Posted on 01/20/2008 1:49:50 AM PST by raccoonradio
Howie Carr weekly thread. Howie's columns and discussion of his radio show. We'll start with his Sunday Herald column. (Just think: who will raise a right hand to take the oath of office as President...a year from today?)
Evolution of a campaign: Huckster’ 08
By Howie Carr | Sunday, January 20, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
The end is near. That theme was no doubt a staple of the sermons of the Rev. Mike Huckabee, although the dope from Hope now refuses to release his fire-and-brimstone perorations.
But the polls before yesterday’s primary in South Carolina were a veritable Book of Revelations that his political Armageddon was just around the corner.
Too bad, because a come-from-behind victory by the former Arkansas governor would have put a real crimp into John McCain’s campaign as the candidates head south for the Florida primary on Jan. 29.
The Huckster was doing all right, I suppose, once one got off the main roads and into the red-dirt redneck districts where, as H.L. Mencken once put it, the howls of holiness are heard in the woods. But overall, the “Christian leader” seemed to know that the wheels were coming off his rusty pickup truck. On the Friday TV liveshots he looked spooked, like one of his favorite snakes had just bitten him.
Earlier in the week the Huckster promised to deport every illegal alien in the country - you know, the same criminals he’d been calling “children of God” a couple of weeks earlier.
It’s one thing to speak in tongues, it’s another to speak with a forked tongue. But his constituency doesn’t care. They just want to hold up John 3:16 signs in the end zone at football games during the point-after kick. For some of them, “Deliverance” isn’t a movie, it’s a way of life. They cheer at the end of “Easy Rider.” Teeth are considered an optional fashion accessory.
He won Iowa but it’s been downhill since then. The other GOP candidates have morphed into the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. He tried some affirmative action by hiring a Catholic as his campaign manager. But Ed Rollins turned out to be a loud-mouthed, over-the-hill dolt - a veritable Sgt. Carter to the Huckster’s Gomer Pyle.
Shazam, Sgt. Rollins, I think this here campaign is flat broke! Ain’t nobody throwin’ nothin’ into the collection plate. Do you think it’s too late for Jim Pinkerton to beg Newsday to give him back his column? It’s all ending rather badly, the way it did for William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes monkey trial.
The Huckster really jumped the shark this week when he attempted to win the trailer park vote by mentioning his deep appreciation for the taste of fried squirrel. He reminisced about his college daze at the Bible school, using a popcorn popper in the dorm to cook the rodents.
From a chicken in every pot to a squirrel in every popcorn popper - there is the trajectory of the Huckabee juggernaut in a nutshell, so to speak.
Who knows how Huckabee would have fared if it hadn’t snowed yesterday in his South Carolina base, the hookworm counties upstate? But God, as they say, moves in mysterious ways.
If the tracking polls were correct, Huckabee appeared to be headed for the same fate as his favorite college dinner - roadkill. From the penthouse to the outhouse in 16 days.
Now the Huckster’s campaign needs a lot more than a bottle of Chuck Norris’ favorite K.O. Fitness Recovery Drink. Exit polls in the early states showed Huckabee winning the support of 93 percent of the voters who have bumper stickers saying their cars will be unmanned when the Rapture occurs. The bad news was, among everyone else in the Republican party, he was running neck and neck with Ron Paul.
A Channel 4 poll of the Massachusetts GOP this week showed favorite son Mitt Romney with 48 percent and John McCain with 34. Huck had 3 percent.
So what does the future hold? Infomercials would seem to be the Huckster’s next big thing. His pal Chuck Norris has cornered the Total Gym market, but maybe the Huckster can bless shotgun racks and peddle them C.O.D. Even better, how about the Ronco Total Squirrel Fry-o-Lator? Can somebody shout amen?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1067725
AMEN!
AMEN AMEN
That article needs it’s own thread here.
AMEN
Oops - it does have it’s own thread - Great....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1956606/posts
She was in the DP before his "vacation", but I missed the "Welcome Back Howie DP".
Howie has really got to do it during the 4PM hour.
I really liked Pleshette's performance in Support Your Local Gunfighter, especially when contrasted with her role in The Birds.
Amen, amen, amen! Another great column! I especially liked the "college daze" comment!
Oh no! She was married to Tom Poston who just died recently.
yes...
Ping for Monday, Martin Luther King day. Avi in for Howie.
Staying true to his word,,,,,,,,he’s taking EVERY holiday off, good for him!
