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Feb. 19, 2009 - No Agenda
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Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
Coming to you from opposite corners of Gitmo Nation, it's Thursday, February 19th, 2009.
This is No Agenda.
It's Crackpot and Buzzkill in the morning.
From Gitmo Nation East in the Crackpot Command Center in Southwest London, I'm Adam Curry.
And I hope that's not a recording.
I'm John C. Dvorak here in the Gitmo Nation, Silicon Valley North.
What do you mean you hope it's not a recording?
Well, it sounds like you transitioned from all those little jingles that people want copies of, by the way.
Well, they want copies of the Obama stuff, which I'm not giving away.
No, no, no.
They don't want that.
They can get those.
We've got a whole slew.
Jan Paulette, who does the hit test, put together a whole package for us.
Adam Curry.
John C. Dvorak.
This is No Agenda.
Menacing sounds.
Really important news.
Important information.
Isn't that great?
Yeah, that's good stuff.
But it sounds like you sound like part of the recording.
That's how slick it is.
Oh, no, that donut.
Yeah, no, I just, I put it in there.
How cool is that?
It's totally cool.
Although I flubbed it.
Did you hear me flub it?
No, I was so befuddled that I didn't pay...
I don't think anyone noticed until you just now mentioned it.
I should do it again just to make it right.
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
Coming to you from opposite corners of Gitmo Nation.
It's Thursday, February 19th, 2009.
This is no agenda.
In the morning.
Okay, now I'm right.
What was the flub?
No, I flubbed earlier.
That was live.
Oh, see, I can't tell.
Yeah, I said glutamination.
It didn't come out right.
I heard you say something weird, but I was still so baffled by it.
This is the thing about this kind of stuff.
We got a note from the hypnotist that told us this kind of thing.
It scrambles the brain.
Well, that's the whole point.
In fact, I even looked for some specific music to roll out before we actually got started on the show to get people into the right mode, tune them into our frequency so we can start injecting important information.
Into their brains.
I think that's a necessary thing to do.
But when you hear that kind of opening with that menacing music, I think it prepares people.
You know, like, oh, important information coming.
I've got to pay attention.
It could.
I like it.
So far, we're getting there.
Hey, John, let me tell you, this two no agendas a week, I'm really liking it, man.
I haven't been this excited since high school dating.
I don't think that needs comment.
I wish you could reciprocate on that.
I don't think I could come up with anything to top that.
High school dating.
I wasn't really a big fan of high school dating.
I didn't date that.
I mean, I usually had a steady.
I never, ever, ever got laid.
Never.
I'm not kidding you.
You got laid eventually.
Eventually.
When I was on television, I started to get laid.
Ah, well, gee, I wonder why that was.
Well, it's not like I didn't know it, but I have...
People don't believe it when I say that.
I do not know how to pick up women.
I just don't.
Well, you, uh...
Now I just flash my gold bar.
Hey, baby.
That is...
The way that, you know, I think the way to, as somebody once said to me, they learned how to pick up women by learning how to lie to them.
I think kind of summarized everything.
And I recall the days when I first went to New York City during the era when New York was a 24-hour town, which isn't really anymore compared to where it was in like the 70s.
And the First and Second Avenue bar scene was really happening.
I mean, it was unbelievable.
There's these different bar scenes in different major metropolitan areas.
Like in San Francisco, there used to be Union Street used to be like this.
It's not anymore.
And Rush Street used to be like that in Chicago.
Now it's still kind of a scene, but it's nothing like it was in the 1980s, for example.
And Athens has a little area which still is hot, and Istanbul has an area that's even hotter, which is kind of a surprise since it's a Muslim country.
And so I was hanging out in this, I think, one of these 1st or 2nd Avenue bars uptown.
And this is in the 80s?
When was this?
This was probably in the late 70s or early 80s.
I can't remember.
Right after Prohibition for you, probably.
It was, yeah, something like that.
So anyway, I'm in there and I'm listening to these pickup artists.
And it was like, holy crap, pal, nobody believes you're a producer for CBS. You think this girl's going to believe that?
If only I could find an unknown.
Seriously.
And he just gave her the song and dance.
Because when I overheard it, I was just like, my ear just got bigger.
Bloom and I used to do that when we had an office in Los Angeles with Think New Ideas.
And just for yucks, we'd do that at fancy restaurants.
We'd say, yeah, man, if only I could find an unknown for this role.
Yeah, that would be great, wouldn't it?
And it was amazing.
Of course, Bloom, back in his day, major player.
Major.
So you could have done this if you wanted to.
Nah.
So there's no chat room.
We're off the chat room.
We're now using Twitter.
So if you...
Now, John, you're just using the website for Twitter, right?
Yeah.
And also, I don't get Twitter on any machine except the other machine.
And the one at the Mevio office.
I can't figure out why.
You know, I've changed my password.
It doesn't work.
I have had an amazing week of Twitter.
I downloaded this thing called TweetDeck, which I heard people talking about.
Never heard of it.
It's amazing.
What does it do?
It's like a command console.
Actually, I'll take a picture of it for you.
TweetDeck.
TweetDeck, yeah.
What's so cool about it, besides the people you follow and replies and direct messages, you can set up panels with searches, with Boolean logic searches.
Hold on.
And search through the whole database?
Well, no, you don't search it.
It updates automatically.
So I have, for instance, I have Obama Canada.
And so whenever someone twitters something about Obama or Canada, and you can do a Boolean and or, you can do minus, you know, all the typical things, it automatically shows up.
And there's also this thing from Twitscoop, which is a tag cloud, And so right now I can see that in Twitter land, big words are Obama, Yelp, Christ, darn, leadership.
MTV is big right now for some moment, for some reason.
And you click on any of those tags and then it...
I'm sorry, I'm just getting...
What the heck was that?
You're taking my picture?
Busted!
I gotcha!
Hold on.
I want to send this to you so you can see it.
But it's fascinating.
So I've really gotten into it, and I like it a lot.
I know I'm late to this party, but jeez, this thing is just absolutely phenomenal.
And I've added like 2,000 subscribers in the past couple days.
I'm sending it to you.
Are you getting it?
I'm going to in a second.
Okay.
It's probably going to screw up our Skype feed.
It's been pretty good.
But there's a lot to this thing.
It has retweet options.
It's just all kinds of amazing ways to access.
Really, I mean, I've got to hand it to these guys.
If you can remove yourself from the kind of it's an IRC chat room, the functionality, which is pretty basic, is great when people add little apps on top of it connecting into the API. There you go.
Downloaded.
You're talking about Twitter, not this thing.
Well, this ties into the Twitter API. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Right, right.
That's kind of interesting.
See how it's set up?
Yeah, I think it should be white on black.
Yeah, you can't control the...
I don't think you can control the skin.
It's hard to read.
Yeah, but that's...
Put on your glasses, Grandpa.
It's not that.
It's just the contrast is wrong.
Yeah, I agree.
Anyway, I don't think it's available for Windows.
I think it's...
Well, maybe it is.
Oh, it's Adobe Air.
Of course it is.
It's an Air app.
Oh, one of the first of the Air apps.
Mm-hmm.
I'll check it out sometime.
Yeah, so anyway, so people use these hashtags.
So our hashtag, of course, is no agenda.
So that way, you don't have to remember to type in at Adam Curry or at The Real Dvorak.
You just do your hashtag.
It's cool.
Okay.
Well, good people can send you notes as we do the show.
Yeah, I'm not going to respond.
I'm just saying.
Okay.
Dude, I have so much shit to talk about.
There's just so much going on.
Well, let's talk about these tax breaks for the rich.
It's really bugging me.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
Where do you see tax breaks for the rich?
Oh, that's what Obama's up to.
This whole thing is tax...
This is what the Pelosi bill is.
It's tax breaks for the rich while the poor...
What, the $75 billion?
Well, let's just go over this one.
Because I've done quite a bit of investigation on the $75 billion.
I'm going to give you this little one here.
This was analyzed here on the Business Insider website.
Hundreds...
Obama stimulus saves Microsoft billionaire hundreds of millions.
That's the stimulus package.
Yeah.
Okay, because we have three things happening now.
We have the 790 billion stimulus package.
Which is a tax break for the rich.
