Augustus, the strong Caesar

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Fred Stiening

The final resting place for summer awaits your randomness

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58 Responses to Augustus, the strong Caesar

  1. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    August 2, 2018 at 4:28 am

    Imagine being born 10 years ago is such a curse. Why? How hard do you have to look to find a telephone booth? … not just a payphone, but a booth that was designed and built to protect said payphone? Once you actually find one, it is probably three sided and doesn’t have a door you can close for privacy.

    https://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2018/07/31/clark-kent-beats-michael-phelps-record/

  2. Parrott says:
    August 2, 2018 at 8:32 am

    Ole August. One of my favorite months. Tomato’s are starting to come in. The Grackels will be flocking up at the end of the month to fly south. Some have already hit the road, like Tree swallows who have already bolted.
    West Virginia state fair is this month. August presents another opportunity for an asteroid to hit Sterling Virginia.
    Old Jeep is up for the bogus state inspection as well.
    parrott

    • briand75 says:
      September 6, 2018 at 7:06 am

      Amen – a “racket” is the term for State Inspections. Revenue for nothing. Been exposed to them since I grew up in NY State.

      • CC1s121LrBGT says:
        September 6, 2018 at 9:01 am

        The worse racket is driver’s licenses. In the UK, you’d get one at 17ish and have it for your entire life (like getting a social security card once per life). You don’t need to pay annual fees. Learning to drive is like learning to ride a bike – no one forgets.

        Of course, you may lose your right to drive for too many moving violations, but that is a separate matter and is managed by the government’s computers not whether you physically possess a piece if paper issued when you learned to drive.

        Don’t get me going about vehicle registrations. Last year, the state never sent me their tax for the annual vehicle tax. As I was driving down the street, my license plate registered as unpaid and I was pulled over and fined. Anyone else, cell phone company, cable tv company, electric company, Amazon annual fee, home insurance, car insurance – they all automatically hit my credit card when a payment is due, but not government employees running the annual vehicle tax.

  3. Fred Stiening says:
    August 2, 2018 at 4:19 pm

    Assorted Stock items

    Michigan based Saga, probably the best managed radio company left, is moving from the NYSE to NASDAQ

    Cumulus is trading again and on the same trajectory downward. With no dividend and a huge debt overhang still and a CEO with no prior radio experience – they are proving that it is impossible to turn a silk purse into a pig’s ear

    When I went to nasdaq.com, I was shocked to see that the web site is offering free real time quotes and last sale data. This was the bread and butter revenue source for NASDAQ to exist and why your local stock broker was necessary to trade individual stocks.

  4. Fred Stiening says:
    August 3, 2018 at 1:04 pm

    Herman Cain’s career fades to black…

    The failed presidential candidate, former pizza executive and radio broadcaster is 72. He replaced Neal Boortz on Westwood One (originally Jones), and lost that syndication January 1, 2017. He was retained by Cox Radio on their own stations, primarily WSB-AM in Atlanta, but he was down to one hour a day since last October. He is going to do a web podcast as his Cox employment winds down.

  5. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    August 3, 2018 at 1:46 pm

    Over the years we have had a lot of conversation on health and the medical establishment. I found a fascinating podcast from a Harvard PhD economist, now a professor in Colorado on what he has found to be the secret for losing weight. In a sentence, he says it is not managing calories in/out or even exercise but managing insulin levels to manage hunger.
    It is a fascinating listen to one of my favorite podcasts called “Odd Lots” – topics that don’t fit neatly into established categories. I particularly loved the closing comment from Tracy Alloway regarding eggs –

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2018-03-29/why-losing-weight-is-kind-of-like-defeating-inflation

    The professor has an interesting blog with many interesting insulin-related articles. These two are a great starting point:

    https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2017/11/16/forget-calorie-counting-its-the-insulin-index-stupid

    https://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/2017/9/21/obesity-is-always-and-everywhere-an-insulin-phenomenon

  6. Fred Stiening says:
    August 4, 2018 at 7:39 am

    A news story getting nowhere the coverage it deserves… Senator Diane Feinstein of California, member and former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has had an official real Chinese spy working on her staff for the last 20 years…

    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/07/27/silicon-valley-spies-china-russia-219071

    https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/01/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/

    The story is being downplayed by commingling this revelation with other spy incidents and suggesting that being only her driver did not provide access to sensitive national security information. I guess she never talked to other people while she was riding in her car.

