FCC Decision Limits Right-Wing Radio Expansion

You go, liberal radio chick! Image from Think Progress.

Well, this is interesting. But I've got to wonder. . .how could right-wing talk radio expand exactly? As it stands, they're everywhere, on multiple stations in the same market, it every city across the country. Is there a hunger for more right-wing talk? If there was ever a market that was saturated, this one is it.

[Excerpt]


FCC decision strikes critical blow to right-wing radio dominance

A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision issued Monday (PDF) will clear the runway for hundreds of new community radio stations that broadcast on low-power FM signals, bringing progressive, community voices to urban areas that have for decades only known what’s being broadcast by major corporations and America’s political right. . .

Read more at: Think Progress

Mitt Wins Illinois, Whether They Voted for Him or Not!

In the majority of GOP caucus and primary elections held thus far in the 2012 presidential cycle, something has gone wrong, or just been weird. The delegates don't line up, the totals are wrong, the "winner" is later changed. Here in Nevada, they had record low turnout, and it still took them three days to declare Mitt Romney the winner. . .and he won by a landslide! But, if Republicans aren't embarrassed by their candidates, can they be embarrassed by the insanity going on at the state election level?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

AOL/Huffington Post "In the Tank" for Mitt Romney?

Really, Arianna?

No, I'm not really accusing AOL/Huffington Post of being in the thank for Mitt Romney. It's just that I've heard the term so often, pertaining to the mainstream media and President Obama, I thought it would make a catchy headline. And, the image I've chosen is also AOL's idea of a catchy headline. But a low-information voter reading, "Romney Captures Obama's Home State" might think that Romney somehow beat Obama in Illinois. . . or maybe Hawaii. Oooh, Kenya! Anyway, I thought it merited a post.

America the Stupid: WHITE POWER!

Before you detonate a bomb in my email box, I do not agree with the following:

"Will the sheeple in this country ever wake up and demand a “White Caucus”? Or maybe a “White history Month”?

I am not a racist, but I’m sick and tired of all these blacks demanding special treatment crap!!
Why can’t they just be Americans???"

-- posted on Monday, March 19, 2012 6:01:01 PMby taillightchaser,  Free Republic.com


Yeah, you are not a racist. Mmm hmm. This is the latest in a series of "Why You Shouldn't be a Right-winger." Thank you.

Arpaio: Conspiracy bigger than Watergate

I have an honest question. Is Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona stupid? Is he gullible, easily duped? Is he easily confused? Or is he, perhaps, an opportunistic, lying, fame whore limelight seeker?  Because, the whole "birther" conspiracy theory set. . .they're bonkers. They're nuts. Their head cheerleader is the daffy Orly Taitz, the Gabor-like combination lawyer/dentist/realtor. Every, single (and I mean every, single) claim in this ridiculous theory has been debunked. Over and over again.

Click to embiggen.

I'll give you a quick one: They say to this day that President Obama's "grandmother" admitted that Obama was born in Kenya. A) she was his step-grandmother, and B) she was being mistranslated, and corrected the record in the same interview. They just cut that part out. That's how they work in tinfoil hat land. But Arpaio's corner of the conspiracy is the birth certificate.

For years, the birthers said--seemingly every other sentence--that if Obama just released his "long form" birth certificate, "all of this would just go away." The conspiracy would go poof, and they'd go on with their lives. But they didn't. Because, you see, all a good conspiracy theory needs is more layers. And--unwittingly--the White House gave them more layers. Boy, howdy.

You see, the electronic version of the Hawaii certified certificate of live birth was scanned into Adobe Reader. If you do that on default settings, the scanner tries to break the image into sections, ostensibly for optical character recognition (OCR), but who knows what good it actually does. It's kind of random, as you might expect for a computer that can't think or reason. So, when you open the file in a graphics program, you watch it assemble itself before your eyes. I got a half step into conspiracy world for about ninety seconds. Because, hey, it has layers!

My (gay) marriage certificate.
Embiggen all you want, it's low-res!

