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Friday, July 31, 2020

"480 Minutes" - What 32.9% Economic Contraction?

Yesterday we learned that the U.S. economy contracted a record 32.9% in the second quarter of 2020 and 1.43 million more Americans applied for unemployment benefits marking the 19th consecutive week in which more than a million jobless claims. The prior peak week, ever, was less than 700,000 such claims in 1982. Most probably didn't catch the bleak economic news, though, because the master media manipulator distracted us all with a shiny new outrage, suggesting that the election should be delayed.

He included "safety" as one of his concerns, which is ironic for the guy who pushed states to re-open prematurely ("LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!") and is now pushing even heard to force U.S. schools to reopen in full and in-person in a few weeks. It's not funny that #Cult45 can't do the math on that -- it's safe enough for kids and teachers and support staff to be in schools full-time, but it's not be safe for adults to go to polling places for one day? Three months from now?

By failing spectacularly to create and implement a plan to contain the spread of the virus (as competent world leaders did), and instead hosting daily televised disinformation-filled self-aggrandizement sessions, #PresidentNobodyLikesMe is directly responsible (whether he wants the responsibility or not) for many of the 150k and counting dead Americans. Further irony: his failures have basically *necessitated* the increased mail-in voting that he is so afraid of. As Radiohead once said, "You do it to yourself, you do/Just you and no one else."

Meanwhile a Fox News personality Andrew Napolitano condemned the Barr Gestapo for trying to crush dissent in Portland, OR, calling them out for employing a type of tear gas so terrible it is banned during wartime, and concluding, "Only a government hateful or fearful of the people it claims to serve uses force to silence them."

Napolitano's words expose the conspicuously silent gun fetishists who previously claimed to need their weapons of mass murder "to protect us all from government tyranny" as 100% full of shit.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Crack Cloud (Vancouver, Canada), David Newton and Thee Mighty Angels (Pioneertown, CA, @theemightyangel), Eyedress (Los Angeles, CA, @eyedress), Fontaines D.C. (Dublin, Ireland, @fontainesdublin), I Like Trains (Leeds, England, @iLiKETRAiNS), Plague Vendor (Whittier, CA, @plaguevendor), Protomartyr (Detroit, MI, @protomartyrband), The Psychedelic Furs (London, England, @pfurs), and Yard Act (Leeds, England, @YardActBand).

The marathon 8-hour show is followed by 2 hours of uninterrupted music and is then rebroadcast in its entirety beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, and one last time at 1 a.m. on Sunday. That is followed by a rebroadcast of this week's live-hosted psych and garage rock Fuzzy Road radio show at 11 a.m., then a couple of old 480 Minutes episodes from this week in past years, making for hosted shows all weekend long.

Tune in and chat with other members of our little outlier community on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is (usually, and especially these isolating times) better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Contact the DJ during the live-hosted show hours (9am-5pm ET):
e-mail: ted(at)somafm.com
Twitter: @bagelradio
facebook.com/bagelradio/ (comments only, no FB messenger, sorry)
chat with fellow listeners: https://internet-radio-slack.herokuapp.com

Videos

480 Minutes / Year 16 - Episode 29/704

Friday, July 24, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Mem10 Takeover

The Orange Menace this week publicly wished a child sex slave trafficker well. Said sociopathic know-nothing-in-chief was invited to throw out the first pitch at a Yankees game in August. Adding insult to injury the team I've rooted for since childhood dispatched the greatest NY baseball player of my lifetime to the White House to play catch with and further normalize the man who can't stop lying or saying: "Person. Man. Woman. Camera. TV." For the first time ever, this Yankees fan booed Mariano Rivera. It felt icky but it was definitely the correct response. The good news for The Orange Menace is that there won't be any fans in the Stadium to boo him -- his continuing failure of leadership has ensured that no fans will be allowed at MLB games. We are seeing record numbers of coronavirus infections each week, even as much of the rest of the world has managed to control the spread of COVID-19.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Jack Oblivion (Memphis, TN), Opossums (Memphis, TN, @), The Sea At Midnight (Los Angeles, CA), Tiña (London, England, @teenyahh), The Toy Trucks (Memphis, TN), Tyler Keith (Oxford, MS), Tunde Adebimpe (TVOTR), Turnstyles (Memphis, TN), and The Wolfhounds (London, England).

