BlatherWatch

Sunday night potpourri

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- A syndicated radio talk show host who broadcasts from Spokane County is trying to parlay her strong conservatism, an unusual tax plan and the story of her near-death experience into a long-shot bid for the presidency.

Laurie Roth says she was called by God about a year ago to seek the White House from her double-wide trailer in Elk, Wash., and to turn the nation around.

The Spokesman Review reports the self-described Annie Oakley of the Airwaves will find out on Saturday if the Constitution Party, one of the nation's largest third-party organizations, will put her atop its ticket in the fall election.

The 51-year-old mother of two is one of three main candidates seeking the conservative party nomination at its national convention in Nashville.

 

Former radio host Bill Wippel, also a faithful reader and commenter here at Blatherwatch, recently attended the annual Broadcasters' Luncheon at the 125th St Grill on April 23. He writes, "There were 20+ broadcasters attending. Among them: Tom Henning (KING) Warren Severance (KOMO) Dave Langley (KIXI-KAYO) Jim Wilke (KPLU) Vic Bremer (KIRO) Don Riggs and Patti Par (KMPS) Felix Banel (NPR-KUOW)) Gary Engard (KIRO) Frosty Fowler (KING) George Toles (KIRO-KJR) Vic Stredicke (Seattle Times radio columnist) Bob Adkins (KREM, KOMO) Cliff Murphy (KVI) Duane Smart (KIRO) Paul Bishop (KIRO)  and yours truly, Bill Wippel (KIXI-KIRO)."  Next year, the BW Crew hopes to make the luncheon and get some pictures. 

From MyNorthwest.com: One of the candidates to take on Seattle Public Schools has already had second thoughts. Steven Enoch withdrew his candidacy over the weekend, sending an email to board members saying, "I have concluded that what Seattle needs is a younger person, potentially able to provide longer stability and direction for the district. I believe you have two very viable candidates that will better meet the long-term needs of the district."

Enoch turns 63 next month. He's currently the superintendent of San Ramon Valley Unified School District near San Francisco.

The Seattle School Board is considering the remaining finalists and was expected to have a decision this week.

Previously heard on radio...

This time we go back to 1993 when KIRO TV was the "newsroom out of the box", along with KIRO Newsradio as seen on KTZZ 22 as the "KIRO News Network".

 

 

  Some past hosts including those who have passed away: Wayne Cody, Bill Gallant along with Bill Yend now at KOMO and Gregg Hersholt, now afternoons at News Talk 750 KXL in Portland.

The idea was innovative, groundbreaking, exciting – and a complete disaster.

The $3 million overhaul of anchors walking around in an wide open broadcast arena including radio, only lasted a few months as ratings began to plummet.

 

 

The most out of touch man in America.

 

 

We usually reserve this for the likes of Dori Monson, but since Herr Dori has been on his best behavior promoting driver's ed videos on his show, we thought we'd scan around the dial and see what the other dullards were opining about.

It seems the poor and underfed according to Sean Hannity are doing just fine, thank you if they would only cut out "the soda and drink more water".  Never mind the fact that soda consumption among teens has been falling.   "Good wholesome" food is readily available too if the poor would just look at the myriad of choices. 

A report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture on food insecurity in America released in September 2011 found that "in 2010, 17.2 million households in America had difficulty providing enough food due to a lack of resources."

Food insecurity rates were substantially higher than the national average for households with incomes near or below the current federal poverty line ($22,350 for a family of four), households with children headed by single women or single men, and black and Hispanic households.  

 

 

Herr Hannity blames the fact that most of the poor he has dined with have too many of the things he has too like 2 color tv's (do they make any other TV besides a color tv?) and "other things" which obviously has led to their nutritional decline.

Former presidential hopeful John Edwards faces trial

The anger, disgust and disappointment of fellow Democrats will be felt by John Edwards as he goes on trial tomorrow for allegedly misusing campaign finance money to help keep secret his affair with another woman. 

Reuters reports: "Edwards is accused of accepting more than $900,000 in campaign funds from two wealthy donors, knowing the exposure of his extramarital affair "would destroy his presidential campaign," prosecutors said in a trial brief.

The candidate at the time was a married father of three, whose late wife, Elizabeth, had breast cancer.

Jurors will hear opening statements the federal courthouse in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Edwards, 58, is accused of conspiring to solicit the money, receiving more than the $2,300 allowed from any one donor, and failing to report the payments as contributions.m He faces six felony counts, each carrying a sentence of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Edwards admits personal failings but insists he broke no laws.

Edwards' defenders say the government is overreaching with its prosecution of Edwards, the son of mill workers who earned his fortune as a trial lawyer in North Carolina before being elected as a U.S. senator from the state in 1998.

His defense lawyers dispute the Justice Department's interpretation of federal election laws, arguing the donors would have given the money regardless of the campaign and did so knowing it wouldn't be used for campaign purposes.

The money was not spent to influence the election but rather to conceal the affair and resulting pregnancy from Edwards' wife and children, they said.

Edwards never personally received any of the payments, nor did his campaign. The money was used to cover living expenses and medical care for his mistress, campaign videographer Rielle Hunter, rather than traditional campaign activities.

"This is expanding the scope of the definition of campaign contribution," said Ron Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest University who is not involved in the case. "It is an unprecedented definition."

And now you know what will be on Talk Radio in the coming weeks, obliterating all other news. 

