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April 5, 2018 - No Agenda
02:52:35
1022: LibJoe
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Time Text
Citizens of the globe, the earth is my home.
I live on earth.
Adam Couric, John C. Dvorak.
It's Thursday, April 5th, 2018.
This is your award-winning Gitmo Nation Media Assassination, Episode 1022.
This is No Agenda.
Celebrating double magic digits around the sun and broadcasting live from the capital of the drone, Star State, downtown Austin Tejas, in the Cludio, in the morning, everybody.
I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where we missed the Zephyr, I'm John C. Dvorak.
Oh, wow.
Short, sweet.
It's an AZ show.
AZ. AZ. AZ. Well, ladies and gentlemen, he's been around the sun two times, 33 times.
Happy birthday, my friend.
You're welcome.
Have you received any gifts yet for your birthday?
Sorry?
Have you received any gifts yet for your birthday?
Yeah, I got one right here.
I'm playing it.
Oh, God.
That's not a gift.
That's a curse.
Who gave that to you?
Who gave that to you?
Mimi did.
Oh, what is she, trying to be cute?
We're going to start a new bongo poetry podcast, because I know that'll pack it in.
Exactly.
So you're going to do the bongos, Mimi will do the poetry, and then Jay will be doing finger snaps?
Yes.
Got it.
Well, you know we have...
I've got to get the goatee.
I've got to grow a goatee.
That will look so good on you.
You know, we have many producers from around the globe of different professions and different skill sets.
One of our...
I think she was an associate executive producer on the last show, Melissa Tallon.
Are you familiar with her?
Uh, no.
Why?
She was the one that said that after years of being signed to major labels, she's now independent, is really happy.
Oh, right.
Yeah, I remember her, yes.
So, uh, she's, she's actually quite talented.
Uh, she's, she's, um, hmm.
You know.
We have lots of talented people.
Yeah.
But, you know, like chick behind the piano type, cool, talented.
Oh, okay.
One of those.
And guess what?
She sent something in for your birthday.
Ah, terrific.
Thank you.
But this show comes along.
Here is your show.
Get you some cover and two spots.
We're gonna just stop.
Cause we really love you, stop.
We're all thinking of you.
Happy birthday's a phrase from the shade.
I'm no agenda forever.
There you go!
Well, she can sing.
Uh-huh.
And you know what's great?
If we had done a morning show on a radio station or even a weekend call-in show, in order to get something like that, It would have been, you know, you've got to write it, you've got to get approval, you've got to talk to the production guy, we've got to find a singer, we've got to find music.
We're going to get a call from ASCAP? Immediately, yes.
We probably will.
Think about it.
Well, it's a parody.
Yeah, uh-huh.
Yeah, that doesn't mean that you're absconded.
It's a totally legal parody.
Yes, but you're not absconded from rights.
Anyway, thank you very much, Melissa Tallon from Australia.
You made my day.
Yeah.
Very sweet for you.
She's great.
She should do well as an independent.
You should check her out on the YouTubes.
Okay.
She's pretty good.
She's got some good stuff.
Almost as good as that chick from Iran.
My goodness.
Was this a doozy or what?
Well, it was a gem, and I got some nasty note from one of our producers saying, apparently something happened to his area, and we poo-pooed it as, eh, local, who cares?
Oh.
And so he says...
This is local.
Who cares?
He's kind of mocking me.
The funny thing is, this is not a local story because it involves YouTube, and it involves changing their policies and screwing all these people they suckered into hoping to make a living.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for bringing up the immediate issue that isn't being discussed.
Of course, we're not talking about gun control or anything like that or how white men are horrible or white men are terrorists.
What I saw is exactly what you just mentioned is, wait a minute.
YouTube and all the social nets, they're all constantly giving you this feedback mechanism.
And believe me, this is not about demonetization.
The demonetization part, I'm sure she was making pennies.
That's not the point.
When you get demonetized on the YouTubes, your viewer count goes down.
This is what drove her over the edge.
The channels being closed, viewer count.
This reward system is addictive.
And when people can't get their drug, they can go over the edge.
And I think the social nets need to be very careful, particularly with YouTube, because people put a lot of effort into that.
And again, I really don't believe that her 300,000 views is a groundbreaking moneymaker.
The way it really operates.
But, you know, it was the addiction that was...
She was being cut off.
It's like cutting off a junkie.
No, she looked like one.
Um...
I have a couple clips.
Can I do one first?
I have a backgrounder from the New York Times, and the reason I want to play it is, for some reason, it's a Dutch guy doing the voiceover.
Oh, so that means you can mock it?
Absolutely.
But I was surprised.
Why would the New York Times have this voice do their video?
Oh, you're talking about the crappy videos they put online?
Yeah.
Representing the paper?
Yes, exactly.
I don't get it either.
They have these...
They're in New York City.
They could get a reasonable newsreader, and I'm sure there's somebody on the staff that can do it, but they just bring any old schlub they can, and you know they don't want to do it.
I mean, every once in a while there's somebody that does want to do it, but most of them go, I don't know, I don't know, I don't have a good voice.
Oh, you're good.
Go ahead, you're going to sound great.
I think what happened here, I think this was the editor, because I know a lot of Dutch guys who are good video editors, and he's probably illegally at the New York Times working on stuff.
And then they said, well, you know, we don't have anybody, so I did the voice myself.
Hey, everybody in Holland, I'm on the New York Times.
The YouTube shooter Nassim Ahdam was widely known on Iranian social media as Nassim Saps, which means Green Nassim.
Huge information.
Because of her advocacy for animal rights, healthy living and veganism.
Her specific style of videos made her relatively famous among Iran's growing YouTube and Instagram influencers.
Woo!
For instance, one showing a rabbit where she explains the differences between vegetarianism and being vegan.
In another video, she explains the benefits of eating a papaya.
One of her most well-known videos here is...
What do you think of it so far?
Do you think I'm really rocking it?
I think that maybe this will set a trend and kind of remove the British sounding newsreaders.
We're going for this?
And replace it with these Dutch guys.
I have a career!
Finally!
I can get gigs!
One where she's wearing a revealing purple dress.
Don't believe what you see is a message appearing in the video screen.
I'm being discriminated and filtered on YouTube.
And I'm not the only one.
And if you go and check my videos, you see that my new videos hardly get views.
She also criticizes YouTube and makes a physical protest a year ago by going on the streets, posting what claims to be a picture of herself holding up a sign saying, YouTube dictatorship.
And then there is a video that gives more insight, if you will, in the life of Mrs.
Saddam.
She had fled her native Iran decades ago.
In that video, she explains that even though she was a member of the Baha'i faith, which is a persecuted faith in Iran, she doesn't really like life in the United States.
And she literally says...
In Iran, they kill you by X. But in the United States, they kill you with cotton.
An Iranian expression for saying that she's dying a slow death in the United States.
When it comes to freedom of speech, do you think that Iran is better than USA or USA is better than Iran?
She was also repeatedly being teased online for her comments.
Many Iranian users in social media would ridicule her, would tell her that she's crazy.
Crazy?
She actually explains that she's doing very well and that it's actually the people who are making those comments who are mentally ill.
She also criticizes Instagram by saying that her followers are all real.
She actually has several Instagram accounts.
She also had a Telegram channel before she attacked the YouTube office and subsequently killed herself.
One of her last posts there is a childhood photo of herself posing between flowers with one flower stuck in her hair.
I'm telling you, he also wrote it.
He wrote it as well, I can tell.
Yeah, he wrote the copy.
He wrote it, yes.
That's crazy.
I thought that was a fun way to get the info.
It was a different type of report.
Yeah, I think we should just go with this.
I hope they do more.
We did have a producer at YouTube, Boots on the Ground, if you're interested.
Yeah.
Let me see.
You're smacking your lips.
I am.
It's the birthday cake.
It wasn't easy for me to judge since I only got to look at the perpetrator holding the gun before I ran for it.
However, they looked very serious.
They were dressed in black.
And he says, they?
I asked him, I said, why did you say they?
Was there more than one shooter?
He says, no, no, no.
That's just how we talk here.
I said, it's a Z. Okay?
You got to do it right.
That's a good way to confuse the country.
Yeah.
Z were dressed in black and my co-worker who I met up with later said he thought it was a woman with at least part of her face covered.
The perpetrator was holding the gun, medium-sized, in both hands, the sort of way I believe you're supposed to.
When I heard the very loud popping, I looked up for my food and saw the figure described.
I was fortunate, quote-unquote, to be sitting at the table closest to the lobby doors, whereas the shooter was more in the center of the patio area and aiming straight in front of her at a downwards angle.
She could not have been more than 10 to 15 feet from the victims that got shot.
The door to our building requires badges to enter, which slowed our escape by probably one second, but it still felt like an eternity.
I escaped through the lobby, but I think many people may have run out through the side entrance where you don't need a badge to exit.
That's mostly it from my account.
I'd like to know how the shooter got in.
It wouldn't be too hard for them to tailgate someone through the outside entrance to the patio, but if they're familiar with the layout, or lucky, they could have just gone through the garage complex.
To get from the garage complex into the patio, there's a heavy door where for some reason the badges only needed to get into the garage from the patio, not vice versa.
And that turns out to be the way she got in, actually.
So that was the security floor right there, boots on the ground.
Well, I have a couple of those.
Let's start with the last report.
This one came out last night on the local TV. And this is the YouTube last report.
Shooter report with a little opinion.
As each hour passes, there are more revelations about the YouTube shooter.
This is her YouTube channel.
Naseem Ogdam was extremely bitter with the San Bruno company, saying YouTube changed its policy and ultimately paid her less for her content.
As you might know, YouTube pays people who have a big online following.
Ogdom isn't the only one upset with YouTube's new payment structure.
Plenty of people worldwide are accusing the company of unfair business practice.
But do they have a valid gripe?
NBC Bay Area's Gene Nellie joins us at YouTube headquarters with the latest details.
Gene.
Raj, lots of people who have YouTube channels say recent changes made by the company are costing them thousands of dollars a month and some have taken legal action.
I'm being discriminated and filtered on YouTube.
Nassim Agdam was angry with YouTube over new policies that made it harder to make money from her videos.
It could be why she walked onto the San Bruno campus and shot three people.
Now, the way that you should deal with something like this is through legal means.
The creators of Zombie Goes Boom don't condone her actions but understand her anger.
Tweeting last night that YouTube's new rules ruined livelihoods and it has blood on its hands.
We are ZombieGo Boom.
Chuck Murray says ZombieGo's Boom used to bring in $10,000 to $15,000 a month.
But in March of last year, YouTube stopped posting ads in front of videos it decided had questionable content or language.
Murray says revenue plummeted 90% overnight.
Our channel is 1.7 million subscribers on YouTube.
YouTube we have over a quarter of a billion views and we make less than a part-time employee at McDonald's that's that's what YouTube has done to thousands of people.
Mireille filed a lawsuit against YouTube's parent company Google claiming fraudulent business practices.
The suit was dismissed.
As he and other content producers simmer law enforcement is taking a closer look at Ogdom searching her parents home in Riverside County and near her apartment in San Diego.
Oh, what a fool.
The guy had another Dutch accent.
That one?
The zombie goes boom guy.
It didn't sound that Dutch to me.
Okay.
So that's the angle they're using.
Hold on a second.
When this happened, I was watching MSNBC, as I've promised myself to do for a while.
I know, I know.
I know, it makes me nauseous when you say it.
Don't tell me.
Okay, I was watching the M... And so the report comes on, and immediately, almost immediately, they went to, well, it's a woman.
We believe this is a domestic dispute.
You know, can't be any kind of terrorism.
Can't be just a crazy old white guy.
No, it's just...
Yeah, so let's drop it.
Yeah, yeah.
So let's just go along with that like that.
Oh, oh, gee.
Oh, she was angry at YouTube.
Yeah, we had...
I mean, every one of the reports ends up with this kind of an ending clip.
Play YouTube security.
Oh, yeah.
I got one about that, too, with an interesting bit.
Tonight, YouTube making changes, saying, we are also revisiting this incident in detail, and we'll be increasing the security we have at all of our offices worldwide to make them more secure, not only in the near term, but long term.
Now I have a more secure clip with a little gotcha.
See if you can hear it.
The Google-owned company pledged to increase security at its offices.
It is encouraging workers to take time off or work from home.
Tonight, YouTube is stepping up security worldwide after the shooting at its California San Bruno headquarters.
The company is releasing new details tonight, saying Nassim Agdam entered an outdoor courtyard through a parking garage, then opened fire yesterday, wounding three people before killing herself.
YouTube says security protections prevented the shooter from making it inside the building, and relatives say Agdam was angry YouTube started censoring her videos, and they warned police after she disappeared.
She had a problem with YouTube, so we called that cop again and told him that she might, there's a reason she went all the way from San Diego to that.
There was no information related to the officer whatsoever that there was any indication of violence.
Today police searched the home where Ogdam lived in the gun range he visited just prior to that shooting.
Did you hear it?
No.
Oh, at the end, he's so programmed to think that shooters are men that he says he.
Oh!
Play it again.
Hold on.
Why isn't it playing?
Here we go.
Hey.
The Google-owned company soever that there was any indication of violence.
Today police searched the home where Ogdom lived and the gun range he visited just prior to that shooting.
Yeah, he's so programmed to say he...
She says she.
No, he didn't say he says he.
I listened to it several times.
Well, let's play it again.
Oh, gosh.
Now tell me which part you're saying, because he says she visited the gun...
The Google-owned company pledged to increase...
There was any indication of violence?
Yeah, listen.
Today police searched the home where Ogdom lived and the gun range he visited just prior...
No!
The gun range he visited...
I heard she.
Okay.
Then maybe I'm programmed to hear he.
How about that?
Well, that's possible too.
Yeah.
It's bad, but it's possible.
It's possible that I'm programmed to hear she.
Who knows?
I'm from the Bay Area.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
I still hear Z. I don't know.
Maybe I'm crazy.
Well, if you're going to play that game.
Yes.
I got one for you.
Okay.
This is another one.
This is a story about the gun and...
This YouTube story about gun.
I've seen the investigative reporter, Vicky Wayne.
Vicky.
Well, Raj, Nassim Agdam's father said when YouTube changed its policies about which videos make money, his daughter had, quote, no income.
Agdam was active on Instagram and YouTube.
She had more than 50,000 followers on Insta.
She posted videos in Farsi, Turkish, and English...
But she grew upset with YouTube as early as 2015.
And in 2016, she posted this screenshot, claiming YouTube paid her only 10 cents for a video that received more than 300,000 views.
Family members say she had no history of mental illness.
And we learned today from San Bruno PD that Ogden's gun was registered in California, which means she presumably had to pass a background check that ruled out any reported mental health or criminal issues.
One relative who declined to give her name said she's upset that Ogden was able to obtain that 9mm handgun she used to shoot and wound three people.
Ask Adam, ask Adam, yeah.
Alright, ask away.
You already got it.
Oh.
You spotted it.
Oh, the Insta?
That she said Insta?
She uses the word, this is a reporter.
She's trying to be cool.
She's trying to be like one of the kids.
She's a reporter and she says Insta.
Yeah, that's what she got.
I'm trying to say the gram.
No, I think Insta is what all the cool kids say.
We say the gram.
Yeah, that's what they say, but I say the gram.
I say the gram.
The gram.
Yeah, you spotted it right away, so it wasn't much of an accent.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't hear.
Did you ding?
Did you ding me?
I clapped.
Oh, I'm having problems hearing today.
More than usual.
I have a sinus pressure thing.
It's crazy.
It's affecting my ears.
Well, it didn't affect your ears so you didn't spot Insta.
I just thought it was unprofessional, personally.
Oh, okay.
Anyway, the last clip I have, and you can go on with the more security stuff, but is the...
Because the way they do the security thing is, YouTube's been, everyone's bitching about they're not getting enough money.
YouTube's making big changes.
They're going to beef up security.
Yeah.
It's just to me, I don't know why I think that's funny.
We're going to hand out less money and beef up security.
That's the strategy.
That's the way to do it.
That's if we can pay the guards more.
But ABC tried to get some sort of an angle.
There was a lot of innuendo.
And then they came up with this long shot.
