From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…
"LIVE for three years! Daily Kos Radio is on the air!"
"Shhhh!!!"
Talk radio may sound easy, but it's a tough gig. You have to talk about stories that pull people in, add perspective that engages the head and the heart, ask rhetorical questions that prompt the listener to answer out loud, inject some humor (not required but highly recommended) and know when it's time to move on to the next story. No stumbling, no brain farts, no dead air allowed. Oh, and you're on in three…two…one…….
Listeners of Daily Kos Radio's Kagro in the Morning Show know that Kagro X---aka Daily Kos front-pager-since-forever David Waldman---is an excellent talker. And it was three years ago today when, along with Armando, aka front-pager-since-forever Armando, he took to the airwaves.
"Not now, dear. Mommy is spending
her quality time with Kagro X."
Their "Sirius Period," while successful, abruptly ended during a bare-knuckle brawl with executives over potty break privileges. But Sirius's loss was NetrootsRadio.com's gain. Today "Kagro in the Morning"---including guests like Greg Dworkin, Joan McCarter and, yes, Armando---airs live from 9 to 11 ET five days a week and you can listen to the podcast any old time.
As you can tell from his years of blogging about the odd workings of Congress and, more recently, our country's seeming inability to handle guns safely, David knows his stuff and communicates it with wit, outside-the-beltway common sense, a voice like buttah, and just enough incredulity at the state of things to make you wonder if he's just moments away from going Howard Beale on the world. Yesterday, while cutting him off in traffic, I asked him to reflect on his 36 months in the air chair:
David Waldman discusses
policy with the president.
"It's hard to believe Daily Kos Radio has been on the air for three years, and I haven't been arrested for buying Oxycontin even once! I kid, but truly, we could not have done this without Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and others lowering the standards of radio so dramatically.
In the way of sincere remarks, thanks to the many dedicated Kossacks who make up the Netroots Radio operation. They built this thing by themselves, out of chicken wire and duct tape, and were just kind enough to let us experiment with it.
Special thanks to Greg Dworkin, who's on with me nearly every weekday morning, and to our other regulars, Joan McCarter and Armando, plus the other featured writers, editors and community members who've been on with us, or let me read their comments and diaries, and helped make the mornings feel a little like a visit with family, but still be informative radio. And of course, all of you, who've been willing to click the "play" button and actually give over two hours, or some part of it, to the show each day! You people are crazy."
So check out the Daily Kos Radio preview post that'll show up above C&J momentarily, then lend Kagro your ears and join in the running dialogue on twitter at @KagroX. The first three years were just the warm-up. The fourth promises to reveal the awesome firepower of his fully armed and operational battle sta.… Whoops, I almost let the cat outta the bag. You'll just have to wait and see. Er, listen.
Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]
Cheers and Jeers for Wednesday, August 13, 2014
Note: Today is Wednesday the 13th. Not as unlucky as Friday the 13th, but we do recommend that you leave your regular Dodge Dart in the garage and take the up-armored Dodge Dart to work instead. You're welcome.
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10 days!!!
By the Numbers:
Days 'til Labor Day:
19
Days 'til the
Tequila and Taco Music Festival in Santa Cruz:
10
Portion of Ferguson, Missouri's residents who are black:
2/3
Commissioned police officers in Ferguson, out of 53, who are black:
3
Percent of arrests following car stops last year in Ferguson that were of black people:
93%
(Source:
L.A. Times)
Percent of all developers who make less than $100 per month off their smartphone apps:
47%
Top bid so far for
Boon Island Lighthouse, where cannibalism once occurred following a shipwreck before the light station was built:
$19,001
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Mid-week Rapture Index: 188 (including 5 floods and 1 Jared Leto getting his Jesus on). Soul Protection Factor 20 lotion is recommended if you’ll be walking amongst the heathen today.
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Puppy Pic of the Day: Master of the soft landing….
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CHEERS to progress in the war zone where we're actually still at war. As Iraq continues to unravel (although it seems like ISIS is starting to lose battles and recognize their limits), there's something positive happening in the other country we invaded back when we were knee-high to a grasshopper:
Smiles are good.
We like smiles.
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Afghanistan's feuding presidential candidates say they will resolve their dispute, form a unity government and name a new leader. It comes after an audit of votes to decide the winner of the election, which was marred by allegations of polling fraud.
"Today, myself, our team, and Dr (Ashraf) Ghani and his team have taken another step forward in the interests of strengthening national unity in the country ... and also to bring hope for the better future for the people of Afghanistan," Abdullah Abdullah said.
Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama get a chunk of responsibility for brokering the deal. But don't tell the beltway media. It might rumple their narrative.
CHEERS to a moment of judicial sanity. For whatever reason, large chunks of this country seems to prefer a steady drumbeat of gun violence (Hello, Ferguson police, we're looking at you, too) over any kind of responsible restrictions on who gets to own what kind of firearms. But there are happy exceptions, one of them being Maryland where
this just happened:
Insert photo related to topic here
to add pizzazz to your story.
A federal judge on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. The law banning the guns, which was passed in May 2013, was challenged in court by a group of nine plaintiffs including gun stores, gun ownership organizations, and individuals. … Magazines holding more than 10 rounds were used in 85 percent of the mass shootings over the last 30 years in which the magazine capacity was known, a witness told the court.
You take the wins where you can get 'em.
JEERS to strongmen who have long outlived their...um... 46,525,600 million minutes of fame. Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has managed to claw and scratch his way to an 88th birthday. His wish as he blows out his candles: unity and strength for Cuba and its people. And a big ol' grin for outlasting arch-enemies Ike, JFK, LBJ, Tricky Dick, Ford, Carter, St. Ronnie, G.H.W.B., Bubba, GWB and, so far, BHO. Love him or hate him, that's impressive.
JEERS to losing another entertainment icon. Here's another legendary face that'll be on the "Farewell" segment at next year's Oscars: goddess Lauren Bacall---gone at 89. It's a shame she didn’t win the Oscar for her role in 1993's The Mirror Has Two Faces, but it's an even bigger shame that it was her only nomination. Not even for her sultry debut in The Big Sleep:
If there's a hereafter (and I hope there is---I'm an optimistic agnostic, an "optignostic"), she's gonna be a sight for Bogey's sore eyes. Condolences to the family and also anyone who's heard me try to whistle.
It's a miracle!!!
CHEERS to Great Moments in Inventin' Shit That's Cool 'n All. Wipe that doughnut powder off your face and sit up straight, this is important. Today's the 101st anniversary of the
invention of stainless steel. It was created by metallurgist Harry
Reid Potter Truman Brearley, who had the good sense to "add chromium to molten iron [that] produced a metal that didn’t rust." Today stainless steel is a ubiquitous part of life on earth. But to survive the slings and arrows of being the president of the United States, only Teflon will do.
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Five years ago in C&J: August 13, 2009
JEERS to the "relentless summer of melt." Here's some more iron-clad evidence of global warming that the deniers will take glee in ignoring: the polar ice caps are melting faster and faster:
From the barren Arctic shore of Tuktoyaktuk in Canada's far northwest, veteran observer Eddie Gruben has seen the summer ice retreating more each decade as the world has warmed. By this weekend, the ice edge lay some 128 kilometres at sea. "Forty years ago, it was 40 miles out," said Mr. Gruben, 89, patriarch of a local contracting business. Global average temperatures rose 0.6 degrees in the past century, but Arctic temperatures rose twice as much or even faster, almost certainly in good part because of human-made greenhouse gases, researchers say.
Environmental experts say they're ready to take a drastic, unprecedented measure to restore Arctic ice levels: pay Ann Coulter to move to the North Pole and just sit there
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And just one more…
CHEERS to new uses for old tiles. Anyone here play Scrabble? If so, you've got about five thousand more words at your command with which destroy your opponent. Seems the poobahs in charge of the official Scrabble dictionary woke up from a ten-year slumber and made up for lost time:
Oh, grow up.
This month's refresher…adds tech-savvy words like "texter," "vlog," "hashtag," and "selfie," among others. …; "Language is constantly evolving and new words are added to Merriam-Webster dictionaries on an ongoing basis," Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster editor at large, said in a statement. "Now thousands of those words can officially be played on the Scrabble game board."
Other acceptable words include "bromance," "frenemy," "Sudoku," and "mojito" (yes, the drinky drink). Unfortunately, one word that recently passed into American vernacular to great fanfare didn't make the list. So I'm lodging a complaint to get Scott Brown's immortal
Bqhatevwr listed. That's an 87-point triple-word gold mine, bub.
Have a nice Wednesday, which for all those letters is a measly 17 points and hardly worth the effort. Floor's open...What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today's Shameless C&J Testimonial:
Bioengineers have created three-dimensional brain-like tissue that functions like and has structural features similar to tissue in Bill in Portland Maine's brain and that can be kept alive in the lab until the Bacardi runs out.
---Science Daily
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