BlatherWatch

OPEN LINE SUNDAY...

Saddam Hussein is dead- and so are 3000 of us- can we go home now, Mr. Bush?

Blathering 2006: the best, the worst, the merely mildly entertaining PART DEUX

~RUSH LIMBAUGH CONTINUED TO GIFT BLATHERWATCH with his noxious exudations both ideological and intestinal. In 2005, his public flatus made headlines as friends made hard left turns, lovers became downwinders, and employees turned up their noses. But in 2006, the tabloids reported that Big Pants had found a support group and a line of flame-retardant flatulence odor products.

MORE BLATHERFODDER BY THE FLATULENT FULMINATOR: in April, Big Pants was arrested after his celebrity lawyer got him the deal of a lifetime for the charges against him for illegally attaining prescription drugs. He was taken into custody, booked, a happy-face mugshot á la Tom Delay was taken before being released after bailing himself out with $3000. This at 4p on a Friday afternoon when the media ebb is at its lowest and least-read. Always more libertine than libertarian, the blabber magnate was detained again in June, in the Palm Beach Airport coming in from the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra without a prescription. We never really thought he'd done much wrong, but it was hilarious see his sexuality or lack thereof so widely publicized. The Third World country is known for sex tourism; a great place for fat guys to get laid; and he took along a drug for erectile dysfunction. We can't be too judgmental about a little Caribbean chuffing- big fat idiots get to have sex, too. But hell, that's what you'd expect us to think-we're liberals! tBut this "boys weekend" as Rush called it, flies in the face of fundamentalist biblical morality that defines sex a sin if it's not in the marital bed. We wonder what Big Pants' cohorts in the "values-community" such as Jerry Falwell, Phyllis Schlafly, and Rev. Ken Hutcherson think about his pre-marital chuff-chuff? Cable news reported that according to the Customs declaration, Rush had 30 Viagras going down, and only 29 nine coming home- that ain't much of a sex weekend.

~PAT O'DAY was the Chairman of the Board, the Grand Poobah, the Top Dog, the Big Kahuna of Seattle rock radio and Pacific Northwest rock & roll business for decades. Now retired in Friday Harbor, he's a wealthy man; hopelessly Republican, a spokesman for Schick-Schadel Hospital, and ... a BlatherWatch fan. (Ol' Blathe, he calls us). We got Pat to write a two-part piece, here and here  on the state of Seattle talk radio- he wasn't amused. 

THE DORI MONSON OPEN. In March, we asked our readers to send us love notes or hate mail about Dori Monson (KIRO m-f, 11-4p) since we weren't up to actually listening to him long enough to give him an honest assessment. Boy did we get an earful! It was woefully short of love notes- though we published everything we got...

PERNICIOUS MOMENTS, 2006: DORI AND ANN COULTER-  he most outrageous thing about Dori's "interview" of the sharp-elbowed Connecticut harpy with the toothed and leathery nether parts was a story he told as he was prostrating before her. He said his 16-year-old daughter had been offered extra-credit in a science class if they went to Gore's movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. She and her mother didn't see the movie, he said, but instead went to the theater, bought a ticket so the teen could lie to the teacher, and get the credit. Dori said they bought her the ticket to "take advantage of the system, but not make our daughter sit through two hours of tedium like that." Buying that ticket is what conservatives might call, "investing in education;" but liberals would call it cheating. Dori's daughter complained, Dori denied the story in later broadcasts; and readers flooded our comment strings and Dori's mailbox.

WE ASK THE QUESTIONS NO ONE ASKS: such as, Frank Shiers: why?

HONORARY WASP, 2006: Dan Sytman says he's Jewish, but wouldn't he make a great W.A.S.P.?

R.I.P. 2006: Some notables and some merely annoying left Seattle radio this year, all to be

Blathering 2006: the best, the worst, the fair-to-middling: PART ONE.

IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES. Radio, in 2006, has suffered ratings declines, lost the confidence of Wall Street, and that of some of it's largest conglomerating investors.

There's a death watch on, with media vultures watching the breast of talk radio for its last heaves. Frankly, this ain't the first time it's condition has been pronounced terminal, and probably not the last.

