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Oct. 25, 2008 - No Agenda

01:37:51

53: Gay Marriage

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Time	Text
	With the world tipping point, just ten days away, time for your weekly interlude from two guys who know nothing about anything.
	Call it a match made in heaven.
	Call it no agenda.
	From Gitmo Nation West and the condo overlooking the bay, I'm Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak up here in Silicon Valley North.
	A non-existent location, but somehow I feel substance.
	Substance.
	Substance no less.
	Or substantive, I guess.
	Not sure.
	Hey John, how are you doing?
	It's Saturday afternoon, 1125, here on the West Coast.
	And I think I've solved the disconnect problems from last week.
	It's a weird one, though.
	Oh yeah?
	What was it?
	For some reason, my router gets confused when...
	I have three machines here.
	I have an iMac, one of those desktop things, and then I've got the MacBook Pro, which I record the show on, and then my phone.
	And what was happening was it was getting conflicting IP addresses, you know, where two machines tried to grab the same IP address.
	I think it has to do with the phone, actually, because that's the new piece that was introduced most recently.
	Ah, did you turn the phone off?
	Yeah, I've turned it off completely.
	So I think, you know, maybe once in a while, maybe the router looks to check or something's going on, which I'm sure is also a part of the router.
	But for whatever reason...
	I get conflicts between the MacBook Pro and then the other machines.
	So I'll just turn it off.
	Hopefully it should be okay.
	One of those deals.
	So I went to dinner on Thursday at a 10th anniversary little party they had for a company called NetSuite.
	Yeah, what do they do?
	They make a kind of an all-purpose...
	They essentially are SAP in the clouds is what it really amounts to.
	Oh, my God.
	Did you stand there and say, you guys are doomed?
	The cloud will never work?
	I don't believe in it?
	It's BS? Well, the type of cloud computing they do is something that is doable in the cloud because it's very targeted.
	It's not like mass market stuff.
	Wow.
	And...
	So it's like enterprise stuff?
	Is that what it is?
	Yeah, it's all enterprise stuff.
	But small companies can utilize it.
	It's actually an interesting product.
	People should check it out if they have a small company and they want to computerize everything.
	The Oakland A's are on it.
	You know, John, your bandwidth is crap, man.
	Once again, you're warbling all over the place.
	But anyway, we're connected.
	You know what's weird, since we're both on Comcast, we have better connections when you're in England.
	Yeah, no kidding.
	It's messed up.
	I was going to, unfortunately I didn't do it, but this week I was going to talk to the Comcast folks and have them monitor this conversation.
	And tell me what's wrong with it, because I have heist.
	They might die of boredom.
	Don't have them actually monitor the conversation.
	Well, I mean, you know, monitor this stream.
	It's weird.
	It's like your upload speed.
	I mean, you've got like mega, mega, mega, mega bits, right?
	Don't you have the massive Comcast connection?
	Yeah.
	Yes, I have a five up.
	And the thing is, with everybody else, I don't have a problem except with you at that location.
	I hate it.
	Alright.
	Anyway, so NetSuite, you had the dinner.
	Yeah.
	Is that the pictures you sent?
	That's what that was of?
	No, the one picture was the dining room.
	That's at Larry Ellison's house.
	That's where we had the dinner.
	Oh, that's his ship then.
	No, no, that's Tom Perkins' ship.
	Excuse me, I get them confused.
	Yeah, one is Blofeld, and the other one is, I can't remember the other evil character, but Perkins is definitely Blofeld with that ship.
	That thing is amazing.
	I mean, it's a world-famous ship, right?
	It's the only one of its kind, a sailing ship that is completely automated.
	I think it was actually, wasn't it built in the Netherlands?
	Didn't the Dutch build that?
	Turks.
	Turks!
	Huh.
	Same thing.
	Well, I'm sure the Dutch taught the Turks.
	Yeah.
	But anyway, so I tried to get on it, but they won't let you on.
	You know, since he's at, you know, he is one of the founders of Kleiner Perkins, you should be able to get on, seems to me.
	Yeah, but I have absolutely no desire.
	By the way, I'm against parties on boats.
	This party was not at a boat.
	The party was at Larry Ellison's house.
	Just on the way to the house, I went past this boat, and I stopped and took a picture of it.
	Oh, wow.
	There's a lot to wish for still, I guess.
	Holy moly.
	Well, I don't think Ellison even stays at that house.
	By the way, you have to take your shoes off when you go in there.
	Yeah.
	It looks like more of a crash pad in the, let's say, the model of the lobby of the Four Seasons.
	Right, right, right.
	Is this the Japanese place?
	No, no, that's his place in Woodside.
	Oh, okay.
	So how many people were invited?
	There were 22.
	Oh, man, you're on the list.
	You're in the inner circle.
	Well, for that party.
	And anyway, since one of the guys or the CEO of the company is a wine collector, he gave me access to his database.
	So I picked the wines for the dinner.
	And they were all...
	I'm going to have to blog this because it's another example of how people get caught up in...
	Essentially overpriced California wine.
	And for anyone out there who follows this, there's going to be like two guys who are not going to know what I'm talking about, but we had essentially a six-bottle horizontal tasting of the 2002 vintage, which included two Colgens, an Ebreu, an Araujo, a Bryant family, and...
	Overall, these wines are $500, $600 a pop or more if you bought them today.
	The next couple of days later, I had just a second wine from Bordeaux for $20.
	It was better.
	Oh, man.
	Somehow, it's a lot less interesting when I wasn't there to taste it.
	How come I wasn't your bitch?
	How come I wasn't your date?
	What's up with that?
	Nobody had dates.
	It was just people were invited.
	Nobody could bring anybody.
	Yeah, okay.
	And was it like really nerdy, a whole bunch of guys in cockies sitting around drinking $500 bottle wine?
	No, not really.
	It was mostly entrepreneurial class.
	Ah, yes.
	Although Dan Farber was there.
	From ZDNet.
	ZDNet, right.
	Okay, so that was nice.
	So you had table conversation.
	I knew half the guys there.
	I'm glad we didn't go out last night.
	We were planning our dinner last night.
	We were still on for tonight or not?
	Yeah, but I'm thinking, here's an interesting idea, and I think people get a kick out of this.
	About a month or two ago, I was floating around San Francisco.
	I had to meet somebody, and I was over in the part of Chinatown where there's a classic San Francisco restaurant.
	I don't know how old this place is, but for years and years and years, it always won the Most Beautiful Restaurant in San Francisco award.
	And the more I thought about it, I've only lived here forever, and I don't know that I've ever eaten at this place.
	And it's a classic old restaurant.
	Really pretty Chinese restaurant that is probably as faded as anything could be.
	It's just semi-decadent.
	It's called the Empress of China.
	Oh, okay.
	I think I've walked by it once when I was on one of my...
	It's a big thing.
	It's up in the air.
	It's like on the 10th floor of a building.
	It overlooks Chinatown or something.
	And so anyway, so I'm walking around and I go and I had some time to go.
	So I went in the elevator to go up and visit the restaurant to see what it was like.
	And I roamed around.
	And it's actually still a...
	Still looks like it's still in pretty good shape.
	You know, I'm wondering about...
	About choosing that as our destination for the season?
	Well, I was thinking it'd be kind of interesting as a...
	Because I've never been there.
	Well, it's a landmark.
	I think our audience who once in a while frequents San Francisco would enjoy the review.
	Yeah, I think so, too.
	I mean, is it worth going to, is the question.
	Well, you know, I lay my trust completely in your hands.
	Well, anyway, so it's a change of pace.
	Especially after having this high-end meal I had, which is like, you know, drinking these wines.
	I mean, I was so irked about the wines.
	Not that they weren't good.
	I mean, they were all decent, except I didn't like the Colgins at all.
	And I never have liked that winery, and I was looking at the bottles, and I realized why.
	The alcohol in those wines is ridiculous.
	That's like 15%?
	15.5, 15.7.
	That makes you hammered real quick.
	Yeah, and it gives you a headache, and you have all kinds of issues with it.
	I don't even know why they're pushing them up that high with that kind of alcohol.
	And when you smell the wine, trying to look for a bouquet or anything, all you smell is ethanol.
	And this wine is $500?
	I mean, are you kidding me?
	Pour that in my tank.
	I mean, I can go get some Everclear.
	Excuse me, can I just dab my napkin in that to clean the glass table for a second?
	Yeah, there we go.
	Nice.
	Anyway, but I'll blog it.
	Yeah.
	Oh, man.
	This is so weird.
	You know, I don't like doing our shows when we're both on the same coast or in the same country, actually, besides the connectivity.
	I just feel so disconnected from the rest of the world when I'm in San Francisco.
	Well, you've been reading the Financial Times.
	You were very disappointed this week because you ran into the Financial Times article on Sequoia's complaining about something or other.
	No, that was actually just before I left.
	That was last, was it?
	No, no, you're right.
	It was Monday or Tuesday.
	When did I arrive?
	Tuesday?
	When did I get in?
	I don't know.
	See, I don't know either.
	You came in Monday night.
	Right, okay.
	So, yeah, it was Monday's Financial Times on the plane.
	The front page, above the fold, it said, I wish I knew exactly what the headline was, but it was like Silicon Valley in dire straits or something like that.
	And it referred to what is now really old news, which broke on, of all places, Valleywag.
	One of our investors, actually, Sequoia Capital, they'd had an all-hands meeting almost three weeks ago.
	They had all of their companies come in.
	They had three guys speak.
	They had a common PowerPoint deck.
	The deck started off with a picture of a tombstone that said, Rest in Peace, Good Times.
	And essentially the message from...
	Yeah.
	Which was insulting to start off with, honestly.
	What do you mean good times?
	I'm working my ass off here.
	And the message was, we're all going to die.
	Your companies will die.
	You have to cut 60%.
	You have to plan to have the amount of cash you have right now.
	You have to plan to have the exact same amount of cash in one year from now.
	If you're not making money, you're going to be dead.
	And that was their message.
	Now, we have other investors who had very different messages, I'll say.
	But this was really, you know, they brought everyone together.
	And they did a really stupid thing.
	They sent out a video of the event and the PowerPoint through email.
	The video was not password protected.
	And it said, you know, confidential.
	Yeah, like of all those people who were at the meeting, like they're going to keep it confidential.
	So, of course, that showed up everywhere within an hour, including a valley wag.
	And, you know, to add insult to injury, then the Financial Times picks up on it two weeks after the fact and makes it a headline story, and then quoting, you know, who are they quoting, like Loic Lemur of Seismic, who had just, you know, let seven people go and, you know.
