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Dec. 18, 2016 - No Agenda

03:05:07

887: Fact Checkmate

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Time	Text
	But it's not an underground bunker.
	Not that you know.
	Adam Curry, John C. Devorak.
	And Sunday, December 18, 2016, this is your award-winning Gitmo Nation Media Assassination, Episode 887.
	This is no agenda.
	Reporting the A in anonymous sources and broadcasting live from the darkest corners of the internet here in FEMA Region 6, Austin Tejas.
	In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
	And from northern Silicon Valley, where Plato's a man who recovers submerged automobile...
	Dip toe in water.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.
	It's Crackpot and Buzzkill.
	In the morning!
	Not sure I got that one.
	T.O.W. He's recovering a submerged automobile.
	Yeah.
	He must dip toe, T.O.W., in water.
	Ah, okay.
	Wow.
	Play-Doh, man.
	I didn't know they had automobiles back in the day.
	That's amazing.
	It's weird.
	If you read enough books, you'll find out all this is true.
	The insight Play-Doh had is just kind of freaking me out a little bit.
	Wait a minute.
	I had a clip.
	Hold on.
	What did I have?
	I had something for you about that.
	Let me see if I can find this.
	Oh, yeah.
	Now, we'll get to that later.
	I got a lot of fun stuff today, John.
	I got a couple of prostitute podcasts.
	You know, it's my new favorite thing.
	I have a...
	Oh, yeah.
	I have a couple of fake news items that are gems.
	Well, why don't we start off with a few fake news items, and I'd love to bring in a podcast, a couple of clips from a podcast, where, as you know, the people who are running around reporting, doing things behind the scenes, they always seem to open up a little bit too far.
	When they're on a podcast.
	Yes, this is your thing.
	I want to back up a little bit because about five years ago, I attempted to do mockery of podcasts, which you eventually nixed.
	Well, they were bad.
	It got me in trouble with a bunch of podcasters.
	It was really mean.
	It was a mean segment.
	It was like, hey, you suck.
	And let's laugh at you.
	Yeah, that was unnecessary.
	Yeah, I think it was probably correct.
	But you have repurposed the idea.
	I like this perspective.
	What you're doing based on a single claim That because of podcasting or being overseas, if you're doing an interview in England, you know, it's okay to say what you want.
	Because nobody in America is going to hear it.
	And all that sort of thing is a good thesis because I think you're, yeah, it's just a podcast.
	You're acting amongst their friends.
	This is what they'd probably be talking about at the dinner table.
	It's, yeah, yeah, in a way, it's exactly like that.
	And today I have several things.
	I have, well, let's do some fake news, and then I have two reporters from the Washington Post who really started off this fake news, what do we call it, fake news?
	Fad.
	Yeah, fake news fad, yes.
	Everybody's talking about fake news.
	Okay, so I have, besides just the normal thing where people bitch and moan about fake news, I actually have Well, let's start with the fake news report, which is a backgrounder.
	It's a long one.
	Okay.
	It's a backgrounder on fake news that was done on RT. I thought it was a very good...
	It's a little long.
	You can interrupt it if you want.
	But I thought it was a good take on the whole fake news concept.
	Then I have two fake news items.
	Well, I will say that it's very meta of you to have a fake news report from the state-sponsored fake news media.
	Yes.
	That is meta to the meta.
	Gazdia reports.
	Fake news.
	Here's an interesting fact about fake news.
	It does not have a universally accepted definition.
	The people who are pushing to ban it can't agree on what exactly it is that they're trying to ban.
	So, Facebook is at the forefront.
	Very soon, users are going to be able to report any news story that they don't like as fake news.
	If you suspect a news story is fake, you can report it.
	Wait, what is this?
	Who's doing this PSA? I guess it was some Facebook PSA. Nice.
	It just takes a few taps.
	A few taps!
	Your report helps us track and prevent fake news from spreading.
	Enough people do it, and it gets sent to the fact-checkers for review.
	And here is where the drama starts.
	Meet Facebook's fact-checkers.
	ABC News, which was allegedly busted recently for taking a crime scene for a live broadcast.
	That's right.
	The Associated Press, the AP's fact-checking department is, well, they recently claimed that Assad isn't fighting ISIS. Palmyra.
	Public quickly called them out, and the fact-checkers were left red-faced.
	I can't help but hear this guy say fag checkers.
	It's just the Russian accent is weird.
	Fag checkers!
	Politifact.
	A fact checker that is widely accepted as being politically biased.
	Example, they accuse the Republicans of lying nine times as often as Democrats.
	You are an embarrassment.
	You sully the reputation of anyone who cites you as an authority on fact-ishness, let alone fact.
	You are fired.
	So, these are just some of the guys who are going to be deciding what's fake and what's real for you.
	Way worse in Russia.
	So far, no Russian press group is on Facebook's partner list.
	Instead, there are two Ukrainian ones, which are presumably going to be patrolling the Russian language part of Facebook.
	Yeah...
	They're going to be impartial, aren't they?
	Okay, Facebook is going to start censoring news.
	Obviously, you, me, well, we're no longer capable of deciding what to believe in or to separate fact from fiction.
	Did they get to a point?
	I think I saw this, actually.
	Did they get to a point somewhere?
	Did they wrap it up?
	Yeah, you just stopped it right at a good point.
	Oh, shoot.
	I'm sorry.
	No, it's good.
	Stop right there.
	Alright, let's stop right there.
	So let's go with a couple of fake news items I've run into.
	I'm going to find these all the time.
	Well, before that, just playing into this, so the announcement was Facebook, and we read this right after the show on Thursday, Facebook said, hey, we've got a whole panel together, and this is how we're going to do it.
	We're going to allow the community, the community can report what they think is fake news, and then it'll go through our international fact-check network, Which the Fact Check group and network is partially sponsored by George Soros.
	Finance, I should say.
	And Bill Gates.
	Oh, is that the Gates Foundation or Bill Gates personally?
	That I don't know.
	I don't know.
	Probably the foundation.
	And the top of the list of people who, organizations who will be helping to fact check is ABC News, which is very funny.
	We have Associated Press, and of course, Pointer, which is the, you know, is that like a journalist, journalistic organization?
	It's a blog.
	It's a very expensive blog.
	And Snopes, obviously.
	Yeah, when the Russians did this report, they showed a list that's a lot longer.
	It is a lot longer.
	40 people or something.
	But that's all the fact-check network members, but the top three or four of ABC, Poynter, AP, and Snopes, Those I think are the main guys.
	Well, you know what's going to happen, of course, is that every piece of news that's partisan will be called fake news.
	Of course.
	And so they're going to end up going.
	And then when some stuff will be taken down for one reason or another.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	They're not going to do that at first.
	The way I understand is it's the continuation of the verified.
	You'll have a verified article, which has been fact-checked.
	And if you have a piece of news that has been fact-checked to be false...
	Fact-checked false...
	Then it will receive, I think, a little skull and crossbones or something.
	Well, it's still going to cause a furor amongst people.
	Of course it will.
	Let's listen to RT's wrap-up here.
	Yeah?
	Yeah.
	...separate fact from fiction.
	But you know what's more worrying?
	This is part of a much bigger and much darker trend.
	If you're a person with unconventional liberal views, you are now being put on public watch lists in the U.S. If you run a website that, and I quote, criticizes the United States or Barack Obama, NATO, Ukraine, the mainstream media, there's an organization that is going to label you as Russian propaganda.
	This isn't some obscure website.
	It got cited by Washington Post.
	It's like the West is turning into 1970s USSR.
	Dissidents, foreigners, the unconventional are now the enemy.
	A new 21st century information inquisition.
	A digital witch hunt where you are no longer trusted to decide what news you should see.
	And if you think this isn't going to be abused, well, I don't know what to tell you.
	Maybe instead of skull and crossbones, they should use a little hammer and sickle if you have fake news.
	Yeah, because it's always going to be from the Russians.
	Now, I have a couple.
	Actually, I would like to interject here, because it was specifically about ABC, and you, of course, maintained the Lerner Report, the Lerner Report, sorry, LernerReport.com.
	Where is NBC right now, according to you?
	They were a month ago.
	They're kind of, well, the way I see them, they're one of the more crooked operations in terms of factual reporting.
	Right.
	Do you think that they are still pro-Hillary or who they are?
	I don't see any changes.
	They still have Katie Turr, now they've got Cynthia McFadden, who's the hot top of the list for the hit jobs.
	And she comes on and she does these reports.
	I mean, I have a couple of clips from NBC just from yesterday that are very slanted.
	Yeah, let's do them.
	And in fact, let me give you an example.
	Katie Tur, I guess they're trying to move her around because she took a slot on MSNBC to do some hosting.
	And this is the kind of dumb crap that you get on MSNBC.
	And I'm going to explain why this is dumb.
	But just play this short clip, this Katie Tur hosting clip.
	Obama's going to come out and give a press conference.
	And then before this happens, this is a question she asked of one of her reporters that is on the scene.
	But let's start with politics and our team of reporters.
	Chris Janssen is at the White House briefing room.
	And with me on set are Pentagon correspondent Hans Nichols and MSNBC political correspondent Casey Hunt.
	Chris, you're there.
	Let's start with you.
	Will President Obama talk about this Russian hack?
	If so, what do we expect him to say?
	Because clearly we know everything already.
	Well, the thing about this, I'm watching this and they have a countdown timer showing that he's going to be speaking in about an hour.
	So why would you, I'm going to just ask you as a hypothetical, from a logical perspective.
	The guy is going to be speaking in a few minutes.
	So why would you ask somebody, what is he going to say?
	What do you think he's going to say?
	What do you think he's going to do?
	He's going to be there.
	Why don't you just wait five minutes and you'll find out?
	What is the point of the speculation?
	Well, I'll tell you, she had a 20-second teaser that was planned before the commercial pod going into the B block for the hour.
	You need to fill it!
	Yes, exactly.
	That is actually the right answer.
	That's how it goes.
	I know exactly how it goes.
	It's just when you watch it, you go, what?
	I find just watching anything these days become very laborious because you turn on the TV and you can place a bet.
	It's like, hey, I'll bet you five bucks.
	It's Russia, CIA, Trump.
	One of those words.
	Hey, listen to this for a second.
	This is my first Prestitute podcast.
	This is a Politico podcast and they have on David Brock.
	Yeah.
	David Brock is the guy who started, I think, Media Matters.
	And Media Matters is this organization that goes out and they fight news they don't like.
	It's a Hillary front organization.
	She's a large part of it.
	Well, that actually comes up in this podcast, which I found very enlightening and also odd that the way he just says who's paying for everything.
	And these guys have gone...
	I think this is...
	Media Matters has gone after Glenn Beck, and they go after the advertisers, and they try to bring down news or information organizations that they don't agree with.
	Pretty much anybody who's not Democrat, left, progressive, whatever label you want to put on it.
	And...
	David Brock is on the Politico podcast.
	Of course, he's way too candid.
	He actually doesn't run Media Matters.
	He runs four organizations who are out there to literally create fake news, to debunk real news, to harass people.
	I thought it was worth a little listen.
	We'll start off with David Brock talking about the four organizations he runs, including one of which is a for-profit Apparently, he's gotten tired of doing all this stuff and making no money, so he's going to try and make some real money with it.
	And he also gives us some insight into NBC. So, the four principal groups, Media Matters is our media watchdog group.
	I started it in mid-04, too late to really help John Kerry with the swift boating.
	And I started Media Matters with the help of the Clintons who saw a need for an aggressive media watchdog group after what they had been through in the 90s.
	What kind of help do you think that was?
	Money?
	Money?
	Money, of course.
	But he just says it.
	I've never heard him just say, oh yeah, the Clintons, they paid for that.
	Set us up.
	No problem.
	I started American Bridge, which is a super PAC, in early 2011.
	I was the first Democrat to plant the super PAC flag after what happened in 2010, and we got outspent, and there was a lot of hand-wringing among liberals about Citizens United.
	And listen carefully.
	You'll hear that he's very frustrated about money.
	He feels that he wasn't given enough money.
	He didn't have enough money to operate.
	He probably could have single-handedly made sure that Donald Trump never even would set foot outside his door if he'd only had enough money to do it.
	You know, I disagree with, but I said we have to have a super PAC structure.
	So we were successful in...
	Helping to define Romney in 12 and less successful this time around, which we can get into.
	Crew is Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
	Remember those guys?
	Crew?
	No.
	No, I forgot them.
	Yeah, we talked about it.
	I had forgotten about them as well.
	And it's an ethics watchdog group that I took over a couple years ago because the...
	Somewhat controversially?
	Yes.
	Some people thought you were kind of, yeah.
	Well, people thought I was too partisan, and so...
	That could be Melanie Sloan, right, crew?
	Melanie Sloan was the founding executive director.
	She wanted to go to the private sector.
	The group was going to go under.
	I took it over, took responsibility for financing it, found a replacement for Melanie.
	And you know, they did great work in 16.
	They filed the first IRS complaint against the Trump Foundation, which was successful.
	Great work.
	And that drew the media attention onto the foundation.
	So more about that.
	But we're going to build this organization up in the Trump era.
	So it is kind of interesting to hear.
	All that stuff about the Trump Foundation, the huge million dollar foundation that, of course, used funds improperly and had to pay fines, that wasn't some journalistic work from your big news networks.
	No, that was a bunch of douchebags trying to discredit everything.
	They did the work.
	You should watch.
	On the right has a $30 million year annual budget crew.
	Oh, you see, man.
	We need more money.
	We need more money.
	The right has a $30 million year annual budget crew, has a $2 million year annual budget, and there are a lot of lawsuits and lots of complaints.
	And you've got Norm...
	We just signed up.
	Yes, we just signed up.
	President Obama's ethics are, Norm Eisen, and President Bush's, which I'm very happy about, Richard Painter, because, you know, like-minded Republicans are a group that we're going to have to reach out to because this is now about small-D democracy.
	It's not about capital-D Democrats in some ways.
	And then I have a fourth entity, which is a for-profit media company called ShareBlue.
	We've been running that for about eight months.
	The idea there was to see if we could create an avidly pro-Hillary website that would work.
	So it's more pro-Hillary in making the case for Hillary than it was anti-Trump, although there was anti-Trump content.
	And he's got a million followers on Facebook.
	And it's a work in progress, which we could talk more about.
	But I believe there's space for an antidote to Breitbart in this era.
	And that's what I want to do with Share Blue.
	Unless George Soros and Tom Steyer give me a billion dollars to start a real media outlet, which is what we need in this climate.
	Because journalism is going to be significantly weaker.
	MSNBC is under pressure from NBC to toe a Trump line.
	And we need some alternatives.
	That's a lie.
	He doubles down on that.
	He doubles down on that.
	There's no evidence of this.
	In fact, just coincidentally, NBC has been the network I've been following on a daily basis for this show.
	I used to do all three at once and I gave up on that because it was actually tedious.
	And so now I'm going network by network and NBC, I'm working with NBC right now and just watching everything they do and there's no evidence of this.
	At all.
	I'm just going to give you the double down here from David Brock.
	President of the United States will remain as the executive producer of The Apprentice.
	Yeah.
	Well, now we know why The Apprentice tapes, the rest of them were suppressed.
	The 14,000 unaired outtakes that we tried very hard to get.
	First of all, What does he think this is?
	Like, you can just get outtakes of everything and you have the right to publish that?
	Or, you know, oh, we tried so hard.
	It should have been, you know, blocked us everywhere.
	Because, of course, Trump's executive producer.
	It's private material.
	Why would you want to?
	I mean, no one's going to give you that stuff.
	Outtakes that we tried very hard to get during the campaign.
	Yeah, I mean, that's an outrage.
	And I know that there are hosts...
	Outrage!
	Now listen, listen, listen to this.
	This is the outrage.
	There are hosts at MSNBC now who feel their jobs are at risk because the brass is for Trump.
	Wow.
	They've told you so?
	One has, yeah.
	And I've heard of others.
	Okay.
	I've heard of others.
	One has.
	Bull crap.
	What's happening is their ratings are so bad that the brass...
	They gotta make some changes because the ratings are so poor.
	They can't put up with it anymore.
	It's costing money.
	These guys aren't working for free.
	Play this NBC hit piece on Trump and the Russians.
	This is from yesterday, I believe.
	And I want to, where's the pro-Trump bias on this?
	...tongle tonight in Moscow, thanks.
	President-elect Trump has repeatedly rejected U.S. intelligence estimates, blaming Russia for the election hacks.
	Tonight we get reaction from Team Trump to the message President Obama aimed at them today from NBC's Kristen Welker.
	Tonight, mounting pressure on President-elect Donald Trump to call out Russian hacking in the U.S. election after President Obama called on his successor to take a hard look at what went wrong.
	One way I do believe that the president-elect can approach this that would be unifying Is to say that we welcome a bipartisan, independent process.
	But just moments after the president's press conference, one of Trump's top advisers digging in, not disputing Russia's at fault, but instead pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton.
	This wouldn't have happened if Hillary Clinton didn't have a secret server.
	In fact, it was one of Clinton's top advisor's emails that was hacked and exposed, not Clinton's secret server.
	Trump weighing in on Twitter today, again pointing to the DNC hack, ignoring Putin, whom he has consistently seemed to excuse.
	Are we talking about the same cyber attack where it was revealed the head of the DNC illegally gave Hillary the questions to the debate?
	That, a reference to one hacked email which showed Clinton may have been tipped off about at least one debate question.
	Mr.
	Trump, likely concerned the hacking charges could undercut his victory, has consistently balked at the idea that Russia is to blame.
	If you don't catch him in the act, you're not going to catch him.
	They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody.
	It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace.
	And as a candidate, he even seemed to encourage Russia to hack Clinton during his last news conference in July.
	But it would be interesting to see.
	I will tell you this.
	Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
	I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.
	So will his tone change?
	Tonight, a top transition official.
	No, look, I'm in agreement with you.
	I'm just telling you what the...
	I'm just pointing it out with an example.
	Now, there's two things I want to bitch about just before I get to my fake news clips, which we can stretch probably to the end of the show.
	Well, hold on.
	How they gonna make news!
	I just had to mix it.
	By the way, in that clip, two things I liked hearing.
	One, secret server.
	That was new.
	Secret server.
	I like it.
	And Puddin.
	Puddin.
	Puddin.
	So, a couple things I want to point out.
