I'm back 8^)

Well, it seems like forever since I last posted. I feel bad about it being so long... you know, fellow bloggers, that feeling you get, that you owe the world a daily post, and you feel pressured to provide it, and when you don't, you feel like you've let everyone down? Am I just crazy?

I tried several times to post a Youtube video, but I keep getting an error message and it won’t work (aauugghh!). Is it just me? I welcome any helpful hints here.

I have so many idea-inspiring links saved that there is no way I could possibly get them all organized and written about. I mean, piles and piles of ‘em, mountains of ‘em, folders stuffed with ‘em. But that's okay. I'll just jump back in with some free-form stream-of-consciousness commentary, just like the good old days.

One thing that has happened while I have been away is that Sacramento Ca, the capitol city of a state that is regarded as one of the nation’s most liberal, lost Air America. Lost it! That means I don’t get to listen to Randi Rhodes at lunchtime anymore, which I used to enjoy a lot.

Sacramento has had major problems delivering Air America from the beginning. Again, this should not have been the case here on the blue left coast. It started out okay, but it was on a station with a very weak signal, so it was quite hard to pull in most of the time. Still, I loved listening to Rachel Maddow et al in the morning, etc.. Then, they suddenly dropped that station, and jumped to another. They compounded things by not broadcasting Air America stuff all the time, replacing it with local programming. They also made asinine decisions like replacing Rachel Maddow with Jerry @$%#! Springer. Stupid. It was just a downward spiral from there. Finally, AAR tanked in Sac.

Air America’s failure in the Sacramento market was like a gift from heaven to local right-wing commentators. It was mortifying… it seemed to validate all the Rush O’Hannity bullshit about how progressive talk is doomed to failure in this country. Maybe they’re right. Maybe we’re in too much of a minority. Or, maybe their audience listens to the radio, while ours concentrates on the internet. Who knows?

The good news is that the original station, the one that AAR was on before the switch, remains true to their progressive roots, and carries Mike Malloy (go, truthseekers!).

So, lately I have tuned in a couple of times to rightwing talk radio to see what they’re up to. Yikes. I’ll tell you what: if we were judged on debate points, we would have no worries at all. For example, I listened to Michael Medved, a right-winger who fancies himself to be quite “fair and balanced,” and whose show I supposedly one famous for allowing honest debate.

During a call-in show about impeachment of “president” (sic) Bush, what do you suppose his response was to those calling for Bush’s impeachment? You guessed it: “If you’re going to go back and retroactively impeach presidents,” (employing the metaphysical strategy that one reason not to impeach Bush is because his actions took place in the past), “why not go back and look at Clinton?” oh, yes, he did, “because [he did this and he did that and blah blah blah]…”

I had to laugh. The theme of the program was that impeachment of Bush was a bad idea propagated by “Bush-haters”. And his defense was that it isn’t fair to impeach Bush after Clinton did all those horrible things. I wanted to say, “Dude, guess what: Clinton is not president anymore! You had your chance while you were impeaching him for that other stuff… what, eight years ago?! It’s over!” Or, as the right-wingers love to say, “Get over it!”

And, it goes on. I have no progressive talk radio where I live. Pity me.