    The California Democratic Party has refused to endorse her run for re-election in November, but she is still expected to win since the unique “top two” primary system means no Republican can run in the General Election

    • TheChairman says:
      August 4, 2018 at 1:23 pm

      Yeah, sure. Like he didn’t have access to the vehicle to conceal listening devices, knowledge of her contacts, schedule, location, etc. Nothing to see here…

      • Fred Stiening says:
        August 4, 2018 at 2:32 pm

        And she became wealthy from her husband’s business transactions.

        This is getting depressing. Did I post yet about the woman The NY Times hired for the editorial board who fantasizes about killing all white men?

        • CC1s121LrBGT says:
          August 4, 2018 at 4:31 pm

          This didn’t get a lot of MSM press coverage at the time or even now, but wacko John Brennan also spied on Feinstein… and her entire committee:

          “When it was first suspected that Brennan’s CIA had penetrated the Senate investigation’s computers he lied, denying everything. When the CIA snoop was confirmed, he held firm that the Agency had done nothing wrong. It was only the Inspector General’s report that federal laws may have been broken that prompted Brennan to draft, then rip up, an apology letter to the Senate. He is reported to have apologized verbally in person to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Diane Feinstein (D-CA).”

          from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/congress-alert/2016/february/09/cias-brennan-to-senate-im-not-sorry-i-spied-on-you/

          • Fred Stiening says:
            August 4, 2018 at 4:49 pm

            I totally accept the notion that the “intelligence” community starts gathering a dossier on every person who might someday have influence and hold it to blackmail leaders. Perhaps a US asset even facilitated hiring the driver, and that is how the FBI knows with such certainty that they know no sensitive information was passed to China.

            If the Senate flips to Democratic control, presumably she would return to chairman of the Intelligence oversight committee. How fortuitous that an unnamed intelligence source is leaking this information and somebody is pushing the narrative to get her into retirement.

            After being elected, people quickly realize that the people we elect do not control the government.

            • CC1s121LrBGT says:
              August 4, 2018 at 4:57 pm

              Ya ain’t seen nothing yet – Wait until more elected offices have “term limits”.

              I would bet that more people lost their welfare benefits last year that were fired from any level of government.

              Remember, after 9/11, not only did no one in government get fired, but there was a massive wave of promotions and everyone’s department got a larger budget and more direct reports.

  7. Fred Stiening says:
    August 6, 2018 at 10:05 am

    Entercom is selling 8 former CBS and Entercom stations in San Francisco’s to Bonneville for $141 million. Bonneville is the for-profit Radio and TV corporation owned by the Salt Lake City based Latter Day Saints religion, known informally as the Mormons.

    https://www.rbr.com/bonneville-for-entercom-8/

    LDS is no more adventurous in their radio formats than Oldies music playing Donny and Marie Osmond and Pat Boone. What they intend to do in San Francisco is not clear. All News KCBS-AM is not among the list of eight.

  8. Fred Stiening says:
    August 10, 2018 at 3:04 am

    Is multicast digital TV over 5G going to eviscerate coax delivered “Cable” TV?

    T-Mobile has the answer on August 15th.

    • CC1s121LrBGT says:
      August 10, 2018 at 6:32 am

      Prior to that, I think that the best deal around is

      https://tv.youtube.com/welcome/start/

      Not a fan of Google, but I hope and expect them to eat Verizon’s lunch. For $40 per month, you get live TV from 60+ networks that you can watch anywhere – TV, PC, cell phone…. AND you get free Cloud DVR with no storage limits (on the google servers) to watch anywhere as well. I understand it has the added bonus for sports fans that when you travel, you still get your “home” channels live and via the included Google DVR.

