In the first half of October, Air America Radio will be offering free air time - up to a block of an hour - during Richard Greene's evening 'Clout' program to the Democratic presidential candidates. And, they're offering the same deal in the second half of October to the Republicans:
They will be playing radio host, answering questions from the live audience, cueing up clips, playing excerpts of their own speeches or, whatever is their heart's desire... Others have chosen to record a 2 - 5 minute statement or excerpt. These will run on both CLOUT! and one of Air America's daytime programs... The value of the programming time (not advertising time) donated to the eight campaigns is approximately $80,000...
I applaud AAR for this largely worthless gesture: first, very few people are going to hear it, and second the last thing we need is to hear the candidates just blather on some more.
What we really need is for the candidates to be asked tough questions. If Greene or others at AAR get to ask them questions, he'll just ask puffballs of the Dems and smear questions of the Republicans. What we need are real questions designed to reveal the flaws in their policies.
It looks like the only way to get that is for citizen journalists to go to campaign appearances and ask tough questions, then upload the response to video sharing sites.
For those of you not on the "bleeding edge", September 24 is the new, hipper April 1. It's the day when the mainstream media prints obvious jokes that, on any other day, would cause their readers to question not just their journalistic integrity but their sanity as well.
To kick off this new "holiday", Forbes Magazine has printed the list of their "Top Ten Pundits". As part of the joke, they were selected not for their influence, but for their popularity. And, as a clear indicator that Forbes is not serious, look who made the list:
1. Roger Ebert
2. Bill Maher
3. Bill O'Reilly
4. Al Franken
5. Geraldo Rivera
6. Rosie O'Donnell
7. Leonard Maltin
8. Greta Van Sustern
9. Lou Dobbs
10. Bill Walton
Two braindead movie reviewers and a far-left NBA announcer? Wasn't Bob Costas available?
And, needless to say, the presence of Stuart Smalley - and the absence of people like Rush Limbaugh - further discredits the list. According to them, the soon-to-fail Senate candidate has "Appeal points" of 64 out of 100, and a 47% "Awareness level". (Presumably refering to others' awareness of him, and not his awareness of what's going on in the world.)
Ex-cutie and current tattoo'ed something-or-other Janeane Garofalo screeched her way through an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher yesterday. She calls General Petraeus "dishonest" and said that was part of his job description here. She speaks up for the Palestinians, warns of pro-Israel bias, and says she thinks of herself as a "global citizen" here [see UPDATE]. On this [see UPDATE} clip she says that Bill O'Reilly can "kiss [her] fat ass", adding in others who can do that (but never will): Sean Hannity and Joe Scarborough. Then, on the next tape (there's more!) she pronounces Bush a war criminal ("just like Saddam Hussein").
After the show, she was spotted pushing a shopping cart down Central and looking for cans to buy her "medicine".
But, seriously folks, she really, really, really, really, really needs help. TMZ gives her the only treatment she deserves here; they spotted her walking down Robertson towards the Beverly Center and, rather than subject us to her prattle, sped up the tape and played music over it. In the clip above she burps; in the second clip she talks about sweating.
It's really not funny anymore, it's just very, very sad.
UPDATE: The videos previously linked above (IDs Zkbve0a8qlk and vefioLFxnic) have been removed. However, these videos still remain:
Like blending chocolate and peanut butter, it got even better on September 10th, with current or former Democratic Socialists of America member Lou Grant:
Ed Asner, active for years in the 9/11 Truth movement, was part of the show tonight... Also, your unanswered questions about 9/11, and Dr. Ben Marble, the folk hero who shouted "Go f--- yourself, Mr. Cheney" [77 DEIQ CWQ12] during a televised vice-presidential press conference in New Orleans two years ago. We were also joined by Kathleen Rosenblatt, co-founder of 911TruthLA.us.
Greg Palast talks about Cowboy George Bush's fear of horses and other frauds... Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) talks about the CIA Investigation into pre-911 intelligence screw ups and The Holt Bill on Electronic Voting Machines.. Professor David Ray Griffin [621aa DElAQQ 71203 JQQWCQ], author of 5 books on 911, including "The New Pearl Harbor" talks about some of the remarkable inconsistencies in the administration's story... REGISTER YOUR VOTE ON THE 911 POLL!!... 1. 19 Arab hijackers and Osama bin Laden were completely responsible? OR2. The Bush Administration was negligent? OR3. The Bush Administration knew what was going to happen and let it happen? OR4. The Bush Administration helped make it happen?
