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Oct. 3, 2008 - No Agenda
01:08:59
50: The Sarah Palin Show
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It's time once again for Joe Sixpack and the Soccer Moms.
Hey everybody, it's No Agenda coming to you from the West Coast or the West Side of Gitmo Nation.
And high and horny in the Curry Condo overlooking the San Francisco Bay and the Financial District.
My name's Adam Curry.
And I'm John C. Dvorak here in northern Silicon Valley, overlooking the bay from the other side, the cheap side, the cheap seats, as it were.
Hey, I can see you.
Hey, how you doing there, John?
Love to see you.
Waving back at you.
So let me just start off, if I may, by saying...
She had me from hello.
May I call you Joe?
Wait, wait.
Before you say anything, we're doing a special show here because we just watched the debates and we're doing a Thursday night version of No Agenda.
Yeah, it's the vice presidential debate of 2008.
Right.
And I have to tell you that I think Joe Biden kicked her ass.
You're kidding me.
Yes, I am actually kidding.
My goodness.
I was thinking of different things to say to get your reaction.
You know, I... I'm almost at a loss for words, John.
This debate so validates my entire theory that this whole thing is a charade equal to...
It's the biggest reality show in the universe!
Big numbers.
And this woman is...
Palin-mania is what I predict.
Palin-mania.
And may I say, we are all going to die when she is vice president.
But Palin-mania!
This was fantastic!
What a great show!
Well, okay.
So let's start analyzing this thing.
I took a shitload of notes.
I just couldn't stop.
Well...
Let me start with some notes.
Well, okay.
Let's do a little overview, because I got a lot of notes, but my notes are probably different than yours.
What channel are you watching it on?
As last time I watched it on CNBC, I watched nothing of the run-up.
I only watched from the very beginning.
Okay.
Same here, but I watched a lot of the after shows, and you did too, even though you didn't want to admit it.
Honestly, I just switched around because I wanted to see Rachel, whatever her name is, on MSNBC. Rachel Ray?
No, not Rachel Ray.
I think Sarah can cook.
You know the one we were talking about earlier today?
That one?
Yeah, yeah.
That one.
That one.
So, I just had to...
Because she was so smug yesterday playing video of Sarah Palin playing a flute.
And I just...
I had to see what she picked out as the...
As the bad points of Mabel's performance.
We ran that flute video on the Dvorak.org slash blog site.
Did people say it's a phone?
All the comments were the same.
I wish she was playing my flute.
Hey John, that's our audience!
Unbelievable.
These people should be ashamed of themselves.
This is my point, John.
This is my exact point.
This is what the audience wants.
I'm telling you what Sarah Palin did this evening.
It was unprecedented.
You won't hear this on mainstream media.
No one's going to admit this.
Maybe Fox.
But it was unprecedented.
The acting performance, of course, politics being show business for ugly people, the mold has been broken.
Because Sarah Palin is beautiful.
She's stunning.
She delivered all the lines.
She knew what to say.
She lost it a little bit there when Joe choked up, but she came back and finished.
I want to talk about the Joe choking up thing.
And by the way, at the beginning of the show, and I'm watching it on HD, and I'm using the projector so there's a 10-foot screen, she was visibly shaking for the first 5 or 10 minutes.
Yeah.
And I've worked with people on TV. She was tight.
Generally speaking, you can't see it.
And most people wouldn't have noticed it.
Unless you're sitting there with the person, you won't see it.
Because I've seen people shaking like a leaf, but it doesn't show up on TV. But with HD, with a 10-foot screen, you see it.
Well, that wasn't visible, but I totally believe it.
She was wound up tight.
Yeah, she relaxed about 15, 20 minutes into it.
By the way, and the thing, before we get into our little discussion here, I want to mention this, that the woman that was the moderator, Gwen Eiffel...
Controversial moderator, I understand, right?
Yes, because she has a book coming out called Obama World or Obama Nation or the Obama something or other.
I presume it's a pro-Obama book?
She's a total Obama nut, so she had to back off, and she did a really good job until about 12 minutes.
Oh, yeah, wait a minute.
I know I have the note here somewhere.
She had a couple of zingers that were so anti-Palin.
Which one was it?
She had the heartbeat away.
Oh, no, that was later than 12 minutes.
Oh, no, I'm not saying 12 minutes.
That was 12 minutes after the hour.
Oh, right, okay.
It was at 7.12.
Total shark jump, and there was another one.
There was another...
A meme that she threw out there.
Ah, which one was it?
I'm looking for it.
Well, you have it in your notes.
But let's start deconstructing this.
What was that?
You mean the one heartbeat away?
Yeah, that was at 12 minutes after 7.
I thought that was the real one that she threw in.
Palin, I hope she was a little more aggressive than she is, and she should have said, you know, that's a funny question you should ask that, because this would be really cool if she was like a coach type.
I've been looking over every vice president.
I've had a presidential debate since 1930, and no one's ever asked that question before.
Is this like some sort of an insult?
Throw it back.
I'm sure it wouldn't have gone over with a lot of people.
Shall I tell you that in that case, I actually believe that when she was training, they didn't think about the audacity of the moderator actually asking that question.
Because otherwise she would have had a super one-liner.
Because man, she had them.
She had freaking zingers.
There was a one-liner waiting to happen with that one heart beat away question, especially when Gwen Ifill has a book on Obama, a pro-Obama book coming out in the months ahead.
This is a total conflict of interest situation that they only kind of glossed over on these different channels.
But no, but as far as I'm concerned, hey, if I'm producing this type of material, this kind of show for a national audience, she's off the show.
Yeah, exactly.
She's off the show.
But John, what are you talking about?
This show...
This is the way it's supposed to be built up, man.
This thing was scripted.
Are you crazy?
This was fantastic from beginning to end.
Everything was put together.
And even the sympathy laugh for Biden when he cracked the ultimate bridge to nowhere joke.
That was the other shark jump.
Well, there's a couple.
Okay, go on with your list of notes.
Oh, no, it's too long.
It's just way too long.
Well, mine's not too long because it's only when I'm irked that I jump in.
Let's go over what happened on CNN, which you didn't watch and I did.
CNN again had the little graph thing, but they changed it.
And what bugged me is when I first saw the change, I went...
What is this bullshit?
What was the change?
They changed it from Democrats, Republicans, and Independents to men and women in Ohio.
What?
And that was it?
Oh, man.
They punted.
They totally punted.
You know what?
They knew the time bomb was coming.
They got word of it.
Well?
You know why?
Because Joey Danko, Biden's middle class friend, clued him into it.
Well, you know what?
And I hate to say, you know what, because I'm not really asking a question.
I actually wrote it.
I hate that.
By the way, I wrote a column in the whole place of Human Events about saying, you know what, versus guess what, which is things 12-year-olds say.
And Biden, and I was criticizing the Democrats for saying, you know what, you know what?
And then...
And then I said, it's worse than, or it's not as bad as when you're 10 and a kid, every time they talk to you, they say, guess what, guess what, guess what?
My daughter does that all the time.
I think we talked about this before.
Yeah, she stopped doing it and now, you know, but Biden kept saying, guess what?
He sounded like a 12-year-old.
