By spocko, on April 18th, 2014% From a great diary at Daily Kos. Industry Expert Says StopRush Has Destroyed Limbaugh’s Business For Good by Proglegs
Speaking yesterday on the Ed Schultz radio show, industry insider Holland Cooke credited a persistent online activist movement with completely destroying right wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s business model by using the very free speech that El Rushbo claims gives him carte blanche to do what he does.
The piece quotes Cooke on the Ed Show and discusses the lower ratings, Rush’s move to smaller stations and the impact of less income for Rush’s distributors and radio stations. Being the self important Vulcan I am, I commented on the piece and my role in the process that lead to this.
Discussing the article with my friend Jeff Tiedrich of the Smirking Chimp there was some confusion.
“Wait, how does losing advertisers result in fewer listeners? Seems to me they’re two different problems?”
I explained they they were indeed separate issues. I created the Spocko Method specifically to reduce revenue in an environment where the ratings wouldn’t necessarily be impacted by an action and could even increase the ratings because of controversy.
I know that when KSFO, Savage, Beck or Limbaugh . . . → Read More: The Magic and Beauty Of Hiding Behind Front Groups
By spocko, on April 9th, 2014% I know other folks have talked about this but I just heard most of the interview with the author of Dog Whistle Politics on the Bill Moyer’s show.
Two things struck me, This:
And, it’s important, because dog whistling is not about bigotry. It’s about the manipulation of bigotry. It’s about the manipulation of stereotypes.
And this:
The triumph of the civil rights movement is to teach us, to teach Americans that we’re all human, we’re all in this together.
It occurred to me that today’s conservative might not believe that we’re all human (I am only half after all.) But they clearly don’t believe we’re all in this together. Reagan, Rush, Ryan and the Randians keep saying that we are NOT all in this together.
The right can attack liberals 24/7, and they do. They don’t even have to dog whistle! I’ve read a couple of stories in Salon about people who felt they lost their parent to Fox News. That the parent attacked them for their ‘liberal values’
The author Ian Haney López points out how Reagan and his followers coupled the government with helping lazy black people. With dog whistle politics people vote against government because . . . → Read More: How They Use Dog Whistle Politics Against Liberals
By spocko, on April 7th, 2014% Senior Pentagon officials told Congress on Tuesday that troops are willing to sacrifice portions of their pay and benefits if it means keeping and improving the training and equipment needed to do their jobs. — Military.com
Right. Hmm. What was that phrase that everyone reflexively said before any criticism of the military on the run up to the Iraq war? “I don’t agree with invading Iraq but I support our troops!” It was used as a shield by liberals and democrats who were against the war. We used the phrase as an incantation to ward off the, “Hippies spit on returning Vietnam war troops!” myth.
My friend, who is former military, said that no enlisted person is going to complain to his superior officer in those meetings so we shouldn’t put too much value in those comments. It’s just a way to let Congress off the hook. But what I see in those “Senior Pentagon officials” comments are the grasping hands of war equipment makers and contractors.
If you want to cut the state budget in a way that the public will notice, you shut down the parks. If you want to cut down the war budget in the . . . → Read More: Generals Say Troops Understand Need for Pay Cuts
By spocko, on March 23rd, 2014% War activists, like peace activists, push for an agenda. We don’t think of them as activists because they rotate in and out of government positions, receive huge amounts of funding, have access to big media, and get meetings with top officials just by asking — without having to generate a protest first.
— War Activists by Dave Swanson
I remember after graduating from Star Fleet I took a job with one of the Big 8 Peace firms in San Francisco.
I was a junior analyst working on developing pro-peace material. Part of my job was booking our leading peace advocates on the Sunday morning talk shows. If it seemed like every Sunday you saw the same peace advocates ganging up in a four to one “discussion” with one war monger there was a reason. Unlike them, our people were well trained, articulate and buddies with all the producers and hosts. The media loved our men and women as guests. We booked everyone, from the red white and blue wearing men to the serious, hard-hitting realist female experts.
You know all those op-ed pro-peace articles you read in the editorial sections of the major media editorial . . . → Read More: Working at a Big 8 Peace Firm, a Look Back
By spocko, on March 13th, 2014% Don’t have time to read and dog ear the corners of books but want your friends to think you have?
Introducing the Heritage Foundation’s Freedom to Read ™ program.
Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner.Photo by Medill DC under Creative Common’s License
Starting this April The Heritage Foundation has teamed with AEI, AFP, Cato, Hoover Institute and the EIEIO Institute to offer you pre-owned and distressed books for your home!
Includes all the classics you never had time to read, but want to say you have like:
The Fountainhead! Atlas Shrugged! Saul Alinsky’s, Rules for Radicals! (They’ve read it, why can’t you say you have?)