I too am quite suspicious of certain aspects of the official story (D732X 832 eE), but some of the Truther Tales verge into the quite weird territory, much like the terrain around the Green Mountains of Vermont or perhaps even the Mount Washington Hotel area of New Hampshire which you may know from the Bretton Woods treaty.
Of course, one way of looking at this is that Richard Greene is actually part of the conspiracy: by bringing on far-far-left loons like Ed Asner, he's helping to portray those who want a better investigation of what happened as loons.
Of course, the idea that there's a conspiracy is only in their minds.
Speaking on tonight's Phil Hendrie Show, Ted Bell of Ted's of Beverly Hills Steakhouse revealed that former Air America hostess Janeane Garofalo dropped by his establishment to view tonight's Iraq speech from president Bush. And, Ted told her she had to eat in the kitchen instead of being able to eat in the main dining room with Danny Glover, Glenn Close, Susan Sarandon, and other celebrities!
He diplomatically explained to JFo that it wasn't because she was a B-list celeb, but because he was concerned that she wouldn't be as much of an attention getter as Glover and the other stars. She then either left or was asked to leave. Bell somewhat undiplomatically stated that she could walk into the restaurant, walk outside, come back in and vomit on the bar and only until the last happened would anyone notice.
JFo could not be reached for comment.
UPDATE: It's pretty sad the depths JFo's enablers are willing to go to, but it's funny as well. Trying to claim that Ted Bell isn't a real person takes the cake; I've been hearing his commercials on the radio for years, and I'm pretty sure I've seen his restaurant on La Cienega during one of my rare visits to the "Westside".
One of those things is not like the others. Al Franken shares his thoughts:
...Minnesota is a very windy state. We're ninth in the nation. We should really be exploiting that more...
[...additional thoughts...]
...Right now gasified biomass is being used as fuel in ethanol plants...
What I want to know is exactly how an obscure interview by an obscure interviewer with an obscure failed comedian got 364 Diggs; I note that the cross-post at her blog got only 2 Diggs. Odd. Very, very odd.
In other Stuart Smalley news, he's returning a $2,300 donation. No, it wasn't from a Boys & Girls Club; that's a bit too hot right now. It was a donation from possibly imminent Arkancide victim Norman Hsu.
No big surprise there: Norm Coleman has always been ahead of Al Franken (Rasmussen poll of Minnesota voters). While support for Stuart Smalley has picked up five points from March, there are warning signs for Al: his DFL competitor Mike Ciresi's numbers are more favorable in some ways.
Franken is viewed favorably by 46%, up from 39%. However, he's viewed unfavorably by 47%, with 31% marking that as very unfavorably.
Ciresi, by contrast, is viewed unfavorably by 43%, with only 17% of that being in the very unfavorably category.
And, what's dragging Coleman down appears not to be him so much but president Bush.
Franken's numbers are only bound to get worse as more facts about his past come to light and as MN voters get a closer look at "Senator Al".
Just a reminder: I'm taking suggestions on what should go in the Janeane Garofalo Rescue Kit. Please leave your best ideas in comments. Here's what I've got so far:
* A Burberry catalog and a $10 gift certificate from Nordstrom's
* An REI catalog (not just for the outdoors-y fashions but also to suggest that JFo goes outside for once)
Remember: once all the items for the Rescue Kit have been assembled, I'll be sending it off to Henry Rollin's management in the hope that he can get it to her and she can be rescued from herself.
UPDATE: Thinking about what Bill O'Reilly and Dennis Miller have to say about Britney Spears, maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. They suggest ignoring her until she gets her act back together. When she straightens things out, then they'll start paying attention to her again. Maybe that's what JFo needs in order to force her to straighten herself out. Perhaps it would be best if we simply ignored her until that happened.
UPDATE 2: On second thought, I guess that isn't going to work since no one besides me is paying any attention to her at all.
Scary-looking painted lady, ex-cutie, troubled "liberal", and alleged comedienne Janeane Garofalo was surprised to be met at a Los Angeles airport by paparazzi* when flying in to flick Fox's 24. So surprised that she says to them*:
"I'm not a celebrity. I'm a moderately successful person... I was more famous in 1998."
