If this does not stop

[Libertas]

I'm sure you would, but so would some other players in the Internet side of the radio wars. They own guns. We are not dealing with rational people here. Fortunately, radio is a dead man walking, so it hardly matters.

Give up all hope of ever getting it out of me. If you try, I will vanish without a trace. That's the last word on that topic.

Ok.

[ProfX]

I remember those days.

I think I remember Zowie from those days.

Air America Radio ... went down in flames.
Nova-M ... tried to resuscitate the corpse. Same fate.

I don't wanna know all the palace intrigue or where all the bodies are buried. It's an era. It's over. Those who saw more of it go down on the inside can go to their graves with their secrets.

Weirdest of all, the weirdest, like Lionel, anybody remember him? - seem to have climbed off the horseshoe into a vodka-fueled blender.
I mean, yes, I can remember, JERRY SPRINGER had a radio show, and at least on the radio, you could never see the chairs being thrown ...
It's probably what launched Al Franken into his political career. Gave Rachel Maddow the spot she deserves (IMHO) on primetime cable.

All the survivors are doing what they can. Streaming their audio, usually their video, trying to get you to buy a stinking podcast. Poor Nicole Sandler I think has moved some of her casts to Zoom. Hope she doesn't get zoom-bombed. Thom Hartmann on SPUTNIK? Sigh.

Like everybody else, I guess they carry on.

[Number6]

I had one more thought on "situational ethics". Yes, I haz them.

Looting is always wrong. BUT. If after a natural disaster, your family is starving, there's no other way to get food ... should people looting after a natural disaster be treated as harshly as under normal circumstances? My position is no.

Please note ... it's still wrong, I'm just saying the situation modifies the way it should be ethically handled.

So I just want to point out, yes, I do believe in situational ethics conceptually, since the alternative to it is inflexible moral dogmatism, and the latter way of thinking has never led to anything good for the human race. It can lead to silly things like putting a truck driver in prison for 110 years. I think he MAY have committed some culpable negligence, but anybody can see, including the governor and AG, there was no way he deserved that sentence.

This Jesus feller said ... it's a nice quote, who knows if he ever did, but it's this thing in the NT ... "the law is made for man, not man for the law". You're not supposed to do anything on the Sabbath. Nor probably should you grab from somebody's cornfield without their permission. But the apostles were hungry, the corn was there, and grabbing a few cobs wasn't going to ruin the farmer whose field it was.

That's why I find him such an interestingly written character. But I digress.

Moderators are supposed to be able to arbitrate situations without any partiality and with total neutrality. Something I can't do. So I never volunteer for the job, even if I was once offered it at RRMB. Aside from the fact that everybody just gives you shit, without any thanks. Just because I told 9/11 truthers their theories were full of shit (term of art), I got accused of being a "fascist".

I can just see what would happen if I started using that power to close down 9/11 threads. Boy, they'd dox me, find my address, lord knows what would happen next. Who needs it? I didn't. One reason I like anonymous boards is there seem to be a growing number of people who think it's quite cool to issue death threats against you and your family for speaking your mind. Now again, if we wanted to talk about the decline of civility ...

"Situational" also applies to other areas like management and supervision. The AF sends it's NCOs to various academies to teach them management, leadership, and supervision skills as well as military topics. One of the thing they emphasized was to develop your style of leadership. My style was closer to laissez-faire but depending upon the situation I could change in a heartbeat and be authoritarian if I needed to be. By laissez-faire I mean if my people know their jobs I left them alone to do their jobs but only keep me informed of what they're doing. During 911, because of what was going on, my style changed to where I needed to know what everyone was doing, why they were doing it, and telling them what I needed from them. They responded to my change with no problem because, IMO, they knew I was in charge and they welcomed a firmer leadership style.

