As of today, AM1280 is making a big programming change.
The Walter Winchell Mark Levin show will be moving back to the 11PM-2AM slot.
And – this part, I like – the Dennis Miller show will be moving up to the 8-11PM shift.
And I’ll cop to it, I love it. Not a huge Levin fan – but I love the Miller show.
So now, hopefully everyone’s happy. But for one, I certainly am.
The Northern Alliance Radio Network was the first all-blogger talk show in the United States – heck, the whole world – when it went on the air in 2004.
Since then, there have been a few other blogger/activist focused radio shows; there was one in Boston back in 2005, and as I recall one, maybe in Colorado (not sure).
Of course, Jack Tomczak and Ben Kruse have been doing “The Late Debate” for a while now on a small chain of stations in the north ‘burbs and Saint Cloud; it’s an excellent show that you should check out.
The idea went badly off the beam a few years ago, when KTNF, the former Air America affiliate in the Twin Cities, started putting leftybloggers on their afternoon drive show, before discovering that none of them had anything interesting to say.
And now, perhaps, a much better plan; Aaron Brown, one of Minnesota’s better leftybloggers, debuts tonight on KAXE, a community station in northern Minnesota.
And from Brown’s description, it looks a little more like “The Northwoods Home Companion” than “Fast Eddie Schultz Lite”:
I knew things were getting serious when I hired the jug band. Have you ever hired a jug band? There’s a certain feeling after you do a thing like that – neither good nor bad, a sense that you have altered the universe in an unpredictable way. Da’ Elliott Brothers out of Duluth will bring three musicians and a couple dozen instruments.
We’ll have a company of actors – Pete Pellinen, Marty and Michelle Rice, Josh Anderson and Scott Hanson performing an original radio drama written by the up-and-coming writer Matt Nelson, a Hibbing native. There’ll be a couple of original sketches and a set of lumberjack stories by Matt’s dad Ed. And I wouldn’t be a showman if I didn’t promise some surprises and special guests.
I actually share Brown’s fascination with the great tradition of live radio (read the article); I’ve had the odd dream of doing something similar…
…but different.
Anyway, break a leg, Brown.
TREBEK: “The most annoying people in the world”.
BERG: “People who pedantically fuss over fairly meaningless, and usually wrong and out of context, ephemera in history to try to discredit their opponents among people who don’t pay much attention to the subject but like to think they do”.
TREBEK: “Form of a question, Mr. Berg…”
BERG: “Who are who pedantically fuss over fairly meaningless, and usually wrong and out of context, ephemera in history to try to discredit their opponents among people who don’t pay much attention to the subject but like to think they do”
TREBEK: Correct, and you control the board.
I woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming the above exchange, and couldn’t get back to sleep.
So I fired up the computer, and – this is a completely bizarre coincidence – found this piece in the blog PoliticsUSA, a liberal blog:
Progressive political commentator Thom Hartmann has something to say about the real history of the Boston Tea Party. Using a first-hand account written by one of the participants, he shows that it was not against government regulation; it was not against the size of government. It was not even really at its core about government at all, except to the extent that a government supported a huge mega-corporation that had a stranglehold on America’s economy. As Thom Hartmann says, the Boston Tea Party was “A revolt against corporate power and corporate tax cuts.”
It’s a good thing for Thom Hartman that there is liberal talk radio. Otherwise, he’d be, I dunno, a barrista or something. A nutty barrista with a very selective sense of history.
Hartman – and the “account” from “one of the participants” – are right to a point; the British East India Company was a corporation. And it definitely was powerful.
But not a corporation in the sense that we have today. Mostly.
The BEIC was given a government charter – a legal monopoly – on trade between India and the rest of the British Empire. It had its own special dispensations to defend that monopoly – like its own frigging Navy and Army. Even Microsoft and Apple don’t have that kind of government-granted power (more or less).
So the BEIC was a corporation, indeed – at a time when corporations were very, very rare things that were created (if memory serves) by act of Parliament. It served as a pseudo-government in large parts of India – and, indeed, several of the American colonies had been started by similar “corporations”. With Armies. And Navies. And the power to levy taxes.
And it’s irrelevant – because the Tea Party was a reaction to Parliament’s “Tea Act“, which the BEIC passed on to the colonists in more or less the same way that Whole Foods passes on sales tax to Tom Hartman’s listeners.