Hot current books like:
The complete, “Killing Somebody” series by Bill O’Reilly!
Books you didn’t read in college but said you did like:
Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations!
Bills the liberals have tried to ram down your throat like:
The Gay Agenda Bill and the “Give Homos Special Rights Bill” The Affordable Care Act–all 906 pages! The bill that inspired the “Read the Bill!” chant!
For a low monthly fee we also send you Heritage, AEI, Cato and Hoover Institute books our experts turn out each month that you only hear about on Fox, Hannity . . . → Read More: Heritage’s Freedom To Read™ program
By spocko, on March 11th, 2014% I love a good publicity stunt. At the South By Southwest festival (SXSW) festival, Chaotic Moon Studio used a drone to taze an intern.
What I love about this stunt is that it was designed and developed to be the perfect news story and that William “Whurley” Hurley, chief innovation officer, understood that it would be a conversation starter.
Because military drones are a hot topic and SXSW is a large global event, Hurley said they decided to bring to life the “fantasy of some people and nightmares of others.”
“We wanted to have an educated, well-informed discussion about how people feel about this as a society, or whether you’re a police officer or private citizen,” Hurley said. – ABC News
So, maybe we should have that discussion.
If not now, then on April 5 at 2:00 pm Pacific when I will be holding a Book Salon at Fire Dog Lake with Daniel Suarez on his book “Kill Decision.”
This should give you time to get and read the book. Yes, it’s science fiction, but it raises a lot of questions and it is structured as a thriller, so . . . → Read More: Shock and Awe. Taser Drone Zaps Low Paid Worker
By spocko, on March 10th, 2014% After watching True Detective did you wonder what Rust Cohle would have to say about Matt McConaughey’s Oscar speech? Well wonder no more. Comedian and Filmmaker Katie Halper shows us.
McConaughey is a great actor, but we should give credit to Rust Cohle’s creator, the writer Nic Pizzolatto. I don’t know who wrote McConaughey’s Oscar speech, but Rust’s words are all Pizzolatto.
I loved this show. Wonderful writing, acting and cinematography. I haven’t really felt a sense of mood like this since “The Killing” and it was not a surprise to me that Pizzolatto was involved in writing that. That show is another one of my favorites. I could watch just the face of Mireille Enos, the lead in that show, for hours.
By spocko, on February 13th, 2014%
I often suggest to non-profits that they need to get some celebrity endorsement. People love celebrities. Celebrities love good causes. This is a great way to mix them together.
By spocko, on February 12th, 2014%
I recently attended the 3rd Annual 90-Second Newbury film festival in San Francisco. My personal favorite was this musical rendition of Charlotte’s Web to the Spiderman theme.
The event was wonderful, the films were fun and the hosts funny, but my favorite part was looking over at a couple of kids who made one of the films proudly raising their hands when asked if they had read another one of the Newbury winners. The festival is a program of the KidLit Foundation, an Illinois literacy nonprofit. It was hosted by authors James Kennedy and recent Newbery winner Katherine Applegate.
The next stop on the film Festival tour is Tacoma and Portland Washington on March 1 and 2 where they will show another 2014 90-Second Newbury winner. The Olde Tobacco Shoppe. The plot? A five-year-old boy smokes some “magic tobacco,” has a bunch of hallucinations about sailing on a pirate ship and finding treasure. Hmmm, interesting choice out of Washington State.
. . . → Read More: Charlotte’s Web Characters As Singing Superheroes and Villains
By spocko, on February 11th, 2014% Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) on Sunday said Democrats are pushing poetry as an alternative to holding a job.
– By Megan R. Wilson The Hill, ‘Democrats pushing poetry over jobs?“
David Atkins, writing at Hullabloo, analyzes Gowdy’s response to the report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) on how people will respond to the Affordable Care Act in their work life.
Atkin’s piece is titled “Republicans do not understand what it means to be human” and it’s stellar. Here is an insightful paragraph.
It is not an inaccurate or extreme statement to declare that ideological Republicans do not understand what it means to be human. They view human beings as economic units to be plugged at their lowest possible price into a maximally efficient market that provides the greatest possible returns on investment to the wealthy few, with any resulting human resentment and misery dulled by humility before a pleasure-fearing angry God promising rewards to the obedient in the hereafter. It is a dark, meager, shriveled and cramped vision of humanity.
Read the whole piece it is excellent.
If you aren’t a good “economic unit” they think you should feel bad about it. And you certainly shouldn’t be enjoying it! . . . → Read More: Gowdy: “No poetry for you!” GOP’s Older Brother to Dem’s Prodigal Son.
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