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Aug. 15, 2013 - No Agenda
02:57:42
539: Assume the Position
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She is such a douche and an idiot.
Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.
It's Thursday, August 15th, 2013.
Time for your Gitmo Nation Media Assassination, episode 539er.
This is no agenda.
Sink in my BM keys to my BT sink here in the Travis Heights hideout in the capital of the Drone Star State.
Austin Tejas in the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where I'm nine dog biscuits over five, I'm John C. Dvorak.
It's crack ballin' That's because you're pumping out 35 whiskeys.
I was not doing ham speak, by the way.
All the cool kids are now on the BM, man.
I didn't know what you were talking about.
Did you know what I was talking about?
No, what did you say?
Say it again.
I'm syncing my BM keys to my BT Sync.
What does that even mean?
Have you not followed along with the new bit message?
No.
Oh, my God.
Oh, I'm sure I'm missing out.
Yeah.
Molly Wood even wrote about it and credited no agenda, which is like...
We invented this?
No.
No, we did not invent it.
But we're using it.
We have a thriving community.
So imagine an email, BitTorrent email.
Okay, I'm imagining it.
Okay, that's what it is.
So you got an email client, and it's peer-to-peer, and you don't get like john at dvorak.org, you get a really long number.
Which of course someone else can store in their own address book as Dvorak or whatever.
Do I get a Bitcoin?
In fact, it works on the same principle as Bitcoin.
I was trying to avoid that right off the bat so you wouldn't ridicule it without me getting at least to the crux of it.
But it's great.
So it's email without any bullcrap email providers in the middle.
And because it's all encrypted, it's secure.
Although I'm not interested so much in the secure part as in there's like no Google in the middle.
It's like you can send stuff and you can broadcast to people who subscribe to your address.
So it's like RSS. So we're all spies now.
No, but it's really good.
I'm switching to that.
It's like, do you really want to say something to me?
If you want to expect an answer, then you have to get on the bit message.
And of course, you can also do channels.
This goes through torrents or something?
How does it work?
Okay, so it's just like Bitcoin, so it's peer-to-peer.
So it is like Bitcoin, like I was right.
Yeah, and that's what I say.
It's the same system, the same idea, except it has multiple streams and there's a couple of improvements over the original concept of Bitcoin.
Do I have to mine to get my address?
No, but what is nice is when you send someone a message, an email, you have to, you know, there's a statement of work, so yet you're doing some encryption, so it's very unattractive for spammers.
I would think.
Yeah, so this is really, it's quite groovy.
I'm sure it's very groovy.
I would assume this would be actually great if you didn't still have to go to the legacy systems to actually get your mail from your mom.
Well, but the whole idea is that if, you know, it kind of looks like email, and if you just say, here, just use this, the only thing that's different is you don't have, you know, a you at domain.com address, although there's people already have set up gateways and stuff.
So you can use that.
It kind of defeats the purpose.
But the whole idea of sending email without an email provider or the email infrastructure in the middle is nice.
I like it.
And no spam.
And of course we have this channel because you can set up channels.
I've been blogging about it and then Molly Wood wrote us an article.
We got a lot of traction and people are showing up.
And of course, question number three on the No Agenda channel.
Can you guess?
How do I get a number?
No.
Is JCD here yet?
Oh.
You got to get on this thing.
You'll like it.
Oh, I'm going to love it.
Come on.
Don't be so skeptical.
I'm not skeptical.
I said I'm going to love it.
Pretend I'm Dutch.
Alright.
If you pretended I was Dutch, then you wouldn't be able to criticize me for what you consider my sarcasm.
Right, because the Dutch always sound kind of sarcastic and harsh.
Yes, but they're not.
They just tell it like it is, but they have this sarcastic tone because they speak flat.
It is kind of annoying, the way they say it.
Guys, people are crazy when they first go there.
Like, why are the Dutch so kind of nasty?
Why do they hate me?
That's what I say to Mickey every day.
Why do you hate me?
I did that too.
There's this cute little bar that serves just elixirs in Old Town in Amsterdam.
And it's only open on Fridays and Saturdays.
Wait a minute.
What's the name of this place?
I can't remember.
I got photos.
So anyway, I don't even know if it has a name.
But anyway, you go in.
Their place is packed with a bunch of Dutch.
And this woman who runs the place, she just seems so mean.
But she's into the mean.
She's the worst case scenario for this.
And I know it.
I understand it.
But it got on my nerves so much.
I said, why are you so mean to all the Americans who come in here?
She got very offended by that.
I am not mean.
I don't care what you say, you crazy American.
I'm not mean to you.
I love you from the bottom of my heart.
And from my wife's bottom too.
So anyway.
There's a very funny book.
What is it?
It's like...
It's for expats, and I think the Dutch ambassador gave it to me, or something like that.
But it's a book about all of the crazy things that Dutch expats say in America that just come across completely wrong.
That's cool.
Yeah, I can imagine.
Hey, happy Virgin Mary teleporter to heaven day, John.
Is that right?
Is this the Day of the Virgin Mary?
It's the, I'd never heard of this, Assumption of Mary Day.
Oh, the Assumption?
This is the Assumption?
Yeah.
It's a major Catholic event.
Yes, and in fact, I think France, I think the financial markets may be closed, because Trevor, who usually sends me this financial tip sheet, He sends me a note.
He says, oh, you know, happy Assumption of Mary Day.
You know, I don't have anything today.
I'm like, Thursday?
What's the problem?
No, no, no.
It's a big holiday.
And this, I guess, is where God said, Mary, your job is done.
Come on up.
I think that's what it is.
It's possible.
I don't know what the...
I don't remember.
I used to be a Catholic.
And why did you give it up?
Well, I don't...
You know, this is another mystery.
I try to remember last time I went to a church.
Stopped into a church I saw along the way.
And I got down on my knees.
Okay, okay.
I don't remember when I quit.
Wait a minute, wait a minute.
You never really quit, according to the Catholicism, former.
Hold on a second.
Hold on a second.
This is new information.
Were you raised a Catholic by your parents?
No, no.
I chose to be a Catholic when I was third grade.
Wait a minute.
What?
What?
This makes so much sense.
Wait a minute.
When you're in third grade, and at this point, you're what, nine?
I don't know.
I'm going to be a Catholic, I say.
Yeah, they probably do.
If I had said something exactly like that, they would have figured I was a little bit touched.
Let me guess.
Here's the process.
It's like, hey, what's this book?
Hmm.
Let me start reading this.
Several hours later.
Hey, this is pretty good.
I think I'll become a Catholic.
Interesting.
So the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, informally known as the Assumption, according to beliefs of the Roman Catholic Church and parts of Anglicism, was the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into Heaven at the end of her earthly life.
I find it peculiar.
Why?
Well, because everybody in heaven, supposedly, they're just the souls and the spirits, and they get some body up there, some person, wandering around.
I think it would be annoying.
Well, that's not...
It's...
Said the bodily taking is what it says, right?
Yeah, you're right.
Up she goes!
Teleportation!
Exactly what I said.
Let's look at it.
So then what is she going to do now?
She's like, she can't get around.
I think you can move around a lot faster if you didn't have the body hooked to you.
So according to the Book of Knowledge, which, you know, this thing has like links in it, and if you click on it and it takes you to another thing, it's really quite amazing.
So they have this link for the bodily taking up, and you click on that.
It's amazing how this works.
And I get, Entering Heaven Alive!
The concept of entering heaven alive, known as assumption, is a belief held by multiple religious and traditions.
That's not quite English.
Since death is generally considered the normal end to an individual's life on earth, entering heaven without dying first is considered exceptional and usually a sign of God's special recognition of the individual's piety.
Piety?
Piety.
Piety.
What is piety?
Wait, it's linked.
Piety.
It's virtue.
Wow.
This Wikipedia thing is pretty cool.
Yeah, I use it all the time.
But there's something you can't quite rely on it.
You mean it's not really fact?
It's a lot of bogus information.
I don't think this one, the assumption of Mary Page has got too much bull crap.
Anyway, interesting to learn that you were nine, you decided to be a Catholic.
Yes, it's a decision.
My parents were, you know, my dad was, they were Catholics, I think, when they were kids, but they weren't the most religious people in the world.
Very skeptical.
And especially my father, who said, he says, whole side of the family quit going to church when they started, where you had to actually pay to get into the church, as one church person.
In Minnesota.
He said he had to pay.
He said that was it.
Is that where you're from?
That's like, in fact, that's what we do with this show.
We don't, you know, most, like, if you want to go to a movie, you have to pay up front before you get a seat.
Up front with just only reviews from Yelp.
We, on this show, which I think is a much more spiritual show than a typical movie, you don't have to pay to listen to this podcast.
I think we're on par with the Catholic Church, with spirituality.
There you go.
Well, we are working.
We work a lot.
We work on holidays, and now we're working on the Assumption.
We work on the Lord's Day.
We work on the Assumption.
We work...
I don't know what that says about us, but...
It means we need money.
You can't afford not to work.
Well, there's certainly enough to talk about, once again.
Yeah, there's quite a few things that went on.
I had kind of like research days.
Before we go into the news, let's just start right off the bat with something I think we should do.
Just to kind of lighten things up since we're talking about religion.
I mean, now you have to go shift gears.
I have an Ask Adam.
Oh, hold on a second.
I have an Ask Adam jingle.
Yes, you have a burning question, John.
Okay, you tell me what this is.
Is that my cue?
Yeah, that was your cue.
9, 6, 7, 7, 6, 9, 2, 1, once again. 10, 2, 6, 9, 6, 2, 6, 9, 6, 7, 7, 6, 9, 8, 10, 2, 1, once again.
once again.
Is this one of those number stations from the short waves?
That's what you'd think.
Yeah, it's not, though, apparently.
What is that?
Aha!
I don't know.
Oh, you've stumped me!
By golly!
Again.
What is this?
This is a CAPTCHA. Oh, wow.
That's interesting.
I guess I never click on the little speaker icon.
Exactly.
I always thought they were going to read what there was on the screen.
No, what you heard is the speaker.
Oh, so this is the CAPTCHA version of making the letters almost unintelligible?
Yeah.
And the funny thing is that the capture that's on the screen, which is a bunch of screwed up letters, the capture that they play is different.
They just don't read what's on the screen.
Oh, that's interesting.
I mean, how degenerate are we as a society to leave a comment?
A comment, people.
Just a comment.
And even if it is, you suck.
That you have to listen to that.
And the captions have to go.
Who knows what it's telling you.
Please enter this word, these letters in sequence.
When you actually have to go to your wife, like, honey, what letter do you think this is?
It's defeating the purpose.
No, it's ridiculous.
In fact, many of these things are unintelligible, and you can't read them, and you always get it wrong, and it's, oh, no, wrong, wrong.
And then there's the other one, which I kind of...
Wait a minute.
Now, if the website actually would start talking and go, no, wrong, wrong, then it would be entertaining.
Then I would like it.
More entertaining than it is.
But then there's the other one that says 12 plus 3 equals.
Yeah.
Which I think is actually a better one, although I guess you can beat that, too, by a machine.
But this is to combat spam.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah, and scrapers.
Yeah.
Anyways, there you go.
You learned something today.
People don't read it because I never clicked on it.
This thing kept coming up.
I could not read it for the life of me, so I clicked on the little speaker.
Do you remember what you were trying to do?
Were you trying to comment on something?
Yeah, I was trying to say hi or something.
It was ridiculous.
Hey!
Hey, I'm here.
Hey.
Yes, well, very nice.
You know, we're kind of on that track then.
Something very, almost disturbing happened.
There's two parts to this story, I guess.
So a lot of people, of course, listen really to what we talk about on the show, which on one hand is really nice.
And they say, you know, this whole thing, this whole trip you're on about the president and he's always saying his number one priority is to protect the American people.
And like, no.
And we, of course, keep citing the oath that he takes and that really his only job is to defend, protect, and uphold the Constitution.
But now people are getting in my face about it, John, which is a little annoying, and they're like, well, you know, he says, as Commander-in-Chief!
Yeah, okay, Commander-in-Chief.
And then I usually just send them Article II of the United States Constitution, where it shows what his duties are as the Commander-in-Chief.
And have you ever looked at them, his duties, the President's duties as Commander-in-Chief?
He's just supposed to be the Commander-in-Chief.
He's not supposed to do anything else.
Yeah, he just has meetings.
He's supposed to take meetings.
Yeah, meetings.
Yeah, here it is.
The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States and of the militia of several states, whatever that means.
We should figure that one out.
When called into the actual service of the United States, he may require the opinion in writing of the principal officer in each of the executive departments.
So he can solicit memos upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective officers.
So he can say, hey, could you please write me a memo about how you're doing?
And he shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.
And that's it.
And that's it!
So, you know, this whole thing, it's not true.
Except in cases of impeachment.
Yeah, so if he's being impeached, he can't pardon himself.
I think that's the...
Oh, what about if he...
The way I read it, that means that Gerald Ford couldn't pardon Richard Nixon if he was...
That could be...
But he never got impeached.
Never mind.
Well, that's interpretation.
That's interpretation.
Boy, you're almost taking this in a different direction.
In fact, why don't we do that before I go anywhere?
Let's go to Holder, then.
So, this was a very interesting thing that happened, and the analysis of it, I think, is pretty much incorrect just about everywhere.
Attorney General Holder, who is the number one dude in the justice system in the United States of Gitmo Nation, and he does a speech at the ABA, the American Bar Association, which is the Lawyer Guild.
It was right here.
Yes, it was.
It was in Moscone Center West.
And Hillary Clinton, she got an award.
She's a lawyer.
And so she got an award, and her face looks great.
It really does.
It looks really, really good.
As long as she doesn't, you know, smile too hard.
And Holder starts off with, you know, and I've always wondered about, you know, the profession of law.
I really love reading legal documents, trying to understand them.
The internet has made it really...
Really easy to, you know, Google stuff and find out, you know, what things mean and look at case law and really get a handle on stuff.
And, you know, I think lawyers go to school for a number of years and they learn kind of a different language and then they can charge, if you can get a job as a lawyer, which seems to be harder, you can charge a lot of money for your services.
You know, it's kind of like an interpreter.
But I found the thing that Holder was talking about, and I'm going to presume you didn't see it, was kind of like, really?
Do you really think that you're all that and a bag of chips?
From its earliest days, our republic has been bound together by this system and by the values that define it.
These values, equality, opportunity, and justice under law, were first codified in the United States Constitution.
Now listen very carefully what he's saying here.
And this is something that bothers me enormously because I've always learned that our society here in the United States is based on the Constitution.
Not on values.
I've heard this values thing, you know, you hear that a lot in Europe, you know, what's the values of our society?
No, values are, I mean, if you want to call the constitution values, okay, then so be it, but that's it.
Then values equals constitution, and there's not like some extra values thing that's going around.
Then here he's saying, well, it started off with the constitution, but really, you know, that was just kind of like training wheels.
Yeah.
Wait, before you go on with that, let me finish that thought.
You know, what's interesting to me about this, and I do have a Holder clip too, but it's a little different, is that this is the kind of thing that the Republicans began pushing.
Yes.
Which is values.
Family values, family values.
Bringing the church back into it and throwing all these extracurricular elements into what would normally be pretty straightforward constitutional stuff.
And using it to leverage voters.
And the Democrats always moaned about this.
They constantly moaned about it.
But now, the shoe is on the other foot.
And in fact, it is being used specifically for a group of voters.
But let's listen to a bit more of what I consider to be hubris.
And they were renewed and reclaimed nearly a century later by this organization's earliest members.
Now, if I'm hearing him correctly, he's saying 100 years after the Constitution was written, 100 years later, they were renewed, I guess, version 2.0, and I guess that the American Bar Association now is the Constitution.
Am I just overly sensitive?
That's what it sounds like.
Am I overly sensitive?
I think you are.
I'm not so sure.
First codified in the United States Constitution.
Listen to it again for a second.
And they were renewed and reclaimed nearly a century later.
Reclaimed?
What does that mean?
Reclaimed.
I guess they had fallen down?
They were reclaimed.
It's like a repo man.
Well, now the thing is a wreck.
Let's reclaim it.
Let's get it out of there.
We'll polish this up by this bullcrap organization's earliest members.
With the founding of the ABA in 1878, America's leading legal minds came together for the first time to revolutionize their, to revolutionize our profession.
Ooh, a little gaffe there.
In the decades that followed, they created new standards for training and professional conduct, and they established the law as a clear and focused vocation at the heart of our country's identity.
Throughout history, Americans of all backgrounds and walks of life have turned to our legal system to settle disputes But also to hold accountable those who have done wrong.
And even to answer fundamental questions about who we are and who we aspire to be as a people.
That's the first question I have whenever I meet a lawyer.