Very quickly, I realized, a) this is not the actual document, it's a scan of it; b) if they were going to forge the document, they'd do it on the physical specimen, not in the online version; and c) the White House has resources most forgers couldn't dream of. If they were going to forge it, it would be fucking undetectable. But conspiracy theorists don't try to step out of their bubbles when presented with something new. No, they seek to incorporate whatever comes their way that feeds the conspiracy, and eject what doesn't. On the surface, the layers seem hinky. And that's really all they need.

Though my deductive reasoning concluded that the layered document was normal, I decided to perform an experiment, to see if Adobe Reader really behaved that way. If I could reproduce a similar effect, then I would be debunking the whole "layers" hoo-ha! So, I cobbled my ancient G4 PowerBook (since replaced) to my ancient-er HP ScanJet 3C, and scanned my City of Palm Springs Marriage Certificate. The results (and ensuing pointless argument with a birther) can be viewed here. And anybody thinking there is anything to birtherism (or Arpaio's tilting at windmills), should explore the site linked below. I'm serious: they debunk everything.

[Excerpt]

Arpaio: Conspiracy bigger than Watergate 

The Arizona Republic quotes Sheriff Joe Arpaio offering a conspiracy-based explanation why the media has universally panned the investigation by a group of birthers who used his office to publicize their ideas. . .

Read more at: Obama Conspiracy Theories

Walking Dead Season Finale Scores Huge Ratings

Andrea kicks ass! From source, HuffPo

Now that I'm a rabid fan of AMC's The Walking Dead and HBO's True Blood I get to experience the joy of fantastic, quality television, and the frustration of "mid-season finales" and tragically short seasons. The Walking Dead just wrapped its second season, and weighs in at a total of 19 episodes. There are more episodes than that in one full-length network season. I know, I know, quality over quanity.

To read internet fan message boards, quality is in short supply on TWD. They whine and complain endlessly about every little thing, from casting, to writing, to acting. It reminds me very much of Star Trek's sequels, Voyager and Enterprise. Fans watched every single episode, obsessed over every single detail, but hated everything about them. It's counter-intuitive.

The truth is, the second season did have a weak spot. One was the several-episodes-long "what happened to Sophia?" story arc. Half of the season was taken up with it, and--though it had a satisfying resolution--it felt like it was going nowhere. It seems like if you have a short number of episodes, you probably ought not drag out anything. And that would pretty much be my only complaint;* that some story lines traveled a little to slowly. Otherwise, I thoroughly enjoyed the show.

Tasty. Also from Huffington Post

One of the fans' main complaints is that there's too much talking, not enough zombies. This is a "be careful what you wish for" complaint. On the episodes that did feature tons of zombies, the adrenaline was pumping, the action was sick, and I was on the edge of my seat. But you can't make that the whole show! If you don't know who the people are, what they're about, what their interpersonal relationships are, you don't care about them when they die.* Another complaint will be how this or that character reacted to a situation, or maybe someone acting out of character, or something someone said (they hate Lori, the leader's wife). And I say, This is a zombie apocalypse! The fact that they're not catatonic in a corner, wetting themselves already makes it unrealistic.

Anyway, after a semi-draggy first half (still chock full of highlights), the second half of season two was pretty much fantastic, all the time. And the fact that they're willing to kill off characters that you don't expect is pretty thrilling. On the afore-mentioned Star Trek, you could know 99% of the time who would and wouldn't die. Not on The Walking Dead. So, the stakes are always high.

*SPOILER*

And here, I have to mention Jimmy. Jimmy is a teenager apparently, and one of the regular characters in residence of TWD's second-season farm house. I say apparently, because when he died in the final episode? I had no--still have no--memory of him whatsoever. So, let me amend my "no other complaints" statement. There were some background characters who got very little development.


[Excerpt]


'The Walking Dead' Ratings: Season 2 Finale Shatters Records 

"The Walking Dead" closed its Season 2 with lots of blood, guts, zombies and big ratings. The Season 2 finale (9 p.m. ET on AMC) brought in 9 million viewers. According to the network, "The Walking Dead" is the No. 1 drama series in basic cable history with men 18-34. "The Walking Dead's" Season 2 finale grew more than 50 percent in total viewers compared to Season 1's finale. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

FOX "News" Barely Covers Big Hate Crime Story

All day on the radio, and later on TV, I heard about the sad, infuriating story about a kid who bought some Skittles and tea at the 7-Eleven, and was killed on the way back by a confused vigilante. While the story could ultimately change to show the killer in a less hideous light, it doesn't look like the killing was justified, or that self defense was even an issue. But the incident is still being investigated, and we'll know more later.