In his closing remarks, he even started off by saying, look.
I was like, whoa, whoa.
Get back to this thing with the...
So that sucks, man.
That's no good.
Stop.
I like this better because it didn't give you the feeling for the independence, but it showed you the difference between men and women.
How did it go?
I don't want to be critical here, but...
The women totally loved her, right?
No, no.
It wasn't the women loving her.
It was the points that women went up and the men went down.
I think they should take the vote away from women.
Oh, my God.
Okay, John.
Now, listen.
Listen, my friend.
My wife would probably agree with me.
But it's just women in Ohio.
It's just women in Ohio.
It's not representative of the whole country.
It's not representative of those East Coast politicians.
Now, looking at the way the graph went...
Palin, early on, was the only one, and this didn't even happen in the previous debate, she pinned the needle With both men and women, which means the 100% mark, it was pinned.
You know what?
Biden pinned the needle two or three times with men or women, one of the two, but never with both.
And it was when she went on and on about personal responsibility.
We should know what, you know, our parents told us to be good people and we should do this and that.
And it was just, it just buried it.
It was unbelievable.
Oh, fantastic.
Well, first of all, a couple of general...
General comments.
It was a really red set, which of course, all this stuff, this show is all, they say they agree to stuff, but basically the producer comes in and says, okay, here's what you're going to wear, here's what you're going to wear, and then maybe a little bit of debate back and forth.
So she couldn't wear a red power dress.
But I thought she was dressed very well.
She looked spectacular.
And when she opened, first of all, the hello, can I call you Joe?
By the way, she didn't call him Joe once during the entire debate.
And where?
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Her mic was open and Biden's wasn't.
What was that all about?
Not on CNBC. I could hear him.
You heard him?
I heard him on her mic.
What did he say?
He said, well, yeah, you can.
Very light.
She was saying, can I call you, Joe?
It was really loud, and then you heard him say yes.
It was coming through her mic.
Can I call you, Joe?
And actually, Biden, you could hear him audibly inhaling a couple of times during the debate.
After you would finish 90 seconds, you could go...
I was like, whoa, man, the guy is really trying to keep himself in check there.
It was a rough time.
It was really hard.
I thought Biden was fantastic.
Yeah, I'm sure.
No, really.
I thought he was fantastic.
He didn't go after her.
He didn't do anything really stupid.
And honestly...
It was just a strategy mistake because I don't think he expected this.
He did not expect her to perform this well.
He just didn't.
And it took him back because he had already decided, I'm not going to attack Palin.
And of course, he has a much better understanding of what's going on.
Yeah, he still works for all the same people, and we're all going to die in the end anyway.
But that's beside the point.
He was not prepared for that, and so he didn't have anything in his arsenal to deal with her actually coming out and killing.
I mean, absolutely.
No, come on.
But listen, she was so good.
And she built it up and she got confidence.
And then all of a sudden, boom, she starts attacking Obama.
And when she got a question that she didn't want to answer, John, it was like Major League Baseball.
She ran out the clock.
It was like football.
She ran out the clock.
I'm like, wow, that was so fantastic.
And Biden couldn't do it.
He was like, I'm running out of time.
I'm running out of time.
Sorry.
Actually, I don't think you're right on one thing.
Biden, twice during the debates that I recall, said, well, I see I'm going to be out of time in a second, or the red light's blinking, was the thing he said another time, which was an excuse to let him ramble on.
I would like to do a stopwatch on the two of them in that debate, and I'll bet you Biden snuck in more time using that trick.
Yes, he did.
He definitely used it a couple times, and the moderator was not very tight on time at all.
And I just want to remind our listeners that I'm a total constitutionalist.
I wouldn't vote for either one of these actors who were cast this evening before you.
This is truly the largest reality show in the world, and I am extremely delighted because now that I have been proven That this is one big show.
Now I can start predicting exactly what you're going to see along the line.
It's really going to be extremely easy for me.
And if this was Steven Spielberg or Steven Bochco or whoever actually is behind the production of this show, totally, this is outrageously entertaining.
If anything, it's been my job to try and understand what people want to watch.
And this was it.
This was it.
Okay, enough of that.
Let's talk more about this thing.
It's Drill Baby Drill.
Oh my God.
I almost orgasm.
I almost orgasm.
It's Drill Drill Drill.
No, it's not Drill Drill Drill.
It's Drill Baby Drill, you idiot.
But, I mean, think of the connotations of, it's drill, drill, drill.
No, it's drill, baby, drill.
Oh, drill me, baby, drill me.
And then he's saying, bushes, bushes, bushes.
I'm just hearing Beavis and Butthead going, he said, bushes.
It was fabulous.
It was fabulous.
Well, that was funny.
You're right.
Now, let's go back to the thing that you mentioned about him getting caught off guard.
Now, this I have on my notes, but this is at the end of the notes, and this is part of the postmortem that was done on Fox.
I watched the postmortem on CNN. And the funny thing is, the one woman on there that really annoys me to no one is this Hillary Rosen.
On CNN? You know her.
She was the RIA. Oh, yeah.
Oh, jeez.
Yes, of course we do.
She's a creep to the nth, and she hates Palin, and her analysis is useless.
This woman shouldn't even be on television.
Anyway, even Paul Begala, who was a Clinton guy and a total Democrat apologist, at least had a couple of good things to say.
Hillary wouldn't do it.
And Begala said, for example, that he thought she sucked, but she was building up herself for the 2012 campaign, which I thought was interesting to make that observation, meaning that Obama can't make it through two elections.
Anyway, the guy on Fox was Frank Luntz, who was the guy...
Biden mentioned him a couple times, right?
No, no, he said Lugar.
No, I'm sorry.
No, no.
Frank Luntz is a pollster who works mostly for the Republicans.
And he does all the, you know, where they strap you to, you know, lie detectors and all this other stuff.
Oh, that's hot.
And he...
Unbelievable.
Sorry.
Should be sorry.
And he found that the whole group of non, the people that were undecided, everybody thought Palin won.
Everybody.
And he claimed, by the way, at the end that the polls are going to reflect this and it's put McCain back into the race, which makes me think, can you imagine...
Sarah Palin actually saves the election.
Yes.
No, no.
I 100% can't.
I've got to think through what the next, on Tuesday we have the next Obama, or, I mean, Biden couldn't pronounce Obama's name 15 times throughout the entire debate.
He kept tripping over his name.
That was weird.
Well, let's go back.
Let's go back.
This is the part I want to talk about.
And this is really interesting.
When this came up, I was going, yeah, that's interesting.
Uh-huh.
And what it was is that one woman came out and said that one of the reasons Palin won for her was that Palin wasn't expected to do this good based on her performance with Katie Couric.
Katie Couric, yeah.
And the woman made, which makes me think that Katie Couric has actually helped the election, ironically.
John, how many times do I have to say, it's in the script, page 15...
Now let me finish what this woman said.
She hinted that the reason she was so shocked by the change, the fact Palin was good here and she sucked with Couric, and this is extremely important for people out there eavesdropping on this conversation.
She hinted that with the Couric interview, it was edited to make Palin look bad.
Oh, absolutely.