There’s a reason that “discussion” with the Mos Eisly Cantina that is the AM950 audience is so futile; it’s that so much of what they “know” is crap.
Well, he does for one Democrat, anyway. Democrat Kate Marshall is a Democrat running in a special election in Nevada’s 2nd Congressional District.
And she released a lit piece pointing out her really double-dog sincere support of Israel:
“I am proud to consider Israel a friend and I reiterate my unwavering support for its fundamental right to exist and the absolute necessity for Israel to secure its people from outside threats. I stand ready and willing to assist Israel in defending itself against all acts of terrorism,” the statement reads.
Unfortunately, nobody copy-edited the piece – so it went out with one of Marshall’s strategists’ internal comments still in the text:
“Background: Israel has been in the news lately, and will be even more in the news with [Glenn] Beck’s ‘Rally to Restore Courage’ in Jerusalem. In an R district, it will be useful to express support for Israel and demonstrate some foreign policy prowess while it is a timely topic — especially for people who are likely paying attention to Beck’s event.”
To be fair, the Dems have had their agenda driven by much worse…
It’s no secret – American trade unions have been hemorrhaging membership for decades. Outside government, there really is very little future for unions; in the private sector, they are a cost that generally can not be sustained.
And so when the unions can find a hidden trove of tens of thousands of workers that can be unionized in one fell swoop, it’s like candy at Christmas.
The proposed merger between ATT and TMobile will release just such a stockpile of fresh potential dues-paying recruits. ATT is unionized; TMobile is not, but being the absorbed entity, its employees – 20,000 of them – would be potential union recruits.
That’s a lot of money.
And the unions knew it. And so the unions – almost all the big ones – aggressively lobbied the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to approve the merger. The record is long and ornate; the unions really, really wanted this deal.
Richard Trumka, President, AFL-CIO., sounded off when the news of the proposed merger broke: “Yesterday’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T hasimportant, positive implications for consumers in the U.S. and Germany, forthe U.S. telecom workforce and for our country’s economic future. The acquisition ensures AT&T a strong telecom workforce well-positioned tocompete globally, while offering tens of thousands of T-Mobile USA employees the opportunity to make their jobs good jobs by benefitting from the pro-worker policies of AT&T, one of the only unionized U.S. wireless companies”
The AFL-CIO’s house blog was similarly effusive: ““The announcement over the weekend that AT&T is buying T-Mobile USA could benefit both consumers and employees”
And Larry Cohen, President, Communications Workers of America. also spoke up: “For more than a decade, the United States has continued to drop behind nearly every other developed economy on broadband speed and build out. The Federal Communications Commission sounded the alarm more than a year ago with its broadband report, and President Obama in his State of th eUnion address called for increased efforts to bring the U.S. back to global parity as a key stimulus for economic development. Today’s announcement of the acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T is avictory for broadband proponents in both the U.S. and Germany. For the U.S.,it means that T-Mobile customers will get quick access to the AT&T network,soon to include LTE or data speeds of at least 10 megabits down stream.More important, as part of the deal, AT&T is committing to build out to nearly every part of the U.S. within six years” Bear in mind that Cohen and the CWA are not cheerleaders for big telecoms; they’ve fought a long, losing battle with Sprint over their practice of contracting out labor, rather than hiring expensive union employees and taking on their pension burden.
Last month, Philip Qualy, legislative director of the Minnesota United Transportation Union’s mailed the FCC’s Julius Genachowski to support the merger; you can read the letter here. Ditto Shar Knutson and Steve Hunter, from the MN AFL-CIO. And Julie Schnell, President of the SEIU’s Minnesota State Council; while the SEIU is reliably in bed with the Democrats and the DFL, they know money when they see it.
And Edward Reynoso, political director of the Teamsters’ “Democratic Republican Independent Voter Education” (DRIVE) project, who estimated the long-term upside for the unions, and the private economy, at up to 96,000 jobs. Not to mention Mona Meyer, president of the Minnesota Communications Workers of America, the union that’d be most affected by the merger.
There is no doubt that labor has close ties with Democrats in Congress. A list of eighty members of the House of Representatives – including Betty McCollum, of Minnesota’s Fourth Congressional District, signed a letter to the FCC also supporting the merger.