Last yr on MLK Day the Celtics were still on WRKO and they had a 3 pm game. Howie didn’t take day off—you could hear him on
WEIM in Fitchburg (I think WCRN didn’t have him yet)—and
he was back on ‘RKO by just before 6 pm or so
I had the same thoughts about the Amber Alert PSA weeks
ago, when I first heard it: imagine the ruckus if they had
said the victim was a Caucasian girl and the suspect
was an African-American male in a black van...
Flipping thru TV channels right now; Stroker Ace with
Burt Reynolds is on CMT right now. And look who’s in it:
Mike Huckabee! Oops, I mean Jim Nabors.
I agree with Avi on that ad, it is definetly racist.....OMG,,,,,all the whackjobs are coming out of the woodwork tonite, the doug guy, the ken guy, now this whackjob teacher..........excellent radio! Avi knows how to shake the whackos out of the bushes! I’m surprised that idiot SADiki hasn’t called in,,,,,I heard him earlier on Reese, I haven’t listend to all of Avi’s show so maybe he did call in,,,,the only time he calls in is when the topic concerns blacks or iraq.
Hopefully he’ll be back...definitely provokes responses
from moonbats, etc. Whether they would take him off due
to listener outrage/listener-advertiser boycotts, who knows.
The Tue ping. Some nice responses to Avi’s show yesterday,
from the “comments” at savewrko.com:
DAVE wrote: “Anybody catch Avi in the 6:00 hour tonight? That’s some good radio. Can’t anybody find a full time slot for the guy?
PS, Sadiki is still trying to pass off his and Chucky Turner’s spank pix collection as pictures of “American soldiers” committing “atrocities”.”
BARBARA wrote: “Dave,,,,,the 6pm hour with Avi was EXCELLENT radio! All the whack jobs where coming out of the woodwork, good stuff, especially that idiot Ken, wow, what an a$$. I heard SADiki earlier today but did not hear him tonite, was he on with Avi? I didn’t catch all of Avi’s show..........it would be nice if Avi got a permanent slot on RKO.”
(I thought he had a weekend show? maybe not—rr)
JOY wrote: “babs, sadiki was on with avi for a good 20+ minutes. it was great radio to hear avi take apart sadiki’s fantasies one by one.
sadiki still avers that those pics of our GIs “raping” iraqi women that he peddled and got the globe to publish were legit, in spite of the globe having to apologize for publishing those porn movie images without verifying them.
and as usual sadiki asked for reparations.
avi dismantled sadiki. i like avi. he’s old-school, but entertaining.”
Rich wrote: “Avi was awesome. That was the best local hour of radio around here in some time.
I might be wrong, but I think part of Howie’s salary is tied to ratings, so I wouldn’t think he’d be mailing it in.”
(Recent ratings showed Jay Severin beating Howie and
some have accused Howie of “mailing it in”, not
trying hard enough...)
TUESDAY JANUARY 22
1st Hour —TBA
2nd Hour— TBA
3rd Hour
CHUMP LINE! Call 617-779-3469 and leave Howie, Sandy or Happy a message about today’s stories or anything else buzzing around your bonnet and we may play it back on the air!
Max Robins the TV Guru and will be with us to answer all of those nagging questions about your favorite show on the boob tube...Check out Max’s site http://www.MediaZulu.com.
4th Hour-—TBA
Damn, I’m sorry I missed that loser sadiki, I bet Avi turned him into dust!
He did. Maybe they’ll podcast it on the WRKO site. I heard
it while driving into Brookline to see Morgan White Jr’s trivia show at the Coolidge Corner Clubhouse. It was good
listening.
Another one bites the dust: Fred Thompson’s candidacy
will not be down for breakfast. (And we hear Huckabee’s
got money troubles in Fla...) When will Rudy drop out?
Losing even in NY! Start spreading the news...
LOL, Howie talking about Heath Leger death saying perhaps the pills found may have been advil,,,,,bashing the felon!
(Quebec lingo for Steve...)
OH man, what a bleepin’ clown he is!
But the French Canadian expression reminded me of Steve.
Always great to hear Howie discuss the “claps” of the economy.
I keep meaning to ask for Paul Harvey in the DP.
I know he’s a radio icon, but enough already!
He’s their third stringer.
From now on, we may hear Moe Lauzer talking about little league baseball on the Cape before we hear from Avi again.
Amen, Brother Howie!
You’re correct — I do get the impression that Avi doesn’t give a bleep anymore.
Howie column ping. We’ll also make this the radio show
ping for today.
Are they jumping out of their windows on Wall Street yet?