This is an attack on the media that is, I think, in the public domain right now, it's a meme.
Everybody thinks the media is corrupt to such an extreme that they're trying to throw this election, and I think the public is just not going to put up with it.
Yep, and they're catching on, absolutely.
They're totally catching on and what we don't really think too much about is that television has been the main communicator in terms of Public perception of almost everything.
You mean mind control?
Since about 1946.
We're talking about 60 plus years.
This is a learnable, practicable, demonstrable science that you can program people's minds to buy things.
We choose our presidents the same way we buy our washing powder.
And people are clued in.
I don't think they're complete robots out there.
They see that this is going on.
They can spot a scam.
They can spot a crappy product.
They spot all this stuff.
That's why the cost per thousand is what it is in terms of advertising.
Because unless you do your job perfectly and you're not doing it, if you look like you're on one...
For example, Katie Couric...
It's supposed to be an objective journalist in that old school where you're even-handed.
You don't find somebody's weak point and then grind on it and grind on it and grind on it until the person's embarrassed.
Specifically, what newspapers do you read?
Specifically, what do you mean when a father rapes her daughter?
Specifically.
It's the public spots that a mile away.
And this woman reflected that in this entire audience that Luntz had, which was a focus group, essentially real-time focus group, was like, they weren't, except there was a couple, you know, you can't have 100%, but there's a couple, I don't know, I didn't like her.
But, because, you know, that goes like this, by the way.
I didn't like her.
She reminds me of my third girlfriend who dumped me.
Can I just counter that for a second?
I have to disagree respectfully, John.
Um...
Yes, people are on to it, but with this particular debate, and obviously, Palin and McCain's stance on Iran, boy, it was so brilliant to say, I'm going to talk straight to you, and I'm going to say it.
And for all intents and purposes, she actually said something, but it sounded really straight.
This was game-changing.
Rule changing.
No, I know.
Look, I know what you're saying.
What you're saying is that...
I'm saying that America...
Wait a minute.
What you're saying is it's going to be worse than ever.
Yes, of course I'm saying that.
We're all going to die.
But the point is, you're saying that the public is on to it, and I have to disagree.
And it's not because...
When they think about it, yes, of course, they can...
They understand it quite quickly.
That's this awakening that I think is taking place.
This was of a format that is so recognizable.
This is what American Idol did to the Gong Show.
It took it to a whole other level, and people are getting sucked into it.
They are getting sucked in really, really deep.
And Fox News will propagate that.
She's a hero, and there you go, Joe.
Say it ain't so, Joe.
My God, this was just absolutely brilliant.
A time bomb.
An absolute time bomb, and I agree.
I think it puts McCain ahead of Obama, and I bet you that the Obamatrons are going to be pissed off.
No, I think it's going to be, I think they are going to be a little, but of course they're going to be in denial, like this Hillary Rosen woman, who gave, you know, they had these points things going on with these different people, and she wouldn't give Palin credit for one positive thing, and if she did, she gave him four negative votes.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
There is a certain denial.
I mean, this Palin thing is like, got these guys really spooked.
And they're freaked about it.
And it's like they hate her.
And which then the Democrats are always the love, love people.
And they hate hate.
I mean, you know, I don't get it.
I'm just looking through my notes.
Actually, they did cover quite a large array of topics.
Boy, the Israel stuff was hot and heavy, man.
That was pretty amazing.
I just waited for one of them to say, one of my best friends is Jewish.
I mean, that's all that was missing.
They were one second away from it.
I was waiting for that, too.
That got so close.
And then Palin...
I mean, this is so skillfully done.
Her hammering Ahmadinejad, and she's propagating lies.
I mean, he did not say the rotting corpse of Israel.
Maybe he...
It's all an interpretation and translation.
It's all stupid.
Well, let's go back to the main themes, the underlying themes that they were obviously trying to do.
And I thought where Palin did well, at least on kind of a subtext, is Biden...
Better than Obama.
And I actually liked Biden in this debate.
I think he was a very personable guy and he was, you know, he's magnanimous in a lot of different ways.
He had a big smile.
Totally a political animal.
And, you know, I was hoping to see you and he went on with, ah, you know, Scranton, Scranton and all that.
Scranton, Pennsylvania.
That he'd say, that she'd say, Joe, using the word Joe, Joe, when was the last time you actually lived in Scranton?
You know, but he also used...
It's like 40 years ago.
There were some script changes I would have made.
So I wouldn't have had him say madrassas, because no one knows what the fuck a madrass is.
Exactly, you're right.
You know, what the hell is that all about?
I mean, he was really...
You know, at a certain point, you could tell about half an hour into it, they both kind of like ran out of material, and they had to kind of pick it up, and then...
No, he lost the crowd on a couple of these crazy things like that.
Mm-hmm.
Now, let's go back.
Biden, better than Obama, as I was saying, linked...
McCain with Bush, because he harped on it much more so than Obama was able to do.
Because Obama kind of lost the track on that, and he was criticized for it by the people deconstructing his performance.
Now, she...
They obviously expected something like this because she had this one interesting approach, which I thought was genius, which was that she called him on that and she says, you know, you guys are big talkers about the future and change, but you keep pointing to the past.
Yeah, and there's always a finger pointing to the past.
Oh yeah, it was beautiful.
I thought that was like, I was just like, whoa, somebody wrote that one.
And I think that that was set there.
They said, look, if he starts talking about Bush, Bush, Bush, Bush, and all this other stuff.
By the way, what's 1932?
What happened in 1932 that he referenced that?
Roosevelt was elected.
Oh, okay.
Like anybody knows that.
Yeah, that's why I'm asking.
I'm like, what happened in 1932?
And he threw out some things there.
He tried to get her on the Bush Doctrine.
She didn't pick up on that.
I really, really enjoyed when she said...
Of course, she's positioning them as mavericks, and I think that's what the big theme is going to be for McCain on Tuesday.
By the way, wait, wait.
Every time she brought up that Maverick thing, the numbers plunged.
That Maverick thing is done.
Really?
That's over.
Give up on it.
Alright, so they'll know that.
So they're going to choose something else.
I liked, she really positioned herself well by talking about the Wasilla Main Street.
Yeah, that was okay.
So she really pulled that towards herself.
No, that was good.
That was really good.
Yeah, it didn't do much for her numbers.
Let me go over it quickly.
I only made a few notes on the numbers going up and down.
With Palin mainly.
Biden had a real interesting thing with it when he talked about drill, drill, drill.
His numbers actually went down.
And when she said drill, baby drill, did they go up?
A little bit, but the funny thing was when Biden talked about we can't drill, drill, drill, and it went down, but we should do some drilling, it went up, like big time.
Really?
Yeah, it was weird.
Well, and energy independence, that must have really worked.
People must have fucking loved that.
It worked a little bit.
Let me give you the key example.
Talking about the bipartisan partisanship thing didn't work.
In fact, it went down.
Maverick, dog.
Corruption and greed.
Big.
Big.
Like spiking, like through the roof?
Spike.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So she was the only one who actually started about the financial crisis, and she also wound up with it, which I thought was good, because we kind of got away from that.
Her finish, by the way, beat his...
Hands down.
But hands down.
She was great at the end.
