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Feb. 12, 2009 - No Agenda

01:42:52

71: Be-Wilder-Ment & The Queen

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	Navigating the new world order from opposite ends of Gitmo Nation, it's time once again for No Agenda.
	It's Crackbot and Buzzkill.
	In the morning.
	From Gitmo Nation East in Southwest London in the Curry Terrace, I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm John C. Dvorak here in Silicon Valley North, also known as the Gitmo Nation.
	In the morning.
	Big thanks to Jeff Smith, the Jeff Smith, for cutting that jingle for us.
	We'll have more, hopefully.
	You like that, though, don't you?
	Isn't that cool?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, that's the way to go.
	We might as well go back to this style, because nobody does that stuff anymore, except there's a gag, and we might as well just do it.
	I bet you there's still top 40 stations out there that do the whole, Hey, everybody!
	Yeah, let me tell you what's going on.
	We are the people of America.
	Oh, yeah, I got some countdown.
	We are the people of America.
	Yeah.
	Hey there, JCD! How you doing?
	It's Clay Vaughn and Buzzkill!
	So, uh...
	Sorry.
	See, the problem is with you, it may just turn into the entire show.
	It is possible.
	Also known as Daily Source Code, not so weekly anymore.
	Yes.
	So the one thing, I mean, I think most of those top 40 shows have all deteriorated into the zoos.
	Well, it really started with the zoo format.
	I believe Scott Shannon is still doing it.
	No, I don't know.
	You go back, and I'm talking about you go way back into the 60s before the zoo showed up.
	That's right.
	Well, of course.
	And you had guys like Dr.
	Don Rose in the San Francisco Bay.
	It was a classic example of this.
	He would have the bell, he'd have the horns and the honks, and he'd have a million jingles, millions of jingles, and tell jokes and play top 40.
	And he's always telling jokes.
	In fact, there's one joke that I still remember him telling, and I still tell this joke.
	Okay.
	You're going to hit us with a joke?
	Yeah.
	A nun decides to, or a girl decides to go into a nunnery where there's a vow of silence.
	But she's allowed to say two words every year.
	Okay.
	So she joins up and she's in there.
	She goes in to see Mother Superior to say her two words after one year.
	And she says, bed hard.
	So she goes back into the silent mode.
	And then a year later, the whole year goes by.
	Mother Superior brings her in and she says her two words.
	And she says, what's your two words?
	And she says, food bad.
	So another whole year goes by, and Mother Superior brings her in, and she says, okay, well, what are your two words this year?
	And the nun says, I quit.
	Mother Superior says, well, it doesn't surprise me.
	You've been doing nothing but complaining ever since you got here.
	Wait!
	Oh, shit, I'm sorry.
	In the morning!
	Oh, my goodness.
	But it was just like, you know, that was the end of an era.
	And again, those DJs, you know, pre-Zoo DJs and Top 40 radio, back when, I mean, this was like pre-1970, were making a quarter of a million or more dollars a year, which is equivalent to about $2 million.
	I mean, they were well paid.
	Oh, but the morning guys in the early 80s were doing a million.
	I mean, the major market.
	Yes, and Scott Shannon is still doing a morning zoo on 95.5 PLJ. Something like that.
	Well, anyway, those days I think are pretty much over.
	And I don't know anybody who does a podcast that runs all the sound effects and jingles and things.
	I come close sometimes with a little bit of the intro jockeying, but that's about it.
	Hey man, forget all that stuff.
	Guess where I was this morning?
	You were in Amsterdam.
	Nope.
	Where?
	I was visiting the Queen.
	Oh, was today, the day you visit the Queen?
	Yes!
	So she did this on Darwin Day.
	Yeah, interesting.
	I don't think she has any clue that it's Darwin Day, to be honest.
	Okay, so let's go, well, we're all here.
	Alright, so let me start at the beginning.
	So, first of all, the car that picked me up, John, had Wi-Fi on board.
	That was pretty cool.
	Have you ever had that?
	Yeah, it was a Mercedes S-Class.
	No, no, no.
	So it has the television monitors and the headrests on the front seat so you can watch TV in the back.
	Direct broadcast television, I might add.
	So it's digital, so none of this snowy stuff.
	And then there's a sticker.
	Actually, I put it up on my Flickr site.
	There's a sticker right in between on the console of the driver's front console.
	It says, Wi-Fi.
	I'm like, hey, dude.
	He says, yeah, go ahead.
	I just fired up my phone and boom, got a connection.
	I mean, I'm sure it would have been faster if I'd used my own 3G connection, but the idea is kind of cool.
	Huh.
	Yeah, it was nice.
	Drove up to Buckingham Palace through the front gates.
	I've got to tell you, this was very exciting to just be kind of waved on.
	And so this is where people can still walk at this point.
	It's just there's normally no cars allowed in the circular part.
	Oh, by the way, I turned on my Google Latitude so people could track me.
	And I actually put it on the curry.com.
	Someone sent me a picture of me and my little face there in Buckingham Palace.
	Because, of course, you couldn't take pictures.
	Cell phones had to be turned off.
	So I kind of cheated by leaving the cell phone on, but it's silent.
	And I figured all I could really do is just broadcast my location.
	Mm-hmm.
	Now here's the interesting thing.
	So then there's the gates where the public is not allowed.
	And so they stop the car and then they check the car, which really only consisted of opening up the bonnet.
	That's the hood to you and I. And the boot, the trunk.
	And that was it.
	And they didn't ask me anything.
	Only spoke to the driver.
	Okay.
	Drove through the gates.
	Parked.
	Actually, he dropped me right off in front.
	You drive through the gates and you get to this courtyard.
	Which is really kind of dreary.
	It's just a square courtyard.
	Yeah, it's a square courtyard.
	But on one side is the entrance, and there's a red carpet.
	So you stop at the red carpet and walk up the red carpet.
	And I had my invite, which is really just a piece of paper with a number on it and my name and my photo ID. I said, oh, no, you'll need that later, so just hold on to it.
	So I put it in my inside pocket, went off to the cloakroom.
	Hung up my coat.
	May I take your cloak, sir?
	May I take your cloak, sir?
	And then walked up the steps into kind of this holding area.
	There's about, I'd say, 50, 60 people there.
	Anybody you know?
	Well, I'll get to that.
	So I walk in, and it's really almost like a cocktail party reception.
	And what I really try to do is really keep my eyes open, my ears open, because I have to be the camera now to be able to tell the story.
	Right, and we need material.
	Yeah, thank you.
	And I looked at all the details.
	The art, first of all, John, you would have shit yourself.
	I mean, this place, this waiting hall, kind of a rectangular hall, all gold, by the way, the ceiling, everything is all gold.
	But the art, it wasn't portraits, because normally it's all these stately portraits, but this was Rembrandt, Vermeer, Albert Kaupp, Jan Stein, all these fantastic Dutch masters.
	You can walk right up to them.
	Masters would do marketplace scenes and there's always kind of sexy, funny stuff in there.
	So there's all these weird people, I guess loose women on the square hanging out with guys.
	It was just phenomenal to see all these works of art that I'd never heard of before.
	I'm sure they're in a book somewhere, but it's just like, wow.
	You might be surprised.
	Yeah, and they hand out drinks, all the little page boys and girls.
	Beautiful...
	What was the drinks?
	The drinks were red wine, white wine, water...
	Orange juice or champagne.
	I chose for champagne.
	They were serving mum's champagne.
	Okay.
	Which is always what they serve at the...
	I asked, obviously.
	That's what they always serve at the receptions.
	Must be the one that's approved by the Queen.
	Yes.
	And so a couple of interesting things in this waiting room.
	The fireplaces had electric heating elements in them, which I just found kind of odd.
	Kind of a bummer.
	You really want that real fiery feel in a place like that?
	Coal.
	Exactly.
	Well, that's what they would be, typically.
	And so, in the middle of this rectangular room, there's mirrored doors, which we know we're going to be going through there because in front of the mirrored doors is a huge plasma display.
	You know, showing the...
	I can't remember.
	It switched, but they weren't showing the new website, because this is what this was about.
	This was for the relaunch of royal.gov.uk, the Royals' website.
	But what's funny is the branding.
	It was on a stand that had a huge LG sign.
	Hold on.
	Pretty lame.
	And every other monitor in the place, by the way, was Panasonic.
	So then the doors open.
	And actually, one guy came up to me.
	He's from Australia.
	He was the consultant on the website.
	So they hired in a consultancy.
	The consultancy then said, okay, here's what we think you should do.
	Then they hired another company to build it.
	And he said they were real sticklers about budgets, and it was pretty funny.
	So then you walk in, and then you have your card.
	Now remember, I have not been checked.
	I have not walked through.
	I mean, I could have had a fucking Uzi in my ass.
	Anything.
	And by the way, I probably could have, you know, anything.
	There was no check whatsoever.
	Not at any moment was my identity checked.
	Just nothing.
	Which I just found peculiar.
	So then the doors open, you walk in, and then there's two guys, and the Queen.
	She's right there.
	And then you all walk in one by one, and you hand your little piece of paper, which has your name on it, and then the first guy says, Mr.
	Adam Curry!
	And then hands the piece of paper to the guy next to the Queen, and he leans over and says, Mr.
	Adam Curry.
	And then you walk up and you shake the Queen's hand.
	And she has a firm handshake, I might add.
	And, you know, I looked her right in the eye and said, pull my finger.
	Yeah, right.
	Why isn't there some protocol for addressing the Queen?
	Well, another interesting thing, no one gave any hints or help or whatever.
	I had asked a number of people, and they said probably the best and coolest way was to address her with ma'am.
	So I said, pleasure to meet you, ma'am.
	And I would meet her later on, which I'll get to.
	So there was the royal camera and video crew, so I'm hoping to get a picture of it because that's just kind of cool for the archives.
	She's about 5'3", and she was wearing, I swear to God, John, a chroma key green suit.
	If we get video of this, you can key anything you want onto her outfit.
	It was phenomenally green.
	But like that ugly kind of...
	Yeah, no, I know the green.
	That's that one color green that they used the key on.
	That one color green.
	You figure no one ever is wearing that color.
	Well, guess what?