	It was just like, man, if this is their reporting, if this is their great, in-depth, award-winning reporting, crikey, I've got to start thinking about the value of other shit I read in their paper.
	It's disappointing.
	That happens all the time.
	When you read something in the newspaper, you absolutely know something about, and it's never right.
	You have to question the rest of it.
	Yeah, no, that happens all the time.
	In fact, you run into that.
	I ran into that, by the way, a lot with Alex Jones.
	Oh, from Infowars?
	Yeah, and I mean, he brings up certain things that I happen to have personal knowledge of, and it's like, what are you talking about?
	Yeah, well, we all do it, obviously, and, you know, it's all in...
	Yeah, there is no truth, I guess, is the message.
	No, it's all entertainment.
	Yes.
	So talking about entertainment, I've come to some horrible conclusion about the election.
	It's no longer fun?
	Well, no, it's getting a little old.
	But...
	But what's getting to be kind of fun is watching the smugness of the Democrats kind of creep into the picture.
	I mean, if you watch this week's Bill Maher show, I mean, these guys are sitting there.
	It's actually kind of interesting.
	It's going to be so offensive to people after a couple of years of this.
	But, so I realize that I made a huge mistake.
	Uh-oh.
	Yeah.
	I made a huge mistake.
	Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
	Here it comes.
	A huge mistake.
	I made a huge mistake.
	And the thing was is I violated my own basic tenet when I made this mistake.
	And that is about two years ago when I started to pick up on the way this election was going to go, which was...
	I believed it was going to be Hillary as the Democratic candidate, then you said it would be a Clinton-Obama ticket, but that McCain would win regardless.
	So far you're batting zero.
	Right.
	I would also predict that McCain was going to be the nominee, and I also said that, but I said the Vice President was going to be Giuliani, but that was kind of the way, but these guys got shook out at the, during the primaries, and who knew that Obama was going to push out Hillary?
	Because that wasn't really in the cards.
	Anyway, so, and I still think they're trying to submarine his campaign, but they can't do it.
	But the thing I overlooked was I wrote a column, which I'm going to reblog.
	I wrote, it's just basically I wrote the column for the blog a few years ago about how the media Is going to force the issue on the way the electoral college works and make a popular vote be the vote for the president because when they target states, which Obama's not necessarily doing because he's got a 50-state strategy.
	And he's got a huge lead.
	But when they target states, they take money out of the coffers of media companies who get all this election campaign money.
	But meanwhile, I've been arguing vociferously.
	Every time it comes up in the conversation, and people who know me have probably heard this from me numerous times over the last decades.
	Is that there's never going to be campaign finance reform ever because it would limit the amount of money that goes to these campaigns that then goes to the true beneficiaries of the campaign.
	Which are the media companies.
	Which are the media companies.
	So they're not going to put up with it.
	They're essentially going to screw over anybody who tries to do campaign finance reform because it's money out of their pockets.
	Right.
	So what am I doing putting my money on McCain when he takes public funds, even though Obama agreed to it, and Obama just said, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, right.
	Gotcha.
	Psych.
	Psych.
	And so Obama's got the 200, 300 million, God knows how much money he's got, and he's spending it, and he's still collecting it.
	He charges for bumper stickers for God.
	He can't even...
	They're so desperate to spend their money, and we should probably delve into this just lightly, John, and to explain to our non-American listeners how it works.
	In fact, many of our American listeners don't know how it works.
	Because you can't spend that money after the campaign, right?
	I think you can put it into the next campaign.
	I think you can carry it forward like a credit.
	Right, okay.
	So, obviously, he's trying to spend everything, which explains what he's doing, I think, Wednesday, when he's spending a million dollars per network for a primetime half-hour special, for which baseball is even being delayed by 15 minutes.
	Which is the kicker to the story, because Fox, of all the networks, is actually delaying the World Series so they can take Obama's money.
	And by the way, a million bucks for a half hour?
	That seems cheap.
	Yeah, it does seem cheap.
	I think it's pre-prime time or something like that.
	It's not prime time, or is it?
	Well, before the baseball game is prime time, regardless.
	That million dollar figure may not be accurate.
	It may have been negotiated.
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I'm just going by what I hear.
	That's true.
	Yeah, it could be something else.
	So let's just understand this first.
	Let me just delve into the campaign finance.
	Let me just play it to you the way I understand it.
	If you go with public money, Then there's a set amount that you can use.
	And you get that basically for free.
	If you take other forms of money, and I'm very fuzzy on what other forms of money is, then you can't take the public money, but then the amount you can get in and spend is essentially unlimited.
	And I'm not quite sure how it works.
	Where does this money come from?
	Can you raise it any way you want?
	As we know, and we can get into that later, Obama is literally selling his bumper stickers.
	How How does that work?
	Well, it's pretty, you know, this is a, nobody knows.
	Nice and transparent in the Banana Republic.
	It's like, you know, there's a bunch of little money come pouring in that they don't track, so it could be from Africa.
	You're not supposed to be taking foreign money.
	Which is illegal, right?
	You're not supposed to take foreign money.
	Yeah, you can't take foreign money.
	But you can't track it, because it's all going on through the internet.
	And then there's these big donations, and there's a thousand dollar minimum, but yet there's people that give more somehow.
	I mean, the whole thing has really gotten weird, and there used to be this problem with so-called soft money and hard money, and I don't even know what they did to fix that.
	And then you've got the public money that goes to one or both candidates in different ratios.
	All right, John, it's all right to say you just don't know.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I just know that there's an awful lot of money on one side of the campaign and then the do-gooder who wants to do campaign finance reform.
	Because the reason for campaign finance reform is just what we're describing.
	We don't know how it works.
	We don't know where this money is coming from.
	It could be coming from Saudi Arabia for all we know.
	And it's being funneled in in all kinds of different ways.
	And they would like to fix that because there's a corrupting factor to it.
	But it's never going to be fixed, and we have to get over it because the media is not going to let that happen.
	So they've got these two candidates, and you wonder why.
	Because I was still baffled by why would General Electric, a big contracting company, really put all its weight behind Obama in such a way that they've actually created a network, MSNBC, that is essentially the Obama network.
	Yeah, the Obama channel, sure.
	And they just, you know, as far as they're concerned, it's all Obama all the time.
	Well, then why do you question it?
	I don't understand why you're...
	That makes total sense to me.
	Well, it makes total sense when you think of the fact that they don't want a campaign finance reform guy winning, because obviously that's money out of their bottom line every four years or every two years with the congressional elections.
	Oh, dude, but come on, General Electric, think about the power they're going to have when they come knocking and say, yo, Barack baby, remember we hooked you up with that Barack channel?
	Yeah, well, that's fine, Danny, but I don't think that's the basic reason to do it, because it was always risky.
	I mean, because they were going on Barak side when the election was even, and what would happen if McCain won?
	The reason everybody, and if you look at all these newspapers that are, including the Chicago Tribune, that's never advocated for a Democrat, even though he's a local boy.
	Yeah, they're now endorsing him.
	They said, yeah, we wanted Obama.
	Every newspaper editor, which is usually always saying a Republican, well, the staff is Democrat, they're all saying vote for Obama.
	Nobody's saying vote for McCain.
	And the reason is, as far as I'm concerned, it's just like they look at the bottom line and they say, look, this Obama guy's got, he's throwing $300 million into the system, our money, and then this cheapskate McCain, he's got some public funds.
	Do we want a future with the presidents running under those circumstances?
	It was not going to Who's not going to pay the man?
	So I made this bet, not thinking, because I have always said for years that campaign finance reform is never going to happen because the media is the beneficiary, the media controls public opinion, and the media would be shooting themselves in the foot to be promoting this thing.
	So am I missing something?
	Is there campaign finance reform on the horizon?
	What am I missing here?
	No, McCain has always had a couple of bills go in, trying to do it.
	He's a big shot here by taking public funds.
	Yeah, it's always on the horizon.
	It gets talked up every once in a while, but when it comes this close and you've got a guy who's going to be president who's a really big-time campaign finance reform guy, McCain, they have to kill him by making sure he doesn't get in.
	So they say, don't vote for him.
	All the editorials are against him.
	He's an idiot.
	He's old.
	One thing or another.
	Yeah, I know.
	Somebody out there is going, well, Obama's better.
	Yeah.
	Bullshit.
	They could have put anybody in.
	I really hope people understand the significance of this.
	And by the way, there was a Dutch reporter.
	I think I sent that to you a couple weeks ago.
	A Dutch reporter who donated money to Obama's campaign.
	And then she wrote an article about it saying, hey, you know, that's actually illegal for you to take my money.
	Of course, that went nowhere.
	In fact, when I donated to...
	I'm just realizing now, when I donated to...
	Dr.
	Ron Paul's campaign, I did it on a Dutch credit card, so technically that would also be an illegal donation.
	But this is what I've been saying for a long time, that in the United States, we choose our presidents the same way we buy our soap and our washing powder.
	It's all through advertisements, it's all through manipulation and paid manipulation of the media, and it's the people who are behind the candidates who are really running the show.
	Last Thursday...
	When we had the beautiful, I love C-SPAN, when we had the beautiful investigative committee about the financial crisis, and you had Greenspan sitting there, you had Cox from the Security Exchange Commission, and Snow,
	the former Secretary of the Treasury, and Davis, the Republican on the committee, He asked these three jabronis, these thieves and liars, he said, do you have any idea in the past 20 years which presidential candidate, in 20 years time, which presidential candidate has received the most campaign finance donations from...
	The subprime mortgage lenders, which is just another word for the Wall Street thieves.
	And none of them knew the answer.
	And of course the answer is Obama.
	Because that's where his money is coming from.
	It's coming from Wall Street.
	And it's coming from Wall Street where big companies like GE are listed.
	And it's one big money game.
	And the fact that we don't see through this, certainly as Americans, is sad.
	Well, I think the market is going to skyrocket once he gets in.
	Shmark it, shmark it.
	I'm so uninterested now.
	You're in gold bars.
	You know what?
	I've really calmed down a lot because I see now that clearly we're not going to stop the freight train.
	Unless something really radical happens, Obama is going to win.
	And we're headed for at least two more years until we hit your cycle, our huge depression, and it's going to be very, very serious.
	And we brought this shit on ourselves.
	Well, the funny thing is it's going to be all Democrats, you know, running everything, so we'll see how they do.
	But, you know, the Barney Franks of the world.
	Oh, that guy.
	You know, I wouldn't buy a car from that guy.
	What a dick.
	He looks like your crazy-ass uncle, the one that always sets up the slideshows.
	You know, it's like, what a horrible, horrible man.
	And, you know, you can just tell he's full of crap.
	Oh, I hate that guy, really, with a passion.
	And the way he talks...