By Howie Carr | Wednesday, January 23, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
CNBC to world at 9:30 a.m. yesterday: The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
CNBC to world a few hours later: Never mind.
For a while there it looked serious - like the cast on Tom Brady [stats]’s foot or something.
They were throwing out the cliches like there was no tomorrow, or should I say, as if there were a margin call. Want to get in - that’s like trying to catch a falling knife. There’s attractive risk-reward, if you can remain risk-adverse and deal with the heavy volatility. Have you ever considered a cover-call strategy?
I know, you’re supposed to think that you’re investing for the long haul. But as with everything else, the Internet has changed everything. It used to be, you got a 40l(k) statement every three months. Now you can get it every night, around 8:30 p.m.
“I can’t stand watching my money go down every day,” a 38-year-old was saying to me last week. “That’s why I moved everything into money markets.”
You can’t blame CNBC, though, any more than you can blame the torrent of sports blather about Tom Brady. This is it, baby! Sometimes the talk even sounds the same. I heard one CNBC guy say early on, in the down-400 point range, that, “Somebody’s gotta man-up and take some risk!”
Yeah, and you gotta play hurt, too.
But this was going to be CNBC’s 9/11, its Katrina. Or so it looked in the early going. Anyway, here’s the diary of one (very small) stake-holder in the American economy on Dingy Tuesday.
9:15 a.m.: Bank of America says profits are down 95 percent. There is a silver lining to this dark cloud. Someone in Lincoln is weeping.
9:45: The Dow Jones is already down 400-plus points. You look up Vanguard’s 800 number and decide to do what the caller did - put all new 401(k) contributions into money-market funds.
9:47: You remember that you already changed your allocations, three weeks ago.
10:13: You go onto Fidelity’s Web site and look up the stock of a media company that owns a newspaper you once worked at. You sold everything you had last year at 35. It’s now at 18 and change. You felt good about yourself, as if you’d taken the Chargers and the points. You try to forget that some of the stock you sold at 35 you bought at 50.
10:15: Some CNBC’er wearing Jim (“Dow 36,000”) Glassman glasses reminds everybody of Black Monday in October 1987. He says, “Remember, we’d need to be down 2,700 points to get to 1987-level losses.” What he doesn’t say is that if you remember the 1987 crash, you’ve now got 20 fewer years left to put away a nest egg.
10:18: Not being a regular CNBC regular, you don’t see Erin Burnett on a regular basis. Now you realize, she is hot. She is pretty in purple. No wonder the Money Honey is worried. Better get back from Davos pronto, Maria.
11:30: You consider whether it’s time to call your bank and ask them to run some numbers for you on a new 30-year fixed rate mortgage. Then you remember, the Fed’s going to cut another half-point - er, 50 basis points. Saying half-a-percent is like saying “inside the 20-yard line” when you really mean, “in the red zone.”
Noon: Interest flags. The market isn’t even down 200 anymore. Erin Burnett is gone, and “bounce” is not a word that will keep the remote-control on your lap. “Crash” is, although as one of the CNBC viewers notes, they don’t call ’em crashes anymore. They’re “bear markets.” Or even worse, “buying opportunities.”
1:30: You check out a stock you have an option for 100 shares on next month. Last year when you exercised the option, the stock was over 20. Now it’s hovering around 10. Easy come, easy go.
2:00: Erin Burnett returns to CNBC. Bears start short-selling. But who cares?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1068369
For some reason, I connect the announcement to about the time of the Kursk sinking.
That was in what, 2000?
So what?
Last fall, I heard a caller to either Rush or Dennis Miller that said he was a classmate of McCain's, and he would not vote for McCain.
I love Paul Harvey. When I was a teenager working on a dairy farm the farmer would have the radio on in the barn during morning milking time. We’d work right through everyone else on the radio but would listen carefully to Paul - esp when it was time for ‘ the rest of the story ‘.
“And now ....... page ........ [THUD]” LOL
(only because he was making the DVD promotional rounds a couple of months back...Dick Cavett, that is, obviously.)
Another Howie column—I knew he couldn’t resist commenting on The Whitey Tapes. Column ping.
We’ve heard that chuckle before
By Howie Carr | Thursday, January 24, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
What took them so long?
It’s great that the feds finally released some wiretaps of serial-killing gangster Whitey Bulger on the telephone. But wouldn’t it have been more helpful to the investigation if the G-men had released them when he actually vanished, 13 years ago this month.
For the record, Whitey Bulger, age 78, has not been seen in the United States since mid-1996. So who exactly was this audiotape released for. When do the February TV ratings sweeps begin in Italy?