Note: all of those Mem10 records are courtesy of a single label, Black And Wyatt Records.

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is (usually, and especially these isolating times) better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

480 Minutes / Year 16 - Episode 28/703 - Mem10 Takeover

Friday, July 10, 2020

"480 Minutes" - 864511320

This week the top infectious diseases expert in the U.S. was told he was not welcome at a coronavirus task force press briefing. Apparently the administration is still not a fan of reality.

Speaking of reality, the Republican Party now accepts the realities that COVID-19 is spreading out of control in Florida and that holding a series of mass indoor events in an infection epicenter during a pandemic is murder...yet apparently the GOP does not accept the reality that Jacksonville in August is crazy hot and humid and full of mosquitoes as they make arrangements to move events to outdoor venues. In Jacksonville. In August. Did I mention that it tends to rain 11 days during the month of August in Jacksonville?

The Orange Menace proclaimed that the CDC guidelines for re-opening schools safely this fall are "too expensive." Meanwhile he brags about the size of the obscene $740 billion military budget.

He also says he won't sign the military spending bill if it includes a provision which prevents the use of the U.S. military against peaceful protesters and another which allows for the re-naming of military bases currently named for traitors who fought explicitly for the evil cause of perpetuating slavery.

The good news is that the race-baiting sociopath who manages to make Mississippi legislators look enlightened is finally seeing his polling numbers slip. The bad news is those numbers remain roughly 10x higher than they would be if Fox News -- which publicly admitted last month that it's highest rated star *doesn’t necessarily do any research and what he says isn’t necessarily true* -- spoke truth to its viewers instead of stoking white Christian resentment.

Instead the Fox-lobotomized yell at considerate people for wearing masks in public (which, it somehow must still be noted, protect others more than the wearer) and blame China for the state we're in even though the results of President Pandemic's obvious, repeated, ego- and idiocy-fueled failures are what forced the European Union to ban travel by U.S. citizens and Mexico to close its border with Arizona. Thanks to our stable genius and his enablers a global superpower has been transformed into a shit hole country (to use his words) isolated from its allies and mocked by...just about everyone.

Who would you trust if you were feeling awful and were told that you needed a stent ASAP or you will die? Would you trust the advice of multiple renowned surgeons who have read your chart, or the psychotic white nationalist schmuck with a spray tan who definitely did not read your chart but kinda sorta maybe owns the hospital and was on TV handing out medical advice that contradicts that of the medical professionals? Take your time thinking that one over.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Dream Wife (London, England, @DreamWifeMusic), Holy Wave (Austin, TX, @holy_wave), Moscow Apartment (Toronto, Canada, @moscowapt), and Throwing Muses (Providence, RI, @kristinhersh).

The marathon 8-hour show is followed by 2 hours of uninterrupted music and is then rebroadcast in its entirety beginning at 7 p.m. Friday, 5 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, and one final time at 1 a.m. on Sunday. That is followed by a rebroadcast of a Fuzzy Road radio show at 11 a.m. and then a couple of old 480 Minutes episodes from this week in past years, making for hosted shows all weekend long.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

480 Minutes / Year 16 - Episode 27/702 - 864511320

Friday, July 03, 2020

"480 Minutes" - #701. Yawn.

How anticlimactic. Last week was our 700th show. Seven hundred! That's more episodes than The Simpsons, and those jaundiced freaks had a 14-year head start! And this week? 701. Bo-ring.

Summer is always slow for new releases, and I'm sure that lockdowns and job losses and illness and death have also negatively affected the recording and releasing of new music this year, so it's no surprise that this was a 3rd consecutive week of fewer submissions than usual, and lower overall quality as well. That said, there was some cool stuff in there!

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Afor Gashum (Tel Aviv, Israel), Beachtape (Brighton, England, @beachtapeband), Jay Som (covering Soccer Mommy), Mattiel (covering the Beastie Boys), The Vacant Lots (Brooklyn, NY, @TheVacantLots, and We Were Promised Jetpacks (Edinburgh, Scotland, @WWPJ).