Great at the end.
Hands down.
And like going out to a good meal, the dessert's what most people remember.
Yeah, you mean the way she has her newborn kid on her shoulder at 11 at night just to be on camera?
That's a nice touch.
Oh, by the way, the lame lame-o, your joke was lame because no one got it?
Oh, man, I thought I was peeing my pants.
You thought?
You should check.
Oh, the other word Biden used was, you know, Iran is not run by Ahmadinejad, it's run by the theocracy.
I'm like, no, man, no one knows what that is!
They don't know what that means!
He's too inside baseball.
Yeah, and it's not an evil name, you know, you've got to say, like, the evil Ayatollah, you know, that's the kind of stuff, not the theocracy.
That doesn't get them, and by the way, a lot of what he said I've got to agree with, even though I know that the people who really run everything are out to kill us on both sides, but...
Seriously.
But this, as a show, this was, I mean, God bless American television.
God bless it.
You know, it was good, but it wasn't great.
I'd like to see what the overnights are.
Anyway...
They're going to be huge.
Huge, huge...
You know what?
It was just so nice, and it was so...
Because everyone...
Look...
They started off, okay, even David Letterman last night was saying, are you all excited about the debate?
This thing is living, man.
This thing is like a hit record.
You know it's just bubbling under.
And then even CNBC opens up with, well, literally, welcome to the main event.
I'm not kidding you.
And then we're going to have pre- and post-game analysis.
These are direct quotes.
I wrote them down.
And then at the end, Erin, not Erin, the other girl on CNBC, she says, okay, let's get your popcorn.
CNBC! And this is a business channel.
This was highly anticipated.
I'm predicting 40 million plus viewers.
Well, 80 is the record that was set by Reagan and Carter.
Was that the final of their debates?
I think they had more than 40 on the last one.
So I think it more than 65, 75, maybe 80.
It's going to be higher than 40.
Okay, so here's a couple of other things that bombed.
This is the one that was really interesting that bombed, that I think caught everyone off guard.
She says, hockey mom, down into the tank.
I didn't catch that one, honestly.
You had to see the chart.
When she talked about...
Interesting.
Yeah, I thought that was weird.
When she talked about parents and personal responsibility, parenting and personal responsibility, it spiked everybody.
It's the only time in both debates that both people were spiked to the max.
How about education?
She won because of that.
How about education, John?
How did that do in the ranking?
No, education moved it up, but nothing like that.
This really, I mean, it was like, holy crap!
If she had stayed on that for about five minutes, it would have been, they just, by acclamation, would have given her the job.
The other one that the real loser, the loser that she kept harping on, and even when Biden kind of got into it, was a total disaster.
It makes you know for a fact that the USA public does not like this war in Iraq.
She starts talking about the troops and this and that.
It didn't work, right?
People hate that.
Only when she brings up getting out or something like that, it goes in the toilet when either one of them talk about extending this war for one more minute.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
And same with Afghanistan, right?
Because that's the big trick here.
I mean, it's so obvious.
No, Afghanistan gets nothing.
Yeah, well, we're going to end the war in Iraq, and we're going to send all the troops to Afghanistan.
We're just changing to another place.
I mean, it's just moving the same military industrial complex to another country, which happens to have a fantastic natural resource of drugs that they can also make money on, shipping it through Wall Street.
So, I'm sorry.
I get carried away.
Can I just say, though, another fantastic, beautiful moment.
This was a Miss America moment when Sarah Palin was, she was actually saving poor black kids in Darfur herself.
I mean, it was just so moving.
She completely nailed that one.
Well, she did the right thing with her response.
Now, here's the one with Biden.
Biden loses when they talk about drill, drill, drill.
Especially with the men, they just go into the tank.
So these guys have got a problem with that issue.
And by the way, when anyone talks about nuclear power, Down?
The women go into the toilet and the men go way up.
This is like hilarious.
Oh, no, we can't have...
All these green and all these kind of knee-jerk things.
Interesting.
The women are way into it.
And the men are like, no, this is bull.
Well, green, the whole thing is being marketed to women.
Of course.
Apparently.
Yeah.
Anyway, the big spike, one of the big spikes for Biden is when he starts talking about getting out of Iraq.
Yeah, of course.
The American people want to get out of all these countries, of course.
They're just being shafted.
They don't understand that yet.
But yeah, of course they do.
I think that's good, but neither of them can really adjust their strategies on that in the public eye, so they're going to have to do something else.
You know, the thing is, again, like the last one, when they go on the attack, the numbers go down, and when they're all, you know, with just the idealistic crap, whoa, it's a great country, and we need to improve our education because we're the leaders, and this guy, boom, up it goes.
So the public is looking for that kind of thing.
It's called nationalism, John.
Yes, exactly.
We're very nationalistic, and if you want to play that game, you're going to do well.
Meanwhile...
Back at the ranch.
I have a note here.
Here's a note I made.
The note reads as follows.
Anyone who follows our various podcasts knows that I take kind of sketchy notes and I wonder what the heck.
You don't say.
This one says, coughed a tear, she blew it.
I realize what it is.
That's when Biden...
Which I thought was a bit much, where he started to, you know, cough the tear over, you know, the possibility that it was his sons and that, you know, horrible thing happened to his first wife.
They got killed.
By the way, Joe Biden had cries during speeches.
He's known for doing this, and I don't want to, you know, say that it wasn't sincere, but, you know, he, like any good actor, he uses his personal emotions and experiences to get across his point.
It's probably, I mean, to do it that well at the well time, there's probably some sincerity involved.
These are highly skilled actors, John.
Yes.
But she had the opportunity to be motherly.
Yeah, I totally agree.
She blew it big time there.
Big time.
She could have come back, because she already had the, you know, she deserves her place and her reward in heaven.
Yeah, but his current wife was a teacher or something like that.
She wasn't talking about the first one.
No, no, I know, but you're right.
She totally lost it, and then she went over to energy or some shit.
She blew it.
Yeah, she could have locked it up right there.
You know, Joe, I want to say right now, you know, and something about, you know, I have, you know, we've had all these families, and everybody really appreciates what you've gone through, and, you know, it's just some sort of...
And there are plenty of single-parent dads out there, and we support them.
I mean, she totally, and that's, you know, the...
You know what?
I didn't know this about Joe Biden.
I think it surprised a lot of people, because most Americans, of course, are stupid slave sheep ignorance.
But that was a very interesting piece of information.
And it did instantaneously, instantaneously, it humanized the guy.
And that really, really worked.
And all the way up until the end, I think he had the upper hand once that happened.
Well, I'm not convinced of that, because I think where he blew it, right after that, he did this twice, and I didn't write down the first episode of it.
The second time he did it, and I think it got fair numbers, but I think it makes him look like either a stand-up comic or just a politico when he went, he's not a maverick because, he's not a maverick because, and he didn't do it five or six, it went on for ten times and she didn't, there's another opportunity for her to say, Joe, you know, you're repeating yourself here, he's not a maverick because.
And he did it earlier, too.
He would even say, he would repeat things slowly, so you idiots can understand what I am programming into your brain.
He would keep doing that.
He would keep doing that.
What was that thing?