So it’s a big deal for the unions.
And as such, it should be a big deal for Democrat – right?
———-
Last Wednesday, Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl recommended that the FCC spike the almost-$40-billion deal:
”I have concluded that this acquisition, if permitted to proceed, would likely cause substantial harm to competition and consumers, would be contrary to antitrust law and not in the public interest, and therefore should be blocked by your agencies,” Kohl said [last] Wednesday.
The unions seemed flabbergasted. Candice Johnson, communications director for the Communications Workers of America, wrote to tell the FCC that no, they were not amused:
CWA Response to Kohl Letter 7 20
So what does this mean for Al Franken, for you private sector union people out there,and for the country?
More tomorrow.
It was Friday, July 19, 1991.
A few weeks back, Joe Hanson had tipped me off that KSTP-AM was looking for a new “Executive Producer” – sort of a Program Director, but less power.
That night, I wrote a resume. It took some stretching; the sum total of my experience was…
I guess my talent as a writer didn’t start with my blog. I came indoors from some yard work to a message on the answering machine (!) from Ginny Morris, asking for a call back about perhaps talking about the executive producer gig.
I called back, and got through to her secretary. She wondered if I could come in to the station on Monday.
I sure could.
I hung up, and frantically scoured the house for my suit. I reassembled it, and whispered a silent prayer than it hadn’t shrunk.
And then I started trying to figure out how to convince Ginny Morris I was management material.
———-
Does it seem to you that this opportunity dropped into my life suddenly, even abruptly?
It seemed that way to me too, at the time. I heard about the opening one day in June. I sent the resume the next day. And while I kept my fingers crossed, that’s about all the thought I put into it. I’d pretty much given up on anything happening.
Until it did.
…but this was pretty good.
Good enough that the NARN’s going to have to find a way to raise the ante…
Like Muammar Gaddhafi and Hosni “Rico” Mubarak, some of America’s leftists in places like Minneapolis and Madison are having a hard time twigging the fact that they don’t control everything anymore.
“Phoenix Woman” from Mercury Rising, is one of them. One of her readers is upset that National Public Radio isn’t entirely their personal toy anymore:
The following is from an e-mail received from a reader of MR. Said reader has given me permission to reproduce it here, with spelling edits [I’ll just bet there were – Ed.]:
Just tried to call in to Talk of the Nation while they were doing a program on Wisconsin.
Back in the old days, the show used to allow various comments so long as they were on topic.
Er, no. NPR programs are always tightly screened, and always have been.
But today, the FIRST thing the screener said was “With a state budget deficit of $2 billion, what should public employees be expected to give?”
When I tried to say “They’ve ALREADY given sixteen furlough days in the past two years!”, the screener cut me off, saying that they wanted only people who were going to answer their (loaded) question.
It wasn’t a (loaded) question. The program had already noted the concessions Wisconsin’s unions have made (listen for yourself). The subject was not “Let’s let Wisconsin union members on the air to bitch about their lives”. It was “what is it right to ask?”
Talk of the Nation gets dozens, maybe hundreds, of calls an hour. They put maybe 7-8 on the air in a typical hour. It’s the screener’s job to make sure those few calls are the ones that make for the best, on-topic radio possible.
A good screener knows that there are four kinds of callers; great ones, average ones, boring one and crazy ones. Listening to people carping, off-topic, while not addressing the show’s topic is boring and off-topic.
She was quite brusque, too.
Screening is a tough job. And I’m gonna bet that there were more than a few “seminar callers, like the person “Phoenix” is quoting, from Wisconsin.
Also, the screener was a government worker.
NPR: not even Nice Polite Republicans any more.
“Everyone who doesn’t kiss our butts must be a Republican”.
I think I get it now.
I take the occasional bit of flak for not reflexively bagging on Minnesota Public Radio.
Oh, I do think it’s a travesty that the taxpayer is supporting an organization that can easily support itself. Perhaps in the style to which it is accustomed – the MPR headquarters and broadcast center at the Taj Ma Kling, in downtown Saint Paul, would put most TV stations to shame – but then, most of us are having to pinch pennies these days.
