Month: March 2008

Fasten Your Seat Belts

by digby

Tomorrow should be an interesting day on Wall Street. JP Morgan just bought Bear Sterns for less than the price of the office building it’s housed in and then the Fed cut interest rates another quarter of a point to try to cushion the blow.

The Fed approved the financing arrangement announced by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bear Stearns Cos. JPMorgan separately agreed to buy Bear Stearns for about $2 a share.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is stepping up efforts to keep strains in financial markets from spiraling into a full-blown meltdown. Last week the central bank agreed to emergency loans to a non-bank, Bear Stearns, for the first time since the 1960s. Fed officials also announced a program to swap $200 billion in Treasuries for debt including mortgage-backed securities.

The Fed lowered the discount rate to 3.25 percent from 3.5 percent, narrowing the spread with the federal funds rate to a quarter point from a half point. From tomorrow, primary dealers will be able to borrow at the rate under a new lending facility, to be in place for at least six months, the Fed said.

The actions are “designed to bolster market liquidity and promote orderly market functioning,” the Fed said. “Liquid, well-functioning markets are essential for the promotion of economic growth.”

Investors expect the Fed to lower its benchmark rate by as much as a full percentage point, to 2 percent, when policy makers meet March 18. That would exceed the 0.75-point emergency reduction on Jan. 22, which is the largest cut since the overnight interbank lending rate became the main tool of monetary policy about two decades ago.

Paul Krugman wrote on Friday, before these actions of today:

I’m more concerned that despite the extraordinary scale of Mr. Bernanke’s action — to my knowledge, no advanced-country’s central bank has ever exposed itself to this much market risk — the Fed still won’t manage to get a grip on the economy…

I’m sure that Mr. Bernanke and his colleagues are frantically considering other actions that they can take, but there’s only so much the Fed — whose resources are limited, and whose mandate doesn’t extend to rescuing the whole financial system — can do when faced with what looks increasingly like one of history’s great financial crises.

The next steps will be up to the politicians.

I used to think that the major issues facing the next president would be how to get out of Iraq and what to do about health care. At this point, however, I suspect that the biggest problem for the next administration will be figuring out which parts of the financial system to bail out, how to pay the cleanup bills and how to explain what it’s doing to an angry public.

Like I said. Buckle up.

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A Responsible Plan

by digby

From Think Progress:

On April 1, 2007, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strolled through the open-air Shorja market in Baghdad in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq. In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market was proof that people could “walk freely” in parts of Baghdad. What McCain failed to mention was that he was accompanied by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” He also appeared to be wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit. Since that trip, McCain has claimed that the situation in Iraq has improved even more. A few months ago, McCain claimed that “we’ve succeeded militarily” in Iraq. Things, of course, are going so well, that he wants to keep U.S. troops there for at least 100 years. McCain is now back in Iraq for a “surprise visit with Iraqi and American diplomatic and military leaders.” He is joined by fellow Iraq war defenders Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). But it’s unlikely they will be visiting the Shorja market again. Today, CNN reported that they tried to visit the Shorja market, but it was too unsafe and they were unable to go.

The conventional wisdom in the news these days is that the “surge” is working and the polls show that it’s having its effect on the public. People are starting to believe that the Bush/McCain Iraq policy is succeeding. It’s not. Any reduction in violence is temporary at best and dependent upon a large contingent of US troops for the foreseeable future. Even The Man Called Petraeus admits that the political reconciliation for which the surge was allegedly designed to create is still not happening.

Tomorrow at 2:30 PM at the Take Back America conference, a group progressive congressional candidates will introduce a responsible plan to withdraw from Iraq:

Stay tuned …

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‘Tis A Beautiful Thing…

by tristero

… when the august New York Times sounds like a common blogger:

What Mr. Bush wants is to be able to listen to your international telephone calls and read your international e-mail whenever he wants, without a court being able to prevent it or judge the legality of his actions…

The president will continue to claim the country is in grave danger over this issue, but it is not. The real danger is for Mr. Bush. A good law — like the House bill — would allow Americans to finally see the breathtaking extent of his lawless behavior.