Could you please help me?
Who are we?
Who are we as a people?
You, you member of the ABA, you can help me.
I don't like to harp on lawyers too much, but I think Holder gives lawyers a bad name.
Particularly when you hear how he cannot read a teleprompter.
Even as we see most crime rates decline, we need to examine new law enforcement strategies and better allocate resources to keep pace with today's continuing threats as violence spikes in some of our greatest cities.
How are your greatest cities doing?
Thank you, bros.
I mean, seriously.
Can't you just say cities?
You just let that go?
Cities.
And no one.
I live in one of the best cities in the world.
Dr.
Fauci, thanks so much, as always, for joining us.
Good to be here, Bruce.
Some of our greatest cities.
Look, if you're reading it, we get to make fun of it.
If you just flub because you're doing a big speech and it's a complicated topic.
So what does he do?
He comes up with this basically saying, we rule you, slave, and we're going to throw you a bone.
It is unworthy of our great country.
It is unworthy of our great legal tradition.
And in response, I have today directed a group of U.S. attorneys to examine sentencing disparities and to develop recommendations on how we can address them.
In this area, and in many others, in ways both large and small, we as a country must resolve to do better.
The President and I agree that it's time to take a pragmatic approach.
And that's why I'm proud to announce today that the Justice Department will take a series of significant actions to recalibrate America's federal justice system.
And this is very interesting because...
They change reboot to recalibrate.
Yeah, reclaim.
They're rebooting the reclaim.
It is very interesting because by law we have minimum mandatory sentences for certain offenses, certainly in the drug arena.
And what is happening here is nothing is changing in the law, but it's a policy change directed by Herr Holder himself, which he explains here.
We will start by fundamentally rethinking the notion of mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes.
Why are they clapping?
Are they all drug dealers?
I have no idea.
It makes no sense.
Oh yes!
Oh yes!
Very good!
Less work for us!
No, I don't think that's what's going on is not less work.
...mandate inflexible sentences.
And this is regardless of the individual conduct that is at issue in a particular case.
Typically, a judge has the discretion to say, well, okay, look, in your particular case, you know, you did this, you know, it didn't really hurt anybody, but it was wrong, you knew it was wrong, but maybe you didn't.
I'm going to give you, you know, I'm going to cut you a break, and you're going to do this, or maybe already time served, whatever.
Yeah, but there's still these mandatories that the judge has to...
Right, right.
Well, that's what a judge should be able to do.
These mandatories are there, but now here's what Hare Holder's doing.
reduce the discretion available to prosecutors, judges, and to juries.
Because they oftentimes generate unfairly long sentences, they breed disrespect for the system.
When applied indiscriminately, they do not serve public safety.
They, and let's be honest, some of the enforcement priorities that we have set have had a destabilizing effect on particular communities, largely poor and of color.
and applied inappropriately, they are ultimately counterproductive.
This is why I have today mandated a modification of the Justice Department's charging policy so that certain low-level, nonviolent drug offenders who have no ties to large-scale organizations, gangs, or cartels will no longer be charged with offenses that impose draconian mandatory minimum sentences.
So the way I see this essentially is, look, we're going to be able to make deals with people now.
And whereas this was not necessarily possible, a prosecutor works for either the federal government or for the state, but I guess indirectly they all work for this guy, will be able to say, okay, hey, look, Dvorak, we caught you, man.
We caught you with, you know, you're growing the weed in your basement.
You know, that's five years in the state penitentiary.
But, you know, if you want to, like, help us trap that Curry guy, you know, maybe we could reduce this to 90 days.
Well, I think they do that now to some extent.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Well, you know, before you get more of this, because I do have one other guy who comes in with a different theory.
Let's hear the different theory.
I'd love to hear that.
Okay, this is the local news report.
Essentially.
And there's Tony Serra, who's a very famous...
I don't think he works that much anymore, but you've seen him before.
Tony Serra's his famous defense attorney.
I think he lives in the Midwest someplace.
And he's that long, white-haired Indian, American Indian guy.
Yeah, I remember when we were in San Francisco, I'd see him from time to time on the air.
Yeah, he's a very mean, mean defense attorney.
And he just wins a lot.
So they bring in, this is the holder thing, this is the local report about it, and then Sarah comes in and blasts them, and then they kind of wrap it up, and the whole thing turns out to be just a bunch of bullcrap.
And San Francisco's DA, George Gascon, told reporters he's thinking of a statewide initiative that would reduce simple drug possession to a misdemeanor.
Stop right there.
That's not what Holder's saying.
There's no, if only, if he were, if the laws were changing, but that's not what's happening.
To dramatically reduce the sentencing to one year, I think is the right thing to do.
Holder did not talk about the federal raids on Bay Area pot dispensaries or the fact that federal law contradicts the legalizing of medical marijuana.
Defense attorney and legalization advocate Tony Serra told me he's delighted by Holder's position, but he suspects the motives.
It isn't a concept of justice.
It's not a concept of, you know, giving, I don't know, a break, you know, to the low-level nonviolent criminal.
They can't afford the number of prisoners that they have incarcerated.
Holder did say that while the nation's population has increased by a third since the 1980s, the prison population has increased by 800%, and that black males are serving significantly longer sentences than white males convicted of similar crimes.
You know, there was yet a third theory that Miss Mickey kind of steered me towards.
She said, is this just a coincidence that Sanjay Gupta on CNN all of a sudden is pro-weed and weed is good and everything should be weed?
And I'm like, maybe they just need more users.
That's a possibility.
What did you find out about this weed stuff?
It makes people pretty calm.
We've got to do something to calm the public.
We've got to be rioting in the streets the way things are going.
Besides calming them, we know that the banks, the entire economy runs on drug money.
Maybe it's like, you know, we want to taper off a little bit.
We don't want to be printing all this money all the time.
We need some more drug money in the system.
You know, well, then we've got to get some users out.
I think it's possible.
Something is screwy about it.
I agree when a holder comes in and gives a speech and...
And the thing that I thought was interesting, I didn't have it on the clip, but it was on the clip at the beginning.
They actually brought up the meme that we stumbled upon, which was that a 25%, they put it on the screen as a graphic in a chyron.
25% of the world's prisoners are in the United States, and we only have 5% of the world's population.
And that was up there, and that's what...
In the mainstream...
I didn't expect to start seeing that on local news, that people are starting to add two and two about this.
And so I think Sarah, in his idea that this is ridiculous, this prison situation, especially in California, was trying to privatize like they have in Texas, largely.
Right.
They've got overcrowding and there's been a number of demands.
Wasn't there a strike, a hunger strike in California?
There's a hunger strike going on now.
It's not reported.
Ah, okay.
So now we're getting down to something.
I thought that hunger strike had ended.
As far as I know, the hunger strike's still going on.
I think it's still going on in Gitmo, too.
That's where it started.
Right.
And, yeah, no, there's a huge hunger strike.
Let me see.
Let me make sure that it's still...
Because I don't...
I've not heard anything.
It's like 15,000 prisoners.
It's so poorly reported.
Why bother?
That we don't know if it's over or not because nobody's reported that it even exists.
Lady Gaga weighs 60 pounds.
Everyone knows that.
She weighs more like 260.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
Oh, eh, eh, eh, no.
What happened?
We're not going there.
Now she looks anorexic.
No, I was surprised.
She went from Canada to Canada.
Yes, yes, she did.
This is just publicity stunts.
She probably shot these, you know, these things.
No, no.
Searching for the truth about California's hunger strikes.
I got a publicity stunt for you.
Yeah?
Yeah.
Well, you're searching for that.
All right.
You're going to be annoyed, though.
Okay, I got August 13th.
Hundreds of strikers have now gone one month without food.
This is still going on.
In a stated effort to end the state's controversial solitary confinement practices.
Yeah, they throw you in solitary for a drop of a hat.
Get in!
So somehow the CCA, the Corrections Corporation of America, they messed it up.
Or maybe that just, you know, whoever was, because we tracked this for years, John.
We tracked how the juvenile system was, you know, shuttling kids in from school, like get them into the jail, get them in the system.
It was, you know, was it 40, 50?
There was actually a judge that was taking bribes to send kids to jail.
To send kids to jail, yeah.
So it was $60,000 a year per, you know what, maybe this is what's going on.
And I think it was Eisenhower who said, if you want total security and you want a roof over your head and three meals a day, prison is the place for you.
I don't remember Eisenhower saying this.
Yeah, I think it was.
I can look it up.
Hold on a second.
That's okay.
It's not important.
And he ends up his quote by saying, the only thing you don't have there is freedom, which kind of relates to this whole balance between our freedom and our security.
So I think maybe people are saying, screw it, I want to be in jail.
Think about it.
There's some evidence of that in some communities because a guy will get out of prison.
No one will give an ex-con a job in California.
Right.
Not because you couldn't train him or do something.
But you can get somebody that's not an ex-con.
There's so many jobs available.
Exactly.
I mean, there's jobs.
I'm sorry.
It's a buyer's market for employers.
We're in a depression, so you can get...
Workers aren't ex-cons to work for you, so there's no reason to resort to ex-cons because you can't take a chance.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
So these guys get out, they can't get a job, and then they have to do some petty thievery or something.
They get thrown back in.
The system is broken.
If you release it, they don't go for rehabilitation.
They don't teach prisoners JavaScript.
If only!
If they did, it would end the whole problem with, you know...
So they don't do any of that stuff.
They just make them, you know, make license plates or birdhouses.
And the next thing you know, they come out, they got nothing.
They're still de-socialized from being in prison.
This is not working the way they have it set up.
It's...
And it's creating this problem.
And then they're all felons so they can't vote the idiots out.
You can't vote anymore.
That makes zero sense to me.
It seems to me you should be able to vote.
Do you lose your rights for good once you've been convicted of a felony?
Or do you get them back at some point?
Yeah, there's some way of petitioning it.
Whose dick do you have to suck?
Or is it just a thing that happens?
You have to be white.
Oh, God.
Okay.
Seriously.
Unfortunately, I'm believing you.
But don't propagate the meme that America is racist, please.
This is not the point.
No, no, it's not the point at all.
But the system is not working and they're not training people.
There used to be rehabilitation.
Now it's just long-term punishment.
The punishment is too long-term.
Throwing somebody in jail for a couple of weeks is not...
Say you have a job someplace and you get thrown in jail for two weeks.
You're not going to get back to...
I mean, that's punishment enough.
You don't have to put somebody, especially a marijuana smoker, in jail for years.
Dwight D. Eisenhower said, If you want total security, go to prison.
There, you're fed, clothed, given medical care, and so on.
The only thing lacking is freedom.
That's Eisenhower.
That Eisenhower.
Yeah, come on.
That was good.
You quote him every week.
It's going to be the Eisenhower Memorial Podcast.
I like him.
I like him.
So, I was going to, just to get it off my chest, because I heard this on NPR, and...
Sometimes I think that as we get new listeners on board, we have to go back to our earlier days.
What we take for granted, and we have a whole chat room full of people who have been listening for years, and they know all this stuff, but we still have to kind of help people understand how it works.
So NPR is, now if I'm not mistaken, they're supposed to be funded by people like you, and underwritten.
Right?
By corporations.
Because, you know, there's no profit motive.
You're going back to the well to play the classic.
Well, maybe I'll play the classic.
Why not?
Play it.
Okay, moving on to money.
How are NPR's corporate underwriting revenues holding up in the recession?
And what about foundation grants?
Two different stories.
Underwriting is down.
It's down for everybody.
I mean, this is the area that is most down for us, is in sponsorship, underwriting, advertising, call it whatever you want.
Call it whatever you want.
Exactly.
So I hear this thing, and, you know, John and I, you know, John, you and I have been in media for most of our professional lives, and we know how these things work, and either NPR is complicit, or they are stupid.
Or both.
Well, it could be both, but when I heard this yesterday, I'm thinking to myself, can you really be that gullible, or are you just in on the game?
Well, sticking with the music industry, let's move to a big story in the world of pop music.
If it were up to Lady Gaga, we would not be able to play this song yet.
So, nope, they're playing the song.
On NPR. That song is called Applause.
It was supposed to be released on August 19th, but it was leaked on the Internet, so Gaga and her record label decided to release it early.
That is a common occurrence these days for musicians and joining us to talk about it from the blue.
But listen, so of course I'm like, oh, so they pretended that it was leaked so that it could be a story because no one cares except for the little monsters.
And now they're playing the song on NPR. Newsroom in New York is Claire Sutteth, an entertainment reporter for Bloomberg Businessweek.
And we have Bloomberg Businessweek now.
Claire, there's an interesting backstory here.
Tell us what happened with Lady Gaga's release over the weekend.
What happened?
Well, so she has a new album coming out in November called Art Pop.
And please note, drop date, name, title of album.
The promotion is right there.
And on August 19th, she was going to release the first single off of it called Applause, which you just heard.
But it showed up on the internet over the weekend, and so she tweeted some very angry things.
I think her main complaint was that as an artist, she had sort of lost control over her work.
Now, listen, she tweets as an artist, she's lost control over her work.
However...
It's not someone else's decision when to...
So, if I get this right, she said it's not anyone's decision when to release my songs, and then her record company decided to do it early.
You know, just the reporting alone, these people should be fired.
Alright.
I'm looking at the Gaga feed.
You subscribe to Gaga?
No, you can go look at the feed.
You just type her name in.
She's got 39 million followers.
I know.
I wish I'd just plug my Dvorak Inside Trackbook.
How about no agenda, dude?
What do you mean Dvorak Inside Trackbook?
You know, that'd be cool if we had Lady Gaga as a No Agenda listener.
Yeah, good luck with that.
Yeah, she's not that...
So, applause.
All it is, is like, this is the worst feed.
Anyone who subscribes to the Lady Gaga feed has to listen to this same thing.
I don't see her complaining.
It must be deep.
No, today's the 13th.
I mean, it says the 13th.
I don't see all this bitching.
Because you could only...
Imagine.
I think this is...
No, this is bullcrap.
What she said is nonsense.
UK Monsters, thank you so much.
I'm so happy to be climbing your charts again.
I can't wait to see you live.
Kisses from across the pond.
The applause lyric video will be out at 12 PST today.
I don't see the complaining.
Because this is promotion.
This is blatant promotion.
That's the point.
There's not one thing in here where she's complaining.
The woman reported that she was complaining on Twitter.
Right.
Yes.
So NPR are liars?
This is unbelievable.
I would challenge anyone to find anything more than maybe one.
I can't find one where she cares at all about this.
Okay, well, never mind.
Now we got that done.
Let me get all of the annoying things out now.
We might as well do it just so I can get it done.
And this was annoying because I couldn't believe that I was agreeing with this person.
This is kind of sad.
This goes back to the presidential duties.
So this is actually a little clip from NBC talking about the president had another fascistic interview because now he's in bed with Amazon and he had an interview with Kindle.
Apparently Kindle now interviews people.
So, you know, he just spoke at Amazon.
It's like the whole thing, it's icky.
It's very icky when you're doing interviews with Zillow, the real estate company, and not a journalistic outfit, but just Kindle.
He's being interviewed by Kindle.
And here's what he says.
There's also been a shift in culture.
We weren't exposed to the things we didn't have in the same way that kids are these days.
There was not that window into the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
Kids weren't monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing or where Kanye West was going on vacation and thinking that somehow that was the mark of success.
Okay, so think of it what you may.
To me, it was a little hypocritical much, but...
The mother and mother-in-law of these two, of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, Kris Kardashian, has somehow used her daughter publishing a sex tape with Ray J, or whatever his name is, into her own television talk show called Kris!
And the eye is a little heart.
The dot in the eyes, a little heart.
It's Chris.
And so this, of course, I don't watch this, but this clip was sent to me and I'm like, ah, why am I agreeing with this woman?
And the president said, and I quote, the American dream involves some pretty basic stuff.
A good job where you felt some security, a good education.
I don't think people went around saying to themselves, I need to have a 10,000 square foot house.
Kids weren't monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing or where Kanye West was going on vacation and thinking that was somehow the mark of success.
And interesting to note here that NBC did not read the entire quote, and she did, which talks specifically about one of my major points, the president's rebranding of the American Dream.
So I read this, and I thought, wow.
I mean, it's really great that people aspire to get a great job and I too wanted that when I was growing up and I graduated from high school and I really wanted to work hard and succeed.
But I wasn't aware that you could only set the bar so high and that we could only dream so big.
I was taught dream big, work hard and you could have whatever you wanted.
How sad is it in America when I'm now agreeing with Kim Kardashian's mom?
Well, Kim Kardashian's mom is probably no dummy.
And I think, by the way, that this is a little bit...
I don't want to be completely cynical about this, but this may be a little bit off the rails for what the powers that be will accept.