A part of the story that has much less weight, is how the media is covering it. Most of the reporting I heard on it was fairly straight ahead news. And all of the commentary I heard was negative on the killer, which--again, unless something revelatory comes out--is understandable. But everybody was talking about it today, except. . .FOX "News." Well, once. They covered it once.* Here's a brief snapshot:

CNN: 41
MSNBC: 13
Fox: 1

"What difference does it make?" you might ask. And ordinarily, I might agree. But FOX "News" is constantly making a big deal out of the mainstream media doesn't report the stories conservatives think are important. Whether it's the video hoaxster James O'Keefe's latest trumped-up story, or if a couple of surly dudes think they're the "New Black Panther Party," if FOX is covering it, they're also whining that other media outlets aren't. And nine times out of ten, the mainstream media falls for it, and begins covering the coverage of the faux outrage. At least this story is newsworthy.

*FOX may have aired more segments on it since the excerpted article came out, maybe even because it came out.

[Excerpt]

Fox News Not Really Interested In Reporting On Shooting Deaths Of Unarmed Black Teenagers

 Fox News can generally be relied upon for a steady stream of artlessly jingoistic vomit, spewing forth from helmet-headed hairspray sacks who move their lips while reading important reports on hurricanes and other outrages against Heartland (= white, irrespective of actual location) America. What Fox usually fails at, though, is reporting on outrages against Urban (= black, etc.) America. (Kenneth Gladney excepted!) The latest such outrage to receive Fox News’ patented bitchy silent treatment is the unprovoked shooting death of Trayvon Martin, a black teenager who found himself in the wrong Florida neighborhood (you know, where his father lived), being hunted like prey — ALLEGEDLY but also PROBABLY — by a local paranoiac vigilante known for being “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” Hmm, that description… kind of sounds like every Fox scare-segment ever? . . .

Read more at: Wonkette

Mike in Raleigh: Pandering Whiner

Mike in Raleigh (famed from The Stephanie Miller Show) has done it again, with this parody of the Beatles' Paperback Writer. Keep 'em coming, Mike!

Blast from the Past: Snack Foods of the 70s!

Another weekend gone by, and not only was I busy, I'm also getting sick. So this week's Blast from the Past is another one from the vaults. But a good one! It's actually from the first regularly scheduled installment of this feature, from August 2010.

ORIGINAL POST:

Image found at Democratic Underground

I've wanted a weekly feature on the blog for a long time. I've got several regular themes here, Right Wing World, Science is Cool, Lest We Forget. . ., What Happens in Vegas, America the Stupid and others. But they come and go with no regularity. Well, I'm going to try to change that now.

Practically since I started the blog, I've run several Blast from the Past posts, each centering on a particular batch of videos that have something in common.  I've created a couple of new ones over successive Sundays, and realized that Sunday is the perfect day for it.  It's a slow news day unless the Sunday morning political shows break something shocking (usually a politician putting his or her foot in their mouth).  So, from now on, Blast from the Past has a home on Sunday evenings (or Monday mornings, depending upon what time zone you're in).

This week?  Well, I loved the old Pringles ad from when the dehydrated snack chip first came out, so why not snack foods of the 70s? Sounds yummy, let's go!

1. Peter Paul Almond Joy & Mounds Candy Bars - This one will noodle around in your head for a while.
2. Lay's Potato Chips - Okay, so we've got Bert Lahr, the Cowardly Lion dressed as Satan, and he apparently can eat just one? I'm confused. . .
3. Doritos - I'd forgotten about the fat Dorito's guy until I found this clip. See if you remember him.
4. Jiffy Pop Popcorn - I'm pretty sure that's Ruth Buzzi.
5. Nestle $100,000 Bar - I think they call this the One Hundred Grand bar now.
6. Keebler Fudge Cookies - Somehow elves making cookies in a tree doesn't sound all that hygienic to me.
7. York Peppermint Patties - This is from a whole series of commercials that were never funny.
8. Hostess Snack Cakes - Okay, so Twinkies are fresh and wholesome? Hostess and kids, they go together. Well, duh.