I mean, well, MSNBC, like you pointed out, decided it wasn't even a story because it wasn't a male right winger.
Right.
ABC at least tried to make it a terrorist story, at least make some innuendo, and this is the tube shooter was a pilot.
A neighbor saying it appeared on dump threw away some of the clothes she wore in these videos just days before her rampage.
And Matt Gutman joins us live outside YouTube's office in San Bruno.
Matt, authorities tonight searching for clues and porn over those videos and telling you they've learned troubling details about the shooter's past?
That's right, Tom.
Federal law enforcement officials tell me they are still involved in this case because when they delved into her background, they found some red flags.
For instance, she got a pilot's license from the FAA just two days after 9-11, and some of her online activism also raised concern.
But they are telling us tonight they are nearly certain she was not affiliated with any domestic or foreign terrorist groups.
Tom.
So this is the way you go now.
Oh, yes.
So anyone who's got a pilot's license within five days of 9-11 is suspect.
Very suspect.
Very suspect, I say.
I said, what a stretch.
Now, have you heard any reports about antidepressants, SSRIs, anything like that?
Nothing?
Nothing?
Of course not.
Hmm.
She seems like she might have been a candidate.
Oh yeah, she seemed like kind of a lost soul.
There was a couple of clips I didn't get, but I'll mention them because one was very funny where the sheriff says...
She apparently didn't have any gun skills.
And I'm thinking...
What?
She went to the range?
Yeah, apparently she had no gun skills.
That's why she went to the range seeing if she can shoot at all.
She bought the gun.
And everyone bitched about that.
Oh, she shouldn't have been able to buy a gun.
Yeah.
If you can buy a gun in California, you can buy a gun.
So she bought a gun.
Decided to take it to the range.
Probably had somebody show her how to shoot her.
They wouldn't have remembered her.
It's not everybody at the range remembers everybody who shows up.
And so she probably took a few shots at the targets and figured, okay, well, at least I can shoot it.
And then she shoots a couple people in the legs.
And then they said, well, she couldn't.
She was in the patio because she couldn't get into the building.
She could have shot those building doors, I believe, or glass from what I could tell.
You could shoot the door out.
You could shoot the lock off of it.
She wanted a surprise attack.
And so she's shooting people on the patio and then shoots three bullets and then says, oh, I have no good at this.
I have no gun skills and blows her head off.
So maybe that was an accident.
The blowing her head off part?
Yeah, maybe she has such few gun skills that she shot herself in the head.
I don't know.
I hate to make fun of the day.
Or of the trauma that people live through.
It sucks.
But I also have to point out, from my own personal history in the Netherlands, and I've seen this in many...
I'm opening myself up here, but...
In the community of animal activists, there is a lot of violence.
And sometimes these can be very violent people.
I think the act of throwing cakes and pies at somebody and throwing paint on people, all of that is unacceptable.
And, you know...
It doesn't surprise me that she was such a radical animal activist, let's put it that way.
No, it doesn't surprise me either.
I think it's all part of the same, I don't know what to call it.
Oh, apparently she didn't blow her head off.
She shot herself in the chest.
Then I'm right.
Which way do I point it?
Horrible.
I'm not hitting anything with this.
Maybe I'm holding it wrong.
I think someone sent me a link to this.
Why don't you shoot yourself in the chest?
You gotta turn the gun around.
Oh, brother.
Yeah.
Someone sent me a link to this, and I'd kind of forgotten about it.
Michael Moore is such a nut.
Where is he, by the way, with this handgun incident in California?
But when he did the movie Bowling for Columbine, which I think is really how he rose to fame, right?
Wasn't that his big hit, his big mainstream documentary hit?
I think the big one was the General Motors one.
Oh, was that before that or after that?
It was before it was the original.
Okay, so all right.
Yeah, of course.
He had already been huge by then, Roger and me.
But he came to some very interesting conclusions about Columbine, and I think it would be interesting, in light of this shooter, who we don't know much about, just to listen to what he came up with.
In Bowling for Columbine, we never really came up with the answer in terms of why this happened.
I think we did a good job of exposing all the reasons that were given were a bunch of BS. You know, Marilyn Manson caused them to do it.
This, this or that caused them to do it.
And none of it really made any sense.
That's why I believe there should be an investigation in terms of what prescribed pharmaceuticals these kids were on.
And perhaps parents...
It would have a shocking...
It just would be shocking, I think, to the millions of parents who prescribed this for their kids if it was finally explained to them, if this is the case, that...
This perhaps occurred for no other reason other than because of these prescriptions.
Imagine what that would do.
Imagine how people would totally rethink things, grasping for every little straw they can to explain why something like Columbine happens, when in fact it may be nothing more than this.
How else do you explain two otherwise decent kids, very smart, no history of violence to other kids in the school?
Why them?
Why did this happen?
It's an extremely legitimate question to pose, and it demands an investigation.
Where's that Michael Moore?
What happened to him?
I like that one.
Well, you know, he does make a point in none of these school shootings...
Ever occurred before the TV advertising of these drugs.
There's a strong correlation, in fact, in the timeline.
Yes, and I don't think it's a coincidence.
He noticed it early on.
That's very early on.
It's continuing.
Nobody seems to want to talk about it for the reason that we've expressed on this show, which is why we ask people to help us do this show by contributing directly to So we don't have to run ads from these companies that are really supporting the networks, these drug companies.
The networks, half of them would really be rethinking everything they do if they lost all that advertising revenue from these drug companies that produce some of these really dubious drugs.
Here's a short follow-up clip from Michael Moore.
E.Y. Lilly Corporation, a pharmaceutical company, for nearly 15 years covered up their own internal investigation that showed that anyone on Prozac Is 12 times more likely to attempt suicide than those using other antidepressants.
Not 12 times more than the average population.
12 times more than those already on other antidepressants.
This is a criminal act.
And I want to know why these criminals are still walking the streets.
Yeah.
That guy!
Where's that guy?
You know, he could do a good documentary on that, but no one would ever run it.
Yeah.
He'd get killed.
Unfortunately.
He'd get killed, or they just would say, you run this documentary, you're not going to get any more dollars from us.
We'll just give it all to CBS. Yeah, the worst.
Hit the guy where it hurts, in his pocketbook.
Yeah, true.
Let me see.
I don't know.
Can we...
I guess maybe we can move this a little bit to...
Because we just don't have anything.
We don't know anything other than...
No, I think it's covered.
I think it's been covered.
She's done.
And that's the way it goes.
And this news cycle continues next week.
This won't even be a story.
But I think we might see more of this type of violence against the social nets.
When you get demonetized, delisted, banned, blocked.
This may be the start of a violent backlash.
And I have for later on the show, I have I listen to that Ezra Klein interview with Zuckerberg.
Did you hear that?
You haven't heard it.
Good.
No, I have heard it.
Oh, you have?
The whole thing?
No, I didn't hear it.
Okay, so I pulled a couple clips, so you'll be able to listen to that.
But we did have, let me see, two other clips.
Oh, yeah.
Okay.
You might have seen this.
I wasn't even going to clip this one until I saw it run on TV and I thought it was funny, just even the audio.
This is Nicole Wallace on MSNBC and so they have the box.
She's got a guest in the studio and a box to her right or to her left for the viewer with the helicopter video or a sky shot of the YouTube headquarters.
And someone opens up a Pepsi can in the studio.
From Google and YouTube as it becomes available.
Steve Schmidt, I always go back to the horror of 9-11 and the complete reliance.
You know, we're in our tribes.
We're in our corners most of our lives.
I think we just heard some gunshots.
Should we listen to that for a second?
Control room?
Control room.
Not gunshots?
Not gunshots.
Okay.
They'll tell us if there's something...
I think we just heard some gunshots.
Can you confirm the control room?
Oh, my God.
From here, it sounds like somebody opening up a Pepsi can and micing it.
Yeah.
I think we're hearing gunshots.
Her reaction is priceless, though.
I think we're hearing gunshots.
Control room, can you confirm?
Is that gunshot?
Is that gunshot?
These people are the worst.
Here is David Hogg.
He's getting kind of high on the Hog, actually.
I guess Bill O'Reilly wrote something or went somewhere, as if he's still relevant, and accused this kid of taking money from Soros, from shadowy figures, shadowy figures in the background.
Here's his priceless response.
I mean, I'm pretty well lit.
I don't see any shadowy figures behind me.
I mean, honestly, if he sees powerful, shadowy groups, is corporate America standing with us?
Okay.
Yes, it doesn't really make sense.
But what I want to get on from is the negativity in this situation, and I want to focus on what's ahead for our movement.
It's really what we need to be focusing on is the positivity and really bringing everybody together.
And that's the first thing that we have coming up are the town halls on April 7th that we're trying to get in every congressional district.
And I think when Bill says these things...
I love how he's just...
Bill...
You know, like my colleague over there, former Fox News colleague Bill.
Bill and Laura and Don.
And I think when Bill says these things, and when Laura says these things, I'm fine when they disagree with my policies.
That's absolutely okay.
What I have a problem with is when they attack me or anybody else personally.
Why?
What does that accomplish?
It doesn't make any sense.
I don't have any shadowy figures behind me.
At least, I don't see any.
I'm pretty well lit, and I'm just a kid that uses Twitter.
And if he sees me as powerful, that's okay.
I don't see myself that way.
But, honestly, we're trying to use our First Amendment rights, and so is corporate America.
And if he stands against that, that's fine.
But they're standing with us, and we're going to stand with them, too.
This guy babbles, too.
He just wants corporate America to stand by him, which is great.
I think you should do an ISO of, I'm pretty well lit.
I'm pretty well lit.
It's like, oh man, I'm really high.
I'm pretty well lit.
Yeah, I should do that.
Pretty well lit.
I should do that.
I forgot that Chris Wilson sent in a little preview of his end of show mix for this whole YouTube thing.
Don't tell me why I don't like YouTube.
I don't like you, too.
That was so sick.
I don't like you, too.
Community strong.
The whole side down.
All right, you can look forward to the full song at the end of the show.
I have a little side thing to do here.
First is the Tesla April Fool's gag, which we should at least do a little follow-up on.
And then I have my clip that I finally found and I've got that one.
Yes, I see it.
Well, they may have gotten some laughs, but Tesla took a big hit because of an April Fool's joke.
Here it is.
Elon Musk posted this to Twitter yesterday, saying that the company was going bankrupt.
While a lot of people were looking out for jokes, the timing of this tweet may have put Tesla shares into a deep slide.
As we mentioned earlier in the newscast, the NTSB is investigating a deadly crash involving a Tesla that was in autopilot mode.
Tesla shares fell about 8% this morning to their lowest level in nearly a year.
You know, that was the dumbest thing I've ever seen anyone do.
And he never said April Fool's.
So he violated the whole game.
It's interesting you say that because I was waiting for him to say April Fool's on that and April Fool's on the flamethrower.
And you actually, not a lot of people know this, but you were pretty famous back in the day for your April Fool's gags.
Yes, I've done quite a few good ones.
I got in the Hoax Hall of Fame with one of them.
Oh, which one was that?
I believe that was the one where I said that Patrick Leahy...
It got wind of this and he got irked about it, by the way.
Patrick Leahy was working on a bill to make...
Being intoxicated while on the internet, a felony.
Because these guys...
And the way I played it was that these guys are so stupid that because it was dubbed the information highway, they felt it was like drunk driving.
It was DUI. And they didn't know the difference between one and the other.
And so I played it from that perspective, which is the way you do it, April Fool's.
Take something real and then twist it into something ridiculous.
And then people will say, oh, these guys are so stupid.
And, of course, the whole thing was bullshit.
And that was one of them.
I also had one that, which got on the front page of the Sioux City newspaper.
Sioux City?
Sioux City?
Sioux City, this is where my gateway was.
Gateway computers.
And it got above the fold, right at the top.
I think it was Sioux City or Sioux Falls.
You're all jacked up above the fold, below the lead.
It was above the timeline.
You print maven, you.
It was in the olden days.
This was before the internet.
You're still excited about it.
Well, I got a kick out of it.
All right.
Because above the whole thing.
How did you launch it?
You had no email.
How did you launch it?
You had no webs.
These all went into magazines.
Oh, print.
Yeah, nice.
Oh, jeez.
Anyway, you want to hear the story?
Yes!
You asked for the story.
I asked for one, but you're going to give me the second one.
I think it was in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, the chat room should know.
Anyways, it's a big town in Dakotas.
I made the assertion, it was just, I wrote it up as a news item, is that Ted Waite and the boys at the Gateway 2000 Computer Company, it was in the 90s, We're buying the town name, and they were going to change the name of Sioux Falls or Sioux City, which are the two, to Gateway City.
And I played it straight.
I think I remember this, yeah.
Yeah, they're going to be Gateway City and everybody got bent out of shape.
So they wrote this article and it ran in the paper.
And how did you do the April Fool's?
You put that in the magazine as well?
The way it's done, the way I would always do it is I'd have about five hints in there that this was a gag.
I would put the date.
I always have a spokesperson who's always a lerp a sleuth.
And...
Which is April Fool's spelled backwards.
I mean, if you can't get that at that point, you're an idiot.
And there's a lot of hints.
There was actually, there was a pretty good one this year, which didn't get enough play, I felt.
Lexus and 23andMe, did you see that?
No, I didn't.
They did a commercial, very professional commercial.
It was completely produced, and it was extremely believable.
And the idea was, and I clipped it, but it doesn't work without video.
And it's really well done.
It looks like a Lexus commercial, because it is.
And the idea is, you give your DNA to Lexus, and they customize...
Oh yes, I saw this commercial.
And there's a couple of giveaways.
There's a couple of giveaways.
One is she's spitting into the test tube right there in the commercial, which is not at all flattering.
I'm like, hold on a second, what's going on here?
And then at the very end, I'm like, oh my god, this is crazy.
Are they insane?
What's happening?
The very end, to start the car, she licks the steering wheel and it recognizes her DNA and starts and drives off.
It was well done.
That's funny.
It was very good.
I didn't see the whole thing.
But Elon Musk should be arrested.
I thought so.
I thought that you sunk the stock if you were trading it.
You may have lost money.
This was the stupidest thing I've ever seen anyone do.
You can't do this legally.
Honestly, I sunk the stock.
I mean, I told you get $250.
Well, you said that, but I found...
I found the old rave clip.
You raving and raving about the machine in 2017.
This is what I criticized you for.
And so I have a clip.
I finally found it.
Taken out of context, just a small part.
No, no.
This is your words in the order you said them.
And it's also...
Okay, I tightened up a little because there was a lot of the ums and ahs.
So I cut it down a little bit because I didn't want it to go on forever.
I got one minute and 41 seconds.
This pretty much summarizes your feelings.
And I-35 can get pretty gnarly.
Let me tell you something, John.
This car blew my mind with autopilot.
I did not drive to New Braunfels.
The car drove itself.
Oh, that's nice.
And from stop-and-go traffic, we were on the web browser, we're connecting phones, and the car is just driving by.
In fact, at a certain point, we have to get off I-35, and I'm thinking, I wonder if it'll actually just do that, too.
That's how comfortable it felt.
Lane changes, click on...
Yeah, I never drove one with that feature.
Oh, my God.
Now, I'm very familiar with adaptive cruise control and with systems that keep you in your lane that'll kind of bop you back into the lane.
But this was an absolute mind-boggling experience.
Any car I have in the future, I want this technology in it.
Tina loves it.
She loves the minimalism of it.
She thinks it's fantastic.
But also just the feeling that we're tootling along and saying, hey, let's just see how the pickup is when we're doing 70.
I floor the thing.
It's unbelievable.
There's no doubt about it.
This is an unbelievable beast of a machine.
So again, on the way back, I just love the technology of the car.
I think the sound...
The sound system was okay.
There's a lot of extras.
I don't know if he has the super sound system and the suspension and all that.
But again, the car is driving itself.
I am absolutely loving this experience.
It made me feel great about saving the world from climate change.
Absolutely outstanding.
You know, I almost bought one.
This car is suitable for every imaginary scenario, except for picking up chicks at the Whataburger.
Absolutely outstanding.
First of all, I gave John the link from NoAgendaPlayer.com.
