Liberal talk comes to Armed Forces Radio

The military will finally get some relief from the constant barrage of hate and misinformation from the likes of the drug addled gas bag Rush Limbaugh when liberal talk is added to the Armed Forces Radio Network (AFRN).

A PowerTalk line up of some of the most dynamic liberal talkers will hit AFRN airways in mid- to late October, and it will feature Ed Schultz, Bill Press, Thom Hartmann and Stephanie Miller. The line up is part of the Dial Global personalities that will also include conservative host Neal Boortz.

The Armed Forces Radio serves about 800,000 American military personnel worldwide with programming and news, as well as their families, providing a link back home for the men and women of the Air Force, Navy, Marines, Army, Coast Guard and more.

Vote for the top liberal talk show host of 2009

Like you, I love listening to liberal talk radio, when I can find it, but who are the best liberal talkers? The blog LTR: The Alternative Media Resource, is again running its annual contest to pick the top 10 liberal talk radio hosts.

The contest is pretty simple. Just go to the blog, and pick your top 10 from the list provided. The polls are open now until midnight on Christmas Eve. The results will be announced on the blog on January 1, 2010. So vote today.

Last year’s winner was Mike Malloy, followed very closely by Air America host Sam Seder and –one of my favorites – Thom Hartmann. In the early voting MSNBC and Air America host Rachel Maddow has an early big lead at 63 percent. She finished fifth last year. My favorite, Stephanie Miller, finished fourth last year, but is in sixth to date with a respectable 25 percent of the vote.

If nothing else, you will discover a great blog that does an excellent job of covering liberal talk, and it has links so you can listen to a wide variety of liberal and progressive hosts. Unfortunately, that’s the only way many of us can find quality talk radio.

Here in Michigan we live in a state that has been blue since 1992, but for some unknown reason there is only one station in mid- and Southeast Michigan that carries liberal and progressive talk on a regular basis.

We already know conservative hatemongers enjoy an unfair monopoly on talk radio, thanks, primarily, to media consolidation that has five mega companies owning almost off the 257 talk radio stations in the country. There are 10 hours of conservative talk for every one hour liberal talk. That’s not only unacceptable, but it makes no sense.

Former media darling McCain acts like jilted boyfriend

Grampy McSame campaign surrogate Phil Graham was half right with his disgusting comments that the U.S. is a nation of whiners, but he must have had his employer in mind when he made the ridiculous comment.

A McCain rant hit my email inbox today, and Grampy McSame is up in arms because he claims the “media is in love with Barack Obama.” The email claims “It's pretty obvious that the media has a bizarre fascination with Barack Obama. Some may even say it's a love affair.”

That got the rightwing echo machine revved up, and rightwing think tanks and organizations are picking up this theme, and the crying and whining can be heard coast-to-coast. The Communications Director for the rightwing propaganda machine the Media Research Center was on the Thom Hartman show today, and I thought he was going to come unhinged trying to get his talking points out. He was engaging in the Republican tactic of screaming over every one else to get his talking points out. It was his claim that this is proof of the myth – effective political strategy actually – of the liberal media. To me, I would prefer the media cover Grampy McSame more because his constant gaffs are rarely covered or are passed off as “senior moments” are going uncovered.

It sounds more like jealously from Grampy. He has courted the media over the years, and he is angry at being jilted. He was the media darling in 2000, and he sounds like a jilted boyfriend.

Hartman, who has to be the smartest man in the world, broke it down very simply. Network news stations, and most media outlets, are for-profit entities owned by a few mega corporations. That’s why the media is conservative. The simple fact is they want to increase their ratings because increased ratings means more profit and more profit means more profit to stockholders. It seems logical that they want to cover what people want to see.

“There going to follow the rock star instead of the boring, old man,” Hartmann said.

The media Research Center is launching a letter-writing campaign aimed at GE stockholders, owners of NBC, to alert them of this alleged love affair with Obama. I don’t think that will work. If you want to spur them to action, show them they are losing money by covering Obama and you will get results.

General Electric: now there’s a liberal corporation.