Okay, I want to hear that in a second.
We have the 75 billion dollar homeowner bailout, which I've researched extensively.
And then we still have the financial stimulus.
Don't we?
Don't we have another financial stimulus for the banks?
Yeah, but that's not a tax break for the recession.
No, no, no, it's not.
I'm just talking about the giveaways.
So I have looked through this thing, the stimulus package.
I'm pretty amazed by...
When is something an earmark and when is something not an earmark?
Is it not an earmark if you put it in at the beginning?
Is that how it works?
I don't know.
I never thought about it.
I thought anything that just had nothing to do with anything that was in the bill, whether it was put in at the beginning or the end, and it just designated money going to here specifically was an earmark.
Well, so Pelosi's Save the Field Mouse...
Which was in the bill from the get-go, Pelosi's Save the Field Mouse.
Wait, I'm sorry?
It sounds like you're saying Pelosi's Save the Field Mouse as if there's something in the bill to save mice.
Yes, that's correct.
Rodents.
Yes, that's correct.
We have field mice around here.
They're a nuisance.
Yes.
Well, this is a protected one.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Pelosi's...
That's what it's called.
Pelosi's Save the Field Mice.
And it's called Pelosi's Save the Field Mice?
No, it's in the stimulus package.
You haven't heard about this?
No.
She wants to save a mouse?
Yes.
And then she wants to spend money on this?
A lot of money.
A lot of money.
In times of economic distress?
Wait a minute.
In times of economic distress, she wants to spend money on saving some crappy mouse?
$30 million.
I'm amazed you hadn't heard about that.
I haven't heard of it.
Well, you're in the Bay Area.
They don't let us know about stuff like that.
But this is in the Bay Area.
Well, that's the point.
They don't want to tell us anything.
Because we have roads with potholes.
You've got to drive down the street here.
It's like unbelievable.
You've got to get new shocks every couple months.
Well, isn't your entire state government right now sleeping overnight together and trying to figure that out?
Because they've fired people, they've furloughed people, the tax refunds aren't coming.
There's a lot going on in California.
So Pelosi wants to save a mouse and spend $30 million doing it?
Yeah, but that's just a minus.
What's the $30 million for?
I don't know.
Why does it take so much money to save a mouse?
Dude, I don't know.
Is it endangered?
Yes.
Oh, a mouse is endangered?
Isn't that a good thing?
A tiny mouse with a long time backing a political giant.
I'm just Googling it to find it for you.
Oh, he is very cute.
Not $30 million cute.
But that's minor.
Anyway, it's tax breaks for the rich.
Explain it, John, because that would mean me.
I want to know how I can benefit.
Okay, hang on.
Billionaire Paul Allen is a Microsoft co-founder, the owner of the NFL Seattle Seahawks, and the owner of the Portland Trailblazers.
And thanks to the stimulus bill, President Obama signed this week.
He's about to be as much as a billion dollars richer.
Here's how.
Allen owns a majority stake in cable provider Charter Communications.
Charter Communications this month said it would reduce its debt load by $8 billion and enter Chapter 11.
How can you not make money with a cable company?
Normally, partners at a firm like Charter would have to pay taxes on the amount of the debt forgiven in this process, which is, in a sense, a one-time income windfall.
Tax law calls it a deemed distribution.
But under the new bill, companies like Charter Communications will be able to avoid paying taxes on forgiven debt until 2014.
Even then, Paul will have until 2018 to pay it off completely.
Paul owns about half of Charter, so a share of Charter Communications' $8 billion debt forgiveness is around $4 billion.
At a tax rate of 25%, Alan could avoid paying as much as $1 billion in taxes until 2014.
tax expert Robin Williams told the Wall Street Journal.
But that means you have to make money first, right?
What do you mean?
Well, you don't pay corporate taxes if you don't make money.
Well, yeah, that's true.
Well, I mean, yeah.
Right, but he is making money on this deal.
Oh, okay, because you said, how do you not make money with a cable company?
Oh, how do you not make money with a cable company?
Well, that's what I'd like to know.
I don't know how you don't make money with a cable company.
Well, is he making money or not?
No, he's not.
Well, I don't know if he's making money.
I'm just saying that they're going bankrupt.
It doesn't mean he's not making money.
I mean, all these companies go bankrupt left and right, and guys are taking home tons.
The point is it's a tax break for the rich.
Well, there's certainly a lot in there.
And I've been trying to...
It's difficult because people talk about all these different stimuli, packaging, and you get confused after a while.
You know, what's going where?
Right.
And I was...
So I was quite amazed by this $75 billion homeowner affordability and stability plan, which was announced in...
In Denver, right?
Right after he signed the stimulus package.
Yeah, I thought it was announced before that.
Well, so here's the thing.
So I'm going to recovery.gov a lot because I want to find out how it's being spent.
And, of course, there's no mention of the $75 billion.
I delve a little bit deeper.
This is, and I'm not quite sure how this works, but the $75 billion is apparently coming out of the initial Freddie May Fannie Mac bailout.
And by increasing the money they receive by $200 billion, which I guess, I mean, it's hard to read these bills.
I guess they can do that.
But I really don't understand even if it's going to cost any money at all, because I've looked at this, you know, because the idea is a certain percentage of American homeowners will get a break.
But the break, it seems like phantom money, go figure.
Because every example they give, if you go to whitehouse.gov and they send you over to treasury.gov and there you can finally find something.
It's all very transparent as long as you're willing to search long enough.
So if you have...
Basically what this housing bailout does...
It lowers your monthly payment, yet it's basically everyone gets a refinancing.
So they have an example here.
Your existing mortgage, you have a balance of $199,584 with 27 years remaining at a 6.5 interest rate.
Your monthly payment is $1,308.
After the plan, if you qualify, How do you qualify?
Do you know?
Oh, yeah.
They don't have a handy little calculator, but there's a whole bunch of rules.
It's like the house can't be more than $400,000 over its multiple family dwelling, $750,000.
If you're up to 105% equity, there's a couple of things.
I don't think a lot of people will qualify.
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
Certainly not the people that are really going to get hurt the most, but for...
Well, this is Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.
This is subprime mortgages.
So anyway, so after you get helped by this plan, the balance is now $203,575.
You have 30 years to repay it.
Your interest rate goes from 6.5 to 5.16, therefore reducing your monthly payment by $196.
But basically, it's a refi.
You're paying back more.
At a lower rate.
And every single example has that.
You can do that now.
Well, so basically they're forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to do that, but I don't see where it costs any money.
So here's example B. Well, that's because these people aren't rich.
Right.
But they're getting screwed.
It's a benefit to riches for the bankers, and now Paul Allen, he gets a billion dollars in tax breaks.
But it's crazy, because they could lower the interest right now.
Just say, hey, you know what, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, you're at 6.5% now.
Just lower it to 5.16%.
Done.
No.
Yeah, recalculate.
Yeah, but instead of that, they're saying, oh yeah, okay, we'll do that.
That would be a direct benefit.
A direct benefit to the public.
Exactly.
This is a deficit to the public because you're paying more for your house.
You just have lower monthly payments.
Right, which is what the scam was to begin with.
Yes, unbelievable.
Every single example is that.
So I don't understand how it's going to cost any money.
But the American public, because this is, well, I'm sorry, not the American public, the twittering American public, which I think is still smaller than many believe.
I don't think it's big, but not humongous big.
Once the celebrities got into it, it could change things really fast.
Yeah, but still, if I look at TwitScoop, when something's really hot, it's still only like 30 tweets a minute.
That constitutes a very hot topic.
Maybe.
They have charts.
You can see it.
But what's so disappointing is that Just like many other promises that were made, people are saying, hey, shut up, Curry.
At least it's transparency.
Go to recovery.gov.
And I go to recovery.gov, there's no information there.
It just tells you what they're going to do.
But there's nothing there yet.
I was looking for the $75 billion.
Nothing.
And I think people just believe that, oh yeah, recovery.gov, yeah, okay, yeah, that's transparency, right there.
You sound like Stewie.
Someone's gotta stop him!
Karl Rove wrote an awesome, and I don't give a shit about Rove, I know you follow him, but he wrote an awesome op-ed in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
Have you seen it?