	One is they keep playing the same old thing.
	And I was listening to Trump's...
	If you listen to his whole hours, they play him on Fox and elsewhere where he goes.
	Like he went to Pennsylvania, then he went to Mobile, Alabama.
	And he talks for an hour.
	An hour and 15.
	His talks used to kind of peak out at about 45 minutes.
	Now he goes a solid hour...
	I think it's very charming.
	Nobody else has ever been able to do anything like this.
	Well, Obama did a thank you tour, except it was more like a worship me tour, kind of.
	Yeah, and it was prompted.
	It was teleprompter, I believe.
	Well, so it was Trump's teleprompter at the beginning, too.
	No, it's not.
	Yes, it is.
	He just goes off on tangents, but it's definitely...
	No, no, these big, long speeches, there's no problem.
	I watched Pennsylvania.
	He had two teleprompters.
	I didn't see a prompter there.
	Yeah, okay.
	Believe me.
	Well, anyway, he goes off on this long...
	It's very, very charming.
	And in a very awkward way, because he says all kinds of crazy stuff that's got nothing to do with anything.
	He's just joking around.
	He does.
	And he always goes to the, yeah, there's the most dishonest people in the world.
	Yeah, he points at them and they all boo at the reporters.
	And it's pretty much the same that he's done before.
	It is exactly the same.
	He likes to be up in front of a lot of people and talking.
	That's why I've always believed he's closer to Mussolini than anybody else.
	Because he does the Mussolini looks.
	He's got a lot of Mussolini.
	And...
	So there's two things.
	One is this, you know, Russia, if you're listening and he does that spiel, all the networks are playing that over and over again as though he isn't actually encouraging it.
	Even though if you saw it in context, it was kind of joking around as usual.
	But the thing that really gets me in every one of these networks and every one of these news reports, When they mention Putin and they go to a B-roll, it's always Putin walking through these huge gold doors.
	Yeah, with the guys opening the door for him.
	Yeah, there's a couple of stooges opening these massive gold doors.
	They must be 40 feet high.
	And then in comes Putin.
	And they all show this same clip of Putin coming through these gold doors.
	This is propaganda.
	Yes, it is.
	It's totally propaganda.
	It's unbelievable propaganda, as though every time he goes from room to room, he goes into the bathroom, there's gold doors.
	Oh, hold on, gold doors!
	Anyway, people should be on the lookout for the gold doors.
	You're going to just see them forever.
	Okay, my fake news.
	Okay, I got two items.
	One happens to involve Politico, which is being discussed there on their podcast.
	This is with Sean Spicer, who's at a Politico event, and he decides...
	Now, Sean Spicer, he's been on the news shows a lot recently, and you sent me a note, one of the few ones, and you were certain I agree that this is probably going to be the new administration's spokeshole for the White House.
	I think he's going to be the spokeshole, and I think it's the reason we're seeing him so much, because I never saw him a month ago, I don't know who he was.
	I think this is trial by fire.
	He's pretty good.
	He's not bad, and he's getting a little better.
	I think he's doing the right thing.
	He's doing it the right way.
	But he's so traditional.
	You know, he's a very traditional kind of spokeshole guy.
	Well, you know, people talked about they're going to put Guilfoyle.
	Oh, no.
	What happened to Katrina Pearson, the little multi-culti girl?
	She was good.
	She was discussed, and so was Ann Coulter.
	This is bullcrap.
	This guy is the guy.
	I mean, I'll be surprised if he's not named.
	But here he is at a Politico event giving them grief over an article they wrote about him, and this is an example of him busting out some fake news.
	You know, how many times is something shared incorrectly?
	And on Friday, you know, excuse me, today's Friday, two days ago, there's a story that a reporter in Politico puts out saying Sean Spicer disinvited Twitter from a tech meeting.
	Now, first of all, I'd love to say I have the power to disinvite someone from a meeting with the president-elect, but I don't.
	And they were never invited.
	And I was never asked by Politico whether that happened.
	And yet, I can't put that story back in the bottle and say, you know, and so once it's out there, it's out there.
	And that's what I think is unfortunate, is that the attempt to quickly put up headlines and be provocative is not good journalism.
	Understood.
	Well, wait until you hear from the journalists themselves.
	They disagree with you, sir.
	Vehemently.
	Now we go to one that's, this is a New York Daily News bust.
	This is a New York Daily News, CBS Sports, and one other outlet are busted with this anecdotal story about something that happened, again, involving Trump.
	Most fake news is about Trump, and it's fake.
	That's kind of the irony of this whole thing.
	It's about, you know, let's blast Trump with some fake news.
	This is a really good story.
	This is Roger Staubach?
	Yes.
	You were telling me you were just with Roger Staubach, one of my heroes?
	I spoke to him on the phone earlier today.
	I tell you what happened.
	Trump was at the Army-Navy game over the weekend, right?
	And he did an interview on CBS at halftime.
	And what he said, Tucker, was, I don't know if it's necessarily the best football, but it's very good.
	But boy, do they have spirit more than anybody.
	It's beautiful.
	Typical Trump.
	Staubach was interviewed by a writer for the New York Daily News.
	Here's the headline.
	Staubach to Donald Trump.
	Army, Navy football players deserve your respect, not your insults.
	So in this three-page article, I'm looking for the...
	I've known Staubach for a long time.
	I don't know if he's ever insulted anyone other than with a victory in the football field.
	And just so the audience knows, I mean, this guy, Naval Academy, Heisman Trophy winner, served the Navy in Vietnam, quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, won two Super Bowls, MVP of one of them.
	I mean, he's about as American as they get.
	The one quote in here, Tucker, says, service football from Staubach is extremely respectable and very competitive.
	They've won some big games.
	They're not in the top ten, but it's still good football.
	I really enjoy watching service football.
	So I called Staubach today a very successful real estate businessman in Dallas, Texas, and I read him that headline.
	I said, Roger, did you say that?
	And here's what he said.
	That is far from the truth.
	First of all, I don't think Trump said anything bad.
	He had a lot of good things to say.
	I know the writer wanted to get into the anti-Trump thing and I wasn't going to go there.
	A story like this is dishonest.
	He did not insult Navy, meaning Trump.
	I did not come close to insulting him, meaning Trump.
	That's why I don't even like to talk to reporters, Bill.
	Shit.
	But the cat's out of the bag.
	I mean, this thing is all over the internet.
	It's at CBSSports.com.
	It's at NFL.com.
	The headline in CBS Sports is this.
	Staubach goes to Trump over Army-Navy game insults.
	Hey, hey, hey!
	You read that?
	Fake news.
	Now, I don't know much about sports, but it sounds like some fake news to me.
	It sounds like fake news, and it comes from the New York Daily News and CBS Sports.
	These are big corporate names.
	These are not little bloggers.
	It's not Breitbart.
	These are big boys, and they're doing the fake news.
	That's where it comes from.
	We have to be aware of this.
	It's the real fake news, which is such a dichotomy in terms.
	Okay, then...
	Let me see.
	Well, while we're on it, I'll also do my fake news story.
	I have one.
	I'm happy because we finally had some follow-up.
	Now, I tried to find the original on YouTube, which was...
	I couldn't find it.
	And the reason why we'll be told in the second clip here...
	First, let's see if you can hear this short clip.
	That's impossible to hear.
	That is the Aleppo Twitter girl, the seven-year-old who is verified on Twitter.
	Yes.
	Who I expected to be killed.
	She's worried she's going to get killed.
	She said so.
	Yes, she's on deck.
	And here is the report.
	Syrian girl Banna El Abed and her mother Fatima have captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of people around the world via Twitter as they post about their dire circumstances in the shrinking rebel-held area of eastern Aleppo.
	And now they hope to capture the attention of First Lady Michelle Obama.
	In a recent video message sent to NBC News, Fatima says in the video, I talk to you as a mother.
	I implore you to help us because we are so afraid.
	Syria's President Bashar Assad has said that the Twitter account is propaganda promoted by terrorists and their supporters.
	The evacuations of citizens in Aleppo began Tuesday, but the operation has stalled since pro-government militia opened fire on transport buses.
	So I found that rather interesting that if you are there in Aleppo and you're sending out tweets and you're doing videos, that you don't put it on YouTube, but no, you send it directly to NBC.
	Makes nothing but sense.
	I like the way they said that the evacuation was stalled because of pro-government forces shooting at the buses.
	Don't you love it?
	It's just nuts!
	I mean, it doesn't make any sense!
	But that's what they report.
	It's unbelievable.
	I know, I know.
	This is just lies.
	Feeding the American public lies.
	Well, here's how it works.
	Rationalized.
	Here I got an intermediary.
	Play this.
	This was, I think, was a slip of the tongue.
	It wasn't meant to be said this way, but this is Dick Cheney was at some of the Brookings or something, and he's there with some other, with Panetta.
	Yeah, Panetta, and it was Barbara Starr who was interviewing us.
	Yeah, they're talking about this and that.
	So here's what Cheney says.
	This is the Cheney clip.
	The U.S. military and reassert our responsibilities and our leadership role in the world.
	That's important both to our allies, but it's also important to our adversaries like Mr.
	Trump and the Russians.
	Advertisers like Mr.
	Trump and the Russians.
	Nice!
	Unbelievable!
	I know it was a slip of the tongue, but it was what he really thought.
	The truth always wants to come out.
	Alright.
	So we had the Washington Post started off this whole CIA says thing with anonymous sources.
	And I think you saw the guy on Twitter who you...
	We got a bunch of guys on Twitter.
	Hey, don't you think now?
	Why don't you admit it?
	You know, this kind of guy.
	Yeah, that's exactly the voice.
	Exactly.
	And, uh...
	You know, they're saying like, well, you know, FBI and CIA, they agree with each other.
	Now you have to prove that there's that.
	No, wait a minute.
	There was, again, it was anonymous sources who say that or some internal memo that we have no copy of.
	And nobody's willing to show it to us.
	And I went to the press release.
	The CIA does press releases.
	They have a whole bunch of them.
	And I just say, go look at the list.
	Where's the list of the CIA press releases telling us this?
	No, it's not there because it's not there.
	Now.
	On the NPR morning edition, he had two journalists, both from the Washington Post, who talked about their use of these anonymous sources.
	They both worked on the story.
	And why they feel, A, it is okay.
	B, they feel that is, well, they actually feel it's the way forward.
	Anonymous sources within the government is great for reporting.
	Here is one of these ladies' names.
	Hold on a second.
	Their names.
	Kind of want to get them.
	Well, you're looking up their names.
	I do want to mention that it seems to me odd that people say secret memo, secret.
	If it's secret and you're revealing it.
	Yeah.
	There's issues with that.
	Yeah.
	I don't see anybody here holding a hearing.
	Well, have a...
	It's because it's not secret.
	There's no memo.
	This is bull crap.
	Have a listen to these two reporters, and we will discuss as we go along.
	Three short clips.
	He was responding to our reporting, which went all this past weekend and into this week, in which we...
	Does this woman sound like Fozzie Bear, or is it just me?
	A little bit.
	Waka waka waka!
	When all this past weekend and into this week, in which we were trying to stand up the story that the CIA... I've never heard this.
	We were trying to stand up the story.
	I've never heard this term.
	I've never heard that either.
	But the Fonzie Bear thing has ruined this clip for me.
	Waka waka waka!
	I know with that.
	She has the perfect voice for print.
	Trying to stand up the story that the CIA has concluded Russia not only intervened in the U.S. election, but intervened with a motive, and the motive was to elect Donald Trump.
	I have spent the last several days chasing every source I have at the CIA, at the Director of National Intelligence, on Capitol Hill, in the White House, in the Pentagon, everywhere, and And got someone who agreed to speak to me at length and agreed to be identified as a U.S. official.
	This was someone in a position to know who would only agree to be identified by that title.
	So that was carefully negotiated with the source, how you would refer to the source.
	Absolutely.
	You try to give the listener as much information as you can.
	In an ideal world, you would say, and this is hypothetical, this is not who this was, but you would say, for example...
	A current senior CIA official with direct access to the intelligence.
	You negotiate as much information as you're willing to give.
	Because that helps the listener weigh how much credibility to give it.
	I know who that person is, but the more information you give, the narrower the circle becomes in terms of that person being exposed.
	And if I have agreed to protect that person's identity, you have to do it.
	Okay.
	So, there you go.
	That's how the negotiation takes place.
	But now...
	You of course have to wonder.
	Hold on.
	Yeah?
	If this information...
	I'm just going to take...
	I'm going to step way back as you present this and ask questions that are obvious to me.
	Sure.
	If the president is all jacked up about this...
	And the CIA and the FBI and all the other intelligence agencies are all jacked up about this.
	How come she has to go and negotiate with one stooge who is the only guy who will even talk about it and it has to be completely off the record?
	If they're jacked up about this, why don't they just bring it out?
	Well, it seems to be the way forward this question is answered, I think, in the third clip.
	Of course, you always have to wonder, are these sources, do they have a motive, are they telling the truth, etc.?
	Basically, all national security officials refuse to speak with their name attached to it.
	That's their rule, not ours.
	National security reporters tend to be senior reporters.
	They've been around a long time.
	They're pretty good at judging the character of somebody that they actually quote without their name.
	And that's how we do that business.
	It would not happen without it because they're really not supposed to be talking to us.
	They could be fired.
	They could be fired.
	Just to give a little bit of insight into that, the people who are agreeing to speak to somebody like Dana or me are people who have security clearances.
	To keep the clearance, they are regularly polygraphed.
	And one of the questions that is routinely asked is, have you had any unauthorized contact with the media?
	These people are risking their jobs, their pensions to speak to us.
	So they have to take a polygraph.
	They have spoken to you in some cases.
	They might have to try and lie and hope that the polygraph doesn't pick it up.
	Yes, but also there's an unofficial...
	Oh, stop right there, everybody!
	Stop!
	Does this make any sense?
	Well, let me ask you this.
	Considering the rather large amount of anonymous sources in this past election cycle, year and a half, are these polygraphs yearly?
	Are they annually?
	Because how can you pass the polygraph?
	You're telling me all these people are just lying?
	And they say, no, no, I haven't had any unauthorized connections with the press.
	And then they pass the test?
	Well, I mean, that would be a very, you know, high-end field guy, perhaps, from the CIA or something, which is not the guy that's going to be talking to these reporters anyway.
	But they still have their clearance, and they have to...
	And they have to take the test.
	Now, so we have to make the logical assumption...
	That they were told to go talk to these people, told to leak.
	It was authorized.
	That's the only way you can get around that question.
	It has to be authorized.
	Yes, thank you.
	Again, and let's bring it back to the meta look, which is why authorize somebody to leak some information when, if it's true, you would just come out and say it.
	Exactly.
	And I think the conclusion is correct, that if they are saying, oh no, this is not authorized, and they have to do a polygraph, and they ask the question, did you have unauthorized contact with the press, and they say no, they would pass because it was authorized.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, John.
	Risking their jobs, their pensions to speak to us.
	So they have to take a polygraph.
	They have spoken to you in some cases.
	They might have to try and lie and hope that the polygraph doesn't pick it up.
	Yes, but also there's an unofficial thing that's going on.
	It's happened since forever, which is...
	Forever?
	It's happened since forever!
	Forever!
	...thing that's going on.
	It's happened since forever, which is the government actually wants to tell the American people what's happening, but they don't want to stand on a podium and announce it to the world.
	It sounds like an official position then.
	They would rather use us to communicate with people and let people know...
	What's happening, but in a less formal way.
	I knew you would like that.
	Excuse me.
	They would rather use us, the trustworthy media, to do their bidding for them.
	That's what she's saying.
	That is a bold-faced lie.
	And besides, Obama keeps going up on a podium and making these illusions about the Russians being these bad guys.
	Well, we'll get to that in a second.
	All right.
	Last clip.
	And, of course, you've got to wonder, isn't it possible that maybe these anonymous sources, maybe they'll be sent there to lie to you?
	I mean, how can you tell?
	Do you blame the people you are writing for and reporting for for trusting stories less if there are only anonymous sources there?
	Should they trust them less?
	I think it's a reasonable question to ask.
	I would push back and say, if anything, the reverse.
	Because if I am using an anonymous source, I have given my word that I will not reveal their identity.
	No, I will trust you.
	But I am asking you, the listener, to trust me that I have done everything in my power to make sure this person is who they say they are, that they have access to the information, and also to weigh what's their motive.
	But Donna Priest, couldn't they have an agenda that you or your readers might not know about?
	Not only could they, they often do.
	They might want to be making one agency look bad by telling you something bad about them.
	That is true.
	So yes, agendas abound.
	But I'd like to make another point, which is I do think our industry needs to pay much more attention to this, especially right now when the whole media environment is very confusing.
	I don't think...
	The mainstream media, like the Washington Post or even NPR, although you're trying to do that today, has been transparent enough in how we do our jobs.
	I don't know how you do that, but I'm certainly open to trying.
	There you go.
	They believe this, John.
	They totally believe that they are the trustworthy sources, that you have to trust them, that they've gone to J-school, and you can trust them.
	To trust that they can weed out all the fake stuff and the agendas and the bull crap.
	It's so easy for them to do.
	Well, apparently it's not easy for them to do, and it doesn't sound like they're doing it.
	No.
	Dull.
	That was a good little series of clips.
	Hey, I did pull a couple clips from President Obama's presser, because I found he said some very interesting things.
	And for you, I pulled out all the pauses.
	To bring it down to an acceptable length.
	Okay.
	So the president did like an hour and a half.
	He did a big speech talking about Russia, talking about cybersecurity in general, about the election.
	And when he started off talking about WikiLeaks and the so-called hack, the way I heard this clip, minute and a half, the way I heard it, and I'll tell you what I heard and then you listen with those ears.
	maybe I'm wrong he says uh WikiLeaks already had this information we knew they had this information they knew we knew they were going to release it and then Russia was hacking the information so the president the way I hear him says they already had this then Russia started to jump in and started to hack on the same information and then of course they stopped because Obama said hey cut it out man and then Russia Russia went okay that's pretty much what he's saying here
	I think it's worth pointing out that the information was already out.
	It was in the hands of WikiLeaks.
	So that was going to come out no matter what.
	Do you hear that?
	They already had it.
	He's saying right there.
	They already had it.
	It was going to come out no matter what.
	Maybe I'm hearing it wrong.
	No, that's what he said.
	All right.