A Thought on Bill Maher, and the Rush Limbaugh False Equivalence

This is not a post about the whole Sandra Fluke/Rush Limbaugh/Slut-gate affair. Though it can't be pointed out enough, that Limbuagh's 3-day rant bore no resemblance to reality, and was completely out of bounds. It's not really about Bill Maher, his comedic choices, or his potty mouth. And it's not even about the actual false equivalence: Sarah Palin, uber-famous political celebrity vs. Sandra Fluke, student activist; Rush Limbaugh, conservative messiah vs. Bill Maher, libertarian comic.

What this post is about is the mystery of the news cycle. For several days (and it's probably dying down a bit right now), conservatives were pushing the "Oh yeah? Well if you're going to blast Limbaugh, we're going to tear down Bill Maher!" line. As is common when this stuff hits right-wing talk radio and FOX "News," the mainstream (liberally biased, my ass) media picks up on it too. So, the storyline became: If Rush Limbaugh's so bad, what about Bill Maher?

So, I'm not going to argue the false equivalence, I just want to know, why Maher? Do you know how many comedians have used Sarah Palin* for a punchline? Or how many have used the same words Maher used about her? Patton Oswaldt, John Fugelsang, Hal Sparks, and many others have made Palin the butt of their jokes. And don't tell me it's because she's a woman­® either. Lisa Lampanelli, Sarah Silverman, Kathy Griffin? They're all women. They've all skewered Palin. It's because she's a dolt, not because she's a woman!

So, how did conservatives en masse decide that the issue boiled down to a) sexism, b) Bill Maher and c) Sarah Palin? It would be quite a leap for so many conservatives to go to. It can't be a coincidence, so what is it? Do conservative talkers, pundits, commentators and bloggers get marching orders from headquarters? Do they get a bullet-pointed talking points daily email? Do they have some sort of Star Trek Borg hive-mind? I'd really like to know.


*And back to the sexism angle. It isn't just Palin and Michele Bachmann who get skewered with dirty words. Off the top of my head, I can think of John Boner Boehner, Eric ("bitchface") Cantor, Mitch (Yertle) McConnell, Tom (Tipsy McStagger) DeLay, Dick (Darth) Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scott (Recall) Walker, and George freakin' Dubya Bush--all men--who comedians have had a field day with. It's not about sexism. It's about comedic potential.

A Thought on Sarah Palin, Game Change, and the Mormon Church

Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin. Bet she wins an Emmy.
Image from Vanity Fair.

It's been a week since HBO's Game Change--you know, the Sarah Palin movie that Sarah Palin didn't like--aired. It was a compelling docudrama that told the story of John McCain's 2008 campaign for President against Barack Obama. Yeah, it didn't go so well.

But that isn't the point of this post. Sarah Palin (played by Julianne Moore) was actually humanized in the film, in both good and bad ways. From the film, it was clear that she's a good mother and wife. She was shown to be driven, enthusiastic, energetic, and a go-getter. But, she was also shown to be profoundly ignorant of basic foreign policy issues and other basic knowledge. She was shown to be somewhat emotionally unstable, belligerent, a giant pain in the ass, and completely unsuited to be one septuagenarian's heart-beat away from the White House.

It was interesting to see how Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) and Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson)--two prominent McCain campaign operatives--dealt with Palin's obvious failings. Wallace grew weary of Palin's abuse, and basically washed her hands of Palin. Schmidt hit upon Palin's strength: acting. Acting like she knows what she's talking about. Give her a script, wind her up, and watch her go. She's a little firecracker!

But Schmidt, Wallace and the rest knew they were dealing with a dangerously incapable candidate. Their biggest issue wasn't the potential problem of an unqualified second-in-command. Their biggest issue was how to camouflage that, well enough to win the election. So, when I watch Wallace and Schmidt on television, confirming, yeah, that's how it all went down. . .well, I'm glad to hear the movie was accurate. But wait! I'm aghast that these people admit what they did!

