This is the follow-up to http://www.dailykos.com/...
If reading this disgusts you as much as listening to it disgusted me, then join us at http://www.mediaactioncenter.net/ , sign our petition to the FCC, and help us fight back against hateful one-sided propaganda on OUR public airwaves!
Wednesday 5/16:
Today we had a very special guest, none other than the Divider-and-Conquerer In Chief himself, Governor Scott Walker.
Among Walker's many nuggets of duplicity: He's put "more money into the classroom, more money into badgercare."
Not exactly.
http://political-heat.blogspot.com/...
His excuse for why WI isn't doing better? "The recalls are holding businesses back." i.e, the good old reliable "uncertainty" excuse.
But it makes no logical sense. Let's say I'm one of those 95% of business owners that Walker claims are on his side. If I'm uncertain what the business climate will be like after Walker's recalled, and I want to keep Walker in, then I'm gonna hire as many people as I can right now so Walker's job numbers look good and he stays in power. The last thing I'd do is wait until after the recalls to hire people knowing that doing so would hurt my guy's chances of winning. Pretty stupid.
"Only Louisiana has done better for business."
Wow, he actually said that?!? He holds up "right-to-work-for-less" Louisiana as an example of success? I think that reveals a lot more than he intended.
Then, as always, Walker includes lots of incessant hypocritical BS about "out of state big government union bosses...pouring money in" and "influence coming from out of state." Do Walker fans still not know that 70% of HIS money is coming from out of state? How is Walker able to get away with hypocrisy so brazen, so craven, so cynical? Is his fanbase that willfully ignorant? Is their Scott-holm Syndrome that severe?
In the show's final segment, Belling repeated the tired GOP lie that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac started the housing crisis and private lenders only hopped on the gravy train under pressure from the big bad government, when the true chain of events is the EXACT OPPOSITE!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
http://truth-out.org/...
http://www.cjr.org/...
http://www.politifact.com/...
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Thursday 5/17:
Program Director Jerry Bott subbed for the Bellower today and wouldn't you know it, he's just as vile and repugnant as Mark. Peas in a pod, those two. It's almost as if they were reading from the same playbook. Oh wait,...they are.
If anything, Bott's even worse. Where Belling will occasionally take detours into sports or other side topics, Bott spewed nothing but witless anti-Barrett, anti-liberal, anti-union bile for almost the whole 3 hours.
Including this misdiagnosis: "people in the squishy middle are starting to look at the results of the Walker reforms and they're liking those results" and "people have seen the positive effects" of collective bargaining reforms.
No, Jerry, there are no positive results for them to see. If they're starting to favor Walker, it's only because your pro-Walker BS is all they ever hear. No one outside of Dane county is getting alternative arguments on the radio. But you knew that already, as you go on to say: "talk radio does have an effect."
Well, which one is it, Jerry? Is Walker getting support from independents because they see results or because you're brainwashing them?
Then Bott pulls the same cowardly trick Belling has used before. He tells his audience that liberals can't defend their arguments yet never dares have an actual liberal on the show for debate, because then he'd be exposed as a liar. "It's hard to defend socialist liberalism because it's so expensive and it doesn't work."
1. It actually does work, and has been proven to work, unlike the nonsense "free-market" fantasies you sociopaths peddle, which has failed over and over and over again. FDR's New Deal reforms produced 30 years of the greatest economic growth the world had ever seen. We'd still be on that path now if the trickle-down/supply-side/"free-market" con artists hadn't started taking over in the mid 70's.
2. Liberalism is actually very easy to defend. And if Bott ever allowed a liberal on his station, his audience would see that. I emailed Bott about this (I share our interesting email exchange here: http://www.dailykos.com/... ).
Later, Bott returns to the latest Marquette poll and uses it's results to assert that a "vast majority of Wisconsinites now agree with Walker" on collective bargaining.
You're not too good at math, are you, Jerry?
Here's the poll results:
http://law.marquette.edu/...
50 to 43% on collective bargaining. Since when does 50% constitute a vast majority?
Then Bott cries crocodile tears that big, mean, bully Tom Barrett has "thrown nothing but negative attacks on Scott Walker."
So all of Walker's horrible Barrett-bashing ads don't count as negative attacks? Seems you Rethugs can dish it out but you can't take it.