	Thank you.
	Now, the reason that I think it was overlooked is because I think in context, the way he blew past that was to make it sound as if the Russians had first already given it.
	Here's the way I would think.
	The Russians had already given it to WikiLeaks, and they already had it, so that was going to come out no matter what.
	But here's the problem.
	Since WikiLeaks was the only one who released it in the first place The Russians weren't releasing it.
	There was no Russian blog or anything.
	I guess Guccifer.
	Well, the president speaks of cutouts.
	They use cutouts.
	That's Guccifer.
	Yeah, cutouts.
	Cutouts on the internet.
	We'll listen to his thing again.
	It's worth pointing out that the information was already out.
	It was in the hands of WikiLeaks.
	So that was going to come out no matter what.
	Uh-huh.
	What I was concerned about in particular was making sure that that wasn't compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself.
	And so in early September, when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn't happen was to talk to him directly.
	And tell him to cut it out, and there were going to be some serious consequences if he didn't.
	I can just see that conversation.
	Hey man, cut it out.
	Or, you know, there'd be some serious consequences.
	Like, you have to go to bed with no dinner.
	And in fact, we did not see.
	Further tampering of the election process.
	Oh.
	Oh, thank you, Obama.
	Yeah, thanks, Obama.
	He says, okay, so it wasn't happening.
	He told them to cut it out.
	They stopped.
	They stopped.
	Thanks, Obama.
	Thanks, Obama.
	But the leaks through WikiLeaks had already occurred.
	So, when I look back in terms of how we handled it, I think we handled it the way it should have been handled.
	Well, then, what's the problem?
	Well, there is really no problem yet.
	...enforcement and the intelligence community to do its job without political influence.
	We briefed Now, hold on.
	No.
	What?
	No, he said through the intelligence communities.
	No, it was announced through leaks to the press.
	Anonymous sources.
	It wasn't announced by the intelligence community.
	I got the press releases from all these agencies.
	There's nothing about any of it.
	This is a bold face lie.
	Consensus.
	It's another lie.
	Around what had happened, we announced it.
	Consensus.
	Not evidence.
	Consensus, John.
	Just so you know.
	Consensus.
	High confidence consensus.
	When we had a consensus around what had happened, we announced it.
	Can you imagine, Mr.
	Curry, we have looked at this case, and we feel the consensus is, we don't need evidence, but the consensus is you're guilty.
	We're sorry, you're going to jail.
	Consensus.
	That's how it works.
	Announced it.
	Not through the White House, not through me, but rather through the intelligence...
	Communities that had actually carried out these investigations.
	And then we allowed you and the American public to make an assessment.
	By leaking it from anonymous sources.
	As to how to weigh that going into the election.
	I don't know if he actually knows how it went down, but he believes it went down differently or he's intentionally twisting the truth a bit.
	From this, of course, the president needed to speak briefly about the danger of fake news and crazy stuff that people were garnishing or garnering from the garnishing.
	The people garnering from the emails, of course, in there also John Podesta's emails.
	The truth is that there was nobody here who didn't have some sense of what kind of effect it might have.
	I'm finding it a little curious that everybody's suddenly acting surprised that this looked like it was disadvantaging Hillary Clinton because you guys wrote about it every day.
	It's your fault.
	Every single leak.
	You guys.
	About every little juicy tidbit of political gossip, including John Podesta's risotto recipe.
	Pizza, pizza.
	Sorry, I can't help myself.
	Then we have...
	You know, before you go, and I still want to make, just for anyone who doesn't understand this part of it, these hacks, especially the John Podesta hack in particular, was the simplest of simple phishing expeditions where you send somebody a link.
	This goes back 20 years, this whole idea of having a link that hooks to malware that links, instead of linking to where you go, hey, read this.
	Here, I love you.
	Read this to remember that I love you when this radio became popular.
	Hey, want to meet tonight?
	In this case, please change your password so you click on some bogus thing, and it clicks, and what's your old password?
	And then as soon as you type it in, the bad guy who's doing keystroke logging or whatever grabs it and then logs in for himself and then steals all your emails.
	That's how that works.
	It's very simple, but it's very low-end.
	This is not like high-end Russian hacking.
	It's something you would definitely do if you wanted to pin it on somebody.
	You could say, oh, well, they did that.
	That would be simple enough.
	With no proof, because they can't produce any proof it was anything other than a 400-pound guy in his basement or whatever Trump liked to demean it with.
	The other one, I think, was obviously some similar thing that happened, or it was that inside job guy who got shot in the back of the head.
	Seth Rich.
	Seth Ritch, and it's probably, in fact, there's a lot of indications that it was him.
	There's no way that any of these campaigns don't have operatives in the other campaigns.
	That's what we talked about in the last show, the DCCC. And it's just the way these guys operate, and the Republicans, who I blame for all this, because they're the ones who would benefit the most, and they don't care if the Russians take the blame or not, because it's the Democrats accusing, not them.
	And then, of course, this whole thing about the RNC was hacked, and that was a small story that lasted for a while until Rance Priebus went on one of these shows the other day, like last week, and said, we were never hacked.
	So why were the FBI in your office?
	We brought the FBI in, Priebus says, to make sure that we weren't hacked, and we weren't.
	So that nonsense that the Russians hacked both sides and only released one side is bullcrap.
	I just don't see the Russians being that.
	I think they just let the things go their own way.
	The Russians don't need to do any of this work.
	Regardless, this story will live on in infamy as the election cycle the Russians hacked.
	There's nothing that, you know, to use the phrase, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.
	And especially when you hear the president saying, oh, we are going to respond to Russia's evil, evil doings.
	With respect to response.
	Okay.
	My principal goal Leading up to the election.
	Didn't he say he was going to call him out?
	He was going to name and shame?
	Wasn't that the whole idea?
	I remember that, yeah, name and shame.
	We're going to call you out, Russia.
	Was making sure that the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with the actual process of voting.
	Okay, so he's saying that really, it was no difference.
	You know, the overall irony to me, if you're going to be totally cynical about the whole thing, because when they did the recount, you know, a couple of them that got through, Trump picked up a few more votes.
	He got 150 votes more, yeah.
	Now, is that maybe the Obama administration actually did put the just...
	Clamp down on any possibility of the election votes actually being rigged.
	And that's actually what cost Hillary the election?
	Is they wouldn't let it get rigged.
	Yeah.
	Hey, thanks, Obama.
	And we accomplished that.
	Yeah, we accomplished it.
	That does not mean that we are not going to respond.
	It simply meant that we had a set of priorities leading up to the election that were of the utmost importance.
	He was busy, is what he's saying.
	I was busy.
	I was busy.
	Now I'm going to...
	We're going to do something about it.
	Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you.
	Oh, we can do stuff to you.
	We can do stuff.
	Hey, man, do you want me to do some stuff to you?
	We can do stuff to you.
	But it is also important for us to do that in a thoughtful, methodical way.
	Some of it we do publicly.
	Okay.
	Some of it...
	We will do in a way that they know, but not everybody will.
	And I know that there have been folks out there who suggest somehow that if we went out there and made big announcements and bumped our chests about a bunch of stuff, that somehow that would potentially spook the Russians.
	But keep in mind that...
	We already have enormous numbers of sanctions against the Russians.
	The relationship between us and Russia has deteriorated, sadly.
	Yeah, thanks to you.
	Yeah, in the past few years.
	There's your legacy.
	It's deteriorated, sadly.
	Significantly over the last several years.
	Thank you.
	And so how we approach an appropriate response that increases costs for them for behavior like this in the future but does not create problems for us is something that's worth taking the time to think through and figure out.
	And that's exactly what we've done.
	So at a point in time where we've taken certain actions that we can divulge publicly, we will do so.
	There are times where the message will go, will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized.
	Why not?
	I don't like that.
	I think they like to blame the Russians.
	I think there's a history.
	And I think the Russians are just coasting because they can make everything that they're doing.
	It makes them seem more powerful than they are.
	And we kind of forget where this stems from.
	And I think this is what all the diplomats and everybody in Washington still think about.
	Because this stems from the 2011 Hillary Clinton meddling.
	Play this card.
	This is when they meddled in the Russian elections.
	Does it make sense that Vladimir Putin would have a role?
	I think we have to go back to 2011.
	In the fall of 2011, there were mass demonstrations in Moscow protesting falsified elections and protesting Vladimir Putin's announcement that he was coming back to the Kremlin.
	He directly accused Hillary Clinton at that point of paying the demonstrators to go onto the streets in Moscow.
	So he apparently and his colleagues in the Kremlin believed that there was U.S. interference in 2011 in the election and therefore it's fair game to interfere in the U.S. election because that's, you know, what big countries do.
	Can something like this, it's a big government like all governments are, can something like this happen without his knowledge or approval?
	I think he must have known on some level that this was happening.
	I mean, hackers couldn't just have done this freelance without at least having a sense that this was permitted.
	Whether he personally directed it, I think that's much more difficult to say.
	I haven't seen the evidence none of us have.
	Yeah, none of us have seen any evidence of anything.
	I did find a clip that talks about the one piece of evidence that is actually the genesis for blaming this on the Russians.
	There is a piece of evidence that is, while it's circumstantial at best, but it's real evidence.
	And Julian Assange talked about it.
	I want to play this.
	This is, according to them, what the entire thesis of Russian hacking is based on.
	It's based on the conversion of some of these documents, some of these emails.
	Now in the middle we have something which is the publication by other media organisations of information purportedly from the DNC, and it seems to be the case.
	So that's a series of Word documents and PDFs published by The Hill, by Gorka, by The Smoking Gun.
	This is a completely separate batch of documents compared to the 20,000 pristine emails that we have released.
	In this batch of documents released by these other media organisations there are claims that in the metadata someone's done a document to PDF conversion and in some cases the language of the computer that was used for that conversion was Russian.
	So that's The circumstantial evidence are that some Russian was involved or someone who wanted to make it look like a Russian was involved with these other media organizations.
	That's not the case for the material that we release.
	So that is an interesting little tidbit.
	That the conversion from Word doc or PDFs, that there were some Russian characters in the file that were translated along with them, meaning that someone had used a Russian version.
	Well, in the metadata of a lot of these things, especially Adobe products, but also in Microsoft products, there will be like your name.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	The version of the software, what language you're using, all that stuff will be there very clearly laid out.
	It wasn't like anything left over.
	It's just in there.
	And you always have to go into metadata.
	The same thing with JPEGs.
	There's a lot of information that you could stick into the metadata with JPEGs.
	And also the EXIF information, sometimes with location.
	All of it.
	There's a lot of stuff.
	In fact, some of it tells you the focal length of the lens.
	Yeah, your flash.
	Yeah, all that stuff.
	One person who's very disappointed the president is not immediately going and bombing Russia appeared on ABC because, let's be honest, she can't go on CNN anymore.
	That is the lying sack known as Donna Brazile who, of course, her emails were also published and it showed that she had given not one but two questions to the Clinton campaign that were coming up in a debate.
	So she is a dishonest person.
	Dishonest.
	And she goes on ABC with Martha Raddatz, and it's just like it never happened.
	You know, she's a victim, of course.
	Look, I think the president is right to call for a full investigation.
	Every federal agency involved should put everything on the table, and the Democratic Party will put everything on the table.
	They came after us daily.
	Hourly.
	And there were times when we thought they would penetrate us and we would have another breach.
	But we had a great...
	You think the president didn't know they were continuing?
	You said they were continuing.
	You know, when I saw the president, I was a little disappointed that, you know, we were under constant attack.
	We never felt comfortable.
	We didn't know what was coming next.
	And, you know, this is not just about computers.
	This is harassment of individuals.
	It's harassment of our candidates.
	Harassment of our donors.
	We had stolen information, personal information.
	People were personally harassed.
	So are you disappointed in the president's response?
	She said we had stolen information.
	She didn't say we had information stolen from us.
	Good catch.
	We had stolen information.
	We were fencing.
	Are you disappointed in the president's response?
	I am disappointed that we went through this process.
	The country went through this process.
	But are you disappointed in his response?
	You know, Martha, I don't personally, this was, we were attacked by a foreign adversary.
	And I think it's the responsibility of the government to help individual citizens as well as institutions, nonprofits, corporations to protect us.
	Thanks, Obama.
	Yeah, sure.
	You need to be protected.
	You cheater.
	She's a cheater.
	She's a cheat.
	NBC had, they were playing a lot of these different segments, and they did leave one thing, Obama's letting it rip against Russia, a little commentary, which I thought was completely uncalled for, and incredibly insulting, and you wonder why we have such mediocre relations with Russia when you have something like this, this is NBC final Obama lets it rip clip.
	They are a smaller country.
	They are a weaker country.
	Their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy.
	This is a low point.
	Oh, man, they cut off the best part.
	Oh, shoot.
	What's the best part?
	Let me see if I have it.
	Yeah, I have it.
	Hold on.
	Hold on.
	Then I'll go back to your clip.
	They cut off a really good part of that.
	Just as I told Russia to stop it and indicated there will be consequences when they do it, the Chinese have in the past engaged in cyber attacks directed at our companies to steal trade secrets and proprietary technology.
	And I had to have the same conversation with President Xi.
	Yeah, he said, cut it out, Xi, Xi, Xi, Xi, whatever your name is, Prime Minister, President, cut it out, man.
	And what we've seen is some evidence.
	They didn't really stop.
	That they have reduced, but not completely eliminated, these activities.
	Partly because they can use cutouts.
	One of the problems with the internet and cyber issues is that there's not always a return address.
	And by the time you catch up to it, attributing what happened to a particular government can be difficult.
	Okay, what he said was, here, I will finish his statement based on your clip.
	Damn, I'm sorry, I thought it was in this one.
	Where is it again?
	It is NBC, Obama lets it rip.
	Okay, because they cut it out.
	They are a smaller country, they are a weaker country, their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy.
	And he says, except oil, gas, and some arms.
	Well, that's what we do.
	I know, it's ludicrous.
	You mean they're a competitor to us, is what you're saying.
	Oil, gas, and some arms.
	Yeah, that's our GDP. Yeah, no, that was ironic.
	It was a very funny comment.
	You're right.
	I'll say.
	Well, that's why they cut it out.
	This is NBC. They're very slanted.
	They're not going to make it obvious that you don't have a bunch of guys sitting there watching the news and delivering punchlines.
	They do that on purpose.
	I got a clip that explains the president's use of ISIL instead of ISIS. Oh, okay.
	Yeah, I was waiting for this explanation.
	And this comes from that new guy who apparently has been on Fox a lot, Sebastian Gorka.
	He seems to be...
	Yeah, Gorka's showing up a lot.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So we got to keep our eye on him for multiple reasons.
	But I did like his explanation of why the president uses ISIL and not ISIS. But you've been...
	We're in touch with the transition team.
	You've talked about radical Islam.
	You believe it's something we can defeat.
	Obama was out there to press it today saying he took the best course in Syria.
	Really?
	Do you agree with that assessment?
	No, because I live in the real world, Sean.
	It's a catastrophe.
	Remember the red lines?
	The real reason he calls it ISIL and not ISIS. What is the reason?
	The real reason is because he doesn't want to remind people that S stands for Syria and that he drew the red lines again and again and again.
	That makes nothing but sense.
	He doesn't want to remind people it's Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
	He wants to be Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.
	Please don't mention the S word.
	Hey, it's as good as any.
	Yeah, it's fine.
	That guy is just horrible.
	You know, he sounds like...
	I saw an interview with Tom Ford, the clothing designer.
	Yeah, I've seen it, yeah.
	And the guy sounds just like him.
	He's extremely kind of smug.
	That was the interview where he said every man should be penetrated anally at least once in his life to know what it's like to be a woman.
	I swear that's what he said.
	Tom Ford?
	Yes!
	Oh, God.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, and now you're going to know what it's like to be a woman.
	Try getting pregnant, and then you'll know what it's like to be a woman.
	I'm not going there.
	Yeah, and then, Will, you should.
	I'm not going there.
	Drop it in and nobody's going to get me crap.
	Hey, let me just ask you one question.
	Because, you know, we have all these, you actually brought this up.
	Like, one day Trump is nincompoop, he's dumb, the next day he's genius, what he's doing.
	It's very hard.
	So, here's one.
	Hillary Clinton lost because the Russians hacked our election.
	Hillary Clinton won by almost 3 million votes.
	Please, pick one.
	Either one.
	Just pick one.
	Yeah, well, somehow they managed to...
	They understood our system so well that they managed to hack the electoral culture.
	She hasn't even voted yet.
	I have an electoral college...
	Do you know what I say to that?
	Fact check, mate, is what I say.
	Oh, so you actually worked on that gag.
	Hell yeah.
	I stepped on it.
	Yeah, you did.
	Yeah, I stepped on it.
	Fact checkmate was my...
	Yeah, I think you could have done a connective in your discussion so I couldn't have interrupted so easily.
	Oh, that's so hard.
	I should just mute you.
	That's the way to do it.
	Oh!
	Yeah, that would work.
	Alright, here, I gotta play this one.
	This is off topic a little bit, but this is an electoral college guy in California.
	Now, I want you to listen to this carefully and try to understand what this is about.
	It is the craziest story that I think I've got for this show.
	This is the weird, hill-bot-thinking electoral college member in California who's trying to get out of his pledge to vote for Hillary.
	Okay.
	And who is this, John?
	I'm sorry.
	This is weird, hillbott-thinking electoral college member of California.
	Constitutional showdown in federal court in San Jose today.
	An electoral college voter from Monterey County asked the judge to allow him to vote his conscience for president.
	NBC Bay Area's Damien Trujillo spoke exclusively with that elector today.
	I joined us live in San Jose to tell us why this man, this guy could make history, Damien.
	Yeah, Terry, that Electoral College vote is on Monday.
	Vince Kohler is a Democrat, and if he does not vote for Hillary Clinton, then he faces felony charges in California and up to three years in prison.
	So he came here to federal court hoping to get an injunction to keep him from being arrested.
	Vince Kohler is an electoral voter.
	Today he stood outside the San Jose Federal Courthouse with his lawyer after testifying that he should be allowed to vote his conscience in the electoral college process.
	So if I am not allowed to vote for someone other than Hillary Clinton, in effect, I'm enabling an election of Donald Trump, the president.
	And in good conscience, I cannot do that.
	The Democrat instead wants to cross party lines on Monday and vote for a Republican, like John Kasich, since he knows Clinton can't win.