	He's not the only weird talker.
	The other one is the...
	What's his name?
	Rankle?
	Or that black guy who's got that...
	I don't know.
	But Dodd is another one.
	He looks so completely untrustworthy.
	And even Nancy Pelosi, man.
	What planet is she from?
	I don't know.
	I think she had way too much Botox the last time around.
	She can't even move her face.
	Botox and that helmet that she calls hair is frightening me.
	Well, she looks like she's perpetually scared.
	Well, enough about the personal attacks.
	But yeah, I mean, it's not right to talk about people's physical appearance.
	Well, when they're all Botoxed up, I think it's okay.
	There are people in my family who use Botox and people in my friends I know.
	So what am I going to say about her, right?
	But, um, it's, uh, it's, you know, for me, it's just, it's winding down.
	I'm just like, I'm exhaling already.
	I'm like, okay, you know, well, we'll see it happen, and then we're gonna, you know, we're gonna see all that smugness, and everyone's gonna be ha-ha-ha-ha, and aren't we great, and we rule, and we're gonna change the world, and then we're gonna wake up one day, and we're gonna be...
	I'm trying not to swear, but we're going to be screwed.
	We're going to be so screwed, and that's what I'm waiting for when I can say, okay, told you so.
	Now can we please get together and change this and make it right?
	You know, I'm angry, John.
	I'm angry, I'm disappointed, and dismayed when I hear what Obama is going to do.
	You look at, you look, this is the only, I've tried running companies in countries that are socialist, which is the direction the United States is headed.
	And what you get is, it's impossible, at least for me, it is not possible to run a small to medium sized business.
	We are the ones that are going, we are absolutely, our company is the one that's going to get screwed.
	Because we're going to get all the tax crap.
	All that shit's going to come down on us.
	We're the ones that are actually working.
	And people who are lazy bitches are going to be sitting around taking handouts and not want to do anything.
	It's like this is not what America is about.
	And it's upsetting to me.
	Really, really upsetting.
	And I've had small, medium businesses.
	And I've run them successfully.
	And I love doing it.
	But when your government is there...
	Jabbing a poker up your ass, it's like, why bother?
	I'll just take my gold and go sit somewhere else, go to Paraguay and screw all of you.
	Seriously.
	Paraguay.
	Well, that's where all the bushes go, and that's where they all have their compounds for when the riots break out.
	It's really, honestly, seriously upsetting, because I am a patriot, and it upsets me.
	I mean, do you disagree with that happening?
	Well, you know, the thing is that it happens, so it's still a slow boat.
	It doesn't happen overnight.
	Yeah, I've learned that too.
	It takes a while.
	And there's a lot of resistance.
	Here's what the Democrats have to do.
	They've got to pretty much not do anything.
	Except, you know, fix a few leaks and maybe, you know, look at the regulatory landscape a little bit and make some adjustments for two years so things are kind of on an even keel.
	And then they can keep their plurality because if they start screwing around right away and things start to fall apart, the Republicans will be right back in office in the Congress and Senate overnight because the public The public is fickle.
	And they're not going to put up with, you know, here, we're going to give you Congress, we're going to give you the president, we're going to give you whatever you want.
	You can pick any Supreme Court justice you want.
	You're going to have the Senate, the House, everything.
	It's yours.
	Now do what you're supposed to do, which is fix things.
	If they don't do it, they're done.
	In fact, I'm surprised that they're going to pick up more seats because it's been the Democrat do-nothing Congress that got in two years ago, and they were going to get us out of the war, and they were going to do this, and they were going to do that, and they did nothing except be partially responsible for this financial crisis by not doing anything.
	When I hear our cultural leaders of the elite, mind you, when I hear Jon Stewart on his show talking about, well, isn't it time we spread the wealth around a little bit?
	In other words, it's okay for people to receive checks from the government for not working.
	That really angers me.
	That's not the way it's supposed to work.
	The way it's supposed to work...
	75% of American business is small business.
	It's only 25% that are huge conglomerates and megacorporations.
	This is the guy with the corner stall.
	This is the guy with the little shop.
	This is a couple of guys with 50, 60 employees.
	We're supposed to be able to create jobs which creates wealth and creates an economy that actually runs on real product and people doing real work.
	And that's how you spread the wealth around.
	Not by giving handouts, because it breeds contempt.
	I've seen it happen.
	We've talked about this.
	Yes, but what also breeds contempt, for example, is the guy who took over that bank for two weeks and walked away with $300 million.
	Of course, but this bailout is not about actually fixing anything.
	I'm just saying that, you know, we have a bunch of interesting executive packages that are out there that are being, you know, these guys are, you know, look what I look at, you know, and there's people who are doing one, I'm making more as a CEO than you are, I'm making $200 million a year, and you're only making $150 million, that kind of thing.
	This is, which is basically shoving it in the public's face, because these guys can't either shut up about it, or they can't find some other way to get paid.
	I mean, even like Jack Welch wasn't paid that kind of money.
	And so you get a blowback on it.
	And this is what's going to happen.
	So they're going to literally do what Democrats can do when they take over.
	And it's a simple old phrase that goes around.
	Soak the rich.
	Eat the rich.
	But it's the Democrats who set all this up.
	It's the Democrats who forced this bailout.
	You know, they're doing it.
	It's not like...
	I don't know.
	I'm at a loss for words and I'm disappointed.
	Yeah, well, the lecture's not over yet.
	It's not over until it's over.
	That is absolutely true, but I would hate to think what would happen if Obama lost.
	Well, that would be bad, too.
	I'm very worried.
	If it turns out that he was born in Kenya...
	Yeah, this is getting weirder.
	I was reading yesterday that because Obama did not respond to this lawsuit that was filed in Pennsylvania, I think, that that actually creates a legal problem for him.
	Essentially, all he has to do is produce his vault version of his birth certificate, and he's good to go, right?
	And he's not doing that.
	Right.
	And the rule is, if you're not a natural born American, you cannot be president.
	Whether it's fair or not, that's the rule.
	And this trip to Hawaii, I've read somewhere else, amongst my many fellow conspiracists, that his grandmother is apparently ill, or very ill, and so he stopped his campaign for two days to go to Hawaii.
	The general conspiracy thought out there is that he's there with his lawyers trying to finagle and fix his birth certificate issue, because that's where his so-called birth certificate is from, is from Hawaii.
	Which I kind of would buy into, almost.
	Yeah, I thought it was kind of weird that he would have this issue with his grandmother out of the blue like this just two weeks beforehand.
	Although I think right now that both Obama and Biden would be better off staying off the campaign trail and coasting home on an empty tank because there is less chance of getting into a wreck, as it were.
	Yeah, well, of course, this Biden thing where he, at a fundraiser, was recorded saying, oh, you know, this guy's really going to be tested.
	There's going to be a...
	Something bad's going to happen.
	But he said it was going to be an orchestrated event.
	Yeah.
	Hello.
	And he knows the people who are going to do it.
	That was literally what he was saying.
	That's what he kind of hinted at.
	But, you know, the thing is, you've got to remember, there's an eight-year cycle of attacks by Al-Qaeda on the United States.
	I mean, the 93 attack on the World Trade Center.
	You better get your book out quick, John.
	This is the eight-year cycle book, so that means we're due in 2009 for another Al-Qaeda attack.
	This is also in a cycle?
	You're serious, right?
	You're really telling me this now.
	Absolutely.
	Oh, please.
	Well, when it happens, you're going to go, my God, this Dvorak is unbelievable.
	No, I don't think it's.
	I think it's a financial.
	I think it's structural.
	I think it's going to be the reset of the reserve currency screwing the dollar.
	That's what I believe it's going to be.
	It's not going to be a physical attack.
	It'll be a financial, virtual attack.
	I think you're going to blow up Los Angeles.
	And why do I say that?
	Yes, please.
	I wouldn't mind knowing.
	I'm going there tomorrow.
	Will it be okay?
	If I leave on Tuesday, am I safe?
	Well, the reason I say it is because they seem to, whoever's behind all these crazy things, which I would assume is bin Laden, but you don't know, they always keep coming back to the things that they didn't get done the first time.
	And so the World Trade Center, they tried it in 93.
	They tried to blow it up from the bottom up.
	With a bunch of explosives in the basement, and it shook the whole place, but nothing happened.
	Well, a couple people died.
	Yeah, some people died, but I'm just saying it didn't bring the building down.
	And then they rethought the process, and then eight years later, after a lot of planning, these guys aren't...
	Kind of just scatterbrained about it.
	After a lot of planning, they'd do the thing on 9-11.
	Now, during that same period, there was an attempt to go to this Los Angeles airport and blow up that horrible-looking...
	Yeah, the spaceship-looking dome.
	Yeah, that dome thing.
	The dome restaurant.
	And they brought these guys in through Port Angeles, my Washington home, as a matter of fact.
	These guys are coming in from Canada, and the guy screwed up and panicked, and we started running around.
	If anybody knows anything about that area, when you're in the Olympic Peninsula, there's one road out.
	And it's like being on an island in that regard.
	You can't get out.
	I mean, if you can get on a plane, you can get out.
	But driving out or running out, as this guy was doing, you're not getting anywhere.
	You're going to get eaten by bears.
	Anyway, so...
	They also tried to...
	Wasn't the talk of them trying to attack the Sears Tower in Chicago as well?
	There was talk about it, but there was no...
	I mean, there wasn't anything where there was an actual effort where the guys were caught.
	And there was also talk about the Space Needle in Seattle during the...
	Fireworks.
	Why bother with that?
	That is not symbolic.
	You've got to get something that has...
	No, I agree with that.
	I think the Space Needle is not symbolic.
	It's just a Space Needle and nobody cares about it.
	I think blowing up LAX... Well, that would cause some actual economic disaster.
	It would cause all kinds of problems.
	Yeah, it would be a disaster.
	As opposed to the Space Needle, which I think was stupid.
	You know, once that rumor came out about the Space Needle, they canceled the fireworks display and, you know, the Seattleites all panicked.
	Because, you know, the Pacific Northwest and most of Canada, everybody in those areas thinks everything's about them.
	Well, that's just like San Francisco, dude, believe me.
	Yeah, that's true.
	But anyway, the point is that they got really freaky about it, which is like ridiculous.
	And yes, the thing that these guys would like to do is something that really has an economic impact, which the World Trade Center definitely did, and that whole idea of the airplanes.
	So they are blowing up an airport, which is what they tried to do once, eight years ago, or seven years ago, coming on the eight years, Seems like a logical target, and if I was down in Los Angeles, I'd be very, you know, I don't know what to do about it, but I think I'd be on the lookout.
	So let me ask you a question.