As for your "situational ethics" I agree with you. In a disaster where it's life or death, "stealing" some food for survival is understandable. A good example of this is from the movie Jurassic Park III when the group finally makes it to park's deserted central building, Paul Kirby is trying to get a snack from the vending machine by putting in money and Billy Brennan kicks and breaks the vending machine's glass. Billy was wrong for doing that but in the situation they were in it was the right thing to do.

[ZoWie]

Air America Radio died from lack of funding. The business model had everything but sufficient capital to survive the initial period when the audience was still in the embryonic stages. The talent was there to make a successful media entity, but the money wasn't. The founders may, repeat MAY have made promises that they couldn't keep. They had, except for 2 or 3 exceptions, everybody you've heard of in "liberal" talk media since. Yes, they put Franken on the map as something besides a goofy comic. Yes, Rachel Maddow, Sam Seder, Lizz Winstead, and some other people got their start there. Randi Rhodes already had a following in Florida, so she was kind of the anchor. Knowing what we know now, though, it's a wonder it survived as long as it did. There was no hope from the day that the check for the LA and Chicago signal rentals bounced, though everyone kept waiting for a miracle that never happened.

In show business they talk about angels. No new entity succeeds without financial support, either in the form of venture capital, low- or no-interest loans, or donations, until the new entity gains enough of an audience to sustain on its own. When Rush and his crowd were starting out, they had the same problems of second-rate signals and sponsor timidity, but they got financial support from, well, wherever. AAR would have succeeded with similar support, but for whatever reason, it never came. Most likely reason is because the left never takes care of its own the way the right does. There was also at least one ad boycott, but from top down instead of the usual bottom up, when some corporate entity started blacklisting AAR advertisers.

The right of course fought AAR's board tooth and nail. The actual moderators were nice people, prone to boozy parties, New York area gatherings, and various types of fun. The board, though, had many of the usual flames, hacks, threats, trolls, socks, bots, dummy accounts, and all the other fun behaviors that we've come to know and love on this net. The "official" web site started out as an independent volunteer entity funded almost entirely by one guy in Chicago. I have been told, but cannot substantiate, the rumor that said guy is now a Republican. The membership stopped growing when the righties started spamming new accounts, making it impossible to verify anybody, and the site stagnated and died some months after the radio network did.

This particular board we are on right now actually seems to have come, if I remember the story right, from a somewhat less disastrous but equally depressing experience on the Ed Schultz support site. He didn't start on AAR. He was on a different syndicator, the ultimate fate of which is unknown to me but not to many others who read this board.

I think P said once that it wasn't like Radio Free Europe, but more that the board would be radio free, as in not tied to any particular personality or syndicator. I thought that was a good idea at the time, and I still do. It's about the politics, not the politicians or the messengers. It's for smart voices to be heard. Radio as a medium has seen its day, and been completely rendered redundant by podcasts and net streaming. The EM spectrum is all being re-allocated to newer and sexier corporate ventures, or just being drowned in incidental radiation from this week's latest consumer electronic wonder boxes.

You'll never get any names out of me that weren't mentioned on the air. That's for their privacy and my own safety. There are some very bad people out there, and they have guns.

[ProfX]

This particular board we are on right now actually seems to have come, if I remember the story right, from a somewhat less disastrous but equally depressing experience on the Ed Schultz support site. He didn't start on AAR. He was on a different syndicator, the ultimate fate of which is unknown to me but not to many others who read this board.

Schultz was on the Jones Radio Networks.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jones_Radio_Networks

They also syndicated Stephanie Miller, Bill Press, and IIRC, even for a while, Jesse Jackson. (On the left side of things, anyway. They also syndicated some righties.)

(Yes, apparently this here site evolved out of the ESSMB. Then Ed for a short while before his death moved to Russia Today, started IMHO moving toward becoming a Trumper ... OK, let's also go back to the bodies are buried stuff, I really don't want to revisit THAT, either. )

They became Dial Global, which IIRC, went bankrupt in 2018.

[ZoWie]

Right, I remember now, that's exactly what happened. Dial Global, yes.