But I think MPR – at least, the News side of it – does a decent job of balancing its coverage of the news.
But National Public Radio? From Nina Totenberg’s Pauline-Kael-like sense of ideological entitlement to “On The Media’s” preening media elitism to “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”‘s endless George W. Bush jokes (although they at least did have P.J. O’Rourke as a panelist a few times) to the firing of Juan Williams for going trayf on Fox News, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Board’s institutional Victorian Vapours that George W. Bush would try to appoint conservatives to their club, there is no sentient, honest person in America who doesn’t know that NPR is a center-left reservation.
Still – they have to try to keep up appearances.
Which, as an MPR News staffer noted on Twitter the other day, gets just a little more difficult when the likes of MoveOn.org leap to your defense.
When House Republicans put the money for public broadcasting on their list of budget cuts two weeks ago, there was barely a peep from either the right or the left. But that changed when MoveOn, a liberal organization that’s a favorite bogeyman for and target of conservatives, jumped into the fray.
MoveOn turned the entry page for its Web site into a petition opposing the proposed cuts and e-mailed its members imploring them to sign the petition.
Public broadcasting executives appreciate the support—to a point. But several who spoke with Adweek wish MoveOn would have stayed quiet. They’re concerned that the group’s support will help opponents paint public broadcasting as a tool of the left wing, rather than a thoughtful, educational and often high-brow approach to news and culture.
“We’re embarrassed,” one exec said.
Well, to be fair, MoveOn’s support didn’t tell anyone anything they didn’t already believe.
As if on cue, Brent Bozell, the founder and president of the Media Research Center, a conservative press watchdog, seemed to confirm public broadcasters’ worst fears. Bozell entered the debate by tweeting: “Earth to media reporters: If PBS and NPR subsidies are being promoted by MoveOn.org, doesn’t that hint at WHOSE media these are?”
Paula Kreger, president and CEO of PBS, disagrees with that sentiment.
“When you look at the breadth of people talking about us right now, they aren’t all left- or right-wing crazy people,” Kreger told Adweek. “MoveOn is out there, but so are others. It’s a stretch to point to them and say, ‘See, they’re all one.’ It’s a polarizing time, and there are some people who look for these opportunities.”
Ms. Kreger: here in Minnesota, now that we have a Republican majority in the state House and Senate, the Teachers Union is suddenly – as in, with apparent panic – “reaching out” to teachers who happen to be Republicans and/or conservatives – a minority that the union had wasted no time acknowledging, much less listening to, in the previous forty-odd years. Conservatives – teachers among ’em – got a good chuckle; after decades of what could loosely be called “repression”, suddenly the Union wants conservatives at the table.
Your statement reminds me of this.
But I have a question; is there actually a conservative group, along the lines of a “MoveOn”, also jumping in to defend NPR’s federal funding?
No?
Why do you suppose that might be?
I’m open to theories.
To: Program Director, Clear Channel Twin Cities.
From: Mitch Berg
Re: Your open position : “Job Title: Morning Show Host – 100.3 FM”
Dear Madam or Sir:
I’m Mitch Berg. Perhaps you’ve heard of me; I’m one of the guys who completely dominates the all-important weekend political talk market in this town.
I’ve noticed that you are advertising for a new morning guy.
Let’s go through the position, piece by piece:
Employer: Clear Channel Radio – Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
Ooof. Not a good start. Clear Channel is known to be mercurial and just a little executive-driven. But we can work that out.
Onward:
Job Title: Morning Show Host – 100.3FM News/Talk 100.3 FM (Minneapolis/St Paul) is looking for its next great morning host.
And I’m going to help see to it that you find him or her!
If you think you’ve got what it takes to propel a morning show into instant relevance in a highly competitive market, if you’ve got compelling and unique takes on the news of the day, if you love digging into and ‘owning’ local stories
Wow. That reads just like yours truly!
if you truly ‘get’ social networking, unique online content, and the value it adds to your show
As in “writing one of the region’s better-read political blogs, having a decent regional twitter following, and helping put the “social” in the Twin Cities alternative social media?
Wow. It’s almost like an engraved invitation!
plus a strong sense of humor to boot
You think titles like this come from just anyone?