Granted, it’s very interesting stuff - from a historical perspective. As for its use as a sleuthin’ tool, well, it’s safe to say the trail has gone . . . a bit cold.
The lesson of the whole 13-year farce of an investigation is that if you give a guy an 18-month head start and $40 million to get out of the country, odds are you aren’t going to be able to find him, no matter how many times he’s on “America’s Most Wanted.”
But now we have the tapes and - surprise, surprise - Whitey sounds just like his little brother, Billy, the Corrupt Midget. Same cadence, same slightly archaic Boston accent. You could really catch the similiarity when Whitey was calling the guy about the rentals at Marine Park, where he remarks of the first-floor units, “They’re no good.”
Of course they’re no good. Somebody has a direct shot at you from ground level. That’s why he replaced the sliding-glass door in Quincy with steel plates. He didn’t want to end up like Bugsy Siegel. But what’s more interesting is when Whitey says:
“I mean, I asked you about the rentals, you never get back to me.” Then there’s that malevolent little Bulger chuckle. It’s like at the old St. Patrick’s Day breakfasts, when Mel King, the black state rep from the South End, would show up in his dashiki. Billy Bulger, the host, would ask him, “Did you have any trouble getting in?” And Mel would say no, to which the Corrupt Midget would say, “No, of course not. It’s the getting out that will present a problem for you.”
And then would come the same little snicker as Whitey used on the guy from Marine Park.
I think in most of the snippets he’s calling the Rotary Variety Store. That’s why he’s always looking for “Kevin” or “Pat.” Was the “cough medicine” code for some kind of drug? Probably not. This is a guy who claimed he was given massive doses of LSD for years at the federal pen in Atlanta, and at age 65, cough syrup “knocked me for a loop.” Probably did. What a drag it is getting old.
Besides, Whitey always assumed he was being taped or bugged. Before they busted his Southie drug rings in 1990, the feds got warrants to tap his cell phone conversations. Good idea, but it never turned up anything. Everyone he said was generic. Did you see our friend? Did you get the thing? The usual place?
Or, as Whitey explains cryptically to someone, “He’ll explain it to you when you get here.”
“Here” being under the street light on the sidewalk at the rotary, where the noise fom the passing cars never ended.
Interesting stuff, but could it possibly be any more dated? He’s asking about beeper numbers - they went out with the New Kids on the Block. And there is Tammy.
“Tammy is not here,” Whitey says. “There is no Tammy at this phone number.”
I’ll bet Tammy is on Social Security by now, living in Florida.
What will the feds do for an encore now? Release Whitey’s musings on the Ed King-Mike Dukakis rematch of 1982?
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1068656
LOL! But his naturally nondescript looks don't help either -- I saw a picture of him in the paper and his looks had all the distinctiveness of a crash-test dummy: ideal for any disguise, no matter how simple!
HOWIE never ceases to crack me up! Another excellent column!
Thu show ping
Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrre’s HOWIE!
Dennis the Menace has dropped out of the race. And he had
such a good chance! :P)
WHATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT????? I’m sooooooooooooooooooooo depressed!!! It will give him more time to go to Texas and investigate those UFO’s the government says don’t exist!
Or did he hear from some people that were displeased about his remarks on the House floor yesterday?
I think the occupants on the UFO’s that passed over Texas contacted him!
I'll have to listen to that part of the show.
Maybe I'll try to call Coast tonight if they talk about them, and ask if the reason the UFO's showed up was to talk to Dennis about menace he is to the country.
Free Republic criticised by a male caller on Howie’s show today. He criticised all of the anti-Mitt Romney comments that exist throughout FR instead of every conservative now fully supporting Mitt. The actual situation is that the Republican Party at every political level in the northeastern states is different and much more “leftist” overall than the much more conservative Republican Party at every political level throughout most of the rest of the U.S.
Worse—he has candidates running for his seat in Congress! He can run for prez & Rep. at same time but since his seat is
in danger...wonder if same situation exists with Ron Paul
Ping for Howie’s Fri column
Bargain for Bechtel, catastrophe for the rest of us
By Howie Carr | Friday, January 25, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com
This is then-Gov. Mitt Romney on the Big Dig in 2006: “People should not have to drive through Turnpike tunnels with their fingers crossed.”
This is Attorney General Martha Coakley on the Big Dig this week: “We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? It doesn’t make Romney a hero, nor Coakley a villain. But it does illustrate what the state got for our $15 billion investment:
A leaky, badly built series of tunnels that are already in such poor shape that when the state and the feds negotiated a settlement, they had to make sure to include a “catastrophic reopener” in the event of a “catastrophic event.”
