Month: May 2013

Obama’s Too Nice to People Who Want to Destroy Him

Buck Banks

All of these things we’ve said about what the president could do, should do, might have, could have, but the central thing to keep in mind is his opponents — you talk about taking them out to dinner, making nice with them — these people, politically, want to cut his heart out and throw his liver to the dogs.

— Dan Rather, in an interview on the Chris Matthews Show.

Rush’s Boss to Limbaugh: Don’t Let the Door Hit You

Trish

Rush Limbaugh’s big fat feelings might be hurt, and he is considering leaving the distributor of his show over it. Cumulus Media, which contracts with Limbaugh, is blaming reduced company revenues on last year’s boycott of advertisers on Rush’s show. The boycott was called after Limbaugh labled a “slut” the lone female who provided testimony to a Congressional committee examining insurance company coverage of birth control.

Although several dozen advertisers either permanently left the show or suspended their ads until the dust settled, Rush at the time described the situation this way.

“That’s like losing a couple of French fries in the container when it’s delivered to you at the drive-through,” Limbaugh said. “You don’t even notice it.”

But to Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey, the advertiser stampede must have been more like more being shorted the fries AND the burger, being left with the ketchup packets and the soft drink.

In an August 2012 earnings call, Dickey said Cumulus’s top three stations had lost $5.5 million, in part because of the boycott. In a March 2013 earnings call, Dickey said the company’s talk radio side had “been challenged… due to some of the issues that happened a year ago.”

Rush could actually be right that Cumulus Media’s losses aren’t all his fault. In addition to his show, the company carries The Mike Huckabee Show and The Huckabee Report, Focus on the Family “Commentary,” and The Savage Nation. I don’t know about you but I sure wouldn’t want to advertise on any of those shows.

No Democrats Spoke at the NRA Convention

Buck Banks

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Number of Democrats who spoke at the National Rifle Association’s 2013 annual convention. “In an indicator of the continued influence of the nation’s largest gun-owners’ group, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, and other Republican politicians addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting in Houston Friday, celebrating the defeat of gun legislation in the Senate, assailing the media, and offering a strong defense of the powerful lobbying organization,” NBC News reports.

Meat Me in the Turkey Burger Aisle — in a Hazmat Suit

Trish

Sadly, it would take generous definitions of most of the nouns and verbs in that sentence for it to be accurate.

— Tom Laskawy, writing for Grist, about proposed new regulations for the handling of poultry carcasses that would depend even more heavily on chemical washing to avoid contamination. The sentence Laskawy referred to said the new regs would, “further the agency’s transformation to focus solely on public health and help address the challenge we have to reduce foodborne illness” and comes at the same time as a Consumer Reports finding that, despite the carcasses being washed in chlorine and other toxins, all 257 samples of ground turkey tested from different supermarkets showed the presence of fecal bacteria, staph, or salmonella.