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

480 Minutes / Year 16 - Episode 26/701 - #701. Yawn.

Friday, June 26, 2020

"480 Minutes" - The Magnificent 700

Today marks the 700th episode of the 480 Minutes program which first aired in 2004 as The BAGeL Radio Friday Live Broadcast (and you thought 480 Minutes was a mouthful!). That's 336,000 minutes or 5600 hours or 233 days of music interspersed with descriptions, commentary, stories, and occasional rants. In the abstract those numbers are difficult for me to fathom; when I remember I now sport a grey beard the fathoming becomes less difficult.

Thanks to everyone who has ever listened: from those who have been listening since the aughts to those who discovered the show out of sheer desperation for something to pass the time during lockdown; from those who tune in every day, to those who tune in every week, to those who tune in from time to time; from those who love the music and can't stand the DJ to those who can't stand the music but enjoy the banter; from those for whom the rants represent what they are thinking but cannot say aloud for whatever reason to those who wish I would just STFU and play music; from those who have reached out with kind words and gestures that made me blush to those who have called me uh ignernt libtard moran; from those who have never revealed themselves to those active degenerates who have brought me fame and fortune and everything that goes with it...I thank you all.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Elvis Costello (London, England, @ElvisCostello), Francis of Delirium (Luxembourg, @frantowndeli), Galore (San Francisco, CA, @GaloreSF), I LIKE TRAINS (Leeds, England, @iliketrains), and Intercooler (Brisbane, Australia).

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

480 Minutes / Year 16 - Episode 25/700 - The Magnificent 700

Friday, June 19, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Juneteenth

Today is known as Juneteenth here in the U.S., the day that slavery was finally outlawed in this country. We've come a long way from our original sin, and we've still got a long way to go. The delusion of white supremacy now has the bully pulpit from which the sickness has spread. A fraud entrusted with great power but takes zero responsibility has empowered racists to dig out from hiding their torches and swastikas and hateful chants and the flag of slavery and bring them out into the streets. That recurring stain is ugly, but also instructive. Photos and videos of red hats and gun festishists will live on, forever shaming those we know as #Cult45, just as public fealty to this lawless demagogue cult leader will forever tar the elected officials who have bent the knee.

This week the campaign of the said conman, who took out a full-page ad in the New York Times demanding the execution of a bunch of teenagers wrongfully arrested and convicted for a murder in Central Park, put out an ad suggesting he is the victim of wrongful accusations. Besides Dunning Kruger, pathological narcissism, sociopathy, and daddy issues, there's going to be a photo of him in the dictionary next to the word projection. The candidate himself also shared bogus video about CNN using manipulated media (including changing the on-screen chyron, and Facebook removed a set of Trump campaign ads for violating the company’s rules against hate symbols. We are being pelted with a steady stream of bullshit so thick it's almost self-defeating...and they are just getting started!

This was a slightly better week for music submissions thanks to the arrival of the Coriky album. The band features Ian McKaye (Minor Threat, Fugazi), Joe Lally (Fugazi), and Amy Farina (The Evens), and we will be debuting several songs from that one.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Built To Spill (Boise, Idaho, @built_2_spill), Coriky (Washington, DC), Disheveled Cuss (Los Angeles, CA, @bbqdbrains), The Golden Dregs (London, England, @TheGoldenDregs), Nana Grizol (Athens, GA, @NGrizol), and a couple of songs from the tribute album to Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne and Ivy who died from complications due to COVID-19 in April.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, June 12, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Spikes

When you hear or read people saying, "Of course there is going to be an increase in coronavirus infections as non-essential businesses begin to reopen. No one ever said there wouldn't be. Literally no one," feel free to counter with, I agree, I didn't hear anyone say there wouldn't be new or more cases, either." When they continue with, "The alternative -- keeping everyone locked away until there's a vaccine--is absurd," feel free to counter with, "I haven't heard anyone suggest 'keeping everyone locked away until there's a vaccine.' Literally no one. That's a straw man argument." That's a good place to leave it, point delivered in no uncertain terms, but if you really want to call them out on their bullshit ask, "I'm curious, are you down with another 50K dead Americans by September? How about 100K? Wondering what that number is for you. Thanks."

