Happy 2008!
There will be no show on either Monday or Tuesday, as we enjoy our last official holidays before Memorial Day. We’ll have “Best of” segments playing those two days and be back on Wednesday with original programming. Dawn Legg from Code Pink is visiting from Italy where she has been studying and will be among the Wednesday guests. We’ll have our 16th anniversary show on Monday, January 7th and Jerry Lenthall is slated to join us on Friday, January 11th.
Good segment today with SLO city councilmember Paul Brown. I’ve been in this town 20 years and it’s always interesting to watch the on-going debate as to whether or not not SLO fast food restaurants should be allowed to have drive-through windows. SLO is the only place in the county with such a ban. Apparently it dates back to the early ’80s. I’ve never understood the ban since we do allow drive-up windows at banks. It seems inconsistent, but Paul seemed in no hurry to remove the ban.
Meanwhile, on the national stage, we prepare for Iowa on Thursday. The CNN poll showing Hillary with a double-digit lead seems ludicrious–every other poll shows a tight three-way contest between Clinton, Obama and Edwards. Huckabee and McCain have the “Big Mo” on the Republican side. Thompson seems dead in the water. Can Guliani be far behind?
Please be safe this New Year’s Eve. Don’t drink and drive. And have a Happy 2008 from Dave and Matt!
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The Dave Congalton Show 
happy new year
Happy New Year, and, to give January 1st a little more meaning, there are from this date forward only 385 more days before George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States of America. It would seem at this point that the only real discussion about who is going to be the next President is whether or not we get a “Corporatist” Democrat, a “Centrist” Democrat, or a true Democrat. As for the Republicans, pluuease, it is as though they are in a race to see who can be in last place. Oh well, Happy New Year anyway.
Dave,
Happy New Year!
I used to get your podcasts automatically on my laptop because I subscribed to it..but have not gotten any since the ownership change. Did the URL change? Please respond… (I can’t get your radio signal at work because the walls are too thick–but I was always able to listen to your shows one day later because of the podcasts). But now I can’t even do that. Help! Thanks.
What part of predator don’t you, self professed lack of knowledge, understand. You say your not simple minded, yet you object to the word nuisance. When you hit a bear with a car on 101 the possibility that an innocent person, or people could be killed or maimed. How many babies are killed each year from abortion? Does it bother you that a person will kill an innocent child, just because it is a woman’s choice?
Get real Dave, at least there are people that have the courage to take away a bear, mountain lion, wolf, or coyote that does have a real possibility to kill or maim a child, hiker, or perhaps even you. What part of a legal hunt don’t you understand. Why, especially when you don’t understand, should you care what responsible people do? Just how does it do damage to you?
To Anonymous:
Thanks for your question about the podcasts. Yes, it is still a “work in progress” under El Dorado. Tristan Negranti is in charge of podcasts and he is on vacation until Monday. Feel free to ask him directly at tristannegranti@edbroadcasters.com.
To Scott H:
I’m going to guess that the “Best of Dave” that played yesterday dealt with the hunting of bears being considered within the county. As I recall, the VAST majority of callers were opposed to this, including Paul from Pozo, the most experienced hunting voice in the conversation.
But thanks for starting 2008 off on such a positive, upbeat note.
Iowa will break out this way:
Huckabee folds as everyone realizes what a Jesus nutjob he is. Romney wins on the Republican side because of all the $$$$ he spent.
Obama takes out Clinton and then things really get nasty in New Hampshire.
Concur with Chuck.
Iowa finishes will break this way:
Republican: Romney, Giuiliani, Huckabee
Democrat: Obama, Edwards, Clinton
But the most important result will be University of Kansas – 38 Virginia Tech – 24 in the Orange Bowl
I will try one more time. The last two entries for your blog never got published. I did not think that they were negative or derogatory in any way, but something must have been wrong with them as they never got on.
I want to wish you and yours and all of the listeners a Happy New Year and a wonderful 2008.
Tom
We apparently still have some kinks on the system as we switch over from Clear Channel to El Dorado. If you’re posting stuff and it’s not appearing, please email me directly:
davecongalton@edbroadcasters.com
In terms of Iowa, it looks like Obama has the big Mo, but is that a good thing?
I thought McCain was coming on strong, but the national media seem to be focusing on Romney, so looks like he’s the man.
Here is my take on the top candidates of each party:
In reality, there is barely an ounce of difference between the top tier Democrats. All of their proposals would bankrupt the government if enacted and their proposals are anti-capitalist and very pro-socialist.