	The queen wears that color.
	Maybe?
	Yeah.
	Just in case.
	But I was...
	No one's keying on me.
	Yeah, really.
	She wore beautiful pearls, had a huge diamond brooch, and she was continuously clutching her black handbag.
	And so everyone, you know, again, it's only 56 pounds.
	The black handbag had the pepper spray in it, so she had to take back on it.
	Exactly.
	And so then we turn left into the room, the front of the room.
	They've got a nice six-panel, you know, flat-screen kind of display unit, rather large.
	And once again, they were all served, and the canapes come out, and the same mum champagne.
	And I asked all of these pages, I said, you know, what is this?
	And they had little, you know, the puffy dough with the fish bits on the inside.
	I'm not quite sure what those would be called.
	But even their twisty breads.
	I'd ask every single thing.
	Did you guys make this?
	Oh yes, it's all made in-house.
	It's not from Marks and Spencers?
	No, no, no.
	It was everything that passed down.
	I'm like, who made this?
	Did you make this?
	Marks and Spencers.
	It's not stored yet.
	So it's, you know, so then someone comes up behind us and says, could you please make a path for the queen?
	So everyone kind of, you know, the sea of people parts.
	And then the queen walks in.
	And it's crazy because she walks in and complete hush.
	I mean, you could have heard a pin drop on the carpet.
	It was so quiet.
	And she walks up, and there's a little podium there.
	And so she's standing right.
	And it's very weird.
	I would be embarrassed.
	Because she walks up.
	She's standing there.
	She's on display.
	Everyone's gawking at her.
	And then, and this was the cool part, who was there to officially launch the site with a little intro speech and then hand over the first click to the Queen?
	None other than Mr.
	Tim Berners-Lee.
	No.
	Which made total sense, right?
	Sir Tim, yeah.
	Yeah, Sir Tim.
	And I have exchanged email with him many years ago, and of course, let's just be honest, this is the guy who invented the web, not Al Gore.
	Al Gore invented the internet.
	I'm sorry, yes, that's right.
	Al did the internet, and then Tim Berners-Lee did the web.
	Well, he's certainly recognized for inventing the concept of the web.
	Have you met him in person?
	Yeah, actually I hung out with him up in Telluride one year and went drinking with him.
	And he got, unfortunately, I think he was with his wife and maybe one of his kids.
	And one of them got, when you get in Telluride, it's a weird little place because it's like 12,000 or 13,000 feet.
	It's like being in the Andes.
	And a lot of people get altitude sickness.
	Oh yeah, for sure.
	Doesn't aspirin help against that?
	I don't know.
	I never have had it.
	I know if you chew coca leaves, that helps a lot.
	There's a little bar there that is really fun to go drinking in.
	Alcohol apparently helps.
	All the things you're not supposed to do in high altitudes is go drinking.
	I think he went there, if I'm not mistaken, and got some sort of a devastating headache.
	He had to leave a day early, so it was not necessarily good.
	What I thought was interesting is...
	He's a very nice guy.
	He's very nice.
	And he's kind of like me.
	His motor skills are kind of weird.
	He's kind of twitchy and twisty and all over the place.
	A little bit.
	A little bit.
	You or him are like shaking in your boots.
	No, no, no, no, no.
	But it was just kind of funny because I was like, man, if someone's looking at the two of us kind of, you know, like two motherfuckers talking to each other.
	That makes sense to be British.
	So, yeah, so he wasn't, he's not a great, or he wasn't great today.
	It sounded like he was nervous until I realized, you know, he's just kind of like a little messed up.
	Hold on.
	Let me get rid of that.
	So he does a little speech, which was completely uninteresting.
	He tried to kind of bring together all the people communicating, and we need information, and yeah, okay, Tim, we got it.
	It's free champagne.
	Move on.
	And then he hands over a wireless remote to the Queen, and then she...
	And then the website opens up, and they said, oh, we have something special.
	She clicks again, and I guess they took high-resolution panoramic pictures.
	A couple of the palaces, not Buckingham Palace as far as I understood, so you can kind of navigate around the virtual walkthrough.
	And, you know, so then it's like, okay, so it's, you know, that whole thing took, you know, the queen clicking on it.
	It's like she's up there for like five minutes and everyone's like looking at a web page.
	You know what I mean?
	And so there's the queen in front of a big screen looking at a web page.
	I mean, this is not a participatory sport or anything.
	You know, it's kind of like, okay, now what are we supposed to do?
	And so, you know, somehow Tim got everybody out of it.
	Oh, okay.
	Applause.
	Good.
	There we go.
	And then, you know, they had monitors all along one side of a wall, and they had school kids helping people out as they could, you know, could surf through this.
	So I figured I'd go over to hang out with Tim, you know, and it was a good choice because the queen then starts mingling.
	I was flabbergasted.
	And so I'm talking to Tim, who has a foundation, by the way, that he started.
	Had you heard about this?
	The World Wide Web Foundation?
	Is that the one that he's promoting the semantic web with?
	I don't think so.
	This is more like a...
	One abstraction layer lower than net neutrality, you know, basically.
	I don't know.
	I may have.
	Saved the web.
	And so we're talking.
	And I'm like, hey, man, we should totally get John Doerr and Ray Lane to pull some money out for this because, you know, those guys rely on it.
	And so, of course, he was all ears on that and had a little chat.
	And then the queen comes over, starts talking to him, and...
	I got one little word in there.
	It's weird talking with the Queen.
	What have you got in common and what are you going to say to her?
	Nothing.
	I'm thinking there's a million things going through my mind.
	Like, hey, my wife is just as small as you.
	Want to dance?
	I had no idea what to say.
	How about, do you know your dress is chroma key green?
	Well, I She has two guys who are her personal, yeah, guys, I guess.
	And they kind of stand at probably about four or five feet, no, maybe six feet distance, and are just always kind of watching.
	So, you know, they're more like butlers.
	They look big enough to probably beat you up, but they're really proper guys, and you can see that they're just trying to make it all flow and making sure no one's bothering the queen.
	But they really stayed at a distance the whole time, and I was talking to someone else, and he overheard me talking about the chroma key, and he was laughing.
	He said, yeah, totally.
	He said, all these guys are media savvy now, I guess.
	And, you know, I think she was there for probably like half an hour.
	She just, you know, kept mingling around.
	And I met someone...
	Yeah, that was really the top of my mind.
	Did you guys get in any of that Bernie Madoff fund deal?
	Hey, want to buy some gold coins?
	I can get you a good deal.
	I did meet someone very good for us, John, for when you come and visit.
	I met the director of the British Library.
	And open invitation, he says, any book you want to see, I'll be more than happy to bring it out for you.
	And I said, wow, that's kind of cool because I was watching Stephen Fry last night and he built a Gutenberg printing press and he got a look at one of the Gutenberg Bibles with the white gloves.
	And he says, oh, we don't do white gloves.
	I said, what do you mean?
	So we have two Gutenberg Bibles and you're welcome to look at it, you're welcome to look through it, and we don't believe in gloves.
	We believe that the gloves, there's more chance, because you have less sensitivity in your fingers, there's more chance you might rip a page.
	And yeah, sure, you might get a little bit of oil on it, but hey, it's meant to be used.
	And I was struck by that.
	That's where we're going.
	Yeah, I've been thumbing through the Gutenberg Bible.
	What's this thing about revelation?
	I can't figure it out.
	Can you turn down your speaker just a bit?
	Actually, it would be interesting to have him bring out a Gutenberg Bible, whichever one he wants to show us, with one of the best illuminated scripts and do a comparison.
	Luminated scripts?
	Well, you know, these Bibles used to be handwritten.
	Well, before the Gutenberg Bible, yeah.
	Yeah, Gutenberg, you know, who was considered the devil by many because he mass-produced the Bible.
	The Bible, until before then, were all individually crafted, one by one, by scribes.
	And...
	And everyone was baffled when the Gutenberg Bible first came out, because all of a sudden, instead of just selling one or two every so often, he was selling it by the hundreds, and people were befuddled by this.
	And they considered him to be, it must have been the work of the devil.
	Well, yeah, according to the documentary Stephen Fry did...
	So he got it all working, and then he had an investor, and the investor said, I need my money back, and then he didn't have the money, so he had to sell all his stuff, and he died in poverty.
	Doesn't that suck?
	I want my money back.
	Yeah, they say, I want my money back.
	So he had to sell all of his presses, and he never got it.
	But it's a fascinating story.
	Anyway, don't they have the Magna Carta?
	Yeah, that's the one I was thinking of firsthand.
	We can take a look at that.
	You know, oh, this is beautiful.
	Okay, I just want to write down a note here.
	Here, let's rip off a corner.
	Yeah, we rip off a corner.
	So then it kind of ended.
	It's almost like a prince party, as in the purple one, because you know it's over.
	The doors open, and the pages, and the butlers, and they all kind of...
	Do the lights flash once or twice?
	It's like, ladies and gentlemen, the queen has left the building.
	Yeah.
	And then you go out down a different staircase, big portraits.
	And I really took my...
	It's too bad I couldn't have really recorded all of this.
	Because I'm taking my time.
	I'm looking at all these portraits.
	And everywhere there's a guy just standing there.
	And I'm just looking at the beautiful art that I'm here.
	He says, oh, no problem, sir.
	Just point out which one you'd like.
	We'll wrap it up and you can take it home.
	He said that?
	Yeah, it was funny.
	Funny, yeah.
	Everybody's a comedian.
	Everyone's a comedian.
	I made a point to go to the bathroom.
	Oh, absolutely.
	Big letdown.
	Big letdown.
	It's like a modern airport bathroom.
	Oh, that's a crime.
	Totally.
	Of course I was looking to rip something off.
	The champagne glass was...
	Actually, it wasn't really a proper champagne glass.
	It was a wide mouth kind of stem glass with beautiful ER2 on it.
	Not something you could slip into your pocket without it being very noticeable.
	So I figured, I'll take a towel or something like that.
	It's got like fucking Kleenex.
	Lame.
	You know, what they should have is they should have a really ornate bathroom that's old-fashioned, and in there they should have a big bucket full of, like, matchbooks.
	Thank you.
	Something like that.
	Right.