	But state law prevents that, so he came to court.
	Oh no!
	This cannot be...
	Now hold on a second.
	This won't stand.
	What kind of insanity...
	Are we talking about here?
	He's pledged to vote for Hillary.
	He's in California.
	California went big for Hillary.
	That's where your three million votes comes from.
	And he doesn't want to vote for Hillary because then he's enabling Trump.
	I'm telling you, this is nuts.
	This is absolute California bubble insanity at its worst.
	It makes no sense.
	And it's stupid.
	And why is he even doing this?
	He's got to hire a lawyer and he's going to do all this stuff so he can vote for John Kasich?
	Because otherwise he's enabling Trump?
	In other words, if he does what he's supposed to do, he's voting for Trump?
	Well, you know, the idea is they need to get...
	It doesn't matter where they get them from.
	They need to get 37 electors to vote for someone else.
	One person.
	37 Trump electors?
	Yeah.
	He's actually making it so they need 38.
	Well, that's nuts.
	That's what I'm trying to express.
	Yeah, I got you.
	That's totally nuts.
	Well, then let me bring you something from the great state of Texas, where we have a turncoat.
	We have our turncoat elector.
	I'm not going to vote for Trump.
	I can't do that in good conscience.
	This guy is a fraud.
	And it was Tucker Carlson who gave us the clip.
	Well, here's something new.
	An anti-Trump Republican elector is facing allegations that he lied in a big way about being a first responder on 9-11.
	According to a report from WFAA television, Texas elector Christopher Supran claimed to be one of the first firemen on the scene at the burning Pentagon on the day of the attacks.
	But an investigation discovered Supran wasn't hired as a fireman until October of 2001, a month later.
	And in any case, his fire department didn't even respond to the Pentagon attacks.
	Well, Supran appeared on this program last week to talk about his refusal to vote for Trump.
	If you missed it, here's part of it.
	You described yourself, and I think I'm quoting, as a moral elector.
	You're suggesting that people who are voting for Trump in the Electoral College two weeks from now are immoral?
	No, I'm saying I'm taking a conscious decision to consider who I'm voting for.
	I don't think Donald Trump meets the test to be qualified to be president.
	Well, despite intense and growing criticism, Supran is standing by his story, as improbable as the story now sounds.
	He claims he was a member of another fire department in Virginia at the time.
	And, of course, we'll bring you updates on this fascinating story.
	Oops.
	Wrong guy.
	They picked the wrong guy.
	They got duped.
	Well, the Republicans are the ones who got duped.
	Somebody got duped.
	Well, he's on the Republican slate.
	You know that Tucker Carlson's dad started Voice of America?
	I think I knew that.
	Yeah, I think he might even have been on the broadcast board of governors, which, by the way, is changing.
	Just talking about fake news and...
	No longer will the entire board be appointed, but the president will appoint the CEO of the Broadcast Board of Governors, and that will be the only guy who has to be approved, and he will be the guy, one person, who takes direct orders, I guess, from the president.
	So it's just going to get easier, I would say.
	None of this is good.
	No, it's not.
	And then just a couple other things.
	Almost as predicted, the Washington Post now promoting a plug-in for your browser.
	I knew it was going to happen.
	I told you.
	Did you see my retort on Twitter?
	No, I didn't.
	What did you say?
	I'd rather have a plug-in in my browser that fact-checks the Washington Post.
	And I'm sure they responded immediately by blocking you.
	My mute switch doesn't work anymore.
	It's a little crackly.
	It's very crackly.
	So you can pick up an extension for Donald Trump's tweets, and it will change everything he says into truth.
	And then there's also a new website, SnopesForSnopes.com.
	Glad that someone started that thing.
	It's Snopes for Snopes.
	Oh, that's a great idea.
	Yeah, Snopes for Snopes.
	We'll start with that Al Gore entry.
	Well, wait a minute.
	If you go to Snopes for Snopes.com, let's see what we get.
	I think you might want to try this.
	Let me see.
	Yeah, go to Snopes for Snopes.com.
	Snopes for Snopes.com.
	Got it?
	No.
	I haven't even got my browser up.
	Oh, man.
	I wasn't ready.
	Okay, now I'm going to do it.
	Snopes for Snopes.
	I know what it is.
	It's Snopes for Snopes.
	Yeah, Snopes for Snopes.
	Server not found.
	F-O-R. Snopes for Snopes.
	That's what I got.
	Nah, you're not doing it right.
	Oh, I have Nope for Snopes.
	Snopes for Snopes.
	I didn't get the first S. The chat room already is there.
	Oh, good for them.
	Yeah.
	Well, they've obviously brought the site down because now it's not coming up.
	Doesn't seem possible.
	Well, it could be if it's on a 1200 baud modem.
	I've seen worse.
	All right.
	Well, that's too bad.
	I can't.
	It won't come up.
	Really?
	Well, it redirects to noagendershow.com.
	Oh, wait, wait, wait.
	I see what I see.
	Wasn't you glad you went to this segment?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, real happy.
	There we go.
	It says no agenda.
	Yeah, exactly.
	It redirects to our show.
	Oh, okay.
	I get it.
	Oh, that's hilarious.
	Oh, well, it would have been better if you had a browser open.
	Now, I have a series of more NBC evidence.
	Wanted to ask you a question.
	I'm actually stunned by that guy saying that NBC is like, I apologize for Trump.
	Well, not an apologist.
	No, I'll ask you later.
	Go ahead.
	We're a little behind.
	I want to get to our first segment.
	Do you want to just thank some people?
	I'll just tease it.
	Tease it.
	Because our segment is not going to be very long.
	Okay, tease it.
	Okay, we've got Cynthia McFadden doing just what I consider to be just a horrible report.
	But it's slamming Trump and his people.
	Evening, President Obama today defended his level of response to Russian hacking aimed at influencing the election.
	While for the first time appearing to directly point a finger of blame at Vladimir Putin, the White House blew the whistle on the hack in October without great detail.
	Today, acknowledging some of what we reported exclusively this week, the president said that at the time he wanted to play the information straight in the midst of a hyper-partisan election.
	But NBC News has learned some details of secret operations to thwart further Russian meddling.
	Our chief investigative correspondent Cynthia McFadden has more tonight.
	NBC News broke the news this week that Russian President Vladimir Putin directed Russia's meddling into the U.S. election.
	And this afternoon, President Obama all but confirmed it.
	Not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin.
	What he declined to say was whether Hillary Clinton lost because of the Russian meddling.
	I'm going to let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened in the election.
	Officials tell NBC News that the nation's intelligence agencies all agree.
	Seeing Donald Trump elected became one of Russia's motives, along with undermining confidence in the U.S. election.
	While President Obama tried to reassure the country today, his administration took appropriate steps to warn Russia off.
	He has still declined to give specifics about what the U.S. did to protect the nation around the election.
	But tonight, NBC News can report that at least a half dozen clandestine actions were taken by the U.S. to ensure the integrity of the voting process itself.
	According to a senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of these operations, for the first time in American history, hundreds of military and intelligence cyber experts who work out of top secret facilities, including underground bunkers, monitored real time intelligence and cyber traffic including underground bunkers, monitored real time intelligence and cyber traffic regarding the election.
	I like the theater of the mind, including underground bunkers.
	That's one reason for that part of the clip.
	What are you talking about?
	Why do they have underground bunkers to do some IP tracking?
	It sounds better.
	It sounds cooler.
	Oh, they're in underground bunkers, these guys.
	That's right.
	Why?
	Well, I have a crackpot command center, let's be honest.
	But it's not an underground bunker.
	Not that you know.
	I know.
	My people.
	And I have it on good authority from secret documents that you've got no underground bunker.
	No, you mean from officials inside the State Department who wish to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak about the intelligence.
	Right.
	Although they have to take a lie detector test.
	It's unbelievable.
	This is unbelievable how bad this reported is.
	That's my favorite part.
	It's like, well, you know, they have to take a lie detector test, but they're good at lying.
	But they don't lie to us.
	No, they don't lie to us.
	Come on, come on, come on.
	They don't lie to us.
	All right, you have a part two and three of this, I believe.
	Oh, yeah, I think most of this...
	Let's play part two.
	I kept it as a three-parter for a reason.
	It was all hands on deck to erect what they thought would be an impenetrable defense.
	Hold on a second.
	All hands on deck.
	All hands on deck.
	All hands into the bunker.
	A cyber firewall designed to detect...
	Wait, firewall?
	Wait, wait, they got a firewall.
	Dive, dive, dive.
	Dive, dive, dive, dive.
	A cyber firewall designed to detect and block any Russian cyber warriors from interfering in the American infrastructure.
	Brought to you by Intel.
	From the U.S. power grid to the nation's communication systems.
	Let's dramatize this more.
	Yeah, it sounds great.
	We're all gonna die.
	What are the nation's communication systems?
	What is our nation's communication systems?
	Time Warner Cable.
	Spectrum.
	Systems.
	Every vulnerable path was monitored.
	The senior intelligence official told NBC News, imagine protecting the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree from above, from below, from the sides.
	Now imagine you had to protect every one of the 50,000 bulbs on the tree from electromagnetic interference.
	You can do it, but it takes extraordinary resources.
	But last night at a private party with her top supporters, Hillary Clinton suggested Vladimir Putin's vendetta against her did help shape the outcome.
	This is not just an attack against me and my campaign, although that may have added fuel to it.
	This is an attack against our country.
	Something the President acknowledged today as well.
	Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you.
	Cut it out!
	Cut it out, dudes!
	Talk about, oh, it's like protecting every light bulb.
	Well, all you have to do is protect the one cord and the extension cord.
	Yeah.
	Unbelievable.
	You're really, really surprised?
	After 10 years.
	I'm always surprised.
	Otherwise, I wouldn't be doing this show.
	I am flabbergasted by some of this stuff.
	It goes on like this, and it's just crazy.
	Let's do the last clip, then.
	A senior intelligence official tells us the massive U.S. effort should itself signal to the public how seriously the Obama administration...
	Wait a minute.
	What massive?
	They're telling us nothing.
	How can that be a signal to us if you say, well, we're not going to tell you what we're doing, but it's massive?
	That is just...
	I don't understand what she's saying.
	A senior intelligence official tells us the massive U.S. effort should itself signal to the public how seriously the Obama administration took the threat.
	The feeling inside the White House, as we heard...
	In other words, they didn't take it seriously at all.
	And now, since Hillary didn't win as expected, now they're just making stories up just to finish off the year.
	That's right.
	...to the public how seriously the Obama administration took the threat.
	The feeling inside the White House, as we heard from the president today, was that to reveal the details of what was going on would further alarm the public and undermine American confidence in the electoral process.
	All right, Cynthia, thank you.
	And the Russians, meantime, are trying to hit back at the American claims today.
	We want to get reaction from there, from our chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel in Moscow, with new developments in a cold year of words.
	In Russia, the message to Washington today was put up, show proof of Moscow's election hacking, or shut up.
	Yeah.
	Bam.
	Yeah.
	Put up or shut up.
	Yeah.
	And the reason they don't want to give us any details is because they don't want to alarm the public.
	They don't want to, yeah, they're going to alarm the public that we didn't do crap about anything if we even suspected something.
	Wow.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it's pretty bad.
	Well, you know, luckily we're here.
	We're saving the day.
	That's right.
	And with that, I'd like to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, John C. Where the C stands for checking the facts so you don't have to.
	Dvorak.
	Well, in the morning to you, Mr.
	Adam Curry.
	Also in the morning, you know, ships and sea boots on the ground, feet in the air.
	Subs in the water and all the dames and knights out there.
	Yes, especially the subs in the water.
	I got something to say about them later on in the program.
	And in the morning to the chat room, noagendastream.com.
	Hello, everybody.
	Good to see you here.
	Good numbers today again.
	Good numbers.
	In the morning to SilentTapper72.
	SilentTapper72 brought us the artwork for episode 886, The Exodus of Misery.
	And this was good.
	We would have used this as a title possibly, but it was the Recycled Children gag, which was something that came up on the previous program.
	And it was good.
	We liked that.
	It was a nice piece of work.
	And please go to NoAgendaArtGenerator.com.
	Check out all the submissions.
	You can use it for all kinds of cool stuff to promote the show.
	You can also submit there, obviously.
	We pick the art right after the show is over.
	And we appreciate all the work that all of our artists do.
	NoAgendaArtGenerator.com.
	Now, let's thank some of our people in our Value for Value model.
	This is how it works.
	We bring you the value.
	Take no commercial interest, no money of commercial interest.
	Just no commercials.
	No nothing.
	Yeah.
	No money.
	Again.
	And no exception.
	No exception.
	One executive producer, one associate executive producer.
	It's close that we only had just one.
	But Sir Pool Man Tim in Phoenix, Arizona is our sole executive producer for this show as we enter the Christmas holidays where people are losing interest until February.
	Right.
	And he says, 33333 from Phoenix, I have been an avid listener since episode 48 and have since canceled my cable.
	This best podcast in the universe has saved or created my sanity.
	That's what we do.
	We save or create sanity.
	That's how we roll.
	I would like to ask you for a dedouching for letting my PayPal account go dark.
	You've been dedouched.
	Can't stop the dedouching once it's out.
	And due to my relocation from lost wages back to Phoenix after 12 years, I will also need a jobs karma, a Nancy Pelosi jobs, and an LGY. Thank you for your courage.
	Thank you very much, Sir Pool Man Tim.
	Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
	Let's vote for jobs!
	Yes!
	You thought karma.
	There you go, man.
	Thank you.
	You know, I have a clip.
	I'm going to play it.
	Let's play it now because we could kill a little time.
	This is Trump's, I think this is Mobile Alabama speech that he just gave like yesterday or the day before.
	Or is it Pennsylvania?
	But I know it's Mobile for sure.
	Oh, I know exactly what this is.
	Okay, this is just a small clip.
	This is the Trump's jobs, jobs, jobs clip.
	And I want to play it and then I have a commentary.
	We are going to stand up for the American worker like nobody has ever stood up for that worker.
	Our economic agenda can be summed up in three very beautiful words.
	Jobs, jobs, jobs.
	I actually ISOed that.
	Jobs, jobs, jobs.
	I like that.
	Jobs.
	Now, I was thinking about this because Nancy Pelosi's thing is jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
	No, she said, let's vote for jobs.
	No, then she says, let's vote for jobs.
	Hold on, hold on, hold on.
	I think it's jobs, jobs.
	She says, for jobs?
	Yes.
	Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
	Yes, let's vote for jobs.
	You're right.
	Now, I just want to mention a little writer's trick as a rhetoric trick.
	If you want...
	There's three ways of you...
	If you want to do this gag, you can do...
	Let's get jobs and jobs, which is two.
	Jobs, jobs, and jobs is three.
	And jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs is four.
	And you will use them in writing or to make points or to get somebody to think one way or the other.
	You always use these repetitive things.
	And the rule is when you do it twice...
	That means you're demanding, and you don't want to go on about it.
	It's very important.
	I'm getting to the point.
	You're making a point, and you're wrapping it up.
	If you do it three times, that means you're kind of the guy in the middle.
	Again, like Trump was at the table in the judge's position in the middle.
	Then it's also the Trinity.
	You've got one, two, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
	So you use three, and that's supposed to be the most...
	That's like, oh, it's a fact.
	And then if you use four, like Nancy Pelosi does, that means you're off the rails.
	You're off the rails.
	And you're emotionally so involved in this that you have to go four or even five.
	And this is a writer's trick.
	It's kind of a writer's thing, yeah.
	I don't know.
	I remember learning that in college.
	I love it when you analyze the writers.
	You know exactly how this works.
	I love that.
	It's great.
	It's good stuff.
	Anyway, so Pelosi's actually got the most powerful of the group, I think, because she sounds crazy.
	It's crazy.
	And then Trump is reasonable.
	That's what's odd about it.
	The people always give them crap.
	We also have the Nancy and Trump together.
	Jobs.
	Jobs.
	And jobs.
	Let's vote for jobs!
	But we're...
	I'm...
	Hesitant.
	We need to just use the Pelosi because that's the one that works.
	I don't want to just use a different jobs karma because we know this works.
	Yeah, we can't change that.
	Pelosi's what it is.
	Alright, onward.
	Sir Don in Wyndham, New Hampshire.
	2222.
	My man.
	Hi guys, Don here.
	I need your help.
	My good buddy, Joe, has a terrible accident while traveling on vacation and broke his leg.
	Prognosis is paralyzed from the neck down.
	Yikes.
	I need maximum karma.
	I broke his neck.
	I need maximum karma for him and his wonderful wife, Michelle, who has been mildly hit in the mouth, but who knows?
	She is coming around.
	Maybe she has other things to do right now.
	Yeah, I think she's got other things on her mind.
	Well, I've been a donor since 2012 when Sir Brian Destroyer of Cones hit me in the mouth.
	My accounting shows I'm well beyond Baronet, but I hate that title and I will wait for Baron.
	Okay.
	Thanks for your help and a great show.
	Keep it up.
	All right.
	We'll get maximum karma here.
	Maximum, maximum karma.
	You've got karma.
	All right.
	And we wish our knight, no, his buddy Joe.
	We wish him good luck.
	And that's all we got for today's show.
	887.
	We got 888 coming up.
	We'll see what happens then.
	Maybe we'll pick it up and then we're on our way to Christmas.
	I do want to mention that I received a package yesterday.
	A big box from UPS. And it said, you know, there's all kinds of markings on it.
	It said, this side up, live yeast inside.
	Like, all kinds of stuff on it.
	You know, this side up.
	And I'm like, okay.
	And then as I'm opening it up, there's another box inside.
	And whoever packed this up had cut up one of those pool noodles.
	You know those noodles for the pool that you float on?
	Yeah, they're big.
	They're big.
	Yeah, you cut one up into pieces and use it as shock-absorbing material.
	There's another box inside that says be very careful with opening this.
	And Tina actually said, I'm not going to stand near you while you're doing that.
	I'm like, okay.
	Well, it doesn't feel too heavy.
	So I don't think there's an actual bomb inside.
	Cutting it open.
	Another box inside.
	And then it turns out this was a gag gift.
	Inside another box was a small sack of safety pins.
	Which I guess is the joke because that's, you know, the safety pin is your safe space.
	Yeah, so that was Matthew.
	That was a gag gift.