This was a bad week for music submissions. There wasn't the typical flood, and much of what arrived was just lame. I can handle that, especially as we enter the summer months which are traditionally slow for quality music releases.

What is not OK with me is the continuing, worsening trend of submissions arriving as low bit rate files, or in the wrong format, or with missing metadata, or with incorrect metadata, or with no metadata, or some combination thereof. Sure, some of that is personal annoyance at my time being wasted, but it's mostly about the artists who are paying their hard-earned tips to management and/or radio promo companies who are failing at the easiest parts of their job.

Recently after importing 500 or so song submissions into our Review Library, I went to the automatically generated Review Queue playlist to find nearly 40% of the music submitted was not there. I thought it was a mistake, it had to be a mistake, my playlist/submission rules aren't that strict...but it was not a mistake. It was mistakes by many people who submitted low quality files including one established company in particular that sent 5 (yes, five) different albums as unusable low bit rate files.

I love discovering new music and sharing it with friends and hopefully inspiring sales (tickets, merch, vinyl, what have you) which support the artists who made the music. It pissed me off that there are people taking money from artists and not even doing the basics of what they are being paid to do competently week after week.

Artists: don't get taken! Ask around before signing with a label, management company, or radio promo company. There are good ones out there, there are shitty ones that are always shitty and I don't know how they stay in business, and then there are others who right now don't seem to care enough to do the job right. Don't pay people who don't do the job right.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by The Black Heart Death Cult (Melbourne, Australia), a double-cover version by The Foreign Resort (Copenhagen, Denmark, @foreignresort), and Lithics (Portland, OR, @lithicsband).

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, June 05, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Inspecting The Bunker

No, that's not slang for something naughty (at least not yet), it's the so-called *president's bullshit (and uncontested by Fox "News!") excuse for fleeing to the underground bunker beneath the White House when in reality he was there hiding from the protesters across the street.

Last week the bully who has no idea what his wife's "Be Best" slogan means (and in his defense, no one else does, either) threatened to send the U.S. military into U.S. cities (wait...what?!) to pacify the protests sparked by the on camera cold blooded murder of a Minnesota man under the knee of a veteran "peace officer." President Pandemic spent the weekend rage tweeting and re-tweeting incendiary messages and the protests not only grew, they spread. The Stable Genius, sounding decidedly unstable, warned, "I will deploy thousands of heavily armed soldiers, military personnel" and wished aloud that there was an "occupying force" in U.S. cities to "dominate" protesters, telling governors, "you have to get much tougher...or you'll look like a bunch of jerks."

Think about that for a minute. The guy whose job it is to unify a democracy and protect the rights of his citizens was instead pushing governors to make law enforcement more brutal in an effort to stifle free speech and put down protests over...police brutality. It's not quite suggesting that California should rake it's forests to prevent forest fires, repeatedly suggesting to national security officials that we should nuke hurricanes, or of course the whole Clorox/very powerful light inside the body thing, but it was still powerful dumb and completely tone deaf.

One thing he said on that call with governors that has not gotten much attention (because it was all so very terribly wrong) is the impossibly self-unaware admonishment, "You have every one of these guys on tape, why aren’t you prosecuting them?" The Commander in Chief showed himself to be far more concerned with prosecuting people who looted Target than with the cops who slowly and "on tape" murdered an unarmed, handcuffed, subdued alleged passer of a fake $20 bill.

Trump is a career grifter who pardons criminals from a crooked politician to a murderous a Navy Seal to a virulently racist sheriff who bragged of running a concentration camp (his words!) at the Mexican border. This know-nothing once took out a full-page ad in the New York Times insisting on the death penalty for five kids of color arrested for raping and murdering a white jogger in Central Park who they did not rape or murder. The kids were wrongly convicted in part due the pressure on the District Attorney to blame someone for the horrific crime. All spent most of their teens and at least some of their 20s locked up. They were later exonerated and given a $41M award as compensation for their stolen childhoods and state broken lives, but the hero of the KKK to this decade has insisted that they were probably guilty of something. Yes they were, Donald -- they were guilty of being non-white and in the wrong gigantic park at the wrong time, you gigantic asshole.