And I listened to the whole thing.
You just cut that up.
You butchered it.
You're a horrible man.
How long did you spend on that?
Two days?
That was good.
That was good.
I'll tell you.
I will brag about one clip.
One thing I did.
You, I think, because you're like a very good editor, and I think I can hold my own, but there was a couple more things I really had to spend a lot of time getting just a little, one bit of information out.
But on the one, I was trying to fix it, and it was, this car, you said, and you should actually play this again and see how good I did this, because it was a luck shot.
You said, this car is unsuitable.
And I took the un out.
You did a good job.
I'm like, wait a minute.
I know exactly what's in that clip.
I just heard it.
Okay, you got me.
What I was going to say is, yes, that's the day I bought.
And I sold April 1st.
Oh, man.
Okay, good one.
You got me.
Okay.
Alright, what else we got here?
Yeah, let me see if we got...
Did I have anything else on...
Oh yeah, well there is a...
This was interesting.
Someone asked me if this is constitutional.
I believe it is, but it's just something that we should maybe discuss briefly.
The vote came in about...
This is Deerfield, Illinois.
...an hour ago, and it was unanimous, the village opting for a ban on specific types of firearms.
And essentially what that means is a complete ban on semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns containing certain features and magazines containing more than 10 rounds of ammunition.
Law enforcement and retired law enforcement are exempt by the adjustments to local law.
The debate before the vote at times heated and passionate.
There's going to be lots of talk about Second Amendment rights.
But I'd be hard pressed to find any right that is completely unrestricted.
We have police.
Yeah, they had them in Florida too.
Imagine how those teachers and those kids felt as they look out that window at that cop hiding behind that tree.
I bet they wish they had a gun versus a phone in their hands.
The law is very similar to the one that is currently in place in Highland Park.
The ban goes into effect June 13th, and after that, those with the noted firearms could be fined up to $1,000 per day that they possess those noted firearms.
We are live in Deerfield.
Jeremy Ross, CBS 2 News.
So the question is, is that constitutional?
I believe it is.
What?
That they can ban a gun in their city or municipality.
Well, they do that in Washington, D.C., and I think it's been upheld.
I can see why that's a community decision.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just the federal government does not like it.
The Second Amendment is about the federal government.
Yeah, it's not about the local government.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, why don't they just do that?
Do it town by town, we'll go, shutting them down.
Just in time, our favorite resource on the internet for definitions, Merriam-Webster, has changed the definition of assault rifle.
Huh?
Huh?
Yes.
Here we go.
Assault rifle.
Any of various intermediate-range magazine-fed military rifles, such as the AK-47, that can be set for automatic or semi-automatic fire.
Also, a rifle that resembles a military assault rifle but is designed to allow only semi-automatic fire.
So they added the also.
Ah.
It resembles.
What kind of definition is that, resembles?
It means if it looks nasty.
I know what it means, but, you know, resembles.
So that could just be colors.
Yeah, with the camo.
Yeah, exactly, the camo.
Very strange.
And then just some confirmation, even though we already had figured this one out pretty quickly.
The March for Our Lives march.
These kids were all getting ready to organize in April, which would have been about now.
And they were going to do this big walk out of school.
And then all of a sudden, no, it's in March.
It's called March for Our Lives.
Here we go.
D.C. police confirmed that the March for Our Lives people booked and got their permits months in advance.
Yeah, well, they still put the kibosh on it, didn't they?
They wouldn't let them march.
Well, no, I think they didn't have permission for a rally.
But the point is, this whole thing was set up months in advance for a march.
It's unclear to me if it was called March for Our Lives, but the permits were given out way before the shooting took place.
Oh, yeah.
So that's the timeline that's interesting in this case.
Scam.
Scam.
Well, yeah, it's a scam.
Absolutely.
Maybe the guys who got the permits were the ones behind the shooting so they could get more people to come to the march.
Get off my beat.
Even I wouldn't suggest that.
Even I wouldn't suggest it.
Did you see Spotify go public?
Yes, I did.
165.
It went up to 165.
This stock is worthless.
This is one of those 50-cent stocks.
You know what's interesting?
Actually, I'd like to correct the DH Unplugged sister podcast.
I think you guys know it, but it really came out wrong.
There were no shares issued at this IPO. There was no money raised.
This was just an exit.
No, it was just going public.
Yeah, this was an exit.
If they weren't public, I think it was by June, then they'd have to cut millions more shares to everybody and there was all these penalties and everything.
So they're like, ah, screw it.
It's like a reverse merger.
Yeah, I don't know about 50 cents.
I think...
It's never made a nickel.
No, of course not.
But just by the typical standards, I think $50.
There was no shares to short.
No, we did it on our game, though, because...
CNBC actually called me to do an appearance about the Spotify IPO. Well, you should have.
No!
No.
What am I going to say?
You know exactly.
You get all ready.
You go to a studio.
Wait, let me guess.
Hold on.
So, Mr.
Curry.
Yes, yes, yes.
Let me just do the whole thing.
Okay.
Let me tell you.
First of all, I'll preface by saying the angle is MTV, music, technology.
Sure.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right.
I'll tell you what, you be the MSNBC or CNBC guy.
I'll be you.
I'll be Curry.
This is what I expect us to hear.
Right now we have another person who is very interested in this, very interesting to talk to when it comes to this Spotify IPO. We heard from Gene Simmons, a legendary frontman from KISS earlier.
And this guy has been around for lots of revolutionary technologies when it comes to music.
Please say hello to former MTV VJ and currently host of a podcast, Adam Curry.
Thanks.
Good to be on.
So, Adam, what is your feeling about Spotify in general?
Do you think that it's the cultural shift that will save the music business?
Well, I think what we should be talking about is Michael Jackson being murdered.
Yeah.
And back to Gene Simmons.
I'm an idiot.
You're so right.
I should have done that.
I should have done that.
Ah, stupid.
It's actually one of our producers is a booker.
He's the one that he said, I'm a big fan of the show, the podcast, and he's sincere, I could tell.
We have a listener who's one of the producers at NBC. Yes, a booker.
A booker.
But here's the real travesty.
This is the story that's unreported.
All the music business executives, all these companies, everyone had shares.
The people who didn't have shares were the artists.
They had no shares.
Screw them!
All the A&R managers, all these guys, like, hey, get it on Spotify.
Come on, you should do that.
You should make your own Spotify list with all the cool songs, the stuff that you really like.
It doesn't really matter.
It doesn't have to be on our label.
Just anything.
And then promote it.
Promote it on your Twitter.
And so these guys, they raped the artist twice by not cutting him in on any deal or any shares or anything, and then by actively helping them promote and create fictitious value that they then monetized.
They cashed in again on the back of the artist.
And are the artists stupid?
Are they stupid?
Do you not see this?
They're artists.
Oh, my goodness.
How about their managers?
You know what it is?
It's collusion.
Yeah, the managers were in on the IPO. Oh, it's just so sad.
Fools, I tell you.
Fools.
It's the same with YouTube and all this money.
Internet money.
Go look at the South Park Internet Money episode.
That will explain it perfectly.
Internet money, yeah.
Yeah.
We got a couple of things happened.
The Mexican...
They made a big fuss over this.
Stop the caravan?
No, well, spot the caravan was part of it, but I think which is why...
Trump put the National Guard at the border.
And of course all the, you know, your boys at MSNBC was all...
Hold on, hold on.
I'm just going to assert one thing.
I'm going to assert that this story was launched on purpose by Trump to get the National Guard on the border.
This thing was set up from the beginning.
It could be.
But the real point that I always thought was that they're making a big fuss about this.
And in fact, Bush put the National Guard on the border.
Obama?
And Obama put the national...
So what?
So he's doing it too.
Hold on.
Obama not only put 1,200 troops, National Guard, on the border, in Yuma, on the border, but he also charged the American public half a billion dollars for it.
He raised $500 million for this operation.
So anyone saying anything is full of crap.
Well, what they tried to do at ABC was bring it, conflate it, To make it sound as though he's doing this because Mueller is out to get him and he's trying to distract.
I love the old distraction.
They put the two stories together.
Listen to the way they do it on ABC. This is ABC. This is the beginning.
ABC, border announcement.
And lie.
Next, a stunning announcement from the White House.
National Guard troops will head to the border with Mexico as soon as tonight.
And it comes as sources say, special counsel Robert Mueller told the president's legal team in recent weeks that he was under investigation.
Here's ABC's chief White House correspondent, Jonathan Paul.
Wow!
Brazen!
That's incredible.
It's unbelievable.
Because you could also say, this is all a plot by YouTube to distract from people killing them.
It's really, I don't know even what to say, but it's just ABC trying to, I mean, it's two separate stories.
One's got nothing to do with the other.
I've got to give you a borderline.
That was at least that good.
That was at least a borderline.
That was worth a borderline.
So here is the second part where they bring in our guy, you know, the White House correspondent.
And this is Mexican border announcement in lie two.
A day after the president surprised his own top advisors by floating the idea of using the military to secure the border with Mexico...
We're going to be guarding our border with the military.
The White House made it official announcing he is signing the order and the National Guard could be on its way as early as tonight.
We do hope that the deployment begins immediately.
The Homeland Security Secretary could not say how many troops or how much it would cost.
As for what they'll do, U.S. troops cannot do law enforcement functions such as arresting illegal border crossers.
This would be a support role such as helping with surveillance.
It will be strong.
It will be as many as is needed to fill the gaps that we have today, is what I can tell you.
So we'll go through and make sure.
Just last week, the president also suggested he would use military funds to build his border wall.
Does the president have the authority to use money that Congress has appropriated to the Department of Defense to build the border wall?
What he meant was there are some lands that the Department of Defense owns right on the border that are actually areas where we see illicit activity.
We're looking into options for the military to build wall on military installations on the border.
But Pentagon officials tell ABC News the U.S. military has no land on the Mexican border.
The closest is the Air Force's Goldwater practice range in Arizona, which is not actually on the border.
Meanwhile, regarding the special counsel investigation, ABC News has confirmed President Trump has been informed by Robert Mueller's team that he is not, at this point, a criminal target of the investigation.
But he is a subject of the investigation, and therefore, Mueller wants to interview him.
Wow!
The hits just keep on coming with these guys.
Now, the worst part about this particular one, and I have the two ISOs put back-to-back.
Is that Tom Yamas, who's sitting in for David Muir, he indicates one thing in his opening, which is that Trump is under investigation.
And then this guy, the White House correspondent, says he's not under investigation, he's just kind of a person of interest.
He's just a person involved in the whole story, I think is what that means.
Yeah.
And so this is like misleading.
Now I have the two of them back to back.
Now you listen to the intro, which to me is always, when the anchor comes out, that's the headline.
So this is a misleading headline by ABC. And then it's corrected in the main part of the story.
But I think by then it's already ingrained in your brain that they're out to get Trump and he's under investigation.
And it comes as sources say, special counsel Robert Mueller told the president's legal team in recent weeks that he was under investigation.
President Trump has been informed by Robert Mueller's team that he is not at this point a criminal target of the investigation, but he is a subject of the investigation and therefore Mueller wants to interview him.
A subject, yes.
Oh, please.
I thought this was incredibly misleading.
And you're surprised?
I think this is just the lowest of the...
This is really reaching down there.
ABC trying to compete, I guess, with NBC who's really gone off the deep end on this stuff.
Well, it must be ratings.
It's got to be good somehow, somewhere.
I think you just got to pepper every story with Trump.
I don't think it's good for ratings at all.
I don't see that their ratings are doing that well.
ABC is the number one of the group, supposedly.
But I don't know that their ratings are improving by them being liars.
We barely have any news in this country.
In our country.
We barely have any news.
I agree.
It's just all Trump, Trump, Trump, Mueller, blah, blah, blah.
Hey, But what did you think of our DHS Secretary, Christian Nielsen?
I'm liking her.
This woman?
She was in that clip.
Yeah, that's why I asked.
She has skills.
She's very pretty.
She is pretty.
And she handles adversarial questions so expertly.
This could be...
She's a pro.
This could be a president.
She has president written all over her.
Listen to the...
So the guy asked some asshole question like, did the president get that idea from watching the morning show, Fox and Friends?
With some bullshit like that.
Listen to how she does this.
This is the 440th day of the Trump administration.
You talk about the urgency, you talk about it being April.
But there's a lot of speculation in the country that this might have something to do with something the president saw on television on Sunday morning.
Or it might have something to do with the fact that the president wants to short support amongst his political base.
Can you speak to that speculation?
Is it true?
I think what is true is the president is frustrated.
He has been very clear that he wants to secure our border.
He's been very clear that he wants to do that in a bipartisan way with Congress.
I think what you're seeing is the President taking his job very seriously in terms of securing our border and doing everything we can without Congress to do just that.
But I do hope as soon as Congress comes back that I can work with them.
How long have you been working on this plan?
For how long have you personally been working on this plan?
You know, it's always on the table.
It's been done before, as you know.
As you know, it's been done before.
It's nothing new.
It's one of many things that we have looked at.
We're in continuing conversations with the governors.
This is a partnership, as you know.
So, it's not new.
We're just walking through all of the things that we can do.
I listed some of the ones that we have done.
We can provide you others.
She needs a little bit of help on the vocal fry?
And she elongates some stuff without frying, which is also not so attractive.
But I think once she gets rid of that...
She's good at what I call a soft-pedaled insult.
Yes, as you know.
And the soft-pedaled insult is the use of as you know.
As you know, yes.
Because when you say, as you know, it's really saying, you already know this.
I don't know why you're asking me this stupid question.
Very subtle.
Well done.
A microaggression for sure.
It's a microaggression.
That's exactly what it is.
As you know, it's a microaggression.
She's good at it.
I'm a fan.
Let's see how she does.
She looks good at it.
She doesn't seem to get rattled.
I think the newer girl seems to be...
I think she's been promoted, so we're not going to see her so much.
Yeah.
He's got a bevy of women that do the front work.
The misogynist that he is.
The misogynist that he is.
He's hired all these women.
The problem is they're all pretty.
Well, I guess not all.
But it's beside the point because they all are effective and I think he's doing a very good job of surrounding himself with women who are effective at delivering the message without Obama had guys like Kirby and these other dicks.
It was just kind of an insult.
Josh Ernest.
There was another one besides Kirby, that other guy, Tanner.
Was it Tanner's name?
Yeah, the first guy was Carney.
No, no, I'm talking about the guy for the Defense Department was Kirby.
It was Toner or Tanner, I can't remember.
But he was a clone.
Kirby was an ex-admiral, so he had the Classic arrogance of a Navy officer.
And he just exuded it.
It was terrible.
No offense to all you Navy officers, but you know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, they know.
They understand.
And then just before we take our break, did you see Jesus Christ Superstar Live?
Not...
I did on Broadway years ago.
No, no.
It was on TV. It was the big Easter Sunday television extravaganza.
Oh, this was really good.
Oh, I'm surprised you didn't.
It was a blowout.
Nine and a half million viewers.
It's not bad.
Alice Cooper as King Herod.
And basically he wasn't acting, he just was Alice.
I didn't even know it was on.
I somehow missed the boat on it.
Oh, that's too bad.
I would have probably watched it.
Yeah, John Legend was Jesus.
We're black baby Jesus.
Yeah, it was really quite outstanding.
What I didn't realize is that I grew up with the double album, which came before the play.
It was just an album some freaks put together back in the hippie days.
My parents had that.
I had one of those big wooden...
Yeah, furniture cabinets in the living room and you open up the top and there was the turntable and you put it, you know, maybe it even came up on some kind of fake hydraulics.
And then the speakers were in the cabinet and I'd listen to that and I knew all the words still.
It was very, very odd.
I had no idea that people would still even give a crap about that.
Hmm.
Yes, for sure you didn't.
Apparently it didn't.
And with that, I'd like to thank you for your courage and say in the morning to you, John C. You are the J.C. Superstar is what it stands for, Dvorak.
In the morning to you, Mr.
Adam Curry.
In the morning to all ships at sea and boots on the ground.
Subs in the water, the feet in the air, and the dames in the nights out there.
Yes, in the morning to our troll room.
Hello, trolls.