Meanwhile, BlatherWatch has thriven like a little girl skipping 'neath a burgeoning mushroom cloud. By having cast ourselves in the role of radio know-it all, we crammed ourselves into a silly little niche than that no one else would cover, and managed to scrape together a small clutch of stalwarts who cheer us on. (Cheering on is all we need, now that we've qualified for food stamps).

THANK YOU, THANK-YOU, THANK-YOU to the tippers, the sources, the insiders, the threep doats- whose secreted, sensational and accurate information not only always checks out, but have made us more than just another screedblog or Air America fansite. Special kudos and accolades to Mike Webb, Michael Medved, Frank Shiers, the Ron, the Don; Dori Monson, Bryan Styble, Bryan Suits, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Tim Eyman, Tom Delay, Tom Clendening, Dan Sytman, Dave Boze, George W. Bush, John

OPEN LINE WEDNESDAY...

Could Dick Cheney pick up the pieces of Bush's shattered presidency as gracefully as Gerry Ford picked up the pieces of Nixon's? 

Progressive leftovers dep't: CHEF MICHAEL'S TURKEY JELLO PRETZEL SALAD

NPR's Susan Stamberg offers her mother-in-law's famous cranberry relish every year; Hillary Clinton touts the Chocolate Chip Cookies which she famously doesn't make; Slade Gorton has his Dungeoness Crab Spread; and the Bush Family their Zuni Stew.

These are all beloved Xmas traditions and BlatherWatch has one of it's own- which we now present by acclamation; and a big glass of holiday cheer. And you'll need one because as with so many old family recipes, the sentiment, not taste or the taste, is what endears this travesty to us all.

There's no "right ' way to make this favorite- it's made truly from the "left" overs found in any liberal holiday pantry.

CHEF MICHAEL'S TURKEY JELLO PRETZEL SALAD

3 tbsp. sugar
2 c. crushed pretzels
1/4 c. melted butter
1/2 c. powdered sugar
10 oz. cooked leftover turkey
8 oz. pkg. cream cheese
8 oz. carton Cool Whip
2 c. miniature marshmallows
6 oz. pkg. strawberry Jello
2 1/2 c. boiling water

Mix together sugar, melted butter and crushed pretzel sticks. Press into 9 x 13 pan and bake 15 minutes at 350 degrees. Set aside to cool. Soften cream cheese; add powdered sugar and cream well. Fold in dessert topping and marshmallows. Spread over pretzel crust. Mix Jello in boiling water. Stir in turkey. When slightly thickened, pour over cream cheese layer. Place in the refrigerator until set. Serves 8 to 10.

A Christmas Carol

It's always seemed to me, after all, that Christmas, with its spirit of giving, offers us all a wonderful opportunity each year to reflect on what we all most sincerely and deeply believe in - I refer, of course, to money. And yet, none of the Christmas carols that you hear on the radio, or in the street, even attempts to capture the true spirit of Christmas as we celebrate it in the United States, that is to say the commercial spirit. So I should like to offer the following Christmas carol for next year as being perhaps a bit more appropriate. ~Tom Lehrer

Christmas time is here, by golly,
Disapproval would be folly.
Deck the halls with hunks of holly,
Fill the cup and don't say when.

Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.

On Christmas Day you can't get sore,
Your fellow man you must adore.
There's time to rob him all the more
The other three hundred and sixty-four.

Relations, sparing no expense, 'll
Send some useless old utensil,
Or a matching pen and pencil.
("Just the thing I need, how nice!")

It doesn't matter how sincere it is,
Nor how heart felt the spirit,
Sentiment will not endear it,
What's important is the price.

Hark, the Herald Tribune sings,
Advertising wondrous things.

God rest ye merry merchants,
May ye make the Yuletide pay.

Angels we have heard on high,
Tell us to go out and buy!

So, let the raucous sleigh bells jingle,
Hail our dear old friend Kris Kringle,
Driving his reindeer across the sky.
Don't stand underneath when they fly by.

Run, stefan, run... UPDATED

Ace-boom Seattle Republican blogger, Stefan Sharkansky, left the tea leaves in the bottom of his cup, Thursday, for all to read.