No.
So, what's the title?
Is the administration winging it?
I like that very much.
Winging it.
But he latches on to something that we've been talking about.
He says, Team Obama was winging it when they declared the stimulus would, quote, save or create 2.5 million, then 3 million, then 3.7 million, and then 4 million new jobs.
These were arbitrary and erratic numbers, and they knew there's no way to count saved jobs.
Finally, someone says it.
Finally!
I'm surprised.
How come the media doesn't chime in?
Because they're hypnotized.
They're hypnotized.
That's why.
And if you go to recovery.gov, they have a little map that shows how many jobs are going to be saved or created, and you roll over the map and it says, 40,000 jobs saved or created.
It's like, give me a break.
So, no big fan of Karl Rove.
You know, the more you talk about this, the more it makes me itch.
Well, it's angering.
It really is that the media is not calling out and just saying...
On the public, you know, they don't...
Well, now the latest thing is...
Here's the latest thing you run into constantly.
The guy's only been in office for three weeks.
Yeah, give him a break, man.
Give him a break.
Well, let me tell you...
I didn't have enough time to find the audio, but I was looking for the speech that Obama gave where he says, no lobbyists, that's not going to happen in my...
and the crowd was going wild, you know, it's not going to happen in my administration.
You'll have five days before any bill gets out there.
I'm like, fail!
That didn't happen.
We didn't get to see any bill for five days.
And he took an extra day vacation, so it easily could have been put up online.
But I did take the liberty of putting together a list of lobbyists in the Obama administration.
You ready?
Uh-oh.
You got a minute?
Yeah, I guess.
Eric Holder, Attorney General, registered on behalf of Global Crossing.
Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture.
Does that name ring a bell?
No, he's Monsanto.
Monsanto, we talked about that.
Oh, Monsanto.
And he's Secretary of Agriculture.
Registered to lobby as recently.
Oh, that should help all the vegans out there.
They're going to love that.
Registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.
William Lynn, Deputy Defense Secretary.
Registered to lobby as recently as last year for Raytheon.
William Corr, Deputy Health and Human Services Secretary.
Registered to lobby for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.
And I'm against that.
We should be pushing tobacco on kids.
David Hayes, Deputy Interior Secretary.
Lobbyist for San Diego Gas and Electric.
Mark Patterson, Chief of Staff.
Wait, hold on a second.
You're reading a list of lobbyists.
These aren't people that are actually in the administration.
Yes, they're in the administration.
What do you mean they're not in the administration?
No, they can't be, because they said right off the bat there's not going to be a bunch of lobbyists all over the place.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You're being facetious.
It took me a second.
I had to bite.
I'll give you a couple more.
Chief of Staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was registered to lobby for Goldman Sachs.
Ron Klain, Chief of Staff to Vice President Joe Biden.
Registered to lobby for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways.
Interesting.
U.S. Airways.
Airborne Express and drugmaker Imclone.
That's Martha Stewart's company, isn't it?
Imclone?
Yeah, Imclone.
Boy, it's a small world.
Mona Sutphin, Deputy White House Chief of Staff.
Registered to lobby for Anglis International.
Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Counselor.
The list goes on and on and on and on.
Oh, I don't know why you stopped.
I can't.
It's too depressing.
And there's not a...
Is the media really controlled, John?
I mean...
They're stupid.
Well, there's also...
Remember, I was in corporate media with Viacom at MTV, and it was kind of the same thing.
You did not say anything bad about any Warner Brothers act...
When the MTV Music Awards were coming up, because then you could know that Madonna wouldn't perform.
So this was a very cultural thing.
In fact, you couldn't make jokes about artists ever.
Ever.
Hey, screw you guys!
You don't like my hair?
We'll shove it!
That's exactly how it used to work, man.
Exactly how it used to work.
Well, that's the way it works in all corporate media.
I mean, people always say, well, you know, you guys don't say anything bad about these guys or that guy because they're advertisers.
No, that's not true.
But there is a tendency to be circumspect.
In certain situations, especially if you go after your own properties.
It's always funny to see some meta-gags on The Simpsons or Family Guy.
I remember this one episode of Family Guy where Peter says, you know, first it starts off, it's actually a good clip.
He says, you know, I don't understand why there's so much violence on TV. Why doesn't the government step in and tell us what to watch?
And then he says, and then they have to blame the networks.
These networks, why do they put this garbage on the air?
And then Lois says, Peter, Peter, you shouldn't be talking about the network.
He says, what?
Why?
Why can't I talk about the network?
What are they going to do?
Cut our budget?
And then he says, I'm going to go get a beer.
And then they just have them as kind of a solid drawing that just kind of bops back and forth, unmoving into the kitchen, you know, where there's, in other words, there's no animation at all.
Mm-hmm.
They froze him.
But that's a fact.
It is.
It is.
People have to get used to that.
Part of the stimulus bill is there's a lot of money going to Acorn.
Have you found that yet in the stimulus bill?
No, I can't.
But I don't believe it's true.
Because it looks corrupt.
Wasn't he once with Acorn and now he's just giving them money?
Yeah.
Hold on.
Stimulus.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were getting a lot of money.
Well, I think this will come out...
4.1 billion.
The Acorn.
What?
Yeah.
4.1 billion?
Yes.
To a community organizing company?
Yes.
Wow.
Man, we're in the wrong business.
No kidding.
You think?
What's interesting is that Acorn...
Today announced something.
They announced a new tactic.
Civil disobedience.
So I'm not quite sure how you can take money from the government.
Here it is.
Here's the press release.
February 19th, ACORN members will launch a new tactic in fighting foreclosures.
Civil disobedience.
Participants in the ACORN Home Savers campaign nationwide will simply refuse to move out of foreclosed homes, or in some cases will move back in.
ACORN homesteaders intend to squat in their homes until a comprehensive federal solution for people facing foreclosure is put into place.
I guess the $75 billion wasn't enough for him then.
It's crazy.
That's great.
I mean, that's biting the hand that feeds you.
I admire that.
Well, I don't know if it's biting the hand that feeds you or taking directions.
At this point, I'm...
Yeah, I know.
You're more skeptical.
I'm very skeptical.
I'm very, very skeptical.
Listen, I'm sorry.
I apologize.
I shouldn't say that.
It seems like it's all on purpose.
Yeah.
Well, it could be.
I mean, you might be right.
It might be like, okay, here's your 75 billion, or how many is billion?
That's 4 billion, whatever they get.
4.1, yeah.
4.1 billion here.
Now, here's what we want you to do.
We want you to make a big stink about these foreclosures so we can enact some other, you know, socialist, fascist, you know, government control thing.
So just do your thing.
Knock yourself out.
Very possible.
We promise we won't beat anybody up too badly.
Yeah, we'll only tase you.
Don't worry.
Could be.
Meanwhile, there's a new actor on the scene in the White House.
Peter Orszag.
Orszag.
There you go.
O-R-S-Z-A-G. And this guy is in charge of the $75 billion program.
Wait a minute.
Maybe he's in charge of the stimulus package.
No, I'm sorry.
He's in charge of the stimulus package.
He's the guy in the White House who was going to...
He's the budget director.
Okay, so it's right there on whitehouse.gov.
It's a news item, no less.
Hold on, let me find it.
The news item's even funnier.
Wait until you hear about this guy.
Hey, people out there, you know, now that we've got you hypnotized and I know you're paying attention, when they announce a name, Google it.
It's kind of fun.
It's a fun little game.
Press releases.
I love whitehouse.gov.
Press releases.
Maybe it's under the blog.
Anyway, let me tell you about this guy.
Israeli, by the way.
Which kind of fits with Rahm Emanuel.
Oh yeah, he's going to bring in a bunch of his pals from Israel.
So this guy, besides being an advisor to Rahm Emanuel and Bill Clinton on NAFTA, He was recently advisor to the Central Bank of Iceland.
Is that a kicker?
The only bank's upcountry in the world.
That is rich.
Isn't that fantastic?
How can people, how can the people out there, the pundits, columns, everybody else, let this, this is gold.
Of course it's gold.
Just slide right by them.
It's so amazing.
It's gold.
Yeah, yeah.
We need a TV station, John.
No, we don't.