	Right.
	They have the Queens thing on there, and it was a sign, Do Not Take.
	Or we will have to add $14 to your bill.
	And then everyone takes one of those matchbooks home, and that would be your souvenir, because people do feel obliged to have some souvenir from events like this, whether it's a napkin or, like you said, a wine glass or something.
	I mean, I'm sure that the Buckingham Palace is just constantly being ripped off.
	Oh, no doubt.
	And this was clearly the reception side of the house.
	But anyway, it was really nice, and it was an experience.
	Did you get Tim Berners the email?
	What do you mean, did I get his email?
	Did you get his email?
	You can mail him and tell him that you're going to help him get funded for his whatever.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Oh, yeah, no, that was my whole ploy to hang out close to the Queen.
	It was just, you know, like, yeah, I'll get you money no matter.
	Yeah, let me stand here, Tim.
	Go ahead.
	I'll get you money, Tim.
	Yeah, yeah, no problem, buddy.
	Yeah, no, I've...
	I've got his and Rosemary Leith, who is the director of the World Wide Web Foundation.
	And she had her daughter with him.
	A stunningly beautiful girl.
	Really?
	Young.
	So what's...
	Too young for you, John.
	I don't know, like 16.
	So, did you know anybody else there besides Berners-Lee?
	Interestingly enough, the only other guy that I recognized was the CEO of Blinks.
	The CEO of Blinks?
	Yeah.
	And he said, I have no idea how come I was invited.
	He's British.
	And although he lives in San Francisco, because they're listed on the, I think, the pink slip exchange over here.
	So they went public.
	So what's the, did everyone have name tags?
	Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So you could go looking around at people and say, oh, that's so-and-so.
	Yeah, actually the name tag I did take with me, it has the little ER2 logo on it with my name on it, but it's not like a towel or anything.
	So you didn't feel obliged to protest the fact that the House of Windsor shouldn't even be in power?
	Stick out your tongue.
	Stick out your tongue.
	Show me if it's split.
	You're a reptile, aren't you?
	I know you are.
	Anyway.
	She's almost 80, man.
	She looks pretty damn good.
	Yeah, well, that's a good life.
	Yeah, go booze up and hang out with some geeks and have some canapes and back to bed.
	Whatever she does.
	She probably does at least two of those deals a day.
	I wonder.
	The website is actually interesting, the new website.
	I might as well plug it.
	www.royal.gov.uk.
	Yeah, now they get the high fives going on in England.
	We did it.
	We've gotten our publicity.
	Exactly.
	I hadn't even gotten home and they were already talking about the relaunch on Radio 2 here.
	They're good at it.
	But what's interesting about the website...
	I'm just going to bring it up for a second.
	You can choose your Commonwealth realm.
	So, amongst the Commonwealth of...
	There's quite a bit.
	A lot of islands.
	What about Canada?
	Are they listed?
	Yeah, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua, and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Belize, St.
	Christopher and Nevis, St.
	Lucia.
	Belize?
	They're an independent country.
	Are they still in the Commonwealth?
	Yep.
	Used to be called the British Honduras.
	St.
	Lucia, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu.
	I've never heard of Tuvalu.
	St.
	Vincent and the Grenadines and Papua New Guinea.
	The empire's still out there, isn't it?
	Yeah, well, it's kind of in chunks, but yeah.
	Well, Canada, nice chunk to have.
	Yeah, the Canada thing is a bit befuddling.
	But what was funny is, because I brought this up while I was there, let me see the...
	For example, if Canada has got any connection, how come when we started this war in Iraq, the British came and contributed to soldiers and the Canadians said, nah, we're not sending anybody.
	Why wouldn't they be obliged if they were part of this thing?
	Or is it just some sort of loose alliance?
	I think you're incorrect.
	I think you're incorrect.
	I think Canada has sent troops, certainly to Afghanistan.
	I think so.
	I don't guess anybody to Iraq.
	No, not to Iraq.
	Well...
	It just seems to me that this Commonwealth is not what the British Empire once was, to say the least.
	Well, no, because now this British Empire is just a financial empire and working quite well, actually, at taking away all of our physical assets.
	So good on you, Queenie.
	Good job.
	Did you bring this up, by the way?
	I wish I could.
	I don't have the balls for that, man.
	And do you think she actually knows?
	Do you think she cares?
	She probably knows enough to throw you out.
	Right.
	It's not a good idea.
	Probably some very interesting signal that would be involved.
	That would be worth knowing.
	Yeah, thanks.
	She probably just scratches her left jawbone just a couple of times and boom, you'd be out on your ass.
	Tuvalu is the country where the.tv domain comes from.
	I thought that was Tonga.
	Well, I'm just reading what's in the chat, man.
	I don't know what I'm talking about.
	Maybe Tonga's T.O. But I'm looking on the site because I'm trying to find about the prince.
	I'm sorry, the duke.
	What Duke?
	Of Edinburgh.
	Philip.
	He's the Duke, isn't he?
	I don't know.
	I don't keep up with that crap.
	Because it was...
	Let me see if I can find it.
	Because I was reading it.
	It's like, the Duke has no job is basically what it's...
	Here it is.
	Uh...
	Oh, crap.
	No.
	Well, I'll have to look for it.
	But it was like, he doesn't really have a day job, you know, a day-to-day agenda.
	He's involved in all kinds of stuff and does all kinds of meetings.
	It's like the guy doesn't do anything.
	Prince Philip.
	The Duke of Edinburgh.
	It's kind of like Hearst.
	Yeah, all of them.
	Hearst will get a kick out of that.
	Yeah, he doesn't listen to the show, let's face it.
	Anyway, it was fun.
	Fun.
	Good experience.
	I'm irked now that I wasn't invited.
	Especially now that the Blinks guy was.
	You think you're irked?
	How do you think my wife feels?
	She kept saying, just call the master of the house and just say, I'm bringing my wife.
	I don't think that's done.
	It just says, this invitation is for you only and not transferable.
	But now that I know, next time I'll just print up one of those green pieces of paper, slap a name on it and a number and you're good to go.
	I mean, it's not hard.
	Hmm.
	Forging your way into a reception, that's pretty funny.
	Well, you know that crazy guys have showed up in the Queen's bedroom several times.
	Oh, yeah.
	Now I know why, because it's easy.
	They don't give a shit about security.
	I'm not kidding, John.
	This really flying on easy jet has ten times the security than getting into Buckingham Palace.
	Well, now you know.
	Indeed.
	Of course, if they hear this podcast, they may...
	Didn't you have to walk through a metal detector?
	No, no, no, no.
	No metal detector, no frisk, no nothing.
	They didn't even check my ID, John.
	Yeah.
	I guess I could have gone.
	Adam Curry.
	Crackpot and buzzkill.
	That would be funny, wouldn't it?
	Crackpot and the Buzzkill.
	I think we should, wherever we go, we just need to have a little speaker system, and we're going in to meet the Queen.
	Hello, Mom.
	So, what else is going on this week?
	Anything?
	You think?
	Holy crap, the world is melting around us.
	Well, apparently the Obama plan doesn't seem to be...
	What plan?
	What plan?
	Well, that seems to be the problem.
	Yes, exactly.
	There is no...
	Let me just say one thing.
	Yesterday I had a luncheon, and we have a minicab company right down the road.
	They're licensed taxis, but they can't pick anyone up on the street.
	So they're kind of shitty cars, but they're just regular Joes driving people around, essentially.
	So I walk down there, and they've got radio, so they have communication, but it's kind of low-grade.
	And I'm always asking these guys, how are you doing?
	How's business?
	Because I'm just obviously interested.
	He says, well, besides it being slow, I've got all kinds of shit.
	And I'm like, good.
	I've got 20 minutes to kill, so lay it on me, brother.
	So what's happening now is banks are withdrawing overdraft protection or overdraft facilities.
	And so this guy, I'm sure that at the end of the month, he probably has to bridge maybe four or five hundred pounds to get to the next paycheck or whatever.
	And that's what he uses the overdraft facility for.
	But they just yanked that, which they've done to millions of account holders.
	And, of course, the minute that happens, he's got all these standing order debits for his insurance and council tax, all this stuff that has to be paid on time every single month.
	And then that starts bouncing out, and he can't get any overdraft facility.
	And it just goes into this...
	The story goes on and on.
	The point, of course, is not this individual guy, but this is what happens in the real world while people like John and I are sitting fat and happy watching C-SPAN with unbelievable testimony and questioning of banksters.
	Which I think I sat for maybe four hours yesterday watching some of that.
	But in the real world, this is how people get hurt.
	And this is the start.
	And it's frightening me for what's going to happen to people.
	Because they're really running into big, big trouble.
	Well, it'll be interesting.
	They're not handling it very well.
	Meanwhile, so I'm watching C-SPAN per your...
	You got hooked, didn't you?
	Now you can't let it go.
	Well, I've watched C-SPAN before.
	It's not like I've never seen it before.
	No, but these days it's pretty good.
	They seem to be more aggressive about what they show.
	They're at Davos.
	They're at these different kinds of events.
	They show these hearings like the ones I blogged...
	Specifically with Horowitz.
	A couple of these very interesting...
	Yeah, the attorneys for the SEC. Downs, right.
	So they had this thing, and I guess you couldn't find it, but it was on C-SPAN, too, and it was Sarkozy addressing the Munich Security Conference.
	And this was a week ago, I believe, right?
	The Security Conference?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	It was after Davos, and the topic was the future of European security.
	And this actually was on C-SPAN last Saturday.
	Yeah.
	I found that the whole thing, if you listen to Sarkozy, it was Sarkozy and Merkel and this guy from Poland, the head of the Polish guy that runs Poland, Donald Tusk.
	His name is Donald Tusk.
	Yeah, the guy who runs Poland.
	Yeah, Donald Tusk is the Polish prime minister, and I'm thinking Donald Tusk.
	Hey, yo, Polish dude.
	Sounds like an American.
	Doesn't sound right.
	And by the way, he seemed to be the most erudite of the three and most...
	Now, Poland being interesting, of course, because of the proposed missiles that would be placed in Poland.
	Yeah.