That last sentence is not entirely accurate, but nevermind. I mean, Americans have always been able to see a great deal of the breathtaking extent of Bush’s lawless behavior. It’s just that media outlets like…well, like the New York Times itself, never reported the lawlessness in such a fashion as to sound the alarm if they reported it at all.

Anyway, better late than never.

Saturday Night At The Movies

Paging Dr. Leakey

By Dennis Hartley

A fact is a fact. Director Roland Emmerich makes great movie trailers. C’mon-admit it, you loved watching the White House blow up real good in the previews for Independence Day . For The Day After Tomorrow , he had you at the tornado-fueled disintegration of the “Hollywood” sign. You cried like a little schoolboy when Matthew Broderick exclaimed “He’s pregnant!” in the trailer for the 1998 remake of Godzilla. And I know that you haven’t been able to avoid the TV teasers for his latest epic, the prehistoric adventure 10,000 B.C. (unless you’ve been living in a…oh, never mind).

Emmerich is the heir apparent to the late Irwin Allen (“The Master of Disaster”); he has the same penchant for producing audience pleasing spectacles unencumbered by complex narrative or character development. But you can’t argue with his marketing savvy.

For his new film, Emmerich takes a break from the apocalyptic gloom and doom and plunders Aesop’s fables, Atlantean legend, Mel Gibson, John Ford, Steven Spielberg, the Discovery Channel’s Walking with Prehistoric Beasts and even his own 1994 cult film Stargate to concoct a hunk of cave-aged cinematic cheese that barely sits on a Ritz.

The story (co-scripted by the director with Harald Kloser) allegedly takes place sometime around, oh, 12,000 years ago and concerns a small tribe of mammoth hunters. The men (who all appear to have been cloned from Counting Crows’ lead singer) hunt, naturally, whilst the women busily gather (and still find time to maintain their perfect Bo Derek cornrows). The tribe is led by an aging matriarch and seer named, appropriately enough, Old Mother (Mona Hammond, channeling Cousin Itt from The Addams Family).

Old Mother prophesizes big doings for a young hunter named D’leh (uncharismatic leading man Steven Strait). D’leh apparently is the Chosen One (chosen for what, specifically, is not made quite clear). There is a bit of exposition provided via some underwritten narration (voiced over by a palpably disinterested Omar Sharif, who sounds like he would rather be playing bridge). One thing is made quite clear-D’leh is destined to eventually knock sandals with pretty, blue-eyed Evolet (Camilla Belle).

However, before D’leh’s destiny can be, er, fulfilled, his beloved is kidnapped by a band of Persian-looking horsemen, referred to by the mammoth hunters as the “four-legged demons”. D’leh forms a posse with his best bud Tic’ Tic (Cliff Curtis, probably pondering how the hell he got from Whale Rider to here) and the chase is on.

Many perils lie in wait, like roving packs of huge, wingless avian raptors, who turn the tables on Thanksgiving by gobbling up humans like so many delicious birdie num-nums. D’leh takes a tumble into an animal trap, and makes like Androcles with a larger-than-scale saber-toothed tiger. As the dynamic duo pursues their quarry, they pick up reinforcements in the unlikely form of a tribe of African warriors (Dr. Leakey is spinning in his grave). We also learn some interesting facts about the local geography. Although the mammoth hunters appear to live on a sub-arctic taiga, rimmed by snowy peaks, they are only a day or two’s stroll from grassy African style savannahs, lush tropical rainforests, and a vast sandy desert. But hey, it’s only a movie, right?

The story climaxes in an opulent desert city that looks like a leftover movie set from Apocalypto (or Cleopatra) replete with pyramids, toiling slave laborers, high priests sporting bejeweled feathered hats, and a god-king who demands the odd human sacrifice.

