BlatherWatch

Blathering 2009, Part 2- in other news...

(photo: fan greets Glenn Beck in Mount Vernon)

DR. LAURA CHEATS AT THE YACHT RACES: America’s nutcracking yenta and moral compass was found to be off-course when officials caught her cheating in the arcane, fat cat world of yacht racing. See Dr. Laura naked here.

KGO fires karel the talker

Charles “Karel” Bouley, a weekend talker and fill-in on San Francisco's KGO has been fired.

He announced late Tuesday on his blog:

"And with a two minute phone call and one paragraph letter I have been fired from KGO. I’m told the engineer that made the mistake has been as well."

What was the mistake? A few days before the election, in his home studio while a board operator was supposed to have potted the audio down, but, unfortunately for him, he had not. Heard by thousands of Bay Area listeners were his remarks during an ABC News break about John McCain 's Everyman, Joe the Plumber.

"Fuck god damn Joe the god damn, mother-fucking PLUMBER! I want mother-fucking JOE THE PLUMBER dead."

While not exactly poetry, the expletives were unintended, but KGO fired his ass despite the Supreme Court is still pondering whether to permit such "fleeting expletives "on the airwaves.

Is reporting the truth media bias?

Is the mainstream press so in the tank for Obama? that McCain/Palin get a break?

The chattering class of the right (talk radio, Fox News) is touting a poll released Monday and funded by the respected Pew Research Center, suggesting a horrific imbalance in favorable coverage between the campaigns.

(photo: isn't this the story?)

Researchers found that McCain, over the six weeks since the Republican convention, got four times as many negative stories as positive ones. The study found 60% of McCain stories were negative.

Obama had more than twice as many positive stories (36%) as McCain — and just half the percentage of negative (29 percent).

Bernie ward gets 7 years

A federal judge Thursday gave SF talk radio host Bernie Ward more than seven years in prison for downloading graphic images of child sex and distributing them on the Internet.

The progressive, former KGO talker and Catholic priest pleaded guilty in May to sending between 15 and 150 pornographic images by email, which he said were part of some book research.

Bernie ward to be sentenced

Former radio talk show host Bernie Ward will be sentenced in federal court in San Francisco Thursday for sending child pornography over the Internet.

Ward, 57, a former host on  San Francisco's KGO radio has admitted to one count of e-mail distribution of child pornography in May and will be sentenced by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker.

Bernie ward to serve significant prison time

In a plea agreement, former KGO talk radio host Bernie Ward faces at least five years in prison on a single count of distributing child pornography.

Ward, 57, admitted to Judge Vaughn Walker as part of his plea agreement that he sent between 15 and 150 images of child pornography via e-mail.

The charge carries a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison and a possible maximum of 20 years. Doron Weinberg, Ward's defense lawyer, said he expects Ward to spend at least four years and three months in prison even with credit for good behavior.

Ward was to go before a jury in Walker's court on June 9. Originally charged last year with two other counts of receiving and attempting to send child pornography in January 2005. Those charges are to be dropped in the plea bargain.

The defense told the judge that Ward's use of pornography occurred "in a few weeks in 2004 and 2005" and reflected "an error in judgment rather than sexual proclivity."

Walker will sentence Ward Aug. 28.

Ward is a former Catholic priest and teacher, lives in San Francisco, is married and has four children. He worked in radio for about 20 years and had a loyal following for his weeknightly political show and Godtalk, on Sunday mornings. Both shows were on KGO.

He originally claimed that he was looking at the illegal material researching a book on hypocrisy. The defense filed a motion asking the court to allow Ward to argue that his actions were protected by the First Amendment.

The defense team concluded that courts would not allow that argument. "He thought it was legal to do it as a journalist, but our conclusion was that the courts wouldn't accept that," Weinberg told reporters Thursday.

"Bernie is not a sexual predator," he said.

But the indictment, once unsealed with its damning transcripts of online chats, made Ward's original claim of book research on hypocritical Republicans really hard to swallow, and knocked the underpinnings from any free speech defense.

Bernie ward to change not-guilty plea

Former San Francisco talk host Bernie Ward will plead guilty to child pornography charges Thursday, according to court records.

Ward, 57,  a former Catholic priest, and self-proclaimed "the lion of the left," was indicted in September by a federal grand jury on two counts of distributing child pornography and one count of receiving child porn using the Internet.

His trial is scheduled to begin in one month.

Ward engaged in sex chats with an online dominatrix and allegedly sent her pictures of children engaged in sexual activity, according to police reports.

Troubling new evidence in bernie ward case

This from ABC Channel 7, KGO

By Dan Noyes

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- The ABC7 I-Team has the inside story of what lead up to the arrest of popular talk-radio host, Bernie Ward, on federal child pornography charges. It's an investigation you'll see Only On 7. We warn you that some of the information is graphic.

Bernie Ward got indicted in December and got fired from his job at KGO Radio, effective at the end of last year. Now, police reports just obtained by the I-Team tell us who blew the whistle on Ward, and how he came to send the woman child porn, by his own admission.

The case against Bernie Ward began with a phone call to the Oakdale Police Department, just outside Modesto.

"We received a report from a local resident of Oakdale that she had gotten an e-mail message and pornographic material involving juveniles," says Chief Marty West with the Oakdale Police Department.

UPDATED: Godtalkers: do you know who rabbi daniel lapin is?

Godtalk Update: after Rabbi Lapin discussed Berkeley's actively discouragement of  Marine recruiting, a listener writes: "This is a Godtalk topic?!?" Later Lapin managed to get into the religious conversation: "I don't like the BBC, I don't like PBS, and I don't like NPR... they shouldn't exist."
    Another listener comment forwarded this to us: "Please, please PLEASE, get Rabbi Daniel Lapin OFF THE AIR!!! You are insulting every minute Bernie spent on the air. I have been a faithful listener for years, but no more until Rabbi Lapin is history. He gives us nothing to contemplate, but much to hold in contempt. While Bernie spoke to the best in all of us, the Rabbi makes even the pacifist want to consider mayhem. He is narrow-minded, condescending, self-absorbed, and about as deep as one layer of vaneer. As Bernie would say, "He parked his brain at the door and picked up his Crayolas." The loyal God Talk audience deserves FAR BETTER. If you keep him, you would do well to  rename the program "God Forbid Talk."
~~
Godtalk, Bernie Ward's interfaith dialogue is too popular to cancel at San Francisco's KGO (Sundays, 6-9a). But what would he say if he could comment on how his show is being shepherded over by one of the most virulent clergymen in the American religious right?

For three weeks now, former KSFO right-wing talker, Rabbi Daniel Lapin of Seattle has hosted the weekly, liberal, one-world exchange of views that often range far afield from those of the Judeo-Christian practitioners whom Lapin's always championed as the sort of "Master Race" of religionists.

L'affaire bernie: bad news and somewhat better news for bernie ward

The bad news is: Bernie Ward has been officially fired from San Francisco's KGO. 

The fierce "lion of the left" was indicted on federal child pornography charges in December after downloading images;  e-mailing it on to others, and discussing the material in chat rooms. Ward and his attorneys said was doing research for a book.