We just need to turn on.
We don't need that.
We're doing fine as is.
It's hilarious.
Isn't that great?
Oh, that's a kick.
That's a 10.
That's the top.
We can close the show.
Good night, everybody.
We'll be here next week.
I've been telling you.
That's great.
This is like the old thing that happens in professional sports where they get, you know, one loser after another.
This is like a club.
You know, yeah, well, he bankrupted the whole guy.
Ah, bring him in.
We need him.
He's a good guy.
He likes to, you know, he's like scotch.
We're scotch drinkers.
Let's bring him in.
You know, he's a good guy.
Here it is.
Setting the bar high.
Setting the bar high?
Yeah, this is from the White House.
The bar where they drink the scotch.
This is from the White House blog.
Just looking at Recovery.gov, it might not be immediately clear what an enormous undertaking it will be to ensure the transparency and accountability that the President expects will be upheld.
It's going to require an unprecedented level of vigilance, a fundamental shift in the way the federal government spends your tax dollars, from the Oval Office down to every department and agency awarding funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
That is why Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, It's only five points if you want to hear them.
Geez, keep going.
Is that it?
Now, funds are awarded and distributed in a prompt, fair, and reasonable manner.
Whenever you see the word reasonable in a directive or a contract, run.
Reasonable is like that's the stuff lawsuits are made of.
The recipients and uses of all funds are transparent to the public, like Stewie.
And the public benefits of these funds are reported clearly, accurately, and in a timely manner.
Funds are used for authorized purposes, and instances of fraud, waste, error, and abuse are mitigated.
Mitigated?
What does that mean?
It means it's resolved in some way instantly.
Let's read it again.
Funds are used for authorized purposes and instances of fraud, waste, error, and abuse are mitigated.
Yeah, it means they're fixed.
Somehow.
That just is written by some Lindsay Nagel character, some person that's a cartoon.
It's a blogger because it's on the White House blog.
But anyway, I just thought...
It sounds like it's written by a public relations person, if you ask me.
Well, that's not what the White House blog is all about.
I'm just saying.
It's not written by a blogger.
Funny, though, huh?
That he was the advising advisor to the Central Bank of Iceland.
Yeah, that's a CV you want.
That's the entry.
I think he would have suppressed that.
I guess they've gotten to the point where they've got all these lobbyists, like tons of them, and they just list them, and they're totally transparent, and they figure it goes like this.
It's like, yeah, I robbed you the other day.
Oh, whatever.
Apparently they've decided, and I think there's some rationale for this, that the public is so stupid and gullible That you can tell him anything and you just sugarcoat it in some way and deny stuff.
You know, like the character in the Monty Python movie had his arms chopped off.
It's just a flesh wound.
From the piano that closed on his hands.
And the public's like, okay, whatever.
They said he's not going to have any lobbyists.
Wait a minute.
Well, they're probably not really lobbyists.
I'm getting something in here, John.
Traders on Wall Street revolting?
CNBC has like some kind of flash bulletin.
Hold on, let's see what this is.
Oh, yeah, it's supposed to be...
That's kind of creepy.
That's from GP1477. Here, let's listen in.
Let's see if we can see anything.
It says revolting right now.
Inventories have crashed.
The inventory problem, according to the California realtors in 2008, has come down substantially, and the selling time for home sales has shrunk.
In other words, free markets will solve this problem in ways that this mortgage subsidy will not.
That's my point.
There are states...
Nah, Kudlow.
I don't know.
Kudlow.
That's Kudlow.
I don't see no big revolt.
CNBC is a little bit on the sensationalistic side.
That's one step away.
They actually feel threatened by Fox, I think.
But CNBC is pretty much the e-entertainment of Wall Street.
So E! Entertainment, the E! Channel, is pretty much what everyone has to be watching in show business.
Every executive office you come into, it's on.
And CNBC is on continuously all across the trading floor.
They've got the closed captions on.
Yesterday, though, they had a great piece of news, which really hasn't made much of the mainstream press, But partners at Goldman Sachs are now having to borrow tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars because they got margin calls against stock that they've borrowed against.
Oh.
This is bad.
This is the stuff that bad days are made of.
When you get margin card on your own company stock.
Yeah, that's not a good thing for them.
No.
Well, that's good that the inventory is dropping in California.
I can get out of this miserable state.
This place is going under.
Did you see Bernanke by any chance yesterday?
No.
It was unwatchable.
He came out and he did this whole...
I think he's loaded.
In which way?
As in drunk-loaded?
Well, at least you'd be the judge.
He started off, and so the press is so gullible, and they're laughing all the time.
They laugh at these press conferences.
And by the way, the guy sometimes makes a funny joke, just like Obama.
There's always some human, but the press corps is always so ruddy.
It's so funny.
So Bernanke comes out, he says, you know, it's a really bad situation, and I just want you to know that even my family home that I grew up in has been foreclosed on.
Like, the guy's a billionaire!
A billionaire!
And the press goes, whoa!
A billionaire!
And he has the audacity to say that.
The audacity of hope.
Yes.
In his case, it would be the audacity of dope.
My family home has been foreclosed on.
Jeez.
Disgusting.
I think you're getting a little too into this.
Well, you're right.
Because I see it happening.
So how do we distract attention away from the real news?
So one way is to say, hey, we found another Madoff.
Because the press loves it.
That's all the press will talk about.
And this new Madoff, by the way, is a million times better than the old Madoff.
Well, of course, because it involves...
The first made-off had no drama.
He basically got caught, gave everybody the finger, moved into his Park Avenue apartment, which is huge, and he's living it up.
He was 70 years old.
He didn't go out much anyway.
This guy at least ran away.
That's kind of cool.
I like that.
You know the latest, right?
What's that?
He was under investigation by the FBI. For drugs?
They got pissed...
Yeah, maybe a money laundering operation.
They got pissed off at the SEC for busting him because they were surveilling him, I guess, trying to catch one of the most violent of the Mexican drug cartels.
Does this not prove my point, which we've discussed on this program many times, that Wall Street is nothing more than a laundering operation for drug money?
I mean, here's the proof right there.
And let me ask you this.
Who broke this story?
Where did this story come from all of a sudden?
Because apparently the guy's attorneys for Stanford...
He went to the SEC last year.
So that could be December, but I think it was around November.
So they were sitting on this.
No, no.
He was first being looked at in 2007.
For the drugs, but not by the SEC. Oh, for the drugs, right.
But the SEC was sitting on this information as well.
And now all of a sudden, it's breaking news.
And there's a lot of stuff happening, which I believe is meant to cover it up.
But who broke the story?
Where did it come from?
Why is it all of a sudden news?
Well, that's a good question because these things seem to be leaked out in some sort of a concerted effort.
Now, I knew about this because Horowitz and I had talked about it on our podcast before it broke because he has a friend working there who, by the way, he said he did have this friend who's working there.
I had to call him back a couple days ago and describe the scene where the feds come plowing into the office, basically kicking down the doors, pulling out all the plugs of all the computers.
You know, rounding everybody up and telling them to get the hell out.
He says, which was very unnerving.
No kidding.
Yeah, that's definitely one of the, for the financial folks, this has got to be one of the more interesting things.
The guy's taken off.
He's tried to get out of the country.
He apparently tried to rent a jet, you know, a private plane.
I heard a helicopter.
I heard he tried to rent a helicopter, and his credit card was denied.
I didn't hear about the helicopter, but I know about the jet where he's trying to fly to Antigua, which doesn't make any sense if you think about it, because they're going to kill him when he gets there.
I mean, the soccer, or the cricket team that he owns will kill him.
Now, this is why it's big news over here in the UK, because of the cricket team sponsorship.
And this guy is a sir.
They literally carried this guy around, idolized.
And on Dvorak.org slash blog, I saw a great story and accompanying video, you should go there and take a look at it, of...
Of this guy hugging Nancy Pelosi and Bill Clinton.
Of course Bill Clinton, I believe, the biggest drug trafficker in our history.
Just go look up Mina, Arkansas.
You'll learn more.
He was pimping him out.
I mean, it's disgusting.
Disgusting.
It's just more proof for me that the whole thing is a fractal.