So should this post have been titled When Anachronisms Ruled the Earth? Mmm, maybe. (I also toyed with 10 IQ, Mammoth Misfire, Dude, Where’s My Spear? Two Years Before the Mastodon and Yabba Dabba Doo Doo -but hey, I don’t want to bore you with details about my “process”). One gloriously incongruous moment that elicited unintentional laughs and nominates the film for future camp status: a climactic, mascara-streaked crying scene (even the Geico Caveman would find Evelot’s “raccoon eyes” a bit out of place 12,000 years before the debut of Maybelline and Max Factor).

You’re probably getting a vibe that I’m not recommending that you go out of your way to shell out your ten bucks for this one? Well, that depends. The CGI creations are convincing, and there are a few rousing action scenes, if that’s what you’re in the mood for. If you have a soft spot for the prehistoric adventure genre to begin with, you will likely be more forgiving to Emmerich’s liberal use of “artistic license” (when I was 11 years old, ogling Raquel Welch for 90 minutes while she ran around in a bear fur bikini, fleeing from hungry dinosaurs, do you think I was stressing out over epochal accuracy?). If you’re an anthropologist, you will definitely want to avoid this one like the Plague (that was, like, back in the Middle Ages… with Robin Hood and all those dudes…right?)

In like flint: Quest for Fire, 2001 – A Space Odyssey , Iceman, Ice Age , One Million Years B.C., When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, The Lost World – 1960 & 1925 versions, Clan of the Cave Bear, Teenage Caveman, Prehistoric Women, Caveman(1981),Cavegirl (1985), The Flintstones (1994), Encino Man, Conan the Barbarian.

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Little Rustic Cabin

by digby

Jamison Foser talks about the odd obsession the press corps has for Democratic candidates’ finances while ignoring the finances of the much richer Mr and Mrs John McCain. He specifically mentions their descriptions of McCain’s so-called cabin in Sedona as an example of the double standard:

[T]he news media — McCain’s “base” — don’t treat him the way they treat other (particularly Democratic) candidates. And so you probably haven’t heard or read a word — not a single word — about John McCain’s wealth during a news report about his tax policies. Indeed, you probably haven’t heard or read a word about his wealth during any news report.

Certainly not during the recent wave of reporters gushing over McCain after he hosted them for a March 2 barbeque at his Arizona “cabin.”

The Arizona Republic described it as a “rustic cabin”; National Public Radio described it as a “weekend cabin”; The New York Times called it McCain’s “cabin near Sedona, Ariz.”; the Associated Press called it a “cabin”; and The Washington Post — which devoted two articles to the barbeque — agreed that it is a “rustic cabin.”

If a presidential candidate cooking outdoors at his “rustic cabin” conjures images of Abraham Lincoln and a modest log cabin, that is no doubt fine with McCain.

But McCain’s “cabin” isn’t quite like what you might imagine a “rustic cabin” to be. For one thing, there’s a pool. For another, the cabin has a guest house and has been featured in Architectural Digest.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with the fact that John McCain’s cabin is so luxurious that it has a guest house out by the pool. Good for John McCain. But given the media mockery of John Edwards and John Kerry for their expensive homes, it’s a little odd to see McCain’s lavish home described so modestly as a “rustic cabin.” Edwards and Kerry were lambasted as out-of-touch elites in part because of their houses; McCain’s is described in the most favorable possible terms.

Kerry, of course, wasn’t just mocked for living in a large house; journalists went out of their way to point out that his wife owns the house. There was Tucker Carlson on CNN saying “Kerry wants to mortgage his wife’s house in Boston for a campaign loan.” And The New York Times emphasized that Kerry was scheduled “to fly to his wife’s house in western Pennsylvania.” And Fox’s Carl Cameron: “Kerry mortgaged the Beacon Hill mansion his wife purchased for them 10 years ago and loaned his campaign $6 million.”

Well, guess who owns John McCain’s “rustic cabin” — the one with the guest house and the pool? Cindy McCain, the wealthy and politically connected Arizona beer heiress McCain married shortly after leaving his first wife, and just in time to move to Arizona to run for Congress.

Here again, in case you missed it, is the press relaxing at Cindy McCain’sArchitectural Digest “rustic cabin.”