	Hope you liked it.
	Thanks.
	Yeah, he did put in some live yeast.
	He put in some IPAs in there, so at least I got something to drink.
	People, if you ask me for my address to send something, don't do that.
	I'm freaked out enough.
	I'm going to send me like, hey, this looks like a really dangerous package.
	I'm one of those snakes that flies out.
	Boing, boing, boing, boing.
	All right.
	Well, hey, thank you to our executive producer and our sole executive producer, our sole associate executive producer, for bringing us some help today.
	Definitely need more help if you want to consider doing that to keep the show going.
	We'll have another one on Thursday.
	Remember us at Dvorak.org slash NA. And just like Sir Don, you can do the same.
	Go out there, hit people in the mouth, propagate the formula.
	Our formula is this.
	We go out, we hit people in the mouth.
	Water! Water! Shut up!
	Shut up, slave!
	Ha ha ha.
	Alrighty.
	Now, let's finish off what you wanted to do here.
	Well, that was the NBC ludicrous thing, but I do have a couple of things.
	Shields.
	PBS, by the way, I haven't changed the leaner report, but I'm going to keep it kind of updated.
	PBS seems to have been...
	I don't know what happened.
	I think they lost it.
	Once Gwen quit, or quit, she died.
	She died.
	She wanted to quit so bad, she just died.
	I think that she had a great influence on the show.
	I didn't realize this until she disappeared and died.
	Interesting.
	Because the show has seriously changed.
	Oh.
	And I think she was, now I look at it, I'm trying to analyze it, I think she was a calming influence.
	Now we feel bad that we always made fun of her.
	Told her a hagiographer, yes.
	I feel bad anyway.
	You should.
	But it seems, because now it's gone crazy, it's like very anti-Trump.
	There's a lot of, they have poetry readings.
	What?
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Well, I mean, they have this, like, my opinion pieces which come on and somebody, some nude Nick from God knows where goes on about themselves.
	And I'm going to apply so I can go on about myself.
	And it's just like, there's this, it's just lost a certain element of I don't know what it was, but I would have to say she was responsible because it's not there anymore.
	That's the only reason I'd say that.
	But now we have Shields, who's not with Brooks today, he's with some guy from the National Review.
	But Shields, and these Democrats, which is what he's supposed to represent in this little debate, That they have two to three quarters of the way through the show.
	He's supposed to be the Democrat, but today's Democrats hate Russia, which is very unusual because they were always influenced by the Marxists, which were supposedly given their orders from the Kremlin.
	He hates Russia, he hates this, and they're talking patriotism and all this crazy stuff.
	And I also believe that...
	Wait a minute, wait a minute.
	What do you mean they were talking patriotism and all this crazy stuff?
	What do you mean?
	What I mean by crazy stuff is for Democrats.
	Democrats are not patriotic.
	Democrats are not Russia haters.
	Democrats were pro-Labor.
	But now the crazy thing is they, I think they're panicked because Labor doesn't like the Democrats anymore.
	They're voting Republican.
	And that's what caused Hillary the election, I believe.
	And so they're completely freaked out.
	So let's listen to some of these rants, these rantings.
	This is Shields, and I think the first one is...
	This is Shields on patriotism and Trump and Russia.
	Most alarming to me is Donald Trump will become president of the United States.
	He won the election.
	This is not about who won the election.
	He will become the 45th president on the 20th of January.
	It is about...
	Whether the sovereignty and self-determination of the United States was compromised by an organized at the highest Russian levels, which means the imprimatur of Mr.
	Putin, espionage, sabotage of the American democratic system.
	And there's an office in this country higher than that of president.
	It's that of Patriot.
	And John McCain is filling that right now.
	And John McCain is saying these are questions that must be answered.
	These are questions that demand an answer.
	And the idea, as Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate Majority Leader says, send it to the Intelligence Committee, is just a way of sending it to limbo.
	Because we spent $40 million in five years in the Intelligence Committee investigating torture at Abu Ghraib.
	We have yet to get a report on it.
	Okay.
	So once you mention McCain, of course, especially if you're a Democrat, as far as I'm concerned, you've lost all credibility.
	But he goes on about patriotism and all the rest of it, and Trump, and he talks about us losing our sovereignty.
	We lost our sovereignty to the WTO. We lost our sovereignty to NAFTA. There are provisions in those treaties that take our sovereignty away, literally.
	And those are all done by Bill Clinton.
	Bill Clinton has already taken our sovereignty away, but I don't think these Democrats realize that.
	And getting it back is going to be more a problem.
	Oh, I disagree.
	I think they do understand that.
	They don't want to admit it.
	Well, they're globalists.
	Shields is like the rest of them.
	They're globalists.
	But here's why I said it's crazy.
	You're a globalist.
	You're not supposed to want individual sovereignty.
	That's nationalism.
	So what is it?
	So these guys are, you know, they're completely mind screwed.
	They got, you know, they're thinking, the fuzzy thinking is coming out.
	Anyway, that's what I'm talking about here.
	We will not get a 9-11 commission.
	But I think John McCain and Armed Services Committee with Jack Reed, the Democrat, with Lindsey Graham and others and Kim Cain and a pretty damn good committee.
	I think you'll get it honest here.
	No, we need it.
	The idea that people who are so concerned about a five hundred thousand dollar contribution to the Clinton Foundation changing and influencing American foreign policy somehow indirectly and incurious about Russia's involvement in sabotaging an American election.
	Is just is unforgivable to me and irrational.
	I love how he throws out that number like it's just five hundred thousand dollars.
	500 million.
	Oh, he said 500 million?
	No, no, he said 500,000.
	He said 500,000.
	Like it's nothing.
	Why are you concerned about that?
	It's just peanuts.
	No one is bribable for 500,000.
	Yeah, and then he goes on that Russia sabotaged.
	He's going way over the deep end here.
	I'm sorry.
	Sabotage is not what happened.
	I totally agree.
	And words matter.
	No one's watching this crap anymore, John.
	No one's watching.
	We are.
	Well, there's that.
	To keep people from watching, we're doing it for them.
	Well, Mark, getting to what both of you are saying, this does leave a cloud, a dark cloud, hanging over the question of our democracy.
	I mean, if another nation, unfriendly, to put it, I guess, in the best way, It can come in and leak and get information and then have it leaked at will.
	What does that say about our system of government?
	No, I mean, it says that we're vulnerable to such attacks.
	And B, that we were manipulated and could be manipulated by Russia.
	I mean, Russia, this is not a one-off for Russia.
	I mean, Russia's done it already in Germany and Italy and democracies in Western Europe.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, the Brexit, everything.
	Germany, Italy, it's all Russia.
	It makes nothing but sense because, of course, Germany has a direct pipeline from gas to the North Stream.
	Of course, they don't want that from Russia.
	Of course, they don't want the Russians buying their cars, which is the Euro round trip.
	It's very well known.
	That's how the Euros flow.
	They sell their cars.
	Russia needs to have Euros to buy the cars.
	Now, Germany doesn't want that at all.
	No, nor does Russia.
	No, just hack away.
	Stupid morons.
	And by the way, when we do a Trump bit, you gotta do the jingle.
	He's Trump!
	He's Trump!
	The President!
	And now the President.
	My mouth today.
	President Trump today, or yesterday, tweeted about the Chinese stealing our research drone.
	I wanted to talk about this research drone for a moment, if you don't mind.
	Okay, this is a story I did pass up.
	Yeah, no, there's also no clips.
	However...
	Yeah, no, you said.
	No clip?
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I'll make sure I call you out every time you say it.
	I wish you would.
	I was thinking about just that the other day, because I was watching too much television to get these clips, and everybody's saying, yeah, no.
	I know, I know.
	Okay, here we go.
	So the president-elect tweeted, hey, this is an unprecedented crazy Chinese seizing our research drone, which in other stories has been called the equivalent of a weather balloon.
	Well, here's the great thing.
	We have a number of subs under the water guys who listen to this show.
	In fact, we have a rather high percentage, I would say, of submariners.
	Good.
	And you'd think that you'd call them...
	That, by the way, just to take it aside here, that has got to be, I think, for any person, you really have to be something special to be in those submarines for hours on end and under the water.
	It's just they're cramped.
	Well, let me take it one step further.
	Specifically, at least one of our subs under the water guys...
	Work specifically with these research drones.
	In fact, he told me, I would say at risk to himself, What he did and what this is about.
	So first he says, no doubt about it, that drone could not have been more than about five miles, but more likely like 150 feet from the drone, because that drone is tethered to the USS Jimmy Carter, which our guy worked on.
	In fact, he was one of the operators of said research drone and a diver.
	And he said, this is about one thing.
	And if you have not, you should read the book, Blind Man's Bluff.
	Have you heard of this?
	I'm sure you've heard of it.
	Yeah, I have heard of it.
	I have not read.
	Okay.
	Blind Man's Bluff is about the untold story of American submarine espionage.
	And here's how it works.
	This initially was written about the USS Parsh, I think, P-A-R-C-H-E. And the drones go out.
	They're tethered.
	And they do a couple of things.
	But mainly, they cut and tap into fiber optic cables.
	So you can do that remotely.
	And we've been doing this for 40 years.
	These ships, these submarines, have about 30 to 40 spooks on them.
	CIA guys.
	And there's a continuous data stream.
	And some of them from 40 years ago are still working.
	So I was, of course, fascinated, and our guy is talking about this, and then he opened up a little bit more.
	He says, yeah, we used to do some interesting stuff.
	Do you remember the Kursk?
	Remember that submarine disaster?
	The Russian submarine?
	And they said, well, it looks like a torpedo blew up in the tube and then we waited for days and they tried to go down and they thought maybe some guys would be alive in one compartment of the submarine.
	Do you recall that?
	I vaguely remember some of this.
	This was a while back.
	Yes.
	Well, apparently our dude named Ben was also involved in an operation where...
	Dude named Ben, our submariner.
	An operation where they went to go pick up some bits and pieces from that wreck.
	Covertly, of course.
	Because, and I'm just quoting here.
	If anyone had found those bits and pieces, it would have...
	It would have raised some very nasty stories.
	And so now I'm very interested.
	He says, okay, well you need to look up USS San Francisco, HMS Onyx, these submarines that have had these weird kind of accidents.
	And the accidents are, well of course the Kursk was not a, I mean that was a very deadly accident.
	I think the USS San Francisco, they said that it ran into something under the water.
	You know, you recall the Kursk.
	There was a conspiracy theory that there was an underwater collision with another submarine.
	I think the conspiracy theory was a NATO submarine.
	But here is what's happening, and this is a term I had not heard before.
	If you Google the term, it's barely Google-able.
	It's called underhulling.
	And what happens is, you take your sub, and you get underneath the Russian sub, about 8 feet below it.
	You use your periscope to take pictures, and you send out the divers to attach magnetic charges to the hull of the adversary, in this case, the Russian sub.
	But the Russians do this too.
	And they are blowing up subs with this practice.
	And he says, any guy who's a sub under the water, ships at sea, sub under the water, knows the term underhulling.
	And he says, we're doing it.
	And this was no research drone.
	We were definitely spying on the Chinese.
	And today comes out the news, which I find interesting.
	China agrees to return our stolen Navy drone.
	I'm not quite sure.
	Why they're so easy to give it back.
	The question still remains whether they give it back in one piece.
	Every time that they've captured one of our devices, this has been discussed in one news article, they always return it, but it's been already disassembled and they don't bother reassembling it.
	Right.
	Well, this thing is pretty simple.
	All it's intended to do is cut and tap into fiber optics.
	I'm sure they know about it.
	But I thought it was pretty interesting to learn about Bly Man's Bluff, about the underhauling, and how we possibly were responsible for the Kursk disaster.
	Possibly.
	Yeah, well, it adds to the conspiracy.
	I'm buying it.
	I'm not saying because I'm thinking this is very true.
	And of course, then my final question was, please tell me that you guys are around Antarctica all the time.
	He says, yeah, that's the number one place.
	All the subs are in Antarctica.
	It's called Operation Deep Freeze.
	And I guess we're there to protect the Nazi flying saucers.
	I'm not sure.
	There's something going on there for sure.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, anyone who watches these great channels on cable, History Channel, there's no History 2 anymore.
	It's now the AHC Channel, which I believe means Adolf Hitler Channel.
	And they always discuss the bell and the flying saucers and the secret Nazi flying saucer base in Antarctica because it's so convenient.
	You don't have to put one in the Andes or someplace that at least you can go down and buy something at the grocery store.
	You're going to put it in Antarctica.
	That just makes nothing but sense.
	That's where you put it.
	Of course.
	Of course.
	Oh, man.
	As soon as I hear about the cable splicing, I'm always thinking, which I guess is doable with fiber, not with much difficulty, but I'm always reminded, remember during our era, the show era, the No Agenda era, They had, that cable was sliced in the Mediterranean, and all these countries couldn't get any kind of connections, but they had to go route around all over the places to get an internet connection out.
	I've always been, that whole thing has always been suspect, that event.
	So as we now know, for 40 years, we've been, for 40 years, I've been splicing cables in cows!
	Oh, crap, you had something about Was that in your previous clip, the 9-11 commission?
	Was it something, some strange, almost like a non-sequitur, we won't get a 9-11 commission?
	That's what he said.
	Yeah.
	I caught Feinstein on MSNBC, I think with Andrea Mitchell, and she said something really odd under the heading of the truth always wants to come out.
	See if you can catch it.
	And I can cite cases of interrogation where information was gotten.
	For example, Ali Soufan in the case of the Blind Sheik, this is a while ago, but he got enough information so that the Blind Sheik that bombed that earlier, not the 9-11 bombing, but the one that took place earlier.
	The World Trade Center in 93, right?
	Yeah, that he pled guilty and is serving a life sentence.
	Did you hear what she said?
	No.
	Okay, I'll play it one more time.
	Just listen carefully.
	Not the 9-11 bombing, but the one that took place earlier.
	The World Trade Center in 93, right?
	Yeah, that he played...
	You can't hear it quite there.
	Here it goes again.
	He got enough information so that the blind cheek that bombed that earlier, not the 9-11 bombing, but the one that took...
	The 9-11 bombing?
	Since when was 9-11 a bombing?
	Oh.
	WTC 7 won't go away.
	Mm-hmm.
	I really doubt that if there was a controlled demolition, which you could consider a bombing, that Feinstein would have any knowledge of any such thing.
	I could be wrong, though.
	She's in the Senate Intelligence Committee, so you never know what she knows.
	I'm just pointing it out, man.
	Hey man, just point it out.
	Hey man, just point it out, man.
	Don't harsh my mellow.
	I wish this was done by democracy now, but just imagine.
	Just imagine.
	We're in a moment of global cooling.
	Everything's cooling, and everybody's in.
	99% of all scientists agree.
	That it's cooling.
	We're going into a new ice age.
	And everybody agrees.
	Everybody agrees that 99% of all the scientists agree, like they used to in 1977.
	So let's play this.
	At the end, you can imagine Amy Goodman coming out and saying, oh, this is more evidence.
	More evidence of global cooling.
	Yes, I found it.
	Sorry.
	500 crashes on Minnesota roads.
	Now that the snow has stopped, a new danger is moving in.
	Extreme cold.
	In Minnetonka, Minnesota, Becky Osley is preparing for temperatures that feel like 40 degrees below zero.
	So what precautions do you take?
	Well, getting gas.
	I have a quarter tank right now, and so we know the closer you are to a half a tank of gas, the more likely it is that it's not going to freeze with the cold temperatures that are coming.
	In many parts of the country, today's high temperatures aren't much warmer than last night's frigid lows.
	In Tulsa, Oklahoma, fire officials warned against unsafe heating after a fire killed an elderly woman.
	Turned all the gas burners on and they set a fan next to it to blow that heat into the living room.
	On the West Coast, heavy rain caused mudslides in the Los Angeles area.
	People there are still struggling to clean up.
	Just as the holiday rush is getting underway, more than 2,000 flights were either canceled or delayed Saturday morning across the country.
	Here in Minneapolis, they're expecting their coldest temperatures in December in more than 16 years.
	The temperature is expected to drop to more than 20 degrees below zero.
	Michelle, thank you, Jamie Ucas.
	Well, despite the weather, retailers say today could turn out to be the busiest shopping day of the holiday season.
	Well, I want to say something.
	We had a rare complete inversion yesterday in Austin.
	72 degrees at 4 p.m., Yeah.
	And we were warned that a cold front was coming in.
	Tina and I went out to get a couple of groceries.
	We just walked around the corner.
	We came back, and all of a sudden, the front hit, and it was actually a little scary.
	There was shit flying off of balconies.
	I mean, we have a lot of construction here.
	I was worried one of the cranes might come down.
	And the wind was unbelievable, just whipping through the states everywhere.
	Global cooling.
	And this morning, 27.
	We went from 72 degrees to 27.
	Crack a few windshields.
	Global cooling.
	Yeah.
	Which is what I've always asserted is really high.
	Whatever the government says, just think the other way.
	Although, man, your guy in California, Jerry Brown, is off the rails.
	This is not news.
	So he...
	It's not news, but I do have a clip of him going off the rails, which is always comedic.
	We have the laws, we have the tools of enforcement, and we have the political will.
	And we will set the stage, we'll set the example, and whatever Washington thinks they're doing, California is the future.
	So a lot of people say, what the hell are you doing, Brown?
	You're not a country.
	Well...
	Judged by measures of gross domestic product of over $2.2 trillion, we're the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world.
	Yeah, and you have one of the largest debts in the world.
	In the world.
	And we got a lot of firepower.
	We got the scientists, we got the universities, we have the national labs, and we have the political clout and sophistication for the battle.
	And we will persevere.
	Have no doubt about that.
	We should have the Dead Kennedys clip right there.
	Yeah, usually you have that.
	Well, I do.
	Look at California Uber Allis clip.
	It's still got to be around.
	I have the song.
	Well, you have a clip, yeah.
	Oh, this week?
	No, you don't.
	I don't know where it is.
	Okay.
	What's he talking about?
	Well, he's talking about the fact that they are going to fight global warming, cooling, advertising, whatever you want to call it, and they have the resources to do it.
	No money, but they have everything.
	Is this about the law they're passing?
	They're passing a law saying by 20-something, all cars must be electric.
	That's right.
	Just like the Netherlands.
	I think it's 2020 even, or 2026.
	It's real soon.