Clinton is a quasi-solcialist running on a record that is her husband’s with credentials she didn’t earn. She doesn’t answer questions with straight answers the first, second or even the fifth time she is asked. Now, she is not even taking questions at all in Iowa. When cornered, she lets loose that cackle reminisient of the Wicked Witch of the West and then proceeds to answer a different question, one she must have heard in her ear bud. She is the media candidate of inevitability but is truly just an empty pants-suit. The other thing that totally turns me off about Hillary is that she is the most cold caculating candidate out there. I do not beleive that anything happens in the Clinton campaign without Hillary’s direct yes or no on the subject.
Obama is running on the fact that is has almost no experience in Washington. The only time he got any bump in Iowa was when Oprah started campaigning for him. He is duller then pond water and is easily thrown off message by the Clinotn campaign. However, the Clintons must be worried about him or else they wouldn’t have tried to slander him with the “Did Obama sell drugs” notion thaty Clinton’s top New Hampshire operative (and husband of Jeanne Shaheen, Senator from N.H.). I believe that the Clinton’s are afraid of Obama because he infringes on the “first person ever” label as the first black man to be seriously considered as a candidate from either party (Keys, Jackson, Sharpton, Mosely-Braun were not even second tier candidates). I think that if he were to get the nomination, he would be easily tripped up by a Republican candidate with even a modicum of foreign policy experience.
Edwards is the hypocracy candidate. He has lived exactly 180 degrees out of phase with rhetoric he expouses. He has been a trial lawyer and a hedgefund manager, neither of which should give him credibility with that second America he keeps talking about. I would guess that Edwards is Bob’s candidate of choice since Edwards is the most stridently anti-corporation, anti-capitalist candidate out there. Edwards is the most telegenic candidate of either party, but he doesn’t seem to be resonnating with the public.
I would love to be able to talk about Bill Richardson as the most qualified candidate, but he comes across as very clumsy and scatterbrained in his debate answers. The most statesman-like and experienced candidate from the Dems is Joe Biden. He has a touching personal story of overcomingthe untimely death of his wife and raising his children alone after a devestating car crash. Unfortunately, Biden is more known for his verbal faux paxs (uncited Lincoln quotes and callig Obama “clean” and being long-winded) than he is for his experience or intellect. As a Republican, I could sleep soundly at night with Biden at the helm… but the media has already thrown their lot behind either Obama or Clinton as the “first X ever” candidates, so that will nev er happen.
The Republicans:
Romney is probably the most accomplished Chief Executive in the field. He was very successful in running ultra-liberal Massachussetts. He has experience with the Health-care emergency (not a “crisis”). He has fiscal experience with his rescue of the 2006 Olympics. Unfortunately for Mitt he has two big stikes: he has not always held the views he has now on the topics of immigration and abortion and he is a Mormon. As far as I can tell, Mitt’s positions have only changed once, making them more of a policy change than a flip-flop in the John Kerry vein. But the fact that they changed at all gives fodder to his opponents. Romney is probably the best candidate of either party with his executive experience. Romney has another advantage over the other Republicans: tons of cash. He has spent $6 million in Iowa, and with the turn out to be about 60,000 means he is spending about $10,000 per vote. Therefore there is no reason to not expect a Romney win in Iowa. With that momentum, and the proximaty of Mass to N.H., he should win in N.H. too, putting himself well on the way to the nomination.
Giuiliani has experience as Mayor of New York City, saving the city from the liberal abyss of decades of mismanagement and huge deficits under Democrat regimes. He gets a lot of credit for the 9/11 response, although guys like Bob from the other side of the country, will subscribe to any criticism to denigrate it. He has clearly articulated how he feels about the global jihadist threat and how he would handle it, formulated in the aftermath of 9/11. Rudy is most certainly qualified to be president, however his achilles heel is his liberal positions on gay marriage, abortion, immigration and his multiple marriages that don’t play well with the conservative base. With Rudy it becomes a trust issue; do we trust Rudy to actually appoint strict constructionist justices to the supreme court? That remains to be seen as the campaign season goes forward.