Meanwhile The Orange Menace, paying no mind to the Kent State massacre, went ahead and dispatched troops to cities, even where they weren't wanted, along with unaccountable unidentified mercenaries, ratcheting up the potential for violence and actual violence...and not a peep from The National Rifle Association. The NRA, which claims it is "dedicated to the future of freedom" and never lets a crisis pass without at least trying to score political points, has been strangely silent. Not a peep from the organization whose solution to everything, including mass shootings, is: "More guns! Less restrictions on the sale and ownership of guns! A national registry for guns = tyranny!" Their 2A über alles members insist on a right to own and carry weapons of war into Applebee's claiming they are necessary to protect us all from the tyranny of the federal government. Now that there are curfews and occupations to prevent people from publicly expressing their grief and anger, their *president is shouting bizarre and dangerous ravings far more likely to be heard from the lips of a frightened fascist than a freedom-loving American, yet those very fine folks are suddenly silent and nowhere to be found (save for a few agitators who have shown up at the protests armed to the teeth hoping to incite violence if not commit it themselves). After some took to the streets a few weeks ago to protest the very stay at home orders recommended by dear leader's administration and stormed state houses open carrying their guns while intimidated representatives were in deliberations, it's probably safe to say their lack of visible and audible presence is not because they are at home knitting protective masks.

Maybe they are following the lead of their rotting apricot hero (who hates them) and are inspecting their bunkers, too.

On a more positive note, Bandcamp is again being way cool today waiving their revenue share for all sales to support artists impacted by Covid-19, so hie thee over to bandcamp.com and buy thyself some music.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Drab City (Drab City, UK, @drab_city), Elephant Stone (Montreal, Canada, @ElephantStoneHQ), Ex Norwegian (Miami Beach, FL, @exnorwegian), Kyle Avallone (New York, NY, @KyleAvallone), No Age (Los Angeles, CA, @NoAgeLA), Sports Team (London, England, @SportsTeam_), and Tanya Donelly (Boston, MA, @TonyaDonelly).

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, May 29, 2020

"480 Minutes" - The 480th Amendment

There are a whole lot of people who are really mad about what happened the other day in Minneapolis when a 20-year police veteran murdered a subdued, handcuffed, unarmed black man who was begging for his life saying, "I can't breathe." Unfortunately many of those really mad people appear to be more mad about the angry reactions of the public to the on-camera brutal violent murder of a compliant, handcuffed, unarmed black man by a police officer than they are about the on-camera brutal violent murder of a compliant, handcuffed, unarmed black man by a police officer. The mainstream media focus on the flaming Target store serves to maintain white privilege by shifting the conversation from the horrific, completely unnecessary death of a black American citizen under the knee of a police officer while other officers stood by and watched it happen. Officers who heard the man beg for his life just like all of us who watched the video of their complicity. The media shift of focus is one part of institutional racism that white America needs to wake up and recognize, like, yesterday.

This reply to a Tomi Lahren's intentionally obtuse post on the subject might be the comment of the year:

Q: How does looting, rioting and destroying your OWN community bring justice for anyone?" A: Idk but they tried peacefully kneeling and yall had a problem with that too.

The comment itself is brilliant, and the fact that as of this writing it has 675k "likes" while the original post has 15k gives me some hope that despite the media images and focus, the majority of Americans remain aware of what's important here (hint: it's not a store being looted).

Meanwhile President Pandemic finally recognized the obscene coronavirus (not a hoax, not the flu, not something that's going to go away with the warm weather in April) death toll for which he, Fox News, and his COVIDIOT enablers are largely responsible. If only he'd responded to the biggest health crisis the planet has seen in 100 years as quickly and forcefully as he did to Twitter daring to place a link to reality (more on that below) next to his tired, sad, proven-to-be-baseless-by-his-own-investigative-commission excuse for losing the popular vote...to a woman, no less!

Remember how upset he was about Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players taking a knee to protest police brutality? He called on NFL owners to "fire" players who knelt during the national anthem. He called the kneeling players sons of bitches. He Tweeted about that peaceful form of protest dozens of times, as if he didn't have more important things to do in his role as *President of the United States of America. I may have missed it, but I haven't heard him call for the firing or prosecution of the police officer who murdered an unarmed handcuffed subdued man in cold blood.