	Actually, one of the dates I've noticed this, and people should be on the lookout for this, I've noticed the date 2021.
	Oh, that's new.
	Dropping up a lot.
	Did you see, and I thought this was a message, and I tried to work on it, tried to figure it out, this heroin bust of $750 million?
	Which apparently was not just one bus, but they were showing all the heroin that the DEA, the largest haul ever in Afghanistan, if not the world, according to ABC News, 20 tons.
	This has got to be a message to somebody.
	I mean, because it wasn't just one, it's like, oh, here are the guys, we got it.
	No, this was, hey, we've got all this from Afghanistan recently, sometime, whatever.
	And then you see all these, there's also a lot of different heroin stories popping up.
	Of course, now we know that more people die from opioid overdose than from guns.
	Or car accidents.
	Or car accidents.
	But I think still more people die in the hospital.
	You know, from MRSA and other horrible things.
	Yeah, from being in the hospital.
	From being in the hospital, basically.
	But I don't know what it is yet, and maybe one of our producers out there knows.
	But to me, this was a message I just don't know from who to whom.
	Well, I don't know that we have that many people inside the drug industry that can tell us.
	It'd be nice if we had one person.
	That would be nice, yeah.
	I don't know.
	It doesn't sound right, the whole thing.
	Maybe the supply's been out of control like the oil supply and they had to pull some of the stuff off the market to jack up the prices a little bit because the middlemen aren't getting their cut.
	Could be.
	Could be.
	Because everyone keeps talking about how cheap it is.
	Yeah.
	Maybe it shouldn't be cheap anymore.
	Let's jack it up.
	Oh.
	Oh.
	Little interim ditty.
	I forget these things.
	I really do.
	And also, when you're talking August 2015, who the heck remembers what we did on episode 745?
	Do you?
	We started off with a song, a jingle, and then...
	Luckily, producer Tim E sent me a clip.
	He brings me joy.
	He will be railroaded out of the getting ever getting nominated.
	We shall see.
	You want to put money on that?
	Yeah, I'll put five bucks on Trump.
	Okay, five bucks it is.
	Five bucks that he is...
	What are we going for?
	The nomination.
	Oh, yeah.
	He's in.
	He's the man.
	Oh, yeah.
	I think you owe me $5.
	Indeed.
	And I love this little ISO. That's you.
	That's your disdain for my prediction.
	Yes, well, you win.
	Send it over, son.
	I will.
	I'll send it over to some other stuff that has been accumulating.
	Let's talk about...
	Oh, go ahead.
	I said I have a series of clips that we can play before or after the bigger break.
	Okay.
	Oh, wait.
	Here, play this first.
	50-pound note.
	This came off of a British show.
	Ah, yes.
	War on Cash.
	I have a couple of these.
	I don't know, where is it?
	50...
	Yeah.
	With an F. Yes, got it.
	Now, deals to tax evasion.
	Banks say that £50 notes are mostly used for criminal activities.
	Yeah, now it seems they could become a thing of the past.
	Last year, the Bank of England didn't print any new notes and most cash machines don't dispense them.
	Well, today, an article in the Financial Times questions whether they're actually quietly being phased down.
	I think I saw this same bit, only I pulled the clip of the expert they brought in, and I'll play that, because he gave a little detail as to what other fake ideas there were to remove cash from the British society.
	Is this the beginning of the end for the 50?
	Well, we don't really know.
	I mean, as you said, they didn't print any last year, but they say there are reasons for that.
	They haven't put them into the sequence of conversion to polymer, which, of course, we've got the fiver now, the £10 in 2018, the £20 in 2020.
	No mention of the 50.
	So that's another sort of little hint.
	And, of course, they're quite hard to get.
	Cash machines generally don't dispense them.
	A few do, but very rarely.
	You can, of course, go into a bank and get them.
	I got these fine examples yesterday from a bank just down the road and they gave me them without any problem.
	But then there's the question, what do you do with them?
	Do shops take them?
	And I think they are becoming rarer.
	And so the suggestion is they may be on that slow path towards disappearing.
	But we touched on some of the reasons why the banks might want to phase them out.
	This idea of criminal activity.
	And they probably have a point, don't they?
	Yes.
	Yes, indeed.
	I mean, they are the biggest store of value, certainly in England.
	In Scotland and Northern Ireland, the banks there actually issue £100 notes.
	So, yes, they do suspect that they're used as an easily transportable store of value.
	But, of course, they're much smaller than, for example, the €500 note, worth nearly 10 times as much.
	That's being phased out from 2018.
	And, of course, we saw in India recently, I think you reported, the 1,500 rupee notes, which aren't actually that high value, but they were phased out immediately.
	And that was to stop people.
	And it's not just big criminal activities like buying drugs or moving money around.
	It's also the smaller stuff like paying the builder or a work person, for example, in 50s because they don't want to put the money through the books.
	It's all that kind of thing that banks get worried about.
	Uh-huh.
	No.
	I don't think the banks are worried at all, at all, at all.
	In fact, the banks love the cash because they get to launder it.
	I can't believe that they're saying the banks don't want that, although they are complicit, of course, in the ultimate goal of having no cash money.
	I don't know what's going to happen to money laundering when that goes on.
	I've always perceived this as just a tax grab.
	Even small change, I mean, the small transactions, I think which includes fivers and dollars and quarters and nickels, is a $3 trillion business.
	In other words, $3 trillion of small...
	I did a story on this, so I got that number in my head.
	$3 trillion of small cash transactions take place every year in the United States.
	If you could tax that...
	And even 10%, I mean, that's a lot of money.
	Well, yeah, of course, but you can, yes, you can then tax things automatically, or taxing it because it came in your bank account.
	There's control.
	You can freeze the bank account.
	A lot of things can happen.
	Yeah, all bad.
	And of course, this is being touted by the...
	And we have this now in Australia.
	We have it in India.
	We have it in the UK. We're talking about it in the US. They're talking about all over EU with the 500 euro pound note.
	So cash is disappearing.
	We have Tim Cook saying, ha ha ha, we're going to kill cash.
	He loves it.
	And I will say of all the digital money, I think Apple Pay is probably the best.
	But that's not the point.
	I don't have an Apple device.
	What am I supposed to do?
	I get screwed because I don't use Apple?
	Why should one company be dominating anything like that?
	Hey, man.
	It should be a government thing, if anything.
	Oh, yeah.
	I don't want anyone controlling my cash.
	Anyone.
	Not the government or Apple.
	No.
	Cash is king.
	And so, of course, now everyone's saying, oh, Bitcoin, it'll be the new store of value.
	I just don't see it.
	It's too inconvenient.
	The thinking is that India will really push Bitcoin off the chart now.
	And I'm just not seeing it.
	I'm watching, but I don't see it yet.
	It's not going to happen.
	I'm doubtful as well.
	Doubtful.
	Well, I did catch while we're on the topic.
	I did catch a...
	I can't say it's native ad.
	I think it is native advertising for credit cards.
	But it also has all these sub...
	There's a lot of subtext involved.
	Again, NBC. And this is about just kind of a rundown of the benefits of credit card usage.
	I thought it was...
	This will be my Dvorak tip of the day because there's a lot of good information in here.
	But as I... I've had mixed feelings about it running because I believed it was a native ad to begin with.
	And then I don't know what the purpose was.
	And it was also...
	Kind of promoting the cashless society, which I don't like.
	But I thought there was a lot of good information in this particular native ad on NBC, which I didn't realize they did.
	All right, everybody, stand by right after this clip.
	It'll be time for Dvorak's Tip of the Day.
	Well, this is the tip of the day.
	Here's the tip of the day.
	What you might call the hidden power of plastic.
	Perks and benefits a lot of credit card holders don't even know they have.
	Ways to get refunds, get services without any charges, saving you money in the process.
	NBC's Jolene Kent explains.
	As you use your credit card this holiday season, you should know it may have hidden benefits that can save you big money in a pinch.
	I was super scared.
	I didn't know what to do.
	When Lauren Bergman's car broke down, she called the number on the back of her American Express card as a last resort.
	The company sent a tow truck free of charge.
	I never in a million years would have imagined that my credit card could do all the things that it could do and that they would be my saving grace.
	And when Bergman dropped and shattered her iPhone after her Apple warranty was up, her card gave her a 100% refund.
	Many popular credit cards offer these kinds of little known benefits.
	According to a recent survey, 81% offer extended warranties.
	57% provide purchase protection.
	Like reimbursing you for items that are lost, stolen, or damaged.
	47% give price protection, refunding the difference if the price drops on an item within four months after purchase.
	And 26% guarantee returns, even when stores don't.
	You could be missing out on hundreds of dollars a year in extra benefits from your credit card company.
	Everything from roadside assistance...
	You're paying for your hotel if you miss your flight due to weather-related travel concerns.
	But they don't cover everything.
	They usually exclude cars, jewelry, medical equipment, and computer software.
	At the end of the day, you never know when it could really help you out.
	Experts say call or check online to discover the perks that may be hiding in plain sight.
	Jolene Kent, NBC News, New York.
	So that's a tip.
	I think it was a tip, and I remember that I think American Express, depending on the card you have, would actually cover your extra insurance that you could pay for a rental, car rental.
	By the way, this also incorporated fake news.
	NBC's version of fake news because that woman who was super scared and she realized she gets a free tow.
	She could call it tow truck herself, but she gets a free tow from American Express.
	They showed her on the phone in her car.
	They showed the tow truck coming in and then they showed her happy as a clam as the tow truck took her car off.
	Yeah, I would say that's a native ad for sure.
	It was a native ad and that was fake news.
	There was no way that this woman had a camera crew with her when her car broke down and she was so super scared.
	So what was that?
	That was a reenactment.
	It did not say reenactment at the bottom of the screen.
	They should just use one of our jingles.
	Which one?
	And you choose which one you want.
	We got tons of them.
	Fake news?
	We got tons of fake news.
	We got anything you want.
	Hey, hey, hey!
	You read that.
	Fake news.
	That's right, everybody.
	Use your Amex.
	It's got fake news on it.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Anyway, I just thought I'd throw that out.
	There's the tip.
	That's good.
	Well, let us see.
	I have a couple of clips from C-SPAN. Book TV. Oh, yes.
	This guy, I thought these were very interesting.
	This guy wrote a book.
	He's a professor and he writes a lot of books.
	I can't remember his name, but I do have the name of the book.
	You can look it up and then get his name.
	I think it's Brennan.
	And the book is Against Democracy.
	And he writes a bunch of, he writes this book and he's, you know, I think there's this kind of a subtext movement that's going on.
	I'm sorry.
	Democracy sucks.
	You know?
	Yeah.
	And here's your evidence.
	Donald Trump is the president.
	Right.
	Well, that's why we're a Republican, not a democracy.
	Yeah, well, there's that, but that's not really discussed much.
	But he did do...
	They did a lot of market research on the public and how they vote and what they vote about and why they vote and all the rest of it.
	And I thought a lot of it was interesting.
	Let's play...
	The first one is against democracy.
	This is the one that's on ignorance.
	To cast a sensible vote.
	Yeah, that's right.
	And in a sense, we've been doing studies of voter behavior and voter knowledge for over 65 years now.
	And what's interesting is how little they know has remained constant.
	65 years ago, people knew hardly anything.
	Now they know hardly anything.
	Even though we have smartphones that contain all the world's information at our fingertips, we use them to look at pictures of cats and argue about meaningless things.
	Voters hardly know anything.
	And Philip Converse, the great political scientist, had a nice quote about this where he said, the two simplest facts I know about voter knowledge are that the mean is low and variance is high.
	So if you were to take the American electorate and give them a quiz of just basic facts, the most basic questions that would be relevant to an election, which is done every two years by something called the American National Election Studies, what you find is that really the top 25% of voters, they get sort of like a B-plus on this quiz.
	The next Kind of middle 50%.
	They do roughly about the same as chance.
	And the bottom 25% actually do worse than chance.
	We give them a multiple choice test and they get more than 75% of the questions wrong.
	And that's the electorate, the people who actually vote.
	When we try testing the people who stay home, they know even less.
	And none of this would really matter if political information didn't change how we vote.
	But as I argue in the book, it does in fact change how we vote.
	Uh-huh.
	There's a little bit of elitist stuff going on there.
	You think?
	Yes.
	For 65 years, nothing's really changed, but maybe we should rethink the whole thing and let the elitist, the king, let the king make the decision.
	Why should we be doing this stuff?
	But I found this next clip actually, as it was in generalization, actually brings into the discussion a little bit about our show.
	Oh.
	In so far as its conclusions are concerned, and I thought this was very interesting.
	The effect of information while controlling for that.
	So if you give people a quiz and you ask them who they are, what they know, and what they want, and you do this with thousands of people, you can then determine how information affects what people want while controlling for whatever effect who they are has on their preferences.
	And what he finds, and this is a surprising result, it's not guaranteed by the method, is that in general, as people become better informed, regardless of their background party, regardless of their background demographics, they tend to move towards one set of policies, and when they become uninformed, they tend to move towards a different set of policies.
	And we can look at the median voter in the U.S. and find that they tend to act as if they're an uninformed voter.
	Interestingly, other people like Brian Kaplan and Martin Gillens and a few others have done similar kinds of tests using different data sets, and they get the same results.
	So I think we can say things like, yeah, Paul Krugman and I will end up disagreeing on a lot of things, but in general, high information voters are more in favor of immigration than the average voter.
	They're more in favor of free trade than the average voter.
	They're in favor of criminal justice reform.
	They're actually in favor of increasing taxes to offset the deficit rather than reducing taxes.
	The policies they advocate don't really go to a democratic direction.
	They don't really go in a republican direction.
	They don't quite go in a libertarian direction.
	They're nuanced.
	Wait a minute.
	People who are more informed want higher taxes and want more globalism?
	Yes, that's what he said.
	And I believe...
	Here's the situation.
	I believe that what he said is true and what we're talking about are the people that are more informed than other people who are like less informed.
	In other words, they're more influenced by the mainstream media, the more informed people.
	They're the ones who read the New York Times and the, you know, religiously and they read the Washington Post.
	They believe it all.
	And they're all in on globalism.
	The two of us, because neither one of us, we like sovereignty.
	Yes.
	We like lower taxes.
	Yes.
	We like everything he said high informed.
	Now, I don't believe there are any two people that I know that are more informed than the two of us because...
	For all practical purposes, all we do is monitor news every day, all the time.
	It's all we do.
	It's all we do.
	So there is nobody that can say, well, I'm more informed than you.
	Maybe you read a few books more than we do, or you do some...
	No.
	Because you have a job, you have other things.
	This is our job.
	Yes, it is.
	So we are hyper-informed.
	Mm-hmm.
	And so what happens is you have a bunch of stages.
	is the natural man who's not well-informed he's just a guy who's a farmer whatever he doesn't read the new york times doesn't care he is the one that's for nationalism he's a he's probably a populist he has all these different elements that are that make his vote less informed somewhat informed that you go to the next stage which is very informed and for some reason in that group you become suckered into globalism you don't like the country you i mean whatever mark shield said earlier in the show is bull crap
	these guys aren't patriots by any means and they and they're not and they're less patriots they're they think that we should have open borders and high taxes because the way you pay for things is by taxing more and then if you go to hyper you go one step further that gets reversed and essentially the hyper informed are just like the uninformed and probably the uninformed make the same proper decisions as the hyper informed guys and that's why the democracy works in this in the republic sense
	because people in in pennsylvania who aren't hyper or you know aren't hyper informed they're normal and then you have these so-called really informed people and they're the smart ones that want higher taxes yeah There's no logic to wanting higher taxes.
	I just get the biggest kick out of people that advocate, oh, we should have higher taxes.
	Why?
	So, okay.
	So we can be more fair to everybody else.
	So they end up, the people that end up voting, they, like, for the last 65 years, they've been studying this.
	They end up making the right decision at the end of the day, as I would say.
	That's interesting.
	Well, along those lines, I've been reading this more and more on the face bag, and I think when the numbers come out, we will see this is true.
	Because of the fake news and the way the election turned out, I'm seeing the following everywhere on the bag.
	Oh yes, no, I've taken two subscriptions to make sure that I'm well informed.
	I have the Washington Post and the New York Times.
	And the print subscriptions, print mainly, but also digital, but subs for New York Times, Wall Street Journal are skyrocketing.
	Because everyone thinks that they are ill-informed and they need to support good journalism, so they're taking out subscriptions for the Times and Washington Post.
	Yeah.
	Which is, I mean, it's feeding itself.
	The machine is feeding itself.
	It's fantastic.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I know those numbers and it's pretty interesting.
	I'd love to know what the numbers are.
	Do you have a...
	No, I don't have the numbers exactly, but I do know they went up by like 20% or something.
	Yeah, and everyone on the bag is just like, oh yeah, no.
	And they'll have conversations about what...
	The New York Times subscription is extremely expensive.
	You never get your money's worth out of it and you end up dropping it.
	Right.
	Well, I want to inform everybody, before we take a break here, talk briefly about Rex Tillerson, who will be our new Secretary of State.
	He was lampooned last night on Saturday Night Live by...
	I think I had a...
	If you can dig up the Tillerson clip from the last show, I forgot to move it over.
	Sure.
	Let me see.
	Yeah.
	Hit piece.
	Shall we play that?
	Yeah, this is a hit piece.
	I have tremendous respect for him.
	He's a world-class player.
	Born in Wichita Falls, Texas, joining ExxonMobil more than four decades ago.
	From engineer to chairman and CEO, now dealing with foreign governments in nearly 50 countries.
	But it's his ties to one country now under the microscope.
	My relationship with Vladimir Putin, which dates back almost 15 years now.
	I've known him since 1999.
	And I have a very close relationship with him.
	I don't agree with everything he's doing.
	Improving the tense relationship with Russia was a Trump campaign promise.
	Wouldn't it be great if we actually got along with Russia?
	But tonight, critics are pointing to ExxonMobil's efforts to fight climate change rules and Tillerson's opposition to sanctions on Russia.
	Coziness with Vladimir Putin is very alarming and should have eliminated him, frankly.
	Some Republicans critical, too, after Tillerson received a friendship medal from Putin.
	When he gets the friendship award from a butcher, frankly, it's an issue that I think needs to be examined.
	Married with four children, Tillerson is a past president of the Boy Scouts, embracing their decision to allow gay scouts and leaders.