Typical Mormons. Image from ABC News

It all reminds me of a book called The Mormon Murders by Steven Neifeh. The book recounts the true story of a con-man named Mark Hoffman. He was an antiquities dealer who had the amazing ability to find exceedingly rare Mormon artifacts. He conned the Mormon Church at its highest levels with amateur forgeries (and killed people when he got busted). Those forgeries--believed to be authentic by the church--pointed to the in-authenticity of the church itself.

So, did the church prepare to inform their congregants and potential converts that Joseph Smith was a fraud after all, and that the whole Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was now going to become a secular charity or something? No, no they didn't. They paid Hoffman beau coup bucks to take the documents and hide them away! Let's go over that again: they believed the documents saying the church was a fraud were authentic. And rather than re-assessing the whole religion, they decided to put their fingers in their ears and go, la-la-la!!!

Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but I see the McCain campaign's decision to soldier on, and try to win--despite having knowledge of Palin's disqualifying shortcomings--to be the same kind of willful disregard for the facts. Charging ahead anyway. I find both to be disgusting.

Over Time with Bill Maher, March 16, 2012

Ep. 241: March 16, 2012 - Overtime

Anti-Gay Bully Found Guilty of Major Counts

Tyler Clemeni, the student driven to suicide
by bullying. Source: Towleroad

The topic of suicide among gay youths is a troublesome and sad one. On one hand, publicizing a rash of such suicides makes people aware of the problem. On the other hand, suicides among young people can sometimes catch like wildfire. For whatever reason, the act seems to be contagious. So, making it too big an issue can make the problem worse.

The guilty verdicts in a case of a bully whose actions resulted in a suicide are nonetheless welcome, and a bit surprising. Critics will say that the verdicts punish thought, and that we can't know what the accused's motivations were. Guaranteed, there are people saying he was convicted of "thought crime," right now over at FreeRepublic.com. But these kinds of criminal activities often result in reduced charges, and in light punishment. The "Twinkie defense" in the case of Harvey Milk's assassin is but one of many examples of light treatment afforded to anti-gay criminals. So it is heartening to see when the system works.  Then again, we haven't seen the sentence yet, so I could be getting ahead of myself.

[Excerpt]

Dharun Ravi Found Guilty of Major Counts in Tyler Clementi Case


After 12 hours of deliberation, the jury in the Dharun Ravi case today returned a verdict, and Ravi has been found guilty on a number of major counts including bias intimidation and invasion of privacy that could land him in prison for 10 years. . . 


Read more at: Towleroad

George Clooney Goes to Jail

Even looks good in handcuffs. Image from source, Raw Story

It's for a good cause, there were several prominent people arrested with him, and he'll surely be released quickly. But my brain is wrestling between an Ocean's 14 riff and a "pretty boy in prison" joke. I think I'll just leave it there.

[Excerpt]

George Clooney arrested outside Sudan embassy in D.C.

Actor George Clooney was arrested on Friday outside the Sudanese embassy in Washington, D.C. Clooney, a longtime human rights activist, was handcuffed and taken to jail after he refused a police order vacate the private property. . .

Read more at: The Raw Story

CDC Launches Graphic Anti-Smoking Campaign

You know what would really freak the kids out?
This picture, and Rule 34. Image from HuffPo.

It has been long enough since my last cigarette (14 months ago) that I can confidently call myself a non-smoker. But I smoked for almost 20 years. And you know what didn't make me quit? Threats. Taunts. Finger-wagging. None of that stuff works on a smoker, it just makes you more defiant. It's not like smokers are in the dark about the negative health consequence of the habit. They know. But those consequences seem somehow off in a possible but not certain future. After all, everybody knows somebody who smoked from the age of 14, and died sometime in their nineties, right?

As a current non-smoker--one who is very happy he quit, and wonders why he waited so long to do it--I am rather indifferent to this current campaign. It won't make many current smokers quit. $5 per pack would have done that, were it that easy. But it might make cigarette smoking a bit less cool to the kids who haven't started yet. Or maybe not, who knows? Kids love gory movies, and kids think they're indestructible. If I could rationalize that health consequences were a ways off in my forties, certainly to kids it seems like a hundred years away. So, I don't know.