I did know that Thom Hartmann is on some Russian agitprop network. Too bad, I used to like Hartmann. Big Ed, well, that RT part I didn't know, just that he was dead, as in physically.

Isn't Stephanie Miller still on? Her show was a real hoot. Lying sack of crap, lying sack of crap...........

Otherwise it's all gone to scared people, broken friendships, bad blood, and even badder memories. I, too, prefer to let its corpse rot in peace.

[ProfX]

Isn't Stephanie Miller still on? Her show was a real hoot. Lying sack of crap, lying sack of crap...........

Yes, on Free Speech TV. Randi Rhodes is there now, too.
https://freespeech.org/shows/

Hmmm. Looks like a lot is there now. David Pakman, Laura Flanders, Jim Hightower.

The Young Turks seem determined to be everywhere else, including on just about every streaming platform. "The Turks" have their own stream shows on everything from movie reviews to sports to gaming ... seems they want to have their own "go our own way" media empire.

Hartmann was on Russia Today for a while ... got off ... still on Sputnik (sigh). Ed was on Russia Today for I think around 2 years before dying. All I can tell you is just for S & G I started streaming his RT show to see what it was like (as I hated everything else on it, but ...) and he was talking about how Mike Flynn was being railroaded. (This was 2016.) I was like. Huh? I believe Ed also went to CPAC in 2016 as a featured speaker.

OK. Bad blood. Maybe I should stop stirring it. But now we're long past his death, and I guess maybe we can put it in the rearview mirror.

[gounion]

The right of course fought AAR's board tooth and nail. The actual moderators were nice people, prone to boozy parties, New York area gatherings, and various types of fun. The board, though, had many of the usual flames, hacks, threats, trolls, socks, bots, dummy accounts, and all the other fun behaviors that we've come to know and love on this net. The "official" web site started out as an independent volunteer entity funded almost entirely by one guy in Chicago. I have been told, but cannot substantiate, the rumor that said guy is now a Republican. The membership stopped growing when the righties started spamming new accounts, making it impossible to verify anybody, and the site stagnated and died some months after the radio network did.

I can substantiate. I was FB friends with him, and he'd turned into a Trumper. Tried to talk sense to him, and he blocked me.

You might remember that we were a unofficial fan board of the network, and then the head of PR or some such came to us interested in making us the OFFICIAL board. We mods all got together and put a proposal together about what it would take to accept their offer. Our plan was that it would be the first of a negotiations, so we asked for the moon (no money, though. It wasn't about that). But the guy accepted it all.

Last we heard of him, he lost his job shortly thereafter. He probably told them he accepted our proposal and they realized he was in over his head and fired his butt.

At least that's how I remember it. It was a long time ago. But Zowie was there with me on the call.

[ZoWie]

I remember all that. Who could forget?

Yeah, GoU, you were one of our most fearless leaders. Your contribution was and is appreciated. You've proven to be a good friend and a tireless supporter of what passes for a left in this benighted country.

There are a couple of others who I still get twitter PMs or texts from. If covid ever dies down enough, it would be fun to have another meet-up in New York. We had some good people.

I will never give any names in the clear, nor will I answer personal questions if PM'd here. The past is past, let us allow it to rot in peace. I prefer the future, though right now it's hard to find one.

[gounion]

Yeah, GoU, you were one of our most fearless leaders. Your contribution was and is appreciated. You've proven to be a good friend and a tireless supporter of what passes for a left in this benighted country.

There are a couple of others who I still get twitter PMs or texts from. If covid ever dies down enough, it would be fun to have another meet-up in New York. We had some good people.

I will never give any names in the clear, nor will I answer personal questions if PM'd here. The past is past, let us allow it to rot in peace. I prefer the future, though right now it's hard to find one.

I'd love it! Though I've met several people from the various message boards - nice thing about traveling for a living - but you were one guy that I haven't had the pleasure. I'd be up for it if we can ever get past COVID, and I've got plenty of airline points!