Your weekend open thread

We are away from the computer most of this weekend. Here is an Open Thread for you to discuss George Zimmerman, The War on Women, The War in Afghanistan, the Presidential race, the Governor's race,  the Mariners, the chance that the Sonics could return to Seattle, the next Rock 'n Roller who's gonna go to the big jam session in the sky, Rush, a rash, the weather--you get the idea. Have a good weekend.

Levon Helm dies of cancer at 71

(AP) With songs like "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," "The Weight" and "Up on Cripple Creek," The Band fused rock, blues, folk and gospel to create a sound that seemed as authentically American as a Mathew Brady photograph or a Mark Twain short story.

In truth, the group had only one American - Levon Helm.

Helm, the drummer and singer who brought an urgent beat and a genuine Arkansas twang to some of The Band's best-known songs and helped turn a bunch of musicians known mostly as Bob Dylan's backup group into one of rock's most legendary acts, has died. He was 71.

Helm, who was found to have throat cancer in 1998, died Thursday afternoon of complications from cancer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, said Lucy Sabini of Vanguard Records. On Tuesday, a message on his website said he was in the final stages of cancer.

Helm and his bandmates - Canadians Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel - were musical virtuosos who returned to the roots of American music in the late 1960s as other rockers veered into psychedelia, heavy metal and jams. The group's 1968 debut, "Music From the Big Pink," and its follow-up, "The Band," remain landmark albums of the era, and songs such as "The Weight," "Dixie Down" and "Cripple Creek" have become rock standards.

Read the rest here  and  here.     

R.I.P. Dick Clark 1929-2012

Anyone who owned an AM radio in the 50's and 60's knows the name Dick Clark. His long-running television show, "American Bandstand" was the predecessor of dozens of other shows that featured dancing teenagers and the musical hits of the day. Later, he also was famous for his New Year's Eve gig at Time Square in New York City.

Here is the obituary from the Los Angeles Times:

Nugent's big mouth gets him in trouble...again.

"If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will be either be dead or in jail by this time next year. He also recommends decapitating Democrats: "We need to ride onto that battlefield and chop their heads off ..."

That statement, made in front of some of the NRA faithful, has earned Ted Nugent an appointment with the Secret Service. Will Ted carry out this "threat"?  Of course not. He is a big mouth coward, angry that he will never have a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Will Nugent apologize?  Today he told the Dana Loesch radio show, "“See, I’m a black Jew at a Nazi-Klan rally, and there are some power-abusing corrupt monsters in our federal government that despise me because I have the audacity to speak the truth to identify the violations of our government, particularly Eric Holder and the president and Tim Geithner, ad nauseum.”

Nugent told Loesch that he’s stating publicly what Mitt Romney is really thinking but can’t say.

“Mitt Romney knows what I’m saying is true. He puts it in the words for him, I put in the words for me,” he said.

The Romney campaign offered no further comment when asked about Nugent’s statement on the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Talkers new ratings are out

The wait is over! Those In The Know over at Talkers Magazine have released their Heavy Hundred list for 2012. While most of the results are predictable, there are a few new faces that are sure to annoy some of you. All of them have included bios that read as if their sainted mothers wrote them. It is a  good mix of terrestial and satellite stations, men and women. This year there are a few more liberal voices on the list as well.

While we won't list all of them here--you can see the entire list at the link above--we will go through the list and show you a few of them. If you disagree, take it up with Talker's Magazine.

In the No Surprise category:

 1. Rush Limbaugh 

 2. Sean Hannity  

 3. Michael Savage

Sure to draw ire on our little blog is

 4. Ed Shultz

..and a few more names that are familiar:

 5. Laura Ingrahm

 7. Mark Levin

 8. Thom Hartmann

 9. Glen Beck

11. Stephanie Miller

12. Howard Stern

13.Neal Boortz

15. Alan Colmes

21. Dennis Miller

24. Michael Medved

33. Don Imus

38. Randi Rhodes

NPR to air political ads?

(From Reuters)--Reversing a decades-old rule, a federal appeals court said on Thursday that public television and radio stations could not be prohibited from broadcasting paid political ads. The ruling could prompt some noncommercial stations to start including ads from candidates and political action committees on their broadcasts, just as commercial stations do. Hundreds of millions of dollars are expected to be spent on advertising in the prelude to the elections this fall. 

The decision startled the television industry when it was issued on Thursday, in part because the case before a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit initially involved ads bought by corporations, not candidates.

In a 2-1 ruling, the appeals court argued that a law banning such advertisements violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by placing too great a restriction on speech without serving a substantial government interest.

“That is the kind of picking-and-choosing among different types of speech that Congress may not do, absent evidence to show that Congress’s favoritism is necessary to serve its substantial interest,” Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote.

The Minority Television Project, a nonprofit that runs KMTP-TV in San Francisco, challenged the law as unconstitutional after it was fined by the Federal Communications Commission for running paid ads from for-profit companies.

The court ruled that such ads can still be prohibited, but that political and public issue ads cannot. It said there is no evidence that political and public issues ads are more harmful than ads for goods and services by non-profits.

“Public issue and political advertisements pose no threat of ‘commercialization,’” Bea wrote. “By definition, such advertisements do not encourage viewers to buy commercial goods and services. A ban on such advertising therefore cannot be narrowly tailored to serve the interest of preventing the ‘commercialization’ of broadcasting.”