McCain: The first ‘maverick’ media darling of the Republicans. McCain has held positions 100% in conflict with the prevailing republican opinion. He is a founding memeber of the Gang of 14, that enables both parties to filibuster judges to the federal bench. He opposed the Bush tax cuts that has fuele the post-9/11recovey, regardless of what Bob says. McCain has sponsored the biggest infringement on Free Speech ever with the McCain-Feingold campaign bill (no “reform” present in this law at all). McCain created the Amnesty for illegal aliens bill that both Michele and I vehiminately opposed. If you hate Bush, you should hate McCain for creating the immigration bill that Bush wanted. McCain has a principled stance on torture that I respect but I also think is so broad that playing Quiet Riot for terrorists could be construde as torture under McCain’sdefinition. McCain has been unwavering in his support for the military and the military actions in Iraq, which has earned him scorn from the Code Pink types. On papaer, McCain should be the perfect Republican candidate, but his record makes him someone I would have a very hard time voting for if he was the Republican candidate for president. If it was McCain against anyone other than Hillary, I might actually vote Democrat, that is how much I don’t like McCain as a candidate.
Huckabee: the new flavor of the month for the MSM. His media darling status has materialized out of no where. Actually, it materialized out of Hope, Arkansas, also the hometown of Bill Clinton. He is a preacher, which he parades around like a Boy Scout merit badge. He was governor, like Clinton, plays an instrument on talk-shows, like Clinton, and is a closet liberal, like Clinton. He bumbles the calculating piece with his pseudo non-running of his negative attack ad on Romney. During the 2nd debate, I said that Huckabee is positioning himself as a V.P. contender, but the media is elevating him to top-teir status. I beleieve the media would love to see a Clinton-Huckabee candidate so as to position the weakest “top-tier” candidate for the massive media smackdown that would drop on him like a ton of bricks. theonly thing Huckabee has accomplished is a 120 pound weight loss. All of his fiscal accomplishments pail in comparison to Romney or Giuiliani (four times more people live in NYC and three times more people live in Mass than Arkansas).
I would like to support Fred Thompson, sho is probably most philosphically aligned with a Reagan Republican, but because he entered the race so late, I haven’t had the opportunity to vett his stances. If Thompson comes in less than second, I think he will drop out.
As I said, Romney is probably the best candidate from either party, but may be critically handicapped with his Mormonism and perceived flip-flopping.
It will be a Romney or Giuiliani versus Clinton or Obama for president.
As for Bob’s comment about Republicans trying to see who will come in last: what utter nonsense. Bob, and others, are still under this self-delusion that the 2006 mid-term was a repudiation of all Republicans. Nothing could be further from the truth. Once again, the 2006 election was first a repudiation of the corruption of some Republican members of Congress (e.g. Cunningham, Ney, De Lay, and Foley, et al), second a repudiation of the spend, spend spend, ways of the Republican controlled Congress and third, a deception whereas many freshmen Democratic Congressmen ran as more conservative than their Republican opponents. It is this win at any costs mentality that created a new faction in the Democrat party and has made the House unmanageable by Nancy Pelosi. Reid has a insignificant one vote majority on liberal policies and a stalemate on the Iraq War (thank you, Joe Liberman). Not a mandate by any stretch of the means. If there is another answer (other than the old and tired ‘Republicans’) why Reid and Pelosi have been beaten time and again by the “most unpopular and incompetent president of our life time”, I am ready to hear it. Fact is that the American people don’t support the Democrat/Socialist/American humiliation agenda or else there would have been the Amnesty Bill that Reid wanted, we would have been out of Iraq in the first 100 hours of this Congress as Reid and Pelosi wanted, and they wouldn’t have the lowest approval ratings in the history of our Republic. Reid and Pelosi wouldn’t need to bribe their members with $20 billion in pork to “do the right thing” with Iraq. Also, has anyone paid any attention to the 10,000 pork projects in the budget Bush just signed over the holiday? I guess not. A rude awakening is coming for you Democrats as word of the malfeasance and mismanagement and utter legislative incompetence gets out and comes home to roost.
Dave, I know Jerry Dagna is a friend of yours but you should hold him to the same standard you hold your other guests and callers. Jerry doesn’t like facts, he lives in his own little fantasy world, this is why he won’t go on the radio with SM Bill. I called your show last night and instead of making Jerry explain why he continues to lie over and over again, you covered for him and tried the excuse that he is just “obstinate”.
Jerry is not just stubborn and you know Jerry well enough to know he purposely advances lies to defend his personal dogma. He’s no better than the President of Iran, despite all the evidence, Abajenadad (I don’t know how to spell his name and I don’t think spell check will help) says the Holocaust never happened. So you tell me Dave, is the President of Iran lying or is he merely obstinate? Your friend Jerry is no different than those Islamic zealots he wants to kill.