[ZoWie]

Well yeah, the other people seemed to be mostly east of the Mississippi. Radio started as a New York based medium and most of it stayed there. It's presence on the west coast was always as essentially branch offices.

Radio never needed 300 days a year of sunshine for exterior shoots. Nor did it have issues with patent enforcers a la Edison Motion Picture Patents Company, since David Sarnoff owned it all following his use of Congressional legislation to dispose of that pesky old boss of his named Marconi. Radio's lack of dependence on weather, or environment in general, during production was one of its advantages, actually, until every bozo in the world started carrying around a complete audio-visual communication system in their pocket, for better and for worse.

I have airline points and a TSA good guy card, if covid ever permits ever again.

[Glennfs]

I've always wanted ask you Glenn, what rig do you drive? Peterbuilt, K-Whopper or White Freight Liner. I had best friend in the Army who drove himself a K-Whopper. While I never got behind the wheel, he did let drive is '72 Vet....Hot Shit and Holy Damn.

I've always driven plain jane trucks. Primarily Internationals aka Corn Binders and Freightliners. I did once own a used KW Cabover known as a KW Condo. Which was and is my favorite truck.
As for bell's and whistles when they start paying extra for chicken lights and chrome I will buy chicken lights and chrome.

[Libertas]

Stephanie Miller, a great American, is on XM channel 127, progress. Mornings.

I listen almost every day for at least a little while. She retweets me often. I think she handles her own twitter account, not sure.

I have a political twitter account that she and a few others retweet. I love Stephanie and her group, Adam etc.

I also love PAULA POUNDSTONE and she has a real fun podcast,
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n ... 1410611499

Seen her twice on stage, the last time was when I got sick couple weeks before someone here, probably ap215, posted about hospital being built in 10 days in China because of Covid, nobody was talking about it. I think I had a cold that I got at her performance, but who knows, could have been Covid I guess.

[ZoWie]

When China built the hospital in 10 days, there were something like 100 cases of that original version of covid in the US. It didn't spread far and wide for another few weeks, though when it did it started in California and New York City.

The places where travelers come in.

NYC built a field hospital in Javits Center, taking less than 10 days to do it. However, since American emergency plans tend to lack practicality, I don't know how much it was actually used. There was a Navy hospital ship moored in LA, but I don't know if anyone was ever actually treated there.

NYC might have briefly reached herd immunity, and it was among the safer places to be until the Delta hit and derailed Biden's presidency. He could save it by rallying the country with the kind of tactic used so effectively by the Republicans to start unnecessary wars, except this time the war is necessary and it's to prevent death, not kill off the military in some country we've decided we don't like.

But that doesn't seem to be his style.

I wonder who's going to get tough with the Republicans, and how, and when.

[Libertas]

When China built the hospital in 10 days, there were something like 100 cases of that original version of covid in the US. It didn't spread far and wide for another few weeks, though when it did it started in California and New York City.

The places where travelers come in.

NYC built a field hospital in Javits Center, taking less than 10 days to do it. However, since American emergency plans tend to lack practicality, I don't know how much it was actually used. There was a Navy hospital ship moored in LA, but I don't know if anyone was ever actually treated there.

NYC might have briefly reached herd immunity, and it was among the safer places to be until the Delta hit and derailed Biden's presidency. He could save it by rallying the country with the kind of tactic used so effectively by the Republicans to start unnecessary wars, except this time the war is necessary and it's to prevent death, not kill off the military in some country we've decided we don't like.

But that doesn't seem to be his style.

I wonder who's going to get tough with the Republicans, and how, and when.

What specifically are you saying Joe should do? I believe he should replace Garland and go full on after the fascists, etc. Speak louder and forcefully about politicians of BOTH parties who refuse to protect voting rights. I think he should sound like we are in an URGENT fucking situation.

Is that what you are talking about?

[ZoWie]

Yes, it's a matter of urgency, and the country's future is on the line. Covid is not a war, but it has the urgency of a war, and we need similar measures to cut red tape, mobilize responses, and rally the public to the common cause.