I wrote it down that he was just...
Shoot.
I'll find it somewhere in my notes.
But yeah, there was a lot of repetition.
Because these guys know repetition works.
They know it.
It didn't work.
Well, no.
Sarah Palin just took it to a whole different level.
It was old-fashioned.
You know what the problem was?
It was old-fashioned.
It looked old-fashioned.
It felt old-fashioned.
It was this repetition thing.
It looked staged.
The guy who does it the best right now is Chris Rock, a comic.
Yeah.
Let me tell you though, so first of all, Sarah Palin is a political animal, and what that means is, again, it's just an actress, and she's fantastic at it, and I think it's a super-duper asset for McCain, and I only wish that she was working for us, because clearly she can take direction, and this is the kind of woman, this is the kind of image that absolutely could save America if someone else was pulling her strings.
You know, it's going to be a hard job for Obama and Biden to get across the message.
This is what I said to you before.
She's expert at hammering home the exact talking points to the T in understandable, pleasant mannerism.
Plain language.
The CNBC guy just made a big point of that.
And everyone from the Midwest, including Van Sustrand on Fox News.
Greta Van Sustrand, yeah.
She's like in love with her.
She's on Fox.
Of course she's in love with her.
But she's going on and on about this is the Midwestern thing that we love so much.
And that's why the Johnny Carsons and the David Lettermans do so well on television.
But this is the big secret.
This is something that I've known for almost all my life.
Country and Western music is laughed about, is scuffled by the elitist media on the West and the East.
Now, they actually can't stop it anymore because now you have the Country Music Awards, but the sales of not just actual CDs, but of concerts is so incredibly large because it is actually what is alive in America today.
That's what people really like to They have huge concerts, and if you take that one more step and start looking at NASCAR... Oh, thank you very much!
It is the largest spectator sport in the United States of America.
It is huge.
And the West Coast and East Coast elitist media, whenever they recognize it, they get it.
This is the secret to reality television.
They don't even understand it yet.
We're so frickin' elitist.
When people see themselves standing in line like slave sheeps, they love it.
Hey, look, I'm on TV, and I'm going to this stupid audition, and I made it on.
This is what Jerry Springer is about.
This is what it's all about, John, and that's why these shows are huge in the numbers, and obviously, it should not be the future of this great country, but that is the reality.
That is really what's going on, and that is what you're seeing this evening.
Okay, now I got the one, the one, the main, the entire night, the one, and of course there were no real gaffes except for the, except the way, there is one kind of a gaffe.
Besides, I think Palin kept calling some general McTrell.
Oh, yeah, yeah, but no one knew that.
They all had to get their analysts and look it up on Wikipedia.
No, but there was a good one that were, were, were, uh...
And why didn't Biden correct her?
Because, you know, he didn't know it either.
Biden's was better.
Oh, what was that?
Biden had a gaffe that I think you could have called him on.
He talks about the, you know, he calls the Bosnians the Bosniaks.
No, I didn't hear that.
That's fantastic.
This is that he was so heavily involved in, he doesn't even know what they're called.
Because of the Bosniaks.
The Bosniaks?
Oh, fantastic.
I didn't hear that.
It was hilarious.
I just almost fell out of the chair when you said it.
Oh, that is so funny.
The Bosniaks.
But here's Bosnia.
He probably thinks Borat really is from Kazakhstan.
So here's the one that I thought when he brought it into the...
I don't have the exact word, but he brought it out of the blue.
I guess as a reference to all the Democrats that still remember this.
This is another one of these callbacks like 1932 that nobody gives a crap about.
He brings up Judge Bork.
Oh, man.
I mean...
Did you hear that?
He said Bork.
Judge Bork.
Oh, we could have had...
Who knows what the country would be like if we had Judge Bork.
Nobody cares.
Nobody cares.
This is an SMS society, man.
He also, he was underprepared, John.
He really was not ready for this.
He really thought this was a shoo-in.
I'm telling you.
No, you might be right.
I thought he did a great job.
Well, I think he told the truth, and I think he spoke from his heart, and I think he played his role expertly.
He didn't attack her, which just made it so easy for her.
Well, this is what all the experts predicted, by the way.
Well, I predicted it, too.
Not that I want to call myself an expert, but I told you...
Maybe you're as much of an expert as any of these other boneheads.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that, my friend.
Yes, very good.
Very good.
No, Palin did have a little gaffe, which I'm sure will become a Freudian soundbite on YouTube.
She had a couple of them, by the way.
Well, there's more than one of the problems that she had.
Do you want me to give you this one?
Occasionally...
She roamed into that Miss Teenage South Carolina thing where her sentence structure started to break down and she kept trying to recover and it was like, will you try to wrap this up before you embarrass yourself?
Not that Biden didn't do that too, but she would do it in a real weird way that you go, oh brother, I can see somebody bringing this one on.
Generally, I thought her vocabulary was interesting.
She definitely tried to start her sentences differently each time.
You know, I pay attention to that kind of stuff, and there was no look, and guess what, and any of that stuff.
Although, I think this was the Heartbeat Away...
So the guess that she made there was, instead of saying, John McCain to lead, she said...
No, it was John McCain to leave.
I didn't hear that.
Yeah, yeah, that was one of them.
What did the moderator, she cracked a couple jokes, and I was typing on the keyboard, so I couldn't hear it.
Kind of needy in there.
I didn't hear her do any jokes.
They were laughing.
She cracked a little side joke just before she said the jokes were lame-o, but the moderator said something.
She said something funny, and the audience laughed.
Oh, all I remember is the lame-o thing and then Biden kind of had to come back, you know, think him funny or something like that.
That was a nice moment.
That was a human moment, but I don't think it did much for the debate.
Did you look at the spikes?
Was there anything there?
Nah, it went up a little bit, yeah.
But it wasn't a spike.
I mean, the spikes were always with the same old kinds of, you know, grand issues.
Education to a lesser extent, but personal responsibility was the big one.
And green and corruption.
Green and corruption.
Green and corruption worked with McCain, too.
But the problem is, you know, the problem Palin had, she revisited it too often.
She revisited two topics over and over again out of the blue.
I thought it was a little strained.
About, you know, energy independence and then greed and corruption.
She'd bring it in when she wanted to get her numbers back up.
You know what?
So here's how...
By the way, she could...
You know, here's the thing that somebody's...
One of these boneheads has got to do.
I'm sick of hearing this meme.
The United States uses 21% of the world's energy and we only have 3% of the world's resources.
That 3% of the world's resources plus our coal is like a thousand times more than anybody else has.
And when it comes down to it, that 3% of the world's total, yeah, if you tapped it and just used it, it would last for decades.
I mean, the whole thing is bad math.
And the fact that the Republicans have bought into this stupid argument, oh, well, we use 21% or 25% or whatever it is of the world's energy, but we only have 3% of the world's resources, those 3% is more than we're using.
Yeah.
And nobody jumps on that and says, this is just great.
I have to think of an analogy, which I'll think of.
You use most of the tomatoes in the world, but this kind of thing.
There's some way of submarining that bogus number.
You're taking two different things.
So McCain and Palin can lock this up, and this is the choice that I would give it, considering I only have, you know, what, 30 more days or whatever.