So anyway, so apparently he went to get this jet, and I guess he threw down his American Express Black, which is a classic car to own.
And it got declined.
Yeah.
Which is not supposed to be possible.
That's funny.
If you have an American Express Black...
Which, by the way, for anybody out there, you have to be invited.
You have to have like a million dollar a year income or more or something.
And then you have to pay, I think the fee is $10,000 a year.
Just to have the card.
Yeah.
Which is like, why would you have this?
What is the point?
What's wrong with the green card?
It works.
Yeah, nothing.
That's how guys get laid.
Whip out the black card.
Well, the dummies that, you know, that they probably get laid by.
I don't know what a black card.
Or I guess the gold diggers would know what it is.
Yeah, you would get laid by them.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
So anyway, it seems to me that the whole, the guy's now, I figured he's, you know, rigged up every, you know, he's got his, he had his war chest, he probably has a, you know, half a million in cash that he grabbed, put it in a, you know, in a Chevy Capri and drove across the border, you know.
Who knows?
Yeah, that's pretty amazing.
They'll track him down.
Of course they will.
And they'll make a big deal out of it, and he'll wind up in Paraguay with Ken Lay from Enron, who of course is not really dead.
You know, it's funny you should say that because I've always been suspicious about Ken Lay actually being dead.
I don't believe he's dead.
Where was the funeral?
Was it a huge thing?
Did everyone come out?
Were people protesting?
What happened?
He got a heart attack.
He died in his sleep or on his way.
It's not like it was a public collapse.
No, I think they protected him.
Well, he had enough money.
Well, he was George Bush's best friend.
I mean, he flew on Bush's whole campaign.
He flew on his jet.
They couldn't get him out of the country in some way, yeah.
No, I agree.
I mean, I'm not saying that...
Hold on one second, John.
Hold on one second.
Hold on.
Hey, babe.
Hello?
Hello?
My wife just landed.
She wants to call and say she landed.
Sorry about that.
I'll put it on silent.
Was she in an airplane?
I think she was in the car.
I hope she was in the car.
Let me just tell her.
Okay.
So, um...
Yeah, no, the Ken Lay things I've always been suspicious of.
In fact, I was thinking of doing a novel about something like that, where the guy's living in some Costa Rica or, you know, you could probably do it in Paraguay.
Uruguay, I mean, a lot of the Nazis went to Uruguay.
Well, Paraguay, that's where Bush has all that property.
You know, that's why he's there.
He's hiding out there.
He could be sitting, you know, if Ken Lay was down watching the Bush property in Paraguay...
And he was like, he was sitting in that house.
Who would care or know who he was or anything?
Nobody.
Nobody.
You know, and all he has to do is grow a beard.
So this is where my theory comes in that Obama is, well, you know, I believe he's an actor, but this whole administration is Clinton-Bush people, including Hillary.
So they're still in the game.
It's just a new guy, and he's not in the White House.
He's traveling around.
He's all over the place.
He's still campaigning, giving great speeches, does a fantastic job, makes everybody feel good.
And I just got to presume he's either Manchurian or he really doesn't know.
Because he really pulls it off.
And it's like he does believe that what he's doing is good.
Well, he's cool as a cucumber.
Although I had to laugh at a...
W-R-E-A-K, reek.
Is that reek?
As in wreaking havoc?
W-R-E-A-K? Yeah, reek.
Reek is reeking havoc, I think, is maybe.
But you pronounce it that way, reek?
R-E-E-K. But you pronounce it reek?
I think so.
I don't think that, yeah.
Because Obama's speech, he misread it and he said, wrecking havoc.
I thought it was kind of funny.
Right.
And an A or an E could easily look like a C. Yeah, no, if you're reading from a prompter...
Yeah, it's easy to mispronounce that.
You can make that mistake easy unless you practiced it.
He's probably starting to have to cold read because he's so busy.
This will be interesting.
As anyone who's ever worked on a prompter knows...
Cold reading is...
You've got to work it for a while, baby, before you can do that perfectly.
It's tough.
Yeah, because you have to actually, it's an interesting trick, and it's not easy to get to it.
I mean, it takes years, and he's not going to have enough time.
And one of the problems is you have to actually, as you're reading the Word, you have to pre-read the Word ahead.
And then make sense of it so your cadence is correct.
And that's why you find a lot of professional announcers, they've developed a strange cadence.
They all have the same one.
like it's a da da da da da da it's a da da da da exactly exactly exactly Because you need a certain kind of a pace because if you screw up, it doesn't sound that bad.
Exactly, exactly.
If you have...
Like long pauses.
It just sounds as if that's the way you talk.
Yeah, you could say wrecking havoc.
There'll be some other gaps then.
Those will be recordable.
From Gitmo Nation East, I'm incensed about this.
So you recall that there was, and there's a whole backstory to this, which I won't get into, but there were seven or eight so-called radical Muslims who were going to mix up explosives on the airplane and bring down multiple jetliners headed towards the United States.
And, of course, this plot, this evil plot was foiled.
And on the heels of it, now worldwide, you have to put all your liquids into a little baggie, no more than 100 milliliters, and you have to jump through all kinds of hoops, and it's a real pain in the ass.
So last year, these guys were basically exonerated because the jury could not convict them of even an intent.
They did have chemicals, but they could not convict them of mixing stuff up.
They did not have plane tickets.
Most of them didn't have passports.
No plane tickets.
Yes, true.
So they dismissed them.
And now all of a sudden, out of the blue, and the press is doing nothing about it.
The BBC is the worst.
So...
The jury in the trial of eight men accused of conspiring to murder by blowing up transatlantic airliners has been discharged for, quote, legal reasons.
Legal reasons.
Could you elaborate on the legal reasons, please?
It is not yet known why the judge, Mr.
Justice Enriquez, took his decision to discharge the jury.
So, it's like, hey, we didn't get him this time to prove that you have to be our slaves and put all your liquids into a frickin' baggie.
We're gonna just do over, and we're just gonna dismiss the jury for legal reasons.
This outrage.
And people don't even remember that this case was already tried.
They couldn't convict him.
And they just do it all over again.
And the media just sits there and goes, oh, legal reasons.
It's legal reasons.
Of course it's legal reasons.
Why even listen to legal reasons?
The Dow just hit $74.99.
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
The Dow just hit $74.99.
The Dow just hit $74.99.
Jury dismissed for legal reasons.
This is no agenda.
Sounds good, doesn't it?
So it's up.
There's probably nothing wrong with that.
So is the Dow up or down?
It's down...
What was it again?
77?
No.
74.98 now.
Remember, I called 72.86.
72.86 by February 14th.
I came so close.
It'll go down.
It'll go down even beyond that.
Now, it's done this dipsy-do once before.
Now, the way it did it, the fractal, is that it should go down maybe another 100 points and then rebound tremendously.
Or...
It falls through the floor, and then we have a new floor, which I don't like the idea of because I recall the bottom on November 20th.
And I'm not the only one who did that, but it'll be embarrassing.
That's okay.
It's like the stock market, you know.
Yeah, yeah, I missed it.
Nobody gets it right, so what difference does it make?
It's all bullshit.
Have you seen gold?
Gold's up.
Yeah.
It's just ticking $1,000 an ounce now.
Yeah, I know.
I talk to a lot of people who say, oh, you know, gold's too high, I think I'm going to short it.
And I'm thinking, well, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
That may not be a good idea.
Well, let me go into some, since you mentioned Hillary being in the administration, which showed her floating around.
I thought it was going to be a controversy putting her in, because the connection between her and that Clinton library is still something that, I think the Republicans were hoping she was going to get nominated so they could start digging into this thing.
The Clinton library, which is funded by unknown people, And the fact that I think Clinton is worth like $100 million all of a sudden or something like that, supposedly from his speeches?
Well, that's very possible.
Does this make sense to anybody?
He does about, I think it's $250,000 per speech.
And then, yeah, it's like $250,000.
It may have gone up a little bit.
Yeah.
Well, here's what I'm thinking.
So it's possible.
What kind of corrupt system do we have when it...
I don't care if the guy's...
He's not president anymore, and fine, he can go out and make some money.
But the fact is, is what kind of deals can you do while you're in office to avoid the Spiro-Agnew effect, where you actually asked people to bring a bucket full of money into your office so you could put it under the desk?