Much as I hate propaganda, I also know how to use it, and will if I have to. In this case, we are fighting disinformation as much as the virus itself, and disinfo is a lot easier to counter. You drown it out, and you make it unpatriotic to spread it, and even more unpatriotic to pose as a patriot while doing so.

This isn't some exotic science theory, it's politics, and everyone knows how to do it. The secret is motivation.

We can worry about voting rights and equality after we restore nerve and return to a more normal life in this country BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY. Do that, and it will become the Democratic century.

[Libertas]

Yes, it's a matter of urgency, and the country's future is on the line. It's not a war, but it has the urgency of a war, and we need similar measures to cut red tape, mobilize responses, and rally the public to the common cause.

Much as I hate propaganda, I also know how to use it, and will if I have to. In this case, we are fighting disinformation as much as the virus itself, and disinfo is a lot easier to counter. You drown it out, and you make it unpatriotic to spread it, and even more unpatriotic to pose as a patriot while doing so.

This isn't some exotic science theory, it's politics, and everyone knows how to do it. The secret is motivation.

Then we need to scream (I have been for years, but I have never really known how to direct it properly) so others hear and make change. WE could all right now contact our House member and our senators.

What can we do NOW?

[Libertas]

https://twitter.com/svdate/status/14780 ... 66572?s=20

cons here will ignore this, which is why America will die if it does

NEW -- Just days before the first anniversary of his attempt to end America's democracy, Trump announces his endorsement for the guy who is trying to end Hungary's.

From now on substitute GOP for trump, he is the GOP...but GOP members here will do nothing, say nothing. VERY BAD

[ZoWie]

Contact your House member and your Senators. Say you're sick of halfway measures in a historic pandemic, and your vote depends on who effectively confronts the problem. (We know the Republicans can't solve it with their current focus on disinfo, so it's a safe tactic.)

[Libertas]

Contact your House member and your Senators. Say you're sick of halfway measures in a historic pandemic, and your vote depends on who effectively confronts the problem. (We know the Republicans can't solve it with their current focus on disinfo, so it's a safe tactic.)

Good wording, I have contacted and will again.

See my post above.

[ZoWie]

Seen it. No surprise. We know what he thinks about democracy. (Hint: he's against it.)

[Libertas]

Seen it. No surprise. We know what he thinks about democracy. (Hint: he's against it.)

Sent a combo of your wording and mine to my House rep...sending to Senators next.


following is what i just wrote to one Senator, will copy paste to the other, what would you change?

I and MANY MANY of my democratic friends are sick of halfway measures in a historic pandemic, and our vote depends on who effectively confronts the problem.

And if trump isn't indicted, I see no way our democracy survives. If President Biden and others in the party dont AGGRESIVELY go after the virus with commercial flight restrictions and other restrictions commensurate with this pandemic, and if they dont AGGRESIVELY oppose the lying propaganda of the rightwing about the virus and masks, we dont know who we can vote for!

We are very frustrated that our reps are not LOUDER and ANGRIER than they are! We think our country is months away from massive unrest due to insurrectionist MAGA, do you? How seriously are YOU taking this? Can you get on TV and tell people how BAD things are PLEASE!

[marindem01]

Sent a combo of your wording and mine to my House rep...sending to Senators next.


following is what i just wrote to one Senator, will copy paste to the other, what would you change?

Senator Padilla is more open to this than Feinstein. She knows she is on her way out. People are lining up to primary her.

[Glennfs]

Senator Padilla is more open to this than Feinstein. She knows she is on her way out. People are lining up to primary her.

Feinstein should have retired and is a prime example along with many others on both sides of the isle why we need age limits. On all federal offices both elected and appointed including judges

[gounion]

Feinstein should have retired and is a prime example along with many others on both sides of the isle why we need age limits. On all federal offices both elected and appointed including judges

So are you for strengthening our Social Security and pension systems so that people can afford to retire young if they may live 40 years beyond retirement?