Of course since we are so close to the election he has addressed the incident, along with the incident where an innocent, unarmed man was chased, hunted down, and murdered by white men for the offense of jogging while black. In that case it took a video of the incident to emerge for the Georgia Bureau of Investigations to take the murderer and his accomplices into custody even though they knew all about the deadly racial-profiling murder for more than two months. Maybe he thinks African Americans have forgotten that he completely ignored all of the other high profile incidents of police murdering unarmed black men during his time in office.

And then he went and did it. Apparently unaware of the Posse Comitatus Act, just before 1 a.m. this morning the blowhard wanna-be-fascist (but is too lazy) tweeted about sending in the capital M Military with the words, "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." The perverse rhyme originated 50+ years ago from a racist Miami police chief. Is he trying to incite nation-wide protests? Is the endgame to start a civil war? First he incited armed white Americans to go out and protest his own lockdown orders, now he's inciting unarmed but righteously angry black Americans? What could possibly go wrong?

I didn't bother arguing with any of the idiots on social media parroting The Orange Menace's whining about his First Amendment rights being infringed by Twitter. In case you missed it, Twitter placed a link fact-checking a Tweet containing his oft-repeated never-substantiated claims about mail-in voter fraud. The company didn't take down the post or kick him off their privately-owned platform, although according to their terms of service, they could have. They didn't alter the post. They did what many people do when some Fox-lobotomized idiot posts something false on social media -- they posted links to the facts of the matter. The perfect part of his tantrum response is that his promised retribution would actually, directly, and literally (not in the millennial sense) go against the First Amendment, which prohibits *the government* from stifling free speech. To no one's surprise he's wrong about the law: his Tweets reveal that he does not understand the First Amendment, and the executive order he signed today reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which was intended to incentivize the very type of content moderation on social media platforms Twitter flagged in this case.

As if there wasn't enough to be pissed off about this week, there were a TON of submissions which never got reviewed. Not because we didn't want to review them. Not because there wasn't time to review them. They were not reviewed because they arrived in formats we can't use, or as low bit rate files. A full 5 albums-worth of these useless files came from a single radio promo company I have worked with for 15+ years and that more often than not gets things right. Another 5 albums-worth of useless files were submitted by others. As a result, there will be fewer new additions to the playlist this week, and artists who might otherwise be getting air play, spins, and chart love will just have to wait until the people they pay to get them air play, spins, and chart love do the easy part of their jobs right.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by The Academy of Sun (Brighton, England, @TheAcademyofSun), The Grizzled Mighty (Seattle, WA, @GrizzledMighty), The Mango Furs (Nashville, TN), Momma (Los Angeles, CA), and Tenci (Chicago, IL, @_tenci_).

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, May 22, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Chloroquine With A Clorox Chaser

It is criminal for a leader to threaten to withhold aid from the citizens s/he is sworn to protect during a local crisis. It is criminal for a leader to threaten to withhold aid from the citizens s/he is sworn to protect during a global pandemic. The so-called *president did both this week (and then, as usual, the blustering bully had to walk it back). The offense these states were to be punished for? Seeking safe ways (like by mail) for Americans to vote in November.

Why is the Mendacious Orange Bully so anti-voting by mail? He claims it's rife with fraud. Here in the real world there have been investigations and court cases -- the results have shown time and again that the level of voter fraud in this country bears no resemblance to the GOP's fear mongering about it, and their prescriptions (poll tax/voter ID, armed guards at "certain" polling stations, restricting voting by mail) all somehow manage to directly and disproportionally disenfranchise poor and minority voters. This administration even set up a special committee to investigate voter fraud and had to disband it in shame because it found nothing. Despite reality, here we are: the cartoon *president of the United States threatening citizens of the United States because they want the ability to vote safely.

The least responsible human to ever hold the Oval Office also announced this week that he is taking hydroxychloroquine daily as a prophylactic against COVID-19. It is not a prophylactic against COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been warning since April that the drug should not be used for that purpose because it could cause irregular heartbeats and other cardiac trauma. Also, promoting it makes people who don't need it (like him) buy it, which is bad for those people and for the afflicted who actually do need it. I hope the Dangerous Dotard is actually telling the truth for once.

