David Axelrod appeared on a legitimate, unbiased network today. It looked more like a counseling session than a newsy Q & A. Poor Andrea Mitchell, clearly despondent over the disappointments of election night, needed some cheering up. I can just see the poor woman flipping between the HBO special reminiscing the glorious triumph last year and watching the gloomy election returns this year. Even New York 23 couldn’t cheer her up much. If Axelrod was in the studio, I’m sure he would have offered her his handkerchief, maybe a hug. He did his best consoling her on each of her worries, but Andrea wasn’t buoyed much by the pep talk. The interview ended with sad Andrea saying, “We loved you in the HBO documentary and we’ll always have the New York 23rd“. You could almost hear the music.
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
I was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
How much power does talk radio have? No psychiatrist today to help us on that. For some inexplicable reason those insecure, bully-loving listeners don’t necessarily do what the talk show hosts tell them to do. Go figure. The imagery and subliminal messages that talk radio is populated by weird loud people with extreme views continued.
Camille Paglia sees the opposition party quality of conservative radio these days as a sort of a shadow government and not a problem in a democracy. If you ask me, it’s what democracy is all about.
Michael Harris of Talk Radio Magazine attributes Al Franken’s successful bid for the Senate to his stint as a talk radio host. Yeah, that and some fortuitous discoveries of previously uncounted ballots.
So Obama got elected in spite of talk radio, but will the country be safe from the harm of talk radio forever….time will tell.
I’m getting a sense that Carol Costello thinks we listeners are some kind of dupes being lured in by talk radio con artists. As she pointed out yesterday as though letting us in on a secret, it’s entertainment and about making money. Maybe like a circus, eh Carol? A sucker born every minute? It’s so much fun seeing something so familiar to you analyzed by someone who is clueless.
I’m a news/politics junkie and I love radio. Forty years ago I was listening to shortwave broadcasts from all over the world. My original SW was a hand-me-down. It was gigantic and it had tubes. I sent in my reception reports and received QSL cards in return. Dang, I wish I still had them. I would send a letter to Radio Moscow and two months later get a notice that my letter would be read by Vladimir Posner (future friend of Phil Donahue) on Moscow Mailbag the following month. I never thought that would become a “well, back in my day” story.
Talk radio is like family to me. I’m sure the psychiatrist would make something else of that, but you know what I mean. I’m so grateful to Tammy for how much she’s done to bring like-minded people together. I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails, tweets, have blog discussions and even personally befriend very wonderful people through the Tammy connection. They are salt of the earth decent people who are as concerned as I am about the fate of the country we love. That kind of power is incomprehensible to Carol Costello.
Who listens to talk radio? To find out, Carol Costello went to bitter-clingy central PA, hopped a ride in a local’s pickup truck and listened to cowboy hatted local WHP host Bob Durgin (He rants and raves!). Then she asked a psychiatrist.
“Anger in the Air, What listeners don’t know about talk radio”. Since I’m an avid listener I wanted to find out what it is I don’t know about talk radio. I still don’t know, unless it’s that it’s all about anger and that listeners are looking to befriend a bully.
Today, Tammy spoke about what’s “normal” depends on your point of view. That’s why Fox News is biased in the eyes of liberals, but not CNN. From CNN’s point of view the secret behind talk radio’s success is the intoxicant of anger that appeals to conservative personality types. Yes, I’m angry. I’m not an angry person; I’m a person who is angry. Bullies scare me. Bullies like ACORN, SEIU, the White House and Congressional Democrats. That’s partly what’s making me angry.
Carol was delighted by Bob’s analysis of liberal talk radio—too compassionate. Compassion is a badge of honor for liberals and you can never be too compassionate. Randi Rhodes doesn’t think compassion is undermining the success of liberals on the air. It’s that they’re not on the air all that much. It’s obvious to Rhodes that liberal talk radio would be much more popular if only there was more of it. Brilliant.
The post report chitchat was revealing. Kiran Chetry noted that some of the listeners are angry at talk radio. Great point, says Carol. In fact, she says, 56% of listeners are independent. Ah!, but what does she mean by that? Do 56% of listeners disagree with talk radio? Should we ask Randi to figure it out?
The news blindsided even his biggest champions: Barack Obama had joined Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Dalai Lama as a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Former Polish President Lech Walesa, himself a Noble laureate, echoed many when he responded: “So soon? Too early. He has no contribution so far.” Even the Nobel Prize committee acknowledged the award honored Obama’s “efforts” to advance global harmony, rather than concrete achievements to date…
Said Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele: “It is unfortunate that the President’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights.”
This starts a list of Obama’s biggest ‘backfires’ and they even give us a handy-dandy list allowing readers to do their own ranking of Urkel Moments. That’s right. Without the Nobel Prize, I don’t think we’d even be seeing that list.
Thanks Oslo!
Bobby Muller, who won the Nobel Prize as co-founder of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, told The Times: “I don’t have the highest regard for the thinking or process of the Nobel committee. Maybe Norway should give it to Sweden so they can more properly handle the Peace Prize along with all the other Nobel prizes.