I would have set it up so that McCain can now say, well, I guess shit he can't, I guess, because he already voted.
What a dick.
I would have done it differently.
If McCain or Palin were to come out and say no to this bill in some way, right, for the Financial Stability Act or the Emergency Economic Stability Act, If there was some way that they could talk that down, they could lock it up.
Because that, I think, is the number one thing on Americans' minds right now, is this.
And what is that going to do to the markets?
And we know Obama can't do it because he's backed so heavily by Wall Street.
He's been mum on the topic.
Yeah, he's been sitting on, you know, observing from the sidelines or whatever.
Right.
Whatever he says.
And, you know, McCain just voted against him.
That would have been the moment, really, but maybe the timing wasn't right.
Well, you know, it's...
I don't think he can go back on it in any way.
You know, he can't say, oh, you know, I want to mulligan.
It's not good.
You know, that whole topic is a problem, so...
I don't know.
I think they're going to have to win without that, but it's going to be interesting to see what happens.
I mean, there are people, you know, I had one of my bloggers, you know, most of my bloggers hate McCain, and one of them said, is McCain trying to blow the election?
I guess it's one of the...
I read that, actually, yeah, interesting.
It's not an unusual...
By the way, it's funny because he's the most left wing of the group.
He's not really one of the bloggers.
He's the sysop who I let blog.
Because he can't...
He just feels like jumping in.
Okay, but he gets good numbers.
Usually he didn't own this one.
So I can now give him crap.
It's an interesting point because if you look at some of the extreme right-wing talk guys, like Michael Savage, for example, one of the more entertaining guys and one of the biggest talk show hosts in the United States on radio, he's been saying this from day one.
That the thing is rigged for McCain to lose.
He wants to lose it.
Because, you know, they want to get the Democrats in.
And if you listen to me and my, you know, 48-year cycle thing, the idea is if you get the Democrats in during this point of the cycle...
Everything tanks.
They will never get in office again in their entire history.
That party will be dead.
Well, you know, that's interesting you say that.
And, um...
I don't believe...
The world is too dynamic, and this is why they're all running scared, by the way, to really plan something that far ahead anymore.
So I believe that, of course, the true owners of the earth control both candidates.
So I think that they basically hedge their bets, and it's a playbook.
You could do worse than dropping that theme.
Why?
I truly believe in it.
I am gore.
Oh, come on.
You know what I'm talking about.
These guys are all bought and paid for.
Come on, that's obvious.
Please.
This is why I say, Sarah, pay the expense.
We need to create a movement.
They would have a sense of the cycle and they would want to get one person or other, somebody in there for a purpose.
Why tank it anyway?
That's already happening.
People are so stupid.
You heard about the White House saying, oh, we can't handle the email forms anymore on our servers, so you can't automatically email your representative because the PHP script is bogging down.
Yeah, what a crock.
Of course it's a crock of shit.
It's horrible.
That stuff is going on, man.
So anyway, besides that, what we need to do is we need to kidnap Sarah Palin and we need to reprogram her so that we can take over these evil people that are behind all of this.
That's not a stupid theme.
That is what we should do with the playbook.
I'm telling you, these guys are brilliant.
Did you hear the Axis of Evil?
She had an Axis of Evil in there.
I loved it.
It was Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong-il, and the Castro Brothers.
It sounded like gangsters.
It sounds like a band.
No, it sounded like evil gangsters.
The Castro Brothers.
The Castro Brothers with Joey Knuckles.
Yeah.
Mickey Blue.
Mickey Blue Eyes.
Mickey Blue, the Castro Brothers.
Yeah, no, I love that.
I mean, I heard the Castro Brothers.
Fantastic.
That was a good one.
But anyway, obviously, you know, what cannot represent the United States of America is this whole notion of, hey, look, no one can have nuclear shit, only we can.
And that's the balance, because we fucking rule the world!
You know, this was so evil, the stuff that was coming out of her mouth.
How did that do on this scale?
It didn't do anything one way or the other.
The nuke thing always sends the women down, and the men are kind of like, well, maybe we should nuke them.
She never said, I mean, that was actually a pretty neutral little exchange.
It didn't amount to a hill of beans one way or the other.
But it's such a huge issue.
People don't care about us killing other people.
I guess we don't.
Generally speaking, I think it's pretty removed.
Which I think the rest of the world doesn't quite get, but that's just the way it is.
I mean, you know, we're close, but not quite the Roman Empire.
And we have a certain kind of cavalier-ness about us that, you know, these other moaners and groaners, which is why that article, which I have to post tomorrow when I sent you from the Telegraph, about all these Europeans, and you've talked about it.
Oh, yeah.
These Europeans that said, oh, it's America's problem, this whole economic thing, and now they're all screwed.
I actually...
There's actually a new thread that I'm following, because people are now reading the new bill, which is 541 pages.
This thing has grown just...
I've actually sent you a couple of links.
But apparently, they've set it up so that they can actually just pay foreigners.
It's just a payoff to the Chinese.
We're just going to pay off the Chinese, and then, okay, now let's get back to business.
Like we don't give them enough money.
Yeah, but...
Yeah, I know this whole thing is a total scam, but the market demands it.
When I did a piece with Horowitz the other day...
No, they're telling us we're all going to die if you don't do it.
They're saying that we're all going to die.
They're saying it.
Yeah, I know.
Financial terrorism.
But the market said very clearly, look, you guys do this deal or we're just going to tank and you're going to be screwed.
So, okay, we'll do the deal.
Like you said the other day when I was talking to you, you said, well, even though it seems like a lot of money, and it does, to say the least, $700 billion in an economy like ours, it's a lot of money.
It's about $2,500 for every living person in the U.S. But it's not about the money.
It's not about the money.
It's about the power and the control and a fourth branch of government.
But we're not going to get that, you know, from these candidates.
I mean, nothing's going to change, and it's just a cycle.
And you know what's baked into it, John?
This whole thing about carbon credits is baked into this bill?
Oh, this really bugged me.
Oh, it is?
It's baked into the bill?
It's baked into the bill, man.
There's all kinds of carbon credits.
By the way, I hate the term baked in, but I'll use it for this.
Okay, I'm sorry.
What should I say?
Braun uses it constantly.
Should I say included or...
Yeah, included would be good.
Included and somewhat obscured.
Because it's on page 3000 or whatever.
The fact that the two of them, Palin and Biden, went, you know, Palin was a little better.
She was better on two things.
One on the, you know, by the way, what are the gays going to do listening to Biden saying, did you notice this?
Yeah, they both said, no way, no gay marriage, you're out of luck.
I thought that the Democrats were...
I was shocked!
I was absolutely, I was like, wait a minute, that doesn't make any sense.
And he said that Obama agreed with him.
So there you go.
There's your government.
To our gay listeners, there's your government.
They hate you.
They hate you.
Both of them.
You're still going to vote for one or the other?
Palin was more magnanimous.
Of course she's smart.
And you know what?
First of all, this is America, John.
Now I'm actually sounding like an asshole Republican.
But the way she handled that...
As opposed to a what?
A regular Republican.
Just a kook.
Just a fucking kook.