      Verizon FIOS is a great TV technology, but they gouge and don’t offer the same mobility that google does… and Verizon’s customer service is a series of people on an extended phone call that each have a different way of telling you, “Sorry, that’s not my job, you need to talk to someone else”.

  9. Fred Stiening says:
    August 10, 2018 at 2:15 pm

    75 year old talker John Lanigan on WTAM-AM in Cleveland Ohio pulled the plug in the middle of the show. He retired to Colorado and was doing the show remotely. From his initial hello, it was clear he was disgusted. The format of the show is awful, especially when you consider they are not in a studio together. Things apparently went in a ditch when the sports show veered into it being the 50th Anniversary of Richard Nixon accepting the Republican Nomination for President in 1968, which further devolved into talking about the worst presidents of all time. I could not handle listening beyond the first minute. Following “the spew”, WTAM carries Glenn Beck.

    https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/local-news/john-lanigan-retires-middle-show?page=2

  10. Fred Stiening says:
    August 20, 2018 at 10:29 am

    The Broadcasting Board of Governors – the unbrella agency for the propaganda radio operations of the US government – is changing its name to be the US agency for global media. The better known functions of this agency include Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, reaching behind the Iron Curtain to explain democracy to East Germany and Hungary. Radio Marti also operates to make sure Cubans in Florida keep electing Senator Rubio

  11. Fred Stiening says:
    August 20, 2018 at 12:08 pm

    Italian actress Asia Argento and girlfriend of TV food critic/chef Anthony Bourdain shared the same attorney. Today’s news is that Ms Argento paid $385,000 to a (then) 17 year old child actor who accused her of raping him in a hotel room. She has been one of the leaders of the #meetoo movement, claiming Harvey Weinstein raped her.

    Bourdain’s suicide makes a lot more sense now.

    http://www.showbiz411.com/2018/08/19/revelation-anthony-bourdain-was-defending-asia-argento-attacking-harvey-weinstein-at-the-same-he-was-helping-navigate-settlement-with-underage-actor

  12. CC1s121LrBGT says:
    August 20, 2018 at 12:35 pm

    CHOI in Quebec City and it noon time talk show host, Jeff Fillion got a bit article in the NY Times on Saturday. They called it “Quebec’s ‘Trash Radio’ Host Fires Up Outrage, and Big Ratings” and it is the number one rated talk show there.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/world/canada/quebec-trash-radio-jeff-fillion.html

    Tu parle français?
    Parrott? Parrott?
    anyone? anyone?
    Bueller? Bueller?
    lol

  13. Fred Stiening says:
    August 21, 2018 at 11:46 am

    Jim Quinn has announced that he and Rose (Quinn and Rose) will be working together again – reportedly on the ESPN station in Pittsburgh from 8-10 AM, when the station’s normal listeners are still nursing their Iron City Beer hangovers.

    Hopefully Quinn has given up the fantasy of monetizing subscriptions and will allow the program to be streamed. He really has reached the point of nobody remembering who he is. I doubt the reasons they split have changed, so I don’t give this a high chance of success.

  14. Fred Stiening says:
    August 21, 2018 at 11:51 am

    Cumulus has announced they are also dropping US Traffic Network and switching to a similar service operated by iHeartMedia. USTN still has TV station clients, which is a concept I totally do not understand. People can’t watch TV while they are driving, and a morning traffic report would be useless by the time you got in your car.

  15. Fred Stiening says:
    August 21, 2018 at 1:52 pm

    President Pence is warming up in the wings

  16. haiti222 says:
    August 21, 2018 at 7:37 pm

    I do speak French at a basic to intermediate level. Listening is my weak point, and Quebec French is despised and laughed at by most of the native French speakers from any other country around the world. It froze in the 1800´s, and uses other created words that are not popular or even known in the rest of the francophone world. Their accent is the most disliked aspect of it, as it has a lot of excessive R sounds and drawling, kind of like the Scottish accent.
    Anyway, I found some tapes on radiopirate.com, his website, including clips from today.