Isn’t it curious that there was more of a media debate about giving drivers licenses to illegals than about health care coverage? Where are the editorials and the Sunday show discussions about how mean-spirited and unfair it is to exclude illegals from health care? I would have expected to see more like this from E.J. Dionne.
I am not at all at peace with the fact that the one issue about which a member of Congress chose to rise up and accuse our president of being a liar related to the charge that our chief executive wasn’t doing enough to build walls between illegal immigrants and health coverage.
How mean-spirited will we allow ourselves to become? How coarsened has our political culture made us? We like to see ourselves as a generous, caring and welcoming nation. Are we losing that part of our character?
There isn’t a debate because it is understood that the circumstances require certain things to be said now. Obama expressed it this way in an interview with Latino correspondents:
Obama told Hispanic Link columnist José de la Isla and other Latino correspondents that the animosity around both issues will be tough to overcome at present time. “I think that, with respect to the debate that’s taking place around health care reform now, it is not going to be possible to provide coverage for undocumented workers,” he said, noting that health coverage had already been extended to 11 million children including undocumented ones. “That was a fight that had been out there for a decade. And it was a huge accomplishment.”
We all know it is inevitable. Maybe Joe Wilson should have said, “You deceive”.
That’s what the People’s Cube wonders, as should the rest of us. It will never end until we plumb out all racism from every object, animate or not. Just like Newsweek. Exactly. What?
Just as the progressive community was scraping the bottom of the barrel to rationalize America’s rejection of Obama’s socialist policies and to provide plausible but untrue reasons for the 9-12 Tea Party in Washington, DC, Newsweek boosted their efforts with an effective subliminal image on this week’s cover, leaving no doubt that the debate is all about race. A picture of a white baby with large black letters over its face “Is your baby racist?” is a brave new take on the olden-but-golden response “You’re a racist!” to every difficult question…
Fortunately, the People’s Cube was able to get their hands on one of the rejected Newsweek covers, which of course, poses an equally pressing, and realistic, question as the original:
In Vanity Fair of all places we finally have someone asking the right question. This astounding event inaugurates the first Tammy Blog “Flying Pig Award” recognizing and lauding the right thing from quarters least expected. Below is a snippet. Please do read the whole thing, and the comments attached to the article are also worth a read. Some of the more thoughtful remarks about a young woman the left would prefer be forgotten. (HT Kruiser)
…I am very well known, a United States senator. My family is incredibly powerful. There are allegations that I had been drinking heavily hours up to the time I got into the vehicle with the passenger. I deny this for the rest of my life. That at no point did I make an attempt to call for rescue would probably be considered by many people to be outrageous and horrible, perhaps a crime that would carry a prison sentence. Can you imagine what the parents of the deceased would be going through when they found out that their 28-year-old daughter died alone in total darkness? I serve no time. Not inconvenienced by the burdensome obstacle of incarceration, I seek to maintain my elected position. I am successful and remain a senator for the next four decades. Would any deed I performed in that time, besides going to prison for the negligent homicide I committed all those years ago, be enough to wipe the slate clean? After my passing, would you fail to mention the incident and the death of this innocent person in reviewing the events of my long and lauded life? You wouldn’t forget about her, would you? That would be negligent.
I thought Sanjay Gupta turned down the job as Surgeon General. Here he is with a thinly veiled pitch to sign up your kids to be guinea pigs for H1N1 swine flu vaccine tests.
Two adorable playful little boys, ostensibly of their own volition, decided to volunteer for the H1N1 vaccine tests. One boy says he wants to do this because a schoolmate died from another kind of flu and he wanted to prevent that as much as he could. Their mother, who coincidentally volunteered for a vaccine test in 1976, says she has complete trust in the people doing the study. The boys’ grandfather is a pediatrician and he’s all for it too. He wants to protect his family, his patients and the general health. The younger boy (what about 5 years old?) sagely tells us it is the right thing to do.
A caveat is added about informed consent at the end but it is after all for the betterment at large.
“…scientists say it’s extremely important they complete their pediatric trials so they have a proven vaccine to protect kids if the swine flu begins to spread rapidly in the united states”
…there have been rare situations of severe allergic reactions, as well. one of the terms they are hearing is a term called informed consent, that’s what you hear during a trial is that you’re consenting that we don’t know exactly how this is going to work, but we’re trying this out for, again for the betterment for the public at large
Blatant propaganda coming from CNN. What a shock. No overt suggestions, but a map of testing locations is informatively displayed.
Now aren’t you shamed into admitting it is your civic duty to sign up your kids as guinea pigs for hurried testing of a vaccine that may or may not prevent a mild flu?
Peggy Noonan is an author and columnist, and once was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan. I can’t say I always agree with her, but she’s thoughtful and, in my opinion, basically on the right side of things. Her current editorial, appearing in the Wall Street Journal, is “Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare”.
There are several facets to the healthcare debate. Noonan succinctly gets to the heart of the economic and social angles. (There’s also the practical and moral note that government health care is in fact government health rationing, which is what makes it death care for those lacking adequate political pull and bureaucratic skills…and I don’t know about you, but I (Maynard) am sadly lacking in those areas.)