NoagendaStream.com is where everybody congregates for the live stream and chat on Sundays and Thursdays.
And I'd also like to say a big hey-o in the morning to Comic Strip Blogger.
He brought us the artwork.
For episode 1021, Sun Burps, title of it.
This was, we thought it was very funny.
This was the pager with no agenda on it for my new OTG status.
Off the grid.
Yep, that's me.
I am OTG. I thought that was an April Fool's joke.
No, sir.
See, now I was told by comic strip blogger that I was made a fool of.
And everybody in the chatroom agreed that was an April Fool's gag that you were doing.
Really?
Yes.
No.
No.
You have no intention of doing any of this stuff.
You were just making an idiot out of me by going on and on about it.
No, I would have done something creative like edited an old review to make me sound like a dick.
I just tightened it up.
Yeah.
Yeah, I do have an OTG update later.
This has hit a nerve.
I want to talk to you about it.
Oh, God.
Yeah.
You sound so excited.
The man who gets excited about being above the fold in Sioux City can't stand an OTG report.
We need a jingle.
If I had a jingle, I'd feel better about it.
Okay.
I'm sure this will happen.
Well, we do have two.
We only have two curiously.
We had my birthday, but my birthday drew all the attention, whatever it literally is.
And so we didn't get very many executive and associate executive producers.
In fact, we got one of each.
Okay.
So we got Stephen Fettig, who will be the executive producer, Sir Stephen.
And he says, John, this is in honor of your birthday and the Sixth Amendment.
So he gave $60.66.
What is the Sixth Amendment?
I don't know.
I didn't look it up.
I think it has something to do with what he just says, which is I love my right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury and confronted with the witnesses against me.
Yes.
Because it has to do with that.
You can look it up.
And I love John for his ever-continuing witticisms and petulant insight.
Petulant.
Nice.
Petulant and not just insight.
Now, petulant is a racist term, by the way.
It could be.
Remember?
And then the...
When Romney said Obama was petulant?
He did?
Yeah.
Oh yeah, I do remember that.
He said Obama is petulant and I love what I do.
And then that was seen as racist because petulant assumes child, assumes boy, assumes racism.
Yeah.
It was great.
I remember that.
Those were the days.
Duchess of Japan, Astrid Klein.
Yes.
How's she doing?
I don't know.
But she gave $222.22.
She's in Tokyo, of course.
Yes.
Dear John, happy birthday.
From every level in life, the view is another one.
But the higher you get, the better the view.
Best wishes, he said when you have cataracts.
Best wishes always, Dame Astrid.
The Duchess of Japan and the disputed islands in the Japan Sea.
That's right.
Good to hear from her.
I follow Sir Mark on the face bag.
They're doing all kinds.
They're opening up, it seems like a building a month.
Yeah, they've also got a bunch of intellectual...
Awards.
And they've got awards.
Yeah, there's stuff going on.
And then still they have time to listen to the mall cops broadcasting.
Do they really?
Just gets a newsletter.
Ah, Dan, send a guy a check.
That's the way I see it.
Oh, no.
Dame Astrid listens religiously, I am sure.
And Sir Mark has to, because he travels so much.
He's on planes all the time.
Well, if you're traveling a lot, yeah, that's a good excuse.
You might as well just listen.
All right.
Well, that's it.
Those are our two well-wishers.
In fact, if you take all of Dame Astrid's time that she spends listening to the show, that's probably one building a year.
One building.
One building a year they don't open.
That's it!
Yeah, that's it.
Okay, well, I look forward to all the other birthday congratulations coming up.
It's a very special day, and we're very happy.
You know, we take birthdays very seriously in the Netherlands, John.
We decorate the chair.
Oh, is this where everyone sits around in a circle and just stares at each other?
Yes, and drinks coffee and has little pieces of cake, and then we have the same conversation that we had at the last birthday where we sat in a circle.
That's how it goes, yes, and it's a lot of fun.
I know, people have described, you're not the only Dutch person I know, and they describe that.
I'm not Dutch.
I'm not Dutch.
Worst, well, you're right, you're not Dutch.
But you're a faux-Dutch.
But they all describe the scene, and it just sounds like the worst thing imaginable.
But then there's an upside to the Dutch, because every Dutch household has a calendar hanging in the bathroom, in the guest bathroom.
And it has a little string and a little pencil or a pen.
And the idea is, when you're sitting there doing your business, you write down on the calendar your name on the date.
And so when you're sitting there, you also have something to do.
Like, oh, oh, John's birthday's coming.
I'm going to put my birthday on here.
Yes, exactly.
And you can see whose birthday's coming up.
Ah.
This is Dutch space bag, basically.
When you pull on the string, it's also flush.
We want to thank our executive producer and associate executive producer.
They know that these credits are real, and I'm sure they've used them many times, certainly on their building pitches.
Daymaster will probably sneak that in there somewhere.
I know her.
We'll be thanking more people, more birthday wishes coming up later on.
And remember, we have another show coming up on Sunday.
So you have plenty of time in the meantime to be out there propagating our formula.
Our formula is this.
We go out, we hit people in the mouth.
So is it common in Holland to take a poop in somebody else's bathroom just whenever you show up?
Right on the calendar?
I think...
This is probably more women do this than men, just naturally speaking.
It depends on the placement.
You know, sometimes the calendar can be right.
It depends on how tall you are.
You know, if you can see it or not.
For guys, it would make more sense if it was on the back wall of the bathroom.
You know, then you could, like, use, you know, you got one hand free.
Or some of us do.
I don't.
Or you could try to write.
I'm so happy I made that joke.
Let me see.
Yeah, just OTG for a second.
Okay, I'm ready.
A lot of response to my idea of getting a pager, which should have been delivered yesterday.
Sadly, it was delayed, so it's coming in today.
The pager?
Yeah, the two-way pager.
So I can send and receive SMS text and email.
And...
A lot of people were like, please document this.
I want to do the same thing.
Oh, I smell a giblet.
The giblet is, I think for sure.
Also, I learned about this Purism outfit, and they have a phone coming out with the crowdsourcing, the Librem 5, I think.
And it's a phone, and it has physical hardware switches to turn off the radio, so there's a real toggle switch that cuts off power to that part of the device.
It has no spyware.
I guess Richard Stallman's going to bless it.
All the things you want to make your calls, but mainly intended to use stuff over the top, so all Wi-Fi.
And they have specific Wi-Fi chips.
It's very interesting.
And the more you are aware of the things people are doing, the more aware you become of what's really being done to you.
What kind of amazing pieces of information about you are just flowing.
So, it's even gotten to a point where one of our producers, who used to own a, I guess, a local or regional telephone company, he says, hey, I'd like to come out of retirement and, you know, we'll white label a pager company.
We're going to make pagers hip again.
Yes, this was your earlier assertion.
I think if we could get new devices, maybe a crowdfund, a new pager device, make it something cool, I think the kids might go for it.
And then you'll have some bullcrap social thing in there.
So they can text each other, you know, like group text.
Pretty colors?
No?
Maybe not.
It could be something.
It has potential.
But...
I stick with the word potential.
Yes, I gotcha.
But just speaking of your data being taken, being used, this showed up on...
Now, you know I have this building.
What are you ringing for?
I just rang because the data is being used.
It is the new bacon, after all.
I've got to keep that in there.
I'm going to keep using that.
Let's see.
That's what I'm ringing for.
Anyway, go on.
Okay.
I think, where does I have it here?
Yes.
So, my building has Nest thermostats pre-installed.
Yeah, which I think is just dumb.
Yeah.
So, I have the app.
Those things, they have little cameras that spy on you.
Well, it gets a little bit better.
I also have a Nest camera that I had in the Airstream, which I took out of the Airstream.
So it's not connected to anything, but it's still in my possession.
And all of a sudden, the app for the Nest, which, you know, of course you have to connect it to Wi-Fi.
It pops up a message, and I took a screenshot, and it's going to be in the show notes, but I want to share it with you.
So it says, and it was very confusing, because I showed it to Tina, and she didn't understand.
It says, a client has been updated.
A client is requesting new permissions.
Now, to Tina, she's like, like a customer?
Or, you know, it's a typical, it's a stupid opening for a message.
And then the next line is, Google Assistant has been updated and would like to do the following.
Now, I've never set up Google Assistant.
I don't use Google Assistant.
I wouldn't even know where it is.
I don't have a Google phone.
I don't have an Android phone.
But I would like to do the following.
Control temperature and thermostat settings, which allows Google Assistant to read and set your Nest thermostat through voice.
Identify and connect to your Nest products.
Allows Google Assistant to be enabled in the compatible Nest devices.
See your camera settings, receive motion, sound, or familiar face alerts, and access live video, which allows Google Assistant to stream your Nest camera.
See your system security settings, view sensor and alarm status, and set the alarm, which lets you use your Google Assistant to set the alarm.
The Google Assistant connection may not work as expected if you do not allow this access.
Contact Google Assistant if you have questions.
Allow.
Now, to an unsuspecting person...
Does it have just allow or is there disallow?
No, there's no disallow.
What?
Yep.
No block, no nothing.
So can you just close that box?
Yeah, you can just back out of the notification, but for the unsuspecting person, you're giving up a lot of information, particularly the camera part.
Under the guise of, oh yeah, I say, hey Google Assistant, go check on the house.
Or whatever.
It's very...
Hey, go look at Bill's house.
Is there a camera in the bedroom, Google?
I would install it if it had that feature.
That'd be great.
Maybe it does.
Yeah, who knows?
I just, you know, the amount of stuff that is being done, and when you really think about what you can do, there's really not much escaping it.
I mean, even if you never had a FaceBag account, I mean, it's just...
That'd be me.
Yeah.
I don't have a Google Assistant, that'd be me.
Yeah.
I don't have a Nest thermostat or camera, that'd be me.
Yeah.
So it's very easy to escape.
Yeah, but...
Don't buy this junk.
Well, there's other stuff.
And there's other stuff.
I mean, you have an Android phone, so whenever you do use it, you're being tracked.
Yes.
Yes, that's probably true.
And, you know, now they've found these mystery Stingray devices all around Washington, D.C. No one knows who they belong to.
The Stingray, you know, it acts like a cell tower and then sucks up everything that you've got.
It sucks up your data.
It sucks up everything you've got, including your battery power.
I think I told a story before, but when J.C. Buzzkill Jr.
was working in the city, he was in a location that was near the Intercontinental, which was where Obama was going to stay.
Right.
So they rolled into the area and they set up shop, the district service set up shop all over the place and lit up a whole slew of stingrays.
Yeah.
And he says you could watch your phone battery drop dead because they were attaching themselves to everything they could get a hold of.
You know, just the common hello, I'm here signals.
Yeah.
And then locking onto your phone and then sucking everything off to see if there was anything, you know, any people around that would, you know, want to do harm to the president.
Yeah.
And he says you had to turn your phones off, otherwise you'd try to get home with a dead battery.
Yeah.
Right.
It's pretty onerous.
It must be running some process then.
Or just opens up some floodgates so it just has everything go out.
I don't know.
It seems kind of strange.
There's got to be a floodgate command.
Yes, exactly.
Sock it to me.
Well, there's other stuff.
I'm just collecting some of these things that I find interesting.
Grindr, you're familiar with the Grindr app, has now announced, in wake of this facebag Analytica, that it will stop sharing users' HIV data with other companies.
Gee, thanks, Grindr!
I got a kick out of that story.
For people who say, I got nothing to hide, and maybe it shouldn't be something shameful, but there's all sorts of reasons you don't want companies having that information.
Getting a mortgage could suck, just as an example.
It all catches up to you.
In the UK, Gitmo Nation East, this is great, the fantastic NHS, the National Health System, in order to track down people in Britain who may have broken immigration rules, the government is now turning to doctors who work with refugees and asylum seekers, and they're just looking in their records.
And the doctors have to share that information.
They've done the same thing in this country by requiring, this was a few years ago, I know my doctor at the time.
Ah, you have to have all your vaccinations and stuff and be HIV-free?
No, no, no.
It was, they required everything to go on a computer.
All the paper records, everything.
You didn't have any paper records anymore.
You couldn't sit there and write your scribbly notes to yourself.
We've talked about this a lot.
Yeah, and so everything has to be on the computer.
And once it's on the computer, that means it can all be, you know, mined.
Yes.
Oh, yeah, there's these rules against it, but are there?
Yeah.
I guess they crack and stuff is just, it's weak.
Yeah.
Anyone thinks that they're not going to just go through it.
Should we play some of this Zuckerberg interview?
Yeah, I have some of it.
Do you have one?
Yeah, I actually put a lot of time into this.
Which doesn't mean they're long.
I can be like, oh my god, he's got a little long stuff.
This was a 45 minute interview with Ezra Klein, hero of the, what did I call your journalist friends again?
I forgot.
It wasn't Lib...
It wasn't Lib...
Lib Joes.
Lib Joes.
He is the hero of the Lib Joes.
Oh, thank you for remembering that.
Good one.
Hero of the Lib Joes.
And, of course, you know, President Obama sat...
No, no, was that...
No, that was Mark Maron.
What is Ezra Klein?
Isn't he just an NPR guy gone rogue?
I don't know.
I don't know anymore.
I think he is.
He sat down with Zuck.
And let's first listen to, this is all about elections.
I think it was more than 30,000 accounts.
And I think the reports out of France were that people felt like that was a much cleaner election on social media.
A few months later, there were the German elections.
And there, we augmented the playbook again to work directly with the election commission in Germany.
Wait a minute.
I thought that they said that both in France and Germany we had nothing but reports that there was all kinds of shenanigans.
That's what I was led to believe by the media.
Well, the shenanigans seems that the face bag was colluding.
Colluding with the government.
Right, and the idea is that, as an internet company, we'll have ability to see some of the content and some of the issues that might be happening in an election.
But if you work with the government in a country, they'll really actually have a fuller understanding of what are going on and what are all the issues that we would need to focus on.
And again, by working with the German government, we were able to focus on a few specific issues.
And I think there, again, people felt a lot better about how that election went on social media.
Any collusion?
Fast forward to last year, 2017, in the special election in Alabama.
We deployed a number of new tools that we'd developed to find fake accounts who were trying to spread false news.
We got them off before a lot of the discussion around the election.
And again, I think we felt a lot better about the result there.
Oh, so it sounds to me when you say...
It felt better because it was the Democratic one.
Yes, that's exactly what he's saying.
We felt a lot better about the result there after we deployed our new tools.
I mean, I'm sorry, Ezra, but as an NPR dude, you should have followed up on that.
Like, what do you mean?
I mean, you felt good.
You're happy that the Democrat won?
That's what I would ask.
What were these new tools that you deployed?
Yeah, I would ask that too.
Now we know from the promo, the house ads on MSNBC that there's a recode interview coming up between Kara Schwisher and the other lesbian, Chris Hayes, see how I did that, and Tim Cook.
Yeah, and it worked very well except for the fact that you called yourself out.
I just want to remind you that it's probably not kosher.
You had a good line.
Yeah, I'm an idiot.
Well, I'm just saying you don't have to brag about your prowess.
Good point.
I need someone to hit the like button.
Next time you do that, just say the whole thing again and I'll give you what you need.
Okay.
So it was an interview between Kara Schwisher and then, who's the other lesbian?
Chris Hayes.
Actually, I hit it the wrong time.
It's your great moment.
Sorry.
That's okay.
And in this, we know from the promo material that Tim Cook said, you know, the question was, what would you do if you were Mark Zuckerberg in this situation?
He says, I wouldn't get into it.
This wouldn't happen to me.
This scenario wouldn't happen to me.
So we need a response from Zuck.
Here it is.
One of the things that has been coming up a lot in the conversation is whether the business model of roughly monetizing user attention is what is letting in a lot of these problems.
Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, gave an interview the other day and he was asked, what would you do if you were in Mark Zuckerberg's shoes?
He said, I would not be in Mark Zuckerberg's shoes.
Apple sells products to users.
It doesn't sell users to advertisers.
It's a sounder business model that doesn't open itself to these problems.
Do you think part of the problem here is the business model where attention ends up dominating above all else?
And so anything that can engage does have at least some powerful value within the ecosystem?
