
Okay, guys, thanks again.
Thanks to everybody listening.
Catch this show in downloadable format at ufoship.com.
Follow me on Twitter.
It's mvandeven.
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