Then Bott crows about the latest fake news lighting up the far-right twittersphere: Obama's budget lost in the senate 99 to 0! "Obama's budget was moronic", says Bott, who wonders, "Is Obama even too radical for his own party?" Wow, sounds pretty damning. So I did a google search. The first 3 pages were all filled up with right-wing blogs and websites gloating about this and how it proves that even the Dems hate Obama's budget plans.
But turns out, Surprise! Surprise!, it's a big, fat lie.
http://www.businessinsider.com/...
- I finally found this on the 4th page of google results and I'd bet that in a few days Factcheck and Politifact will have pieces exposing it as well. But by the time that happens, the right's lie factory will have moved on to a new set of deceptions. It's like Mark Twain said, "A lie makes it half way around the world before the truth puts on it's pants."
Finally, Bott imagines the questions he thinks a fair unbiased media should ask Tom Barrett. Questions like
1. "Would you agree this jobs report is good news?" (Walker's report claiming 23,000 new jobs),
2. "Would you admit Wisconsin had job growth on your opponent's watch?", and
3. "Does it neutralize the central theme of your campaign?"
I'm not Tom Barrett, but here's how I'd answer these questions: To 1 and 2, even if Walker's version is 100% true, it's still not good news. 23,000 new jobs is still less job creation than the previous year under Doyle!
http://dwd.wisconsin.gov/...
(scroll down to the bottom, and remember, these are Walker's own numbers!)
Which then answers #3: No, far from neutralizing Barrett's campaign theme, it strengthens it!
Thanks for playing, Jerry. Try again. (but please learn a few facts first)
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Friday 5/18
Belling's fill-in today was Ted Kanavas, who is Wisconsin co-chair of Romney For President (along with Alberta Darling).
Nothing much to report, just the usual generic GOP cheerleading. And, not surprisingly, he spent a good chunk of the show, including the entire last hour, promoting Romney.
The Romney talking point/lie that Obama's policies have "increased the national debt by five trillion dollars.” was repeated several times.
Debunked here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
and here:
http://www.politifact.com/...
and here:
http://econopolitics.com/...
and here:
http://www.attackwatch.com/...
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Monday 5/21:
After you listen to any right-wing hack radio show for a couple weeks or more you start to realize just how short on inspiration, creativity, and material in general these blowhards are. As they just spend most of each show recycling the same talking point crap they used on previous shows over and over again. But I guess this is the red meat their primary audience loves to be spoonfed. Monday's show was no exception.
Belling spent most of the first hour getting all righteously indignant at (yet again, yawn) those "out of state people" organizing people to vote, "armies of union and liberal employees", "Democrats have all these paid staffers", "so many of these paid people from out of state."
The Koch-fueled hypocrisy here is so blatant, so shameless, so craven, it's a wonder Belling can even stand himself. (hence my theory that Belling and those like him are sociopaths)
Then Belling adds the icing to his bullshit cake with "there isn't that kind of network apparatus, literally paid employees, to do this kind of stuff" on the GOP side.
Are there people from out of state helping the Dems? Sure. Are some of them paid? Yep. But the vast majority are unpaid volunteers and the vast majority are Wisconsinites. Meanwhile, the GOP has plenty of paid staffers, many of which are also from out of state:
http://host.madison.com/...
And last time I checked, Chris Christie and Bobby Jindal are from out of state but Walker fans never seem to mind them meddling in Wisconsin's affairs when they come to support Walker.
So sorry, Mark, that (under)dog don't hunt.
In the words of visiting South Carolina GOP Governor (and avowed "union buster") Nikki Haley: "Walker's fight isn't just about the state of Wisconsin."
Unless, I guess, you're anti-Walker, and then you're suddenly not allowed to care if you're from another state?
And the fact that 2/3rds of Walker's campaign money is coming from out of state doesn't seem to bother Belling at all.
http://www.forbes.com/...
But a few concerned out-of-staters helping the Dems is a sinister democracy-corrupting conspiracy, and worth getting apoplectic about.
Yeah, no hypocrisy there, right?
Later...
"Democrats have no argument against Scott Walker" (another oft-repeated Belling cliche).
Then why are you afraid to have them on your show, Mark? If they have no argument, it should be easy for you to make mincemeat of them live on air for the amusement of your faithful audience. But instead, you screen their calls and refuse to put them on the air. Belling = Coward.
But he's tricked his audience to believe the opposite, that he'd love to take calls from liberals but we're just too afraid to call in. This scumbag truly has no shame. That's why we need to expose him! (details below)
Then MB, like all his fellow Decepti-Cons, tries to have it both ways on the jobs issue. Bad news for jobs - Obama's blamed. Good news for jobs - Walker's credited. In response to some bad job numbers today, "Everyone knows jobs are more a factor of the national economy."