It’s a beautiful rich man’s retreat. I’m sure the press loved it. Lucky flyboy. But shouldn’t anyone who has such an incredible second home be subject to a little financial scrutiny, particularly when he’s made his reputation as a seeker of redemption for an earlier financial transgression (which also involved his wealthy wife?) And especially since it’s been recently reported that he has been much closer to lobbyists than was previously acknowledged? (Of course, that story was disappeared as well, in a flurry of remonstrations among the press corps against the NY Times’ descent into tabloid news coverage. They evidently wanted them to keep the space available for hard news stories about Spitzer’s call girls’ MYSpace pages.)

Nada, nothing. But then living well — IOKIYAR. If you’re a Democrat you must either be a crook or a hypocrite. Everybody knows that.

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Catch That Goalpost

by dday

Over the last few days, White House officials and military leaders, either by themselves or through the press, have been steadily lowering expectations about the current situation in Iraq. They’ve walked this tightrope for quite a while now, between promoting the message that the war is going so well that we have to stay and finish the job, and that the war is not going so well and we have to stay or chaos will reign. Hence, here’s A Man Called Petraeus:

Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that “no one” in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation,” or in the provision of basic public services.

Outside of the fact that the violence has actually ticked back up and this opportunity is increasingly slipping away, this is generally correct. The various parties in Iraq aren’t even speaking to one another, let alone producing legislation aimed at reconciliation. The Sunni political groups aren’t focused on returning to the coalition government, Sunni provinces like Anbar are not repesented in the Parliament because of the boycott during the last provincial elections, the Awakening groups are growing restless (as well as being bolstered by US weapons and funding, forming into something of a militia), and the internal squabbles in the Kurdish north and the Shiite south are growing. Juan Cole offers a charitable reading of Petraeus’ statements.

So you could understand how Gen. Petraeus, having sacrificed so much to get some sort of social peace in Baghdad that would allow some major steps toward political reconciliation, is frustrated that no such major initiatives have been launched and that Iraqi politics just seems to be stuck.

Now we get an article by Robert Burns for the AP, suggesting that Al Qaeda in Iraq is stronger than the Bush Administration is letting on.

Al-Qaida is in Iraq to stay. It’s not a conclusion the White House talks about much when denouncing the shadowy group, known as al-Qaida in Iraq, that used the U.S. invasion five years ago to develop into a major killer.

The militants are weakened, battered, perhaps even desperate, by most U.S. accounts. But far from being “routed,” as Defense Secretary Robert Gates claimed last month, they’re still there, still deadly active and likely to remain far into the future, military and other officials told The Associated Press.

Commanders and the other officials commented in a series of interviews and assessments discussing persistent violence in Iraq and intelligence judgments there and in the U.S.

There are some named sources in that story, but they’re all military. And Petraeus has been carrying the Administration’s water for some time. So what’s going on here? It seems to me that, having overplayed the “surge is working” meme, the White House is reacting to imminent dangers and increased violence by working the other angle, that Iraq is so dangerous that we can’t just up and leave and risk catastrophe, as if we’re not there now. This is the Iraq conundrum that conservative warhawks have skillfully used time and again, moving from success to failure over and over and offering the EXACT same conclusion.

We know that the latter is not true, by the way, we know that Iraq will not become a Qaedistan whether we leave now or in 20 years. Not to mention the fact that things got steadily worse for four years, and having 100,000-plus troops there didn’t stop that.

With Petraeus’ report set for April, and clear signs that violence is rising, we’re seeing the Administration move into the McCain argument, that we can’t leave or there will be genocide. So seizing on these statements that appear to be hedges or flip-flops actually plays into Administration hands. Instead of playing a game of inches and using one statement to highlight the situation in Iraq TODAY, people who want to actually end the occupation have to talk about it in the context of the big picture, about how the Bush strategy can NEVER work. Otherwise we chase headlines and rise or fall on them.