Because, you know, the president has this new way of...
Creating a reality.
Well, it's the new guy.
And she may be a short-lived talk show host if she keeps doing stuff like this.
Oh, well, let me play her.
She'll be asking for donations.
Let's put it that way.
Hi, everybody.
It's the Chris Podcast.
How you doing?
Well, listen to her follow-up.
Was, wow!
I bet the president has some friends with 10,000 square foot houses and you probably wouldn't mind going over there, Mr.
President, while you were asking them to have a party for you when you were campaigning for, you know, dollars to run for president.
I just, I don't, I find it so odd that he's picking on Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
Well, Kanye West, first of all, doesn't...
Okay, there you go.
That's enough.
Yeah, it is enough.
I'm glad you watch stuff like this.
Well, no, I don't watch stuff like this, but it was sent to me and other people said the same thing.
Can you believe that I'm agreeing with this woman?
I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am.
These celebrity talking heads...
They say stuff occasionally that you'd have to agree with.
It's not like everything they say is wrong.
No, but it's noticeable when this happens because typically all they're talking about is exactly that.
It's about how awesome their house is and the great vacation they went on.
I would also say that these are Obama bots.
They certainly were all on the Obama-bot trip.
She sounds like a Republican to me, that woman.
Okay, I don't know about her, but I'm pretty sure that...
Yeah, the rest of them.
Ryan Seacrest produces this.
Please.
This is an Obama-bot production.
Oh, we've got to write that down.
That's a good one.
Yeah, Seacrest.
Obama-bot production.
An Obama-bot production.
So something's happening.
Something is really happening.
And it seems like there's...
Sometimes I get the feeling, John, there's a concerted effort.
And maybe the whole Glenn Greenwald-Snowden thing has something to do with it.
That it really is a force moving to move the current power base out.
Do you ever get that feeling?
We've discussed this before, that they keep taking these runs at Obama and they do it in bursts.
And they have been very unsuccessful.
I think the public at this point is so dumbed down and so fat-butted, sitting down kind of thing, I don't know how else to describe it, that they really can't be riled up.
There's nobody out there to rile them.
I mean, there's not a Republican.
Right now, it's a two-party system with various third parties out there, like Gary, what's his name?
Gary Huntsman.
So you have Republican orators that just are uninteresting, and they're just as bad as the Obama.
They've got nothing to say.
They don't rouse a crowd.
They don't get anyone standing and clapping.
They're working for the same people.
Yeah, it's all the same.
All working for insurance companies, big corporations, etc., etc.
And so it's like they got nothing.
They got no...
They're set.
It's another thing.
They got no inspiration.
No game in the...
No dog in the hunt.
So they can't get anybody riled up.
That's for sure.
And then the third-party guys, they're either nuts or they got some sort of screwball idea.
Or stoned.
They're stoned.
Stoned.
And they got...
You know, they can't...
Or they have a high-pitched voice.
Yeah.
Ross Perot.
I think Gary Johnson's voice stinks.
You know, he's not a guy who wants to get...
Well, Gary Johnson, and I talked to his...
Remember, I interviewed him, and I spoke with his campaign manager, or his media campaign manager, whatever it was.
Soft-spoken.
I said, yeah, the guy's got to get a little forceful, and then they took it exactly the other way, and he went like...
It became like really...
It's kind of like Alex Jones-y, like, you know, a little crazy.
Yeah, no, you can't.
He's insincere screaming.
Yeah.
You know, people can tell.
They can tell when you're actually mad, or when you're...
Unless you're the really great actor.
I mean, that's why Reagan, I think, was so well, because he could act.
You know, he didn't really have a, oh, God, I can't get a, you know, you can't, sometimes you can't get yourself motivated.
Well, if you're an actor, you have a better shot at it.
Well, I better go get those Iranians right now.
Oh, God.
Yeah, I know that wasn't very good, was it?
Well, no, but we could recognize who you were trying to do.
That was my John Wayne.
John Huntsman.
John Huntsman, exactly.
Yeah, well, I find it noticeable that this happened.
It's noticeable.
It's noteworthy, or as you would say, noted.
Noted.
Noted.
All right, so we, of course, don't have cool little hearts over the eyes in our logo.
I don't think we have an eye anywhere.
Maybe we could have an umlaut.
We could have two little hearts somewhere.
Over Dvorak.
Can Dvorak have an umlaut?
There are some characters, and I don't know what they're called, they're Eastern European, that you put over Dvorak and it becomes Slavic.
Dvorak.
Dvorak, right.
We have a different model, so we don't get affiliate fees.
Of course, we also don't get taken off cable systems like CBS and Showtime over some dispute, which is basically about you, about stealing money from you.
That's all that it's about.
What are you losing?
Who knows, but you're not getting service.
and you're not seeing what you want to see or may want to see, we've chosen for a model where you actually do tell us what to do or what you like or don't like, and you support us.
And if you don't, then we go away.
This is so distributed unless a lot of people say the same thing if we don't want to do it.
Right.
What does that mean?
It's not like the suits call you upstairs.
Hey, listen.
You know that jingle?
You're paying attention?
Stop it.
You know what we're talking about.
Bitch, look it up.
It's science.
We don't want you playing that jingle anymore, man.
Because it is science.
So we do have a couple, three actually, executive producers to thank for today's show.
And I want to thank them.
And curiously, two of them are both, the second show in a row where we have two members of the show number.
And I might add, we had a 53833 and a 538 flat on the last show.
And this is the same 53933 and 539 flat.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's funny.
And here's the third coincidence.
They both came in one-two punch.
And they're from California.
Well, we can go on.
Wait a minute.
It might be a conspiracy.
One is our hyperware technology guy, Sir David Foley, who is the Earl of Silicon Valley, who seems to be on a roll.
Alpha Plus Gatos, 539.
In the morning, Oscar and Felix from the Earl of Silicon Valley.
We're on a roll with the No Agenda Karma, continuing to work its magic, so I'm sharing the wealth with the best podcast in the universe.
It's 539.
At 33 cents, we can continue to fill up the bunker...
With mac and cheese.
Which, by the way, I'm going to post this picture.
I was at this place called Grocery Outlet.
It's referred to, generally speaking, as Gross Out.
Is that a California thing?
I don't think we have it here.
I think it's West Coast.
There is one I know in Washington, a couple in Washington State, so it's just, I think, just a West Coast thing.
Um...
And they had, there's a mac and cheese in a box.
Yeah.
And it says mac and cheese dinner.
Does it have the word gourmet anywhere?
No.
No.
But it says mac and cheese dinner and it's a box with, you know, you can shake it and there's some powder in there and some God knows more.
I can't imagine what this is like.
I should have bought it.
Yeah, what are you thinking?
39 cents.
And how many servings does this provide?
Well, I didn't look on the back, but I didn't really want to touch it.
I can't believe you didn't buy that.
Well, I was thinking about it.
39 cents.
Now, is that...
Yeah, 39 cents for a mac and cheese dinner.
But do you think it's one, two servings or six?
Because it's for a family?
It's a little box, so I would say that it's just one serving.
Single shot?
Single shot?
But I'll bet you, I'll bet you, now I'll go back.
I'm going to go back.
You've got to pick me up.
I'll bet you a buck it says two servings on it.
Because you have to have a dinner with someone.
No, no, it'll say...
If you're eating alone, is that a dinner?
It'll say two to three servings.
If you're eating alone, is that a dinner?
Yeah, of course.
It's a meal.
It's a meal.
So, anyway, so I want to thank you.
Let me play the mac and cheese jingle for you.
You slaves can get used to mac and cheese.
Mac and cheese macaroni and cheese cheddar melted together.
Mac and cheese, mac and cheese, mac and cheese.
The mac and cheese life.
Mac and cheese by Ayn Rand.
And there's the thing that's, you know, when I did that about the cheap cheddar, it's actually not even cheddar, it's just powder.
It's just chemicals.
It's sulfur.
Ugh.
Anyway.
So coming in also from Pleasant Hill, California, is Robert Montoya.
And I don't have a note from him.
I searched on the email.
If he has something to tell us, he will.
I have a feeling that...
Why don't you keep going?
Somehow I thought that I saw an email from him.
Let me just double check.
Oh, okay.
Well, that could be.
He could come in with some funny name.
What is his...
Yeah, like he might come in with something like Robert.
No, well, I just looked at Montoya.
So I got a Robert.
Hello, Adam and John.
I believe this loving donation will elevate me to the prestigious ranks of the No Agenda Nights Roundtable.
Is that this Robert?
I would think so, but I don't see him on the list.
Well, what does he say?
Here's what his email is on the PayPal.
I guess I shouldn't give it out.
Let me see.
Is it Gmail?
No, it's Yahoo.
Is it Bob something?
No, it's R. Alright, well then we'll have to fix it.
Anything that's wrong we'll do on Sunday then.
Yeah, and you get a Black Knight.
So Robert, get a hold of us.
Well, that's the way to go.
Say you sent a note and then not really send one so you can get a black note.
No, no.
I've already discussed this with guys who tried to pull that.
Oh, wait a minute.
People have been trying to scam us for that?
Well, I don't know why you want the black, you know, I want to be a black knight.
And I explained to him what it takes, you know, and it's like, oh.
When we genuinely make a mistake.
And actually, there's a whole back channel and there's like arguments on email.
It used to involve Mimi.
It's really not fun, these black knights.
It's not a fun process.
We haven't had too many in the last six months.
We're trying to get away from it.
So Bas, okay.
Bas Brunix.
Brunix.
Brunix in Forst came with 250.
This is the second time in as many shows, I think.
Yeah, unless it's a mistake.
But I don't see a note from Bas.
Okay.
Bas, we need notes.
There's a little box you can fill out.
Sometimes it says instructions.
Okay.
Anyway, those are our three.
We have two executive producers, one associate executive producer for show 539.
Actually, the two guys came in late.
We almost only had Boss, period.
So, got lucky.
That's alright.
Well, it gives us more time to talk about stuff because we'll have a short donation segment as well.
Just looking at the spreadsheet.
Yeah, we didn't get a lot of...
No, volumes down.
Volumes down.
Volumes down.
Well, let me say in the morning to you, John C. Dvorak...
Well, in the morning to you, Adam Curry, and in the morning to all the ships at sea, boots on the ground, subs in the water, feet in the air, the dames, and the knights out there.
Yes.
And, of course, to these fine executive producers, our two from California today and our associate executive producer from Gitmo Nation Lowlands.
All of these credits are valid.
You can put them anywhere you want.
You can use them in job interviews.
Unlike the phonies in Hollywood, we'll be happy to vouch for you.
We'll have someone call us.
Do it all the time?
Say, hey, yeah, absolutely.
He's an executive producer.
What are you talking about?
And, of course, we'd like to thank all of the human resources in the chat room, noagendastream.com, noagendachat.net, our crack team behind the scenes, Sir Gitmo Slave, Sir 19-Inch Rack, Void Zero, Sir Mr.
Oils, and everyone else I'm forgetting there, and our artists, Martin J.J. for the three-peat on episode 538.
Yeah, that was a good one.
He's a three-peater now.
Can't wait to see what...
I think he's done this twice.
I think he's a double three-peater.
It's happened a couple times, yeah.
Like the Chicago Bulls.
It's happened a couple times.
Noagendaartgenerator.com.
Looking forward to seeing what we have at the end of today's broadcast.
Dvorak.org.
And regardless of how you support us, we always can use you propagating our formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out, we hit people in the mouth.
New world order.
Shut up, slave.
Shut up, slave.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
I got a contender.
You do?
I got a contender, yeah.
For clip of the day?
Yeah, you want it now or you want me to hurt you later?
Yeah, I want to know.
I want to see what you're made of.
Reggie Love.
Are you familiar with the name Reggie Love?
Oh, God.
This name, we haven't heard it on the show for, you should might as well brief people on it, for what, over, almost two years.
Yeah, Reggie Love was, just like Huma Abedin is Hillary Clinton's body man, Reggie Love, Or was President Obama's body man, which means he pretty much does everything.
You call the president sweet in the morning, he's going to answer the phone.
Of course, there's always speculation about these types of body men.
It's like, could it be a little bit more?
You never know.
We do know that he complained incessantly about the president sitting in the beast in the presidential limousine, that the president does not sweat.
And then, you know, he'd turn off the air conditioner, and remember that?
And Reggie Love was like, man, the dude just, like, I think he said he was like a reptile, didn't he?
Or like a lizard?
I thought it was just Hillary.
I never noticed it.
No, no, no, no.
This was Reggie Love, one of his rare interviews, and he said, oh, man, this is crazy.
The president, you know, cranks up the, or turns off the AC, and he's just sitting there, but he doesn't sweat.
Now, Hillary doesn't sweat.
Oh, gee.
Coincidence?
I think not!
Hello, reptilians!
So Reggie Love is at some, like one of these conferences, and it's one of these conferences where, you know, you have a little riser and the audience is there, and you have like two chairs, table in the middle, but it's not the Clinton Global Initiative.
It's not Davo.
You know, it's just, it's like a little university thing.
It may have been...
It's Davos, by the way.
Did I say, what did I say?
You said Davo.
Oh, well, if you've been, then you know how to say Davo.
Davo.
I've been to Dubbo.
I've been to Dubbo many times.
It's all about the breakfast.
Reggie Love is at some college thing, and he's being interviewed.
And of course, he's not really noticing the camera in the back, I presume.
And he makes quite a stunning admission.
Talk about the day that Osama bin Laden was killed.
Do you remember where you...
Oh, yeah.
I remember, of course.
Of course.
I mean, I think, you know, it was a very long day.
We actually, I spent the entire day at the White House.
And probably, you know, typically, like the weekends, he's like, he'll work like a half day.
And this Sunday, I mean, we worked the...
I mean, we were there until almost...
I mean, I think he went on TV at midnight.
Almost midnight.
Sat around in the private dining room, kind of like...
Most people were down in the Situation Room, but he was like, I'm not going to be down here.
I can't watch this entire thing.
So he, myself, Pete Sousa, the White House photographer, and Marvin, we must have played 15 games of spades.
Whew.
Wait a minute.
Do you mean he wasn't there?
That picture where everyone's like staring and we're all like, you know, it's intense.
Yeah, Hillary's smelling her finger.
Yeah.
That picture.
So he just went in for the photo op and then went and played spades with Reggie Love in the executive dining room all night?
That's pretty good.
I know you're hoping for Clip of the Day, but I think Clip of the Day needs a little more surprise.
Okay, well, let's listen to it.
I was hoping that was going to...
Here's the problem.
You oversold it.
Yeah, you're right.
Because I expected Reggie Love to say something a little more interesting.
And then I kissed him.
Presence a boring guy who plays Spades.
And then I kissed him.
And Spades.
And then I kissed him.
That would have been a clip of the day.
If he kissed him, then we'd be in business here.
But he plays Spades?
What a lame game.
If they were playing poker or some manly game, that would be better.
Well, there's a lot to it.
First of all, what is Spades?
What is the game of Spades?
Is that like Old Maid?
It's a little like Hearts, only different.
It's like Old Maid?
What?
It's a college game.
It's not even a really great game.
It's not a good game.
I think Texas Hold'em would be some sort of a good...
Or strip Texas Hold'em.
Strip poker.
Yeah.
I found the whole statement to be bizarre.
A, that the president was supposed to be like, when we killed Osama Bin Laden, he wasn't even in the room.
He's just up there playing spades.
I don't know.
I found that to be disturbing.
Well, at least he didn't say I was playing Go Fish.
And then this other comment, which also does not jive at all with what we've heard in the past, which I also thought was kind of funny about his birth certificate.
And also, I think it's about who the president trusts in the White House.
Who does he most trust?
And listen carefully because I think words matter and emotions matter.
Most trust.
Definitely his wife.
I think she's like a brilliant person.
Brilliant person and...
What is that?
I was like...
She's a brilliant person.
I'm thinking the same thing.
Wasn't that weird?
Just play it again.
Play it again.
Because it's like he's thinking about something.
He's thinking about something that cracked him up.
No, but it's a nervous laugh.
Does he most trust me?
Most trust.
Definitely his wife.
I think she's a brilliant person.
Brilliant person and...
Maybe he's laughing about the brilliant person or like she's so...
I don't know.
I don't either.
But he's not letting us in.
We should keep that clip in abeyance.
Something's going to come out about that.
Something's going to come, yeah.
Here we go.
Tough.
She's tough.
I think within the staff, I think probably either Pete Rouse or Bradley Jarrett, but probably one of those two.
Did he say Pete Rouse?
I think that's his staff, right?
His head of staff.
And then Valerie Jarrett, of course.
I remember when he finally found his birth certificate.
Now, this is interesting.
I remember when he finally found his birth certificate.