In response to the know-nothing's answer to a question about new outbreaks at meatpacking plants he ordered open, Rachel Maddow opined, "Three months into this thing he just throws word salad at anything, tries to approximate a noun that might have something to do with the real problem he was asked about."

As of this writing the official number of COVID-19 fatalities in the U.S. is 95,000; 92% of Republicans polled approve of the job done by a "leader" who takes zero-responsibility.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by BOAT (Seattle, WA, @boat_music), Chemtrails (Manchester, England, @chemtrails_band), IDLES (Bristol, England, @idlesband), Jade Hairpins (London via Toronto, @jadehairpins), Perfume Genius (Seattle, WA, @perfumegenius), and Shelles (Chapel Hill, NC, @Shelles1311).

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, May 15, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Creeping up on 100k

As the U.S. COVID-19 death toll creeps upwards toward 100,000 it is worth noting that the so-called president spent his 2014 tweeting nearly 100 times criticizing the Obama administration's response to the Ebola crisis. One tweet stated, "I know for sure that our leaders are incompetent." In another he called President Obama "stupid" and suggested that he "personally embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!" Fact: two American nurses who treated Ebola patients overseas died. No Americans who contracted Ebola in the U.S. died.

Today the U.S. leads the world in coronavirus deaths because the damaged unfit fool in charge was more concerned with his re-election campaign than reality. The bungled U.S. government response to the warnings we received from experts and saw in Italy can be directly attributed to the stable genius who thinks he's good at science and is certain he knows better than any expert. Others bear significant responsibility as well, including the "news" and "religious" outlets which sold his obvious bullshit messages, and of course all who are supposed to represent We The People but have instead continually enabled a clearly incompetent "leader" whose tombstone will bear his infamous quote: "I take no responsibility at all." We are where we are today thanks to those power-mad people, not Obama, not China, not "the media," not the Democrats (although they should have done more to lead).

To distract us from the daily death toll and accompanying embarrassing shit show of mendacity, miscalculations, and maliciousness, the misadministration's man at the injustice department tried to further subvert the rule of law. The Attorney General of the U.S. tried to drop the case against a traitor who had multiple undisclosed, unsavory contacts with Russian government officials, lied about those contacts to the administration and to the FBI, and by lying handed leverage over the National Security Advisor to the president-elect to a hostile foreign power leverage. And he admitted to these things. Twice.

Another favorite distraction tactic was trotted out this week, the revelation of an evidence-free whole-cloth non-scandal, has been deployed to gaslight the country. It gives the RWNJs on Twitter something to talk about and hate on Democrats together (lack of evidence or even an actual charge be damned) and most importantly diverts media cycles from the big story: Republican culpability for handling a severe global health emergency as poorly as a "superpower" can. Thus far even Faux News is having difficulty selling this nebulous, meaningless doozy (see video).

Remember the GOP's #1 re-election campaign strategy -- the fake Burisma scandal? Poof! Gone in an eyeblink! Do you know why? The Bloomberg campaign announced that if the Trump campaign didn't drop the bullshit Burisma attacks on Joe Biden and his son (attacks which laughably included Junior and Eric calling out Hunter Biden for...wait for it...nepotism!), no expense would be spared to expose the misdeeds of The Donald's offspring. Seemingly overnight there were no more calls to investigate the Bidens, no more calls for congressional hearings, no Tweets about Biden's family...nothing. Apparently the grifter's kids have some skeletons (and live bodies) they'd prefer to keep hidden. Bloomberg is an ass but in this case he did good: he called the bully's bluff and the bully melted like a snowflake in Ethiopia.