    His style and structure reminded me of Steve Dahl, he has both a man and a women as his primary chat partners. They talk about everything under the sum of concern to them an their audience, especially local stuff and their own lives. They get to the topic, as part of a long segment where most of the talk is not about that subject at all, including the first few minutes of the segment much of the time. He does have bumper music. If my Quebecois French was better I could say more, but it really felt like the Steve Dahl show from 5-15 years ago.

    People complaining about what he says are cherry-picking the offensive statement from a long-form show where most of the talk would be boring if you didn´t like and come to know the people on the show and have an interest in the area they live. I remember Steve Dahl being simulcast in Detroit around 2000, and it was a dismal rating failure that Tom Leykis even made fun of in the last couple of years, as he was much more successful. I was in heaven as I liked Steve already, and felt I missed out on him most of my teen years because he was only on AM for a short time where I could listen to him as we were culturally influenced greatly by Chicago and loved it, but lived 120 miles away and could only get strong AM stations from there like WLS-AM.

    • Fred Stiening says:
      August 23, 2018 at 12:04 am

      Johnny Brandmeier was another attempt to syndicate a Chicago personality beyond beyond Chicagoland. It just doesn’t work. Mancow was another.

      I listened to Steve Dahl back around 1993 on WLUP. His relaxed pacing was because he and Garry Meier had 5 hours to kill every afternoon with essentially no time for show prep. It might have even been 6 hours. So they would grab the traffic woman and talk about shoes for an hour. It made the CTA ride slightly less boring.

    • CC1s121LrBGT says:
      August 26, 2018 at 11:18 pm

      Fascinating writeup, haiti222. Thank you for that.

      I have a question regarding the accent. Have you ever heard the accent of the speakers in Saint Pierre and Miquelon? There are two French islands just a few miles off the coast of Canada. From wiki “Three of these stations belong to RFO – two on St. Pierre and one on Miquelon. In addition to broadcasting local and RFO programmes, these RFO stations broadcast the France-Inter radio service at night. ”

      So lots of programming directly from France, especially at night. Presumably, during the day, they have local programming.

      If you have time to sample the broadcast and describe their accents, it would be most interesting to me. My guess is that is it different than both Quebec and mainland France.

      http://radios.la1ere.fr/saintpierremiquelon

      Interestingly, the server for the above http://radios.la1ere.fr/ is a web page that shows they seem to host the streams of many different French overseas territories, including Radio Guadeloupe, Radio Polynesie, and Radio Nouvelle-Caledonie. You may enjoy sampling them as well since you understand the language.

  17. Fred Stiening says:
    August 24, 2018 at 1:48 am

    President Trump will be in the Charlotte area on Friday. He owns a golf course up on Lake Norman. It is a fundraiser and he’ll probably just helicopter in from the CLT airport to avoid our dangerous Urban core. Maybe he will go visit Billy Graham’s grave before he leaves…

    • Parrott says:
      August 26, 2018 at 8:32 pm

      I ordered one of Billy Graham’s book the other day. I haven’t read any of his books. Going to give it a try. Yeah, I am turning into my grandparents.
      Now pass the Seagrams 7

      Parrott

    • Fred Stiening says:
      August 31, 2018 at 1:57 am

      The schedule has changed. The fund raiser will be at the Carmel Country Club, about a mile from theSRGuide headquarters. From there, he is going to CPCC (Central Piedmont Community College) located along the streetcar route, and also the venue that launched the entire HB2 transgender bathroom issue. The instigator was a black man dressed as a woman who ignored a gender neutral bathroom in order to go into the women’s bathroom. A black female security guard had issues with a man using her bathroom. And so it started.

  18. Fred Stiening says:
    August 28, 2018 at 10:29 pm

    First they came for Amos ‘N Andy, then they came for Robert E Lee. Then they Came for Stephen Foster and there was nobody else left

    https://theincline.com/2018/08/22/a-virginia-city-eyed-pittsburghs-controversial-stephen-foster-statue-and-says-its-not-the-only-one/

    • CC1s121LrBGT says:
      August 28, 2018 at 10:42 pm

      “What would assuredly cause Stephen Foster to roll in his grave if he could learn of these goings‐on, however, would he the fact that the black folk tradi tion which inspired his song has been Laken over by white gentility and now in the process of being appropriat ed yet again—this time by long‐haired collegians.”

      from https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/30/archives/stephen-foster-youd-never-recognize-de-camptown-races-foster.html

      Note: It would appear that the article was scanned in from the originally printed column and hence the broken words that probably spanned two lines in the newspaper’s narrow columns.