	He wrestled with it.
	He preyed on it.
	And he ultimately decided, I have to do what's good for the boys.
	His loyalty to scouting shaped his values.
	We have a duty to this country as citizens to participate in our government.
	A Texas oil man who, if confirmed, will test whether his skills as a global business leader can work in the world of diplomacy.
	Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.
	I'm Richard Engel in Moscow, where the Kremlin couldn't be happier with the way Trump's cabinet is shaping up, especially with Rex Tillerson as potential Secretary of State.
	Vladimir Milov is a former Russian Minister of Energy.
	It is absolutely a gift for Putin.
	Tillerson is best known here for making a deal with an oil giant called Rosneft.
	That's its headquarters over there, just over the Moscow River from the Kremlin.
	And analysts say the company is like a cash cow for President Putin and his inner circle.
	Mikhail Krutihin, an energy analyst, says the dividends earned by Rosneft end up in only one place.
	This is a personal purse, a wallet of the Russian president.
	And that wallet could grow significantly, and Tillerson is at the center of it.
	ExxonMobil and Russia's Rosneft have an outstanding oil deal in the Arctic, Russia valued at $500 billion.
	A deal so important, after it, he was given that Russian Medal of Friendship.
	But the deal is on hold because of U.S. sanctions.
	Obviously, the conflict of interest is something that is written on Mr.
	Tillerson's forehead.
	Written on his forehead?
	Written on his forehead.
	Conflict of interest.
	Yes.
	Especially as far as Russia is concerned.
	100%.
	As Secretary of State, Tillerson will be able to push for the lifting of the sanctions against Russia, something he lobbied for as a CEO. Richard Engel, NBC News, Moscow.
	I was surprised that it was in this report It was kind of just mentioned, but when I was like, oh, I'm going to go look up this guy.
	First of all, he's a distinguished Eagle Scout.
	That's no joke.
	And I know one Eagle Scout in my life.
	Maybe I've met a couple, but I had one when I was in school because I was in the Boy Scouts.
	That is not an easy thing to come by.
	Distinguished, not just Eagle Scout, but distinguished Eagle Scout, which is like Eagle Scout Plus.
	It's outrageous.
	Anyone who I have nothing but the most respect, besides the submariners, for Eagle Scouts, this is a big deal.
	Yeah.
	Ed Tillerson is the president of the Boy Scouts of America, and here's his quote that he said in 2013 at the national annual meeting, No youth may be denied membership in the Boy Scouts of America on the basis of sexual orientation or preference alone.
	And everyone can bash him about being a Putin lover and everything.
	And of course, everyone has funny jokes about the Boy Scouts, obviously.
	Ha ha ha ha, yes, all pedophiles, sure, whatever.
	But you can't deny that one of the main things that the left has against the entire Trump administration is they're a bunch of racist homo-haters.
	And that one won't stick with Tillerson.
	No, they go the Putin route with him.
	And I watched his whole speech.
	And it's McCain again.
	Oh, this guy.
	Someone criticized, within my personal sphere, that you guys are always, you only harp on the left, only the left.
	I said, no, we hate the two biggest right-wing a-holes, McCain and Graham.
	Yeah.
	Used to be three of them.
	One of them got ousted, finally.
	A-Ot.
	A-Ot got ousted.
	So anyway, that's a good little tidbit to hold in the back of your pocket if you ever get cornered by a bunch of people.
	I never get cornered.
	Well, you never go out.
	I know, I stay at home all the time.
	Except I'm going to be at the big meet-up in Beverly Hills next Monday.
	Don't forget, we've got a big meet-up for the day after Christmas.
	I'll be sending out a note about it probably tomorrow.
	If you're not in the newsletter, you better be.
	And on Thursday, I'll give more details if we...
	Need to.
	I think everyone will know by then.
	Alright.
	So I go out for that.
	Now, back to this.
	This guy, I like this tillage.
	I think he's a gruff character that I probably wouldn't get along with.
	Maybe he'd be good drinking, buddy.
	I don't know.
	But he's got the credentials.
	What do you want to put somebody in there that hates Russia and hates Putin?
	Is that what you want?
	Yeah, apparently.
	Why?
	Well, first of all, he has conflict of interest written on his forehead.
	I heard it myself.
	Yeah, and that guy would know.
	He has to give up everything.
	I mean, he has to give up his stock.
	He has to give all that up.
	One of those guys who said in the clip they put it in there, I think if you're an American, you're obligated to do this stuff.
	I mean, he's got a...
	Just salary alone is $25 million a year from ExxonMobil.
	Who knows what he makes into the stocks and the rest of it.
	That...
	He's giving him a job that pays $200,000.
	Doesn't anybody look at it from the perspective of, holy crap, we're getting a high-end CEO guy that makes millions of dollars, and we're getting him on the cheap.
	Yeah.
	I mean, it would be the equivalent of saying, we can't have Tom Collins in our administration, I'm sorry, Tim Cook, because he would favor China.
	Because he makes his stuff in China.
	I mean, that would be similar to that.
	Although it would never happen because everyone would say Tim Cook is awesome.
	Bring him in.
	Yeah.
	But for a moment then...
	But it's against McCain's...
	I understand.
	So we have two things at play.
	We have the military-industrial complex and we have the oil and gas industry.
	And often, of course...
	We know that the State Department sets up the extraction of gas and oil, which is usually done heavy-handedly through the Department of Defense.
	So, okay, so we have Tillerson is going to be in.
	He's going to be friends with Russia.
	What is going to happen on the global oil market?
	What is the strategy?
	Or maybe gas would be more interesting to look at that.
	What is the strategy?
	Are we going to say, okay, Russia, go ahead, do your Syrian pipeline with Iran, and have the gas flow into Europe through Cyprus or Greece or whatever you want to do.
	I mean, what is the strategy?
	We want to help ourselves.
	It's an America-first cabinet.
	Right, and I think somebody made the observation and said, well, why fool around?
	Our State Department's entire business has been to get oil.
	Yeah.
	For the country, why don't we just put an oil guy in there?
	I think that what's going to happen is it's going to probably be a bunch of, instead of these disputes and these battles and these deaths of American soldiers over some of this stuff, There'll be some agreements.
	The Russians can have their...
	It's like when the mob got its act together, you know, and they had the big meetings where they're different.
	Okay, Lucchese, you get this area.
	Genovese, you guys get this.
	And then you don't cross that line.
	You can have that.
	And they make a deal instead of fighting about it.
	And then everybody benefits.
	Supposedly, we get out of a war and we maybe can have a booming economy in the 2020 era.
	Now, do you think that it is possible that the Russians, I'll just say Putin to make it easy, that he has some ideas up his sleeve for more domination once he gets friendly noise from the new administration?
	I mean, do we really trust him?
	Well, I think you have to take everything with...
	I mean, Tillerson said himself that he doesn't agree with everything Putin's ever done.
	And no, of course not.
	But you don't...
	Just saber-rattle, call them names, say they can't make any products, and call them out and act rudely with these guys.
	Yeah, especially in Antarctica is going to be...
	Right, but hold on.
	Then why won't Trump do the same with China?
	I meant Arctic, not Antarctica.
	Then why won't Trump do the same with China?
	He's only been antagonizing them, saying they're a-holes and they're criminals.
	It's...
	I think he is going to do the same thing.
	That's why he sent that Iowan guy into China, or he's going to send him as an ambassador.
	And I think, I don't know, I don't see any of these guys as problematic.
	Oh, I'm not talking about these guys.
	I'm talking about, okay, we're going to be America first, but I'm not necessarily on board thinking the Chinese, Russians, and other actors don't want to dominate themselves.
	They want to dominate.
	Yeah, I'm sure they do.
	But so do we.
	That's not going to change.
	But it's going to be done differently.
	There's no reason to have these little skirmishes all over the place and have saber rattling and threatened nuclear war.
	Of course, I agree with that.
	I agree with that.
	Particularly when you make the ultimate mistake...
	The first rule of a handgun, if you pull a gun out on someone, you shoot.
	You don't threaten with it.
	And we seem to be like the gun pullers and waving them around.
	And you have to remember this.
	One thing that's always overlooked is Russia and China both have been our traditional allies in real wars.
	Yeah, in the big ones.
	You're right.
	In real wars where there were millions of people killed.
	Yeah.
	They've always been our allies.
	So why are our enemies?
	And if you listen to Cheney, you know, our enemies, our adversaries.
	How are they an adversary?
	Economically, because they want to pump some oil out of their place because they've got a big well?
	Well, yeah, it's our interest, sure.
	They want to sell to people we want to sell to.
	I think that's ultimately the idea.
	Yeah, but that's the same with all business.
	You don't necessarily go over to the dry cleaners because you've got to dry cleaners and gun the guy down so you get better.
	You take his business away.
	You clearly have never been in Texas.
	When we get shitty dry cleaning, we come in guns blazing.
	I'm gonna show my support 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.
	All right, we have a few people to thank for show 887-1212.
	One more to go!
	One more to go!
	Yeah, it's a very disappointing campaign.
	Anonymous in Ohio, 199.99.
	Apparently no note or anything wanted to be out of the big list.
	Sir Andrew Harms, KC... Is that KCOW? What is KCOW? Or is it KC0WII? Yeah, it's Kilo Charlie Oscar, Whiskey India India.
	No, I think it's Zero, not Oscar.
	Oh, I'm sorry, Zero.
	I said Oscar?
	I meant Kilo Charlie Zero, Whiskey India India.
	Okay.
	A case in Omaha, $911.11.
	Wesley Walker in Pacifica, California, right over here, where the city is slowly falling into the ocean.
	Very amusing situation, but it's always been that way.
	Yeah.
	They have to keep moving east.
	Yeah.
	$100 even.
	Christopher Hinkle, Apache Junction, Arizona, $100.
	David Wynn, $888.
	Rockville Center, New York.
	And these are $888 contributions.
	And let me get a cursor on this thing and scroll down.
	Lock the cursor in on it.
	Harm of...
	These are all 88, 88.
	There's a few of them.
	Harm Venestra in Bourne, Netherlands.
	Feinstra.
	Harm Feinstra in Bourne, Netherlands.
	Nathan Craddock, Parts Unknown.
	Sir Kevin of Devon.
	Gig Harbor, Washington.
	Kevin Smith.
	Not that Kevin Smith, but the one that we have.
	88, 88.
	David Cardegna.
	Don Mills.
	There's no cities listed here.
	Not sure why.
	Robert Alter.
	Brent Dombrowski.
	Seth Griffin in Highland Park.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	He dropped.
	That's the end of him.
	And Seth comes in with 80.80.
	88.80.
	That's nice.
	88.80.
	Very nice.
	Have a drink of water.
	Okay.
	Actually, that's more...
	I'll have a drink of water.
	Hold on a second.
	Let's all have a drink of water.
	Hold on.
	Everybody have a drink of water.
	There we go.
	Shannon O. Your favorite.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Cannon Winchester in Tulatin, Oregon.
	Or Tulatin.
	I think it's Tulatin.
	It could be Tulatin.
	And that's Boob.
	Yeah.
	A-O-O-8.
	Boob.
	Sir Black Knight.
	Sir Lineman of the Net.
	Boob.
	Alex Croke in Brooklyn.
	That boob, by the way, in this particular newsletter was the FCC. Oh.
	Oh, nice.
	Alex Croke in Brooklyn, New York.
	Roger Boots in Mechanicsville, Iowa.
	Onward to Caleb Holstrom in Onalaska, Wisconsin.
	69-69.
	Shannon Davis, 57-77.
	Dean Roker, 55 double nickels on the dime.
	And now we've got already down to the $50 donors.
	And let's start with Scott Lavender in Montgomery, Texas.
	Michael Gates in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
	Israel Cazares in parts unknown.
	John Camp in Antlers, Oklahoma.
	Sir David Roberts in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
	Amitaph Hajra in Daleville, Virginia.
	Brian Noni in Smyrna, Georgia.
	I think he's a knight.
	Joel DeRuin, I think he's a knight too, 50.
	Paul Rudkin, Canada somewhere, it says.
	He may be a knight, too.
	Matthew Mungin in Baltimore, Maryland.
	And last but not least, Bill LeClaire in Riverdale, Michigan.
	Whoops, there's one more.
	Andrew Haverson in Gravenhurst, Ontario, Canada.
	And we have a special thing here.
	Michael Reed would like to wish a happy 10th anniversary to his smoking hot wife, love of his life, Julie.
	So there's that.
	It came in with a fake good.
	Yeah, a short showing, John.
	Short.
	Short showing.
	Okay.
	Well, we do have another show coming up on Thursday, and we certainly hope that...
	Well, that is the Triple Eight, the Big 888 show, so we really hope that you'll be participating in that as producers of the program.
	We thank everybody, of course.
	For bringing us some value.
	And thank everybody profusely who came in under $50, typically for reasons of anonymity, but also a lot of people on the subscriptions.
	Check it out.
	Also, look at the 33.
	The 33 can get you a podcast license if you're so inclined.
	And, of course, one day you will actually need that as we become an official licensing agency.
	He says, yes.
	I heard that on the show.
	Yeah, and you said it with a straight face.
	I did mention that you got on the two shows, and I saw them both.
	I said they didn't get through all of the stuff with Alex Jones.
	But you said, I think, with a straight face to the RT show.
	Kaiser.
	Max Kaiser.
	You said, yes, we're an official licensing agency.
	Yeah.
	You said that.
	Fake news is what that was.
	Yeah, apparently.
	Or maybe not.
	Someone's going to have to report it.
	Well, I'm setting it up for him.
	I'm setting up...
	He's getting a podcast license.
	He'll need one.
	He'll be the first guy to go down.
	We've got to protect our people.
	Protect him.
	So, yes.
	Thank you, everybody.
	And remember, our show coming up on Thursday.
	Dvorak.org.
	Karma for anybody who needs it, just in case.
	You've got karma.
	And no title changes, no nights, but we've got a couple birthdays.
	And we've got Alex Croak saying, oh, wait a minute, it's his birthday on December 24th, so we say happy birthday to him.
	It'll be 45.
	Don Mills says happy birthday to Todd Moss of Mesa, Arizona.
	And we all collectively say happy birthday to Stephen.
	He is Void Zero's son, and he turned one-year-old yesterday, December 17th.
	So we say happy birthday to all seven to what?
	He just had this kid.
	It's years ago.
	Yeah, it's a year, man.
	It's crazy.
	It's a year.
	Happy birthday, Stephen, from Uncle John and Uncle Adam.
	It's your birthday, yeah.
	I know.
	Time flies.
	It's crazy.
	A couple things real quick I wanted to give you.
	The first one, unbelievable.
	We keep talking about comprehensive immigration reform.
	And what do I always say is the biggest problem with our immigration system?
	It's the cost.
	Oh, yeah.
	You're right.
	The fees.
	The fees.
	Now, they're going up.
	Again?
	Check it out.
	So, application to register permanent residence or adjust status.
	Everybody needs this.
	That's a form I-485.
	I've done this.
	It already costs $985 to fill out your application.
	They're jacking that up 16% to $1140.
	Why?
	Why?
	Because they can.
	There is no reason given.
	Now, you need to have a whole bunch of other things.
	You need a genealogy index search.
	You need a records request.
	Just give you some ideas.
	So we have the...
	And everything's going up.
	But some of them by 57%.
	So if you are petitioning for your fiancé, say, please, can my fiancé come into the country?
	We're going to get married, which is a legal process.
	That's Form I-129F. That already cost $340.
	That's going up 57% to $535.
	I mean, this is insane.
	Insane.
	All of these fees are, you know, at the, about, you know, half a thousand dollars here.
	Immigrant petition by alien entrepreneur.
	Yeah.
	Check this out.
	Form I-526 was $1,500 is going up to $3,675.
	This is just a rip-off!
	That's more than doubling.
	Application for...
	Oh, okay.
	So you know, you have this one sneaky one where you can...
	If you're an immigrant investor...
	This is very controversial.
	Yes, for good reason.
	Yeah.
	So that application, just a piece of paper, cost $6,230.
	I guess it's so successful they're jacking it up to $17,795.
	Why?
	Now, this is the problem.
	When you have a family of five or whatever you have, Who can afford this kind of money?
	This is why people don't get legal.
	It is too expensive.
	Yeah, so they just cheat.
	Of course.
	It's in the show notes if anyone wants to go and have a look at that.
	Our real problem here in the United States.
	I have a couple clips from the UK, which I thought might be interesting from filmmaker Martin Durkin.
	He's more like a UK guy.
	This would actually be kind of a good callback.
	So he blames the Brexit not on the Russians, not necessarily on Trump, but on something else.
	And Martin, I guess the other kind of big context is this war on sugar, which is incredible.
	You know, it went from tobacco to alcohol, salt for a while, and then all those salt groups just seemed to turn into anti-sugar groups.
	What do you make of this kind of new frontier and this sort of nanny statism?
	And what do you think it says just really about the kind of killjoyness of it?
	You can't even enjoy a cake without that being seen as some sort of aberrant behaviour.
	Yeah.
	No, it's enormously miserablist.
	And it creeps like a loathsome cancer.
	And the difficulty is, as we were saying before, you know, someone comes around your door and says, right, we're going to stand up.
	You know, the thing is, you're not going to go up your Saturday and go out and wave a placard about curtains around booze or, you know, reformulation of cream crackers or something like that.
	You know, every assault is sufficiently small that, you know, you are just not going to get off your ass to do something about it.
	And what happens is there's an accumulation of grievances.
	And it's not just food.
	I I mean, you know, I just saw the other day that teachers were complaining that Beauty and the Beast was sexist or fucking ageist or beastist or whatever the damn thing is.
	But, you know, there's something wrong with that.
	And, you know, likewise, it's all these little things, all these intrusions, all these absurd little kind of niggles build up until you vote Trump.
	Or you vote Marry the Pen.
	You know what I mean?
	And all these wankers, excuse my French, sort of standing around going, but why did they vote Trump?
	Was it because of his protectionist argument?
	Was it because of this?
	But they didn't know what his arguments were.
	They just knew Trump wasn't all that crap.
	It wasn't less sugar.
	It wasn't Beauty and the Beast is feminist.
	And he goes on to say that it really is the universities who are creating all these idiotic children.
	Well, I'm glad they're banning fizzy drinks in universities, and I hope they ban lager and food and plenty of other things in order to discourage people from going.