I find that argument, that if you're not paying, that somehow we can't care about you, to be extremely glib and not at all aligned with the truth.
You know, the reality here is that if you want to build a service that helps connect everyone in the world, then there are a lot of people who can't afford to pay.
And therefore, as with a lot of media, having an advertising supported model is the only rational model that that can support building the service to to reach people.
Because you're poor, that we're not primarily focused on on serving people.
I think probably to the dissatisfaction of our sales team here, I make all of our decisions based on what's going to matter to our community and improve the experience and focus much less and very little on the advertising side of the of the business.
But, I mean, look, if you want to build a service which is not just serving rich people, then you need to have something that people can afford.
Wait a minute.
Can I be on the rich people face bag?
This sounds like another business opportunity, John.
Facebook for rich people.
I thought Jeff Bezos had an excellent saying on this in one of his Kindle launches a number of years back.
He said...
There are companies that work hard to charge you more, and there are companies that work hard to charge you less.
And at Facebook, we are squarely in the camp of the companies that work hard to charge you less and provide a free service that everyone can use.
I don't think at all that that means that we don't care about people.
I think to the contrary, I think it's important that we don't all get Stockholm Syndrome and let the companies that work hard to charge you more convince you that they actually care more about you.
See, when he said that, I'm like, oh, hold on a second.
He's worried about the Stockholm Syndrome.
He's worried about it getting out of control.
You don't think so?
I can't say one way or the other.
I just think it's weird that he dropped that bomb in there like that.
It's obviously on his mind.
Yeah, of course it has to be.
And he must be getting a lot of heat.
Certainly from the shareholder department, which he's never really had.
He's always been the darling.
I know what it's like when you miss a quarter or do something else.
Just when the stock price drops, everyone's pissed off at you.
Especially the guys that you sucked up to so hard when you did your IPO. I think this interview was recorded before Facebook started clarifying its terms of service, which I haven't seen published yet, but I'm told it is.
There was a little something in this short clip which I'm surprised Klein, well, not really surprised, but Klein didn't pick up on it either.
The Myanmar issues have, I think, gotten a lot of focus inside the company.
And they're real issues, and we take this really seriously.
I remember one Saturday morning, I got a phone call, and we detected that people were trying to spread sensational messages through Facebook Messenger, in this case.
side of the conflict, basically telling the Muslims, hey, there's about to be an uprising of the Buddhists.
So, you know, make sure that you are armed and go to this place.
And then the same thing on the other side.
So that's the kind of thing where I think it is clear that people were trying to use our tools in order to incite real harm.
Now, in that case, our systems detect that that's going on.
We stop those messages from going through, and hopefully we're able to prevent any kind of real-world harm there.
But, I mean, this is certainly something that we're paying a lot of attention to.
It's a real issue, and we want to make sure that all of the tools that we're bringing to bear on On eliminating hate speech, inciting violence, and basically protecting the integrity of civil discussions that we're doing in places like Myanmar as well as places like the U.S. that do get a disproportionate amount to the attention.
So my takeaway here is that they are scanning Messenger on everybody, which is supposed to be your private messaging.
So they're scanning through it.
He just admitted that.
Looking for hate speech.
I don't know how the system works, but I don't know how the private messaging works.
Those aren't public messages he's talking about?
No, Messenger is direct...
Is there anything that's public?
Messenger spun out from FaceBag.
You can no longer use it on your phone, on the web version.
You have to get a separate app.
And that's your direct message app.
You can put multiple...
Like email, you can put multiple people in the address field.
But it's private.
It's not published publicly.
And so they're just scanning that for, I guess, keywords and then jumping in and changing history.
I mean, come on.
That can't be helping the business.
If I have a system that I expect to get a private message from me to you.
No, they're scanning it with their AI. That's not the worst of it.
My final clip is really what this is all about.
It is a globalist platform with tools, and Zuckerberg is driving it.
Sure.
I think since I wrote that, we've certainly learned...
He's discussing his 2017 manifesto, which I don't know.
Oh, him and Bill Gates.
Yeah, that one.
It's more about how to do this.
But the big thing that I was thinking about when I wrote that was...
How the world coming closer together is not a given.
For most of Facebook's existence, in 2004 when I got started, you know, if you'd told me that people weren't going to keep connecting more...
Stop.
Yeah.
You can back it up.
I know exactly what you're going to say.
In 2004, he started it to pick up chicks.
But when he said it, he said, start, Ted.
He had two words.
Oh no, I missed that.
And I'm thinking, when I start, he said, when I start, Ted, what was he thinking with start as opposed to start Ed?
Let me play it again because it's just very strange.
This guy's like robotic.
It was a data throughput glitch.
It was a total glitch.
The world coming closer together is not a given.
But for most of Facebook's existence, in 2004 when I got started...
No, he says I got started.
You know, if you'd told me...
I got started.
It was not that bad.
It wasn't that bad.
I think it's later.
It was what?
Okay, maybe.
Maybe that was it, but I thought it was more profound.
Maybe it was a glitch in the stream.
Maybe it was a data throughput glitch in your brain.
It was me.
What?
Packets received.
Okay, here we go.
That people weren't going to keep connecting more and that there wouldn't be more global cooperation.
I mean, I kind of had taken that as a given, that the world would move in that direction.
I think over the last few years, the political reality has been that a lot of people are feeling left behind by globalization and different issues.
And there's been a big rise of isolationism and nationalism.
Communism.
And it threatens some of the global cooperation that will be required to solve some of the bigger issues like maintaining peace, addressing climate change, eventually collaborating a lot and accelerating science and curing diseases and eliminating poverty.
So I kind of take it as this is a huge part of our mission is.
I think a lot of these problems require people coming together and having a global understanding.
One of the things that I found heartening is, if you ask millennials what they identify the most with, it's not their nationality or even their ethnicity.
The plurality you identify as a citizen of the world.
I think that's strong.
And that, I think, reflects the values of where we need to go in order to solve some of these bigger questions.
So now the question is, how do you do that?
I think it's clear that just helping people connect by itself isn't always positive.
When you give people a tool, it's more positive than negative.
Clearly, there's a lot of good things that happen, but then there's also abuse and there are bad things that happen.
And a much bigger part of the focus for me now is making sure that as we're connecting people, we are helping to build bonds and bring people closer together.
Bonds?
Rather than just focused on the mechanics of the connection and the infrastructure, as you say.
But I think that there's a number of different pieces that you need to do here.
Civic society basically starts bottom up, right?
You need to have well-functioning groups and communities.
We're very focused on that.
You need a well-informed citizenry.
So we're very focused on making sure that the quality of journalism and that everyone has a voice and that people can...
Can get access to the content that they need.
That, I think, ends up being really important.
Civic engagement, both being involved in elections and increasingly working to eliminate interference and different nation-states trying to interfere in each other's elections ends up being really important.
And then I think part of what we need to do is work on some of the new types of governance questions that we started out this conversation with, because there hasn't been a community like this that has spanned so many different countries, and that's an open question.
We are all gonna die.
This guy's a lunatic.
He's got Napoleon shit.
I get the biggest kick out of multi-billionaires who have their private jets.
I'm being a little bit of an ass here.
Yeah, climate change.
They got their private...
Well, the climate change...
By the way, the climate change thing, my mudflats have expanded.
No.
I don't know if there's a huge low tide or whatever it is, but they're almost out halfway to the bay.
It's unbelievable.
Oh.
Anyway.
Tsunami.
Tsunami warning.
That's what it looks like.
It's going on for a week.
I think that the arrogance of these billionaires...
Going on about, you know, I'm a global citizen.
You know, most people have not left their own community.
There are people in Long Island that have never been to Manhattan.
There are tons of people that live in Germany that have never been to France when it's just a simple train ride and go to Paris.
No, not going.
Not going!
To have this arrogance about, oh, the global system.
I'm a global citizen and that's what everybody thinks nowadays.
All the millennials.
The millennials, most of whom can't drive.
They're all of a sudden global citizens.
Citizens of the globe.
The earth is my home.
I live on earth.
Yeah, why don't you move to the Cameroon.
I mean, it's just unbelievable.
It just sickens me, these guys.
Yeah, and he believes that he's building a globalist tool.
You know, until we collectively understand that the internet is that tool, and we take matters into our own hands and just connect stuff together, which is the way it was intended in the first place, and stop being lazy bastards, maybe we will be able to change something.
But don't leave it to these demokes.
It never happens.
It never happens.
These guys, they set up shop doing something like Facebook.
And everybody says, oh, that's easier than me having to do any work, being the global citizen that I am.
And they just join and they put their stuff on fail.
And they put my photos on here for everyone to see.
Look at that.
I was there with Drunken Sally.
Hey, that's Sally.
And this is Jamie.
Yeah.
I mean, this, to me, is ridiculous.
I mean, and I say the same thing about that woman that shot up YouTube, you know, shot in the ground, I guess.
It's just a symptom, a symptom of the disease.
Put your own videos up.
We do our pod.
We don't use, for this podcast, we put up our own servers.
We don't use Podbean.
You know, I still get their newsletter, though.
Well, if you're doing a small little podcast and you didn't care about it, you guys said, hey, you know, I don't like you anymore.
You're out.
You can always upload your stuff to archive.org.
Yeah, there's that.
You know, someone suggested that for us.
I'm like, well, you know, we really need a little bit of control over stuff.
We want it to get out, and, you know, we have huge surges of data.
You know, Void Zero has a...
Yeah, no, the Archive can't handle this surge.
No, Void Zero has a...
You know, has a...
Permanent alarm system set.
So when I release the RSS feed, bells and whistles go off, and Sir Bemrose is on high alert.
Because when that goes wrong, it goes really wrong.
And also, I'm sure they could handle the load, but they'd be like, hey, what are jabronis doing?
Yeah, that would be exploitation.
Yeah, that's not fair.
That's not nice.
That's not being a good netizen.
I don't mind archiving this stuff for the long haul, but not when the show comes out.
It's not being a good netizen.
We're good netizens.
Remember we used to call them netizens?
Yeah, that died.
Thank God.
Yeah, once those commercial guys came in like Curry, ruined it all, ruined the internet.
No.
No.
Let's see.
Well, I do have the thing that was played on the news, because he came out and every news channel had him going on apologizing, and I don't know about what half the time.
For the stock price being down, that's what he's really apologizing for.
Yeah, what do we have here?
A Facebook rundown NBC? That would be it.
But our top story this evening is Facebook making several major headlines.
It's embattled CEO Mark Zuckerberg agreeing to testify before Congress as we also learned today that the siphoning of Facebook user data by Cambridge Analytica was far bigger than first announced.
Our Miguel Almaguer has the latest.
Tonight, Facebook says the personal data of up to 87 million people, mostly in the U.S., was improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica, tens of millions more than previously thought.
The privacy scandal connected to the 2016 election, a breach of trust.
The fallout forcing Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to now testify before Congress next week for the first time.
Today, he spoke to reporters by phone.
It's not enough to just give people a voice.
We have to make sure that people are not using that voice to hurt people or to spread disinformation.
Zuckerberg taking full responsibility, saying he's the best person to run his company, trying to reassure users and the company's shareholders.
We didn't take a broad enough view of what our responsibility is, and that was a huge mistake.
It was my mistake.
Facebook also announcing new security features to protect its 2 billion users, saying nearly all have had basic information taken.
The fact that someone could come along, look at your public Facebook page, and take that data down and use it in other ways is not at all surprising to me.
With some leaving Facebook, the company is losing value, down $87 billion.
Tonight, Facebook accused of sharing too much.
All eyes now on the quiet CEO as Zuckerberg goes to Washington.
Tonight, Cambridge Analytica says it only accessed the information of 30 million individuals, not 87 million.
As for Facebook, the social media giant says starting Monday, it'll notify its users if their personal information may have been compromised.
Lester?
Oh, what a shit show.
Fun to watch, though.
I love seeing the guy sweat a little.
He should go into one of those sweating modes if you've never seen his sweating episode.
Well, maybe that'll happen in front of Congress.
That would be great.
I hate to sound vindictive, but screw it.
Well, you do.
But it's fine.
I think he doesn't know what to expect because he's never testified before a bunch of a-holes like some of these guys can be.
I mean, they'll be, oh, thank you for coming, Mr.
Zuckerberg.
Well, it'll be interesting to see if everyone's sucking up or not.
I can see some guys not sucking up.
It won't get played much.
We're going to have to watch the C-SPAN because no one's going to play the good stuff on the networks.
So we'll find the good stuff on C-SPAN and then see how it reacts.
You may be...
I don't know.
I mean, it seems to me that you want...
You want to do a Trump and put people who can talk in front of the Congress, and that would be Sheryl Sandberg.
Yes.
She's one of those executives.
She used to work at the government in that executive corps, bouncing around from the CIA to the State Department.
Yeah, she's pre-cleared and all that.
- Yeah, she knows what the government's like.
She's been there.
And she knows how to speak in public.
She's been in a lot of talk shows and been personable, not like Zuckerberg being interviewed like a robot.
She's the one.
She'd handle it.
She'd save the company.
But no.
No, he figures he can do it.
You know why?
Misogyny.
That's it.
Mark Zuckerberg is a misogynist.
The right person for the job, no doubt about it, is Sheryl Sandberg.
Yeah, there's no question about it.
And there's no excuse not to let her...
No one's going to say, well, we wanted to talk to the CEO. She says, we work together.
You're talking to the same.
We're all part of a team.
She'd handle that question.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
You know, and of course, we'll be watching the C-SPAN to get something.
Just like one of our producers was watching a Tennessee House debate.
This is House Bill 1950 about hazing in college.
And just to give you an idea of how stupid some people are, listen to this, Jim.
And we're also just targeting fraternities and sororities.
And so what I would like to do is actually make a motion to send us to summer studies so that we can figure out...
What the real problem is and what Tennessee can actually do about it.
I don't think we know the answer to either one of those two questions right now.
And again, this bill seems to kind of cherry pick just those fraternities and sororities, which on itself seems a little bit offensive to those groups.
But then on the backside of it, the punishment's so light that it doesn't really seem to fit the crime, so to speak.
So with your indulgence and with the committee's help, I do think this warrants a larger conversation, and I would like to make a motion and send it to summer study.
It's a motion in a second.
That is a debatable motion.
And Vice Chairman, we'll say you make some good points.
I mean, a sea misdemeanor is basically a traffic offense.
I mean, it's a stop sign or a speeding ticket.
Representative Van Huss.
Thank you, sir.
And I agree with Vice Chairman Kersey's sentiment.
I'm reading right here on The Onion a report about Kentucky seniors who haze freshman basketball players.
Isn't that great?
Unbelievable.
I'm reading it in The Onion.
And then he quotes it.
What an idiot.
And no one says anything.
Just quiet.
Yeah, that's the other thing.
No one says anything.
Hey, just back to OTG for one second.
I learned something that I did not know, and we are big fans of ham.
Not that data is the new bacon, but ham radio, amateur radio.
We both are licensed.
I'm a little more.
And everyone out there should get a license.
If anyone knows anything about computers, you can almost pass the technical one just without even taking any sample.
It's multiple choice.
You get all the answers in a different order.
There's only X number of questions they can ask.
Those are all public.
You can read over the questions and the answers to all the questions you'll be asked.
It doesn't take a genius to pass this test.
It'll just be in a different order.
That's all.
Now, As a technician, you're allowed to do this.
So with that really quite simple test, you can transceive on 70 centimeters and 2 meters, a couple other bands as well, but There is a community, there is a ham community that is using the POCSAG protocol.
And POCSAG protocol is the pager protocol.
And they're hooking up cheap restaurant pager systems that you can buy off Amazon or eBay or Alibaba.
And then they're hooking it up to 50 watts.
I think you can actually go up to 200 even as a technician.
And you can bridge it as a pager that will repeat messages.
And we'll receive them as well.
So you can set up your own two-way messaging service.
You know, 200 watts, you can do pretty good around town.
You can do pretty well.
Pretty well.
And you can also mesh that with other hams.
So you have a handoff, and we could build our own off-the-grid network.
Yeah.
And the purpose would be?
It's to stop doing this podcast and have a life.
And be rich.
How?
Off the pager network.
No?
How do you monetize the pager network?