      • Fred Stiening says:
        August 29, 2018 at 12:12 am

        Foster attended school the early part of his life in Allegheny, a community on the North shore of the Allegheny River, that was not annexed into Pittsburgh until 1907 and over the strong opposition of Allegheny’s residents. After the Great Northern Migration in the 1920s, the North Side became predominantly black, but in Foster’s era it was solidly German. Heinz had a pickle factory there.

        According to Wikipedia, Stephen Foster’s understanding of the South was not from first hand experience nor did he likely have contact with many black people, free or slave. Most of his songs were written before his single trip to the Deep South – on his honeymoon taking a riverboat to New Orleans.

        If you have ever seen the S[u]wanee River in Florida, you could guess he had never seen the river in person. It is a brackish stream running through a mosquito infested swamp. He picked the name from an atlas because it fit the lyrics.

        Over 20 million copies of the sheet music were sold. As America’s Composer, he surely is an example of “Fake” Music.

        My Old Kentucky Home was at least connected to his experiences visiting relatives in Bardstown Kentucky. Ironically, the song was an anti-slavery song written after Foster read Uncle Tom’s Cabin. After the civil war, it was celebratory music that slaves were no longer property to be bought and sold.

    • TheChairman says:
      August 29, 2018 at 10:11 am

      Soon, they will be coming for Union statues. In a recent blog regarding the toppling of the Silent Sam, I tried to enlighten some of the snowflakes and other triggered liberals about the mutual respect the Union & Confederate officers had for each other, since they had fought together during the Mexican War. Libs will simply say: “then they were all anti-Hispanic and therefore all these ‘infamous’ racist Civil War statues & memorials must be removed.”

      This goes hand-in-hand with the ‘half-staff’ issue. For over a decade I have observed the flag being flown at half-staff with increasing frequency. In Michigan, it now seems to be lowered perhaps 30% of each month, for everything from school shootings to annual ‘remembrances’ of tragedies, events, etc. This practice began many years ago as part of their agenda. Eventually, their goal is to take down the Stars & Stripes entirely… witness the first night of the 2016 DNC convention, no American flags visible.

      As for the Suwanee River, Fred is spot-on. The first time I saw it (as a kid traveling through FL during vacation) I couldn’t believe anyone would get on that river, or sing about it. What a mosquito breeder! “One man’s trash…”

      • Fred Stiening says:
        August 29, 2018 at 10:33 am

        My experience was riding on a greyhound bus as a child. Back then, bus drivers would use their microphone system to entertain their passengers while driving. On a trip to visit my Aunt in Florida, he announced we would soon be crossing the Suwannee River. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, I had high expectations. If you blinked, you missed it.

        Probably as a result of that song, White Sulphur Springs grew up as a resort town on the river. The late radio host Chuck Harder bought one of the old hotel buildings from which he broadcast his “We the People” conspiracy theory show.

  19. Fred Stiening says:
    August 29, 2018 at 2:09 pm

    Cumulus Media is shoving one of the longest running local shows in the country aside to make room for more sports talk. “Religion in the Line” has been hosted by a Jewish rabbi named Joe Potasnik on Sunday morning for 36 years. The show has a Christian sidekick to discuss ecumenical issues, currently a Catholic leader who is receptive to Joe’s outreach for dialog.

    WABC had a heated battle about 20 years ago when “Jews for Jesus” bought advertisements on WABC – it really brought out the anti-Christian hatred of a swath of New York City’s radio audience. In most of real America, radio stations carry church services on Sunday mornings.

    Sid Rosenberg is the weekday cohost of the sports talk show that replaced Don Imus. I suspect Sid may still be living in income tax free Florida. Religion on the Line might move to a different time, but nothing has been announced. That would mean deleting some of the infomercials selling bogus herbal cures.

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