Would you trust radio in an emergency?

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Friday September 24, 2010 · 10:27 AM PDT

2010/09/24 · 10:27

Faced with declining listenership and the growing possibility that radio will have to pay performance fees for playing recordings the way internet audio providers currently do, America’s radio broadcasters are trying to cut a deal with Congress.

If lawmakers will require cell providers to include an FM radio chip in cell phones, broadcasters will cave on their standpat opposition to performance fees.

The radio industry, represented by the National Association of Broadcasters trade group, argues that in a national emergency, radio chips in cell phones could be a valuable information source. That's only true if it's a credible information source and today's information radio, with its stable of right wing crazies, is anything but credible.

PBCliberal

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Saturday September 04, 2010 · 2:11 PM PDT

2010/09/04 · 14:11

For weeks in the run-up to Florida's primary, self-funded billionaire Senate-hopeful Jeff Greene sent daily glossy direct-mail attack ads suggesting that his Democratic opponent Kendrick Meek was a criminal because of Meek's mother's and former staff member's involvement in a real-estate development gone bad.

Late in the campaign, the Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times ran articles questioning Jeff Greene's character, business dealings, and his potential involvement in a real-estate deal that landed his partner in jail.

Greene, whose $24,000,000 campaign vaulted him to the front in the polls, ultimately lost to Meek 31% to 57%. But in the aftermath, Greene has proven that he can dish it out but can't take it. He's hired public-figure libel expert L. Lin Wood to file a $500 million defamation suit against the newspapers who broke the story of Greene's checkered past.

PBCliberal

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Sunday August 01, 2010 · 2:20 PM PDT

2010/08/01 · 14:20

[An open letter response to Kevin Phelan, Sr. Vice President, Sales & Marketing, BP Products North America]

Thank you for writing to me about how your company is doing everything possible to stop the leak and protect the shoreline. I had a feeling you'd be writing me; I'm surprised it's taken you this long to get around to it.

I pass several BP stations regularly here in South Florida. I've noticed there's rarely a car or truck in them, and the tone of your letter tells me that you've noticed that too. Maybe the number crunchers in your department believed that things would blow over. Maybe you figured we were so pissed off it was prudent to wait. Or maybe you just don't give a damn.

My money's on "don't give a damn," because your letter is just another attempt to hide behind yet another group of people whom your negligence and reckless disregard is slowly destroying. I'm talking about the "vast majority of [BP] stations [that are] locally owned and operated and employ more than 50,000 people across the United States."

PBCliberal

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Tuesday December 16, 2008 · 1:17 PM PST

2008/12/16 · 13:17

When the shoes whizzed by President Bush at his farewell Iraq appearance, he either feigned or admitted ignorance that the act had a cultural significance to his hosts beyond a hurled object.

Somehow between the widely promulgated video of children beating the felled Sadaam statue with shoes, and the snarky revisiting of the prediction we'd have rose petals thrown at our feet, he missed grasping that all acts aren't literal.

Or maybe he knew very well, and was willing to play the fool to divert the insult by laughing it off, and this got me to thinking this might be a strength he can draw on as he spends the rest of his life trying to mop up his mess that was his presidency.

PBCliberal

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Monday November 24, 2008 · 1:28 PM PST

2008/11/24 · 13:28

[crossposted from www.pbcliberal.com]

Synergy. Whole greater than the sum of the parts. That’s when things are good.

Too big to fail. National resource. That’s when things are bad.

Suddenly, we’re no longer bowing to the god of "size matters." Today’s bailout of Citibank suggests that, and the coming crash in legacy broadcasting and satellite will be more proof.

PBCliberal

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Wednesday November 12, 2008 · 1:42 PM PST

2008/11/12 · 13:42

[crossposted at www.pbcliberal.com]

We’re good at embarrassing ourselves in Palm Beach County and its environs. ‘Til now we haven’t been able to find a supervisor of elections who can count, we are challenged by chad, and we have a 16th Congressional district that seems to have some kind of hardwired feature that catches its sitting congressperson in a compromising sexual situation.

Democrat Tim Mahoney just found that out afresh, when less than a month before his failed re-election attempt, it was revealed that he’d paid $121,000 to a former mistress to keep her from suing him. Mahoney himself had only won his first-term seat because Republican Mark Foley’s name couldn’t be removed from the ballot, his own scandal over white house pages breaking just before the 2006 election.

PBCliberal

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Saturday July 12, 2008 · 12:52 PM PDT

2008/07/12 · 12:52

"Libel of the dead is not an offence known to our law," read the 1887 court decision that dismissed a defamation of the dead suit. It continued, "The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs." That hasn't remained an absolute in the last 121 years, but the line on too much or too soon is still pretty difficult to cross.

Every day that I awaken to the obituary of one who was our political enemy in life, I know that the knives are out at Daily Kos, and it was no different this morning when I saw that Tony Snow has lost his battle with cancer.

Maybe its just age that is catching up with me. In my twenties I reveled in being a Front Page style character whom scandal made glow all over and a grisly murder sent packing merrily off with the other ghouls and minions of the newsroom to the nearest bar.