Well, people have to pay a subscription fee.
Oh.
Yeah.
Okay, well you might be onto something.
Or on something.
One of the two.
Yeah, exactly.
Maybe some of that new weed.
Have you heard about this stuff?
People are smoking this synthetic weed.
Don't smoke synthetic weed.
I mean, I don't understand what people are doing.
doing.
It looks like potpourri.
All right, we begin with this hour's big story.
Right now, police and health officials in the Chicago area are scrambling to track down and shut down the source of synthetic marijuana that is killing people.
So far, three people have been arrested.
They're charged with trying to sell the fake weed to a convenience store.
Two of the suspects made their initial appearance today before a judge.
Now, Let's explain why it's so dangerous.
Preliminary testing of some of that fake weed showed it was laced with a toxic substance frequently used in rat poison.
The Illinois Department of Health says right now there have been at least 70 reports of people who have experienced terrible symptoms like severe bleeding, including bloody gum.
Some even say they coughed up blood after taking the drug.
So far, two people have lost their lives, and officials fear more people could die.
Yeah, and there's people with blood coming out of their ears, out of their eyes.
People.
What's the name of this weed?
Ebola?
Ebola.
People, it's a weed.
Plant some seeds.
Anything.
Do not.
It looks like potpourri.
What are they thinking?
And finally, we're getting back to...
Stoners.
Yeah.
No, I think it's idiots.
Idiots.
Idiots.
Why would you...
I mean, man, kids, they really...
They got guts.
I mean, back in the day, we're like, you know, where'd you get this from?
You'd be playing all over the place.
Remember that?
When you say, hey, where'd you get the weed from?
Who's it from?
You'd check it out.
I just want to know.
Just want to know where it's from.
You never did that?
No.
You never smoked.
Kratom back under fire once again.
This is a shame.
I still have a bag of this that I just haven't had the guts to try yet.
But we have a lot of producers who use it to wean themselves off of opioids.
They use it instead of opioids.
It seems to be an absolute magical...
Oh, it's good for all kinds of things.
...magical herb.
Again, just like marijuana, it comes from nature, from a tree.
For decades in Southeast Asia, the leaves of the kratom tree have been used to treat aches and pains.
Here in the United States, you can buy Kratom over the counter in the form of a powder, pill, or tea.
According to the American Kratom Association, three to five million people in this country have used Kratom products.
The research that's been done indicates that people are using Kratom to help alleviate chronic pain, to treat mood disorders like anxiety and depression, and in some cases to help wean themselves off of opioids.
But the FDA says kratom itself is an opioid.
The FDA warns it can be dangerous and even fatal, saying it's associated with more than three dozen deaths.
The Centers for Disease Control says kratom may be tied to recent salmonella outbreaks.
The CDC recommends kratom should not be consumed in any form.
Consumer Reports also has concerns because, like all supplements, Kratom is not regulated.
Any given Kratom product can be grossly mislabeled.
It can be laced with other substances, including illegal drugs or prescription medications.
And it can interact with other medications that you're taking in ways that are really dangerous.
Right now, the Drug Enforcement Agency lists Kratom as a drug and chemical of concern, but DEA could reclassify Kratom to the same category as heroin, LSD, and ecstasy, essentially banning it for consumers.
The American Kratom Association argues making Kratom illegal could drive more people to prescription painkillers or illegal drugs to treat their symptoms.
The organization says it supports appropriate FDA regulations to ensure the safety and purity of kratom, but not a ban.
The DEA is reviewing data and public comments.
Yeah.
yeah Although we are getting a deregulation so people will be able to try experimental pharma drugs, that's okay.
Jeez.
Madhouse.
It's a madhouse.
Yeah, and especially when you hear a report like this, thank goodness.
Legalizing marijuana could lead to fewer people taking prescription painkillers, and experts say that means people might be less likely to overdose on opioids.
Two studies released today looked at Medicare and Medicaid patients in states where pot is legal.
It found that opioids were prescribed less often and taken less in those states.
Medical marijuana has been called a lower-risk alternative to opioids by advocates, but some disagree.
Other studies have found marijuana might lead to future opioid use.
Experts want states and the federal government to pay for more studies to see if there is a link.
Could there be a link for thousands of years?
Thousands of years?
There's no money for studies.
Speaking of...
Before we get off that topic, I do have a similar one.
Maybe I didn't move it over.
It was on the last week.
It was about the hospital killer.
They found out that people are dropping dead in the hospital.
I can look it up real quick.
Yes, look at last week's list.
Last week or the last show?
Last show.
Last show.
Hold on a second.
I gotta go.
I'm diving deep here for you, brah.
Diving deep.
Okay.
I have to go into the database, but here it is.
Under JCD clips, we have...
I don't see anything about weed.
No, hospital.
Oh, hospital death secret.
Yes.
And it's not botched surgeries or risky procedures.
On your side, Chief Investigator Ron Regan joins us.
We're finding thousands of avoidable deaths are happening in hospitals across the country.
These are patients who are recovering so well, they're back in their own hospital room, talking with family members.
But we found far too many are dying within hours, and hospitals are failing to rescue.
What's happening?
Well, this is actually a long report, but nobody wants to talk about this, but first you go into recovery, and then you go into just the everyday rooms where you're not monitored that much.
And you're healthy, you're good, you're ready to go home, you're going to go home in an hour.
Two hours later, you're dead.
It turns out that they're giving everybody these painkillers.
Oh, you're kidding me.
Fentanyl and all the rest of it.
And it's depressing their lung function just enough that if they have sleep apnea...
Then they die in their sleep.
They take a nap and drop dead.
Oh.
Well, they're already dropped, you would assume.
By the thousands.
Holy crap.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
This is a scandal.
It's a total scandal.
They're trying to make it into one, but it's been...
That report's the last time I've heard of it.
What station was that on?
What network?
Where'd that come from?
I think it was on ABC, but I'm not sure.
This warrants further investigation.
Yes, it does.
Just like the Novichok...
Which, and I don't know what happened.
I thought I had a clip of the guy from Porton Down saying this, but I can't find it now.
Porton Down experts said they were unable to identify the source of the Novichok virus.
That's not their job as well, they say.
It's not a virus, it's the nerve agent.
The nerve agent, I'm sorry.
Yeah, it's not our job.
It's not our job to find out where it's from, even though the government clearly knows.
They've got it all figured out.
It came from Russians.
Yeah, sure it has.
That's why the Russians can't get a copy of it so they can prove it didn't come from Russia.
If it's even Novichuk.
But here comes the latest.
This thing stinks to high heaven.
Well, here comes the latest that I really loved.
Apparently, these two had dinner at a restaurant, the ZZ restaurant.
In Salisbury.
And this could be total crap because it's coming from Sputnik, so I don't know.
But that they had fugu.
Fugu fish.
Who are they serving fugu for at Salisbury restaurant in the UK? I'm just reporting on what the Russian sources say.
I thought it was great.
And that's the Japanese blowfish that if prepared incorrectly you will die.
Yeah.
Yeah, you get nerve damage.
It's a nerve agent.
Yeah.
Well, how about that?
In fact, even when this stuff is not contaminated with, I think it's gallbladder, some little thing gets in there, one drop and you're done.
The flesh itself gives you a kind of a slight numbness and a buzz and makes you think you're going to die anyway.
It has to be prepared in Japan by a specialist.
Yes.
And very, I mean, still a few people die every year, but it's usually because you ate it in Salisbury.
I don't believe this story.
Remember, it's not the fish that kill people.
Yeah.
Well, if that's true, then the problem is that the first responder, why would make him have an issue?
And then we can finally change the, if this were true, though, you could just, you could change all the headlines in the UK. It was a blowjob.
Yeah, you could.
You could do that.
You could actually do that.
I could see the sun do that.
Yeah.
Okay, let's keep up with some little bit of...
Well, here's another NBC. This is a weird NBC-Trump rundown.
I got a kick out of this because this was on one of the shows.
shows are talking about the YouTube shooter and they they had to get their digs in with Trump with a very weak presentation, I thought, because Trump.
Once again, brought up fake news and this was like, oh, this is so awkward that he did that.
And what's he doing?
And so this is like a lame report from NBC trying to make Trump look bad.
The president today also reinforcing his support for Baltic allies anxious about their own shared border with Russia, repeatedly touting a tough track record, despite having never publicly condemned Vladimir Putin.
Probably nobody's been tougher to Russia than Donald Trump.
But getting along with Russia would be a good thing, not a bad thing.
And just about everybody agrees to that, except very stupid people.
Before concluding the news conference with journalists from four countries, this glaring moment.
You could pick a reporter.
A Baltic reporter, ideally.
Real news, not fake news.
Also tonight, a milestone in the Russia investigation.
A lawyer becoming the first person going to prison.
A federal judge today making an example out of Alex Vanderswan sentencing the London-based lawyer to 30 days behind bars for lying the special counsel Robert Mueller's team.
That's the big deal?
The guy's going to jail for 30 days?
I don't even know who this guy is.
That was the Dutch guy, the Dutch lawyer.
It was with Manafort.
What did he say?
They're going to throw him in jail for 30 days, like contempt of court.
Yeah, I have no idea.
Probably.
Probably.
I don't know.
But it makes the president sound like a real jailbird, that report.
Yeah, that was the idea.
They also used the word glaring, this thing where he says, this report is worth listening to and deconstructing.
The guy says, it's glaring.
Yes.
Glaring.
Glaring right in my face.
It's so horrible.
I mean, the whole thing was just a, you know, it was unbelievable to me, this report.
And they also, what is the preoccupation with Trump having?
He has to.
He's a douchebag unless he condemns Putin.
And he has to do it quickly.
Well, the quickly part is done.
That's over.
So if he ever does condemn him, which I doubt is.
Well, this is part of the Game of Thrones shaming culture that we've somehow latched onto and it's supposed to work.
Before we take our break...
Game of Thrones, shaming culture.
Yes.
Where did that come from?
Well, that's what they do.
Shame, shame, shame.
On the Game of Thrones?
Shame, yes.
They shame the...
I actually like that little ditty.
Game of Thrones, shaming culture.
No, not shaming, just shame.
Game of Thrones, shame culture.
Shame culture.
Is it a column?
No, it's not a column.
It's just an interesting observation because I never watched Game of Thrones.
Oh!
So you wrote it down?
Yeah, I did write it down.
And what are you going to do with that piece of paper?
Does it go on the pile?
It's going to go on the pile and get lost.
Okay, good.
When we take our break, we like to talk about our model – Our model is the value-for-value model where we learn very early on it makes a lot more sense for people to just give us what you think the show is worth, and that's very different to people based upon their personal circumstances for whole different reasons.
There's yet another podcast network raised $5 million Oh yeah.
And on Lopez Wondery Podcast Network.
And I just love this because all these jabronis have all invented this wheel.
My phone's not ringing.
Oh yeah, my phone is ringing.
I made a point in the newsletter mentioning this, I think.
Did I? Was it in the newsletter?
No, I don't think so.
I put it somewhere.
It wasn't in this last...
No.
Maybe I just...
No, it was a tweet, I think.
I don't know what it was.
I'm crazy.
I'm out of control.
But I will say that it's ridiculous to me that the guy who invented the medium has never been contacted by anybody rolling out these things.
You'd be perfect.
You'd be a good figurehead.
I mean, you already have been once.
Well, I think they all know my stance.
That's why they're not interested.
They want me to come on CNBC and talk about Spotify.
I mean, they don't give a shit about podcasting.
You blew your opportunity.
Oh, please.
Our producer will have me on, and I will not...
Say Michael Jackson was killed.
We can't put our guy in jeopardy.
That would be no good.
But there was the Jimlet podcast network, Alex Bloomberg.
I forget the...
Yeah, the Gimlet.
The ex-NPR people that started their network.
Oh, right, the Gimlet.
The Gimlets, yeah.
So they're on the Goldman Sachs talk, which is like a TED talk, only it's bad.
And there's an interview with Alex Bloomberg of Gimlet.
And the second guy who answers at the end of the clip is Jacob Weisberg.
He's the editor-in-chief at Slate.
And these are podcast gurus, you see.
And so this is all really...
This is not sour grapes on my part.
This is just historical fact and they're stupid.
It's funny to listen to.
Because we've literally invented this and it's going to take them 10 years to figure it out.
That you can't monetize the network.
They just think it's radio.
They just think it's right.
They just want it to be radio.
They think that they can do it with ads.
We have studios.
We have studios at our disposal.
Transmitters!
We don't need no stinking transmitters.
But we do need a board.
And a board op.
And we need an intern.
An engineer, a producer, a board op.
We need 10 people to do this.
Runners we need.
We need all that.
So listen to these jimokes.
What do you think the future of the business is or the future of the medium?
I mean, don't ask me that question.
What do you think the future is of the medium?
What do you think his answer is, John?
Ah, sky's the limit.
Yeah, in a way.
What do you think the future of the business is or the future of the medium?
I mean, I like to say at panels like this that we're at the dawn of the second golden age of audio.
I think that, like, if you think about the first golden age, it was, like, 20s, 30s radio.
Radio was king.
Everybody had a radio.
And all these big names got started.
You know, Lucille Ball and, like, Orson Welles and CBS got started around then.
And then TV came along and sort of, like, people had their radios.
Started with NBC, by the way.
Did Lucille Ball start in radio?
Yeah.
It started with, well, she started, she's a movie actress and she did a lot of radio.
But she didn't, and maybe she had a show.
I don't think so.
I don't remember it.
But, I mean, if you mentioned Jack Benny and all these, Bob Hope.
Right.
And if you mentioned NBC, which is really the first network, CBS. No, no, no, no, no, no.
None of that.
But you already hear where he's going.
It's radio!
Yeah, it's radio.
People had their radios in their corner and they sat around and looked at them, but of course they don't have any pictures on the radio.
And the TV comes along and they're like, "Oh, we're going to stick that in the corner and watch it because it's much better to watch." But now with On Demand, now that we have On Demand audio available to everyone, it's changing the form the same way that On Demand TV changed the form.
And I think we're just going to see an explosion of ...
We're seeing and we are going to continue That is, what you just heard there is someone who is used to pitching investors.
And he caught himself saying, we're going to see, no, no, we're seeing it now.
That is, am I wrong?
I don't say you're wrong.
I don't know.
It sounds like a pitch to the whole thing.
It sounds like a bullcrap pitch.
For Goldman Sachs to invest in them, I think.
And I think we're just going to see an explosion of...
We're seeing and we are going to continue to see an explosion of new kinds of programming.
I think it's going to continue to penetrate mainstream behavior.
And I think in the future, do you listen to podcasts is going to be as weird a question as do you watch video?
You know, they're going to say, what kind of podcasts do you listen to?
Do you like reality podcasts?
Do you like narrative podcasts?
Do you like fiction podcasts?
I think that's...
I like comic book podcasts.
That's where we're headed.
You know, for a guy who's a pitchman, this I think, I think, I think could have been eliminated and been a lot stronger.
Now listen to the second guy make the classic mistake, which I myself made 10 years ago.
I guess you like fiction podcasts.
I think that's where we're headed.
Yeah, and that's already for people in their 20s.
We're already there.
But I think for the older audience, for people who say over 50, it's tougher to get people to adapt.
Oh, really?
You age is prick?
That is an age is prick thing to say.
People over 50 can't figure out podcasting.
We're both over 50.
I'm reliably informed.
But I think for the older audience, for people who say over 50, it's tougher to get people to adapt, and I don't know that they really are going to necessarily shift over to on-demand.
I mean, as Alex says, you know, it's really...
It's really fun to be involved in this right now because you have this feeling, which I also experienced when we were first developing internet journalism at Slate, that we're inventing this new medium.
There's bottomless possibility and there's all this enthusiasm and excitement about it.
And there are things like, I mean, around the drama and storytelling shows that aren't journalism but are fiction.
You know, that really went out in America in the 1960s.
Yeah.
And it's coming back.
And suddenly, you know, you have a medium and you have storytellers and you have new kinds of stories, but you have to retrain the audience.
But there's an audience that's ready to do this.
And I just have to say, it's so much fun to be involved with right now.
I love this.
You have to retrain the audience.
That's my favorite line ever.