Oh, a kook.
The kook that I am.
But the way she handled that, I was extremely impressed.
She said, look, it's not my style, it's not my choice, blah, blah, blah, blah.
She went through all that, and then she said, but you know what?
I stand by it.
Marriage should be man and woman.
So that's something that's debatable, and we'll debate about it forever, and that's okay.
It seemed to me, although she did skate around that answer, that she agreed with just about everything, all legal rights, etc., etc., but she was hiding something there.
I'm not quite sure what it Well, the way she was handling it, I thought, was pretty, you know, she's a Christian, she's a Pentecostal, she has all this baggage, and she was dealing with it as a person, but you didn't feel that was going to get in the way of her legislation or anything else.
But you turn it over to Biden, he seemed like the bigot.
Yeah, it was unbelievable.
And I think that's really going to hurt him.
Oh, I think it's going to hurt the campaign because all these gays are lined up lockstep with Obama and Biden, and now they're hearing this?
Yeah.
Because I'm sure there's probably as many gay people that are Republicans as there are Democrats because it's got nothing to do with anything.
John, we're all gay!
They were all walking over toward the Democrat side because it seemed as though they were more amenable, but now it's like, well, what difference does it make?
Let me just vote my party.
That was a botch.
That was a huge botch.
But also, it came from a very direct, that was one of the times he was extremely direct and just said, no, I'm against gay marriage, not going to happen.
Yeah.
So at least you know what you got with him.
Well, he was, you know, I thought, generally speaking, he wasn't as direct, or he wasn't as plain talking as Sarah Palin, but he was about as direct without being completely obnoxious.
But he was bumbling.
Look, again, I'm looking at it from, I'm not kidding.
I'm looking at it from a NASCAR perspective.
And sometimes he would go off and he would mention names, all these words, fancy words, and I'm not mocking him.
Middle America or anything like that.
I love you.
You've given me a reason to have a career with shitty hair and leather jackets.
And I appreciate it.
You have great hair.
But you know, that's what everyone says.
Oh, you're a big-haired dickhead.
But you know what?
I'm basically just a standard kind of guy.
And I get a little kooky like we all do.
And we all like to smoke some weed and hang out and play our country and western music!
And we will play the game!
You'd actually be comfortable at a NASCAR race.
I've been to them.
Oh.
Absolutely.
And I've been to IndyCar, and oh yeah, I love it.
But, anyway, the point is that I think you're onto something a little bit.
The problem we're going to run into here is what happened with Kerry.
Kerry was looking actually pretty good.
He was still ponderous.
He couldn't stop talking.
He droned on and on.
Obama is approaching this kind of ponderous, boring guy.
And, you know, it's going to look at the same old thing.
Two Democrats that can't stop talking.
And there's just a lot of, you know, and they're not...
It's dropping down to the level where they're actually speaking to people.
It's just, you know, kind of talking to an audience.
And I don't know.
I mean, I still think, I've thought from the beginning that Obama's act, and I'm not going to say he's not a good speaker or he can't hold an audience or he can't draw a crowd, and I think they should have been selling tickets to stadiums across the country from the get-go.
Hell yeah.
You know, people would pay $100 and fill a stadium to listen to this guy because they put on a great show.
They got the stage.
It was awesome.
It was a Class A rock show.
Let me ask you something.
I listened to an interview today, and I'll send you a link.
I was actually listening to it right up until the debate.
And some guy, of course he's written a book or whatever, but he was talking about Obama as a, and of course I want this on my resume, a community organizer.
And he was explaining what a community organizer was.
And essentially, it's someone who goes around in a community and convinces people, kind of turns their own opinion and their own words into something that is beneficial to him or whoever he's organizing for.
Kind of like...
Like an internet chatroom moderator, if you will.
But whenever the owner of the bulletin board comes along and says, I've got to say something, then it's like, oh, well, the owner of the system is here, I've got to let him talk.
And that his skill, and this is what we're seeing, his skill is playing upon very deep emotions within his audience, within people who are listening to them, and getting them to see his way, to truly change, actually.
Is that a fair assessment?
Yeah, I think in some ways it is.
It might be a little superficial, but the fact of the matter is a community organizers, a guy goes around with an agenda, and they go from place to place to place to get people to agree with this agenda, whatever it is.
And it takes a lot of work.
This is like one of those things.
I always thought, you know, you run into this a lot.
Everyone in the United States has seen this happen.
You run into, for example, somebody knock on the door.
You know, you go to the door and there's some...
Dave's not here, man.
There's a little black kid selling subscriptions to magazines or candy or something or else, and they come and they go.
Every once in a while, one of these kids is so driven to sell you something That you'd go, wow, I would love to have this kid working for me, selling, you know, advertising in a magazine or selling something, because this guy is relentless, and he's on and on and on, and he's a sales guy.
And he's just never, he's relentless, and you'd have to give him money to get out of there or something, because you can't, you know...
We know people that do this.
Well, we have that in the United Kingdom as well, by the way.
Okay.
And this type of person is what a community organizer basically is.
He goes around and he sells, you know, unless he's the leader of a bunch of these kids, it's that kind of thing.
And they're just...
Floating around some area to get some change made or to get a law passed or to kick somebody out of office or whatever it is.
In the case of the Acorn, which is one of the things he worked for, is still around and they seem to be involved with getting people to vote.
May I just ask you something, just so I understand.
May I ask you specifically, is it only little black kids that do this?
No, there's all kinds.
There's white kids.
Well, you said it.
You said it's always the little black kids.
No, no, it's the little black kids who come up with the newspaper thing or the magazine thing in my area.
So make sure you're not a racist, bigot, cocksucker.
No, I mean, I haven't seen a white kid come up to my house...
In 20 years selling magazines, there's always black kids.
And I was using the black kids because they're the best example.
And I'm actually more impressed with them because they have the black kid.
It's a white neighborhood.
A black kid coming into a white neighborhood selling magazine subscriptions with a phony baloney identification.
It takes a lot of nerve.
It takes a salesmanship.
It takes an ease.
It takes a lot of...
There's so many elements.
That's what impresses me.
I'm going, wow, this kid is unbelievable.
He's coming into an all-white neighborhood, selling some crappy magazines that I don't want, and he's relentless.
And he's running guilt trips on me and everything else to get a sale.
I'm just impressed, believe me.
That's why I don't see white kids doing this.
I'm just saying that to protect you, John, because I know how stupid people are who listen to this show sometimes.
Yeah, no, I can understand what you think would be some sort of racist thing.
But it's not a racist thing.
It is a cultural thing, and it's impressive to me that these kids are so talented that it's just like, wow.
And Obama had to be in that league.
Well, had to be.
Give me a break.
This guy was in a league by himself.
As a community organizer, I'm sure.
And he's obviously not the dumbest guy.
Can I just take that back?
It came out wrong.
The people who listen to the show aren't stupid.
Sometimes we just don't hear things the way they're...
You know, there are some people that listen to the show that are stupid and hate us.
That's true.
I was just sitting there going like, that would piss me off.
And now they're going to hate you for defending me.
Oh, we had Dvorak.
We could have had him as a racist pig.
Yeah, but John, it's because I agree you suck.