[Excerpt]

CDC Anti-Smoking Ad Campaign Set To Launch 

In a graphic new ad campaign announced Thursday, the government is trying to shock smokers into quitting with the sometimes-gruesome stories of people damaged by tobacco products.
The new effort confronts a hard truth: Despite increased tobacco taxes and bans in many public places, the adult smoking rate hasn't really budged since 2003. . .

Read more at: Huffington Post

Republican Talking Point #315: A President Cannot Can Influence Gasoline Prices!

A little cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy political humor, from The Randi Rhodes Show.

 

azette.blogspot.com/2012/03/rush-limbaugh-listeners-on-par-with.html

Rush Limbaugh Listeners on Par with MSNBC?

Conservatives (and by conservatives, I mean the vocal, internet variety) love to say that nobody watches Rachel Maddow. Lawrence O'Donnell doesn't have any viewers. MSNBC is playing to six people. And they have a point, when they say that FOX "News" is the cable "news" juggernaut. It is. But Maddow gets about half (sometimes more, sometimes less) of the ratings her FOX competition, Sean Hannity gets. And I always want to shout, "two times nothing is nothing!" If Rachel gets no viewers, twice her viewership is also nothing!

Ahem. But most of us get defensive of our favorite things. Still, if Maddow's MSNBC show gets, say, 1.4 million viewers for her first-run show on an odd Wednesday. . .does the same amount of listeners to The Rush Limbaugh Misogyny and Racism 3-Hour Radio Hate-stravaganza equal "no listeners?" Because I  don't see the difference.


[Excerpt]

Rush Limbaugh's Audience May Be Much Smaller Than You Think

As Rush Limbaugh's show enters a second week largely without advertisers -- except, ironically, for government-sponsored public service announcements --  it's worth asking how big a sacrifice it is for brands such as AOL and AllState to stay away from the show.


. . .So there is it: Absent better data, only 1.4 million people listen to Limbaugh at any one time.

Read more at: Business Insider

FOX "News" Host Suggests Democrats are for Voter Fraud

The FOX "News" Brain Trust. Image from Raw Story

No, you stupid oaf, Democrats are just pointing out that actual voter fraud is almost non-existent. When states put Voter ID bills before voters, it sounds so innocent: we just want to keep the elections fair! What's the big deal? You need an ID to buy a pack of smokes! Which is all true. . .sort of. The fact is, the reason so many (shhhh. . . .Republican-controlled) states are putting restrictions on voting is because they know that the people most likely to not have a photo State ID are more likely to vote Democrat. And FOX "News" knows this. They're just playing all innocent, "Why don't Democrats care about voter fraud?" They would. If there actually were any measurable voter fraud. But there isn't. You'd think this widespread push to enact legislation on a fundamental right, would have a tangible reason, other than suppressing Democratic voter turnout.

[Excerpt]


Fox News host suggests Democrats are ‘for voter fraud’

Fox News host Gretchen Carlson says she can’t understand why Democrats would be against discriminatory voter ID laws unless they are “for voter fraud.”

Earlier this week, the Department of Justice blocked a law requiring Texas voters to show identification on the grounds that it could disenfranchise Latino voters.

Similar Republican-backed laws have also been blocked or temporarily barred in South Carolina and Wisconsin. . .

Read more at: The Raw Story

George Clooney on Hardball with Chris Matthews

Sudan isn't one of the topics I've covered here, and you can call me shallow for that, I suppose. But look! George Clooney! Okay, I'm definitely shallow!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Blast From the Past: "I'm a Nazi/He's a Nazi" by Rush Limbaugh!

Oh, hello there! Ever get caught in a Wiki-hole? That's when you look something up on Wikipedia (or other site), and one thing leads to another, and you burn up a couple of hours. Happens to me all the time, but this time it happened to me on my own blog! Is it narcissistic to re-read posts from my past? I dunno. Anyway, one gem wasn't even my work, and it is as relevant today as ever. It's "I'm a Nazi (He's a Nazi)" and it is actually "sung" by Rush Limbaugh through the wizardry of audio editing. Godwin's Law be damned, this is a masterful--and hilarious--work. It co-stars Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly. Enjoy!