In other words, if the “Poseidon Adventure” is remade under the city of Boston, as we’re all keeping our fingers crossed it won’t be, the state - the survivors, you might say - gets to sue Bechtel et al.
“We hope it will not occur,” Coakley said of the so-called catastrophic event. “We are, uh, hoping it will not, we are keeping our fingers crossed.”
Don’t forget to knock on wood too, Martha.
A “catastrophic event.” That’s what the lawyers call it. The unions have a different phrase: “Don’t kill the job!” So what if a few motorists have to drown, as long as the OT keeps coming. Thank God for the Democratic Convention of 2004 - that was the excuse they needed to tear down the elevated Central Artery, for aesthetic reasons. Now they can’t reroute traffic back above ground. In the event of the catastrophic event, they’ll have to rebuild.
Bechtel will be the low bidder.
You want some more then-and-now quotes?
This is Sen. John Kerry, always right on the money, circa 2003: “This tunnel will be a bargain!”
Coakley, on Wednesday: “We can well ask whether this was a good bargain, whether we got what we paid for I do not have that answer for you today.”
That’s OK, because everybody else has the answer. The answer is no, it was not a bargain. The commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States of America, which picked up 40 percent of the tab, were both robbed.
When they started planning Tip’s tunnel back in the late 1980s, it cost a quarter to drive through the Allston tolls. Now it costs five times that, and they want to raise the tolls again, for the second time this year, to $1.50, or maybe it’s up to $1.75 now. A round trip on the Tobin Bridge has gone from 50 cents to three bucks.
So this boondoggle to end all boondoggles results in $458 million in “reparations” on a $15 billion project. Imagine if you stuck up a bank for $15,000, shot a teller and finally ended up trapped inside, surrounded by cops. The SWAT team uses a bullhorn to tell you to come out with your hands up. Instead you tell them, OK, coppers, here’s the deal. I give you back 458 bucks, and in return, I walk outta here scot-free, with the rest of the loot.
That’s the deal Bechtel and company worked out. Granted, if the case had gone to trial in the breathtakingly corrupt courts of Massachusetts, the taxpayers might have gotten nothing back. The state’s previous AG, Tom Reilly, tried to settle for $86 million - talk about selling an orchard for an apple. But Mike Sullivan, the U.S. attorney, thankfully nixed that giveaway.
Still, even if it could have been worse, when the boss of Bechtel is crying crocodile tears over Milena Del Valle, you have to figure the taxpayers blinked before the greedheads did.
“We believe,” said the chairman of Bechtel, “that this resolution is in the interests of all concerned.”
So Bechtel and its pals hand over $458 million of their ill-gotten gains, of which $100 million is already spent to patch up this month’s leaks inside Interstate Atlantis. But hey, it’s all over now, at least until the next “catastrophic event.”
Keep your fingers crossed.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/opinion/columnists/view.bg?articleid=1068842
Yet another reason not to buy the Globe: newsstand price up
to 75 cents soon. (If I read it at all, I grab a copy someone leaves around at a restaurant or breakroom at work... Or online.) Globe also denying huge layoff rumors.
>>“People are on edge,” said one Globe staffer. “The story said hundreds of layoffs, and that seems a little inconceivable. Dozens might sound believable, but hundreds, I don’t know,” the staffer said.
The Globe also confirmed its newsstand price will jump from 50 cents to 75 cents Feb. 4 for daily newspapers sold in Greater Boston. The daily Globe already costs 75 cents beyond 30 miles of the city.
>>The Boston Globe yesterday called a published report that the newspaper is planning hundreds of layoffs “factually inaccurate,” but the Globe didn’t rule out the possibility of job cuts.
>>“Metro Boston’s front page story today claiming that the Boston Globe is planning hundreds of layoffs is factually incorrect,” Boston Globe executive vice president Al Larkin said yesterday.
Price for Globe does indeed increase, day after Super Bowl:
>>Globe newsstand price to increase to 75¢ on Feb. 4
January 25, 2008
The newsstand price of individual copies of The Boston Globe will increase from 50 cents to 75 cents on Feb. 4, according to a company statement. The increase applies to newspapers sold in Greater Boston. The daily Globe is already priced at 75 cents at locations beyond 30 miles from the city. The price increase does not affect home delivery copies of the paper nor does it affect the price of the Boston Sunday Globe. (Jenn Abelson)
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/01/25/globe_newsstand_price_to_increase_to_75_on_feb_4/
(BUY THE HERALD!)
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