Apparently, Nixon had a pot full of money that somebody brought him to.
Yeah, it's black bagging.
It's economic hitman tactics.
Black bagging.
That's black bagging.
So instead, again, because you can get caught doing that, because there's always somebody suspicious.
But you do these deals, you say, yeah, I don't know, once I'm out of office, I don't know, maybe if somebody booked me about five, let's see, in your case, I'd say, if I got booked five speeches, let's see, one at 500, and the rest at 250, nah, that would make up for it.
Oh, by the way, I have this library.
Yeah, exactly.
That's really closed off.
It's looking for donations, if you know what I'm saying.
Donations.
You know what I'm saying?
Donations?
Hello?
Hello, donations.
It's a tax-deductible donation, no less.
Well, it's coming from the Saudis.
They don't need the tax deduction.
But they think that most of the library money is from...
So the real scandal...
I'm looking for the link.
You don't think that's a scandal, what I just described?
No, no, that's peanuts.
That's peanuts.
Do you realize that over $150 billion that was sent in cash to Iraq is unaccounted for, is gone?
Oh, yeah.
I didn't know it was that.
I thought it was only $50 billion.
Oh, who's counting?
And you see all these pictures.
If you Google cash, Iraq, you see all these pictures of pallets full of dough.
Yeah, pallets of money.
And soldiers taking pictures and laughing and stuff, which, of course, I do the same thing, obviously.
But I've been hearing for a long time rumors about senior officers getting huge payoffs.
And I witnessed some of the, not the payoff bit, but when I was in Iraq, I saw how this worked.
I mean, it's literally, there's a huge pallet of money that comes in, and there's a guy who sits behind a desk, and people come in, you know, locals, and they're given dollars.
And then for whatever purposes, you know, whatever is determined right, they get a fistful of dollars, and they walk out, and the money's just sitting there.
I mean, of course, how can this not be used for all kinds of inappropriate reasons?
I think that's the scandal, man.
That's the big scandal.
That's why we're broke over here.
We're just shipping our money to Iraq and giving it away.
What kind of thinking is this?
It's frightening.
Why don't they ship us the money?
I wouldn't mind walking.
I stand in line.
This guy hands me a pot full of hundreds.
Here's a...
Have yourself...
Because you don't need to be paid off.
You're not important enough.
They'll just kill you.
They'll just suicide you.
So we need to get more subscribers.
We've gotten 100 so far, and we need 1,000, and then we need 10,000.
Well, first of all, thank you everybody who's supporting this show.
Go to Dvorak.org slash NA to donate.
We appreciate it, and the reason why is our money will be gone just like yours.
So we need to save up a little bit because we'll need to buy bandwidth and all kinds of stuff.
So we need to get 1,000 subscribers for starters, and we might be able to do that in 10 weeks.
I wonder.
And then it's a $2 a month thing.
We get to listen to the show twice.
You get to listen to it anyway, free, if you don't want to give us anything.
Yeah, that's fine, too.
That's cool.
And also, next, by Sunday, I'll probably have a secondary thing, because there's a bunch of guys that have written and said, yeah, I don't like this idea.
I just want to give you some money, just a one-shot thing, like $24 for the year.
Right.
And so I'll set that up.
Okay, that's cool.
We'll take it any way you want to give it to us.
Then I'll set up a third one where someone just wants to give us money, you know, like as in the Clinton Library.
Yeah.
So somebody from Dubai.
Can you put dvorak.org slash library?
Library.
If somebody from Dubai feels obliged, we'll probably back off on our complaining, although there's not much to complain.
I got a guy in Dubai who just wrote me, by the way.
I'm going to try to get him to be a correspondent for the blog.
Dubai is screwed, though, man.
So when I was in Lisbon, I was hanging out with this guy from Dubai.
And he was telling me about DePaul.
I mean, they got all these real estate developments.
And apparently when they started some of these things, you can buy a house for $350,000.
And then they went up to like $5,000, $10 million in value.
And then they crashed.
They have a crash going on over there.
He says, but the house is still worth like $2 million, even though it was up to $10.
He says the place is completely insane.
Hmm.
Well, it's insane because there's no more money.
I mean, oil has been below $33 and changed the other day.
It's been below $35 for weeks.
The oil-producing nations are losing their shirts.
Well, it's because they budgeted wrong.
It shouldn't be.
Well, yeah, they budgeted somewhere between $50 and $150.
And from what I understand, it's got to be at least $50 a barrel to make any money, because it really is...
No, if you talk to the Saudi guys, they say they get it out of the ground at $2.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, well, my understanding from a guy I know at a Halliburton company here...
Is that it's really, if you do it in the sea, it's about $50 a barrel, and out of the ground, about $40.
That's bullshit, because the historic price has always been $25.
And the guys in Iran, the Raj Manojad, he says that they're budgeting for $25 oil, so that's not...
Yeah, but it's the infrastructure, you know, and...
It's been bloated.
If they started over again...
Maybe they have to get these high prices to pay for what they...
And it's impossible to find talent.
My guy is a recruiter trainer.
And he says, it's impossible.
It's impossible to find talent.
They're now getting idiots, and they're training him.
And he asks me all the time, how do you make video conferencing work so that it'll actually be effective?
Because he's really trying to train.
He's an army guy, so he's just resorted to army training.
You know, repetition, repetition.
I can't hear you!
Huh.
But Dubai, there's thousands of cars at the airport abandoned.
I'd love to get a picture of that.
Yeah, because in Dubai, if you don't pay your debts like your house or your car payment, you go to jail.
They don't just take the car away, they throw you in jail.
This is a serious, serious shit.
And they use a lot of contractors and freelancers, so all these people are just bugging out, going to the airport, hopping on a flight, leaving their car there.
There's thousands of cars at Dubai airport.
Wow, let's go get a couple.
Yeah, there's a country I want to mess around in.
That'll be fun.
Oh, it's not bad.
I've been there.
I've been there too.
It's not bad.
Yeah, but you don't want to mess around with the law.
Well, you don't want to mess around.
I'm not talking about messing around.
I think we should get one of those.
I mean, they've got to do something with those cars.
It's called theft.
It's called theft.
They'll give you just a flesh wound.
No, no, the country itself will have to reclaim those cars.
They're not going to leave them at the airport forever.
And then they'll auction them off, and we should pick a couple up.
There's probably a couple of Mercedes.
Who knows?
There may be a Bugatti sitting at the airport.
I am so amazed by your priorities.
I need a new car.
Now that I'll agree with.
If we have anything left over from the library fund, we'll get you a car.
We'll get you some new wheels.
Oh boy.
So anyway, what else?
Well, underreported is this green comet.
Uh-oh.
So we're going to go there already?
Well, NASA reported February 4th, and they have a picture of it.
There's this green comet that all of a sudden just appeared on everybody's radar.
And it's pretty spectacular.
On Curry.com I posted the picture.
And, you know, the comet, comets can do interesting things.
It is, of course, approaching Earth.
I don't want to say, like, oh, we're going to get killed by a comet.
An odd greenish backward-flying comet is zipping by Earth this month.
Why is it greenish?
Because, I mean, there are different, you know, salts.
It's the gas.
I believe it has a gas field the size of Jupiter.
So the gas itself, without it being excited by oxygen, which is normally how you get these colors, right?
You get some salt, you burn it, and it's oxygen, and it turns green.
Right.
That's how you get those little logs that have colorful flames.
You get green, red, blue.
But this is just green by itself.
Well, also, you know, people have been reporting...
And what is this backward green count makes one time only?
It could be one time if it's going to go by.
It's got to go around and around.
I don't know.
But this is...
Remember we were talking about the British-French sub-collision?
Right.
No.
No, maybe we weren't talking about that.
It just happened, but yeah.
What about it?
Well, there's a theory out there that we have had some massive solar winds recently and some other things in this comet.
People are seeing debris, green flashes of light in the sky throughout the world.
And that shit, particularly solar winds, that can disturb GPS and other types of navigation equipment.
Well, that's an interesting theory.
Well, no, those guys claim, of course, then again, who knows what really happened with those two subs bumping into each other.