	So Sarkozy, when all this was said and done, and I have a lot of notes, I could bring a few up that are some of the more interesting comments, seems to me to be a little Napoleon.
	Well, literally a little Napoleon.
	You see that his wife Carla Bruni has to wear flats when she's next to him?
	She can't wear high heels?
	Oh, please.
	5'4".
	Yeah, he's like 5'5", yeah.
	So, he's going on and on about rearming Europe.
	Which is exactly what everyone said would happen if they signed this damn Lisbon Treaty, is then we'd have a European army.
	This is what the guy has been pushing for.
	Yeah, no, this guy's pushing it big time.
	Let me just mention a couple of things here.
	By the way, there's this quote I just got the kick out of.
	He said, Can any area in the world be rich without assured defense?
	Wow.
	Wow.
	Which is like, as soon as he said that, the first thing I said to myself was Monaco.
	Yeah, good point.
	Which is one of the richest places in the world, period, without question, and has no defense.
	And even when Hitler was running, they just did a deal.
	To stay in tax.
	That's bull.
	Anyway, he goes on about the interest being the same as the U.S. He made some very insulting remarks.
	He says, we share Obama's value.
	The America we want has these values.
	The America we want.
	At this defining moment, change has come to America.
	A government of the people, by the people, and for the people has not perished from the earth.
	This is your victory.
	We are and always will be the United States of America.
	A moment in our history.
	All right, all right.
	Yeah, so, uh...
	Well, Obama...
	I know you love that.
	Sorry.
	By the way, Biden was in the audience.
	Yes, he also did a speech.
	I did find his speech, but I never saw the Sarkozy.
	Oh, that's interesting, because I'll have to give you the punchline of this whole thing.
	Anyway, he says, by April of this year, we're going to bring together this great family.
	And he talks about, obviously, the European Union trying to pass that treaty.
	And meanwhile, somewhere, he kind of sneaks in the thing about the A-bombs, about the fact that they have them and Great Britain has them.
	And he thinks, even though they want this big, giant European army, he thinks the A-bombs should be kept just within France.
	Yeah.
	What, all of them in France?
	We're going to share the A-bomb.
	So you really want to give Poland the A-bomb.
	But I thought that was kind of interesting.
	Now, it gets kind of weird as he goes on because he's talking about, you know, they talk about nuclear energy, how the French do everything right, you know, a lot of French stuff.
	But he talks about the fact that they're apparently sharing soldiers.
	And he makes this comment, quote, France will be happy to have soldiers in Germany and welcome German soldiers in France.
	Wow.
	So I'm thinking, why are there French soldiers in Germany and German soldiers in France in the first place?
	Does this have to do maybe with kind of along the lines of we're not into protectionism except when it comes to protecting ourselves?
	Not sure.
	I found that the whole thing about the soldiers being shared.
	Well, that's the precursor to a European army, I guess.
	I think that must be.
	Because they're already doing that with police force.
	I believe that some police forces are being sent back and forth to different countries to, quote, learn.
	I'm sure they're just setting it up.
	You know, a European police force, European army.
	Makes sense.
	So, yeah, there's something going on.
	And the fact is that all we had here, we didn't have anybody.
	We didn't have anybody else.
	I mean, there was Merkel, and there was Sarkozy, and Merkel came, and I didn't get to see her speech, but I heard her questions and answers, and I've concluded she's an idiot.
	Yeah.
	And she's bitching about the chicken issue and some of these other little...
	She has a bunch of petty complaints.
	Shit no one cares about, except for chicken farmers.
	Yeah, and...
	And Sarkozy also said, the public opinion of war is always bad, so we should pay no attention to it.
	Guy's unbelievable.
	And he says, and he also kisses, he made a note, he kisses, some Green Party guy came up and asked some questions, and he just kissed the guy's ass, it was ridiculous, and went on and on about number one in the world with nuclear energy, 23% renewable, blah, blah, blah, who cares?
	Um...
	Armaments, defense is the priority, security, French, our people, just a few random comments.
	This I didn't get to look up.
	I wanted to do it before we did the show, but I've got to look it up.
	Helsinger Plus kept being, two things were brought up by Sarkozy and Merkel.
	One of them is something about, we don't want Helsinger Plus or Helsinger 2.
	What is Helsinger?
	I don't know.
	I'm going to have to be remiss by not having looked it up.
	We'll have it on Sunday's show.
	And then they talked about EU +, NATO +, and I think what it refers to is some of these treaties and bringing out the guys that you're treating against, like NATO +, might be NATO with Russia, which makes no sense.
	And they started doing a little inside baseball stuff.
	They talked about getting Russian support for the EU, and then they mentioned the Iranian satellite.
	He was concerned about this.
	Anyway, so the thing went on and on and on.
	I have a lot more notes.
	But at the end, they said, next on C-SPAN, Joe Biden will make his speech in five minutes.
	And they broke up the...
	They broke up at the end with...
	I was just under the impression that these people were like Hitlerian because they were shaking their fists and doing weird stuff.
	So they say, well, what's Biden going to say?
	So C-SPAN kills Biden.
	They don't have him.
	He never shows up.
	Oh, interesting.
	And instead, he's bumped for...
	He's bumped for...
	Now C-SPAN will give you the...
	The hearings for the Deputy Attorney General nomination, David Ogden.
	Like who?
	So I'm thinking, why are they bumping Biden for the Deputy Attorney General nomination debate?
	Oh, man.
	Which was really boring.
	Oh, unbelievable.
	But I have to say, Sarkozy really does have a little Napoleon thing going.
	And all the talk is about, you know, rearming.
	It was all about rearming and why it's so important.
	And everything was thematically around rearming, but rearming Europe.
	And I think the fear is that because the Germans and the French are always...
	And by the way, if you look at the fractal of history, the French are as much troublemakers over time as the Germans have ever been.
	Actually, so let me say something about that, because indeed the culture, and if you've lived in Europe, you know this almost from childhood.
	First of all, the Germans and the French...
	I've always been at each other's throats, or one way or the other, politically or at war, etc.
	But the French, they really believe they rule the universe.
	I'm generalizing, obviously, but Sarkozy is a prime example of a French guy who considers the Netherlands to be the northern stop on the train route.
	That's literally how they talk about it.
	Oh, Holland, you mean the northern stop on our train line?
	That's how they feel about it.
	Belgium, the Netherlands, all theirs.
	They're incredible that way.
	Well, so they get into these beefs.
	So they must actually be strategizing.
	To get into the European Union, there's two things that have to happen.
	One, you have to have the Germans and the French together on the deal.
	This will never occur.
	But they're trying their best.
	And that's why I think they have this soldier.
	What is it called when you bring your kid?
	Foreign exchange students.
	Mm-hmm.
	So we'll put the French soldiers in Germany, and we'll put the German soldiers in France, so people get used to this.
	Let's give them all new uniforms, but with a little tag that shows what country they're from.
	That's what it's going to be.
	You watch.
	I wouldn't be surprised.
	But the problem is that the Germans are still Germans.
	And the French are still French, no matter what you do about it.
	And it's going to annoy the locals.
	Because there's something that's grating to a Frenchman about a German.
	And it's like the Brits.
	I mean, the British really dislike the French.
	Yeah, but they love to go there on holiday.
	They love France.
	They just don't like the French.
	And they bitch and moan.
	I mean, I don't think Americans, generally speaking, know how mean-spirited the British are regarding the French.
	Yeah.
	In general, I would say the British can be pretty mean-spirited.
	It's not just about the French.
	That's true, but I'm saying the French thing is really...
	You can bring it up at a dinner or anything.
	It's just they hate them.
	And this goes back to God knows when.
	So this is shaking out to be something quite interesting if they keep going in this direction.
	Well, we have a major flap going on today as we speak in the United Kingdom.
	This is the politician Geert Wilders, we've talked about him before on the show, who made the 15-minute movie Fitna, which you can find on, I don't know if it's on YouTube anymore, it's certainly on LiveLeak.com.
	F-I-T-N-A, Fitna, which is essentially a collage of headlines and then translations from the Quran and kind of basically saying radical Islam is really bad and it's here.
	That is how I'd paraphrase this.
	I didn't think it was a very good movie.
	It was kind of like one of those conspiracy theory clips, YouTube documentaries, you know what I mean?
	Like kind of ripped stuff put together crudely.
	So first of all, but it certainly is not like, I wouldn't call it hate.
	It's just, you know, it's facts put together.
	Now you can call that hate if you want.
	And some of it, I'm sure, is out of context and whatever.
	So, first of all, he's being prosecuted in the Netherlands for hate crime, a minister of parliament, no less.
	But he was scheduled to show this movie in the House of Commons today upon invitation, and the Home Office has denied him entry into the country.
	I'm sorry, what?
	The Home Office...
	In the United Kingdom has denied him access to the country.
	So this story broke yesterday because he, of course, received a letter from the home office and it said, please don't come.
	We're not going to let you in.
	And so he said, look, I've got a return ticket.
	And he got on the plane this morning.
	And the last I heard is he had landed, but customs would not let him in.
	And so now, of course, the big debate is, you know, is there freedom of speech in Britain?
	Like, duh!
	No kidding!
	No kidding!
	Wait a minute, I thought they were dealing with the EU where you don't have this kind of control from one EU country to another.
	You can't stop people from going here and there.
	Oh yeah?
	When did that happen?
	Today!
	Today!
	As of today!
	Of course, but duh!
	This is what I keep telling Patricia.
	I said, hon, you know, don't you get it?
	It's only free when they feel it's free, not when they don't want it to be free.
	It's simple that way.
	So what you're saying is that the...
	Oh, jeez, that's unbelievable.
	I mean, this doesn't make any sense.
	But then you have ministers of parliament, Muslim ministers of parliament.
	I don't even remember being checked when you go from...
	Oh, yes, you do.
	Oh, yeah, you definitely get checked.
	Oh, that's right.
	You do walk through passport control at some...
	Even though most countries in Europe have no passport control.
	So if I go to Spain, and if I go to...
	It depends on which airport in France.
	There's no passport control at all.
	You get off the plane, it lands at the European terminal, you walk right through.
	If you land at...
	At Gatwick or Heathrow, you have to go through the EU passport control.
	And it's not like a big deal.