Unless our political headlights have totally dimmed, we'd say Sharkansky is considering running for Seattle City Council against Peter Steinbrueck.

In a short post asking his readers to opine about which of the council members running next year are most vulnerable, he does a little opining himself.

Personally, I would be least inclined to challenge Della, who has displayed more fiscal responsibility and common sense than anybody else running this season. I think that Steinbrueck is the worst member of the Council and also probably the most vulnerable. He's made a fool of himself with his ill-conceived anti-automobile crusade (while himself driving more than anybody else on the Council). At this writing he has the smallest campaign chest of everybody excluding Clark, who just had a campaign. But that's just me.

It's just him, all right- you don't have to be Joel Connelly to read between those lines- and subtleness (different than stuffiness) is an attribute that Stefan's never been accused of.

BROKE: mike webb trial delayed again...

Our legal guy says, "Delay is all he's got."

No surprise to anyone, Mike Webb's retrial for insurance fraud has been postponed until Jan. 22, according to Dan Donohoe, spokesman for King County prosecutors. His omnibus hearing where the judge will take pretrial motions and set opening arguments will take place on Jan. 12.

Delay is a tactic that can help defendants in hopeless cases like Webb's. Witnesses can drop off,  memories can dull, etc. But in this case, the witnesses are professional insurance company employees with crisp paper trails, and electronic failsafes; also cops with trained memories and experience on the stand will be called.

These witnesses actually get paid while they're at trial, so the economics of witnesses not being able to miss work is not relevant this time.

George and the giant impeach

Everyone has abandoned the Prez on this send-in-more troops: Gen. Abizaid, Gen. Casey, the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, George Bush the elder, Sen. John Warren, James Baker and his study group, the American public, and my cat, Linda Werthheimer who's usually conservative on military issues (he'd commit ethnic cleansing on dogs, if he had the technology).

Sen. Norm Coleman, the craven neocon from Minnesota who is perhaps feeling the hot breath of a Al Franken candidacy breathing down his back, is only the latest R to now saying he's against "the surge."

(The Idiot Prince told Bob Woodward he'd stick with his so-called strategy even no one else agreed besides Laura and his dog Barney. Whispers from the White House now say Laura has now jumped ship, and has taken to the doghouse while Barney shares the presidential bed.)

The President sends disparate, desperate, confusing, confused signals that change as often as his ties. He'll say about anything anytime- even if he contradicts himself from the day before: we're winning, we're not winning, we're not losing. We don't need more troops, we need more troops. Surge it up, expand the Army, train the Iraqis, rotate your tires, go Xmas shopping...

He's embarrassing. We used to cheer when he fucked up, but the old schadenfreude isn't fun anymore. Bush is already dead politically; but his nonsense isn't even fun to mock any more- now it only kills people.

Wednesday Oddems: stormwatch kills the war on xmas; styblehead makes goldy seem quiet; KOMO grabs the KIRO mantel; stunning chewing gum wads in Santaland; crack research teams pull stuff out of their ass...

~ Enough already! Is KIRO going to do the storm blab until every single household in the 3-county area has power? That's over kill- or in the case of Bryan Styble or Frank Shiers- underkill. Not sure why the KIRO persists- with not only news coverage dominated by the storm remnants- but also talkers forced to do the neverendending blabber about carbon monoxide; wind chill factor, flashlights; having sex without talking your clothes off; heating coffee with car batteries; translating warning labels on BBQs for Somalis; thawing out frozen toddlers; meatsicles, cerviche and other al fresco dishes for winter picnics in your living room. 

~ The storm was a career break for Bryan "Wireless" Styble, but his reprise on KIRO overnight refried old grudges by his many detractors. The ex-talk host whose quirky 8-month overnight monocast ended in October, is blamed by many for the loss of a live and local overnight broadcast for the first time in the long history of KIRO. His on-air "discussion" with Goldy, Tues. night was truly amazing- the mouthy Jewish kid from Philly seemed quiet and reserved- getting few words past the bombastic, multi-syllabic Styble- as incredible as the concept of a quiet Goldy may be...