I don’t blame you for putting Jerry on the radio, he’s provocative and more interesting than most or your guests. But when he’s on, don’t make excuses for him, he’s a big boy let him defend himself. And when Jerry lies or contradicts himself, I think it would be more interesting if you challenge him. I don’t watch or listen to Larry King, it’s extremely boring to hearing softball questions with no probing follow up questions…………But I do love your show, you do a great job providing a large cross section views.
The best thing about Obama is that he is the anti-Hilary. She is on her way out and we can all be thankful that we’ll not have to endure another “Clinton White House.”
They are master politicians, but it’s time for new leadership and the results from Iowa give me hope.
Dagna said it right-on the other night. Romney is a wack-jon Mormon. Putting him in the White House only legitimizes a glorified cult.
In my opinion, the anti-mitt statement above is in very questionable taste. Approval for what is in good & bad taste by the blog administrator appears to be highly uneven.
To me, the comments about Romney being a Mormon are consistent with the discussion with Jerry earlier this week. I don’t happen to share those viewpoints. I agree with the woman who called in an talked about the various LDS members of Congress, ranging from Hatch to Reid, who serve with distinction.
Having lived in Utah for a few years, I know firsthand that LDS members get a bad rap. Perhaps you sohuld focus your energy on refuting the argument instead of attacking me for allowing the anonymous post.
Dave,
Is Paul a friend of Bill??
He sounds mad that I caught bill in a bold faced lie on the air…
So much for no personal attacks on the blog.
As for me, I would not waste my time debating wacko bill on the air or anywhere else. It’s easier to go to the “dailykooks” or moveon websites and read his talking points there.
As on the show, when confronted with a valid question bill chokes or lies. He can only spew that which he is fed by the radial left.
But ya know ya got your enemy when they rant on about you…so from that perspective the score now stands:
Jerry @ 1
Bill @ 0
Paul @ -10
Thanks for the time on the air. I think the callers (most) were involved and ready to talk politics.
Jerry, you won’t debate SB because you don’t have the guts. It’s that simple. It’s easy to talk a bunch of sh…. when there is no one to call you on your BS. You know SB would wipe the floor with all your drivel so you’ll stay at home in AZ safe and confortable in your fantasy world. You’re just another chickenshit with a big mouth.
Jerry, it’s pretty obvious you talk a pretty tought talk but when it comes down to it you got nothing. What are you scared of?. With all your great an glorious knowledge you should be able to clean SB’s clock- so to speak. You’re not chicken are you?. What’s the worste thing that could happen. Oh, that’s right, everyone would realize “the emperor” wears no clothes.
Brent,
If you go back and listen you will see I cleaned SMBill’s clock in less that 2 minutes when I was on the show…He outright lied about reading Edward’s response that in fact did not exist.
Why would I come there to do that for 2 hours when it was like shooting fish in barrel over the phone in 2 minutes?
SMBill is his own worst enemy. Nobody will debate him because nobody takes him seriously.
Except maybe you and that, in itself, speaks volumes.
Jeri,
my understanding is that your debate will be “sponsored” and you will enjoy an all expenses paid weekend on the beautiful Central Coast for 2 hrs of your precious time.
I can’t believe you wouldn’t take the opportunity to thoroughly trounce a left leaning pinko communist wack job (that would be your thoughts) on the radio for a whole 2 hrs.
Unless of course you are skeeerrrred.
Brent,
Using the woman’s spelling of JERRY’s name? Nice. What’s next? You going to make fun of his mother or get into a “I know you are but what am I?” exchange?
Uh oh, the great Jerry Dagna is going to jail. Yippeeee!!!!.
It’s illegal to annoy
A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here’s the relevant language.
“Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
Brent,
All that means is that now SMBill will have to come out of the closet and reveal his true identity.
When that happens let’s see where the debate story goes.
As for going to jail…You really need a more grounded understanding of the American legal system.
Nobody is going to jail over anon comments in a blog. lol
Is this what ron paul supporters are all about? No wonder he is asking for his supporters to tone it down in public. You are all a huge embarrassment to him.
And when all he can gather is 1-3% of voters it seems yet once again you are in the very very small minority.
as Bob Marley said:
“Facts an’ facts, an’ t’ings an t’ings: dem’s all a lotta fockin’ bullshit. Hear me! Dere is no truth but de one truth, an’ that is the truth of Jah Rastafari. Da only truth is Rastafari. The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.”