	They look at your passport and, okay, you're an EU citizen.
	Come on.
	They don't really ask you questions.
	I, of course, have to go through a different line because I don't have an EU passport.
	And even though I do have a visa, they do ask questions.
	And the question is always, the reason I'm allowed to live and work here is because I'm married to an EU national.
	And they always say, what nationality is your wife?
	I say she's Dutch.
	And where is she?
	And I always, my standard answer is, well, I hope she's home because I'm really hungry.
	Which they don't find amusing.
	They don't find that very amusing.
	But you keep doing it.
	Yeah, of course.
	Of course.
	And by the way, I've met the queen.
	Fuck you.
	Let me through.
	God damn it.
	Here's my name tag from when I met the queen, okay?
	I've got proof.
	Yeah, so this is a big deal.
	And what's interesting is on the radio here they have, I don't know how many Muslim ministers of parliament there are, but there's one guy who's been on most of the talk shows.
	And he's saying, hey look, that guy has his freedom of speech and here's my freedom of speech.
	You're not allowed in.
	That's not freedom of speech.
	That's not freedom of speech.
	That's hilarious.
	But the funny thing is, no one, not a single person, even takes the effort to go look at the fucking movie.
	It's online, and they're all talking about it like, oh, it's this hate crime thing.
	Go look at it before you talk about it.
	And, of course, they don't show any of it anywhere.
	A critic might say it's a crime, but not a hate crime.
	So the whole...
	Turn on your speaker, man.
	You're really blowing me out there.
	The whole reason he's not allowed in is because the government is worried that it will start riots.
	It didn't start riots anywhere else.
	Yeah, but you haven't got those Pakistani nutcases that they have in England.
	There you go.
	That's john at dvorak.org for all you Pakistani nutcases.
	That's where you can find them.
	There's a real good piece that was written, I'm going to have to go dig it up, that was written about how the Pakistanis were the expats that moved to England.
	They were all influenced by clerics that were fairly liberal and modern.
	And then sometime in the, I think it was in the 70s or 80s, they switched...
	Based on what happened, which was going on in Pakistan, which is a movement toward conservative clerics, to a bunch of Wahhabists in Pakistan.
	And those guys then took over, kind of pushed the Pakistani agenda.
	And then, of course, they had their experiment called the Taliban.
	And they had exported their philosophies to England some over a decade ago, and everybody's been kind of pushing in that direction.
	And these things are all reversible, but not everybody just doesn't pay any attention to it.
	That's always the danger.
	Did you...
	Oh, we can't say anything because it might offend someone.
	Well, this is the...
	I heard on CNBC, even, someone mentioned that...
	And I know they always talk about this, but the talk about the fairness doctrine really seems to be...
	The chatter is getting louder, John.
	You know, the thing is, yeah, it is, but you always have to remember that the fairness doctrine was instituted by the Republicans, because the Democrats, when push comes to shove, they're the ones who tend to be more promotional about their political agenda than the Republicans ever have been.
	And essentially what's happened though is you have a lightning rod for the Fairness Doctrine, namely Rush Limbaugh, who they just don't like.
	Rush Limbaugh is, for one thing, he's been doing it for so long and he's so entertaining and he's got the right news.
	Huge audience and a huge audience.
	Huge audience, 14 million or something.
	And he gets quoted.
	And he gets quoted, and again, he is so...
	I don't think he's influential, I think, but he does pound a specific drum, and the drum is not even pro-Republican.
	It's just anti-Democrat.
	And...
	I think Limbaugh's got on everybody's nerves.
	But the fact of the matter is, most of the editorials, and if you take Rachel Maddow, who is on MSNBC, and what's his name, the big head?
	Yeah, Keith Olbermann.
	Keith Olbermann.
	I mean, those guys, and then everybody else that's attempting...
	And by the way, the woman, this is interesting, the woman who is pushing, the main woman that's pushing the Fairness Doctrine thing, her husband, happens to be one of the founders of one of the liberal radio talk shows that failed.
	What is it, Air America or whatever?
	Well, he was one of the shows on Air America, and I think then there was another, somebody else tried to start.
	It was boring!
	It was totally boring!
	The fact of the matter is we've always had a left-wing channel across the country called Pacifica Radio.
	We have a local version of it here in Berkeley.
	Pacifica Radio plays the most...
	They're not even left-wing.
	It's borderline communist.
	And they just basically...
	pound the drum for all the progressive ideas and they have poets on and people who talk like this and, well, I think, you know, the indigenous people, they're the ones who try to change the name of all the holidays and they're essentially anti-American.
	They would be probably as they would be susceptible to this because if this thing ever went through, everyone would be attacking all the left wing anything.
	And the other thing you can do is you can pull a Hannity and Combs, where you can have a...
	I've always felt, you know, if anybody wants to get involved in politics, one of the things you want to do is you want to produce debates for TV. And the way you produce debates for TV, and you have a debate about topic A, and you're for it, but you're producing, and it's got to be objective because there's going to be a debate.
	So what you do is you find the absolute best spokesperson for topic A in the world, knows everything, and then you find somebody against topic A who happens to be clinically insane, and you put them on the air.
	And there's your balance.
	You've got your debate.
	Topic A gets debated by a person who's very normal and some maniac.
	Oh, remember Morton Downey Jr.?
	Yeah, of course.
	God, wasn't he great.
	So, I mean, the Fairness Doctrine is kind of meaningless in the modern era, but it's just Rush Limbaugh.
	They're just trying to get him off the air.
	They don't care about anything else, but it won't work.
	Because Rush Limbaugh really can neutralize his...
	They could take out the government, his audience.
	If they marched on Washington, it would be all over.
	You know, but he can also, he doesn't have to be, you know, you can also do this.
	You have a sidekick.
	That's all you need to do.
	Rush Limbaugh and a sidekick.
	Right.
	Oh, Rush, I can't believe you said that.
	Surely you know that President Obama is actually quite nice.
	This is No Agenda with Adam Curry and John C. Dvorak.
	I'm going to get the guy to pronounce my name a little better.
	So you get a sidekick and make sure that the guy's clinically insane.
	And that's what Hannity and Colmes was kind of like.
	It was a balanced show.
	You know, Colmes was useless.
	It's kind of funny to watch.
	Hannity's not as good by himself.
	That's the weird thing.
	Well, it's kind of like you and me, darling.
	Eh.
	So, um...
	Anyway, so I don't know.
	I still think when push comes to shove, the fairness doctrine is not going to pass.
	And it also may be a red herring to get all these right-wingers all, you know, get their panties in a bunch.
	Moving...
	Go ahead.
	I was going to say, Michael Savage literally goes ballistic when it comes up.
	Yeah.
	He goes a little overboard, though, sometimes.
	Sometimes.
	CNN reported something interesting yesterday, which I saw maybe understandably, maybe I'm just reading too much into it.
	Interpol issued a rare global security alert for 85 suspected Al-Qaeda-linked terrorists wanted by Saudi Arabia.
	Never before has Interpol been asked to alert the world about so many dangerous fugitives at one time, according to the press release.
	What do you think?
	I don't know.
	Some weird stuff's going on.
	I think those fires in Australia are suspicious.
	I think those may be Al-Qaeda.
	Well, the police actually said they were angry.
	I have it here somewhere.
	Australian anger turns as police admit one of the deadliest bushfires was not arson after all.
	So that sounds even weirder.
	Yeah, because there were new fires cropping up all over the place.
	All over the place, yeah.
	You know, just out of the blue.
	And they had all these guys in their sights, you know, supposedly.
	Maybe the information, whatever, what is really going on is being suppressed for some reason.
	Yeah, just like everything else that comes through the internet there.
	Right.
	Yeah, Australia's got a police state when it comes to information.
	You know, the thing, somebody sent me a note, you know, because we were joking about the heat in Australia, but I wasn't realizing the ridiculous fires that they were having.
	I mean, it's like my wife pointed out, it's like everything on fire from San Francisco to Seattle.
	Yeah.
	Well, we mentioned it on the previous show, and that's when you came with your ha-ha, Arizona's hot, too.
	Don't you feel stupid now?
	Yeah, no.
	Well, I've always felt stupid, so it's beside the point.
	But these fires being, as soon as I started reading about it, of course, I've got the Australian sling box working.
	I can't seem to get it working.
	Did you get any local coverage?
	Could you see some good...
	Oh, yeah.
	Oh, damn.
	The guy who sent it to us, we want to thank him.
	You have his name.
	He actually works for Channel 9.
	Maybe we shouldn't give his name out.
	And in Australia, and he says, you know, he was telling about more fires being lit.
	But no offense to him, but I thought the Channel 10 coverage was a little better, at least came in better.
	And it was, yeah, it's ridiculous.
	And it's got to be suspicious.
	I think the whole thing is sketchy.
	Maybe they don't want to panic the public by telling them that these terrorists lighten up the place.
	Well, as Rahm Emanuel said, never let a good crisis go to waste.
	I suppose there's probably a vigilante attitude in Australia that has to be dealt with.
	You know, if you start saying, well, there's a bunch of, you know, if you say there's a bunch of Arab terrorists, you know, riding fires all over the place, they would probably find any Arab in any bar and just kill him.
	Yeah, you're right.
	So who knows?
	I'm sure that will develop.
	Developing stories.
	Anything else?
	Well, you took notes.
	Yeah, I have tons of stuff.
	But you took notes after our last...
	Oh, yeah.
	Here's a couple of things.
	I also wrote down a couple of notes.
	Um...
	This whole smart grid thing, which we've kind of latched onto, there's more and more coming out about that.
	Google's tied into it.
	By the way, Eric Schmidt, who I guess he doesn't work at Google anymore, he is now on David Cameron's economic team.
	Cameron being the opposition in the UK government for the conservatives.
	And there's this big article, I've got Eric Schmidt on my economic team.
	So the guy's on this team, he's on Obama's team.
	Does he do anything at Google anymore?
	Or is he just out saving the world?
	Did he ever do anything at Google besides...
	Bada bing.
	Bada bing.
	Good point.
	So, yeah, so Google is in on the smart grid thing, and this ties into a number of things.
	First is...