Getting back to the issue that the RNC is coaching Republicans on how to not talk about -- we are going to blow past that nearly 100,000 mostly preventable American deaths milestone. By mid-summer that number is going to look like a pie-in-the-sky dream as the consequences of the childish, selfish, ghoulish, and premature rush to "reopen America" start to flood hospitals in places already hard hit and places which have not yet experienced the pandemic up close. Forget that TrumpCo spent the first two full months ignoring the crisis. Forget that they burned the pandemic playbook left for them by the previous administration and instead got everything from preparedness to planning to communications completely wrong. As the virus spreads (because that's what infectious diseases do when people are sharing physical space and air and surfaces) and areas are forced back into lockdowns what will be front and center are the Donald "this 'pandemic' is a hoax to hurt me" Trump televised rallies he used to mislead the country with contradictory and outright false claims, confusing instead of calming people, and his utter failure to use two full months of lockdown time to educate the public, set up solid testing and contact-tracing, and produce a public health expert-defined, federally mandated set of prototcols for the initial post-lockdown period.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Annie Hamilton (Sydney, Australia, @anniehamilton_), Mark Lanegan (Seattle, WA, @marklanegan), Thao and the Get Down Stay Down (San Francisco, CA, @thaogetstaydown), and Tijuana Panthers (Long Beach, CA, @tijuanapanthers).

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, May 08, 2020

"480 Minutes" - No Justice Department

The Injustice Department is attempting to drop its case against a man who pleaded guilty -- twice -- to the charges. There is one federal judge who can put a stop to this madness. The fact that the Attorney General of the United States of America is this corrupt is no longer news (how sad is that?), but it's still a shocking move against the rule of law brought to you by the rule of law party.

An unarmed black man jogging in Georgia was shot and killed by a former police officer and his son months ago and the murderers are still at large, in public, living their lives. Injustice like this in 2020 is so commonplace that it, too, hardly registers anymore.

Outrage fatigue is real, and not paying too too much attention to politics is healthy in this time of toxic, constant gaslighting, but if we lose sight of just how far through the looking glass this criminal administration and the compromised, corrupt Republican Party has dragged us we will never find our way back.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Car Seat Headrest (Seattle, WA, @carseatheadrest), Dope Body (Baltimore, MD, @DopeBody), Fontaines D.C. (Dublin, Ireland, @fontainesdublin), Les Manteez (Agde, France, @lesmanteez), Man Man (Los Angeles, CA, @manmanbandband), Melenas (Pamplona, Spain, @melenasband), Pure X (Austin, TX, @PURE__X), and Squid (Brighton, England, @squidbanduk).

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

Keep track of BAGeL Radio's live-hosted shows and re-runs with our handy dandy program schedule, which you can import into your favorite calendar program, embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Friday, May 01, 2020

"480 Minutes" - Thugs "Я" U.S.

Dangerous, delusional, armed, angry men stormed the Michigan State House yesterday to demand an end to Governor Whitmer's stay at home order. Many of the protesters weren't wearing protective masks, there was little to no social distancing between them or between them and the (responsibly mask-wearing) guards keeping them from entering the chamber where the state legislature was meeting.

Allowing armed thugs to invade government buildings and physically intimidate lawmakers is a threat to democracy. How can representative government function when looking down the barrel of a gun?

57% of Michiganders support Whitmer's coronavirus response, 37% do not. In the end the minority got its wish -- lawmakers not only voted down the governor's attempt to extend the state of emergency, they voted to sue her. Apparently Michigan is gerrymandered enough that 37% of the population can get it's way over a solid majority with no political price to pay.

Over in Washington the current administration is a haven for white supremacist agents of chaos and has been encouraging this very un-American behavior.

Meanwhile, even if U.S. law enforcement was not riddled with white supremacists, what could we expect those officers protecting elected officials to do? It is only a matter of time before one of these attempts to intimidate lawmakers gets ugly, perhaps intentionally by someone looking to be the "hero" by firing the first shot in the fever swamp dream of "the next civil war." Perhaps unintentionally by some particularly skittish incel with bunch of ammo who forgets that his safety is off...either way talking heads and politicians alike will say, "who could have seen that coming?!"). What happens then? That question is not rhetorical.

Today's show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Dead Ghosts (Vancouver, Canada, @deadghosts), Hazel English (Los Angeles via Australia, @iamhazelenglish), Savak (Brooklyn, NY, @savakband), Raw Milk (Columbus, OH, @rawmilkmusic), and RVG (Melbourne, Australia, @rvgband).

Tune in and chat with fellow listeners on Slack. Hanging out and yakking it up with real humans in a virtual conference room is better than not hanging out and yakking it up with other humans.

For help with remembering when the live-hosted shows and re-runs air, check out the program schedule (which you can import into your favorite calendar program!) embedded here:

http://bagelradio2.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html