A little too long, by the way.
You know, your parents don't live together.
They travel all over the world.
Documents get lost.
Really now?
So now I'm led to believe, and I have no reason to believe Reggie Love is lying.
I really don't.
But now I have to believe that, I don't think we've heard this before, that the President had lost his birth certificate, that he couldn't find it.
That's new information.
And how do you get through all of this without ever having to, you know, because, oh yeah, parents get divorced, documents get lost.
Really?
Yeah, I think that is accurate.
Well...
Yeah, you got a bunch of...
You know, it's all over the place.
Who's going to keep dragging this...
You know, I guess...
I think he's right.
I think he's dead on.
I think it's very accurate.
I just wanted to go...
Not that the birth certificate's real or the birth certificate they lost didn't say Keeney on it.
I mean, who knows?
Yeah, no.
Well, I want to go on record with something I think I mentioned to you outside of the broadcast at one point.
And there's been a number of books, movies, and television episodes that I've seen recently...
That all end in, they were twins.
And this is the thing that keeps coming back to me, is the two Obamas, which is your theory.
And I'm pretty sure we had a switch in June, and this is the other Obama.
I'm thinking twins.
And that was the reason that the birth certificate was complicated, because there were two.
Just wanted to take birtherism to a whole new level.
Yeah, I know you had the...
You have been making the...
Off camera.
Yeah, backstage.
By the way, I think you should take a look at Pete Rouse, R-O-U-S-E, and ask yourself...
Look at his images.
And ask yourself why Obama trusts this guy.
I mean, this guy looks like a...
Kind of a...
The guy looks like a real...
Oh my God!
I don't use this word lightly.
He looks like a douchebag.
He looks like a brick.
Doesn't he?
Where's he from?
Let me guess.
Chicago?
Oh, he's known as...
Hold on.
Wow.
Where's he from?
Capitol Hill.
Early life.
New Haven, Connecticut.
Okay.
Hmm.
The Japanese mother.
Interesting.
London School of Economics, Harvard University, Capitol Hill.
He was with Daschle.
Yeah, he looks like a hard ass.
Yeah, totally.
I wouldn't want this guy yelling at me.
No, on the wiki page is a picture of him yelling at the president, actually.
You're not doing it right!
Yeah.
But he looks like he's about five feet two.
He's very short.
I think Obama, how tall is Obama?
6'2"?
Obama's 6'1 or 6'2", yeah.
I think he's 6'2", maybe higher.
Hello, Wikipedia people.
Yeah, where's the Wikipedia height in here?
We want height on this guy.
I'm guessing he's 5'9", 5'10".
5'9", maybe.
He's got a 5'9 build.
So he's a little guy for that business.
Yeah.
Huh.
And he trusts him and Valerie Jarrett, of course, who's like an unpaid staffer or whatever she is.
I don't know if she has a position.
She is the president.
What are you talking about?
That's her position.
She's the actual president.
Anyway, let's finish this up.
And so he wanted to...
He wanted to just have an impromptu press conference to just walk in to the press briefing room in the White House and just put the verse down on the podium.
And everyone was like, that's a really bad idea.
But he was very gung-ho about doing it.
Why would that be a really bad idea?
I don't know.
That seems like a really good idea.
Like, here, bitches, here it is.
What's your problem?
That would have been a really good idea.
Maybe the birth certificate needed some alterations.
Some adjustments.
Wait, wait, wait.
Let's just photo...
Hand me that, Barry.
Let me photocopy that for a second.
Now, don't worry.
So that's Reggie Love.
I think Reggie Love is talking too much.
She's going to have to be put down.
Wow.
That's pretty low.
But yeah, I found that to be...
That's not the image I had of my president in either case, that he had lost his birth certificate.
He plays spades all day.
If he just said, hey, look, my parents were divorced.
It's lost.
I've got to get a copy, whatever.
I'll figure it out.
That would have been so much more believable.
And then, here it is.
Very poorly handled.
I found it.
It's in the box in the basement of the White House, right where I put it.
Please.
Alright, it's okay.
This is all what you want to believe.
Let's see what we got.
I have a, there's a couple things going on that I thought were interesting.
One is, of course, you have to, everyone has to monitor RT. Because, you know, this is the last ditch effort of slamming the administration on behalf of Putin.
And I'm getting very tired of monitoring RT. Because they're really taking a tact which, they have the wrong attitude, you know what I mean?
Well, that's because you watch Abby.
Oh, no.
No, I can't watch it.
No, I can't watch it.
24-7 RT? I turn it on, but it's just, you know, the hosts are poor.
Abby doesn't work.
The hosts are poor.
They can't read teleprompter.
And that Tom Thom guy, he's terrible.
No.
And then they have Max Keiser screaming at you as though that was going...
No, Max Keiser is sold.
He watches the Kramer show, Fast Money, Loud Money, whatever it's called.
And so he thinks that's the way you should act on anything that has anything to do with financials.
And so he screams for no apparent reason.
So he's unwatchable.
And then they have these, I don't know.
Here's the problem.
I'm going to say it now.
Here's the problem I have.
They come up with the story, and oftentimes it's things that we're looking at.
But then the way they handle the story is they get some dude on Skype.
And he talks for ten minutes.
Yeah, this is like...
It's boring.
Democracy now does this.
Yeah, it's like, I'm not interested in that.
The chief feed of some guy, his mouth is going one way, something else is coming out.
Yeah.
It's horrible.
Yeah.
But it's 10 minutes, and it's a horrible shot.
It's not interesting to look at, and you don't know who the people are.
Right, and they're unknown jokers.
The Skype connection sucks, and the guy doesn't even know how to set up a camera, so it's like a homebrew.
It's very amateurish.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, there's my problem with it.
Yeah, it's a big problem with democracy now, too.
I have the same problem with them.
So what they've decided to do is they're going to go after all our allies and make it look like all kinds of horrible things.
Because there's a nonsensical piece that RT did, a hit piece, on the Saudis.
Because they figure, well, let's embarrass the Americans because we're in bed with the Saudis.
So this came out.
In recent weeks, Saudi Arabia has launched an offensive against anti-regime activists.
Hold on a second.
Where did they get the English guy from?
This is one of the many shows on RT, and I'm annoyed by that too.
Ah, that's bad.
And sentencing some to years in jail.
The total number of political prisoners has now surpassed 40,000, according to some reports.
The crackdown has even forced a member of the ruling family to defect.
RT Arabic spoke exclusively to Saudi Prince Khaled bin Farhan al-Saoud, who accuses the monarchy of corruption and silencing all voices of dissent.
Okay, stop right there.
Stop, stop.
So they bring this guy on who's apparently a member of the family.
And the royal family, you have to remember, is about 30,000 to 40,000 people.
And they all get a piece of the action.
And so this guy, instead of wanting a piece of the action, decides to break away and bitch.
And in the process, he talks about anyone who does what he is now doing, they get killed.
But there he is.
There's no bubble over his head.
There's no voice changer.
There's nothing.
He's just standing there yakking away.
So this guy is obviously a shill.
He probably is not a member of the family.
And to be honest about it, I don't think anybody in the family knows who's the member.
He was probably with Skype in Hoboken.
Well, that's a possibility, too.
But anyway, so we'll go on from there.
The government is obviously scared of the Arab revolutions, and they've responded as they usually do, by resorting to oppression, violence, arbitrary law, and arrest.
The easiest thing they can do is deprive you of your salary or fire you altogether.
The ruling regime is not guided by justice, and this is especially true of the Ministry of Interior.
There is no independent judiciary, as both police and the prosecutor's office are accountable to the Interior Ministry.
The ministry's officials investigate crimes, they call them crimes, related to freedom of speech.
So they fabricate evidence, don't allow people to have attorneys.
Things like that happen all over the place.
They even put people under arrest for an indefinite amount of time.
Even if a court rules to release such a criminal, the Ministry of Interior keeps him in prison, even though there is a court order to release him.
Alright, so I listen to this and think, what is this hit piece on the Saudis?
I realize that's not what they're up to.
Being in the propaganda, the nation that's really done a very good job of propaganda, this is not about anything but us.
Right.
All the references are parallel.
And so what you do is you roll out these parallel references.
First you create this boogeyman.
Oh!
These guys are horrible.
And then you discuss how horrible they are.
And so you discuss, oh, indefinite detention, court orders released, but they won't release them anyway.
All this is what we're doing at Gitmo.
Right.
Right.
So this is an interesting thing to start looking for when you're watching RT, which is that this parallel – in other words, you do – it's not the same as guilt by association, but it's a kind of a – which I got into a beef on Twitter about, by the way.
You were this one guy there.
Anyway, the – it's a – Create a parallel universe and be very critical of it and have a rationale for it being horrible, but what you describe is the United States.
Let me ask you a question.
Very cute.
But who are they trying to impress with this?
Are they trying to influence the American public?
Because as a media professional, you're not hitting the mark.
You're off with this.
Is this just politicians?
We got the Russians going, ha ha, watch this piece.
They will hate it.
You know, what is the point?
It's just a waste of bandwidth.
Well, you know, I think your point is well taken, as the term would be.
I think they're just practicing.
I think that this whole RT thing is just a bunch of test marketing, see what sticks, see what catches on.
They got a whole 24-7 to themselves.
They put the weirdest stuff on.
They just, I think they're testing and testing and testing.
Because I think they're so old-fashioned by now, the Russians, that they have to experiment.
Listen, okay, I've been thinking about this for a while because I've been...
I've been evaluating what Zucker's doing at CNN, which by CNN, he's destroying it.
He's doing everything exactly wrong.
And these RT guys, they're doing...
Now, we gave them early on, we gave them some tips, and they didn't follow that up.
But now they've gone so far in the wrong direction that I think they should really turn up the Ruski angle.
They should get...
A couple of...
Remember what Brigitte Nielsen used to look like when she was young and she was really smoking hot?
And they need to put one of those Russian hats on her.
You know, like the bear hat with the military hat.
Sable.
Sable hat.
And have the push-up bra.
And just have her with a Russian accent just saying, God, these pigs!
These American scum pigs!
And really just turn it up, you know?
Because I would watch that.
I... I think you might be onto something.
Let me relate one old story, I think from 1996.
The first trip I took to Beijing with a group of people from PC Computing.
I'm there with Paul Summers and others.
We go there.
We're kind of stunned because we've never been to China and this is the middle of it.
And, you know, there's no, we, we, both of us actually commented on this because in 96, it was still red China and all the rest.
And we were looking for the bull, you know, the giant, the giant, what we have in our country, the giant speaker system.
The giant voice system.
The giant voice system.
We're expecting that.
There's nothing like that in China.
If people are wearing Hawaiian shirts.
American Yankees, come over to the house now.
People are wearing Hawaiian shirts.
They're not wearing the Mao thing, nothing.
So we got to the point where we said, where can we get a poster of Mao Zedong or get one of those outfits, that crazy-looking shirt they wear?
And the person said, what are you, nuts?
Nobody wants that stuff.
And all those shirts were rounded up and sent to the peasants near the border areas.
And you're looking for souvenirs and you're insulting them now.
And so we finally got somebody to go into the library and get us some Mao posters.
We got some classics.
But we got some posters out of the country.
But I was always thinking to myself, why aren't they milking it?
I mean, you could have – tourists are starting to come in.
We were tourists.
And we're looking for Mao jackets.
And nothing.
There was nothing.
So now, to this day, they really aren't milking it the way they could.
The Russians have a number of stereotypes.
Of which one is that?
Is that the hot Brigitte Nielsen chick?
And so they could milk the stereotypes.
In fact, no, stop.
This is what we're going to do.
I am now opening up the phone lines.
I'm opening up submissions for Hot Russian Chicks.
And we will write a story and we'll just do one story.
In fact, even better, we will take the exact Russia Today stories as they've written them and just have a hot Russian chick with a Russian accent just read it and might embellish a little bit, you know, like, let's see, the imperialistic regime Obama, you know, that kind of stuff.
Exactly.
Right, that's what they should be doing.
Yes, and I would watch that.
I'd be like, ah, ah.
And they need to be confident.
This is why Fox is winning, you see.
Because Fox is not snide and they're not like neener, neener.
No, they're not.
You never watch Bill O'Reilly?
That guy's snide.
No, but they're not.
He's beyond in where he really believes everything.
But they're not really like neen or neen.
They're like, hey, here's the facts we're reporting on, and by the way, do I have some killer legs or what?
Yeah, no, they got the leggy chick, they got the guilt oil, they got the cutie, that little cute girl that used to be the...
We should administer Perino.
She's very pretty.
And that's nailing it.
And by the way, I think Fox News, they do approach stories from a news angle.
And people are tired of it.
They're tired of your newspapers that suck off politicians and that just kowtow.
The New York Times is trying this now.
They're trying a little bit.
They're pushing a little bit against Hillary Clinton.
But that's not the DNA of the New York Times.
That's Mark Thompson.
That's MI6 who they've let creep in.
The British Intelligence is now running this paper.
British Intelligence is running The Guardian.
That's why people read these papers.
The British Intelligence is running the Daily Mail.
And because of it, they have a very can-do, journalistic attitude because they have nothing but the enemy in their sight.
And I think a good journalistic...
Outfit should see everybody.
I think that's how I approach it, although I don't want to call myself a journalist.
Whoever is telling me something, you're the enemy just from the get-go.
I have to look at the opposite of what you're saying all the time.
And this is how you will be successful because people want to see the other side.
If they just want to be jerked off, there's plenty of places for that.
And that's what CNN is now trying to do.
They're just doing more than trying to make it prettier.
And then Jeff Zucker, oh, we have a new digital platform.
Listen, I've been around the internet for a long time.
Nothing I've ever seen called digital platform has ever been successful.
Ever.
So, I think we could do it.
And you know what?
Sir Gene, Baron de Marriott, Sheriff of Texas, he knows hot Russian chicks.
So, I'm going to have him recruit some.
He knows all the hot chicks in Dallas, all the hot Russian chicks.
And they speak Russian.
And they got the accent.
And we're going to do the whole thing.
We're going to put the hat on them.
Shit, Mickey can do this.
All he needs is a green screen.
I'm telling you, Mickey can do this.
Mickey can look like Russian.
I think we can make her Russian.
What do you think?
Well, we need to have real Russians.
It's noticeable she's not Russian.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, you're right.
What am I thinking?
We need real Russians.
And it's not like there's a paucity of them.
And we'll do Russia tomorrow.
No, I think we should write it up so there's imperialistic pigs.
Yes, imperialistic pigs.
The pretender president, Obama.
Yeah, the pretender president, the fascistic, all these words, you just got to use it.
Born in Kenya, Obama.
Yeah, it'd be a great show.
I would watch it.
Yeah, they'd always call him Barry Sotero.
Just always.
President Barry Sotero.
Barry Sotero.
That's what they should do.
And it would be hilarious.
And you'd watch it.
And I bet you you could actually get some real...
And you could get people interested in giving you real information.
Sneak in some real good propaganda.
So on that, this Egypt thing.
Yeah, these guys, you're right.
These Russian Today guys are completely a lost cause.
They get no numbers.
Nobody's watching this crap.
The guys are boring.
They're trying to, they're too intellectual.
And they got, you know, their best bet is Abby Martin, who's just not, you know.
She's from Oakland.
She's from Oakland.
I mean, come on.
Comrade.
Yeah, Russian chicks all over the country.
They're all over the United States.
There's tons of them.
Many of them came over as brides.
Yeah.
The capitalistic scum of Barry Sotero's administration.
So what's your take on what's happening here in Egypt?
Yeah, I've been trying.
I didn't get any clips on this.
Actually, I may have one.
One lone clip that has something to do with it.
I watched a lot.
I've read a lot.
Well, first of all, it's not a clip.
No, wait, wait.
I do have one clip.
It'll be a good little aside as we do it.
Play the detained and beaten clip part one, which is the one that says, no, there's no number.
Yeah, I gotcha.
Can I play it?
Sorry.
Officials declared a month-long state of emergency and imposed a nighttime curfew on Cairo and 10 provinces.
As night fell, police announced they had taken complete control of the sit-in sites in Cairo.
I said earlier that President Morsi had been ousted in late June.
It was actually early July.
A short time ago, I spoke to Newsweek and Daily Business correspondent Mike Giglio covering the dispersal of a pro-Morsi site in Cairo today.
He was temporarily detained and beaten by Egyptian security forces.
And did they have him on?
Did they have him on?
Yeah, they have him on.
With a black eye?
The casually detained and beaten thing kind of gets on.
Yeah, did he have a black eye?
Well, they had him on an audio call, but play the second part, and then I have a question as to the way they handled these reports.
Mike Giglio, welcome to you.
Describe what you saw today at the camp dispersal, and what happened to you?