Retrain the audience.
Yeah, that's how you set up a successful business.
You tell your customers they're doing it wrong.
Although Apple did kind of do that pretty well.
But still, retrain your audience.
You know what?
Because I was looking through the chat in the troll room as well.
Fan donations don't work.
No, it doesn't work if you do Patreon or set amounts or pitch in.
This is stupid.
It's stupid.
If you have an outstanding product, let people give you what they want, including nothing.
Including artwork or clips or information or whatever they can give.
If you're sincere, it will work.
It's that simple.
There's other things you've got to do around it.
You've got to have a newsletter.
There's all kinds of things you have to do.
I'm always reminded of Briny, who every once in a while I get a hold of, because I gave her a lot of mentoring.
Congressional Dish podcast.
Yes, to keep her on the right track.
And she ended up with Patreon anyway, but she takes checks and she actually uses every income stream she can figure out.
And I'm telling you one thing or another, she's doing certain things.
She's telling me, she should probably do it this way, she should probably do it that way.
And at some point she says to me, you know, I go to every one of these podcasting conventions.
And I don't make more money.
And she says, there's that.
But then she says, and not one person ever says anything that you're telling me.
There's our business opportunity.
Just, we should do a master class.
A master class.
We could.
We could do a one day or a two day, one day seminar.
Well, how much can we make with that?
Well, I used to take...
I was a big fan of these things when I was doing a lot of direct marketing when I was younger.
And there was a lot of different...
I mean, the best class I took was a three-day seminar in New York City by the Direct Marketing Association.
And this very famous guy, Pierre Passavant, who gave these seminars.
Oh, Pierre.
Yeah.
Yes, old Pierre.
And then I started taking some other ones, and I took a lot of the one days.
And this was a while ago, and they were $150.
And they would get in, I don't know, about 50 people.
But that was then.
I think the price now for a one day, and it was like probably six hours of material.
I think it could be $400, $500.
You'd probably get $50.
You'd probably make $20,000 at a pop.
I just figured it out.
Here's how we do it.
We do value for value for the conference, for the masterclass.
Give us whatever you think it's worth.
Well, the problem with that is that I think it's a good idea, except for one thing.
You need an auditorium.
Yes.
We're not doing a real estate scam where you bring a whole bunch of people in and then do value add to make your money.
Well, we can sell timeshare on the way out.
You can probably maybe get 50 people, 100 people at the most.
That's a lot.
You could do it.
I think we could probably get a number of people to...
To take, come in and listen to our way of doing things, which is totally alien to what they teach at these...
Why don't we just do online course so we don't have to leave or go anywhere?
How about this?
We just don't do any of it.
There you go.
I'm going to show myself food by donating to no agenda.
Imagine all the people who could do that.
Oh yeah, that would be fun.
Yeah, on no agenda.
Help me!
In the morning.
Classic.
We want to thank a few people for helping us out here on show 1022.
Bruce Schwalm in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania sent a check in for $125.
Sir Pete Barron of North Holland and Friesland.
Friesland Boppa!
Yes.
One, two, three, four, five.
He's the Barron of North Holland and Friesland.
Yeah, I read his note because he's a baron.
Payments to get back on track for my tuition fee payments for the Media Deconstruction School of No Agenda.
Just what we're talking about.
Yes, exactly.
A.K.A. No K-N-O-W Agenda.
Looking into setting up a giant scholarship at the school for students.
A grant for scholarship, he says.
A grant.
Onward.
Ben Todman in Mount Riverview, New South Wales.
You've cleared your throat.
He actually went on a little bit.
He says, I'm looking into setting up a grant for the scholarship at the school, that's our school, for students.
Not clear in the details, but perhaps some dukes and barons are interested.
Karma has served me well.
I can't believe you missed this clear money-making opportunity.
Yeah, just another one of them.
We won't do that one either.
Well, let's hope for the best.
Sir Pete's got a lot of gumption.
That guy is that guy.
He'll figure it out.
He'll tell us what to do.
John Robinet.
No, Ben Todman.
I'm sorry.
No, I did bed and talk.
It was Mount Riverview, New South Wales.
Okay, good.
100.
John Robinet, parts unknown.
Barron Ladequin.
Ladequin in Houston, Texas, $100.
Robert Wilcher in Burke, Virginia, $100.
That's nice.
Richard Altman, 8365.
Dude named Muhammad Ali.
8008, which is 100.
Your name, huh?
Yeah, boob for your birthday, John.
Can't read the spreadsheet, Dvorak.
I read it, didn't I?
Adrian Ramos says, by the way, I've changed my way of presenting the spreadsheet.
That's why you haven't heard so many bitches and moans.
It's been working quite well.
I'm impressed.
I thought it was the B12. Nope.
The B12 is what got me Lib Joe.
Adrian Ramos, 73-39.
Sir Got Nate in Sebastopol, California, 6-9-6-9.
6-9-5-9?
No, 6-9-6-9.
Okay, got it.
I know it's 6-9-6-9.
It was a check.
He always gives 6-9-6-9.
Got it.
Sir Brian, White Knight of the Rainbow Nation, not Houston, Texas.
He's OTG, not in Houston.
N-I-H. 6-9-6-6-9.
Sir, start to slard a...
Slardabarfant.
What?
Slardabarfist.
Slardabarfist?
Slardabarfist, I guess.
I don't remember this.
Hope, Rhode Island.
Happy birthday, Johnny Boy, he says.
Sir Chris of the Low Earth Orbit.
By the way, that was 66-66, and so was Chris 66.
We had a lot of 66-66 today in Houston.
A double birthday call for JCD. Matthew Rent in Mound, Minnesota.
Renz.
Renz and Mound, 6666 for the pager fund.
I guess you're getting one.
Everybody's got something funny to say in 6666 today.
Devin Enright in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
Another happy birthday.
Oh, his smoking hot girlfriend, Tammy Lynn, has the same birthday I do.
In fact, we have a whole bunch of birthdays today.
Brian, Baron, Sir Baron Mark Tanner in Whittier, California, 6666.
Sir Gregory Worley in Evington, Virginia, 6633.
Did Baron Mark Tanner not have a note?
No, he sends that check in twice a month.
Oh, it looked highlighted as a note.
I'm sorry.
No, it's highlighted as a check.
Okay.
The check sometimes, I mean, if they do it themselves, this is through a bank.
Okay.
You've got an account somewhere.
They send this check every twice a month.
Nice.
Zachary Gilbrecht, after Kevin Johnson.
Kevin Johnson, 6633.
And he says happy birthday to his smoking hot wife, Nikki.
She's on the list.
She's turning 33.
Yeah, that reminds me.
I should read this note.
We've got a note from somebody who donated 70-something.
And he says...
Uh, Ms.
Skripal of the Poisoning fame is 33 years old and her dad is 66.
Mm-hmm.
Say no more.
We get it.
Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
Fugu.
Fugu.
Now it's Fugu.
Fugu.
Give me a break.
Ha, ha, ha.
Zachary Gilbrecht, 66.
Robert Verber in Palmetto, Florida, home of the insect, 66.
Nicholas Hanna, 66 in Indianapolis.
I'm going to read all these 66s.
These are all Happy Birthday John donations, 66.
Richard Riley in Loomis, California.
Sir Denny Goad, I love the name Goad, 66.
Brian Burse.
Sir Eric V.M. Baronet of the Valley in Van Nuys.
And he says happy birthday, dude.
Louis Pipkin in Tallahassee, Florida.
Jonathan Ferris in Liberal, Kansas.
Annie Lennon in Washington, D.C. Nicholas Robinson in Somerville, Massachusetts.
That's Eric Mekarowicz, Mekarowicz, Mekarowicz, I'm thinking.
Monica Lansing, Dame Monica.
Dame in Drayton Valley, Alberta.
Paul, plain old Paul in 66.
This is out of nowhere.
Naveed Khan, unknown.
John Hall, Cynthia Hickson, Daniel Smith, Alex van der Hengst.
Matthew Januszewski.
Of the stud is what that means.
Sir Matthew Januszewski in Chicago.
Gabe Shabazian in San Francisco over here.
Come to the meetup.
Phil Rodokanakis.
Phil Rodokanakis.
Torben Peterson or Pedersen.
Brian Klimczak.
Daphne Mitchell.
Sir Dirtbag Dave, Melissa Hodges, Arthur Gobitz.
Sir Arthur Gobitz.
Sir Arthur.
Rob Tyson.
Brad Doherty.
Hylko Santima.
Hylko Santima.
Santima.
In Houghton.
Houghton.
In Houghton.
Woods.
The woods.
She lives in the woods.
It's a he.
Randy Holcomb.
Sir Don Barron of New Hampshire, 66.
Theodore Hart, Austin Wilson, Pedro Itriago, Itriago, I think.
By the way, Austin's in Sammamish.
Mark Borghese, which is a ritzy little suburb.
Mark Borghese, Brian Navarro, James Blair, Bart Bertens.
He lives in Best, Netherlands.
Best, yeah.
Best.
Dominique Gobel in Calgary.
Lance Forrest in Newport North.
We've got a lot of well-wishers.
I want to thank you all for doing this.
Your love, man.
Nicholas Counts.
And I'm sure he does.
Nicholas Counts.
Jan Leclerc.
Sir Quijiboo.
I don't remember.
Quijiboo in Luxembourg.
And that's Luxembourg.
Jacob Honan.
Or Jacob.
Christopher Gray in Covington, Louisiana.
Joseph Green, Sir Dusifer, Knight of the Four Springs, Funk, Four Kids and a Time Traveler.
That's our boy here.
Loves the show.
That's our boy here in Austin.
Well, there he is.
Loves the show.
Rene Knig in Eindhoven.
How do you pronounce that?
Knigge.
Alexander Mercuriev.
Oh, and that's the end of our group, by the way, with Eindhoven.
Alexander Mercuriev is 55-55, and he says happy birthday.
He doesn't care about the exact amount.
Sir Kevin Wood in Manchester, New Hampshire.
And he wants his donation towards his daughter Kayla Woods Damehood and add her to the birthday list.
Yes, she's on there.
Stephen Smith.
Sir Tom Dari in DeForest, Wisconsin.
Those are $55.10.
Double nickels on the dime.
Michael Gates, $52.80.
And the following people are $50 donors.
Name and location, if available.
Eric Olson, not available.
Scott E. Knight in Lost Wages, Nevada.
Matthew Januszewski, once again, in Chicago.
Robert Clayson in London.
Paul Van Cordelar.
Cordelar.
Cordelar in...
Hey, Mowden.
Hey, Mowden.
Bradley Lennon.
Todd Moore is cracking myself up in Arlington, Virginia.
Stephen McConnell.
Do you notice how many Dutch people are in the list today?
Because the Dutch care about birthdays.
They do.
They're all sitting in a chair as we speak in a circle.
In a circle, listening to the show, drinking coffee.
Hey, there it is.
Stephen McConnell in Cortland, Ohio.
Sir Brett Farrell in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
We believe that's where it's from.
And last but not least, Sir Alan Bean over here in Oakland, California.
Hey, Alan.
And I want to thank all these folks for contributing to this show, 1022, and wishing me a happy birthday.
Yeah, that was really nice.
Putting the show over the top.
Yeah, I love it when people love you.
It gives me great pleasure.
Because that means that there are more people who see me the way I see you.
Yeah.
Whatever that means.
We do have a lot of people who came in with my date, 4-5-18.
And there's a slew of them, too, and those don't get mentioned.
But we do have a lot of happy birthday wishes amongst them.
Very, very sweet.
Thank you all very much.
And remembering our value-for-value model, the deconstruction continues.
We'll be back on Sunday with another episode, as we do twice a week here on the No Agenda Show.
Remember us at...
Everybody can use some jobs karma.
Jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.
Let's vote for jobs!
You've got karma.
And before we go on to our birthdays, I do have a douchebag call-out from Dame Elyse Garling, who has surfaced once again.
Our salmon fisher babe.
Doesn't she do the...
Limonala.
Limoncello.
Limoncello, yes.
She has contacted us.
She's our girl.
Did you get an email from her?
Yep, same email.
Okay, good.
So you wanted our address so that she can send off some new Limoncello.
And she's about to get back on the boat.
She goes, what, a couple months?
I thought she had a douchebag call out.
Oh, yes.
Pebble Mine.
Douchebag.
There you go.
You're right.
How long is she out?
She's out a couple months.
She'll be gone.
I have no idea.
Okay.
Here we go.
Besides my good podcast buddy, John C. Dvorak, we also congratulate Christopher Genuso on Actually, Christopher congratulates his brother, Jack.
He turns 30 today.
Devin Enright says happy birthday to his smoking hot girlfriend, Tommy Lynn.
She's a fifth baby as well.
Kevin Johnson to his smoking hot wife, Nikki.
She turns 33 as John turns 66.
Young LeClerc, Sir Quijiboo, 37th on April 10th.
Sir Kevin Wood says happy birthday to his daughter Kayla in advance.
She'll be celebrating on the 10th as well.
Eric Olson celebrated yesterday.
And Sir Don Baron of New Hampshire will be celebrating his birthday on the 7th, one year younger than you.
Happy birthday everybody from your buddies here at the best podcast in the universe.
Nice to see everyone.
It's a ruckus show.
I want to remind people if they didn't get in for my birthday thing, Sunday will still work.
Oh, okay.
That's very kind.
You know, someone sent me a rundown, which I thought was quite cute, of the historical census questions.
Since this has been such a big deal.
I didn't get that, yeah.
So things that are no longer on the census, this is true.
In 1820, a few of the questions were, how many other free persons except Indians are in your household?
How many slaves?
How many persons not naturalized?
You see where this is going.
Yeah, of course.
It gets better from here.
In 1830, how many deaf and dumb whites under age 14, over 14, and under 25, or over 25?
How many blind whites?
How many deaf and dumb slaves and free blacks under age 14, over 14, 25, and 25?
How many blind slaves and free blacks?
How many white foreigners not naturalized?
This has been a pretty consistent thing.
1840.
How many idiotic or insane whites?
They can put this back on!
And also, to be fair, they weren't racist.
How many idiotic or insane slaves and free blacks?
And then, can the person read and write?
Is the person deaf, dumb, blind, insane, idiotic, a pauper, or a convict?
Wow.
A pauper.
I like pauper.
Pauper's a good word.
And that's the same question there.
We move to 1870.
Whether or not parents are of foreign birth, can the person read and write?
Is the person deaf, dumb, blind, insane, or idiotic?
That seems to be kind of a trend.
Whether or not a person was sick or temporarily disabled.
This is 1880.
And the nature of the illness, kind of invasive.
And then whether the person was blind, deaf, dumb, idiotic, insane, maimed, crippled, bedridden, or permanently disabled.
What did they need to know all that for?
The demographics.
1890 psychographics, John.
Whether suffering from acute or chronic disease with the name of disease and length of time afflicted, whether defective in mind, sight, hearing, or speech, or whether crippled, maimed, or deformed, and whether prisoner, convict, homeless child, or pauper.
And then finally I have 1900.
Place of birth, place of birth of father, place of birth of mother, attended school, can read, can write, can speak English.
Changed rather dramatically.
1900.
I think that was Teddy Roosevelt.
So he must have changed it.
Not sure.
I'd have to look.
Something obviously changed.
That's kind of interesting.
I'll try.
Well, while we're on the LGBT topic, something new happening in Columbus, Ohio.
Now...
All people are equal.
Men, women, straight, gay, lesbian, or I should say lesbian, gay, I can't even, LGBT, QQIAP. We're all equal, and love is love, relationships are relationships, correct?
If you say so.
No, this is what I've been taught.
Oh, okay.
This is not what you've been taught by Gen Z and the millennials?
That everybody's the same?
Yeah, and all relationships are the same and everyone's the same.
It's all equal.
Love is love.
I'm not a believer.
I don't think so.
Love is love.
Just say it.
Love is love.
What's love got to do with it?
There you go.
There's a new program aimed at helping the LGBT community in Columbus, Ohio.
It turns out domestic violence is quite different.
By their own admission.
The new program aims to stop domestic violence in a specific community.
Franklin County's Municipal Court now has a program for the LGBTQ community.