Just one problem with that, slick. The national numbers are doing much better than Wisconsin's!
http://www.wisconsinbudgetproject.org/...
D'oh!
BTW, is it in Belling's contract to say "collective bargaining is a glorious success" at least once a show?
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Tuesday 5/22, Wednesday 5/24, Thursday 5/24:
These 3 days have been virtually interchangeable. Lots of urging people to get out and early vote for Walker mixed with intense hatred of unions, Barrett, Obama, and Dems engaged in "rampant voter fraud". And almost nothing else.
It's gotten incredibly boring as he just keeps repeating the same nauseating nonsense each show.
And righties think this stuff succeeds because it's more entertaining than liberal talk?
From a purely objective standpoint, the average Stephanie Miller or Thom Hartmann show is 10 times more entertaining and 10 times more diverse in subject matter than this hack.
Among his pearls of wisdom:
Unions are "evil" and "reprehensible", and unions in WI are on a "remarkably obnoxious tantrum" because they're all just "lazy thugs".
And unlike those "obnoxious protests at the capital", there's "almost no irresponsible behavior" from the Tea Party. The "divisiveness is all coming from one side": "the lefties".
Because it's certainly not Scott Walker's doing. "Scott Walker is an incredibly courageous guy" who "has carried himself so admirably". Unlike those ""brutal, bullying, creepy" lefties.
"The Democrats don't have an issue" because "everybody knows Act 10 has
been a resounding success" and thanks to Walker, Wisconsin is now "outperforming the national economy".
2008 was "the peak election for voter fraud". "It was out of control" and "Democrats have a 2% fraud factor" because "fraud is part of the Democratic playbook".
"1 out of 50" Democratic votes is fraudulent. Belling's proof? He admits he has none. "You can't catch it". Well, isn't that convenient?
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Friday 5/25:
Belling did a section today that alluded to Media Action Center w/o mentioning us or our action by name. You can hear the podcast here:
http://www.belling.com/...
The segment runs from 3:38 - 18:22
He reads through the Top Talkers list at
http://www.talkers.com/...
and spins it to suggest that "Nobody can stand to hear a liberal talk."
He alludes to our efforts to get more Democrat and liberal voices on the radio around 13:00.
How does he know about this?
"I read the liberal blogs."
So why no liberals on Milwaukee radio?
"If they thought they could put liberals on and get listeners they'd do it."
As John McLaughlin used to say,
WRONG!
Thom Hartmann, Stephanie Miller, Alan Colmes, and Ed Schultz are all very successful liberal talk shows that do very well in the markets where they're given airtime. In fact, as Belling even admits, they are all in the Top 20 largest political talk radio audiences in the country. What Belling conveniently forgets is that this is despite having less than 1 station to every 10 right-wing stations!
In some markets, they even outperform Rush and Hannity.
So from a purely market-driven perspective, Liberal Talk works and there should be MORE of it!
The reason these station owners and managers don't broadcast liberal talk is because they are more concerned with pushing their right-wing pro-corporate agenda on the voting public than they are in serving market demand.
If they have to, they're even willing to lose money in media so that their agenda can be promoted, thus increasing profit margins in their other non-media holdings.
Everyone knows, for example, that FOX lost $90 million a year for it's first 5 years. And as recently as 2008, parent company News Corp lost $30 billion! So why haven't they gone the way of Air America? Because they have unlimited pockets and they see radio propaganda as an investment tool to help Republicans win elections, a "loss leader" if necessary.
They even admit it here!:
http://news.heartland.org/...
Belling finishes with, "I wish we'd get an all-liberal station in Milwaukee", presumably so he can gloat about how poorly he expects their ratings would be.
This might be a perfect opportunity to pressure him to invite Dems or liberals on for debate. After all, if our arguments are so weak and easy to refute, what does he have to lose?
Help me put the pressure on!
email:
markbelling@clearchannel.com
and his Program Director and occasional guest host:
JerryBott@ClearChannel.com
snail mail:
12100 W. Howard Avenue
Greenfield, WI 53228
Or call Mark's show between 3-6pm central time:
414-799-1130
http://www.newstalk1130.com/...
You don't have to debate the issues yourself if you don't want to. Just ask him why he'll talk smack about liberals but won't allow liberal guests on to defend themselves or allow liberal callers through. What is he afraid of?