	The smart grid idea is that the grid that supplies, amongst other things, electricity, but I think the grid will contain broadband and all kinds of stuff, that it will determine when it's good for your washing machine to be on.
	So, oh, well, you can't wash right now.
	We're going to make that happen at 2 a.m.
	or something of the like.
	And Google has some kind of API or something they've announced.
	I didn't catch that.
	But to me, I always try to explain to myself from day one, when I first heard about this technology over 20 years ago, Which is power grid connectivity to the internet.
	So, you know, you can get your internet connection just through the plug in the wall.
	And it never worked.
	It's starting to work now, and actually they have technologies that can give you almost a gigabit if your house is actually wired correctly.
	And you can buy these little boxes to connect.
	If you don't have an Ethernet port somewhere, you can run it through your home's wiring.
	Yeah.
	And it works.
	Well, it works in houses that are properly wired, which is only about probably half the houses in the country.
	But the idea is, why even do this?
	Because there's other technologies that are better, they're faster, they're not as screwy.
	But it's obvious that they want to have access to your power, A, because if you have an IP washing machine, you can put ads on the display.
	Saying, yeah, hey, by the way, there's a sale over here at Safeway for some tight laundry detergent.
	You want to check it out?
	Push this button and we will send a coupon to your printer.
	You think that's what it's for?
	You don't really think that's the applications they have in mind, do you?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	That's the application.
	Yeah, dude, total control is the application, John.
	The application is advertising.
	You push the button, and then it says, is this your printer?
	And then, boom, you hit it.
	You come back, your printer's printed out a coupon, so you get a deal untied.
	I have to disagree with you, man.
	Yes, of course, that will be the application we're shown, but it's really about tracking everything you do and having total information field on your entire life.
	Come on, that's because we can run your life better.
	That's what I'm seeing.
	Yeah, that's what you'd be seeing.
	I think there's an element of that, but I think that's just too hard to execute.
	And I don't like the idea of...
	I mean, it has to be resisted, obviously.
	Anything that could go in that direction, the gosh, I'm scared to death Adam Curry direction, anything that goes into that direction should be stopped.
	Yes, thank you.
	So I'll stick with that.
	Now, the fact is...
	Google sees it as an ad revenue stream because that's how they make their money.
	I don't think that they are yet wanting to control our lives.
	I'm sure they might like it.
	You know what?
	They've got all the bits.
	That's the important thing.
	Yeah, they're plugged in.
	As soon as we sell Google to some agency, bingo.
	That latitude thing, it's like it's very easy to quit your Google Maps on your phone and it's still to be sharing your location.
	It asks, yeah, do you want to still share your location?
	There's yes or no.
	I've hit it incorrectly a couple times.
	It's a little freaky.
	Yeah, no, I don't like latitude at all.
	The thing is, luckily in the United States we're so litigious that just one person, one female gets stalked because of latitude and the fact that she pushed the wrong button and then is raped and murdered.
	That's the end of that technology.
	And a fat lawsuit.
	Well, let me then take you into the next topic, which I think is pretty important.
	I'd love to hear your take on.
	So people have been pulling apart the stimulus bill, both the House, the Senate, and, from what I understand, the compromised version contains...
	Some very interesting health care initiatives, which obviously come from Tom Daschle.
	And let me just read these to you.
	The bill's health rules will affect, this is from Bloomberg, will affect every individual in the United States.
	Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system.
	Having electronic medical records at your fingertips easily transferred to a hospital is beneficial.
	It is good.
	It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors, but here it comes.
	The National Coordinator of Health Information Technology will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost-effective.
	The goal is to reduce costs and guide your doctor's decisions.
	These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Dasch will prescribe in his 2008 book.
	So hospitals and doctors will be meaningful users of the new system.
	And if they're not meaningful users, they will face penalties.
	And of course, meaningful user is not defined in the bill.
	So, it might understand that the stimulus package that passes will basically allow the government into our medical shit and guide our doctor as to what treatment we should receive.
	Well, a couple of things.
	First of all, insurance companies do that already.
	So I don't know if this is going to be that much different than that.
	Secondly, it is important that we have some sort of a secure medical information system because the number of people, it's in the hundreds of thousands who die...
	From the fact that they're given one treatment by one doctor because he didn't know that there's another treatment from another doctor that is going to kill him if you combine the two treatments.
	I mean, the number is ridiculously high because these medical records are all hand-done and you can't read them.
	And the other thing is people don't realize in the United States in particular that the public, you as an individual, own your medical records.
	The doctors do not.
	Okay, yeah, I agree.
	And so you should probably, you know, if you ever change doctors, you should ask for your medical records and then put them in a file and take them to another doctor or just do whatever you want with them.
	But it's not property of the doctor, and that's little understood, and people seem to assume it is.
	But then shouldn't I have the right to decide who can see it and who can do something with it?
	At the moment, yes, you could probably do that.
	You could probably get all your medical records, gather them up, and then just tell people that you don't have to look.
	I don't understand why people don't generally do this, and I think it's been drummed into them that you can't.
	And I think there's probably a lot of doctors that don't even know the facts, but the fact is the medical record is your property, nobody else's.
	Well, they want access to it through the smart grid, that's for sure.
	Well, they want a lot of stuff.
	It is irksome that the government would have an oversight on treatment.
	What's the point?
	Why don't you just go into a computer and type in what your symptoms are and have the great government doctor in the sky tell you what to do.
	Yeah.
	We're talking about how eight states have declared sovereignty.
	Yeah.
	They're invoking the Tenth Amendment, I believe.
	What are you laughing about?
	Don't laugh at the Constitution as amendments.
	Something funny about it.
	What, that they're invoking the Tenth Amendment?
	I don't understand why California doesn't do that and split into three.
	Well, this has been predicted by many economists already that the United States could possibly split up.
	And the main thing that's happening, and this already, I think, some of these states, like, I think in Texas it dates back to the Patriot Act, or maybe Patriot II or God knows what, where certain states said, hey, you know what, we're invoking the Tenth Amendment, which means you just can't overrule and do shit here.
	You have to stay over there in your federal land, and you have no right over us, and you can't enforce all these terrorism-related security measures.
	I'm going to have to look into this and discuss it further.
	Did we talk about the census?
	Oh, that's right.
	That's right.
	No, we didn't talk about that.
	This was indeed news over the weekend.
	Now, the census is important.
	This is taken every, what, 10 years, the census?
	Yeah.
	It's important because it is used, and I'm not quite sure what the process is, it is used to draw up congressional districts.
	And I believe by...
	It may even be in the Constitution somewhere...
	That the census has to be a part of the Commerce Department.
	And essentially it has now been taken away and the White House is now handling the census.
	In other words, Rahm Emanuel, who is running the White House, and it's underreported as usual.
	But I believe that politically that's a very, very powerful weapon.
	Well, yeah, because it seems as though the threat is that they're going to get a hold of the census and then they're going to have control of the data and then they're going to redistrict the entire United States Chicago style.
	So explain that.
	Well, you know, there's a lot of...
	You see this gerrymandering kind of thing that takes place all over the place.
	If you get enough people to...
	California does it constantly.
	Right.
	You get enough people that you take over the government.
	You've got Democrat, Governor, Democrat, everything.
	And so then they start looking at the census data, and then they start redistricting to protect their districts.
	In other words, you would load up with...
	You know, if you're a Democrat and you have a district that has, like...
	and 50 percent Republicans and the district next door has, you know, 20 percent Democrats and 80 percent Republicans.
	You want to protect yourself.
	So you cut out 20 percent of your Republicans and give them to the Republican thing because you can't get away.
	Just leave them alone.
	They'll have a Republican, you know, and then you're going to suck their 20 Democrats over and you end up with like 70 percent Democrat kind of thing.
	You You just keep jiggering around.
	And that's why you see these districts.
	We have one around here that doesn't make any sense at all.
	It's got a piece of San Jose and then a little, like two square miles up north somewhere.
	There's nowhere anywhere near.
	They're not contiguous.
	There's like chunks of things and that's the district.
	It's not based on geography.
	It's based on demography.
	Yeah, or worse.
	And so anyway, so they have the demographic version of the...
	And so it doesn't make any sense because if I'm in this area where I'm going to have, you know, where there are things that I need about my streets and my roads and my bridges, why is somebody that's out, you know, 100 miles away in some little...
	I don't know.
	Why would one town...
	Detroit will have, you know, that's places like Detroit and Chicago where you have these, you know, ethnic groups.
	You'll put them all in a certain area.
	Or the other way you can jigger it around is you jig it around so you have a Republican and a Democrat areas that are...
	One is really solidly Republican and the other one is solidly Democrat.
	Mm-hmm.
	So you jigger it around, so it's like you take the Republican area and you push a bunch of Democrats into that with 1% over.
	And then you take the other one and you leave it.
	So the Democrats take over both areas, even though there's like 49% Republicans in both.
	They can't win anything.
	I mean, there's all these little things you can do to screw over the electorate, which is what it's doing, by the way.
	So this is not good.
	No.
	You know, I read a fantastic conspiracy theory.
	You did?
	Yeah.
	A really, really good one.
	Unbelievable.
	One that I thought I'd have to share with you.
	It was about the double swearing in.
	Oh, yes.
	The one where I believe there's the two Obamas.
	Right.
	So, the...
	The theory goes...
	Do you know who...
	There was continuity of government was planned for Inauguration Day.
	And do you know that if anything had happened to Obama, who would be president?
	It wasn't going to be Biden?
	No, Robert Gates.
	How does that work?
	Well, I'm just saying.
	So, it was announced.
	And I remember seeing the announcement and thinking, hmm, whatever.
	So the theory is that Justice Roberts deliberately flubbed the line so that Obama would flub the line, meaning he wasn't inaugurated, meaning that Robert Gates for 36 hours was actually the commander-in-chief of the United States, and he then purged That's the word that's being used.
	All of the military commanders who were still from kind of the Clinton camp and the Bush camp and they wanted to get everyone out who wasn't along with the program.
	And then he got sworn in again properly.
	It's just a theory, but I thought it was interesting to...
	Well, who was purged?
	Do we have any names?
	If somebody gets fired, we would know about it.
	It would be in the public record.