What may be most effective heading into those hearings is pointing out this deception, and this game that Bush and his cronies continue to play.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, it’s important to place all of this in the context of keeping us in Iraq well into the future, whether for the purposes of keeping the contracting money flowing or maintaining a presence in the Middle East. Here’s William Arkin on the firing of Admiral William Fallon from CENTCOM:

The man most responsible for the departure of Fallon is Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, the savior of the war and the Bush administration with the surge, the counter-insurgency genius, the Washington-savvy Princeton grad, and a pretty boy called “King David” by many. His boss in the military is Fallon, commander of the Central Command, but from day one of his assignment to Iraq, Petraeus reported directly to the White House, thus circumventing the chain of command and virtually ignoring the views of his superior officer.

As my friend Fred Kaplan reports in Slate: “It is well-known that Fallon has long been at odds with Gen. David Petraeus…. I have heard from several sources that the two men dislike each other and that their disagreements have been tense, sometimes fierce.”

Yesterday, I was hearing from Pentagon officials, high-ranking military officers and close observers of the building that the two were at odds on virtually every element of Iraq policy, which of course put Fallon on a collision course with the White House. In other words, Iran was the excuse but Iraq was the reason: Fallon thought that the Iraq war was a dead end and a drain on resources, that the surge should brought to a quick and successful conclusion, and that the drawdowns should continue. But most important, Fallon argued at the highest level that Petraeus was just not going to get everything he wanted, according to individuals privy to the fights.

But then Petraeus had the White House and Fallon, despite his command and authority to set priorities and decide on what resources are needed, was frozen out.

A senior officer in theater sent me an e-mail: “Petraeus has accomplished a great deal, but he is very reluctant to get rid of force structure.” This officer writes that the political imperative to withdraw has become virtually overwhelming. “I think Gates, the Army, and Fallon are all pressing” Petraeus to give up more resources, he writes, but so far Petraeus is winning the battle.

My take is that Bush has voted with Petraeus and has decided to tough it out with 130,000-140,000 troops in Iraq through the end of the administration. Fallon lost the battle. The good news is that with those kinds of resources being committed to Iraq, and with the lessons of the war, the likelihood of Bush and Cheney starting an Iran war is virtually zero.

You have to look at every Petraeus statement through this lens.

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Take It To The People

by digby

Most of you have undoubtedly already read that the House managed to pass the FISA bill (again) without corporate immunity. This is excellent news. Of course there is still the Senate good old boy club to deal with, but this time a handful of House Bush dogs stepped back from the brink and voted their party (and their constitution.) So good for them.

But this, in my view, is the real good news because it means that we can actually, finally, maybe get a mandate for the constitution in this coming election:

Lawmakers from both parties said the gulf between the administration and House Democratic leaders is now so wide that the issue may not be resolved until a new president takes office next year. Bush, who has threatened to veto the House measure, and Republicans have shown no desire to move further toward the Democrats’ position, and Democratic leaders show no sign of buckling under continuous political pressure.

“I’m very uncomfortable with an issue of this importance entering such a political realm, but I don’t see us pulling it out of this mess either,” said Rep. Tim Walz (D-Minn.), a swing-district freshman who shrugged off a barrage of advertisements that accused him of jeopardizing national security.

Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, such showdowns have followed a predictable path: After some protests, Democrats have given in to White House demands, fearing the political fallout as Bush hammered them for allegedly endangering American lives.

Last month, the Senate appeared to follow that script when it passed, with bipartisan support, a surveillance bill to Bush’s liking after turning back the efforts of some Democrats to strip out the immunity provision and strengthen privacy protections.

Bush appeared on the White House’s South Lawn Thursday to demand House passage of the Senate legislation, warning lawmakers: “The American people understand the stakes in this struggle. They want their children to be safe from terror.”

Then the House went off script. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) responded by all but calling the president a liar.

“We understand our responsibility to protect the American people. What the president is trying to do is something that we think should be stopped,” she said. “I am stating a fact. The president is wrong, and he knows it.”

My goedness, even the Washington Post is calling it a “script.” Have they been keeping that from their readers all this time, or did they have an epiphany when the Democrats decided not to read from it anymore? But whatever, it’s good to see that somebody is finally writing a new script.