On the economic question, this is the commonsense chain of logic Noonan sees going through the heads of ordinary Americans:
Will whatever health care bill is produced by Congress increase the deficit? Of course. Will it mean tax increases? Of course. Will it mean new fees or fines? Probably. Can I afford it right now? No, I’m already getting clobbered. Will it make the marketplace freer and better? Probably not. Is our health care system in crisis? Yeah, it has been for years. Is it the most pressing crisis right now? No, the economy is. Will a health-care bill improve the economy? I doubt it.
Advocates of government healthcare will debate the foregoing, but I think most of us know in our bones that it’s a fundamentally solid argument. If Obama gets his way, we’ll pay more, have less access, and Obama will become party to our most intimate personal decisions.
On the social end, Noonan articulates the intrusiveness inherent in a government that “helps” us so much: [click to continue…]
President Obama did a walk-in during the White House press briefing this afternoon. Earlier today the Cambridge police asked for an apology from the President for his now infamous castigation of the officers arresting Prof. Gates as acting stupidly.
The President’s subsequent statement is in no way an apology. He regrets his words left an unfortunate mistaken impression. He says he should have calibrated his words differently. Then he scolds everyone else for over reacting. Was it not over reacting for the President to make a one-sided conclusion without having the facts?
He starts by admitting he contributed to ratcheting up the incident and ends by claiming the attention to the issue speaks to historical African-American sensitivity. He continues looking at this with bias. He sees only half of it. There was a response to the President’s insults because America is getting fed up with the race card.
Obama calls this a teachable moment; we should spend more time listening to each other. I thought that was supposed to be his forte. He disagrees with those who say he shouldn’t have stepped into it because he is the President. He thinks it is within his portfolio to step in because race is still a troubling aspect of our society. It is not within a President’s portfolio to pour gasoline on a fire. Obama will not step out of his community organizer, radical agitator role.
He couldn’t help but notice this issue took precious time away from discussing health care. No doubt that is the real incentive for his remarks today. I don’t think the issue will fade as quickly as Obama would like. He ends it humorously by sharing exasperation with Sgt. Crowley about the press trampling the lawn and invites Crowley and Gates over for a beer. Nice try for the common touch. The magic is starting to sputter. The halo is starting to fall.
*UPDATE The Fox Panel weighs in. Obama gets slammed by all.
I pulled a random sampling from RSS feeds on what’s being said about Palin’s announcement.
Nobody likes a quitter, Sarah Palin …save Sarah Palin the hassle of having to grind out the acrimonious end of her term in Alaska, battling Democrats and batting down frivolous ethics complaints as conservatives battle each other over her role. But how can leaving office early help her with her greatest deficiency as a presidential contender ” a lack of experience on big issues? from Lucianne.com News Forum
Why Sarah Palin Quit
Although her stated reasons are hard to pin down, insiders say the Alaska governor’s decision is unlikely to lead to a presidential run in 2012 from TIME
Palin’s Resignation Has Many Asking, What Next?
Some political insiders questioned the political wisdom of her decision to quit in the middle of her first term as governor while others were reluctant to bet against her popularity. from FOXNews.com -
CNN: The Real Power of Talk Radio
by Pat_S on October 20, 2009 · 7 comments
A post by Pat
How much power does talk radio have? No psychiatrist today to help us on that. For some inexplicable reason those insecure, bully-loving listeners don’t necessarily do what the talk show hosts tell them to do. Go figure. The imagery and subliminal messages that talk radio is populated by weird loud people with extreme views continued.
Camille Paglia sees the opposition party quality of conservative radio these days as a sort of a shadow government and not a problem in a democracy. If you ask me, it’s what democracy is all about.
Michael Harris of Talk Radio Magazine attributes Al Franken’s successful bid for the Senate to his stint as a talk radio host. Yeah, that and some fortuitous discoveries of previously uncounted ballots.
So Obama got elected in spite of talk radio, but will the country be safe from the harm of talk radio forever….time will tell.
I’m getting a sense that Carol Costello thinks we listeners are some kind of dupes being lured in by talk radio con artists. As she pointed out yesterday as though letting us in on a secret, it’s entertainment and about making money. Maybe like a circus, eh Carol? A sucker born every minute? It’s so much fun seeing something so familiar to you analyzed by someone who is clueless.
I’m a news/politics junkie and I love radio. Forty years ago I was listening to shortwave broadcasts from all over the world. My original SW was a hand-me-down. It was gigantic and it had tubes. I sent in my reception reports and received QSL cards in return. Dang, I wish I still had them. I would send a letter to Radio Moscow and two months later get a notice that my letter would be read by Vladimir Posner (future friend of Phil Donahue) on Moscow Mailbag the following month. I never thought that would become a “well, back in my day” story.
Talk radio is like family to me. I’m sure the psychiatrist would make something else of that, but you know what I mean. I’m so grateful to Tammy for how much she’s done to bring like-minded people together. I’ve had the opportunity to exchange emails, tweets, have blog discussions and even personally befriend very wonderful people through the Tammy connection. They are salt of the earth decent people who are as concerned as I am about the fate of the country we love. That kind of power is incomprehensible to Carol Costello.
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