Andrew Wilkow Live Show Thread 01/08/06 (10:00 a.m. - 1 p.m. EST)

WABC Radio ^ | 1-8-2006 | Aliveritas

[AliVeritas]

LISTEN TO ANDREW: WILKOW on WABC

Sunday, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. EST

THE NEXT GENERATION OF GREAT TALK RADIO

Andrew Wilkow is the newest and youngest member of the WABC air staff. Yes, he's in his very early 30's, but we don't want to reveal his real age because we don't want to come back and update this bio every year. He does speak a little bit of a different language than your typical WABC talk show host, but we think that's a good thing.

[AliVeritas]

Wilkow first came to the attention of WABC Program Director Phil Boyce when he was doing a mid-day rock show on a Hartford FM music station. Boyce heard the show, and wasn't that impressed with the music, but liked the 2 to 4 minute rants from Wilkow, that ran the gammit from "getting stuck in traffic" to what he thought about female liberalism. "I thought if he could do that for 2 to 4 hours instead of 2 to 4 minutes, we might be able to turn him into a talk show host," said Boyce, who began using Wilkow on the weekends as a sub host.

Wilkow loved the new freedom of talk radio, where he did not have to shutup and start playing more rock music every few minutes. He also loved the outspoken and often controversial callers that lined up to get on the air when he was doing a show. WABC decided to find a spot for the rocker....who wanted to be a talker. That was right about the time that his FM rocker in Hartford changed formats to country, leaving Wilkow out of a fulltime job.

Word soon spread however about his stints on WABC, and soon WGY in Albany came calling, and offered Wilkow the fulltime talk show gig he had been craving, and allowed him to continue his weekend shows on WABC. WGY is no stranger to providing talented hosts to WABC, as it once was the home of Mike Gallagher, who enjoyed several very successful years on WABC after his WGY days.

Wilkow is not sure where this wild radio ride will taken him, but he seems happy to have survived the format slippery slope that radio can often become. He's now living his dream of turning his early rock radio experience into that of a successful talk show host, and loves his weekend show on WABC, the most listened to talk station in the nation.

[AliVeritas]

ping

[AliVeritas]

Risen Book: Clinton Gave Iran Nuke Blueprints

Don't expect this to get much play:
http://newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/7/120534.shtml

In a hairbrained scheme that was personally approved by then-President Clinton, the CIA deliberately gave Iranian physicists blueprints for part of a nuclear bomb that likely helped Tehran advance its nuclear weapons development program. ...
Reports Risen: "It's not clear who originally came up with the idea, but the plan [to give Tehran nuclear blueprints] was first approved by Clinton."

Beginning in February 2000, the CIA recruited a Russian scientist who had defected to the US years earlier. His mission: Take the nuclear blueprints to Vienna to sell them - or simply give them - to the Iranian representatives for the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Dubbed "Operation Merlin," the plan was supposed to steer Iranian physicists off track by incorporating design flaws in the blueprints that would render the information worthless.

But in what may turn out to be one of the greatest foreign policy blunders of all time, Operation Merlin backfired when the Russian scientist spotted the design flaws immediately - and even offered to help Iran fix the problems.

Wow.

Of course disinformation operations are nothing new. And operations like this have backfired before, and will backfire in the future.

However: It seems that lately we're not giving the executive the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions. We seem to be only interested in whether or not he was 100% right in his call.

Clinton was a "miserable failure" here. He aided and abetted Iran's nuke program, no matter what his intention was.

Think the New York Times will give this part of Risen's story above-the-fold, three-column treatment?

[AliVeritas]

Re: Sgt. Mark Seavey was outnumbered, but not alone at the moonbat townhall hosted by Reps. Jim Moran and John Murtha last week. Near the end of the marathon session, a Vietnam veteran, General Wagner, stepped up to the microphone to deliver a message from the mother of an Iraqi war vet who gave his life for his country and for the mission. After reading a scathing letter addressed to Murtha, Wagner talked about his own experience in Vietnam:

Must See Video:
http://media.michellemalkin.com/videos/wagnervideo.wmv

[AliVeritas]

Number One women's bestseller on Amazon:

[AliVeritas]

ping

[AliVeritas]

FYI, Wilkow ping

[wtc911]

You are far too easily impressed.

[AliVeritas]

Heart and Lung Association part of a plan to raise cigarettes $2.60 per pack. The money is going to be reallocated to immigrant health care. San Francisco Chronicle.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/06/EDGU9GHG0S1.DTL&hw=cigarette&sn=009&sc=438

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Smoke, pay for immigrant health care
- Jill Stewart
Friday, January 6, 2006


USUALLY, I would wait until later in the year to protest a proposed $2.60-per-pack tax on cigarettes being pushed for next fall by the American Cancer Society and other powerful health associations. But it's such a rotten idea, I can't wait. (No, I don't smoke.)