10TV's Shelby Croft talked to an offender and the judges behind it.
I have a problem with alcohol and I didn't want to face it.
I just get out of my mind.
I go crazy and I just get uncontrollable.
The lack of control leads to violence for this man who doesn't want his face shown.
Violence toward his husband.
He's been charged several times.
Within a year, I feel I had four.
All domestic violence.
One more and he's headed to prison.
That's what's over my head right now, and that's not something to play around with.
So this offender got serious after his last charge and is following through with his probation, counseling for alcohol, and counseling for the domestic violence, the first person in a new court-designed program.
Statistically, it's been found that jail does not decrease recidivism.
It increases it.
I don't want to have to put people in jail.
I know that putting someone in jail isn't helping them with any underlying issues.
Judges James O'Grady and Eileen Paley have worked for almost three years with several agencies to develop a domestic violence program geared entirely toward LGBTQ offenders.
I was stunned when I found out that this wasn't anywhere else in the country.
I think it's the secret that people don't like to talk about.
Miles Stickle is the Director of Behavioral Health for Equitas.
He was tasked with coming up with this program that has never existed, explaining the dynamic of same-gender couples is much different than heterosexuals.
Mostly it's the males hitting the females, and this case, you have two males.
There's other things that create power and control differences in our relationships.
Miles started with an evidence-based model for treatment, then incorporated needs specific to the LGBTQ community.
Everyone will first go into an eight-week psychoeducational group where we'll lay out the foundation of what is violence in a relationship, how to have healthy, effective relationships, thought disorders that lead to violence.
That will be followed by 32 weeks of group therapy tailored to specific problems.
That's ultimately all I want, is just people to get help and not have to come back and see me.
I hope I can make everyone proud.
In downtown Columbus, Shelby Croft, 10TV News.
The judges hope the need for this program will be recognized and modeled nationally.
They also hope it paves the way for more culturally specific programs.
This doesn't sound right.
Culturally specific programs.
Exactly.
That's the kicker.
No, it's normal for black men to beat up their women.
Or Muslims.
Oh, yeah, Muslims, yeah.
Muslims, that's what they're supposed to do.
That's what the women agree to.
They agree to that when they marry a Muslim.
Culturally specific.
So different rules.
That's what I'm hearing.
Different rules.
Yeah, there's no different rules.
It's nonsense.
And just staying with the universities, George Washington University had a, I think it's actually going on now, diversity workshop.
And they have a number of programs, and the one for today is titled Christian Privilege.
But our founding fathers were all Christian, right?
That's the subtitle of the workshop.
Because Christian privilege is a thing now.
It wasn't enough going after white old dudes who are straight and cisgendered.
Actually, they have more workshops.
Let's see.
What do they teach in these workshops?
Well, that you have to recognize your privilege.
Heterosexual privilege, cisgender privilege, able-wise.
Heterosexual privilege?
Oh, yes.
That you are privileged.
You are privileged.
Able-bodied privilege?
Socioeconomic privilege?
You changed the word privilege to burden.
Unconscious bias?
Heterosexual burden.
The white man's burden.
You've heard of that.
Yes.
Well, I think we should reintroduce it.
Good luck with that.
Start making your signs for the march.
It's pretty bad.
Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Well, I got a little deconstruction for you.
Not that we didn't really know this, but I think it's fun to do.
The whole world saw the Sinclair Broadcast Group Propagandizing the message.
Everyone had to say the same thing, the same message.
Yeah, we did a bit on it.
Yeah.
And so I pulled one of Conan O'Brien's examples of this from 2014, 2015.
Yeah, he used to do this constantly.
He used to do this a lot.
Yeah, he would get the same message.
They had some specialists that worked in his comedy writing team that could do this.
That's what it came from.
So just so you know, this is not new.
And I can tell a lot of people who are tweeting and who are emailing, they're shocked.
Of course, we're so jaded, I have to be honest, after doing this show for a decade that We forget to remind people this has been going on for a long time.
In fact, if the M5M does anything, they don't go back, even to Michael Moore when he was all for investigating SSRIs.
This is all the stuff.
This is the gems.
This is what we dig up.
And it's not even digging up.
I mean, it just had to go back in some archive and find it.
Here he is.
What?
A lot of people think the big news stories today are the snowstorm that's hitting the Midwest or the looming federal budget cuts.
But judging by local news, there's apparently an even bigger story that's sweeping the nation right now.
Check it out.
Well, if you filled up your gas tank lately, then you don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise.
You don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise.
You don't need us to tell you gas prices are back on the rise.
You don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise.
You don't need us to tell you that gas prices are back on the rise.
Now, where this comes from, just a point of reference, and this is in the show notes, find it at nashownotes.com, is one of the many sources, but this is one of the big ones for these local stations.
It's something called CNN News Source.
And you can see, there's all kinds of screenshots.
I guess if you register and if you pay for it, then you can actually see the whole interface.
And they have all these platforms.
Packages.
They have the intro text.
Everything's written.
It can actually flow straight from this app into your teleprompter.
This is how it really happens.
And it's CNN, mind you.
It's a much bigger part of the business than people realize.
And it leads me to believe that one of these outfits wrote the response talking points to the infamous Sinclair video as witnessed in this montage.
Which we all disdain, depending on what our description is of them.
The concern, I think...
There's a concern.
The concerns resurface.
Is that concerning to you?
Isn't that concerning?
Nicole, I share that concern greatly.
Mayor, should we be concerned?
It should be a little bit concerning, particularly when it echoes...
It's not journalism, it's propaganda.
...to run a propaganda clip.
This isn't journalism.
This is propaganda.
Shoving propaganda down local anchors' throats.
Scripted propaganda and accusations.
Propaganda has to stop.
Propaganda.
That's a good one.
Is it propaganda?
Is it meta-propaganda?
Or are we actually the propaganda?
That's the question you need to ask.
This whole thing is ludicrous.
Well, I was watching NBC. It had Martin Luther King's 50th anniversary of him getting gunned down at this motel.
Woohoo!
Party!
Which has been turned into a museum.
So all the anchors on all the networks had to go.
Everyone was there.
They're all there.
But the problem was there's people in the background.
And the worst case example is NBC. So you have Lester Holt...
He's got a headset on.
He's got a countryman he's wearing.
And he's standing there trying to do his report.
But there's all this noise and racket because they set up shop behind him with a speaker.
And they're making a bunch of noise.
I have two examples of...
Like that?
By the end of his broadcast, by the way, it's quite annoying.
But I have the two background mess clips.
But play clip one and you'll hear what I'm talking about.
Lester.
Alright, Miguel Almaguer tonight, thank you.
Now to another big story we're following.
New details about the woman who went on a shooting rampage at YouTube's headquarters.
Investigators now say she was a YouTube user who harbored a grudge against the company.
And tonight, new questions about possible missed warnings with police revealing they encountered the shooter just out there.
That was pretty annoying.
So you heard this stuff going, so then, apparently, I think it was Maxine Waters.
She was on stage.
Because that's what it sounds like.
Somebody's screeching in the background.
This is later in the show.
This is 10 seconds, and you can hear somebody screeching in the background while this guy's trying to read the news.
The White House.
China is firing back in a potentially escalating trade war with the White House, and caught in the middle could be a lot of American businesses.
Let me just rotate Zoom.
Rotate, Zoom, enhance.
Yes, yes, it's there.
We got it through forensics.
Anyway, I thought this was so amateurish to have this.
It was distracting to the viewer.
Yeah, it's bad.
It was also on ABC. CBS, I didn't check that news feed.
These guys have got to get a better setup or something.
We wouldn't stand for that at all.
Well, I didn't stand for it.
I made a couple of clips.
You did some work on it.
Hell yeah.
Let me see.
What else did we have that was important?
Oh, did you see the Google AI and search chief step down?
What was the reason?
I don't think a reason was given.
Google doesn't have to give any reasons.
They can do whatever they want.
Yeah, they don't care.
Let me see if it says, is leaving his post...
I think the guy from Google Brain is now taking over.
Jeff Dean.
Do you know him?
Jeff Dean?
No, I don't know anybody at Google anymore.
Did you know anybody?
Yeah, I knew Sergey.
Why can't we investigate Sergey and Bryn for collusion?
Collusion?
Russians?
Yeah, I mean, they're Russians.
It's just a thought.
Okay, I got two clips I want to play before we're done.
One is just a clip I want to get rid of.
It's been sitting and been going on and on.
This is Chelsea Manning.
This is a little known story.
When Chelsea Manning released all those documents, people don't realize that WikiLeaks was not the place she wanted to go with them.
And this is a clip that kind of explains it.
Interesting how the real news media who hate WikiLeaks, they wouldn't even take these documents.
That said, this couldn't have happened any other way.
It happened because of who I am and the values that I have and the time that I had and the means, the technology that was available.
And also, it almost didn't happen.
I tried to reach out through conventional journalists, if you will.
And the technical complexities, they just...
We couldn't work around.
Well, wait for one second.
Could you explain exactly what you did?
For people who aren't familiar with your course, when you were in Iraq, you got a hold of these documents, you saw what you described as the horror documented in the government's own pages and wanting to get it out.
Coming back to the United States, it wasn't WikiLeaks you went to first.
Right.
Of course not.
I mean...
Of course not.
They weren't a thing yet.
They weren't a name yet.
And, I mean, like, I... I ran out of time.
I didn't have a whole lot of time.
I had about 12 days, and three of those days were taken up by a snowstorm.
Before you were going back to Iraq.
Correct.
So you turned to the New York Times.
You tried to reach out to them.
Well, I reached out to the Washington Post first.
And they didn't want the documents, or they did?
I mean, it's technology.
Technology is the problem.
You know, SecureDrop is something that came out of all of this.
The Washington Post and use these tools.
Journalists didn't really have an understanding as to the technical problems.
Why you couldn't just send it to them by regular email?
Exactly.
Why Washington Post did you go to?
All the President's Men.
Exposing Watergate.
Well, that was my reference, was a movie.
Jeez, that's a pretty good clip.
So she...
Saw the movie, The President's Men, and figured the Washington Post was the way to go.
Yeah.
It also shows she was very, very sincere about getting this information out.
But there was a whole thing.
Wasn't there some gay chat room and some other stuff was involved with this?
There was something else going on there.
He, at the time, was bragging about doing it, and somebody busted him.
I mean, he would have never gotten caught if he wasn't saying something about it.
This is classic.
Of course, that person who busted him is now dead.
Who was that?
I don't remember his name, but he died about three weeks ago.
Oh, jeez.
I almost thought that was rather weird.
Delta's been hacked.
You might as well hit that.
Oh, hold on a second.
And I have two quick clips for the end here.
I didn't know this.
I actually travel with Delta.
We're following some breaking news.
We've just learned of a new cyber attack, this time targeting Delta Airlines.
Delta says customers' payment information is...
May have been breached last fall via a San Jose-based chat services provider.
The airline says only a small subset of customers were affected, and payment information was exposed for about three weeks.
Now, in a statement, Delta added, it cannot say definitively if any customer's information was actually accessed, and it will launch a dedicated website, delta.com response, which will address questions and concerns.
Go check it out.
Book a flight.
Yeah, Tina has LifeLock.
And she gets regular emails.
It's very regular.
She says, oh, look, this was compromised.
This was compromised.
I need to write them down when she tells me.
It's a lot more than propagates through the news channels.
Oh, yeah.
You should definitely bring that into the show.
And she's always saying, hey, I can put you on, but I get a discount.
I got a coupon code.
And here's my stance.
Like, no, because what's going to happen is those guys are going to get hacked.
I don't want all my information in one place anymore.
It's not helpful.
It's like the single point of failure password deal.
Yes, one of those.
I would be remiss if I did not give you an update on the Awan brothers.
These were the Pakistanis who were mucking around in congressional democratic computers for...
Months, if not years, removing servers, doing all kinds of shenanigans, hired by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and this thing has been, you know, they keep trying to cover it up as much as they can, and it just keeps rearing its ugly head.
We now know nearly 50 Democrats waived background checks for Pakistani IT aides accused of hacking.
That includes former D.C. Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
An inspector general's report finding 44 Democrats chose not to vet Imran Awan and several of his family members by using a loophole in the House security policy.
Awan, who worked for Schultz, was arrested for bank fraud waiting for a flight to Pakistan last year.
Any collusion?
It's unbelievable this is getting no play.
Well, the mainstream media is not interested in these really good stories because it doesn't involve Trump.
You know, Fox doesn't consider themselves mainstream media.
Which is a joke.
But the original money, honey, over there in Fox Business News, Maria Bartiromo, had Donna Brazile on and asked her about the Awan brothers.
Donna, let me ask you before you go.
You wrote the book Hacks.
Hacks.
Do you believe that the hacking...
And by the way, Maria has no idea what she's talking about.
She's confusing everything.
...into the DNC, had anything to do with those Awan brothers, the IT guys who the Democrats blew off their background checks and, of course, are under investigation today.
Oh.
Well, you know, the House investigation, I haven't read the full report, but, you know, I believe everyone should be vetted.
No, I don't believe those individuals had anything to do with the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
I would hope that before Director Mueller finishes investigation, we get to the bottom of it.
We know that there was Russian interference in our election system.
I want to figure out who committed this crime, and they should be brought to justice.
No, the Awan brothers, just to be clear, is a separate story from the Russia probe.
But you were there at the DNC. Did you work with Mr.
Awan?
No, ma'am.
They worked, I believe, in the House of Representatives.
I haven't worked on the Hill since 1999, so 2000 when I left.
So, no, I don't know anything about that series of what I call...
In many ways, it was a management failure.
It was bad.
We should vet everybody, not just, you know, Democratic staffers.
Every staffer who works for the House of Representatives or the United States Senate, anybody, it should be vetted.
Yeah, I mean, you would think so.
Don, it's always a pleasure to see you.
Thanks so much.
So much for your Fox Business News vapid, empty, empty nothingness story of the century as far as I'm concerned.
It's a great story.
It could be ISI. It could be all kinds of spy stuff going on.
I'm sure it's ISI. Completely overlooked.
All right.
Anything we need to be looking at for this evening's entertainment?
I don't think so.
I don't think so either.
The NCAA tournament's over.
The basketball season's wrapping up.
You got anyone coming over for your birthday to sit in a circle?
We've got the chairs.
We're going to put the circle there, and they're going to sit there and drink coffee and stare at each other.
Great.
I can't wait to see how Theodorable does in the circle.
Get him in young, John.
Teach him while they're young.
Teach him while they're young.
And we will be back on Sunday with another deconstruction of your media.
You're on the No Agenda Show.
Remember us at Dvorak.org slash NA. And I am coming to you from downtown Austin, Texas.
This is the capital of the Drone Star State.
FEMA Region 6 and all the governmental maps.
In the 5x9 Cludio and the Common Law Condo.
In the morning, everybody, I'm Adam Curry.
And from northern Silicon Valley, where we're having a storm approaching, it's going to be a real gully washer, and I believe this will just head back east and give you guys nothing but grief.
I'm John C. Dvorak.
Until Sunday, as always, happy birthday, John, and adios, mofos!
Give me a cab.
Hack day! Hack day!
Noob!
She's a homer! Noob! Noob! Noob!
John, we love no agendas You and Adam together.
When your birthday show comes along, here is your song.
Get you some cover and two spots be gone, just stop.
Cause we really love you, stop.
We're all thinking of you, happy birthday's a phrase from the shade.
I'm nowhere, dream there, forever.
I'm nowhere, dream there, dream there, forever. forever.
The Silicon Valley inside her head has switched to all the love.
And nobody's gonna watch YouTube today.
She's gonna make them stream Vimeo.
It's who she doesn't understand it.
She always says she was good as gold.
And you can see no trickling cause there is no trickling.
What reason do you need to be like?
Tell me why.
I don't like YouTube.
Tell me why.
I don't like YouTube.
Tell me why.
I don't like YouTube.
Community strong The whole side down This video from your account has been disabled for violation of the YouTube community guidelines Thank you and have a nice day.
Oh, well, guess I better go and ask for a manual review.
Oh, well, guess I better go and ask for a manual review. guess I better go and ask for a manual review.
Mopo.
Dvorak.org.
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