Walz says he is afraid of putting this into the political “mess” but the truth is that it has been part of the political mess all this time and putting this into the fall campaign means the American people can weigh in. Clearly, their representatives were incapable of simply doing the right thing and forcing Bush and these huge telcom companies to defend themselves in a court of law like any other corporation.

If the Democrats go forward and win with this issue on the agenda, perhaps they will realize once and for all that the American public is not so frightened that they will allow the government to shred the constitution at will and offer immunity for those in the private sector who help them do it.

It’s the best thing that could happen, in my opinion. Democrats need to face their own fears and challenge this conventional wisdom that says they can’t be rational on national security or risk losing their seats. Put it to the vote.

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Missed Opportunities

by digby

Somebody’s been watching old Combat reruns again:

I must say, I’m a little envious. If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed. It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks.

Well, he had his chance for this kind of romantic confrontation with danger and he didn’t exactly rush to the front lines did he? Here’s what he had to say about that:

“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes.” George W. Bush on why he joined the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War, 1990.

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Regular Guy

by digby

Blitzer: All right Jack Cafferty, what do you think, a McCain Powell ticket?

Cafferty: Amen to that. I second everything McCain said. I wish McCain, I mean Powell would have run for president. I would have made a lot of what’s going on right now irrelevant, in my humble opinion. I think Colin Powell is giant and I wish he would take a more active role in setting the direction for this country.I would follow him damned near anywhere.

Gosh. I think he recently took a pretty damned active role in the direction of our country, don’t you? And jack and his pals in the media followed him to hell:

Cafferty is the no nonsense “regular guy” on CNN’s best political team on television and a lot of people like him. He’s an idiot.

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Hit ‘Em Where It Hurts

by digby

Spocko, (the guy who chased Melanie Morgan off San Francisco radio) wrote this in the comments to our “pudding” series about questioning the premises of these right wing frames. He makes an excellent observation:

I decided that the only way to have an impact on the charade of the “market place of ideas” was to go to the only people they really listen to, the ones who paid them. The advertisers.

This is the “real world” and it is the ultimate of rejecting their premise.

I reject the entire premise of their show. The fake participation, the stacked deck with loving callers. I reject their rhetorical tricks that are used on people who do get through occasionally who they destroy with their high school debating tricks and shouting. (Hannity especially)

People like Rush, Hannity, Grover Norquist, Bill O’ Reilly and Coulter are the ones who create these kind of rhetorical games. They think up the frame. They then give them to their listeners who repeat them for their co-workers and family. My mom regularly uses the rhetorical tricks that Rush uses on the one person in the family who disagrees with her. But because this person doesn’t want to attack my mom she thinks she has “won the conversation”. Personally I hate having to have these conversations with people because I really don’t like confrontation. Especially if my goal it really to persuade and change someone’s mind rather than WIN the conversation. I think some men thing that if they humiliate the other person that they will then admit defeat. And that is what they want. “All right! You are right! I was wrong. You are the smarter person. I will change my ways!” These people often want to appeal to some third party and argue as if a impartial judge of debate is listening in.

What do I gain if I “win” a conversation on talk radio? Even if I had a segment where they didn’t control my volume and my on button, if I “won” the argument the second I’m off the air they will mock me. They never modify their opinion with the correct information. See how often they bring back Zombie facts. As Monty nicely put it, it’s NOT about an “honest inquiry or debate.” It’s about entertainment, stirring the pot or creating the media’s standard “X vs. Y” controversy story.

When I went after the talk radio hosts I chose to change the venue, work on them from outside their frame and even from outside the venue they control. And it had an impact.

The financial impact on the station was big, but the bigger picture method was bigger. They listened to the money people because even if they say, “We had great ratings!” the money people say, “We don’t care, we only like great ratings if they give us more money.” To save face (and to avoid a breach of contract lawsuit) they didn’t fire the K S F O radio hosts at the time, but eventually they slipped them the pink slip for doing the one sin that corporate radio doesn’t forgive, costing them money.

Spocko deserves a medal for fighting back against that shrieking creep Melanie Morgan. And that’s how he did it. Liberals should do it more often.

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