The person carrying her bags? None other than aged punk rocker Henry Rollins. (If, for instance, Perez Hilton stooped to discussing either of them he would probably make a joke about beards or something. I consider this site to be of a higher calibre so I won't do that.)
* Some might quibble over the use of plurals, since there's only evidence that there was one photographer there, and he was probably just an intern or something. For all we know, he might even be JFo's publicist.
Al Franken (aka "The Chair Man") isn't the only libtalker willing to get physical in support of "liberalism". Big Dumb Drinkin' Ed Schultz was recently involved in some sort of altercation in a bar in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Unfortunately, it didn't reach the "broken bear bottles and pool cues" stage. And, it might even have been staged in order to keep his audience thinking that he's one of them:
Nagle [a GOP donor] said Schultz said he doesn't like Lieberman, and then commented that if Nagle felt so strongly about the war, his family should go over and fight in it. The daughter of Nagle's fiancee serves in the Army and may soon go to Iraq. His fiancee's son-in-law has served in Iraq. "It was at that time that Mr. Schultz completely lost control, in my opinion," Nagle said. "He became enraged, and then our interactions became far less civil."
Ed Shultz is (IIRC) the former backup placekicker for the Calgary Stampeders, so he's the last person you want to get uncivil in a bar.
UPDATE:This site interviewed Nagle about the incident. Their summary of the conversation includes this:
# At one point Schultz asked Nagle why he and his family weren't over fighting the war in Iraq, and Nagle responded by pointing out that some of his family was, in fact, in Iraq. Or had been in Iraq. Schultz responded to this by saying that he hates "f***ing right-wing Republicans" and threatening Nagle to the point where the restaurant security began to take notice
# Nagle responded to Schultz's threat by saying he and his group were going to leave, at which point either someone from the hotel/bar or one of Schultz's party (Nagle isn't clear on this) grabbed his arms and pinned them behind him as Schultz approached with a fist cocked as though he was going to throw a punch.
# Before Schultz was able to throw a punch, Nagle's fiancee stepped in and Ed's fist grazed both her and Nagle.
# Nagle's fiancee has bruises from this encounter.
Maybe Big Dumb Ed could be the first AAR personality to broadcast from inside prison.
What did Al Franken know, and when did he know it? The Republican Party of Minnesota demands answers about Franken's links to the disgraced Democrat fundraiser Norman Hsu - a "Hillraiser" for Hillary Clinton:
1. Did well-known bundler Norman Hsu bundle donations for Al Franken's U.S. Senate campaign?
2. Did Al Franken or his campaign have any contacts with Norman Hsu?
3. Was Al Franken or his campaign aware of Norman Hsu's criminal past before the Franken campaign accepted his money?
This is a perfect chance for some citizen journalism: please go to Al Franken's campaign appearances and ask him one or more of those questions. Then, upload his response to Youtube and let us know about it.
It's becoming an almost daily occurence as stations leave the Air America Radio fold, and the latest is Memphis' WSMB 680 AM (formerly WWTQ). Feel free to show their page to any "liberals" you meet; they'll enjoy the Fox graphic. Meanwhile, their previous page is like a blast from the past, featuring Al Franken and Sam Seder in the top graphic, links to Jerry Springer and Mike Malloy, and even a picture of a billboard they had called "Stone Cold Liberal Talk" featuring Al Franken and Jerry Springer... on Mt. Rushmore. Needless to say, all of those "personalities" have gone on to future endeavors of some kind.
Thankfully, they've gotten the help they need from Rupert Murdoch.
Not enough gloating for you? Then read "liberals" making excuses again and again.
Maybe Air America could finally save itself by bringing back Janeane Garofalo. Just kidding!
STRATERGIZING UPDATE: I want to help, so here's some free advice for Mark Green. He could say something like:
"Previously, when we had almost 90 stations, our message was diluted, much the same as a fine mist being spread across the nation. I'm sure you can picture in your mind what I mean: most of it gets blown away by the wind. Now, imagine - picture this in your mind - our new plan of media concentration. By reducing the number of stations to close to 50 or so, we can more effectively concentrate our liberalism. No longer is our message spread to the winds, it's sharply focused and concentrated on just a few outlets, and thus we're stronger than we've ever been!"