– please email cover letter, resume and any other information to: [redacted]@clearchannel.com Subject line should read: 100.3FM Morning Show Host No calls please. Clear Channel is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
Well, as much as it reads like kan engraved invitation, I gotta confess that it’ll take a lot to drag me away from Salem (owner of AM1280 The Patriot, where I do the Northern Alliance). Because while I would love to get pelted with dead presidents for doing talk radio, in a way Salem pays me something that’s worth even more; the ability to do a great show without any pencil-necked execu-dweebs trying to tell me what to do. I’ve got something that hardly anyone in the broadcast industry has; the freedom to kick ass; any ass I want, any way I want.
At Salem, Ed and I report only to God.
Well, no, I got a little carried away. We do have some terrestrial accountability. But in almost seven years on the air, we’ve not had a single Bill Lumbergh-like executive mince into the studio and go “aaah, riiight, why don’t you try to sound a little more…orange?”
And that is worth more than gold.
So thanks, Clear Channel. But no thanks. Nice try, though.
(And shut up and hire Bob Davis permanently. Jeez).
A source in the Twin Cities talk radio industry tells me that KTLK-FM’s Chris Baker is being replaced by longtime KSTP great Bob Davis, “effective immediately”.
I’m going to run this down when I get a chance.
If it’s true, it’s great news for Bob, and for Twin Cities talk radio listeners.
UPDATE: It’s on the KTLK website. I guess that’s official enough for me.
Congrats, Bob!
UPDATE 2: According to Brauer, Baker quit, and Davis is just temping.
I haven’t managed to do a lot of radio writing lately.
It’s a shame; the last time I really covered the business in this blog in any real deep detail, KSTP was still a conservative talk station, more or less; KTLK was still following some idiot consultant’s advice and steering toward the middle of the road. WCCO had changed little in decades; Air American Minnesota was still a contender at the low end of the ratings scale with WWTC (where I broadcast, then and now).
More importantly, perhaps? Radio ratings back then were measured by Arbitron, more or less the same way they were measured back in the sixties. Abritron would mail out diaries to carefully selected users, who would spend a few months filling out everything they listened to on the radio, in quarter-hour increments.
Today? KSTP went sports-talk last year; KTLK went conservative; WCCO is poking around looking for a new identity now that the audience that kept them on top for decades slowly fades from demographic signficance.
And the big news? Ratings are now largely done with “Personal People Meters”, devices that people carry around that “hear” radio stations, and pick up on an inaudible code in the signal the stations transmit. It’s a little controversial – it favors the kinds of music stations that people just leave on as background music (“Jack FM” and WLTE “The Lite FM” are particularly strong under PPM), while shorting stations that have more purposeful listeners (like, say, talk radio).
But all that is background noise to the real news in the Holiday 2010 PPM ratings. AM1280 is the #22 station in the market (in the relatively meaningless “all listeners age 12+” category. The cool part, of course, is the numbers; notice the “cume”, or cumulative audience, for the period. WWTC gets statistically the same ratings as Hubbard’s “Chick Talk 107” with about 40% of the audience, and 2/3 the numbers that the 100,000 watt KTLK-FM gets with about 1/5 the listeners.
What that means is that the Patriot’s listeners are loyal – especially on the weekend, where the key measurement is called “Time Spent Listening”. The average KTLK listener tunes in for twenty-odd minutes; the typical Patriot listener is well over 45 (and, on the Northern Alliance, the average listener, statistically, listens for about an hour every hour).
And KTNF, the former Air America station? It’s dropped to a 0.4 share. Almost too low to measure. Almost into “dead skunk bounce” territory.
I guess Ed Schultz doesn’t reel ’em in like he used to.
ack in the early days of this blog, one of my most popular annual features from 2002 through about 2005 was my “State Of Twin Cities Talk Radio” piece.
Partly because of the conflict of interest, partly because it’s bad form to criticize one’s own station’s programming, and partly because I just don’t like listening to so many local talk shows these days, I stopped.
Fortunately, Speed Gibson has decided to step into the gap. It’s going to be an ongoing series.
Dire Straits’ single “Money For Nothing” was one of the iconic songs of the 1980s when it came out in 1985. Chock full of reference to MTV and the styles of the era, and featuring a video that was fairly bleeding-edge computer animation (albeit very, very stylized) for the time.