	If Obama is going to save us, which of course is what everyone believes, and he's going to bring our troops home and end this war, I can hear Joe Biden saying it, what incentive do they have?
	Of course, you know I don't believe that there even is such a thing as Al-Qaeda beyond a brand name and Bin Laden.
	If he's still alive, it's irrelevant.
	And I don't believe that 9-11 was done by Al-Qaeda or terrorists with box cutters.
	Yeah, go ahead and call me a kook at a nutjob, whatever.
	I didn't call you a nutjob.
	I'd call you a nutter.
	You call me a nutter.
	So what's the incentive?
	Why do they want to get us again?
	Is this just to keep on going forever?
	I mean, aren't we showing our good side here?
	Oh, come on.
	It's bullshit.
	This is being done by the same people who are electing or trying to get Obama and McCain into government.
	They just want to kill us all.
	I'm sorry.
	It's ridiculous.
	It's absolutely ridiculous.
	Because geopolitics is nothing new.
	Anyway, so...
	No, it's not, but it is...
	No, I'm sorry.
	It is absolutely nothing new.
	We're going through this...
	You're right, John.
	We're going through the same cycle.
	The exact same things have happened throughout history and we're so stupid and so undereducated and our governments keep us so dumb that we don't even recognize that what is happening is just a cycle.
	It goes through.
	I mean, the same thing all over again and it's probably done by the same people or by their descendants.
	And it's not guys with sheets on their head climbing on monkey bars in the desert, which is our vision of Al-Qaeda.
	I didn't know about the monkey bars.
	You've never seen that video footage?
	Anyway, the point is, back to what I was saying, there is a cycle involved with their planning and execution, and it's eight years.
	There was a really good article written in the London Times, and I wish I could find it.
	I had a link to it on this little site that I had put up during the...
	9-11 period.
	I had all these links to all these stories.
	It was actually quite a good...
	It's called the Jihad site.
	It was quite interesting to read all this stuff so people can get to an understanding of what's going on with the fundamentalist Islamist.
	And I had a link to this article in the London Times, which disappeared.
	Unfortunately, I'd have to go get the paper, I guess.
	It was...
	Written by one of the professors of one of the big universities like Oxford or Cambridge.
	He's a professor of war studies.
	And he claimed that the Arab methodology for war back from the 1400s and whenever, or before, was always a hit-and-run style.
	It was like you'd come in and you'd do as much damage as you could, and then you'd run away as fast as you can.
	And then you'd stay away, and then you'd come in again when it's least expected.
	And his thinking was what we did when we pounded Afghanistan immediately thereafter was the exact right thing to do.
	You have to, like, you know, just start making them miserable.
	Are you, John, question of conscience, are you proud to be an American when you talk about all these things, when you hear what we're doing and basically what the governments are doing?
	I don't hate anyone in Afghanistan.
	I don't hate anyone in Iraq.
	I don't hate anyone in Russia.
	Do you?
	Are you proud to be an American and have these people represent you with death?
	Well, I don't like their representation with death by any means, but the fact of the matter is I don't think...
	I think that the way we've structured this society, that we are...
	We've been actually given this role and we have to, you know...
	There's nothing we can do about it.
	I mean, I don't think there's a choice.
	What role?
	What role have we been given?
	We have been given the role of the world's big country with the number one economy, and we've been given the police state role.
	We've been given that?
	By whom?
	Who gave that to us?
	We got it in World War II. Who gave it to us?
	Essentially, I think, everybody else.
	I mean, it wasn't like somebody, it wasn't like, here's a piece of paper where we're signing off, you guys can go do all this stuff.
	It's just a role that we ended up with.
	I don't know who gave it to us, like any one person, because there's no a person that gives you anything like that.
	You don't think it's possible that we, as in our government, took it, took that role, instead of just staying back and saying, hey, you know, hey guys, this is messed up.
	You know, I think it's a possibility that we could have stayed back and went back to our isolationist ways.
	Before World War I, and I don't think that would have been necessarily a bad thing.
	Well, but it's not bad to have commerce with other people, but to go set up camps and have military represented.
	We have camps in 200 places in the world.
	I think it's too many.
	Well, of course it's too many.
	And they've been there since the Second World War.
	Germany, we still have bases.
	Why?
	Why?
	To protect those from the evil Russians?
	I mean, come on.
	This is...
	It's just a way of moving money around.
	Well, okay.
	Oh, thank you.
	All right.
	So, as long as we all recognize that it boils down to money at the end of the day.
	I'm just sick of it, John.
	I'm really, really sick of it.
	You're getting weirder.
	No, I'm not.
	There's nothing to be positive about.
	And I see this Obama guy coming, and I know it.
	It's like reading...
	Reading the dictionary, I know we're going to wind up at Z eventually, and I know that Zebra's going to be there.
	It's so obvious what's going to happen, and you're right, we go through these same cycles over and over again, and I'm frustrated because I wish I could change it, and I wish we weren't such moronic idiots.
	We reset the whole country when this next cycle comes around by my thesis, so I'm not worried about it.
	Is that the 12 o'clock train I hear passing by your house?
	It's funny, isn't it?
	This is this one guy.
	And he always...
	Yeah, he just makes noise.
	There's no crossings.
	Seriously, there's no crossings.
	But he just makes noise the whole time.
	I don't know what he's making it about.
	Maybe to chase birds off the track.
	I have no idea.
	He's just a maniac.
	Once in a while, there was a period of time that...
	I don't know what caused this.
	There was a period of time when these trains were going by at 2 in the morning and the guys would be honking the whole time right through the residential areas in Berkeley.
	And so they got a bunch of complaints.
	They stopped doing it.
	But I think it's just something you do when you're an engineer.
	Well, that's the whole reason to become an engineer, isn't it?
	Exactly.
	Look at me.
	I'm an engineer.
	Well...
	And then now it turns out, by the way, that engineer that caused that big train wreck is supposedly texting someone on his phone.
	You believe that?
	You actually believe that?
	No, I believe the later report that he saw green and he went and some screw up at the base.
	Yeah, because he had three witnesses.
	Of course, but it's another great way to take away some freedom.
	Let's turn off texting.
	That's next.
	Well, they got busted on that, so that's not going to happen.
	Although, you know, the thing is, it's almost like everything else.
	Well, it could have been from text messaging, so we better be safe than sorry.
	Exactly.
	Turn off texting.
	You can't do it or you get fired.
	Exactly.
	Wow.
	We'll see how...
	We had that with my favorite thing was during the era, and this actually started in the 80s.
	The era when laptops and people were bringing electronic devices onto airplanes in the early days, when they first started showing up on the scene, early IBM laptops.
	And there was this big thing about, before the cell phone revolution, about you've got to turn off all your electronic stuff, and then all of a sudden it became like, you know, we're doing that because it's better to be safe than sorry, because some plane veered off course, they think, you know, because some guy had his laptop on.
	Well, let me tell you, as an airman, it's horseshit.
	It is horse shit.
	It makes no difference.
	It cannot influence these instruments.
	It does not influence these instruments.
	The main reason for turning off your cell phone, and that is true, is that when your cell phone is searching for a tower, and you hear this on television all the time, you hear the interference, you hear...
	Right?
	The Blackberry does it a lot.
	And that will interfere with audio.
	And you will hear that in the cockpit, and that's annoying, without a doubt.
	But that's the only reason.
	There is nothing else that affects these instruments.
	There just isn't.
	So anyway, at some point they relented and let people use their laptops in the air.
	At the beginning, by the way, that was controversial.
	They weren't going to let you even play on your laptop when you're flying around.
	Right, but now you've got Wi-Fi and you can do video conference from the air.
	It just proves the point.
	That is horseshit.
	It's not true.
	So here's my story.
	So I'm in Brazil.
	And I'm on a, I think, TAM. And I'm sitting in the Fontaleza someplace in northern Brazil in an airport.
	I'm on this plane and it's not going to take off for half an hour.
	So I open the laptop up and start doing some work.
	And the stewardess comes over and she tells me that I have to close my laptop.
	And I said, why?
	She says, you can only use the laptop after we get to 10,000 feet.
	But that, by the way, is the altitude which on 9-11 cell phones worked.
	Yeah, right.
	So, anyway, so I said, but we're still, we're just sitting here, we're just here landed, you know, and then she says, no, no, that's what the rules are.
	Let me go kill this phone call.
	Yeah, sure, go ahead.
	You know, you're going to answer it?
	Hello?
	Yeah, there he goes.
	Yeah.
	Special insights.
	You hear how terse he is when he talks to people on the phone?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Eh?
	Eh?
	I'm busy.
	Oh.
	Eh?
	Can't talk now.
	Got to go.
	Bigger name on the other line.
	What time?
	Oh, jeez.
	Getting a reservation on a dinner.
	Okay, cool.
	Excellent.
	Yeah, I'm so happy we didn't have dinner last night.
	We'd have absolutely nothing to talk about.
	Much better this way.
	Now tonight I can just enjoy the dinner because we'll have nothing to talk about.
	That's great.
	Okay.
	Now, you can cut that out or leave it in, but what it is...
	I'm going to leave it in.
	Okay.
	Well, because we didn't go last night out, and I wanted to go to Chapeau.
	Ah.
	And so they have a seating.
	Somebody canceled and they gave us 6 o'clock.
	I figured we'd take that.
	We'd go to the Empress of China next time.
	Okay.
	So we're going to Chapeau tonight?
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah.
	Okay, cool.
	Where is that?
	It's out in the middle of nowhere, San Francisco, someplace other than the avenues.
	Out in 14th and Clement or something like that.
	There was one time, I'll take that back.
	Do you remember before the BlackBerry, RIM actually had a mobile messaging network?
	I'm talking 1998.
	I want to say 95.
	And you could buy a little...
	Remember the little HP, kind of like a flip-open plastic thing, and it had a keyboard and an LCD screen, and you could shove a PC card into the side of it?
	Yeah.
	And you could join up to the RIM network, which was countrywide.
	Yeah, I remember that.
	And you could send messages.
	Right.
	Email messages.
	That's how they got their start.
	That's right.
	And these things were one watt, which is an amazing amount of power, which is probably, what, three to four times the power of your typical cell phone these days?
	No, it's a lot more than that.
	Those things are...
	Oh, like 50 milliwatts, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	So incredibly powerful.
	Ron and I both had one.
	They were incredibly handy.
	Surprised you didn't have a big bald spot next to your head.
	Well, indeed.
	We were flying coach across country, and Ron was 15 seats up ahead of me, and I was behind.
	What was cool about these things is they actually would work up to 5,000, 6,000, 7,000 feet with these ground stations.
	One watt can go a long way if it's unrestricted.