So I was at the camp at Rabbah before the crackdown even started, and I was there as the police vehicles rolled in and as the police opened fire on the crowd.
I was standing on the police lines watching them shoot the tear gas at the protesters and also watching them shoot live rounds, as you guys have described.
And after about an hour or so, the police seemed to decide that they didn't want journalists, at least on that side of So they rounded up me and a couple other photographers and they beat us after we identified as being journalists and then they detained us for about four hours along with a number of protesters from the city.
Was there any warning this morning before they came into the protest camp?
There wasn't.
I got there around 6 a.m.
So the way it came across to me is like, are you a journalist?
Yes!
No, here's the question that comes immediately to everybody's mind.
What is his definition of beaten?
Did he get punched in?
Did he lose a tooth?
Did he get hit with a baton?
Was he beaten to death?
Was he stomped and kicked on the ground?
Was he punched in the gut?
Was he knee to the groin?
Was he slapped across the face?
Was he given a throat chop?
I mean, what happened?
Did somebody flick his nose?
Okay, I... Constituted beating?
I don't know.
Okay, so I think there's definitely something going on in Egypt, and I have some thoughts about it.
This reporter, I think he might have been in his hotel.
He sounds like he's full of shit.
It sounds like he's lying, like he's just making up a story.
And this is not beyond the mainstream media to do that.
Oh, no.
I agree with, you know...
He's with the Daily Beast.
Oh, okay.
Well, there you go.
He's staying at the Sheraton.
He probably didn't leave his hotel room.
It just doesn't sound like that.
Because if I was there in the camp and the police come in and start beating me, I'd be pretty graphic.
And I'd be tweeting pictures and all kinds of stuff.
I'd be bitching about it.
Yeah.
What's the guy's name again?
I don't know.
I don't care.
Well, I thought maybe there might be a picture of him.
We've all beaten?
That's my point.
I'll look it up while you're going on.
Okay, so here's what I'm worried about.
Clearly, this is not...
Well, we know that we're trying to bring in Ford now as our ambassador.
What's his name?
Ambassador Ford, who was ambassador to Syria.
I think he's part of the Ford family, right?
I'm pretty sure.
Now this guy is Robert Ford.
There were several cops punching and slapping me in the head.
So I said, okay, this is the guy that reported the Daily Beast.
There was no picture of him.
There's no picture of him.
I should have a picture of his face beaten up.
You think?
I just think that's what I would do.
Maybe he thinks it's unjournalistic or something.
I don't know.
Whatever.
Okay, go on with your story.
Okay, so President Obama is attempting to have Robert Ford become the ambassador to Egypt.
Now, Robert Ford is pretty well known for his...
Who was the guy...
The original guy who had all the death squads in like the early days.
It'll come to me in a minute.
He's kind of a student of this idea of policy by death squad.
In fact, he was the ambassador to Syria, and lo and behold, what do we have in Syria?
We've got, you know, terroristic death squads that I would argue have been put in there by American intelligence services.
So they want him to be a part of the Egyptian system, what's going on.
And I'm worried because to me, it feels like what's happening now is not the Americans and is not the Russians.
It feels like it's either a third party, which could be if it's really some, you know, like some third banking party or something, you know, like just real high level people who just want to screw up the Middle East.
Then we're then then I'm really worried about it.
What about the Brits?
Yeah, I don't think they have that kind of power anymore.
I don't think the Brits can do it, can get something like this started.
But it's apparent.
We've got El Baraday, who was the vice president of something.
He quit.
Now, we know he's an international crisis group guy, so he's an American shill.
He's out.
Everybody's jumping the ship.
And it could also be that this is truly what happens to countries when people have just had enough.
Yeah, that does happen.
The French Revolution was not caused by the CIA. Right, and you can look at this, look very closely.
This could happen in America, and it may be a different version.
I'm not so sure about the military piece of it, but this kind of stuff could happen.
One thing for sure, this is not good.
This region, if Northern Africa and the Middle East, if all of that's destabilized, that's bad for everybody.
It's really, that will result in no good.
Well, I can understand Russian involvement with the help of the Chiners.
Maybe, maybe, but it doesn't feel like it, John.
It takes a little pressure off the Syria situation.
I mean, I don't think the Russians care much if all hell breaks loose in some country that we've essentially controlled for all time, or at least modern time, or post-World War II. And the Russians, you know, the whole place goes to pot like Lebanon.
The Russians could care.
I don't think they care.
Well, I think they have...
But it does take pressure off their problems in Syria because they're doing the proxy war there.
And it's like, hey, you guys want to play this way?
We can do this.
It seems like it would be to destabilize this region, which houses a lot of the energy that the Texas-based companies depend on, really opens up for the Russians to do it.
They just did a deal with Boku, Azerbaijan.
They just did an oil and gas deal.
And this was our turf.
This is the Hillary Clinton one.
We had the Eurovision Song Contest in Azerbaijan.
We're supposed to own that.
And now Putin walks in and he's done an oil and gas deal with them?
I mean, we suck.
Well, something else is going...
The Russians have got some sales thing going on that we don't...
It's not bad.
Or at least the two of us don't have a clue as to what it is.
Well, it seems very simple, John.
It seems like they have all the other routes outside of the Middle East.
They've got everything going through the Caucasus, through Georgia, the Black Sea.
Everything runs through Turkey.
It's all Russia, Russia, Russia.
Everything that comes south of Turkey from the Middle East, it's a mess.
It's a mess.
The Mediterranean is going to be a mess.
And that's where all our companies are.
That's the way I see it.
It's maybe simplistic.
Maybe it's just it.
It's just simplistic.
I don't know.
But if Egypt, if that doesn't calm down...
Well, the Bashar Bajan thing is kind of weird, I have to say.
Wasn't that supposed to be ours?
I would think.
Yeah.
Hmm.
I don't know.
Well, this Egypt thing, it should shake out to the point where we can figure it out.
I mean, right now, it's just random rioting everywhere.
And if I see another CNN journalist ducking for cover on camera, I mean, come on.
Do your story from the Sheraton and just give me some information.
None of this, like, well, it was really scary!
I get it.
Putin's visit designed to discuss a wide range of bilateral issues including trade, energy, transportation, and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Rosneft, that's their company, reported that it also agreed with the state oil company of Azerbaijan to jointly use pipelines and terminals to optimize supplies to consumers.
Yeah, that would be Europe.
Hello, consumers of Europe.
Consumers in Europe.
Yeah.
Nah, that guy's smart.
That guy is very smart.
So I found an interesting couple of clips talking about foreign stuff.
John Kerry.
No, that watermelon head.
There's two stories that came up.
One of them just typical Democracy Now!
deadpan report.
But the other one I thought was funny.
This is my last RT clip.
Which is that, you know, these guys again are trying to do stuff by being coy and intellectual and cute.
And I thought this was kind of cute, but this is the way, this was a longer report about Kerry and what he's up to by one of these, this is the fat bald guy that's on RT. And he just throws this in as a descriptor.
And I thought this was like, okay, I'm getting this.
I get it.
I get it.
This is the Kerry assumes a clip.
The massive NSA snooping revelations have cast a shadow over John Kerry's trip to Latin America, his first visit there since he assumed the position of Secretary of State.
Assume the position of Secretary of State!
All right!
That is not the way that's supposed to be stated.
That's funny.
That's funny.
Was that RT? Yeah.
So imagine, we've got this hot chick, right?
And she's got the boobs and she's got the...
I think she has a fur coat with nothing on underneath it.
But it's closed.
I mean, it's closed.
I'd rather have her in some slinky silk.
Okay, whenever it's slinky...
But I want the hat with the red star on the front.
Kerry, who assumed the position of Secretary of State from that mad woman!
Yeah, something like that.
From Mr.
Hillary Clinton.
She'd just say stuff like that.
It would be funny.
I'm telling you, ratings through the roof.
There would be outrage.
There would be congressional hearings about this.
Oh yes, there would be congressional hearings.
Can you imagine?
NPR would be playing clips of RT. Why don't people...
Why can't we get a gig consulting these people?
We should.
I think we could make that network just sink.
I mean, we know enough Russians.
The Russians themselves are too...
They haven't got the guts to actually be themselves.
We can help.
That's why they're drinking all the time.
Yeah, and then...
We'll just get vodka sponsors the whole time.
Just all vodka.
Vodka and caviar.
One after another.
All vodka.
Yeah, exactly.
We'll get like Jay-Z and Kanye and all these guys that have their own vodka brands promoting it and Diddy.
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
It'd be great.
All right.
Don't listen to me.
Don't listen to me.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
Okay, here we go.
So meanwhile, here's a story that came out.
This was on the report on Democracy Now!
about John Kerry, the other Kerry clip.
I just want to, I can't believe, when I heard this, I couldn't believe it.
Because this is like, seems to me to be grounds for firing the staff.
Because you can't run a Department of State When you hear this clip, you listen and you go, how screwed up is our government?
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism says last month saw three U.S. drone strikes carried out in Pakistan, the highest number since January.
Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry told Pakistanis in a TV interview President Obama had a very real timeline for ending the strikes.
But the State Department's own spokespeople quickly contradicted him.
Jen Psaki said in a statement there was no exact timeline, while Marie Harf said, quote, in no way would we ever deprive ourselves of a tool to fight a threat if it arises.
What?
Who didn't read the memo?
Wow.
That is so humiliating for Kerry.
He says something.
Of course, he's a blowhard, so who knows?
He may have made it up.
Which I actually believe he might have just made it up.
I'm convinced he's just talking out of his butthole, and they're actually trying to cover up for their boss and fix it.
That has to be it, because this is insubordination otherwise.
It's a major, major insubordination.
This guy is just a...
I think he's an idiot.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, he's obviously not a super idiot, but...
I'm not sure of that.
Yeah.
I don't think he has the...
I don't know.
I don't know.
He's over there playing nice.
He's an actor.
He's an actor.
He looks the part.
He's got the yacht, you know.
He should have been president.
This is his problem.
That's why he still signs his name John F. Carey.
You know, he wanted to be president from the day he popped out of the womb.
And it just didn't work out that way for him.
It looks like a Kennedy.
So, just the last part of this, to follow up on that story, democracy now went on with the drones and the double tap, which I just think I wanted to play just for informational purposes so we could...
Kiro has also released new evidence.
The CIA targeted rescuers last year at the scene of prior drone strikes in Pakistan, conducting so-called double-tap strikes that in some cases may be considered war crimes.
The reports are the latest sign there's been little change in the Obama administration's covert drone wars, despite pledges in recent months for reforms, including greater transparency.
Of course.
One of the reasons we want to keep secrets in this country is because I think these are war crimes.
You can say company.
It's okay.
You can say corporation or company.
It's the same thing.
It's registered.
And we've had other clips that indicate if you're in the CIA and you're driving a drone around and you're killing people, you're not protected by the same laws that protect the military.
So you're subject to murder charges.
Yes.
Yes.
And I would be very...
I think they should get out of that game.
Out of the murdering game?
I've been asking about this for a long time.
They should get out of the murdering game.
It's not helpful.
The murdering game.
It's a good idea, John.
The murdering game.
Now, before we thank our relatively short list today of producers and supporters of the program...
We have been kind of waiting for this to happen, and it came through.
Now we've been looking at the Media Shield law, which everyone seems to be on board with, including the guys from freedomofthepressfoundation.org, com slash whatever.
Right, yeah, you've looked at their paperwork, right?
Yeah, and it's Glenn Greenwald, Zeni Jardin, Ellsberg, but also Laura Poitras, and who's that other guy?
Your buddy.
Yeah, my buddy.
All my buddies are there.
And, of course, the EFF guy.
What's his name?
Barlow.
Yeah, Barlow.
So on the books is, and I believe we've read this.
If not, I put a copy in the show notes just in case.
Let me just bring it up here.
It is, where is it?
I put it under Ministry of Truth.
There we go.
Senate Bill 987.
And I'll just give you the title of it.
Media Shield Law.
And of course, we know that this is fundamentally unconstitutional because the First Amendment says, Congress shall make no law.
Regarding the freedom of the press or freedom of speech.
So having a law is unconstitutional.
So this S-987, which was drafted by Chuck Schumer and Graham there.
Oh, Lindsay?
Yeah, Lindsay and Chuck.
They introduced it in May.
And it is a bill to maintain the free flow of information to the public...
By providing conditions for the federally compelled disclosure of information by certain persons connected with the news media, this act may be cited as...
Let me do the echo.
The Free Flow of Information Act of 2013.
How Orwellian does that sound?
It's all Orwellian.
These two creeps put together a horrible piece of legislation that everyone thinks is great.
And so in this, well, the worst part is the amendments that have now been put in.
But in the original legislation, essentially, so we're not going to spy on you, we're going to let you go, or no, wait a minute, we're not going to tell you we're spying on you.
Unless, whatever we think you're doing, we might need to know about it to reasonably necessary stop, prevent, or mitigate a specific case of death, kidnapping, substantial bodily harm, or conduct that constitutes a criminal offense and a specific offense against the minor, or if it's about national security.
So pretty much we're just going to continue to spy on you, and we're not going to tell you, and we're going to force you to give us your sources, etc., or we'll throw you in jail.
Now, all of this, the legislation is already crappy.
But then we have, you know, this is now going through committee, and now we have your buddy out there in California, the People's Republic of, Feinstein.
And Feinstein has added an amendment, John.
Did you have a meeting with her by any chance?
No, she wouldn't take a meeting with me.
She added a couple of things.
I bet she did.
Her amendment now provides three definitions of what a journalist is.
Uh-oh.
Open up the red book and cross this one off.
Okay.
So, in order to be protected under the Media Shield Law, which by definition is unconstitutional, and this is coming from a disc jockey.
Hello, I'm a DJ. You can only be protected by the media shield for the free flow of information if you are working as a salaried employee, independent contractor, or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information.
Which covers the CIA, by the way.
I love how they threw that in there.
You know, there's a little gotcha in there too that's even more interesting.
What's that?
The word salaried.
Salaried, yes.
Most people are contractors or freelancers or whatever.
That means nobody except the editors, essentially, in today's market.
No, no, no.
You didn't hear me.
It said salaried employee, independent contractor, or agent of an entity that disseminates news or information.
This is your podcast license coming up.
Okay, meeting the prior definition, okay, you have to, in order to qualify as a journalist, John, you have to meet the prior definition for any continuous three-month period within the two years prior to the relevant date.
By having substantially contributed as an author, editor, photographer, or producer to a...
Substantially is a word.
Yeah.
Significant number of articles, stories, programs...
Significant's a word.
Yeah.
Yes, it's a word.
What are you saying?
Well, what if you wrote one long piece?
Or even one short piece that was just dynamite.
I want to pull it, sir.
But that would...
That's not enough.
No, that's not significant number of articles.
So you're not a journalist?
No.
...programs or publications by an entity within two years prior to the relevant date, or if you're working as a student journalist participating in a journalistic publication at an institution of higher education.
This is a...
You can be a student journalist and be covered by this bullcrap law, which is useless anyway, but you can't be a blogger?
Correct.
You can be a blogger, but you won't be a journalist, and therefore you will not be protected by the shield.
You don't have the cloak.
You don't have the cloak around you.
Feinstein's cloak of protection, so you can have free flow of information.
Goebbels is smiling.
She is such a douche and an idiot.
I could tell that story again, but I won't.
Let me ask you a question.
With all of this going on, but more importantly, what's going on with the revelations about spying, etc., where is the Electronic Frontier Foundation in all of this?
Where are they?
Are they out there yelling?
Are they at press conferences?
Are they suing the government?
Are they really doing their job?
Let me ask you, who do they really work for?
I have no idea.
Well, let me help you answer this, because I pulled their...
I think I'm going to write a column about this, by the way.
Good.
Well, let me give you some information, and you can go to the show notes, John.
No matter how many columns I write, even though I can write a column a day, which I've been doing...
It will never be significant.
It's never significant or substantial.
It's not enough, because there's only one little percentage.
Not significant.
So I pulled their Form 990 of the EFF because I wanted to know.
Now, of course, they're a 5013C corporation, so they don't have to list their donors, which is always fun.
And I got the list here.
So how much money do you think they raise in 2011?
More than we did.
Yeah, just have a guess.
$10 million?
No, not quite.
Almost $8 million.
$7,910,000.
Okay, now you can contribute to the EFF by donating money.
How much do you think they made on that?
From donations?
Is this a different number?
Is it a subset of the first number?
Yes, so there's two numbers.
So there's three numbers.
The $8 million, 7.9, is their overall 2011, which, by the way, is triple from three years ago.
That's their overall revenue.
So this number you're asking me for is a subset of that number.
Correct.
So I'm going to break it down into two separate numbers.