	Well, you know, there's a couple of...
	I think it's commanders on the battlefield.
	I don't think it's desk job guys.
	Well, that might be, but it's still...
	I mean, it's not as though we don't know...
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Was there a list?
	You read this thing?
	It's just vague...
	I mean, there's just a vague assertion?
	There's no specific...
	You know what?
	There's a lot of links to different articles.
	I'll send it to you.
	You can take a look at it.
	It's like a real rabbit hole, man.
	You may not want to go down there.
	I'll check it out.
	But there is something still sketchy.
	How about this sort of possibility?
	The thing that was weird about the second swearing-in was that it was private.
	Yeah, no cameras allowed.
	They have some links to that.
	You've got to see this whole article.
	No recordings.
	There was an audio recording.
	Oh, there was?
	Mm-hmm.
	No.
	It doesn't matter.
	Do we know that for a fact that the auto-recording actually reflected?
	No, we don't.
	Because we don't have a lip-sync of it?
	No.
	No, we don't.
	Just saying.
	Because it's possible that Obama or the...
	He's still not president.
	Or...
	He's still not the president.
	Well, that's probably going to be true anyway.
	So...
	It's either a second Obama or they swore him in to some world government office.
	Right, right.
	John, sometimes you come out of left field, my jaw just drops, man.
	It's a lovely thing.
	I got something, just a little add-on that we should take into consideration.
	I think I was listening to the Horowitz and Dvorak financial show, which is pretty much a repeat of all the good shit on No Agenda.
	But that's okay.
	You had some sound clips.
	I was jealous of that.
	You were talking about Markopolis.
	This is the whistleblower who blew open the Madoff scheme.
	And thinking about how...
	First of all, my belief now that the whole thing is rigged, and the whole thing is one big Ponzi scheme, and it's all a bunch of bullshit, and the bonuses are actually the way these guys get the money out of all this crap that they make up.
	But Markopoulos, do you know anything about his history?
	Because you guys were talking about it, that he worked for a firm, and a client asked him to do some due diligence, and then it led him into some really simple clues that Madoff was running a Ponzi scheme, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	And you heard that and you went, I doubt it.
	No.
	And you decided to do some research and you found out, yes?
	Well, I had already found this out, but now, because I was just thinking, you know, maybe he's making a big deal about this and then, you know, throwing a couple other bones out there for everyone to be looking the other way and not really seeing the big mountain in front of us that we're about to crash into.
	He led a 46-man special ops team overseas.
	Okay.
	Special Ops is no joke, John.
	Doing what?
	Well, it's Special Ops, so of course it's not specified.
	But Special Ops is like Delta IV stuff.
	Yeah, I know what Special Ops is.
	This is like the jackals of the economic hitmen.
	So...
	That's all I know.
	That's all I know.
	That's all you know?
	But it was for the U.S. Armed Forces.
	Because, you know, look around.
	You're not going to find any details.
	I've tried.
	That he led a 46-man special ops team.
	Like, well, that's interesting career change.
	Well, what makes it even more interesting is the fact that, well, he might be a spy.
	My point exactly.
	For all we know, he's a front for the CIA, and they decided they were sick of this Madoff thing, and the SEC was a bunch of boneheads.
	They weren't going to do anything ever, and may be in on the deal, and somebody had to blow the whistle, so they said, who can we get?
	Well, this guy, and they pushed him out in front and said, look, make the biggest stink you can so we can make some changes here.
	And we got some changes.
	Thompson fell on her sword, and she quit.
	It's about time.
	She is the SEC. She is the worst.
	So you know the whole thing stinks, because she's bailing.
	She just jumped out, and it's happening everywhere.
	Finance minister in Germany bailed out, pulled the parachute.
	Just today...
	There was a shake-up in the British financial ministry.
	I should read the story.
	But people are bailing out all over the place.
	They don't want any part of it.
	Yeah, well, I'd be bailing out, too.
	I mean, this is not going to get any better for these people, so why should they stick around?
	Sure.
	Hopefully, you know, I'm sure they have these golden parachutes buried here and there.
	I mean, this Madoff is like this.
	Turns out his wife took out 15 million bucks a couple of days before he turned himself in.
	And he's still out walking about.
	Yeah, and his accountant hasn't even been arrested, from what I can tell.
	And they showed some poor guy in Florida who was running a $300 million Ponzi scheme, which of course is tiddlywinks, and they've got him handcuffed, they're roughing him up, they're throwing him in the back of a cop car.
	It's so difficult.
	Oh, is that right?
	I missed that.
	Yeah, it's on CNBC. They're roughing him up.
	Yeah, and it's local affiliate coverage, right?
	So it looks a little bit like cops.
	I swear to God, man.
	And the guy's got his handcuff behind his back, and his hair's all tussled, and like, ah, this guy, and another mini Madoff, and it's...
	We're focusing on all the wrong things, like the hearing with the bankers yesterday, where, like, raise your hand if you have a private jet.
	God almighty, what have we lowered ourselves to?
	This is so stupid.
	Raise your hand if you've got a private jet.
	And the guy's like, yeah, of course you've got a private jet, you know?
	What do you expect?
	I'm making a million dollars a year for the last decade, plus hundreds of millions in bonuses, of course.
	I mean, who wouldn't have a private jet?
	I mean, it'd be like if you didn't have a private jet, you'd have to be an idiot.
	It's so frustrating, John, because the public is only being focused on these minute details that have nothing to do with the big picture.
	And the public doesn't even understand.
	Let me just say it for once and for all.
	When you talk about bankers, people, there are a couple of different kinds of bankers, and we're looking at the wrong ones.
	You have retail bankers and banking institutions that take deposits.
	Then you have the bankers that create bullshit money out of nothing.
	These are the guys that are on display and have private jets and take out billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses annually.
	And then you have the central bankers.
	And I've mentioned them in that order because you need to be looking at the central bankers.
	These are the evil people.
	They're the ones that inflate the money supply.
	They're the ones that raise and lower interest rates for their own profit.
	They're the ones you need to focus on.
	Ben Bernanke, Mervyn King, who's the guy from the European Central Bank, Trichet, These are the guys and the people behind them who actually own these central banks.
	They are the culprits.
	Because Britain is doing the same.
	It's like it's so coordinated, John.
	They're rolling out these bankers.
	The bankers all do a little mea culpa, a little dance.
	Yeah, I'll pay you back.
	And everyone gets to yell at them.
	But they're not the problem.
	They're just profiting in the middle.
	End of rant.
	That was a good one.
	Not atypical.
	I can just run the tape every single time.
	Is that what you're saying?
	You should.
	Thanks, John.
	I'm glad we're doing this show two times a week now with that attitude.
	Okay, so back to that concept.
	So I've been asking around, and Horowitz and I discussed this, and nobody's actually denied the possibility of your theory being part of the problem.
	Your theory being that the Federal Reserve started offering interest on deposits and excess deposits, not just reserve deposits, as of October 6th.
	Right, which is when the market began to slide.
	It actually tanked.
	And that's because, and the thinking would be that the banks that are connected to the Federal Reserve would just as soon give them all the money that they have just to collect whatever interest they can get, rather than put it in this crazy market, which is unstable.
	Mm-hmm.
	And you could still lose more money by being in it.
	So why loan out a nickel to the public or anybody else or a business or a letter of credit or anything else when you have easy money guaranteed?
	Free, free guaranteed money, 75 basis points.
	Actually, I got the spreadsheet.
	It went up.
	They were doing 1% and 125 basis points at one moment.
	That's a lot.
	It is for this huge amount of money.
	I mean, it's ridiculous.
	And so if that's the case, we're never going to get credit back until this ends.
	But if the thing is designed to rig the system, which we're going to have to assume since we followed the oil scam, and then we watched all this crazy stuff going on with guys like Madoff.
	In other words, there's too much basic corruption.
	Yes.
	Yeah.
	Shake everything down.
	And the banks, meanwhile, end up.
	Look, here's what you guys have.
	You know, you could say you banks now hold all these properties that are just, you know, in the toilet.
	Nineteen million homes in the U.S.
	Nineteen million homes.
	We're going to they all of a sudden say, OK, the interest rate deal is off.
	We're not going to offer any more free money.
	You've got to put your money back in circulation, which you're going to have to do because they can't just sit on it.
	And let the things start cranking back up again.
	It should go up as fast as it went down, which is what happened with oil, by the way.
	It went down as fast as it went up.
	So it'd be a quick turnaround.
	Meanwhile, to sweeten the pie, you guys have got 19 million homes that you can put on the market as the market recovers and just ratchet it right up to whatever, get us back to where we were or close.
	There's a kink in your theory there because the Fed has done something interesting this week, and you'll have to help me through it.
	They have now started buying treasuries.
	And like billions and billions of dollars worth of treasuries.
	And isn't this...
	First of all, I think it's the first time ever the Fed has done this.
	Well, let me think.
	What would be the reason to do that?
	I'm sure somebody out there can come up with something.
	One of our crazy listeners probably has it.
	Well, I think it's...
	It's either in some way to screw China.
	I just have a laundry list of things.
	Yeah, no.
	Screw China is high on the list because, remember, these are all just gangs fighting against each other.
	So it's either to screw China or to position yourself into a spot where you can actually profit from treasuries going up in value.
	Which would happen if you crank the economy back up by pulling the plug on this free money, get the economy back on track, crank it up so you have this two-year, by the way, which is what happened in 1890.
	You have this two-year boom, which then brings all these real estate properties back into the market.
	Everything starts going up.
	It heats up the economy.
	You have to increase interest rates.
	Because right now they're down to zero.
	They actually buried it so it's almost nothing, if it's not nothing.
	Treasuries then would start to become more valuable because they would be paying out more money, so they would go up in price, so these guys could make a killing on treasuries.
	And please remember that the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks.
	We don't even know who owns all of the Federal Reserve because it's unpublished information and considered private.
	So they're just going to go...
	It's a double whammy, John.
	It's a double whammy.
	These guys just can't help but make money.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Well, that could be.
	I mean, that seems like a logical thing.
	Makes sense.
	And all the bankers in the middle, they're just facilitators, you know?
	They're just in the middle of it, and they're getting their payout.