It also created a brouhaha; the original, album version included a naughty word; three times, in fact. “The little f***ot in the earring and the makeup? Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair…” and so on. As songwriter, singer and guitar legend Mark Knopfler said at the time, the entire song was written in the second person, and was a conversation between a couple of delivery guys at a furniture store in New York, commenting on the MTV videos they were watching during the glory days of big new-wave hairdos.
It’s been a quarter century – but the controversy is baaaaaaack:
Classic Dire Straits track Money for Nothing has been banned from public broadcast in Canada – after receiving just one complaint 25 years after its release.
The global hit single came out on the band’s iconic fifth album, Brothers in Arms, in May 1985 and won a Grammy for best rock performance the following year.
But the original version included the word “faggot” referring to homosexuals, and although a cleaned-up edition was made available, Oz-FM in Newfoundland played the first edition in February last year.
The result was a single complaint – but the self-regulating Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has upheld it, and no outlet in the nation can now play Money for Nothing the way Dire Straits intended it to be heard.
The complaint said: “Money for Nothing was aired and included the word ‘faggot’ a total of three times. I am aware of other versions of the song and yet Oz-FM chose to play and not censor the version I am complaining about. As a member of the LGBT community I feel there is no reason for such discriminatory remarks to be played on air.”
And that’s all she wrote – notwithstanding that this is a very, very old rhubarb:
Dire Straits mainman Mark Knopfler has fielded angry reaction to the lyrics since the song first came out. He has pointed out the song is written from the viewpoint of a stupid character who thinks musicians make their “money for nothing” and his stupidity is what leads him to make ignorant statements.
Speaking in 1985 he said: “Apart from the fact that there are stupid gay people as well as stupid other people, it suggests that maybe you have to be direct. I’m in two minds as to whether it’s a good idea to take on characters and write songs that aren’t in the first person.”
Now, I’m not bringing this up because it’s a great case of PC run amok – although it is.
And I’m not bringing it up because it’s a great example of the lunacy of Canadian “Human Rights” law – although, again, it is.
I’m bringing it up because it’s the shape of things to come, if Julius “Seizure” Genachowski and Representative James Clyburn want with all their proposed interventions into the First Amendment – from the “Fairness Doctrine” to “Net Neutrality”; they want, and if not stopped they will get, a system where the First Amendment will be subject to the tastes, whims and tantrums of those who complain the loudest.
Alan Cross of Canadian service ExploreMusic comments: “The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council is run by Canada’s private broadcasters. In exchange for the government not meddling, broadcasters have long promised to regulate themselves.
“It’s seen as much preferable to the arrangement in the US where the FCC – a government organization run by political appointees – carries a very heavy hammer when it comes to regulating broadcast content; or in the UK where Ofcom plays a similar role.
“In Canada, if no one complains, the feeling is that there’s no need to censor it. But all it takes is one person making one complaint for the entire apparatus of the CBSC to come to full gallop.
All of the proposals to return the “Fairness Doctrine” involve returning a frightening degree (if you care about free speech) of control over broadcast licensing to pressure from citizens – and not even a lot of them; organization will count for more than numbers, just as it did before 1987.
The little jagoffs with the suits and the Yale ties? Yeah, buddy – they want control.
As the world learns more about Jarred Loughner, the unlikelihood that any “political rhetoric” had even the most oblique role in causing his atrocity over the weekend is becoming more and more clear to just about everyone.
Everyone that hasn’t been waiting for something to come along to shut up the newly-uppity right, anyway.
America’s village idiot Paul Krugman tipped his hand, comparing the episode to Oklahoma City in his deeply depraved column over the weekend. But he wasn’t entirely off base; there was at least one valid comparison to 1995.
Back then, Bill Clinton had just seen his agenda repudiated at the polls with the second-greatest mid-term drubbing in recent memory. The left lost both chambers of Congress for the first time in more than a generation. Clinton needed something to get his message across; his administration didn’t “waste the crisis”; Hillary as much as blamed the horror on Rush Limbaugh and his “rhetoric”.
It was, of course, “rhetoric”, itself.
Today’s left isn’t wasting the Tuscon massacre. Carolyn McCarthy (D[emigog], NY) is using the crisis to introduce gun control legislation of the type that utterly failed to prevent her own husband from being murdered in New York, or to keep Chicago from being the most dangerous city in the Western Hemisphere north of Juarez – a place that suffers as many deaths as Tuscon once or more a week.