They said that they were supposed to do something, and they both turned off all their sensors, and then they bumped into each other.
What were they turning their sensors off for?
It never made any sense to me.
What was the point?
They were running silent and deep.
What was the point?
They were supposed to meet up or something?
The whole story is kind of vague.
That, of course, I don't know.
But there's, from all over Kentucky, green light in the sky.
Let me see.
That's a lot of Kentucky there.
Interesting.
Some object crashed through a house in New Jersey.
A hot rock.
The hot rock.
Yeah, I was amused by that.
The size of a brick.
We blogged this.
Some guys, some hot rock came from nowhere.
They said it was...
And it dropped into the guy's house and, you know, wrecked his roof.
And it was so too hot to touch for a while.
And I'm thinking, it sounds like a meteor to me, but everybody that came and said, no, no, it's forged.
It was like a piece of forged steel.
Yeah, like it was, yeah.
No, what do you call it?
Cast iron.
Yeah, cast iron.
I'm sorry, not forged.
It's different.
Yeah, it was a piece of cast iron, that hot cast iron that came plummeting down from God knows where.
I don't know how that means.
Comets are kind of like, or not comets, but meteors have kind of a cast-iron quality often.
I've looked at enough of them.
Right, so that would make sense, because this is a meteor.
But if it was a meteor, it would have had an explosive effect when it hit.
It just kind of came clunking down.
I don't know if a meteor is doing that.
They come in pretty fast.
On curry.com, there's a link to the...
It's a NASA story.
NASA reports this, so I'm sure there's got to be some truth there.
Although you've got to question everything.
Like NASA reports global warming, too.
Yeah, really.
You probably blogged about the Stellar Remington, former head of MI5 in the UK. Oh, yeah.
You can not blog.
I didn't make a specific post, but I have a link to it.
Right.
Warned.
She's warned that the fear of terrorism is being exploited by the government to erode civil liberties and risk creating a police state.
Creating one?
This is like one of those save or create jokes?
Come on.
It is a police state.
Good honor, though, for coming out.
We did blog the fact that it's now illegal to take pictures of policemen.
Yeah, I know.
Under the terrorism rule, Act 44 or whatever it is, a policeman can force you to stop taking pictures.
It's not necessarily illegal, but now they've just added to the Section 44 that if a police officer...
It's not even a police officer, it can be a politician even.
It's anyone who's an official within the government.
They say, stop taking pictures, you have to, or you can get arrested.
So, voila.
Hmm.
So what do you think is the Green Comet?
I mean, what...
I don't know.
Is it maybe a publicity stunt for Comet, the detergent, the cleanser?
Because it's in a green can.
No, they need more viral videos for it to be a publicity stunt.
See, if I was working for...
I don't know who Comet's made by Procter& Gamble, or I don't know.
It could be any one of them.
But I would be on that in a minute.
The Green Comet's coming, the Green Comet, and then you have a can of, you know, Comet...
Cleanser.
I don't know what they're thinking, how they can let this go by.
Speaking of gigs, we don't have but should.
There's a green Aurora.
I've seen a green Areola.
That's different.
Charged particle motion in Earth's magnetosphere.
And this is a green one some guy took a picture of.
It's magneto stuff, man.
There's all kinds of stuff going on.
But no one talks about that.
That's interesting, at least.
I mean, I'm not saying there's...
Yeah, this could be distracting.
You know, you're looking for stuff to distract people from the Obama handout to the rich.
No, because it's not interesting.
People aren't interested in it.
They're interested in high drama.
So you get this Stanford guy who has put up like $20 million a match.
The million dollar a man match is prize money.
No, this is his cricket thing.
Cricket, I'm sorry.
And you have to understand that most sports are sponsored by banks.
Banks, insurance companies, and telco.
That's pretty much it.
And now you've got the Aston Villa guys, the footballers, are not getting paid because the sponsors are pulling out.
Left and right.
Formula One, sure, that's logical.
It's the most expensive sport in the world.
But now, regular sport, it's going to go down the tubes.
And it will reset a couple salaries as well, I'm sure.
Because this has just got to stop.
Got to stop advertising.
Tony Blair won a million dollar prize for his global leadership.
He needs the money.
Isn't that amazing?
That's how these guys do it.
That's how they get their money.
Yeah, you get it after the fact.
You do your deals.
It's all quid pro quo.
Everyone remembers.
They keep a little book.
Blair is still down a million.
How are we going to get it to him?
I got an idea.
Hey, Tony, we'll make you whole, man.
Don't worry.
We'll make you whole on the back end.
Both in the United Kingdom, in London, and in New York, governments are now hiring fired bankers.
The Treasury Department in the UK is literally hiring bankers who were fired to come and work for them.
That's a making hole if I've ever seen one.
Same in New York.
It's all the same everywhere.
And you blogged about this thing about the in-car GPS charging by the mile.
They've been pushing that for seven years in Europe, and it's going to happen.
I think it's 2011.
It's going to start in the Netherlands.
And everyone's up in arms about being charged for flushing the toilet.
We went through that.
Remember, I looked at my water bill, and they charge me, you know, X amount per 100 cubic whatever's coming in, and they charge me the exact same quantity for it going down?
You pay a sewage charge.
It's stupid.
No, no, it's a rip-off.
Well, it's a rip-off.
Yeah, no, they just double the rates with some bogus excuse.
If there's a water shortage or anything, you pay for usage.
You don't pay for discharge.
What are you supposed to do with this stuff?
You pay for it.
If you drink it, you pee it out.
It's always going to go into the toilet.
But the nasty thing is, they're just saying, okay, what came out, we're going to charge you for that going down.
But I make tea, I drink water, I use water for all kinds of purposes.
It can never be the same as what came out of the tap.
Yeah, never.
Unless you're just running the tap.
And they don't have a meter on it.
They tried to install one of those smart meters.
I'm not responding.
I don't want it.
Oh yeah.
Avoid, like, the plague.
Yeah.
Like, this is free.
You get a new meter.
It's really time for a new meter.
I'm like, I'm not here.
I am not responding to that.
Well, unless you can find, if you do enough research in advance, you'll find someone who's hacked the meter.
I got so much to do, man.
Same for people out there who want to save money.
So here's what I think the strategy is.
I've been watching...
So now we have the G20 who are meeting.
They're also known as the drinking club.
That Japanese guy was fed.
I had to put him on Mevio today.
I love that guy.
I've been in meetings like that.
We've all been in meetings like that.
We're like, what?
Particularly consulting for Microsoft.
Eyes kind of go into little slits there.
What do you think, Adam?
I think it's a fantastic idea.
But it looks like the global bank that they're pushing for, so the bank that will run all of our banking and thus our political system, looks like the IMF is sticking its head up along with the world.
This is their turf.
Yeah, this is what they do.
The IMF and the World Bank, which are, I think, pretty much interconnected.
And by the way, the World Bank makes sense because the name's already there.
You've got the brand.
You've got the domain name.
They've managed to put out World Savings and Loan in the World Bank.
All these companies that were named World here in the United States, they've been forced out so the name is clear for the website.
So here's one.
All they need to do is call it the New World Bank.
I think that's a bit much.
Because the New World, it sounds too much like New World Order, I think is that term.
Dude, everybody's using New World Order.
Everybody is using it.
Ahmadinejad used it the other day.
He said, we need a New World Order.
I thought he was supposed to be one of the bad guys.
Well, what they talk about in Iran when they talk about New World Order is not fully understood here.
I read a sociological piece, which I kind of mistakenly did not make a copy of, but it was done by one of the top guys at Tehran University, whatever the big school is there.
Tehran State?
We need a hoodie from Tehran State, everybody.
They probably have them.
I'm sure they do.
They've got iPods.
I just got a hoodie from Richmond, Virginia, and I got one from Oklahoma.
Anyway, I credited them on the Twitch.
I don't have their names in front of me.
Anyway, I'm trying to get one from Florida.
One just came, oh never mind, I don't want to get on that.
But anyway, this guy went on and on about how with the collapse of communism, he says there needs to be, and he showed, he had these diagrams, but there has to be these conflicting worlds, and there's no reason why the Muslim world can't take the place of the communist world in this regard, and there's no reason it can't be led by Iran as the brains of the operation to compete with the West, namely the United States being the brains of that operation.