	And so we're beeping messages back and forth between each other, and the captain actually came on and said, we're having an issue with one of our navigation systems right now.
	We'd just like everyone to close down all CD players, all electronics equipment, and heads were whipping around, because of course we were really cool at the time, right?
	Everyone's like, wow, that's awesome, man.
	You're sending these messages wirelessly, and everyone's head whipped around us and gave us the evil eye.
	It's like, you're going to make us crash!
	Now, I'm still not sure if that actually influenced it.
	That could have.
	It could have, but you know, it's a well-known fact that CD players in particular, of course nobody carries those around anymore, thank God, have a huge amount of RF coming off of them.
	Like, massive amounts.
	And it's all over the place.
	They're just a noise machine.
	But at what frequencies, do you know?
	They're all over the place.
	It's a mess.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	Hmm.
	So it may not have been you, but it probably was.
	Watts a lot.
	Well, you see, in the old days, really, really, I mean, there's three basic navigation systems, two of them based on radio, radio frequencies.
	That's the NDB, which is essentially on the AM band.
	If you ever listen, if you ever scan through the AM band, you'll hear these signals going perp, perp.
	Or sometimes it's a Morse code.
	So that's actually an identifier.
	And then we have the FM version, which is a VOR. So it's a beacon, and it's a directional finder beacon.
	But on today's modern aircraft, it's all GPS-based.
	At the very end, when you're landing on an instrument landing system, once again, you do get these radio frequencies into play.
	So, honestly, it does make sense to not have any risk of any other weird harmonics floating around that could potentially throw something off course.
	But this stuff is...
	These receivers and these transmitters, they're pretty good.
	This isn't just like a Radio Shack 101 project kit we're talking about here.
	Except maybe on a Russian plane.
	No, not even those.
	Not even those.
	Well, you've never flown Aeroflot.
	Oh, yes, I have.
	Absolutely.
	A lot of them still had tube transceivers in them.
	Hmm.
	And everything had big bolts.
	Yeah.
	So I'm on the Aeroflot.
	First time I took Aeroflot, I had a...
	I would never fly them unless I had to, by the way.
	Although they're using American-built planes now.
	I was on an Iliach 62.
	Which I think has like four engines all in the back to the tail or something like that.
	Right, right.
	Crazy looking machine.
	Yeah.
	And cramped.
	And the only difference between business, first class, there was a first class, a business class, and a coach.
	And the only difference between, they're exactly the same seats.
	No difference.
	There's just, they add like an inch of leg room for the business class and then two inches of leg room for the first class.
	But there's no, the seats are identical.
	That's the same when you fly either KLM or British Airways.
	When you go from London to Amsterdam, they don't have a first class.
	They have a business class.
	It is exactly the same seats, but there's a curtain separating you from the wee people in the back.
	And you get like a sandwich.
	So they served a pretty big meal.
	I think I was in Coach on the Way and Business on the Way back or something like that.
	I can't remember.
	But it was really cramped.
	I mean, talking about cramped, it was unbelievable.
	Anyway, so they served like a...
	For dinner, they actually cook a meal and then they divvy it up.
	It's not like all this prepackaged stuff, at least back then.
	And this was just before the fall of communism, like the year before.
	And so they were cooking fish.
	Oh, gosh.
	It's not like that smells.
	So the plane is reeking of fish.
	They come out with these platters, these aluminum tin...
	It's like being in a prison.
	Not that I've been in prison, but I'm guessing you have a tin plate.
	You can bang against the seat back.
	Hey, comradeski, I want some food.
	And so they have these tin plates.
	And then they also, somebody warned me about this one.
	They said all the sodas and everything were in big bottles.
	They had no individual servings of anything.
	They were just giant bottles of everything.
	And it was all served in plastic containers that were reused.
	So they were all washed a million times.
	So it was like a plastic cup that you'd normally get.
	And as an American, we'd throw it out.
	But it was reused.
	So it was washed and washed and washed.
	It was all scratched.
	That's not very high class.
	But what was interesting was that the women, because this was a flight out of London, were all...
	There's apparently a number of outstandingly beautiful crews on a number of these flights, and this was one of them.
	And all the girls, I guess, had gone when they went to London.
	I guess the first place they went was to all the makeup stores they could find, because they were wearing so much makeup.
	It looked like the whole place, it looked like you were being serviced by hookers.
	Yeah, well, in those days you couldn't get makeup in Russia.
	In fact, I remember when I was there in 88, I actually took some, you were supposed to take some trinkets with you to get shit done, and I remember taking, what was it they advised me?
	It was makeup, lipstick, I mean, anything you could, you could, you could schlep along in your suitcase would get you stuff, would get you like a phone call.
	Right, it had to be small amounts because you had to bring a lot of it.
	Yeah, bring it in, yeah.
	Because on my, where I was staying, the woman on the floor, there's a woman on every floor.
	Yeah, who does the phone.
	Right out there outside the elevator.
	She's sleeping most of the time.
	But every day, you'd have to give her a little...
	You've got to give her a trinket.
	A little Halloween candy bar is always a winner.
	Chocolate.
	And also, another good thing you can bring over there, because, again, you have to pack for lightness, so you can't bring any big things like a lamp.
	You bring those little cars...
	The matchbook cars that you have that slide along for kids.
	Huge, big deal.
	Just going back to cooking in the air.
	It's been a while since I've flown British Airways.
	I'm pretty sure they don't do it anymore.
	But in 2000, I flew British Airways first class.
	And they would cook your breakfast and they would make you a boiled egg.
	It takes nine minutes to boil a soft-boiled egg at altitude.
	Did you know that?
	Yeah, but the cabin's pressurized, so that should make up for that.
	Yeah, it's pressurized to 8,000 feet.
	Oh, right, then it would take a while.
	Yeah.
	So I remember saying, make mine three minutes, no more.
	She said, okay, that'll be nine minutes.
	I'm like, no, no, no, what are you talking about?
	Make it three minutes.
	I said, nope, it takes nine minutes to make a soft-boiled egg at altitude pressure.
	Huh.
	I've flown on British First Class a couple of times and I don't remember them ever cooking me breakfast.
	I've flown Canadian once and I may have done it there because I took a Canadian air flight to England.
	It was out of Toronto.
	And...
	We woke up in the morning, it was in Guzzeri Landing, and they cooked the breakfast for us.
	But it was an English breakfast with a, you know, just like you get.
	And with some tremendous high-quality bangers, which are almost impossible to find in the United States.
	You know, with that sage flavor and a lot of rusk.
	I was not commenting, I was savoring the recall of the taste.
	Very nice.
	So, anyway, where were we?
	I forgot.
	We're bitching about something.
	Well, about Russia.
	Russia seems to be in trouble.
	Yeah, you know, I got a copy of this video that there was a thing on the Russian, you know, that this new generation of Russian kids, you know, that are the sons and daughters of the criminal group that came in and, you know, took over the oil companies and everything and made themselves billionaires, and now they have a bunch of children who are just, you know, entrepreneurial in style, but they're the ones who, you know, they're buying the up-dumb pairing yawn, and they're just big spenders, and there's, you know, the...
	They're out-of-control morons.
	They're out of control.
	They're the worst in the 29-somethings with the Maseratis that we have.
	Well, what I've noticed is, you know, we've been looking for houses, and I think we've actually closed.
	I don't know yet.
	I haven't been home for a while.
	I think we actually closed on the new place.
	But there was all kinds of weird checks they were doing on background, which has nothing to do with the financing, just purely about, you know, character checks.
	And Patricia's great at you.
	I get immediately, I get all, like, offended, and what the fuck do you want, and what's wrong with you people?
	And she's much more calm about it.
	She's, you know, talking to these guys.
	And they said, well, we've had a lot of problem with Russians.
	And we really don't, you know, it has to do with who we bring into the neighborhood, you know, who you're going to be dealing with.
	And I presume it's, you know, the same level, same age group of people.
	And they're really, they just don't want them anymore.
	They're trouble.
	Yeah.
	Big time.
	You know, and then they, you know, they're pushy, they're pushy, they're trouble, they...
	I know, it's this terrible group.
	So anyway, a guy sends me a note, and he says, I think you and Adam should discuss currency investment during this economic downturn.
	I think it's particularly relevant.
	Do not...
	And not just because I've been asking you about this.
	He wants to buy and sell a dollar.
	Let me make a minor statement.
	Something very interesting has happened to me, personally.
	It's our own company, and we take a salary.
	It's not a huge salary.
	It's not shit, but it's not a huge salary.
	There are many people in our company making more than Ron and I. But right now, because of the way the dollar stands against the pound, and actually the euro, but the pound in particular, I got like 20% more pounds in a month than I had two months ago.
	Yeah, which is nice, but of course that is bound to swing the other way.
	Right.
	Well, I'm not a big fan.
	I think currency investment is a...
	Well, the only way you can do it is if you're into swaps, and that's part of this problem.
	So what you do is you take a position in foreign exchange, and then you insure that with a swap, and that, of course, is these really unstructured, non-transparent, not officially traded, not regulated derivatives, I'm an investor in real companies.
	I used to, but I stopped a long time ago.
	I don't invest in publicly traded companies because I've run one.
	It's full of shit.
	They lie to you.
	Their numbers are bullshit.
	It's trickery.
	Everyone's in on the plot.
	Why do you think Arthur Anderson went down the tubes?
	They were all a part of the system.
	It's a big lie.
	And most people, if you're not somehow on the inside, like you are perhaps with Andrew Horowitz, you're going to get screwed.
	You will get screwed if you buy into stocks, if you buy into currencies, same thing, because you're not a part of the big game.
	You're not a part of the system.
	You cannot win as a small guy just trying to make an investment.
	I would agree with that pretty much, yeah.
	And currency stuff in particular really takes a skilled professional.
	I don't think you can just slop around because you think the dollar is going to go up and the dollar is going to go down.
	And if you feel that way, find some exchange-traded fund.
	Or just quit and become a day trader.
	I'm doing something very crazy, John.
	I'm doing something called, what is it called again?
	Oh, saving.
	That's what it was.
	Yes, I'm saving my money.
	Isn't that crazy?
	Well, some would think.
	Yeah, no, that's a good point.
	You know, if you want to become a day trader, you know, sit there all day.
	I always say to people, it's like one of the reasons I think that professionals do so much better.
	It's like becoming a professional gambler.
	I've known two of them.
	And the professional gambler tell you the same thing.
	You know, they win all the money, the amateurs lose all the money, and that's the way the game is played.
	And typically a professional gambler, not those guys you see that win all those poker games, But typically a professional gambler will make $100,000 to $200,000 a year if he's full-time and he knows what he's doing.