And James Clyburn wants to redefine free speech as, well…:
The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use ‘better judgment.’
‘Free speech is as free speech does,’ he said. ‘You cannot yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.’
Clyburn used as an example a comment made by Sharron Angle, an unsuccessful U.S. senatorial candidate in Nevada, who said the frustrated public may consider turning to ‘Second Amendment remedies’ for political disputes unless Congress changed course.
Clyburn’s lying, by the way; Michael Medved addressed Angle’s “second amendment remedies” comment last August (here’s the audio). Angle was not calling for armed insurrection…
…but as we’ve seen throughout the left’s reaction to the Tuscon massacre – as during the Healthcare debate, with its spurious claims of violence – what people actually say and do isn’t really the issue.
Perhaps it’s the circle of radio life. The First Team of the Northern Alliance gets shown the door…
…and Mark Dayton takes to the air:
Gov. Mark Dayton plans to do a governor’s radio show soon.
“I wish I could be on the air somewhere tomorrow,” Dayton said. “I can’t wait to get on the air. It is just a question of where and going through the proper procedure.
Dayton having a weekly radio show follows a tradition of past governors. Both Govs. Jesse Ventura and Tim Pawlenty had Friday morning shows on WCCO that were required, and sometimes interesting, listening for political geeks.
So gubernatorial radio will go from vain, to vapid, to…uh, is there a synonym for odd that starts with ‘v’?
Ventura and Pawlenty’s shows had their moments, but “fireside chats” they were not. Ventura used the forum as a ricktey soapbox from which to deliver a folding chair to his opponents while Pawlenty’s often politics-lite interviews were professional but dryer than a Martini in the Sahara. Unless Dayton wants to reminisce on his Haight-Ashburyesque days, 60 minutes of dead air might be more entertaining.
MITCH ADDS: While First Ringer would have no reason to know this, I’ll add that the First Team wasn’t “shown the door”. There were some revenue-driven schedule changes; management and John and Brian couldn’t agree on a change to the First Team’s schedule that worked for everyone. There were no aspersions cast on either side; the logistics and timing for both the station and John and Brian couldn’t be made to match up.
It stinks; I was one of the First Team’s biggest fans. But them’s the breaks in Freebie Radio.
The City of Mound is the kind of place we in places like Saint Paul and Minneapolis dream about; a town with a conservative city council that has done a great job of controlling spending, weaning itself from “Local Government Aid”, and balancing its budget by being fiscally responsible.
And Sue Jeffers is the kind of person we need more of in Twin Cities conservatism; a fire-breathing conservative activist who doesn’t just talk principle, she acts on it; she may have been the greatest force behind Tom Emmer’s nomination that you never heard of. While she does do a show on a station that competes with mine (she’s on 100.3, I’m on AM1280) and which Ed and I crush in our time slot (ahem), she’s a friend of mine and one of the sharpest forks in the Minnesota conservative drawer.
But I gotta call her on this one.
Mound city councilman Dave Osmek – who is Republican enough to have been the chief teller at the 2010 MN GOP convention, and conservative enough to talk with Ed and I about the work he helped do to balance the Mound city budget and wean the city off of Local Government Aid – emailed me:
A couple weeks ago, Sue Jeffers’ producer Stan, who lives in Mound, noticed a black Lexus with a City of Mound sign on it. They spent 5-10 minutes bashing Mound (see show podcast from 9/11, hour 2, about 3/4 through the hour).
(Sue’s a good friend, but I’ll let Clear Channel’s promotions department pay me to link to their website, thankewverymuch)
Without calling or checking out the story, the proceeded to blast the Council (4 for 4 conservative Republicans). Jeffers said…they could buy 2 Ford Taursuses for that price…”typical government”…
At face value, it does in fact sound like some pretty wasteful government spending.
There’s more to it, of course:
Except the truth is, the vehicle in question is a private vehicle that we pay milage on for a dock inspector that works seasonally. Instead of buying a $20,000 Taurus, we pay him a couple hundred bucks a season and bought him a magnet for use when on-duty for the side of the car.
