Hypothetically Speaking
OK, here’s a hypothetical. Say that there is a highly placed legislator who decides to do a podcast to create an online presence. Then, a major media company gives the legislator a leg up to increase the podcast’s visibility over their nationwide media network as well as to triple the legislator’s weekly episode output.
Then, the media company funnels advertisement revenue from the thrice-weekly shows to an independent political action committee whose sole purpose is to see that the legislator is re-elected.
Then let’s say the same legislator, who sits as the ranking member of a powerful committee with oversight of commerce, science, and transportation, sponsors a bill to prevent auto makers from excluding AM radios from the cars that they make. But, hold on, the same media company that sends all of that money to the legislator’s independent PAC owns 250 AM radio stations nationwide.
Isn’t that, at best, a conflict of interest? Wouldn’t just that be enough to warrant a hard pass at the ballot box the next time the legislator is up for re-election?
Now imagine that it’s this guy.
H-m-m-m. Wouldn’t this be enough to trigger an Ethics Committee investigation? Or, one by the FCC? Oh, wait. I forgot that Rethugs are immune from such petty inquiries.
1A physics note: AM radio reception in EVs is known to be seriously degraded because EV systems run in a high voltage environment. To reduce (but not eliminate) distortions in AM reception, the auto would need additional shielding, adding to the auto’s weight and subtracting from its mileage. Just sayin’.
2Last time I listened to AM radio, it was the early 2000’s. The FM radio in my car died, but I could still get AM. Thank heavens that’s when Air America was on! It was an oasis in the wasteland of hate and misinformation.
3My sister, The Republican, will believe every other political conspiracy theory she comes across, no matter how far fetched. But connecting Ted’s green eggs to the ham? On the same plate? She’ll find no connection.
4The word “integrity” should never be used in any sentence regarding Ted Cruz – unless “lack of” precedes it.
5As an Army Brat–and a member of JJ’s generation–I can remember many, many crosscountry trips listening to various AM stations. They all pretty much played the current hits. Some small towns in Texas broadcast Little League games.
Also, the only radio station I can get the Nats games on is an AM station. I’d be crushed to get in a car that couldn’t get the game on.
6When I think of AM radio, I think of my ‘54 Chevy pickup that I had when I got married 53 years ago. I also had to twist 2 wires together to get the defroster and heater to work. Good thing my wife had a ‘68 Camaro.
7Glad iHeart media pulled their advertising but too late. Hope they pay for it.
Haven’t heard an AM radio broadcast in decades, nothing but crap on it.
Even FM has mostly sucked around here forever, just a couple of stations worth listening to once in a while, from the area colleges. NPR began sucking long ago, after Dubya and Cheney compromised them [NearlyPureRepublikan].
I have listened to a very few SiriusXM channels for over a decade now, never looked back; they offer several hundred+ channels, but few worth listening to IMO.
Most SiriusXM channels are crap too, but satradio has many advantages.
You just have to play their subscription price games every year or so to get a rock-bottom price. I get it for ~$5/mo per physical radio, which also comes with a free streaming instance for each [works from any device].
So I figure that I’m beating them, and not supporting the bad stations [they have way more RWNJs than libs].
And I get to listen to 100% of what I like, without any interruptions, commercial or otherwise; which is mostly channel 68, Spa [“Spa is an ethereal audio experience. It’s new age with a twist of ambient and light world music.”], with :
https://www.siriusxm.com/music/jazz-standards-classical.
Availibility of a factory SiriusXM radio has been a make-break factor in buying all my vehicles for a couple of decades.
I use a small SiriusXM Onyx receiver attached to the SiriusXM SXSD2 boombox in the garage [they run ‘deals’ often to get stuff at very low prices].
https://shop.siriusxm.com/siriusxm-portable-speaker-dock-sd2.html
One of these days I’m going to cancel that one and just use the free streaming on an old phone with a connection to the boombox.
8One non-Rafael reason for keeping AM radios available in cars: in case of a truly monstrous space weather event (like a major mass coronal ejection event from the sun), it’s possible that most modern wireless communications will be kaput. Afterwards, it’s possible that AM radio would be the only viable way for the feds to communicate with us grubby masses. A large enough solar storm could knock out all but military-hardened communication satellites, and fry much of the cell phone instructure.
The 1859 Carrington Event (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event) was able to destroy many telegraph lines, even melting some lines and causing fires from wires and pylons. The wikipedia article is short and worth reading, especially because of evidence that one even in 775 AD was 10 times as powerful.
AM radio is simpler and more powerful than FM, with some 50 kilowatt tranmitters still subsidized by the government as part of the emergency notification network.
Not that this would ever enter Rafael’s alleged brain, especially when lobbyists are waving fistfuls of dollars at him.
9A couple of typos in my screed above:
1. ” that one event in 775″
2. transmitters, not tranmitters.
Also: if you want to really nerd out with this stuff, NOAA and NASA maintain a space weather site at https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ ; as usual they make a good effort to educate about what they’re reporting upon. At the bottom of the page are links to explanations about potential effects.
And if you witnessed the latest solar eclipse, you may have noticed two sunspots, on near the Sun’s midline, a little above its equator. About 6 weeks ago, there was a humongous one dozens of times larger.
10Ah, AM radio. That brings back memories. Back in my high school days I used to listen to clear channel (not Clear Channel the RWNJ corporation) radio stations at night. They all broadcast at frequencies between 800 and 900 kilohertz at the maximum allowed power of 50 kilowatts. Living in Texas, I could listen to stations in places like Chicago and Minneapolis and thought that was supremely cool.
Then, after college graduation I had a job in southern New Mexico. At night I could pick up Bill Mack on WBAP in Fort Worth on my car radio and KOMA in Oklahoma City. KOMA wasn’t a clear channel station, but it did broadcast on 50 kW, so it had a long reach. Likewise, KOA in Denver and KOB in Albuquerque.
Most cars didn’t have the ability to receive FM in those days, and most FM stations primarily broadcast classical music and had a fairly limited range on account of the shorter wavelength. (One reason AM can reach so far is that it has a longer wavelength that allows the signal to bounce off the ionosphere and go over the horizon.) Once more places had FM stations a few years later, FM’s higher fidelity made it better for transmitting music, so AM stations stopped doing that and gave us Rush Limbaugh and his imitators instead.
You might say we are victims of our own technology.
11In the ‘80’s I grew vegetables for a farmers market. One fall the deer started eating the lettuce, sometimes 100 heads in one night. I tried every deterrent but nothing worked. Until I put an old radio out in the field tuned into a 50,000 watt AM station broadcasting from Arkansas. After sunset a preacher screamed hellfire and damnation all night long.
The deer ran for their lives.
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