I've always thought Jon Caldara was wasting his time, in terms of advancing his political agenda, by spending three hours a day, from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m., doing his KOA talk radio show.
You'd think he could find a better way to advance evil for three hours every do, wouldn't you?
Now Caldara, who's the President of the libertarian Independence Institute, will have those three hours back, since KOA terminated his radio talk show, in favor of a faceless national feed.
Talk radio is, basically, an entertainment medium, and it was proven Wednesday night on the stage of, appropriately enough, the Comedy Works in conservative Greenwood Village, where Denver's top talk-show hosts squared off in hyped "battle."
You'd expect to get plenty of meaninglessness from a two-hour event featuring 10 yappers skilled at yapping plus two moderators.
I mean, what were they thinking? How could a panel of 10 normal people converse intelligently in such a setting much less 10 talk-radio hosts?
And sure enough, it was pretty stupid-and yet enjoyable, to an extent.
WetherDem noted Jon Caldara's lies passed on by The Denver Post in a recent article about Occupy Denver. Caldara gets off several obfuscations in just a few sentences that the Denver Post writer dutifully cut and pasted from Caldara's press release.
Probably the clearest explanation for the Occupy Wall Street protests has been coming from Jesse LaGreca who also blogs at Kos as Ministry of Truth. Here he is again explaining how the interests of Wall Street are systematically crushing the lives of Middle Class Americans -- the 99% of us who don't have Lobbyists or the cell phone numbers of our leaders -- and how big-time media types like Caldara, Mike Rosen, Rosen enlisting a dick army, and reporters at The Post don't yet have a clue (or pretend not to) about the reasons for the growing national protest:
Caldara has many platforms from which to spread his lies, either as the President of the Conservative-Corporate-funded Independence Institute (nice MySpace page, dude!), or as a long-time employee of the largest beneficiary of the FCC's generosity with our Publicly Owned airwaves via Clear Channel radio. The Post gave him a free pass once again, but we should all know that if Caldara's saying he's against it, then it's probably good for our Democracy and good for the 99% of us who don't fit into Caldara's world view. And, if the Post doesn't bother to check it, it's probably full of lies.
I've heard a lot and read a little about the Occupy Wall Street groups that obviously started in New York City but have quickly spread to metropolitan areas across the U.S. since September. A couple of things I read today warrant a small piece of my attention away from more homework than I know what to do about.
Distinctions are drawn by liberals between the origins of the anti-Wall Street drive, which they say is more spontaneous and authentic than a Tea Party movement boosted into existence by Fox News, a favored news source for conservatives. Another difference: Tea Party followers were focused on one issue - cutting government spending - while Occupy Wall Street is amorphous in its aims.
Beyond that, there are broad similarities. Both movements are decentralized and nonhierarchical, driven largely by an alienated and outraged citizenry that favors the same two-word phrase: fed up.
What happened to the United States on 9/11 was no simple thing. It was an enormous tragedy that played out over several states and touched millions of lives. The impact was deep, immediate, and painful. It was an acute infection of horror.
What happened in the wake of 9/11 was something altogether different. In the end, it's what came after that is the biggest cause of prolonged suffering.
As awful as 9/11 was, it was not a threat to our survival as a nation, not a threat to our ability to project American power around the world, not a threat to our economy, not a threat to our freedoms. However, our response to 9/11 endangered all those things. It still does. Like an immune system eating itself from the feet up, we've surrendered thousands of lives, expended trillions of dollars both at home and abroad, abandoned friends, embraced enemies, and tolerated previously intolerable insults to privacy.
Having recently joined the ranks of "business travelers" I can agree with this wholeheartedly.
But instead of fixing TSA* or addressing the abuses of our liberties put into place by Karl Rove and George Bush and willingly implemented by numbskulls like Michael Chertoff and Tom Ridge we waste time fighting about The President's birth certificate and other mind-numbing trivialities that generate viewers and page hits.
The answer is yes, Osama bin Laden did exactly what he wanted to the United States and its citizens with the attacks on 9/11. Republicans enabled his win almost every step of the way. Democrats sat impotent and mute as all this happened, and every flight we get on our belts and iPhones and shoes and change and underwear must be checked. And some poor, innocent schlub gets frisked by 4 TSA agents to top off the humiliation with a giant violation of the 4th Amendment, which you'll never hear civil rights activists and government reformers like Jonny Caldara or Mike "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job" Brown complain about (surprise!).
Thanks alot, guys, for making OBL's dream come true before his very eyes.
* - Didn't even know the TSA certified a union. I guess this counts as a tiny win for citizens and a big FU to Senator Jim Demint.