	And he has a knack for it.
	I mean, it's a skill to do.
	And you can make money doing it, but that is your job.
	Yeah, you have to do it full-time.
	You've got to be in the big game with everybody else.
	Otherwise, there's just no way to win.
	No way.
	Period.
	So, and it's all these little guys, and that's the reason I don't think that this economic crisis that we're going through right now is the big one, because the public is not in the market, and it's always the public at large that takes it in the shorts when you have an economic collapse.
	They're the ones left holding the bag, just like the amateurs who are the amateur gamblers.
	They're left holding the bag.
	Or you have the addicted gambler, those poor bastards.
	But there are millions of people who are getting shafted.
	I mean, you can't deny that.
	Yeah, but that's a different kind of shaft where you're, you know, I mean, you're getting, it's just, it's a roundabout shaft.
	It's not as though you were in the market, you know, and you're all pumped up about it and you're putting everything in it.
	You go on margin, you're borrowing money, you're taking out the mortgage on your house because you know that Juniper Networks is going to double and blah, blah, blah.
	Yeah, but this is the crazy thing.
	This is such an American thing because, of course, our, quote, economy was built on this system of publicly traded equities and debt, etc.
	In Europe, you can go ask 100 people on the street and maybe one of them will actually be actively engaged in any kind of trading with their money.
	People just don't do it.
	Unfortunately, they trust the government and put all their money into pensions and they get diluted that way.
	But it's a very American thing to invest in companies and, oh yeah, I think it's a good company or I like the products so I'm going to buy stock in them.
	That no longer has any relevance to what these companies are doing.
	You're much better off Either starting your own business, or used to be, it's over now with Obama, much better off starting your own business or helping out investing in a small business, because that's where you can actually, over the long term, you'll probably make more money, and you might even have more fun.
	That would be my advice.
	I would agree with that.
	But people do like to get into the stock market, especially when it's going up like crazy, and they all get in when it's going up.
	Yeah, because we're greedy-ass bastards, and we think we can play the game.
	And they all get out when it's down at the bottom.
	I'm always amazed at that.
	I mean, the thing's bouncing around the bottom.
	Yes.
	Bang, bang, bang.
	You can feel it, and you can see it, and you watch it, and people are bailing.
	Wait a minute, this is not the point where you bail out.
	I mean, the old rule still applies.
	You buy low, sell high.
	When did it go the other way?
	Now we're all selling low, and then they get to the top, they'll all be buying in, and then they'll be stuck holding the bag.
	It's unbelievable.
	And then, of course, they'll sell again when it bounces off the bottom again in 2013.
	Well, that's just like gambling.
	If you don't know what you're doing, the minute you lose, like, crap, I'm going to go home now.
	It's like, then you lost.
	You cannot win people.
	So, to our listener who said, you know, what should I do?
	Save your money, my friend.
	That's what I'd say.
	Save it.
	Just save your money.
	I don't know why people want to get into these weird kinds of things.
	John, do you remember back in the day when you would, you know, remember layaway?
	Does that still exist in America?
	Layaway?
	It's being revitalized.
	There was just a news story about it the other day.
	Some of these stores, because of the credit crunch, they can't give cards away or whatever.
	People are rejecting credit cards, thank God.
	Their layaway is now being revitalized by some of the big department stores.
	Absolutely.
	A lot of people don't remember it.
	Great idea.
	So the concept is, you know, you look at the thing in the shop window and you go and you say, I really want that.
	Can I do a layaway?
	And they'll say, okay, give me, you know, 10%.
	And when you've paid it off and sometimes you'll get a, you know, a range, like, you know, you come pay something every week or every month.
	And when it's paid off, then it'll be yours and I'll keep it safe for you.
	And it was a fantastic system.
	And you know what?
	It was so much more rewarding.
	You're like, oh man, I really want that new bike.
	You know, I'm going to save for it or I'm going to do it on layaway.
	And when you got it, you appreciated it and you were careful of it and you loved it and you were proud of yourself.
	And that was a feeling that is gone.
	It's just gone.
	Now it's like, eh, let me see.
	If I pay off another hundred bucks on my credit card, maybe, you know, it's like, it's reverse saving.
	It's dumb.
	Well, the credit card thing is a disaster.
	So, yeah, well, of course, nowadays, you know, you could do the layaway.
	You get to see the bicycle, and you go get it, and you put all the money down.
	You finally take the thing home.
	Of course, it was made in China, and the wheel falls off.
	That has a lot to do with the...
	True, true.
	The quality of the product.
	Well, you get what you pay for.
	And, of course, you didn't really pay for it.
	You borrowed it.
	Saps.
	Stop this, people.
	Stop it.
	Stop it, please.
	Oil down to $67.
	Yeah.
	Well, I've been short oil for some time now.
	That's my only investment.
	People say, oh, you know, you're writing about this.
	And I say, I have one investment.
	Period.
	I mean, I have some options that I hold for some things.
	Well, between the two of us, we're doing good.
	I got the gold.
	You got the oil.
	Yeah.
	Well, I got down to the oil thing.
	We talked about it a million times.
	It's obvious that it was going down, so I bought an exchange-traded note.
	My entire retirement fund is in it.
	DTO, anyone who wants to check it out?
	Wait a minute.
	I just want you to see.
	Your entire retirement fund is in it.
	My 401k SEP IRA. Wow.
	So, yeah, I mean, why not?
	And because it was so obvious that oil was going to go down, so I just bought it.
	And the thing goes up, like, every time the market goes down 500 points, this thing goes up four points.
	Yeah, it's nothing.
	I mean, it's hilarious to watch it.
	Everyone's moaning and groaning, and I'm going, hey, looks good to me.
	I'm happy with it.
	I just had to figure out what the bottom is for this oil, because now it's at 60-something.
	I'm hearing 50 is what I'm hearing right now.
	I'm still looking at 40.
	Really?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, and it is translating somewhat to the...
	You know, the oil was at 25 when this whole bullshit run-up came up.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'm happy about that, although I don't think we're quite seeing it.
	I mean, we're seeing some difference at the gas pump.
	Oh, it's pretty noticeable here.
	It's already under $3 a gallon in a lot of places.
	My wife just bought a bunch of gas for the van for $2.79.
	Hmm.
	And she was paying like four-something just like three or four months ago.
	So then shouldn't food prices come down?
	Shouldn't a whole bunch of things come down?
	What is now creating the inflation if it's not the oil prices?
	They can't use that as an excuse anymore, so it's got to be the currency.
	Well, you know, the dollar's going up.
	That's another interesting thing.
	Yeah, that's nuts.
	That's got to be artificial.
	There's just no two ways about it.
	It just makes no sense.
	Well, it's always been artificial.
	But the way I see it, I still think that the dollar was oversold to an extreme because of the fact that it is, and people always say, well, the only reason you're saying that is because you don't understand how things work.
	Here's what I'm saying.
	And I don't care about the taxes.
	I factor the taxes in.
	I can buy a bottle of quality Bordeaux wine in San Francisco at half the price I'd pay for it in Paris And when the dollar is the other way, it would be pretty much the same price.
	But now, I'm paying twice as much in France for their wine than I'm paying for it here.
	I think that might have changed a little bit now with the euro being down to like 127.
	That's changing.
	When I had the best time is when the euro was 80 cents and you were in France and you could live it up.
	And that's when I should have bought an apartment or something there because the prices were right.
	But now I just completely missed it.
	Why is it necessary for the Federal Reserve and central banks to manipulate our money?
	Why is that necessary?
	Is that for our benefit?
	Supposedly.
	I saw a...
	Well, so keep the economy from getting into that boom-bust cycle, which is...
	Please, it's what creates the boom-bust cycle.
	What are you talking about?
	The regular business cycle has to be somehow controlled in some way, and they think with these theories, the interest rate controlling things, that they can manage to keep things on an even keel, because they don't want...
	The banks, for example, do not want, of all things, an inflationary environment, because then...
	The banks.
	Yeah, the banks.
	But listen, isn't this exactly what Greenspan just said?
	He said, oh, well, there was a flaw in the system of how the world works.
	I didn't really understand it.
	As his nose is like five times longer than normal.
	Do you see his nose?
	It's huge.
	I think he's got rosacea or something's wrong with his nose.
	Yeah, it's called lying.
	Yes, kids, when you lie, your nose gets huge.
	It's absolutely true.
	I saw a Ron Paul video on YouTube from the 80s, and he said something very interesting.
	He said, it's not just wrong from a financial perspective for the central banks to be controlling our money, but And to be effectively diluting it by printing more.
	He said it's a moral issue.
	And this is what I thought was interesting.
	He said it's the same as if the government decided to dilute your milk to make more of it.
	And I thought that was a pretty good analogy.
	Yes, and some dairies do that.
	Yeah, which is immoral.
	Yeah, it is.
	Well, same thing as using that crazy chemical to make the cows pump out more tasteless milk.
	I mean, if you've ever had that stuff and I've tasted it, it's horrible.
	It's tasteless.
	Now, what is that?
	Tasteless milk?
	What is that?
	It's that BST, that bovine hormone that makes you shoot up these cows.
	Is that what it was for?
	Yeah, so they produce like 20 to 30% more milk, you know, on a daily basis, so you get cheaper, you know, the dairy farmers can make more money, and they were, you know, Monsanto was trying to ban anybody from saying that the milk had it or didn't have it.
	Monsanto, there you go.
	They had a patent on it, of course.
	Patented cows.
	So anyway, so they're pumping this stuff out, but meanwhile, the milk is crap.
	Unbelievable.
	I get a lot of pushback from the Greenies listening to this show.
	You must have gotten some of that.
	Nope.
	Oh, really?
	Maybe they've just given up.
	This was the last of the Mohicans.
	Well, they've given up on me a long time ago.
	I mean, some of the new Beals show up once in a while and send me something, and then I'll just blast them.
	And, or, you know, um...
	I don't know.
	I don't know what their problem is.
	I mean, if people want to take their green thing and they want to go crazy, fine.
	It's not like killing me.
	It's just when it impinges is when I'm bothered.
	It impinges on all kinds of normal living.
	And I also don't like the idea of everything being politicized.
	And the whole green thing is vegans are the worst.
	They eat based on politics.
	I eat based on quality and tasty food.
	And stuff that's good for me.
	You know?
	Let me ask you a question just to switch gears briefly.
	Because there's a lot of talk right now in the United States about gay marriage.
	And here's what I don't understand and maybe you can help me.
	Is it not so that there is a separation between church and state?
	Why is this an issue?
	Why are there even propositions?
	In California, with elections, you have all these propositions, which is the closest thing we have to a referendum, where you can vote on some law.