Or maybe its that the speed of technology has changed the comic timing of sarcastic reportage and comment on the shuffling off of mortal coils. When "two bits" follows "shave and a haircut" too closely the meaning gets lost. Maybe that's why, when the death of a Helms or a Falwell produces an immediate chorus of Louis Armstrong's You Rascal, You here at the great orange satan, I'm sad not only for the family who lost someone whom they loved but we couldn't. I'm sad for us, too.

PBCliberal

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Friday July 04, 2008 · 9:01 AM PDT

2008/07/04 · 09:01

It was Senator Obama falling off his pedestal. I am a strong Obama supporter, and am working as a volunteer in the campaign. He has my vote, and will continue to benefit from my donations of money and time. But I now see Mr. Obama as far closer to Bill Clinton than the Kennedys and Kings in whose image I once thought he was fashioned.

That means that we can expect not only more disturbing changes during the campaign, but a substantial January surprise after inauguration, and to inure myself, I will not be maxing out for our candidate the way I expected. Much more of what money I can afford will be supporting liberal candidates on the assumption that we will need them to pressure the new president into making the honorable decisions that should be made on principle but apparently will need to be made through yielding to pressure.

That wasn't the deal you heard breaking, Senator, it was my romanticized idol of you fashioned out of finer stuff than it appears you're really made and enshrined in a place you don't belong.

[crossposted from Senator Obama - Please vote NO on Telcom Immunity - Get FISA Right on MyBarackObama.com]

I just gave Hillary $10

PBCliberal

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Friday June 27, 2008 · 5:28 PM PDT

2008/06/27 · 17:28

If you'd told me a month ago that I'd be giving Hillary Clinton anything besides a piece of my mind (and there's precious little of that left), I would have spewed invective that would make a sailor blush. But today, I proudly sent her money, and I came here to crow about it and urge other kossacks to do the same.

I'd been thinking about doing it for a while, but today her Unity mass mailing arrived, and its postscript was the impetus:

P.S. So many of you have reached out to help us retire our campaign debt -- I'm so grateful for your support. If you haven't, I hope you'll consider making a contribution today to help me as I continue standing up for the values we share.

Poll

84 votes Show Results

I have

84 votes Vote Now!

I have

given Hillary money to help pay her debt

9 votes

have considered it and probably will

24 votes

have considered it and probably won't

21 votes

you're f-in kidding, right?

30 votes

BREAKING: NY to honor same-sex unions from other jurisdictions

PBCliberal

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Wednesday May 28, 2008 · 7:11 PM PDT

2008/05/28 · 19:11

The New York Times reporting:

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson has directed all state agencies to begin to revise their policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, like Massachusetts, California and Canada.

The governor decided there was no compelling reason that the state should stand in the way of making the benefits of marriage available to those who would otherwise receive them except for their gender and that of their legally wed spouse.

Florida Dems, the DNC and the circular firing squad

PBCliberal

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday April 01, 2008 · 8:18 PM PDT

2008/04/01 · 20:18

Its nice to be fought over even when no one is saying nice things about you. Its even nicer when those who are suddenly running in claiming to be your best friends are the folks who screwed you over in the first place.

Hillary wants our votes down here to count, but its a new found cause for her. The folks who were most responsible for our original disenfranchisement were Terry McAuliffe, Donna Brazile, and a whole host of long time Hillary faithful who were absolutely rabid about this issue when the Hillary campaign was going to be a cakewalk and the marching orders were to maintain the status quo so that she'd take the cake at the magic moment.

Fuck Florida said the Clintonistas. We don't need 'em anyway! Add to them the party gestapo who wanted to make an example of us. Nobody else much cared.

If there's anybody out there willing to look past whipping us for the delight in doing so, or using us as pawns because there's some short term advantage to counting or nullifying our vote for your preferred candidate, please follow me over the break.

PBCliberal

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday March 26, 2008 · 1:10 PM PDT

2008/03/26 · 13:10

The Wall Street Journal has been abuzz recently over Clear Channel. First came a doom and gloom piece. But the agreement is full of gotchas and ways Clear Channel can force the potential buyers in ways from either keeping it alive or denying that its dying.

If the deal falls through, the private-equity firms would likely have to pay a breakup fee to Clear Channel that could be as high as $600 million. The firms would probably try to force the banks to pick up the bill.

One of the issues surrounding the deal is what one banker called the "onerous" requirements on the deal's debt. One person involved in the deal said that the banks want the two private-equity firms to sell Clear Channel assets to pay down the future maturities on some of the company's debt. The first of those maturities occurs in 2011, which would give the firms three years to figure out how to refinance, this person said, but the two firms have balked.

But then came all the articles and commentaries about how the deal is going to force some very strange statements and some dissonant actions among the parties.

What does Rush Limbaugh have to do with this? Follow me into the ether...

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Would you trust radio in an emergency?

When self funded billionaires lose: Sue the Press

BP suddenly worried about its creditcardholders

When Bush dies, let's bury him with BBQ

Too big to be any damn good

Mark Foley: The weasel of the Palm Beaches

The dead have no rights and can suffer no wrongs

What was that crashing sound?

I just gave Hillary $10

BREAKING: NY to honor same-sex unions from other jurisdictions

Florida Dems, the DNC and the circular firing squad

From the folks who bring you Rush Limbaugh