There was this long argument about how important it was to have these competing theories of life, basically, and theories of government and theories of how things ought to be.
That keeps things in a kind of a tense, keeps things in a kind of a flux.
And he went on and on.
I thought it was very interesting.
And it was all oriented toward the creation of a New World Order, which replaced the Russian Communist Soviet Union with this Muslim Iranian-centric development or whatever, or creation. which replaced the Russian Communist Soviet Union with this Muslim And that was the New World Order in his mind.
And when he says New World Order, that's what he's talking about.
Okay.
Well, Gordon Brown definitely means something else when he's talking about it.
I think there is a difference in their meaning.
Interesting.
I think.
Yeah, who knows?
Yeah.
I mean, Iran might be a good place to go.
I don't know about that.
It's a great place.
There's beautiful people.
It's modern.
I haven't been there.
My wife has.
But I don't know if it's a good place to go.
I think Paraguay is the answer.
I know for sure that's a good place to go.
If you want to be safe.
If you want to hang out with cool people and the only danger is you get nuked.
And Paraguay?
No, no, no.
Iran.
No, Paraguay is not going to get nuked.
Of course not.
Kansas suspends income tax refunds, may miss payroll.
You know, these states, we talked about that briefly last week.
I've looked into that a little bit more.
It's actually a very beautiful thing that's taking place.
The way the United States works, the federal government really works for the states.
You know, when the original 13 colonies got together, the whole...
The whole thing is an agreement between states, and states can pull out or they can invoke the Tenth Amendment and say, hey, you know, that law or something you set up there, we're just going to ignore that, and you can't enforce that on us.
And that's legal, I believe.
Well, I know they're having a big battle about that here in California because medical marijuana is legal here, and a million guys have set up shop.
Hey, man, Obama was going to stop that stuff, man.
And the feds have been harassing these people, and Obama has stopped the harassment, right?
No, the harassment continues.
They keep getting rolled up.
No, wait a minute.
Obama said he was going to stop it.
He's already issued more executive orders than any other president in this short term.
Why doesn't he just issue an order?
Stop it.
Adam Couric, John C. Dvorak.
This is no agenda.
Bringing you the promises from the president.
And it's just the S-T-O-P. That's four words.
That's four for six.
Six words.
Or six letters, I mean.
Six crummy letters.
Stop it.
Signed, Obama.
Stop it.
Let me give you one last bit, because we should wind it up.
We're on a high now.
And really, after the Peter Orszag story, what left of the show was there really to do?
Absolutely.
Since you have an interest in the state of Washington, this is coming from Russian sources, so take it with a grain of salt.
They do have video.
I don't know if it's really current.
But apparently Russian Coast Guard and naval forces were forced to sink the Chinese registered cargo ship New Star bound for the U.S. port of Seattle after refused orders to stop and be boarded over fears it was carrying a missing nuclear warhead from a Russian Topol M intercontinental ballistics missile.
Thank you.
How did I miss that story?
Because no one reports on this, and you were too busy trying to figure out how the guy's black card could be refused.
Like every other fucking journalist in the world.
And I don't mean to put you down, but...
I'm a bad boy.
You ain't my bitch, nigga.
Buy your own damn fries.
So, I'll blog that as soon as I find it.
Send me a link.
Okay.
I will.
The video is pretty amazing.
They blew up the thing.
They shot at it, and then it sinks bow first.
Target practice.
It probably is.
But that's kind of scary.
Yeah, you know, they probably called him up and said, hey, we want to board, and he goes, oh, go speak English.
Boom!
Right.
Well, no, they didn't blow it out of the water.
It doesn't seem like a good thing to do if it's got a nuke on board.
They apparently shot 500 rounds into the bow and just got a hole in it.
And then it sank.
But that's pretty scary.
A missing nuclear warhead.
So this is the Russians reporting this about their own Russian missing nukes.
Huh.
So that's not on the Seattle...
So you didn't find that on the Seattle...
Wait a minute, let me get this straight.
You didn't find this story in the Seattle Times on the front page or the Post-Intelligencer on the front page?
You found it in a Russian newspaper?
Could you call Mimi?
Ask her to look at the paper.
I can look at the paper.
It's online.
Maybe it's in there.
Well, maybe it is.
I think it would be a bigger news story than just, you know, I don't think we'd go around blowing up, you know, cargo ships left and right.
I think it would be like, you know, be talked about a little more.
Well, the Russians did it, though.
The Russians blew up the cargo ship.
Oh, the Russians blew it up.
Yeah, Russian Coast Guard.
It blew it up off our coast?
Let me see where it was.
It was bound for Seattle.
Oh, it must have been off of Vladivostok or something.
It was probably closer to Russia than it was.
It was coming from China.
I don't have a...
Well, that's a scandal if it was headed to Seattle.
No wonder there's all these crazy Border Patrol guys up there.
Yeah, but they should...
Well...
You know, there is a...
You know, the whole Denver thing that we were talking about...
Yes, we have to talk about that more on Sunday, because we've got some good information from some people.
That airport's got eight layers, it goes deep into the ground, and it's got weird shit going on there.
I told you, runway's covered up.
But Denver, there's some significance there.
We'll talk about it on Sunday.
I'll look up my links as well.
But there was all kinds of stuff about China, and that Denver would be the front in the war against China.
You know.
Eh, it doesn't sound right.
Well, I don't get them all.
I never bat a thousand.
But I do well enough for you to come back twice a week.
Yes, and I hope people appreciate this show and they give us some encouragement by going to Dvorak.org slash NA so I don't have to keep begging for money, which is what I'm going to have to do for the next year.
And people out there listening to this show, and you listen for a reason, you know, Twittering and discussing and arguing about me and Leo Laporte is stupid and useless.
Focus on something important, like a sign that says, making America work, and give me your interpretation of that.
Focus on those things.
The mountain that's right in front of your eyes.
What is going on?
What does that mean, making America work?
Do you say it like making America work or making America work?
Does that mean we have to work?
Or is the machine working?
How about making America work?
I like that one.
That'd be good with the Big Brother picture.
From the Ministry of Truth?
It'd be just two sentences.
Making America.
And then work with an exclamation point.
Fantastic.
You got anything else?
No, I'm done.
Really?
I think that was good.
I just wanted to get into that thing about these tax breaks for the rich.
It really bugs me.
Well, it's...
You know what?
I can't parse it.
And by the way, Pelosi's a mouse that could get her kicked out of office.
Pelosi is definitely running the show.
I saw on...
Did you see that Frontline documentary?
You've got to watch that.
Yeah, it's called Inside the Meltdown.
I love that.
It was really good.
You see how powerful Pelosi is.
Yeah.
She's very, very, very powerful.
Yeah.
She could probably shut down this show.
She or Jackie Smith over here, the secretary of the Home Office, could easily shut us down.
So enjoy it while you can.
Yeah.
It's a short-term thing, for all we know.
And remember, two bullets to the head cannot be suicide.
Just in case you need to know that.
Hey, John.
That was fun.
Yeah, it was fast.
It was a fast time.
Well, we're ending about 15 minutes earlier than normal.
We really have to try and keep it under 1.30.
We're 1.23, so that's not bad.
You going to the office?
What are you doing?
I have to go do the Tech 5 Top 5.
Ah, right.
Oh, cool.
Okay.
You made me laugh on last week's, I've got to say.
You got hookers in there.
That was pretty cool.
Yeah, we try to get that in once in a while.
That was fun.
I pimped you out, man, on EVO today.
Oh, good.
Thanks for watching.
Appreciate it.
I watch it most of the time, but I don't watch it all the time.
I watched the one yesterday.
It started off with something, and then there was another picture of you.
Today I've got Obama's Elf.
That's really funny.
You've got to look at that.
Yeah, we have it on the blog.
That's where I got it from.
Where do you think I sourced it from?
Providing with material.
Yes, highly appreciated.
Coming to you from the Crackpot Command Center in Gitmo Nation East and Southwest London, I'm Adam Curry.
And I'm in the Buzzkill Command Center, much more important, in Northern Silicon Valley, also known as California.
Gitmo Nation West, I'm John C. Dvorak.
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