One will be, because this is how they split it up, the amount of money they receive from members.
So when you go on the website and say, hey, I want to donate to you because I think you're doing a great job, you become a member.
And then they have grants and gifts, which is from foundations and corporations.
Not disclosed on their 990 because they don't have to by law, so that's okay.
They don't have to do it.
So what do you think the breakdown is of that?
Well, because you were asking, I'm assuming that the number of personal contributions is less than a million.
No, it's a little over a million.
Just a tad.
It's around a million.
It's just a tad over a million.
And all the rest is gift and grants.
And they do not...
Well, they have their report from, you know, through 2010 when their revenues were about less than half of what they are now.
And in that case, they're saying, well, you know, here's a couple of foundations, etc., etc.
Let me see what they say.
Corporate contributions 2010 was less than half a million.
So now it's in the millions of dollars, and the question is, who are they working for?
Do they work for Apple?
Do they work for Google?
Do they work for the minority of people who donated to their cause?
This is an Ask John question.
I'm guessing, just so I don't have any idea, but I'll bet you that if you dug into and found the big donors, I'll bet you Google's at the top of the list.
I think you're right, and I think they should disclose that, by the way.
I'd like to know who.
They're not really telling us.
Actually, they should.
Why wouldn't they?
Because I... No, I mean, I don't think anyone's ever asked them, but if you ask them, I'd like to hear what their reason is for not doing it.
Here, let me give it to you.
Ask me.
Yes, we're here at the...
Mr.
Curry, you have a question?
Yes, I'd like to know who do you...
What corporations...
Is Google maybe giving you a lot of money?
We have a policy of not disclosing the corporations because they've asked us not to.
And why is that?
Why have they asked you not to?
They are private.
They're people who respect their privacy and we respect their privacy.
Okay.
Wow.
Hey, thanks for your press conference.
That was great.
Now get out.
Can I have my Google Glass now?
In my goodie bag?
Now get out.
Alright.
I got a little thing for you and then we should thank our...
This lava bit thing.
You and lava bit.
Yeah, I don't like this because there's these things that are happening.
And whenever Glenn Greenwald is around...
And by the way, I'm not anti-Glenn Greenwald specifically, but I think that he's part of a cabal that is trying to make certainly the Obama administration look really, really bad.
But I don't think he's doing it really in a journalistic fashion.
He's just saying stuff.
I spoke to Edward Snowden, and he said this.
Snowden told me this.
Mr.
Snowden said that.
It's like, why doesn't Snowden like...
It's like a guy using his wife.
My wife says I can't go out.
Exactly.
Because you don't want to go out, so you blame it on your wife.
Why can't Snowden write a blog or something?
Why is Glenn Greenwald his bitch?
Apparently the Russians told him to shut up.
Well, that makes me even more suspicious.
Makes me even more suspicious.
Right.
Okay.
So, and the main reason is when, and there was actually a little Twitter thing going on that I got sucked into and I got out of where, you know, it was about the lie that the Bolivian president's plane was forced down.
We have the audio.
They asked to land with a bogative reason that their fuel indicator was off, but, you And then this person on Twitter is like, well then why did France and why did Spain apologize?
First of all, it's like the country put on its Facebook, we apologize?
No.
It's like some ambassador somewhere said, well, we really apologize that something happened, but they all, in the reports from Reuters and AP, they all specifically say, but they deny that they refused entrance into the airspace.
Yeah, except for Portugal.
Well, I haven't read Portugal.
Portugal says that somebody told them, apparently U.S., that Snowden would be on board and it would cause some sort of a mess.
I haven't seen that one.
I haven't seen that one.
But they apologize.
But in general, in general...
It's funny that you...
No, this was a bullcrap thing.
You know, the plane was...
Not forced down.
Right.
Okay, so...
But these things get into the lexicon, and they get into the alternative...
Because no one trusts the mainstream media now, even though that's where most of this comes from.
And then people are like, that's true, it's fact!
Glenn Greenwald said it so!
So, you know, the whole idea of this lava bit.
So now we've got this lava bit which shut down.
And the general consensus is it shut down because Edward Snowden was using it as his email and they got a national security letter to turn over the goods.
That is, if you ask anyone on, if you go on Twitter right now and say why, that's what they'll tell you.
Yep.
I think there's a different thing going on here, but the guy was on Democracy Now!
with his lawyer, and this is two minutes, a little long on the clip here, but at a certain point, the question is actually asked...
NSA leaker Edward Snowden recently described your decision to shut down Lavabit as, quote, inspiring.
Now, I want to say, he did not say this, as far as I know.
He apparently told Glenn Greenwald this.
But I just want to make sure that we're on the level with who's saying what here or how things are coming into play.
You know, for a journalist who lives in Brazil.
He told the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, quote, America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr.
Leveson have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful.
And there was never any mention of relocating his business abroad, so I don't understand why he would say this.
I'm very skeptical about the nature of this quote.
Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are.
The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with.
But one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred lava bits could not.
Snowden went on to say, quote, When Congress returns to session in September, let us take note of whether the Internet industry statements and lobbyists, which were invisible in the lead-up to the Conyers-Amash vote, emerge on the side of the free Internet or the NSA and its intelligence committees in Congress.
Yeah, the Snowden guy has a lot of time on his hands to formulate this.
There's a couple of things here.
One, if it's a quote from a second-hand source and it wasn't derived from a press conference or someplace where other people have heard the quote, you have to say, as quoted to...
That's what she said.
Or as reported by.
She said, he told Glenn Greenwald.
That's what she said.
At the beginning, but then these other quotes, I don't know.
Okay, I'll let her slide on it.
But not very far, because I feel there's no questioning about this.
You know, this guy, hey, the guy lives in Brazil, works for a British newspaper.
Are we insane to believe everything that comes up?
And by the way...
I think it's funny because I like the fact that this is anti-Google, anti-Big Silicon Valley companies, but I think we have to look a little bit further than just some do-gooder whistleblower.
In fact, I think most of the public gets a kick out of this.
Yes.
But it doesn't mean it's accurate, true, or even positive in some bigger sense.
It may not be.
And I will take the other side for a moment and say, we should be wary of other countries and journalists from other countries attacking us.
Just, you know, we have to be aware of what's going on.
Now, let's continue.
Ladar, you were the service provider for Edward Snowden?
Now, she's asking a rhetorical question, almost.
Because this is the meme.
I believe that's correct.
Oh, okay.
He doesn't even know.
I didn't know him personally, but it's been widely reported.
I believe.
He was talked into it.
Listen to what he says.
Listen to what he says.
You talked over it a little bit.
Hold on.
Sorry.
No, it's okay.
I do it all the time.
Provider for Edward Snowden.
I believe that's correct.
Obviously, I didn't know him personally, but it's been widely reported, and there was an email account bearing his name on my system.
Okay, is he dead?
I don't think so.
I didn't know him personally.
Yeah?
The way he's answering the question...
I don't know him personally.
Yeah, he says, I didn't know him personally when this ruse was set up.
I've been made well aware of recently.
Okay, so...
Red in is another way of putting it.
Right.
Now listen to the questions here.
Glenn Greenwald also wrote, what is particularly creepy about the LavaBit self-shutdown is that the company's gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it's mounted and the court proceeding it's engaged.
In other words, the American owner of the company believes his constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the U.S. government, but he's not allowed to talk about it.
Greenwald goes on to write, quote, just as is true for people who receive national security letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company.
Okay, so now she's gone into a gray area where she is...
I don't even know if she's quoting Snowden, written by Greenwald, or just Greenwald himself talking.
So she sets this whole thing up.
It's all about what the Guardian newspaper published about Lava Bit.
What is the obvious question?
I don't know.
What is the obvious question?
Well, the obvious question is, is this true?
Duh, yeah.
That's the obvious question.
Yeah, it's the obvious question.
What does she ask?
Lador Levinson, why did you start Lava Bit?
What?
What is that all about?
The whole thing, she sets this whole thing up and then, why did you start Lava Bit?
Why did you start Lava Bit?
I'm giving you a clip of the day for that.
No, I won't accept it.
I won't accept it.
It's a good clip.
It's not good enough.
But here's the thing you need to know.
So this all happens in July.
And so the guy clearly has no idea if this is because of Snowden, but he's got all kinds of hassle.
And if you actually dig into it, it turns out that there's something else going on.
On June 10th of 2013...
A search warrant was executed against LavaBit user Joey006 at LavaBit.com for alleged possession of child pornography.
I'm thinking this guy, you know, he had to shut down because the whole thing was rife with pedo bear crap.
Yeah, it could be.
And he had to shut it down, and it's a handy excuse...
To say, oh, well, you know, it's because Snowden...
He never says for one minute that he knew that Snowden was on this thing.
Greenwald's the one who said it and made this bullcrap connection.
Yeah, this is a bogative story.
Complete nonsense that no one's reporting on.
Yeah, you're probably right.
It makes sense.
They've been going after pedo bears to an extreme.
Yeah.
And so they went in there with some, that may have not even been a national security letter.
I mentioned that in some Twitter and Declan McCullough from CNET who covers all this stuff.
He says, nah, it's bullcrap.
It could be a number of things.
And he sends me this huge document of all these government subpoenas and other things that all have gag orders in them.
It's like, it could be anything that they gave the guy.
And it could have been a warrant.
For information regarding pedophilia, for all we know.
We don't know.
Nobody's ever said it was just information.
So this guy, he's clearly being used for this.
Clearly.
He seems like a nice guy.
You know, he started something in 2004 with a couple of buddies, and it grew into this...
It's cool.
It's like a little service.
I'm all for it.
It's all good.
And it became a real hassle.
He's like, ah, man, I've got to shut this down.
But he's being misused.
And this is where I come back to.
I can feel it, John.
I can feel that there are forces really, really working real hard.
And Glenn Greenwald is probably willingly a part of this.
And it's just not news reporting anymore.
It's a full-on attack.
And I'm not sad because it's fun.
Oh, no, that's great fun for us, especially.
But I do want to point out that something is going on here.
No, I'm not going to argue that this is a good possibility.
Did you see that New York Times piece?
About Laura Poitras?
Oh, no, the piece was bad.
Yeah.
Because it was just terrible.
But you could glean it.
Some cool stuff out of it, like the fact that Poitras is in Brazil, hanging out in her desk and looking like the...
Like a spook.
Yeah, like a spook.
And that photo is totally a spook photo, like his handler.
And then when you start deconstructing everything that's in that story, which everyone can go read in the New York Times, you start taking pieces out of it because there's information in there.
The whole thing sounds phony.
Well, let me...
I just followed that for a little bit.
And there's a great Reddit thread about Poitras showing up.
She was embedded with some troops, and then she disappeared off the radar, and then all of a sudden this unit got ambushed, but she was there with the camera.
I mean, it's very, very sketchy stuff.
But I was looking at her film production unit, and it lists a number of donors to her...
Her documentary company.
And one of them is the Menchel Foundation.
And you know me.
What is that word called again?
Falling in a rabbit hole.
Yes.
That's it.
I fell in a rabbit hole.
Whoa!
And so I look up the Menchel Foundation, which is essentially just a front for a rich family's money.
It even says, you know, this is managing their assets.
But it says specifically...
Please note, the Foundation is not involved in any charitable activities.
Its primary purpose is to support by contributions other organizations exempt other...
Please spell this.
Hold on.
Let me go to the top.
It is...
It's the Robert and Joyce Menchel Foundation.
M-E-N-S-H-E-L. So she says that she received a grant from them, but they say they don't give out grants directly to people.
They only do it through other foundations.
And I can't find her as a non-profit foundation.
So it stinks.
It just stinks.
Well, this takes us back to, okay, back to Egypt.
What about Israeli intelligence?
Well, yeah.
Yeah, I'm way down with that.
You know, when you see Egyptian police and they have gear that says police on it, which is not the Arabic word.
Where are they getting this from?
Who are these jabronis?
You've got to think that the money's coming...
Well, we know a bill...
Hey, we send them a billion dollars a year.
I think it totally could be Israeli intelligence.
The Israelis could be totally responsible for this.
Yeah, they saw where things were headed with this guy, this Morsi's wolf in sheep's clothing.
Well, you know, helping them a little bit here and there, but as a long-term loser for the Israelis, they're always having to deal with these Palestinians already.
They decide to screw the place up.
They're right next door.
They got better assets in place than we ever would.
You know, and they go off to reservation all the time.
They're the ones that sent the jets over Syria.
I'm absolutely sure nobody in the American services approved the blowing up of a bunch of stuff in Syria.
No, I totally agree.
So anyway, to kind of bring this all around, it's very interesting to watch.
It's clearly...
Just be careful who you champion.
Be careful who you...
Because before you know it, they'll turn around and they'll fuck you.
Because it's just not so cut and dry to me.
Yeah, well, this isn't it.
Anyway, so that New York Times article I still think is worth really looking at and deconstructing and trying to figure out what information you can get out of it because it is kind of a puff piece, but it's not a normal puff piece.
And it's long.
It's a positioning piece.
Yeah, yeah.
And it's not that different from the piece that was written by...
Let me see, who wrote this?
I didn't check on that.
Peter Moss.
Let's see, who is this guy, Peter Moss?
Is he a shill?
I looked at his...
Oh, I've reached my limit of ten complimentary articles this month.
Sorry, can't read it now.
Oh, there goes the show.
Get a subscription.
I'm not going to get a subscription.
Screw those guys.
Propaganda.
Peter Moss, author and journalist.
Let's see.
Is it the same Peter Moss?
He wrote Crude World, Love Thy Neighbor.
No, this is the...
Is this the Peter...
No, the Peter Moss that was the great writer that wrote Serpico, the Valachi Papers, and all this died.
So he's dead.
So it has to be somebody...
No, that's not him.
This is the...
It's PeterMoss.com.
Double A, double S. I am a writer.
Publications I have written for include the New York Times Magazine, New Yorker, Foreign Policy, and the New York Review of Books.
Hmm.
I wonder.
I wonder what this guy is all about.
Hmm.
About.
Aboot.
Aboot Peter Moss.
So he has the extra S on his name to differentiate him from the Peter Moss.
No, it's the extra S for savings.
For more P. There'll be at least ten people in the audience that'll get there.
Yeah, no, really.
So he's been around.
He's been around.
He's done a lot of stuff.
He's covered.
He could be a spook, by the way.
Yeah.
No, it's always a...
Well, anyone can be a spook.
Well, listen, he was writing for the New York Times International Herald Tribune, covered NATO and the European Union, and 87 moved to Seoul, South Korea.
I could ask Don about this guy.
Screw it.
I bet you he worked for Don.
I wrote primarily for the Washington Post.
Totally.
After three years in Asia, I moved to Budapest to cover Eastern Europe and the Balkans.
Is he independently wealthy?
You can't move around like this.
Spend most of 92 and 93 covering the war in Bosnia.
It's funny that the giveaway for spooks is that they're moving around.
They're moving around too much.
They never put them in, I mean, except for a couple of these guys that are already outed as spooks.
Woodward is outed in that Bush book.
And so they're already out, so they don't move them around much.
They just put them in place and crank out stuff here for us.
But these other guys are always here, and there's always these hot spots.
So here's one of the books he wrote, Manhunt.
Oh, no, that's the other Peter Moss.
Sorry, that's the wrong one.
That's the original one.
The novelist, yeah.
I just Googled, is Peter Moss a CIA agent?
Sometimes you can get lucky on that stuff.
Ha!
All right.
Well, we'll have to save this for Sunday.
Oops.
What did I do wrong here?
Hold on a second.
Here we go.
I'm going to show my salute by donating to No Agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do that.
Oh, yeah, that'd be fab.
Yeah, on No Agenda in the morning.
Miss Mickey just texted me, and she says, I'm going to be an hour late.
It's $130 for the battery.
Can you believe that?
That's about right.
The car battery just died for no reason.
You're in Texas where the temperature will just kill stuff.
Oh, I hadn't thought about that.
Because she took me to spin class yesterday.
How was that?
Did you spin out?
Did you get in the back there and ogle the butts?
Yes.
Here's what's cool.
I'm going to tell you what's cool.
So we had a different guy.
This was a different guy.
This was David.
And David does kind of like...
He's a little mellower.
So I was like, okay, I can keep up with him.
But what's nice is after the...
So still, at a certain point, I think I'm going to die.
I can't breathe.
And then you kind of get into it.
After 10 minutes, I can kind of finish the whole thing.
But after...
So you've got to imagine there's 50, mainly women...
And then, you know, and the guy, he's literally like, come on, 90 more seconds!
You know you love yourself!
Today is the day that you go all the way!
You know, and it's like this whole, like, kind of, like, crazy...
No, but, and these women are like, and they're doing stuff you cannot, so they're all like really toned and just tight.