	And the big one now is gay marriage.
	And I just don't understand.
	Why is that actually...
	A law.
	Isn't the church...
	No, because marriage has got nothing to do with the church, especially in the United States.
	The marriage is a civil contract that is really governed by the states and the feds insofar as how you divide up the money when one of these...
	It's not a corporation, but it's like a partnership that you sign up for, and it's got nothing to do with the churches.
	Okay, but so in California, does a civil union exist?
	No.
	The reason for that, and it does exist in Massachusetts and other places, and they don't want to use the word civil union, because everybody wants to use the word marriage.
	I mean, the people who want this to be legalized, and it is kind of at the moment, but they're trying to de-legalize it, because the state voted against it.
	Obama as well, by the way, I might add.
	That's what he says.
	But anyway, eventually it's going to have some binding.
	The thing, it was always behind it, at least according to the cynics, was the only reason that gays wanted to get married was, I mean, they could always just be happy.
	They could go someplace and get married.
	Well, yeah, that's my next question.
	What's the benefit?
	What's the legal benefit?
	Insurance benefits.
	So if there's a gay married couple working at Mevio and one of the partners who's not working at Mevio but married to the person who is, they get the same health benefits.
	You have to pay for health benefits for that person.
	And it's really mostly about benefits.
	I mean, there's the psychological need for people that want to be married, which is whatever it is.
	But there's also these other contracts and being able to visit them in the hospital because you're their wife or husband.
	Which you can't do if you're just some guy walking off the streets in many situations where you're in intensive care, for example.
	And also, if there's a dissolution, who owns the dog?
	How do you split the kids up?
	I mean, you can't do that if they're never really hooked up legally, and it's just people shacked up.
	So they wanted to get that out of the way, because this actually causes more trouble.
	Civil unions are...
	I think result in less troublesome legal crap.
	Yeah, because it's a set process, right?
	Then you know what's going to happen and it's just done with.
	Yeah, it's not a crapshoot.
	So, I mean, I don't have a problem personally with the whole idea.
	It doesn't bother me.
	I don't know.
	It bothers a lot of people.
	And we watched it when they had that one week of somehow there was some overturn and they were getting married left and right in San Francisco because of Newsome.
	And who's a weirdo, to say the least.
	Newsom is for gay men.
	Oh, absolutely.
	He's trying to run for president eventually on the back of that thing.
	But there were people getting married, these couples.
	They looked like they were happier than a clam.
	It was unbelievable.
	It was actually kind of sweet.
	So I'm not...
	I'm all for it.
	I want every person in the world to have the same benefits that I have of being married.
	I want you to have the kids.
	I want you to have all the...
	When you get a divorce, I want you to go through the same shit.
	Please, have all those benefits.
	Thank you for explaining that.
	I thought that I was clearly confusing the marriage part with the church part.
	So that is completely separate.
	Well, Biden said, I'm against gay marriage.
	I won't have it.
	I mean, I think there's a lot of people that are against gay marriage.
	Usually they're churchgoers and they're...
	Right, but that has nothing to do with it.
	That has nothing to do with the union.
	No, it doesn't, but there's, you know, but just like anything else...
	But let me ask you, is it then maybe just because we can't...
	There's a resistance towards calling it something else?
	Calling it a partnership or a union or something like that?
	You know, it's one of those things, it's just a point of contention.
	To me, I don't care what they call it because I'm not on that side of the argument that is going to be affected by it one way or the other.
	But apparently they do care and they don't like the idea of being...
	I think it has to do with it's kind of insulting to be in a different class or category.
	Yeah, we're married, but you're just a...
	You're not really married.
	Yeah, you're not really married.
	It's just BS. And I think a lot of these...
	There are some liberal churches that would like to do marriages with these people, too.
	And I think...
	I think it's just a...
	You know, probably the argument for the use of the word marriage in this regard is probably...
	That's got to be part of it.
	That's got to be part of the problem.
	It's going to be...
	I think, you know, these things you can argue until you're blue in the face.
	And maybe if you're, you know, a very fundamentalist church person, you think it's an abomination because, you know, the Bible says it's a bad thing.
	I think that opinion is not going to change.
	But I think it's a foregone conclusion, you know, because it's just, you know, this is dragging on too long.
	It's ridiculous.
	Foregone conclusion.
	Foregone conclusion what?
	That it's just not ever going to happen?
	No, it is going to happen.
	It's a foregone conclusion that it's going to happen.
	But not under Obama, because that's exactly what he said.
	Nor under McCain.
	It's going to happen under Obama.
	Well...
	It won't happen under McCain, I can assure you.
	But it's going to happen under Obama.
	At least it's going to start happening.
	Okay, so then why does Joe Biden say I'm against it?
	Why does Joe Biden say he's against it?
	I think they're both full of crap.
	Thank you.
	I think they're both full of crap on this.
	I think they're lying.
	Well, people who think Obama is the messiah, you know, you can't have it both ways.
	You can't have them lying about one thing to get in office and then expect they're not going to lie about other things.
	It just doesn't work that way.
	A liar is a liar is a liar.
	Well, as a politician, so I mean, it's not like a shock.
	But no, I think it's going to...
	But you know, what they're going to do, and I think Biden said this too, the Republicans had a really kind of a cool approach to this, which was, leave it to the states.
	Why should we, the feds, get involved?
	Which is exactly what the Constitution says.
	Right.
	But the Democrats hate that.
	They'd rather have everything done at the Fed level, and I'm sure they're going to be pressured to do something about gay marriage at the federal level.
	But I think they can legitimately say, you know, we could be for it or against it.
	It doesn't make any difference.
	Let the states decide.
	Go to your state and have them change the law locally.
	And then, you know, of course, the argument is that.
	Then you can move to another state.
	Go somewhere else.
	Well, you know, there's an argument against that, which is the following.
	Being here in the Bay Area, of course, all the time, I hear all this stuff constantly.
	That's why I know these arguments.
	The argument is, well, you know, okay, so we get married in a legal state like Massachusetts, which is called a union.
	But we got married in Massachusetts, and then we moved to Connecticut.
	And then we got divorced, and then now with the laws, the local laws won't protect me, and, you know.
	Well, you know, that's an interesting argument, except for the fact that with divorce laws, it's the same thing.
	State to state, it varies a lot.
	You move with your wife to a different state, and then she divorces you, she may not get as much as she would, like in California.
	Right, right.
	Or some of these states where there's no-fault laws, or places where they can just ream you and take everything.
	Yeah.
	So that's a specious argument.
	Unfortunately, it sounds like it makes sense.
	Let me tell you the Adam Curry strategy to that.
	I put everything in my wife's name.
	Everything.
	We're married, and so whatever she has, I get half of it.
	So I don't have to deal with that crap.
	Okay.
	And by the way, she's making three times the money I am now.
	So she better watch it.
	For some reason, and we didn't get married because we wanted to get married.
	We got married for a green card.
	I'm not going to lie about it.
	We had no intention of getting married.
	Now, fortunately, it's worked out.
	It's been pretty good.
	Yeah, you've been married a long time.
	Yeah, because we're working on 22 years.
	So, you know, not bad at all.
	Hell of a green card.
	Well, we literally went down to City Hall on a Friday afternoon.
	Did she want the green card?
	What was the deal?
	We had a torrid and very public affair in the Netherlands.
	We'd been together for about a year, and then this opportunity to work for MTV came up.
	They called me and said, you want to come and work?
	I said, well, hold on a second.
	I said, Patricia, look, here's the deal.
	They'll give me a two-year contract.
	Do you want to move with me?
	It'll be a whole new start.
	We'll get out of all this craziness, paparazzi, hiding out in trash cans and stupid shit like that.
	And I said, if you don't want to go, I'm not going to go.
	She said, let's do it.
	So we picked up her 12 boxes of clothing and our car, and we moved to America.
	So basically, she had to leave the country every three months in order to have a valid visa.
	And then at one point she said to me, you know, so we were living in New York in about three quarters of a year.
	She says, you know, okay, so I gave up everything.
	I gave up my career.
	You know, I love you.
	We're having a good time.
	But what if all of a sudden you, you know, whatever, it just doesn't work out anymore.
	What do I have?
	I have absolutely nothing.
	I have no standing in this country.
	I have nothing at all.
	Can we think about putting together some kind of agreement that would give me some protection?
	Fair question, by the way.
	I'm giving a very short, abbreviated version of it.
	I like the way the women work us.
	I'm like, crap.
	Then, of course, I had this genius.
	The easiest way is just get married.
	That's a contract.
	It's split down the middle.
	It's easy.
	And she said, okay.
	And then, you know, we still had to do blood tests at the time in New York.
	You might still have to do a blood test in New York.
	I don't know.
	To see if you're not marrying your cousin or whatever the hell that's for.
	No, no.
	The blood test was always for syphilis.
	That was my understanding.
	The reason for those blood tests was that was the point where you could stop venereal disease and with syphilis mainly.
	Those blood tests go back into the pre-penicillin era.
	Because, of course, you only actually have sex when you're married.
	Got it.
	So that makes total sense.
	So we got all the paperwork and then it was like a Friday afternoon and it was a beautiful sunny day and I called her up and I said, hey, how about today?
	And she said, yeah, sure.
	And so I grabbed Steve Leeds, the guy who was doing talent coordination, and I said, you're my witness.
	And we went down to City Hall in a communicar, which is like a car service, had the car circled the block.
	I was actually a witness for a couple that came before us because their witness hadn't shown up.
	We got married, and we had a bottle of champagne on the way back up to 56th Street, and we were married.
	And then, of course, ten years later, we did a real party and a proper celebration.
	But that gave her a green card, and that was the only reason we did it, because we loved each other anyway.
	It didn't make any difference.
	But, of course, we had that luxury because we weren't a gay couple.
	So I can understand where...
	But by the way, they do check on you.
	A year later, we had to both come to an interview, and they interviewed us separately, and then they checked if the answers to the questions matched up, and it was like, besides the obvious, where's your address?
	But what color eyes does she have?
	All of these really weird...
	I wish I had written them down.
	It was a whole bunch of weird questions where you actually kind of felt uncomfortable.
	It's like, oh crap, man, I hope I don't fail this.
	You're right.
	They might ask me something strange.
	They had to prove that you had bank accounts together and all that.
	But they really did check it.
	I understand they do that.
	Because there's a lot of scammers out there that are just coming in here.
	There's people that just do the marriage just for the green card.
	They don't even live together.
	They're just a whole phony deal.
	Meanwhile, if you actually want to bring in some talent from overseas, it's impossible.
	Particularly in Silicon Valley.
	It's impossible to do.
	You cannot bring in talent from overseas.