	Look, these guys don't care.
	They've already been paid.
	They've already got their...
	They're foreign investments.
	They've got their land.
	They know where they're escaping to.
	They know where they're going to go.
	Paraguay.
	Paraguay.
	Hey, we got a...
	Did you see we got a note from a report from Gitmo Nation South?
	Yeah, our Paraguay guy.
	Yeah.
	Let me just see.
	Did you have...
	Yeah, he says that the bushes are sitting on top of the world's biggest aquifer.
	Yeah, that was last week.
	He sent something new, I thought.
	Yeah, it was mostly...
	Here it is.
	Christian is his name.
	Here it is.
	I won't tell you everything he sent.
	Oops.
	Oh, yeah.
	Everybody here hates the U.S. in general, not because Hugo Chavez...
	This is another Google translator job.
	I'll read it verbatim.
	It's really hard to understand.
	I know that over here, everybody hates U.S. in general around here, not because Hugo Chavez, it's because what the U.S. have done in the 70s and 80s around here.
	Okay.
	Here's the interesting thing.
	In the newspapers in general, they are, well, it says matching, but I think comparing Obama to Hitler.
	Yeah.
	Wow.
	That's weird.
	And he sends a link to a newspaper.
	Did you look at that link?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Hitler's terrible weapon, publicity.
	My God.
	Yeah, it's actually an interesting article.
	It's in the Washington Post.
	And it kind of talked about how, you know, well, you know, the story, you know, Hitler had Goebbels.
	Yes, his PR dude.
	Who was a PR guy, basically.
	And the thing was, if you read, by the way, if anybody is a public relations person or they want to study propaganda, most of Goebbels' speeches and talks and a lot of his papers are online here and there in translation.
	They're very interesting to read.
	And he's a very thoughtful public relations propaganda guy.
	You know, in the same league as...
	Very thoughtful.
	Very thoughtful guy.
	Obama's campaign.
	What's his name?
	Alex...
	Yeah, the guy with the mustache.
	Axelrod, whatever?
	Axelrod.
	Axelrod and Karl Rohrer obviously have to read this stuff.
	But what it was is that the only reason that Hitler was such a PR nut in terms of developing imagery and all this stuff is because in World War I, we were the geniuses at the time.
	The United States in particular, we're the ones, and if you look at World War I posters, which are available at the Library of Congress, you can look at many of them there, Look up World War I propaganda posters, and we're the ones that were just calling the Germans giant rapist apes, and they had pictures of them, and we didn't know what a German looked like, so they made them look like a gorilla.
	And with a helmet on, you know, and basically with dead women in both arms, you know, walking across your arm.
	Just really, you know, heavy-hitting, you know.
	And this, by the way, is for the benefit of the bankers, too, because the bankers are deep into debt with the British.
	Which bankers, John?
	Just specify which bankers.
	Can't remember.
	But anyway, so...
	Like the Rothschild-like bankers?
	Must have been.
	It seems so, yes.
	But anyway, so they cranked up the propaganda machine.
	They got the public, oh, we've got to stop these.
	We must stop them.
	And, you know, we got involved and ended up, you know, at the time, by the way, just before World War I, especially around the turn of the century, the United States and Britain were not friends.
	No, no.
	In fact, the Dutch Anglo Empire and the U.S. have been enemies.
	Right.
	Largely.
	That's part of our special relationship, as they call it.
	We have a special relationship.
	So we weren't friends, and then the propaganda machine cranked up and somehow made us friends, and we had to go help them.
	So the Germans were aware of this, and Goebbels bitches about this incessantly in many of his papers, saying, you know, we didn't get beaten by a better army, we got beaten by propaganda.
	And so he made an effort to make sure that Hitler had the best propaganda machine in the world.
	And it could just pretty much take on anybody from that perspective.
	They made everything sound like it was good.
	So now, I guess in South America, some people are equating what Obama did because it was a propaganda machine par excellence from a guy who's really inexperienced who pushed this guy right to the top with a lot of really good work and the posters, which was plagiarized, by the way.
	Excellent work, though.
	Yeah, excellent work.
	And bingo, the guy's the president now, and so you can see the association.
	Well, but the wheels are coming off the PR machine, because I quite clearly saw President Obama promise that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner would have all the details of the plan, and then that was supposed to happen Monday, and they postponed it until Tuesday.
	And I'm sitting there, I'm like, I'm ready, I'm watching, I'm watching, we've got Aaron Burnett on the scene, I'm ready.
	And then the guy stands, he says nothing.
	Absolutely nothing.
	In fact, he even said, we have no plan.
	We'll have a plan in the next couple of weeks.
	Market starts tanking as he's speaking.
	It drops 300 points.
	And that, I'm sure, the only thing I can deduct from that is that there's a huge problem, because that kind of PR mistake, I mean, they're no rookies when it comes to that.
	They wouldn't have Obama.
	Yeah, somebody screwed up.
	He wasn't keeping his eye on the ball.
	So I'm looking at treasuries, 30-year treasuries, and that same date, the October surprise, changed them.
	Oh, good one, John.
	Thank you.
	That thing was floating around $4.25 and it dumped it to about $2.50.
	Right, so first they tank everything, then they start buying them up.
	And then they start buying them up, so it's floating around $3.50.
	But if you have billions and trillions of dollars, you can't really invest it in anything without moving the stock itself.
	But you could do that with these treasuries, even though they have already moved it up to $3.50.
	But it's historically trades around $5.00.
	So there's a big pile of money to be made.
	Yeah, a nice margin in there.
	For big money.
	So perhaps what we're seeing here, John, is the middle guys, the Citibanks and the J.P. Morgans and Goldman Sachs, they've made all their money.
	They've paid themselves over $150 billion in bonuses in the past year and a half.
	So they can have those big yachts.
	Yeah, so they've made all that money, and now the real evil people are going to make their money, and they do it on a much bigger scale with this type of treasury scam.
	Yeah, that could be.
	Whatever the case is, it's actually good news for the public.
	If what we described comes to pass, this will be a good thing for us.
	Why?
	Because it'll get the economy going again, because you can't get a loan or anything.
	These guys have basically locked everyone out.
	I don't think...
	I have a bad feeling about it.
	I'm telling you, the public will benefit.
	Yeah, if it happens that way, but I have a bad feeling about the economy recovering.
	That's my point.
	Yeah, I'm still optimistic.
	Well, at least one of us is.
	And I will say...
	Well, somebody has to be.
	And I... Why am I the buzzkill?
	LAUGHTER No one ever said you were.
	You keep making a point of it.
	It should be Crackpot and the Buzzkill and Dvorak.
	And I still believe, though, that none of this would have happened.
	No, wait.
	It's Crackpot and the Buzzkill and Dvorak.
	That's what it's supposed to be.
	Let me go kill this phone call.
	You killed that phone call, man.
	So, you're not killing it.
	You're answering the phone call.
	No, I just wanted to see what it was.
	But you know what it is?
	It's that same call I get every time we do a show, which is a recording, about somebody who does rug cleaning.
	And I can't get off this list.
	They keep calling me.
	It's unbelievably annoying.
	Your rug needs cleaning.
	Oh, I'm at AAA rug cleaning.
	Do you have rugs that you need cleaned?
	If so, stay on the line.
	Yes, sir.
	All right, let me ask you one question.
	We've got to close this up, man.
	We're $1.39.
	This is way overdue.
	This is too long.
	So the stimulus package looks like it's passed.
	I mean, it's going to go through.
	There were three Republicans who were thanked incessantly, by the way, at the bailout press conference yesterday.
	The two in particular are Snow and Spectre.
	So they're the ones that crossed the line and essentially got this thing passed through.
	So remember those names.
	But why is it?
	How can all these people on one hand say, we had to ram this through really quick because every single day is costing thousands of jobs, billions of dollars, we're all going to die.
	Yet when you look at it, all those spending happens in 2010.
	How does that work?
	Magic.
	All right.
	That's good enough for me, man.
	Magic it is.
	Okay, we'll be back on Sunday.
	Yeah, we're going to do it Sunday for sure?
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah, it makes sense just to have a couple of days in between.
	Although it's Saturday.
	Well, it gives me a chance.
	If you want to do it on Saturday, I can do it.
	No, no, let's do it Sunday.
	Let's do it Sunday.
	But what always happens then is that you're so hyped up and you're, of course, because it's such a fantastic show, then you go and you repeat all the stuff on Twit.
	Yeah, so?
	You're going to watch a crossover, man.
	By the way, I don't repeat anything on Twit.
	Are you kidding me?
	Are you kidding me?
	You're like nuts when it comes to this stuff.
	It's bull.
	You always repeat topics we discuss on No Agenda on Twit.
	Well, you know, like Bill Ziffuse always says, if you have a good thing, you know, you have something that people are interested in and you want to repeat yourself, just keep repeating yourself because they're still interested.
	I don't think it's a bad thing if I'm doing that, but I'm not.
	We're going to talk about the Munich Security Council on Twitch?
	You watch it come up.
	You watch it come up.
	It will now.
	By the way, Leo.
	You should take a look at the C-SPAN piece for six hours.
	It's really worth it.
	You'll enjoy it very much.
	When you do this, well, we should talk about that another time.
	Besides, I do a lot of cross-referencing.
	We need to market the show up.
	We need another 50,000 listeners.
	Oh, wait a minute.
	We were going to talk about our donation scheme.
	Yes, we're going to have a subscription-based thing.
	We have to get some income for doing this, and we're going to ask people to subscribe.
	Let me give a little bit of background to that.
	The reason why we need this is because when the economy really comes crashing down, we won't have any money either.
	So we'd like to have a little bit set aside.
	I think every donation, John, we should convert into gold.
	We could do that.
	Yeah, and we won't spend it.
	We'll just keep it in gold, and it could be like an emergency fund for all of our listeners.
	Isn't a PayPal account as good as gold?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And with that, ladies and gentlemen, we close down the show.
	Crackpot and the Buzzkill.
	Coming to you from Gitmo Nation East in Southwest London in the Curry Terrace, I'm Adam Curry.
	I'm John C. Dvorak in Silicon Valley North, and I'm also known as the Optimistic Buzzkill.

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