Huge new taxes on specific groups of people create weird backlashes -- in this case, probably skyrocketing sales of black-market cigarettes as smokers find creative ways to avoid this huge grab at their wallets.

But far worse, the proposed $2.1 billion tax, which will hit a shrinking population of smokers, is horribly backward. It uses scandalously little of the windfall to pay for research into lung cancer or other smokers' diseases -- 2 percent. Instead, in one of the great stealth political moves seen in awhile, this measure would transfer money from smokers' wallets into the wallets of illegal immigrants.

In our hopelessly PC world, we aren't supposed to talk about illegal immigrants. But let's be bad and do it anyway.

This proposal diverts most of the $2.1 billion tax to emergency-room care and to health coverage for children -- two services that, in California, provide outsized assistance to illegal immigrants. It's a political ploy backed by the American Cancer Society, California Hospital Association, American Heart Association, American Lung Association and Children's Partnership.

California already pours vast sums into free health insurance for children. We are probably the most generous state, offering Healthy Families and other programs to families who need not even be poor. You can earn around $50,000 and get Healthy Families coverage as good as a private plan, and you don't need to be in the state legally. John Graham, director of health-care studies for the fiscally conservative Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco, tells me: "If your child hasn't got health care in California, you are a negligent parent. There are 900,000 children who qualify for Health Families and other programs. ... They are eligible, but still not enrolled due to parents' inattentiveness, laziness, or the feeling that the kids are healthy so they don't give a hoot." Smokers should take the hit for this? Graham, who will soon release a study of California insurance, says "The number of children not insured, who are not eligible, is probably very, very close to zero in California. We don't have a crisis of coverage here. We have a crisis of parents not taking appropriate parental action."

The other sneak feature of the proposed $2.1 billion tax is its intent to spend vast sums on ER care -- a staggering $902 million each year. As Graham notes, "If this were a rational tax, it would go to programs on smoking cessation and curing lung cancer. But it is not rational. The overuse of emergency rooms in California -- the use of the system is highly biased toward illegal immigrants and not toward smokers."

Illegal immigrants badly overuse ERs instead of tapping into often-free health-care clinics or finding a family doctor. Their behavior cries out for reform, not encouragement. California should spend dough to educate immigrant families to stop using costly ERs as a replacement for the family doctor. Again, we are not supposed to talk like this. But if the misuse of the ER system ended, we'd quickly discover that taxpayers are pouring more than enough into California ER care, and people with true emergencies would be far better served.

The Sacramento Bee quoted Dr. Robert Figlin, co-director of lung-cancer research at UCLA (and a guy who has every right to be angry about this foolish move by the American Cancer Society), as saying: "How the special-interest groups want to use the new revenue stream has very little to do with ... those who smoke, the diseases they get and their suffering." He may not realize that California loves to misspend the money it shakes out of the tobacco industry and smokers. The state has, for instance, blown billions from its "tobacco settlement" paid out by Big Tobacco, thanks to former President Bill Clinton's foolish decision to allow the states to spend the windfall any way they wished. California poured its fat settlement into -- guess what? -- big deficits created by the Legislature in Sacramento.

So this turkey of an idea has a real chance with California voters. Smokers, after all, are the only people you can still be openly bigoted against with society's approval. So let's create a fat, new tax that spends a paltry 2 percent on research into lung cancer and other horrible diseases, that rewards the exploding misuse of ERs and that throws more money at health insurance for children who should have been signed up by their parents long ago. Sounds like a classic California fiscal plan to me.

Jill Stewart is a print, radio and television commentator on California politics. Her Web site is www.jillstewart.net.

[AliVeritas]

Excellent Andrew.

[CAluvdubya]

Thought I'd tune in but I have no sound. Is andrew on commercial break and there is no sound like on Levin?

[AliVeritas]

ping

[AliVeritas]

Yep. You have him now?

[CAluvdubya]

yes I have him now, thanks.

[TomGuy]

On air now.

[WABC seems to be broadcasting allot of silence during the breaks.]

[AliVeritas]

Freeper mention.

[CAluvdubya]

Woo-Hoo, FR plug!

[Mr Cobol]

Just got here. FReeper mention.

[AmericaUnite]

Thanks for the ping. Listening now.

[CAluvdubya]

Hey Andrew, I'm in San Diego and I live near a small day laborer camp. Every once in a while we see sheriff cars checking it out.