And then after they're all, you know, there's such a euphoria, they're all like hugging and stuff.
It's like a sweaty, they're hugging.
Yeah, it's like, hey, that was a great session.
Yeah, come on over.
It's like, hey, hey, hey girl, how are you doing?
And then Mickey's like, look at that girl.
She's, I'm going to do photos.
It was like a model.
It's like, yeah, I'm going to tell you, I got an idea for a photo shoot.
I said, uh-huh.
Yeah.
So we're like picking up chicks over at this place.
It's a good deal.
It's a good deal.
Meanwhile, I'm out $130 because the car wouldn't start when we were in the garage.
Yeah, there you have it.
That sucks.
Lon Baker.
I want to thank Lon here in Emeryville.
It was sent a check at $189.59.
Tonight, I sent a check that will complete my knighthood plus $100 for my lady.
I will try to send pictures soon, Adam.
Hey!
He wants to be Sir Baker.
He wants a little karma for his lady, Jennifer.
Keep up the great work.
Recent shows have been outstanding.
You've got karma.
There you go.
A little karma.
Derek Foley in New South Wales, 15510.
Hi, June and Gladys.
Please accept my annual 5510 donation for my birthday on the 17th of August.
Do we have that on there?
Let me double check.
I think so.
We have them on Knighthood, but we don't have them on...
Yeah, we got him.
We got him on birthday.
We got him on birthday.
I believe it takes me into the realm of no-gen and knighthood.
With your permission, I'd like to claim the title of Sir Thirsty.
Yeah, it's in the book.
All good.
Fantastic.
Glenn Riccio, 11633 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And he's got a 16th birthday call out to his daughter, Leah.
Yeah, it's on the list.
And Mr.
Peabody, $111.11 in that town in Louisiana.
Come on.
Nakatoka.
Nakatoka.
Nakatoshis.
You're supposed to remember this.
You're supposed to remember this.
I know, but I keep thinking of Nakadoshis.
Anyway, it's near Mobile.
No real name.
Mr.
Peabody.
Great work, Lee.
Takes me 777 toward the knighthood.
Stephan Dalton, $100 from Brandon, Mississippi.
Robert Cassell, 8888.
The last 8888 contribution from Dearborn, Michigan with a happy anniversary wish.
I am Eric M. 8334 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Wait a minute.
This goes towards funding Adam's fetish of...
Agalmatophilia.
Agalmatophilia.
What is agalmatophilia?
Look it up while we're continuing on.
69!
69, dude!
Move on.
Sir, Michael Kearns says Eric needs a raise.
Seriously, Eric feels that way too.
Yeah, he's like, make sure you look at that one.
Okay, amalgatophilia is a paraphilia involving sexual attraction to a statue, doll, mannequin, or other similar figurative object.
Where do you get that from?
Was that because we were in Italy?
Did I say something about the...
What'd you do?
I don't know.
Maybe he has pictures I should see.
I don't know.
I missed something.
Hmm.
Huh.
Okay.
Okay.
6969.
Craig Dash now in Brunswick, Victoria, Australia.
He's got some note for you to read about the harp.
Vitriolic in Rebsby, New South Wales.
We have two...
How about that?
6969.
And that closes again.
3.
69!
69, dude!
It's getting close to fail.
It's going to fail on Sunday.
Yeah.
Oh, I don't have a thing there.
Paul Webb, 60 bucks in Windsor, UK. Oh, Windsor, that's a really nice town, by the way.
Epic fail.
We have a certain aide Wilson in Charleston, South Carolina with a birthday call-out, and so we also have a birthday call-out for Paul.
He came in at 51.
Double nickels on the dime, which is pretty much of a dead donation.
Todd LG in Katy, Texas.
Another birthday coming up for Isabella.
And finally, just a couple 50s here.
Chris Lewinsky out of Sherwood Park, Alberta, where the money is.
Blandon Savoy in Port Orchard, Washington.
Mike Westerfield comes in as usual.
And Matthew Stevens from North Richland Hills, Texas.
And that concludes our very small donation segment for today's show, 539.
I have one fine.
I'd like to pull something out of the stock from time to time from Ryan Hoskins.
Adam, been a long-time 11-11 donor.
I've made a few $50 donations, which I recall.
Love the show.
Think that the work you and John do is incredibly valuable service.
I wish I had the means to donate more, but I'm a student.
I was hoping I could get a karma shout-out from my family because my father just passed away from melanoma cancer.
I never introduced my dad to the show, but I would constantly use the information you guys provided in the discussions we would have.
I think that the reason I love No Agenda so much is that you show your audience how to critically question facts and beliefs in a similar way.
I think this generation needs someone to show them how to do this, and since most people aren't so lucky as I was, this show is the next best thing.
Again, thank you for all your hard work.
So I'm going to give him and his family a little...
You've got karma.
There you go.
He's in school.
Yeah, well, we have a lot of smart kids listening to this show.
Oh, thank God.
Seriously.
Yeah.
I got it.
You're going to read this stuff.
I got to read this one.
Okay.
This is James Reno.
This is...
No agenda material.
Gun magazines and literature run by anti-gun Obama supporters.
I didn't look into this, but it's a good story whether or not it's true.
But I think it probably is.
He went deep.
The other day, a co-worker who was pretty big gun enthused was looking through one of his gun magazines and was getting a little annoyed because the issue was littered with zombie apocalypse memes and dumb references on how to defend against zombie attacks.
I said to him, funny, you feel that way, and good that you pick up on the memes.
He gave me an inquiring look, so I decided to hint.
Hit him in the mouth!
I told him the zombie apocalypse memes have been around for a few years now and been used to discredit a number of subjects.
I bet him money that the publisher had some left-wing connection.
He didn't believe me, so I pulled an atom on him.
I took a few minutes and looked up the publisher in the Book of Knowledge.
The publisher turned out to be Intermedia Outdoors LLC, which is owned by Intermedia Patterns LLC, a private equity firm.
Intermedia Outdoors LLC is based out of New York and runs at least 20 gun fishing and adventure magazines like Guns and Ammo, Shooting Times, Shotgun News, etc., Intermedia Outdoors LLC is based in New York and owned by Intermedia Patterns.
Drove me to dig a little deeper, which only took 30 seconds, which, by the way, is typical.
Doesn't take that long to get information in the Internet age.
And found the CEO of Intermedia Patterns to be Leo Hindry.
Turns out to be an avid Obama supporter and contributor.
Look up Hindry.
You'll find numerous articles about his anti-gun stance.
And he was considered to be the President's Secretary of Commerce for a minute there.
So, there you have it.
A wolf in sheep's clothing.
But this is like...
What does it take?
I mean, people just, they lap up all this stuff, and then, you know, luckily, no agenda listener got himself to the point where he had to prove that what he was observing didn't make sense to anybody else, but he felt there was some discrepancy here, did a little research, which, like you said, took 30 seconds, which any journalist doesn't do.
And next thing you know, you see there's a scam going on.
It's not a scam.
But see, John, journalists don't have time to do research because they're too busy filling their quota for a significant number of articles.
Well, that's...
You've got to be writing.
Oh, man, how's my quota?
Is it significant yet?
They should have big kind of meters over everybody's desk.
One of those tote boards.
Oh, I'm sorry.
You didn't make your quota for journalists this week, Chip Gregory.
I'm so sorry.
And then the floor opens up and they fall down into the dungeon?
Yeah.
Alligators.
We could use a little bit of help on Sunday.
We are actually trying to do some journalistic work, so let's make this segment a little bit longer and contribute to the program with your dollars of support.
Dvorak.org slash NAV. And we say happy birthday.
Sir Derek Bali congratulating himself.
He will be celebrating on Saturday.
Glenn Riccio's daughter Leah will be 16 on the 21st.
Paul Webb will turn 33 tomorrow.
And Sir Nate Wilson says happy birthday to his sister Jordan.
She is 13 years old today.
Happy birthday on behalf of all your friends here at the best podcast in the universe.
It's your birthday, yeah.
Alright, two knighthoods today, both knights who have already claimed names for themselves, so we're very happy to accommodate.
A knighthood on the No Agenda show is the first real level where you can receive, well, we have our rings still, and if you have reached your knighthood level, please go to noagendanation.com slash rings and fill out all your details so we can make sure you get everything in due order.
Lon Baker and Derek Molly, Step 4, gentlemen, both of you have contributed to the No Agenda show in the amount of $1,000 or more, and therefore I am proud to pronounce the Knights of the No Agenda Roundtable.
Kneel before me, Sir Baker and Sir Thirsty.
For you gentlemen, I have hookers and blow.
Rent Boys and Chardonnay, Hot Pants and Booze, Long-Haired Heavy Metal Guys and Scotch, Wenches and Beer, Rubin S. Women and Rosé, Geisters and Sake, Vodka and Vanilla, Bomb Hits and Bourbon, Sparkling Cider and Escorts, and Mutton and Mead, all at the Roundtable of the Knights and the Dames.
Yeah, hey.
There was another thing.
There was a couple other things I was looking into.
I wanted to go down, well, not down on it too.
You thought it was bad here.
But in New Zealand, it's been, you know, they have a lot of, they've been bringing a new law onto the books.
And it's, let me see what the exact name of it is.
It's like the, it's basically a spy program.
And the spy program is called the GCSB, which is like Government Crap Spying Bureau.
I can't remember exactly what it is.
And New Zealand is small.
I mean, how many people live in New Zealand?
Do you know offhand, John?
It's not a lot.
I think it's like 5 million maybe.
It's pretty small.
Let's look it up.
Okay, you can sell the Book of Knowledge on that.
So the Prime Minister, his name is John Key, is kind of under attack for this because, you know, just because there's a lot of sheep and there's only a few people, they're really switched on down there.
And they're like, hey, hold on a second.
This is not okay what you're doing.
You can't just go spying on us.
And there's this or this...
4.5 million.
So there's this legislation that's been written and now it's been changed and amended and essentially, the way I understand it, the Prime Minister of New Zealand has hired one of his buddies as the judge who will determine if you can be spied on and then that judge determines if there's going to be a warrant and it's cross-checked by the Prime Minister himself.
So it's like the whole thing...
It's like Obama and his death list.
It's exactly what it sounds like.
So here's an interview, and here's the question about these warrants.
Cyber security.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that, under cyber security, for start off, GCSB, A, has to get a warrant.
From who?
Okay.
So the warrant, like all warrants, it's the same as the warrants for SIS. From who?
Have to be signed by the Commissioner of Security Warrants, which is a retired high court judge.
Appointed by who?
Appointed by who?
By me.
And who was the other person who signed the warrants?
Okay, me.
You and the person that you have appointed to sign the warrants.
Okay, so that was just a little warm-up.
But this guy, do you think that Obama is bad?
Do you think that the Republican leadership are a bunch of elitist pricks?
We had nothing on the Prime Minister of New Zealand.
Listen to this woman asking about this program and how he feels the population of New Zealand Kiwis, as they'll say themselves in this interview or press conference, how low he thinks of them.
The GCSB bill fundamentally and incredibly changes the powers of the GCSB within New Zealand.
You may think that's a good idea, you may think that's a bad idea, but the Prime Minister suspects you don't actually care at all.
That's what he told Rebecca Wright at the National Party Conference over the weekend.
Prime Minister, we are doing a stage of the nation this week with regards to the GCSB bill.
How do you think...
My advice is to switch to snapper and more people will watch Campbell live, but it's up to you.
Well, how do you think the Kiwis feel about the bill?
I think they're much more interested in the snapper quota.
Are you hearing what he's saying?
Yeah.
He's saying, I think the people are much more interested in the snapper quota, i.e.
how much snapper you can catch.
But I'm not talking about the SNAPA quota, I'm talking about the GCSB bill.
How do you think that they feel about the GCSB bill?
Yeah, I think they're much more interested in the SNAPA quota.
Why?
Because they like catching fish.
As opposed to?
Well, they can see that either A, they're fed a lot of information through information that they see, which is just incorrect.
But most New Zealanders understand that actually there is the need for the GCSB They accept the government's perspective that there's a narrow focus to that and they accept that this bill is improving oversight.
But many of them will get a bit confused by experts that turn up on your show that aren't really experts and actually don't know what they're talking about.
Will you turn up on our show and tell New Zealanders what you're talking about and with the guides to this bill on Monday week when we bring the results back?
Probably not.
What a sanctimonious prick.
And here's an explanation.
We have to dumb it down because people only care about fishing in New Zealand.
You stupid Kiwis with your snapper.
Just go catch fish.
If you're on the internet, don't worry.
Just catch fish.
And the government is here to help you.
So what happens under that provision is if the GCSB wanted to provide cyber security support to an agency, let's take IRD and its facility.
Okay?
So that's the provision under which, again, they'd have to go through that process of getting a warrant by the inspector, by the commissioner, by me, subject to oversight of the commissioner.
Okay, the inspector.
Okay, fine.
So that's the first thing.
You have to get a warrant.
Do you know what happens under that?
They cannot look at the content of anything in there.
All they can do is protect you.
So it's against malware or against the virus.
So you have on your computer...
Let me finish because it's really important people understand this.
So on your computer at home, you almost certainly have Norton antivirus or you have some sort of antivirus thing that you've downloaded and paid money for.
That is exactly what that is at a much higher level.
I think we should adapt the same messaging.
It's like Norton Antivirus.
NSA. Norton's Antivirus Security Agency.
The disdain.
This guy is unbelievable.
They should vote that guy out.
Or does he...
Well, it's a parliamentary system, so the public doesn't necessarily vote that guy in.
Right, right, right.
They vote a party in.
They vote the party in, and then the party puts...
I would take that entire party who thinks this should be their leader, and I would take...
I don't know which party that is, but let's take a look and find out.
Key, John Key.
You know what they should do?
One guy should go up behind him and pretend like you're tying your shoe, and then someone else should push him.
That's what I'd be doing.
What a dick.
Sorry, y'all Kiwis down there.
You've got to be careful, man.
I think the Kiwis can get rowdy.
I might get a little angry.
I'd be careful.
It's John Key.
Yeah, K-E-Y. I'm looking at his picture.
He looks like an idiot.
Now, now.
Now, now.
We don't make fun of appearances here on the No Agenda show.
We do all the time.
Okay.
Then there's that.
So this is the fifth national.
It must be the something or other party.
It's a bunch of parties that have combined because I guess they couldn't get a...
The Confidence and Supply Party with the ACT New Zealand Party with the United Future Party with the Maori Party.
He's an MP in a town called Helensville.
And he's been in there since 2008.
Wow.
Okay.
Hey, you get the government you deserve.
Let's see where Helensville is.
You turn left at the sheep.
Hellensville is in the middle of nowhere, it looks like.
Here's his office.
It looks like a shack.
He's got his electorate office as a shack.
Hey, well, listen, producers in New Zealand, keep fighting this guy.
Keep fighting this, because this is bullcrap.
And how this guy talks down you.
Essentially he says that you're an idiot.
His party is the national party.
That's the party you vote against.
You fight against this guy by voting out the national party.
He says himself that he thinks you're idiots.
Yeah, you care more about fish, and you're so stupid that you should believe it's just like Norton Antivirus.
He got 78% of the vote in the 2011 election in New Orleansville.
Yeah, get that guy out.
I have another little debunkerage that I wanted to bring in, because it's irritating me.
Um, I don't know.
Well, this is the news story, and then this propagated all over the place.
We have to meet in secret, because if this nuclear worker was caught speaking to me, he'd pay a high price.
If Tepco knew I was speaking with you, I'd be fired for sure, speaking out as an act of suicide.
Mr.
Fujimoto works in the decontamination program at the Fukushima plant.
He works 12-hour shifts, for which he's paid just $10 an hour.
And he's watched as TEPCO has failed repeatedly to stop the leak of radioactive groundwater, with 300 tons of it leaching into the Pacific every day.
All right, so this is the meme.
300 tons of radioactive water leaking into the ocean every single day.
And so I see this story come up over and over and over again.
And then you see a naturalnews.com with Mike Adams, the health ranger.
And now this is a really popular alternative news site.
Right.
And his headline, Fukushima now in state of emergency, leaking 300 tons of radioactive water into the ocean daily.
Now.
I did something called, what is it called again?
Math?
Yeah.
Yeah, math.
And I actually, I sent an email to our knight, Sir Atomic Rod Adams, and said, please help me understand.
I feel like this is a meme because it's this 300 tons of radioactive water.
You know, who's measured this?
Where is this information coming from?
Where are these facts coming from?
And I need some help on this, so I go to a source who actually drove around on subs in the water, atomic subs, and he works for an atomic energy company, and he's a nuke guy.
He says, well, here is the information for you on the highly radioactive groundwater.
So the samples, according to all the...