So in other words, rather than buying a Lexus, or two Tauri or even a single Taurus, the city of Mound essentially rents a car for about one percent the cost of a Taurus.
Osmek tells me that the story has the conservative Mound city council…
…trying to tamp down this fire, during an election season. Needless to say…I ain’t happy. I don’t have a problem when people challenge me or tell me when I’m wrong. But when someone says something this patently false, its incredibly frustrating because lies are far more provacative than the truth. Like the old saying goes, a Lie can travel across the globe before the Truth gets outta bed.
Naturally. It’s why it’s such staple of the Alinski-ite campaigning the DFL’s been doing this cycle; inflammation is more useful to them than information.
Making a big noise for responsibility and accountability in government is a good thing. I strongly encourage it.
But let’s make sure we focus on the real enemies – mainly, those who actually are wasting money!
Hugh Hewitt has put out a bleg for his top twenty races to watch and, ideally, pony up for. These are not just big races with solid conservative candidates; these are big races with solid conservatives facing serious opposition (hence no John Hoeven, who will win by fifty points), and with major down-ticket and regional significance.
1. John Kasich for governor in Ohio. You can donate online here.
2. Pat Toomey for senator in Pennsylvania. You can donate online here.
3. Marco Rubio for senator in Florida. You can donate online here.
4. Sharron Angle for senator in Nevada. You can donate online here.
5. Carly Fiorina for senator in California. You can donate online here.
6. Ken Buck for senator in Colorado. You can donate online here.
7. Scott Walker for governor in Wisconsin. You can donate online here.
8. Dino Rossi for senate in Washington State. You can donate online here.
9. Mark Kirk for senate in Illinois. You can donate online here.
10. Tom Emmer for governor in Minnesota. You can donate online here.
Booyah!
11. Rick Perry for governor in Texas. You can donate online here.
12. Roy Blunt for senate in Missouri. You can donate online here.
13. Kelly Ayotte for senate in New Hampshire. You can donate online here.
14. Nathan Deal for governor in Georgia. You can donate online here.
15. Chris Dudley for governor in Oregon. You can donate online here.
16. Joe Miller for senate in Alaska. You can donate online here.
17. Charlie Baker for governor in Massachusetts. You can donate online here.
18. Rand Paul for senate in Kentucky. You can donate online here.
19. Christine O’Donnell for senate in Delaware. You can donate online here.
20. Charles Djou for Congress in Hawaii. You can donate online here.
I’m gonna do what I can, here. Hope you can too.
Hey, Fargo people! I talked with Rob Port about the Emmer budget proposal, and the huuuuge gap in the Dayton budget “plan”.
See y’all next week!
I fell asleep last night before I could put up a post about my appearance on Rob Port’s “Say Anything Morning Show” on KZFG in Fargo this morning.
We talked about the DFL’s counterspin of the Emmer education budget, the huge gaps in the Dayton budget plan, and looked ahead to the third part of Emmer’s campaign plan.
Hopefully we’ll have audio later today.
I’ll be on Rob Port’s “Say Anything Morning Show” at 6:35, on AM1100 The Flag.
We’ll be talking Minnesota politics, naturally – and there’s a lot to talk about!http://wzfg-am.fimc.net/goout.asp?u=http://www.sayanythingblog.com
…that Michele Bachmann draws a crowd or anything, but this was the scene yesterday…:
…at the Patriot booth when the Representative did an interview with Michael Medved.
Yep – it’s cameraguys from all three of the local TV stations, pressed up against the glass.
By the way – in case you missed it, I’ve upped my prediction of Bachmann’s eventual margin of victory, from 8 to 10 points.
I’d like to thank Hugh Hewitt and Duane Patterson for inviting me on the Hewitt Show at the Fair this evening.
For those of you who might be new to the blog, here are some of the stories I referred to when talking with Hugh:
Thanks for stopping by, Hugh fans!
Getting ready to go on the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo. Tune in!
UPDATE: Talked about the Tracker story, and the rumors about Mike Hatch’s interest in the gubernatorial race.
UPDATE 2: Here’s the audio:
While in the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo, We discussed the Freedom Foundation’s story about Minnesota cities and counties’ lobbying budgets, as well as the Strib’s non-story story about Target’s “nervous investors”.
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