	We've tried.
	It just can't be done.
	What challenge are you looking for?
	Well, arguably it's talent that you could also find here, but when we were looking for...
	Google, up until their stock dropped down in half, had everybody.
	It was impossible to get anyone in Silicon Valley because they all wanted Google stock and the free Google food.
	Meanwhile, little do they know that they're the serfs and the slaves of the master over there.
	Believe me, there's no picnic working at Google.
	But there's free food.
	Everybody I know that went to work for Google, with one exception, has gotten fat.
	Exactly!
	From that healthy free food, no less.
	Well, I mean, it's weird because it's almost, I mean, yeah, they've all gotten fat because it's free food and they just eat and eat and eat.
	And how hard must it be?
	And this is what we're seeing changing.
	If you're at Google, right, and they don't pay tremendous amounts, you know, they're pretty much on scale and, you know, they, of course, they went through some craziness there, but their main currency was their stock.
	So you came in when it was $600 or $700 and you got all these options thinking, well, I'm going to be a gazillionaire in a couple of years and then I'll punch out and I'll go do my own startup.
	And forget about it.
	What's the stock at now?
	3.5?
	Something like that?
	3.25?
	It keeps punching.
	If I'm not mistaken, it kind of bumps up into 400.
	Right, but everyone's stock options are severely underwater.
	The word that we use is underwater.
	Now, if they were real men, I mean real men, this is something that Ron and I did when we took our company public.
	It said 339.29 as we speak.
	We went public at $7, a huge public offering for an $11 million raise, which is nothing by today's standards.
	Of course, this was 1996.
	We weren't in the game at that time, so I'll just say we got fucked.
	So we went to 7.25 on opening day and then it went down to 6 to 5 to 4.
	You know, everyone just was dumping the shit.
	It was all retail, no institutional investors.
	We didn't know what we were doing.
	And everyone was freaking out because, you know, their options were underwater.
	We restruck the option pool.
	We took it out of our Owned stock and gave it to the employees.
	And that's, I believe, one of the main reasons that we actually could come together as a company and become successful.
	And believe me, you won't see Eric Schmidt or Sergey or Larry doing that.
	They won't take anything out of their pocket to do it for their employees.
	So they apparently bought a new jet.
	Another one.
	A jet fighter.
	Oh, of course.
	I figure they're going to fly up and shoot down Microsoft's jet fighter.
	How about Larry Ellison's jet fighter?
	He's got a MiG.
	He's had a jet fighter for a long time.
	Yeah, he's got a MiG, right?
	I thought he had a MiG-23 or something like that.
	Yeah, I think he's a MiG or a Sabrejet, one of the two.
	Yeah.
	Hey, that's green, boys.
	Way to go.
	Drive your Prius and fly your MiG.
	Uh-huh.
	Well, actually, they bought an Italian jet of some sort.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	There's a picture.
	I think we blogged it.
	Check it out.
	I'm so disconnected.
	I haven't been in tune with the news.
	It's no big deal.
	I mean, they actually got a jet.
	You know, I just, you know, think of the...
	Look, I'd love a jet, believe me, but, you know, how can you be so holier than thou and then do that?
	That's crap.
	Yeah, it's not good.
	Working for the CIA. Don't be evil.
	Don't make me laugh.
	So anyway, yeah, the Google stock is way down.
	It's interesting.
	Well, of course.
	It was inflated, and look at their business.
	Their business is AdWords, and that business is down.
	It's just down.
	That's part of what happens in this economy.
	Interestingly, our advertising business is definitely under pressure, but our transactional business, the budget rent-a-car with the coupon codes, that's off the charts.
	It's off the freaking charts.
	It is such a beautiful system.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I've got to do something with the budget, rent-a-car thing on my Tech 5 thing.
	I keep forgetting to mention them.
	Yeah, well, I'm setting it up.
	Do you want to do eHarmony on this show?
	Because that's going to be the next one, is eHarmony.
	We could do something fun with that.
	We could, if you want.
	I mean, I'd rather do budget, personally, because that's actually a company I use.
	Well, why don't we ask the audience what they would like a deal on?
	Well, you get 10% off on a budget rented car.
	What are you talking about?
	30%.
	I thought it was 10%.
	No.
	Really?
	Is the new deal 30%?
	No, I think it's...
	Let me check.
	I think it's 10% off a weekly rental.
	I could be wrong.
	I'm bringing it up now.
	I think it's 10%.
	Well, you know what?
	We'll give you carbon credits.
	We've got to set up our own carbon trading.
	Oh no, I'm sorry.
	It's $30 off the weekly budget rental or 10% off any amount.
	That's it.
	Then Brookstone, 10% off Brookstone.
	But, I don't know.
	And we still have the e-music.
	Pet meds, that was out of control.
	Pet meds?
	Yeah.
	Medicine for your pet.
	You have a dog, right?
	Yeah.
	Do you ever take your dog to the vet?
	Once in a while?
	Yeah.
	Ever look at the bill?
	It's too high.
	There's this new veterinarian system.
	There's this group, and in fact, we have one of them in Berkeley.
	I can't remember the name.
	It's like a chain of extremely, and unfortunately, all the good surgeons are in these chains, extremely slick operations.
	Oh, yeah.
	And their computer, we got them in the UK as well.
	They're called pet doctors is what they're called.
	Yeah, there's something else called, maybe it's the same operation at the base, but whatever the case is, it's like, wow, it's way too slick, it's extremely expensive.
	And I love it when they say, and please, you have to give your dog this special food that we sell.
	Right.
	In fact, I had to have an operation on my dog and they gave us all these drugs, a whole shitload of them.
	And I'm thinking, there's a dog.
	The dog's going to be woozy enough and screwed up enough from the damned operation that I should be now doping her.
	It didn't seem like a good idea.
	She's fine.
	She wasn't whining or crying or anything else.
	She was fine.
	She healed up and that was the end of it.
	It's a total shame.
	She's an old dog now, though.
	I get sold all the time on pet insurance.
	Have you got that?
	Oh, God.
	What's the point of that?
	Yeah, well, anyway, so the Pet Meds, one of our most successful guys does a show, or producers, I should say, does a show about equestrians, horses, and making a killing on horse medicine.
	Really?
	Yeah, because it's really expensive.
	You think dogs are expensive?
	You want to go visit one of these posh equestrian doctors that do horseshit?
	Are you kidding me?
	That's outrageously expensive.
	They buy it in huge bulk, and the producer gets a cut of that, and you can't get a better price.
	I immediately went online to see if they were selling Special K. But unfortunately, they didn't have it.
	That was a drug reference, John.
	You wouldn't get it.
	Special K is a horse tranquilizer that humans take, and it's quite popular.
	I just drink Bordeaux.
	That's all I do.
	That's 500 bucks a bottle.
	I wish.
	You don't have to spend that kind of money to get good wine.
	That's the point.
	Hell yeah.
	You just have to know what you're doing.
	But, you know, or ask somebody.
	Anyway, those were California wines we had at that tasting.
	All right.
	All right, what time is our dinner tonight?
	Six.
	Oh, you like the early dinner, don't you?
	Well, yeah, I do.
	Not to the point where I'm going to the 4 o'clock dinner, which is a reference to, of course, Seinfeld in Florida.
	I don't know that episode.
	Yeah, because you get in, you get out, the place is fresh, it helps not killing them, they're not slammed.
	Because you start going later, the optimum time is...
	I mean, if I'm in Brazil, yeah, I eat dinner at midnight.
	But the optimum time, typically, where the place really packs up is between 7.30 and 8.30, and the place is slammed.
	The service goes downhill, you know, they're out of stuff.
	You know, I hate going to a place you go, and you say, wow, this is the one thing I've always wanted to eat.
	Oh, I'm sorry we don't have that anymore, because it's sold out.
	And, anyway.
	Alright, so let me just tee this up.
	So we are doing another show that'll be November 1st.
	So we'll talk about the elections, which will be on Tuesday, November 4th.
	We probably should do a show on November 5th.
	Wouldn't that make sense, do you think?
	Uh, instead of November 1st?
	No, no, no.
	Instead of the 8th.
	We're not going to wait until the Saturday after that.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, the 5th will be okay.
	I should be available to you.
	And I'll be in the UK, so I'll have a European perspective on all of it.
	Oh, right.
	I'm sure people will be very interested in what's, uh...
	I mean, I'm sure the Europeans are going to be thrilled.
	They just love that guy.
	You know what?
	They don't care.
	I told you this laugh.
	They don't care.
	Do you have any idea how horrible the situation is in Europe?
	Do you think it's bad here?
	No, but I may be going to Portugal next month.
	Isn't it interesting, by the way, that election day is exactly six months or half the calendar year away from tax day?
	Wouldn't it be better to have Tax Day and then Election Day right after it?
	Yeah, it would be more, yeah, but then these guys would be booted out.
	Well, that's the whole point.
	It's like, have Election Day right after Tax Day, and then that'll really determine if people want to keep you in office or vote you in or vote you out.
	It can't be by accident that it's exactly six months separated from those two events.
	Think about it.
	I got it.
	It's funny.
	No, it's not funny.
	It's sad.
	All right.
	I think we're done.
	Yeah.
	What was this?
	Oh, man.
	We're talking this long about nothing.
	It's amazing.
	It's even funnier.
	How long did we go?
	97 minutes.
	Yeah, that's about right.
	That's what we do.
	We do about 90 minutes every time.
	And I had about a break in the middle where I had to talk to the restaurant, so...
	We'll subtract that from your quota, sir.
	Don't worry.
	We'll give you some carbon credits in return.
	All right.
	Good.
	So I don't know what's coming up this week other than the Obama special, which of course I won't be able to watch.
	Because I'll be back.
	It's Wednesday, right?
	I think so.
	Yeah.
	Well, maybe it'll be on Sky or something.
	I'll be able to pick it up somewhere.
	I'll record it before you put it on a DVD. Yeah, and then I can have it by December.
	Fantastic.
	If you're lucky.
	All right.
	You on Twitter tomorrow?
	You don't know.
	I don't know.
	Maybe.
	Okay.
	I'm going to L.A. tomorrow.
	I've got this Digital Hollywood panel I'm on.
	I got suckered into it.
	Is that on Monday?
	It's Monday, yeah.
	So you're on a panel at Digital Hollywood.
	Everybody who's listening to the show, go down and say hi to Adam.
	Hey, John.
	Thanks.
	Bring money.
	I'm doing sales calls Monday and Tuesday as well.
	Should be fun.
	All right.
	That'll wrap it up for this week from the Curry Condo.
	My name's Adam Curry.
	And I'm John C. Dvorak in northern Silicon Valley.

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