It's the same story, by the way.
You can Google this, 300 tons of radioactive water leaking to the ocean daily.
It's the same story.
A single source has been propagating.
Yes, which means it's propaganda.
Okay.
The quote is, a select few samples have indicated strontium-90 at, quote, 30 times drinking water standards.
He says, that sounds scary.
30 times drinking water standards.
the standard for strontium 90 in drinking water is 0.3 picocuri per liter picocuri apparently is a B and a Q I thought it was a B and a Q picocuri, curie as in Madame Curie a person who drinks a liter per day of water contaminated to 9 picocuri which is 30 times the standard would receive an annual dose of 0.09 microserviet .
Normal background radiation is between 2.4 and 3.0 microserviet per year depending on the source of information.
In other words, big deal.
Not.
So you're receiving up to 3 microserviets per year of radiation just from the background.
But if you drank a liter of this water, which you not because it's going into the ocean, but let's say you did, for an entire year, you would receive 0.09 microserviet.
So it's not all that scary.
They're making it sound scary by giving you information that is clear, but you don't know what it means.
And the final conclusion you've drawn?
Well, it's the same conclusion as always.
You kind of drove the truck into the wall there.
Yeah.
Well, it's the same conclusion as always is that this is propaganda to make you anti-nuclear when it is the definition of renewable energy.
Yeah, no, I know.
You harp on this more than I do.
Yeah, but I want to point it out, and that when you read this and these headlines from your alternative news service...
Yeah, I'll tell you what bothers me.
And this has been going...
I think this started...
Remember when was Fukushima?
Three years ago?
Two years ago?
Yeah.
Well, right.
It was non-stop.
This thing's going to blow.
This thing's going to...
It's going to kill us all.
And it was like, oh, now it's going to melt down.
It's going to do all this.
This has been going on.
Remember that one time when there's a bunch of memes floating around?
Dude, you had a Geiger counter for your fish.
Yeah, well...
Don't deny it.
Yeah, well, there's fish around there, and if it comes from Japan, I'm skeptical of fish from Japan that's around there, but I don't care if the fish is caught off the coast of California.
So anyway, no, I'm not talking about that.
I'm talking about the doomsday predictions.
Yeah, doomsday.
Yeah, no, when the cloud was coming over, we were all going to die.
Alex Jones was selling iodine.
Iodine.
It was I'm going to take some iodine and all this crap.
He made a million bucks on iodine, I'll tell you that.
Yeah, we should have been selling iodine.
We're idiots.
We're stupid.
We should be on board with this stuff.
We're stupid.
We're stupid.
It's because we don't jump on board, but if we did, we'd probably be making some serious money.
But anyway, and all the Twitter guys, oh, you guys ought to cover this on no agenda.
It's going to blow.
Cover it on no agenda because it's going to blow.
It's like, it's not going to blow and we're not covering it.
And so now it just continues.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
And I remain by my theory that this was...
And we have all kinds...
Remember, there was the tsunami bombs that were tested.
We have, you know, evidence that there was tons of tsunami bombs.
And, you know, this was a very, very shallow earthquake.
Right, you have the same theory.
And I still think it was set up...
Targeted.
Yeah, set up by the anti-nuke creeps.
Yeah, well, go read State of Fear.
Well, State of Fear tells us a lot.
It does.
So talking about telling us a lot, some of these books, there's a good book out there on Cornelius Vanderbilt, the first tycoon by a local writer named T.J. Stiles, and who's been on the speaking circuit for a while.
He won a Pulitzer and a National Book Award for this piece of history, and I've heard him speak a few times, and the book is a must-read, especially for people who like biographies.
But you have to, there's a little side note about this woman named Victoria Woodhull, who is apparently the reason there was never a good biography of Vanderbilt is because all this stuff is scattered everywhere.
never kept a library or never created anything that would submit.
Because he claims that most biographers, and I think there's some truth to this, like to find a cache of material so they can sit on their butts in one place and write a biography.
They don't like to spend, in his case, six years combing the country for documents.
But I just thought that this was just a funny little clip.
I picked it off in one of his speeches talking about this woman.
And you'll see what the punchline is.
You'll understand why this is a clip.
If only I knew which clip it was. - It says Victoria Woodhull.
Oh, that would be the last clip in the bunch.
Which is the issue of Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin.
How do they factor into...
They're definitely not part of the business side of Vanderbilt.
That's one of the many interesting sidelights.
A life this long intersected with a lot of famous and sometimes notorious people.
Are people generally familiar with who Victoria Woodhull is?
No, it's alright.
Victoria Woodhull was one of those interesting kind of footnote yet more than footnote characters in 19th century American history.
And her name came up during the last election because of Hillary's run for the presidency.
She famously ran for president in 1872, the first woman to announce herself as a candidate.
She was a really fascinating figure, in part because I think she was, in part, a con artist.
Wow, I didn't know this story.
That's cool.
I like that.
I just saw the parallels.
I've got to look at this now.
This is interesting.
I visited the Vanderbilt Mansion.
One of many.
They're all done not by Cornelius, but by his...
Cornelius apparently was not a skinflint, but he didn't believe in mansions.
And so it was William who sired most of the family, which was his son, who cranked out all these mansions.
So that still knows that it's only...
It's one generation.
It's one group removed from Cornelius.
You'll never...
I don't know if there's a house that has anything to do.
He had...
Here's an interesting little factoid.
Comparing his wealth to Bill Gates.
At the time of his maximum wealth, his total wealth amounted to $1 in every $20 in circulation.
Wow.
Wow.
Bill Gates is rich, but his wealth amounts to $1 in every $140 in circulation.
Wow.
Victoria Woodhull was an advocate of free love.
It's my kind of girl.
Yeah.
She went from rags to riches twice.
Watch your wallet.
Her first fortune being made on the road as a highly successful magnetic healer.
Nice.
Yeah, there's a lot.
He talks about this.
Actually, I'll see if I can clip this out.
Yeah, get some of that for Sunday.
That sounds like fun, actually.
The magnetic healing thing is quite interesting, and apparently Cornelius was into that, too.
He says it was essentially deep massage therapy.
But there was a lot of seance and all kinds of stuff like that.
Back to the free love bit.
Yeah, well, free love.
It's been around.
It comes and goes.
Age didn't help it.
True.
But don't get me started on that.
Uh-oh.
No.
So, just one little thing.
American Airlines and US Air, they were going to merge and then they killed it.
And, of course, now they're whining because they approved all these other mergers.
But what happened was the Justice Department looked at what all these other mergers did and they said, this is not working out.
But I just got this one clip.
And that is two of them.
I think, you know, let's try the...
Yeah, it's got to be this one.
Merger hurts competition clip.
You've got to listen to these two CEOs yucking it up when this deal first came about about six months ago.
And the comment that one CEO makes, I just rolled my eyes.
It was all smiles and backslaps six months ago as the airline's CEOs announced plans to merge.
This really is about taking two airlines, putting them together, and providing better service to customers.
Our view is it increases competition and doesn't decrease competition.
Okay, you can stop.
What bullcrap?
He says this is about improving service and increasing competition by becoming a big one airline.
So in other words, in parts of the country, apparently Reagan, international airline, 75% of the airport would be devoted to this one new airline.
Oh yeah, this is not a good idea.
I mean, listening to these guys, why doesn't somebody pie these guys?
There's no way...
This is going to increase competition or improve service.
Well, I mean, I've been in the airline industry and it's incredibly, at a very small scale, but I learned a lot about the business and it's incredibly difficult to make money with the unions.
You know, and it's not just the unions at the airlines.
It's everywhere.
I mean, the whole business is basically a money-losing business.
It just is.
It's just you can't make money with an airline.
It's burning your money in the air.
And it shows.
It shows.
Now they're moving your suitcase.
You have to pay for your luggage, and if it's over 40 pounds, you can't.
It's just crazy.
It's too bad.
I'm telling you, I'm still waiting for the day, and I suspect it will come, where they weigh you.
Really?
Probably.
And you fly by the pound.
This is the way to get weight loss in this country to take hold.
If you're going to pay for the pound and you're a big fat guy, you're going to probably lose some weight to save some money.
Did you know that Delta now owns 49% of Virgin Atlantic?
No, I didn't know that.
Yeah.
I learned that only by reading the in-flight magazine.
Not a lot of people talk.
They wanted to buy the whole thing.
And I bet you that Branson wanted to sell the whole thing.
Because he's looking at it too and going like, oh crap man, this is just like burning my money in the air.
Even though he's just a front man, doesn't really do anything.
A front man for who?
For the real money guys.
There's big hedge funds and stuff.
Come on man, I could be Richard Branson.
You look like him.
I do not look like him.
So here's a story that came out in just a recent local story.
Tell me this is a good idea.
Play the clip Brown and the Transgenders.
It's about high schoolers.
Governor Brown signed a groundbreaking bill into law today.
It allows the state's transgender students to choose which bathrooms they use and on which sports teams they wish to participate.
Yeah.
Whatever.
I don't care.
I just think it's going to be a nightmare.
I really don't care.
And why do high school...
How does a high school kid become a transgender so soon?
Don't you want to be a little older before you make such a decision?
No, unfortunately, a lot of parents make decisions for these kids, which I think is not necessarily a good idea.
And they make it early on.
Yeah, the whole idea of men's bathroom, it's all like this Puritan thing.
Well, we could have a...
People just used to...
There are restaurants that have...
Unisex, sure.
Unisex bathrooms.
In Austin, it's very common.
Very common.
I think it's a good thing.
Well, if you did that, that would be better.
Why don't they just do that?
Make it unisex.
No, I agree.
We're so...
When I was growing up in Europe, the Europeans used to laugh about the prude Americans.
Oh, my gosh!
You can't even talk about nipples or anything.
You can't show anything.
Oh, my God!
They're so prude...
Which, of course, is true.
And...
Now we're in this weird situation where we have this very prudish culture, yet we're trying to be really open and free.
It's such a dichotomy.
I think it's hurting people's brains, really.
I think it's designed to.
Hey, you know, I'm looking at this general election in Helensville.
I didn't notice this right away.
There's a party in New Zealand called the Legalized Cannabis Party.
Yeah, I'd be voting for that.
They didn't get many votes.
Because everyone was like, dude, let's vote.
I don't know, man.
You got any M&Ms?
Alright, it's all yours.
I'm going to see.
I've got kind of a fun clip.
I'm following the New York mayoral election for one reason and one reason only, because I don't know any other candidate running but Anthony Weiner.
And there's a chance he's going to win, because that's how crazy it is.
It's New York, yeah.
But he's insane.
And remember, I know this guy.
I've interviewed this guy.
He's a douchebag.
I interviewed him when he was councilman.
And then I knew, like, oh, you're such an insincere prick.
But now he's...
I'm not quite sure what is going on.
You have to see the video.
It'll be in the show notes, but I have the audio.
So he shows up for some appearance on the street, and it seems like there's maybe 10 journalists and nobody else, and he's making fun of his entire appearance.
But worse, there's a woman from ITN, the British news service, and she's asking him questions, and he's going off the deep end, and I thought maybe it would be fun to listen to it.
All right, it's American media from British media.
Well, whilst we're talking then, as soon as we're walking along, how do you maintain such resilience in this campaign?
You want to be there?
I'm sorry about that, guys.
I'm handing it to the wrong person.
What do you mean?
If you want to be the mayor of the city of New York, you've got to work hard.
And you've got to fight.
Okay.
What about what's going on in your personal life then?
How do you deal with that when you're confronted and you've been so exposed, your family humiliated?
Nice to see you.
Thank you, brother.
How do you carry on when what's going on in your personal life?
I guess you must be on the impression this is supposed to be easy.
It's not.
I'm fighting for a tough job.
It requires a lot of toughness when you're on the job.
So this is the way I'd want it to be.
Is it ambition?
Is it a hunger for the big job, the power?
I'm trying to take you seriously.
No, it has to do with wanting to be mayor of the city of New York and wanting to help the middle class and those struggling to make it.
What is it that you want to do for this city?
Well, the hunger for the big job.
Hello?
Why don't you go to my website, AnthonyWiener.com?
I want to fight for the middle class and those struggling to make it.
Would anything stop you?
I just have a feeling I've, like, stepped into a Monty Python bit.
I don't know.
Would anything stop me?
Now is a rock going to fall on my head?
No, nothing's going to stop me.
I'm going to win this election.
What makes you so sure you're going to win this election?
What can you give these people?
I'm going to work hard for them.
I've got better ideas.
I come from a better place.
I'm building a campaign on ideas for the middle class and those struggling to make it.
And every single day I'm fighting to show them that I want their support.
Look at me.
When I started this campaign, I was 6'9", 240 pounds is all that's left of me.
By the time I'm done with this campaign, I'm going to slide under the door at Gracie Mansion.
Anything else I can do for ITV? You want me to do the weather or something?
If you can do the weather, you can do the weather for me.
Where is it from?
This is in England?
You can do the weather here in New York, if you like.
No, no, no.
I'll do yours instead.
It's going to be raining and cloudy and gray.
So, do what you can, guys.
Try to keep your head up.
Keep a stiff upper lip.
You know, I think he's being forced to do this, John.
What a douche.
But he doesn't want to do this.
He's being forced to do this.
Bill Klass and those struggling to make it.
Bill Klass and those struggling to make it.
Yeah, he's just forcing him to...
I don't know what's going on.
Well, who's they?
The Clintons.
The Clintons?
Yeah, it has to be the Clintons.
Yeah, of course it's the Clintons.
Duh.
They own him.
But, I mean, wow.
This is...
It's sad.
It's just sad.
You know what?
This guy might wind up killing himself.
Oh.
Put that in the book.
I'm putting it in the red book.
Put that in the book.
This is not going well for him.
By the way, if you want to take it to the next level, he might appear to have killed himself.
Well, hello, Clinton body count.
Google that.
Alright.
You sound like a teenager nowadays.
Hello.
Hello.
Please.
How easy is that?
No, please.
Not.
That would...
Not.
Yeah, and I have Ted Koppel, who was kind of funny these days.
Yeah, he's a real Obama bot.
Hit it.
America's chronic overreaction to terrorism with the headline you wrote, we have created an economy of fear, an industry of fear, a national psychology of fear.
Al-Qaeda could have never achieved that on its own.
We have inflicted it on ourselves.
Look, fundamentally there are two sets of questions that apply in the war against terrorism.
The one set of questions deals with the Where is it going to happen?
What's going to happen?
When is it going to happen?
The other set of questions deals with what is it that our enemy, the terrorists, are trying to achieve?
What are they trying to induce us to do?
Take a look at what's been happening over the past week.
With a conference call, Al-Qaeda has effectively shut down 20 U.S. embassies around North Africa and the Middle East.
I thought that was pretty funny.
I think it was a video conference call, actually.
He's right, though.
So the guy running that's ahead is this Bill de Blasio.
He's leading with 30%.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about the New York race.
You said you don't know who is winning.
Okay, you're back to that.
I just went to look it up because I wanted to know.
And Wiener's down to 10%.
Really?
Down from 16%.
So he's fading fast.
Everyone in the chat room is saying that this story, the Wiener story, he is Peter from House of Cards.
And I've seen House of Cards, and wow, spot on.
So here's how it happens.
He kills himself asphyxiation in his car after getting caught one more time.
Doing whatever he does.
But of course, the way it happened was he was drugged and they put him in his car in the garage and left the engine running and then he died.
So look for an exhaust pipe suicided death for Anthony Weiner.
That could be.
If it happened, it wouldn't surprise me.
If life imitates art.
Especially if life imitates art.
And we've been doing this show long enough to see some of this stuff.
It can actually happen.
Yeah, he shot himself twice in the head.
With a gun in his left hand.
You think it's crazy?
Google it.
Alright, I'm going to go read up on Victoria Woodhull.
I think that there's stuff to be learned here about what we can expect from Hillary.
Yeah.
When she was in college, she looks like a free love chick.
She looks a bit like Victoria Woodhull, actually, with the short hair.
Huh.
Check it out.
I haven't seen the pictures of her.
Yeah.
Well, it's black and white.
She had a big booty, though.
Well?
Excuse me?
Hello?
All right, we'll be back on Sunday, and I'm sure there'll be a lot more for us to talk about.
There's some research that I've been doing on a couple other things.
There's more on the war on sugar.
Some more magic numbers.
She has a Hillary vibe.
Yes, she does.
Coming to you here from the Travis Heights hideout in the capital of the Drone Star State in Austin, Texas.
Proud to be your crackpot in the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where I'm proud to be the buzzkill and seven dog biscuits over five, I'm John C. Dvorak.
I'll raise you five whiskeys on that.
We'll be back on Sunday right here on No Agenda.
The best podcast in the universe!
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