You know, you're one of my true friends.
How sad is that?
It's bad.
So anyway, thanks for rescuing me.
Now that you mention it, you're probably right.
I could have said some ethnic kid.
But no, it's usually black kids, and it's the black kids who impress me the most.
And in fact, there was a lot of black kids, or young black people.
Let me finish this.
I have run into so many of these guys And every time I do, I mean, I've seen guys at this toll plaza collecting tolls that are so adept.
There's a couple guys that are, there's a bunch of checkers at one of the stores and there's like one black guy that is there.
When I see him, I don't care if his line is 10 miles long.
He will get me out.
Faster than anybody else.
And there was a Costco recently.
And again, it was one of these guys.
You can see them a mile away.
They're just working their butts off.
They're just fast and they're enjoying it.
And should I tell you something?
It's these guys and gals, I presume, that when everything comes crashing down and money is useless for a while, hyperinflation or whatever, they're the ones that are going to succeed because they have true social skills and true business acumen that goes way above and beyond all of this thievery that's been going on on Wall Street.
Well, there may be that, but I think they're just naturals.
And I always do this, by the way.
I think people out there should do this.
When you go into a line, I'm looking at a bunch of Costco lines, and I'm always kind of making a judgment.
This is where I could get myself in the trouble if I'm making some generalities here, but I'm not going to do it.
But I will spot the guy or the girl who are just kicking ass.
They are moving the line, and you're out of there.
Of course, you're always looking for the...
Oh, man.
Did I just lose you?
There we go.
Ah, shit.
Hold on, John.
Hold on.
I'm about to lose you.
Okay.
Oh, wait.
It came back.
Maybe.
Did it live?
Yeah, it lived.
Okay.
Yeah, I got you.
Okay.
So this guy is checking me out.
You know, he's running up my bill while taking the card with his other hand with the other guy and starting his, checking him out while he's still finishing me.
And I'm out of there.
I pass up everybody that's in all the other lines.
And what I want to tell people to do when you run into this, tell the guy, which is why I say, look, you're the best checker in the entire place today.
You kick ass.
I really appreciate it.
And let me tell you, John, I've run several businesses.
The last one was 750 people in like seven different countries.
And you're always looking for these people.
If you look at Mevio right now, we have such a...
I mean, the ethnic backgrounds and race and creed and color and sexuality and just...
Everything is so diverse.
In fact, we're so diverse that we're like a petri dish because everyone's always coming in with some exotic fucking flu bug and we're always sick all the time.
But the people you have, you want them to kick ass.
You want them to go that extra mile.
By the way, that is a very American thing.
I don't have to ask anyone in our company if we're doing something to stay until 6 or 7.
They're doing it because they want to do it and they want to be there.
Otherwise, it usually doesn't work out pretty quickly.
In Europe, are you kidding me?
Five minutes to five.
Hey, I got my coat on.
I'm going home now.
Yeah, we'll start again tomorrow.
That is truly an American trait.
Right.
Well, I believe that's true because they have a different ethos.
But the point I'm trying to make is that when you run into one of these people that is just an astonishing worker that has gotten you out of the store faster by five minutes or more, you should say something to them.
Of course.
Because they really, and I've always found this to be the case, If somebody gets a compliment out of the blue from somebody for doing a really good job, they love it.
And it makes them better.
Of course.
But very few people do that.
No, we've gotten into the culture of here's some money.
Or here's a bullshit title.
That's a good one.
We're going to make you a VP, which means new business cards.
Congratulations.
By the way, every time everyone I know gets promoted like that, I would say, was that in lieu of pay?
Yeah.
You get no money.
No, I got a cut in pay, as a matter of fact.
That's right.
But even at the gas station, man, anywhere, if someone's serving you, thank them.
Well, particularly if they are...
A lot of these guys that I like to compliment, you can tell they're competitive.
And they are trying to get...
They're just doing...
They're competitive.
They're doing it because they really like to compete.
They want to be the best checker.
Because what else is there to do?
If you're working at a Costco check line with a bunch of 25 other people doing it, what else is there?
You're just checking.
But if you're checking 10 times more people than anybody else, that's kind of cool.
And it doesn't really take any...
You're still there.
You might as well just do it as best you can.
Let me ask you a question.
These are the people that need a compliment.
So when you...
Okay, so here's a tough one.
When you encounter someone who is clearly not doing a good job of service, do you...
I mean, do you just...
Do you get into major negative mode?
Or do you say, hey, maybe if you did it this way, it would be a little bit more pleasurable for everybody?
No, no, no, no.
You can't do that.
I've tried.
In fact, today I went to a place where they sell vegetables called Monterey Foods.
And there's one grumpy old Chinese woman there that's older than anybody in the place, and she doesn't like to work.
And I swear to God, everybody's got two or three people in all the lines, and she's got nobody there.
So I went in there, and it's like she's yakking with somebody else in Cantonese, and she doesn't know the prices.
I don't know what she's even doing there.
And she's slow, and she sucks.
In fact, I... It's just horrible.
And what am I supposed to say to her?
You suck.
You suck, you old bitch.
I mean, I couldn't do that.
You just don't go to her line.
You just compliment people for doing a good job.
But you can't really say you suck to everybody who doesn't do a good job because that's all you'd be doing all the time because most people suck.
A classic John C. Dvorak moment, ladies and gentlemen.
Do you want to go out on a high or do you want to talk about food?
Because that was too good, man.
Well, we might as well quit because we've got a bunch of food talk coming up.
I was thinking about that.
We've got one restaurant or two maybe reviews in the can.
Yeah, two in the can, yeah.
And then we're going to try to do some stuff next week, maybe something tomorrow.
And I was thinking about, you know, we can do a lot of food talk.
And I was considering, why do people care about us reviewing a restaurant in San Francisco?
We have an international audience.
There's people all over.
And it's not...
It's about the food, I think.
It's not about the food, it's about the details of the, you know, it's like what makes a good, what people should be looking for or what we complain about.
I don't know what it is, but it's something.
I think people inherently realize you are what you eat.
And people are switching on to the idea that we're eating crap, we're just putting shit into our bodies.
And I think there's part of that, John.
I think people do care.
I think there's part of that.
And I think there's also the one thing we do, I think, together on...
We're just shooting our own horn here.
Yeah, we have to do it once in a while.
Nobody else does it.
Is that I think we're meta.
I think we actually kind of bring ourselves into kind of an overview that...
Is maybe different than what anybody else does in this regard.
And I think it's entertaining enough they tolerate it.
The only thing that I think will be a bummer for most of our non...
Because pretty much everyone who is listening to this show, I'm sure they...
They watched the debate.
The Europeans, of course, it was on in the middle of the night.
So I wonder, and let us know how it related, how that worked for you, because you probably only got to see some sound bites, and those, of course, have already been filtered.
Because who's going to sit through an hour and a half of a debate that isn't live anymore?
We're just going to get all the sound bites.
So it'll be interesting to see what the international audience thinks about this.
You're back.
There we go.
I don't know what you caught.
I think I dropped off.
Well, anyway, John would say, coming to you from Gitmo Nation West, John C. Dvorak, and my name's Adam Curry.
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