	I'll come to the conclusion that universities are in fact a terrible, evil social force, and we should do everything in our power to discourage them.
	As far as I can see, most students are fascists.
	And people complain when I say that.
	They don't want to push Jews into chambers.
	I mean Italian fascists.
	They're not quite of the German side.
	Some of them are the German side, but they're mainly Italian fascists.
	And they're there not to learn useful things in order to go and lead productive lives.
	They are there in order to join the new class and tell us all what to do.
	And a few of their number go on to be lecturers and things like that.
	And they're the ones who are behind all this banning fizzy drinks.
	But as I say, the more universities implode, the better for all of us, I think.
	And then finally, he has a nice callback to the opening of our show.
	I think there's a class gap as well.
	I mean, I'm worried about the generation thing, because when my kids were growing up, and the teachers were all appalled when a bit of global warming homework came in.
	And I said, what a load of old bollocks that was.
	And so, you know, I made sure they went in with the right homework saying this was all nonsense.
	Of course, got them into trouble.
	The teachers were annoyed.
	And all of that nonsense, which I didn't think too much of, you know, has produced the, you know, generation of students that we've got today.
	But I also think there's a class thing.
	I think universities, I was only semi-flippant what I said before, I think universities are churning out a class of people who are the class of the Hillary Clintons.
	And the Tony Blair's and the people who will, you know, who imagine themselves as part of the state, who ally with the state, who imagine themselves as middle class tax consumers, you know, in an arts establishment or some such thing or in a university.
	And they are, and that's the real class divide now.
	I think the class divide is between upper class tax consumers, because I think the state is really there for the upper middle class and the intelligentsia, not ordinary people, and the rest of us.
	And that divide is opening sort of wider as they get more and more into their global warming, feminist, social justice warrior fizzy dream.
	Do you think they should have some sort of purge of the intellectuals, like Pol Potts?
	I really think we must.
	Anyone who wears glasses.
	The intelligentsia are the stupidest people on earth and the most offensive, and they have been since Plato, actually.
	We're going to get really sort of historical about it.
	But they're all bastards.
	Yes!
	You know, those clips bring me right into a perfect follow-up, which is my little Italian debate.
	All right, rock and roll.
	Because this is about, we don't talk about Italy that much and we need to kind of bring people up to speed with what's going on there, which is part of what's going on everywhere that we're watching, the populist thing and the Trump and the Brexit and the rest.
	And let's play, this is the Italy Rundown 1.
	Right.
	First, earlier this month, Italian voters rejected a referendum to alter that nation's constitution in what was a stern rebuke of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who resigned in the aftermath.
	The vote was seen as the latest instance of a rising tide of populism, both in Europe and here, against elites in the perceived establishment.
	From Rome, special correspondent Christopher Livesay explains.
	It started as just another protest movement.
	Now, it could control the Italian government.
	And many in Europe are terrified.
	It's called the Five Star Movement.
	A foul-mouthed comedian named Beppe Grillo founded the group only seven years ago.
	Today, the Five Star Movement is Italy's fastest-growing party, picking off votes from both left and right with a populist message skewering the political establishment amid the punishing economic fallout of the Euro crisis.
	The government has long dismissed them as anti-euro nationalists, done so at their now clear and great peril.
	This month, center-left Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, a staunch defender of the European Union, was forced to resign when he failed in a referendum on constitutional reforms that would have weakened the powers of the Senate in order to streamline the legislative process.
	Yes.
	Yeah, what they tried to do, which is what I think would happen here, especially if Hillary got in, because Hillary is against all borders, but we do have sovereignty, and we have to weaken it, and the way to weaken it is to do a constitutional convention and rewrite the Constitution.
	And weaken it so we have no sovereignty, because the idea of the globalists is that there should be just one happy family.
	Yes!
	Countries.
	Everybody be brown and happy.
	So this report goes on and on, and I've cooked it up a little bit, and it's worth listening to because we don't talk about Italy at all, and I think this will bring everyone up to speed.
	So let's go on with part two.
	The five-star movement campaigned hardest against Renzi.
	New elections are expected early next year, and it's the five-star movement with the wind in its sails.
	Franco Pavoncello is a professor of political science and the president of John Cabot University in Rome.
	The Five Star Movement basically is a rejectionist party that feels that the entire political spectrum has been disqualified by decades of bad management, corruption, economic decline, where the people are much poorer than the grandparents.
	And this is where we see a parallel with Brexit and with the United States.
	There is a sense of the dispossessed, of the disenfranchised, those who feel they don't really have a voice anymore.
	That voice is channeled in Parliament by lawmakers like Manlio Di Stefano, a leading figure in the movement.
	What will a five-star movement government look like?
	How we will govern?
	How we will have the numbers?
	We are sure 100% the next political election, people will realize that it's a five-star movement against the rest of the establishment.
	So it's the five-star movement against everyone else?
	I think yes.
	At just 35 years old, Di Stefano epitomizes the youthful rebellion at the heart of the movement, telling his parliamentary rivals they've never worked a real job in their lives.
	Italians like Roberto Maggi, who feel increasingly left behind, are the core of the five-star movement's support.
	Last year, the landlord shut off the single mother's heat and hot water when she lost her job as a secretary and could no longer afford rent.
	She eats up pots of water on the stove and she washes her kids here in the sink.
	You see what I'm going through?
	Sometimes I just break down.
	With Christmas just around the corner, she faces eviction this very morning.
	Neighbors and friends have rallied to her side.
	Among them, Roberta Lombardi, another member of parliament from the Five Star Movement.
	We are here to try to stop this eviction.
	And stop it, she did.
	At least for now.
	The court officials left when they saw the crowd.
	Hey, who did this report?
	Where was it from?
	This was done by an independent reporter that is part of PBS, so it was on NewsHour.
	Oh, okay.
	It took up a good part of the show, as you can tell by the number of clips I've got.
	Yeah, for sure.
	But I thought it was very dense, and it gets you right up to speed, and now I don't think we need to talk about Italy for another year.
	Easily.
	But if you want to keep playing these, there's a...
	Three.
	Okay.
	Stunts like these have made the Five Star Movement vulnerable to charges of populism, a charge they relish.
	So a lot of people say to us, this thing that you do makes you a populist.
	And we always say, okay, if you consider to be populist, just taking care of people, we are proud to be populist.
	But the truth is that everybody in this building, in the parliament, should be a little bit populist, meaning they should consider the people's needs.
	Otherwise, you're doing your own interests.
	Populism is thriving across Europe as economies in the common market struggle and immigration booms.
	Do you have a summary coming?
	You can play the last clip if you want.
	The only reason I ask is because...
	Less than ten minutes to go!
	That's the only reason.
	Okay?
	These clips are pretty short.
	I'm getting the warning.
	I got a kick out of that clip because the word...
	When did the word populism become such a bad word?
	Yeah, well, ever since the rise of Le Pen in France, I think, was when it started.
	Yeah, maybe.
	Yeah.
	Well, I'll hear the rest.
	It's short, so let's go to four.
	I'm interested.
	While less extreme than other European populists, Five Star Movement leaders insist migrants denied asylum should be immediately deported.
	And they've been accused of circulating fake news about migrants to incite their followers.
	Oh, Italian.
	Patrizio Nicirio is a senior editor at ANSA, Italy's leading news agency.
	He says fake news is exploding across Europe.
	It's such a danger that, you know, figures like Pope Francis warned the press not to spread, you know, what he actually made a very strong parallel between the thesis and this kind of news.
	Nicirio points to one fake news story accusing the government of stuffing ballot boxes.
	No, this is a completely bogus story, and there's no reality about it, but the reaction on the social network was very impressive.
	Over 230,000 people reacted to the story on the social network.
	Yeah, of course.
	Yeah.
	Fake news.
	It's a believable story.
	It's all fake news, man.
	It's fake news.
	Let's wrap this thing up.
	All right.
	This one, five is good.
	Rula Jabril is an international affairs analyst.
	Oh, Russia is the real winner of all of this.
	I mean, they killed the news itself by flooding the market with fake news.
	Look globally.
	We had a presidential candidate, president-elect, who told the Russians, yes, please hack the Democratic National Committee and release the emails.
	I want you to release the emails inviting them actually to the party.
	We have Marie Le Pen, Madame Le Pen in France, who asked the Russians to give her $7 million so she could run a campaign.
	And then your five stars here are selecting these kind of news.
	It's a national security threat, what we're seeing.
	Oh, man, that's a bunch of hog-hoey.
	This was, I thought, they did a really good report by bringing her in again.
	Trump, of course, we had that clip.
	No, but she took it one step further, saying Trump asked him to hack the DNC. Yeah, which was not what he did at all.
	No, it was great.
	Oh, yeah.
	Fake news!
	Okay, we'll wrap it up.
	The Five Star Movement denies it has a pro-Russian agenda, but some of their policy proposals would benefit Russia, such as pushing for Italy to leave NATO and for the EU to end sanctions on Russia for annexing Crimea in 2014.
	We want to cut these sanctions.
	You want to cut European Union sanctions against Russia?
	The only ones that are losing money are the European people.
	They did something that was just a demonstration of power.
	Europe against Russia.
	And Russia is winning.
	Indeed, it's the five-star movement's euro-skepticism that's shaken investors and much of Europe.
	If elected, they've promised to hold a referendum on abandoning the euro currency.
	As the eurozone's third largest economy, Italy's exit could be disastrous.
	Yeah, for everybody, including Italy.
	Yeah.
	Oh my goodness.
	Oh my goodness.
	Well, that's what's going on.
	I just want to stay in the Euroland for a minute.
	I'm going to wrap up the show here.
	I did want to bring this clip out.
	It was in European Parliament.
	For once, it wasn't Nigel Farage making noise.
	It was Dutch politician Marcel de Graaf who went off on Schultz and the other bureaucrats about the migrants.
	And, well, it's very interesting to listen.
	He's going to say what he has to say.
	And he's very clear and angry.
	And then the responses are perhaps even crazier.
	Last year.
	And by the way, I love that you're not really hearing the real people.
	You're hearing translators arguing against each other because they're translating what the politicians are arguing about.
	And it creates a very strange radio play.
	Last year, an illegal Afghan was detained for rape and murder.
	A 19-year-old girl who was in the prime of her life.
	She was working actively for the reception of migrants and she was the daughter of an EU official.
	It could have been your daughter.
	She could have been my daughter.
	Politicians and the media talk about this as an incident.
	But in Germany, there have been many rapes, thefts, perpetrations of violence, and many of them by illegal immigrants.
	This commission is refusing to recognize that there's a structural problem here.
	There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of incidents such as this, but you were never actually prepared to concede that this is a structural problem.
	These illegal immigrants are convinced that they have a right to come to our countries and, if they so wish, to rape our women and our children.
	Yes, our children, because women and children, even at the age of five or ten, have been murdered.
	They have been raped.
	And you are refusing to recognize that you are in part responsible for allowing this to happen because you won't recognize that we need a structural solution to migration in our countries and our cities.
	Nothing has been done to stop these illegal immigrants.
	You're working with a dictator in Turkey.
	You're working effectively with people who represent al-Qaeda and al-Nusra, the murderers in Homs, in Mosul, and way beyond that.
	You are largely responsible, and this is the message which will come out of the Council this week.
	It's high time we had proper borders.
	We sent illegal migrants back.
	We stopped Islamization of Europe, and we stopped negotiations with Turkish, which should never have been started.
	Okay, so he says, hey, women and children are getting raped and murdered, and we need to stop this.
	This is out of control.
	We need borders.
	You're working with a dictator in Turkey, and you're insane.
	What are you doing?
	Obviously, this did not go over well.
	Mr.
	Krav, I just have a request for you.
	To say that migrants or refugees are systematically carrying out rapes, well, I think after what we heard yesterday from two migrants who were systematically raped, then I think it's a shame and a scandal.
	Shame, scandal!
	You bring shame upon the European Parliament for what you said.
	Oh my goodness, shame!
	Shame on the European Parliament!
	Mrs.
	Doudmans, you have a question?
	Oh, check her out.
	Mr.
	de Graaf, your statements are absolutely intolerable.
	They have no place in this House.
	Europe stands up for the rights of women, for the rights of every citizen.
	Your statements are nothing short of racism, pure racism.
	You're treating all the migrants as if they are one and the same.
	You're talking about people murdering and raping women and children.
	This is absolutely sickening speech.
	And, President, I'd ask for this to be deleted from the minutes.
	This is absolutely...
	Not worthy of the European Parliament, this type of speech.
	Shut up!
	Shut up!
	Stricken from the record, John!
	Take it out of the record.
	We can't have that speech on record.
	Wow, is this like a trial?
	Strike it from the record!
	I've never heard this, that they can do that.
	Strike it from the record, yeah.
	Huh.
	And then...
	This is like the Federation of Planets meeting or whatever, the council.
	Yeah.
	Crazy.
	Crazy.
	And then finally, I got a lot of response about the eggs on everything here in the United States of Gitmo Nation.
	Okay.
	Putting eggs on everything.
	And I got, well, I got two things in.
	Well, I got a possible answer.
	Eggs apparently are at an all-time crazy low.
	99 cents a dozen.
	Oh yeah, but those are crap eggs.
	Well, okay.
	The pale yellow yolk, no flavor.
	But in general, I think eggs are cheap.
	I don't know why.
	I am seeing U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics saying eggs are down $1.46 on average per dozen.
	So maybe it's just cheap.
	That doesn't sound like they're right.
	Maybe.
	I mean...
	I don't know.
	Would you think if they were cheap, there'd be more people making deviled eggs or something?
	Well, Fix makes deviled eggs.
	But then I got this note from Sir Hank Scorpio of the Electrical Grid.
	On the last show you were wrapping up, you discussed the eggs on food phenomenon.
	When I heard this, I laughed hysterically.
	My daughter has a toy oven that talks and makes sound effects.
	There are multiple sequences when it plays this.
	Exactly.
	One, two, three, four If that's just not enough You want a little more Put an egg on it Yeah, yeah Put an egg on it Yeah,
	yeah Put an egg on it So there's a pizza Wow, that is I'm giving you a clip of the day for getting out of that guy And there's one little short, one little iso, little iso, little iso, iso.
	Egg!
	Egg tastes amazing on top of anything!
	We've got to get a better copy of that, except for the one that came out of the oven, but there's got to be some original recording.
	Yeah, we need the full song.
	Yeah, we need a good recording.
	He's already had to redo the song.
	He just held his iPhone up to it.
	But really, egg!
	Egg!
	Eggs taste amazing on top of anything!
	Eggs taste amazing on top of anything!
	An eight-year-old's toy that caused this trend amongst foodiedom.
	I don't know what's going on, but it's frightening me.
	Oh, my goodness.
	What are we going to do?
	I don't know.
	Maybe the best for last.
	Yes, always, always, always, always.
	All right, everybody.
	Thank you so much.
	Please support us on the next show.
	Dvorak.org slash NA. We do need your help.
	Show 888.
	The big AAA luckiness.
	Lucky, lucky, lucky, luckiness of all.
	That's right.
	Oh, okay.
	What do you got going on, John?
	Anything we should watch?
	Anything we're doing?
	Anything special?
	No?
	No, there's just a bunch of, there's some mediocre bowl games that are going on.
	They're kind of entertaining football bowl games, and it's nothing.
	But there's some, because of the snowstorm, there's been some really funny games to look at on the TV, because it's like, they're playing football in two feet of snow.
	It's fantastic.
	Oh.
	Ooh.
	Nice.
	That is good to watch.
	Well, for sure, everybody, we'll be back, and that will be after the Electoral College has voted, so who knows what we'll have here in Gitmo Nation.
	Until then, coming to you from the Crackpot Condo, downtown Austin, in the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
	And from northern Silicon Valley, where Plato say, woman who plays strip poker with top gun pilots always has an ace in the hole.
	I'm John C. Dvorak.
	We'll be back on Thursday, right here on No Agenda.
	Adios, mofos!
	Donate to a no agenda They give us shows week after week Donate to a no agenda It's a show that's really unique Donate to a no agenda Listen to John and Adam speak Donate to a no agenda Science is turning into a clique I wish you many employees...
	...enters an information system and alters it remotely so that the operator of the system doesn't know there was...
	...saying the...
	...abolish it.
	Not to say you go...
	...that you make it a delegate.
	I wish you many employees...
	...matter of Kremlin-backed hackers...
	That is what did not happen.
	All called vulnerability.
	People.
	Fightful stuff.
	Turn that intransigence.
	Fightful.
	No.
	I'm excited.
	Power.
	Who have never.
	After a massive.
	Transigence.
	In sharing intelligence.
	The attack triggered an internal investigation.
	The election was.
	I wish you many employees.
	Yeah.
	Congress.
	In sharing intelligence.
	In sharing.
	She's key talking points.
	In Russian.
	States.
	He could have been.
	But certainly was.
	Concerning for.
	This whole intelligence.
	Has enabled the manipulation.
	Of the nation.
	Of the people in the NSA.
	Social media.
	Is deeply concerned.
	That in trans.
	The manipulation.
	Of the nation.
	By a far.
	Dead guy.
	In November.
	Popular.
	The before.
	And the day.
	Social media.
	And the immediacy.
	And how things can change.
	At a moment.
	No.
	In sharing intelligence.
	With Congress.
	The manipulation. Of intelligence.
	...in one of the countries...
	...so it's working exactly as the...
	...that guy got shut up real quick when he's too many employees...
	...I wish you many...
	...is too many empty now as a contract...
	Amen.
	Mr.
	President, Mr.
	Paul McCartney...
	A significant impact.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Hey, dude named Ben.
	What is significant impact?
	Because we've been a dead band.
	opium.
	And the fact that they were able to.
	That's a significant impact.
	No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Well, I think we can all agree that 2016 has been a momentous, indeed, historic year.
	And as it's Christmas, let's think of those events in terms of the three wise men bearing their gifts.
	First, we had the Brexit deliverance.
	Then we had the Trump triumph.
	Yeah.
	And then thirdly, of course, the Italian rebellion.
	It's just that in this case, the gifts were all the same.
	Democracy and the rebirth of the nation-state.
	And I really think you'd better listen, because I know in the past you've managed to ignore Danish, Dutch, Irish and French referendums, but this time it is for real.
	A democratic revolution has begun.
	Fact check, false.
	Adios, mofo.
	The best podcast in the universe!

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