Radioactive News

I spent a bit of time this morning watching MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, and  Fox News. I had a minor surgical operation on my foot a few days ago and the doc said I should take a break from work every couple hours and elevate my foot.

So, during my foot-elevation time around 9:30, I scanned the TV band. I watched a bit of CNN, a bit of MSNBC, a dab of CNBC, and then landed on Fox News Channel. They were talking about how dangerous train travel has become. Three train wrecks in the past few days.

I try to achieve some balance in what I watch. MSNBC constantly bashes Trump. CNN does, too. So I throw in a little Fox News Channel to at least get a sense of what a third of America believes is happening.

After the trains are scary story, the Fox News Babe (I'm sorry - I shouldn't objectify people) explained how the stock market was just fine, that this is a correction, that the ups and downs this morning show how the market is just seeking a new level. Hmmm. She sounded pretty intelligent and composed. I thought Fox would paint a gloom and doom scenario, but - they surprised me.

Then, they swung into a story I hadn't seen or heard anywhere else this morning. Some Homeland Security dude said the terrorists "crown jewel" is to blow up another airplane, that airplane travel is extremely dangerous. After his spiel, the FNC anchors nodded approvingly, and repeated the line about how blowing up an airplane is considered the crown jewel of terrorist achievement.

Very scary. Airplane travel. Scary. Bombs. Terrorists.

Then it was time for a commercial.

The commercial was an enticement for me to buy silver. I was told that banks and other money houses are hoarding silver. Silver is my safe haven against global market turmoil. Smart people are buying silver, because they want to be safe from the global market turmoil.

It was then that it struck me: watching Fox News is sort of like exposing yourself to radioactivity. The body can take small doses from time to time, but constant exposure is toxic.

And to make sure that everyone hates me, I think it's fair to say that the same can be said of MSNBC. Joe and Mika ridicule the President every morning. The nighttime MSNBC hosts bash Trump constantly.

Overexposure to either extreme is toxic. Somebody oughtta invent a cable TV news dosimeter, which would beep and boop loudly to warn you that you're approaching a toxic dose of cable TV news.

I think you'd reach your daily limit of exposure in a much shorter time watching Fox News, where the world is a very scary place, and there are so many things you need to be afraid of and hate.

It may take a bit longer, but I think this dosimeter would also go off to warn you of a possible toxic overdose from MSNBC and CNN.

Perhaps an advanced version of the dosimeter would automatically switch your TV to the Game Show Network or The Hallmark Channel when you're in danger of a cable news overdose.

It's a way you'd be assured of fairness and balance.

Adventures In Antihistamine-Land

I strolled into a pharmacy on the west side of Madison yesterday afternoon to buy some allergy pills. Claritin D, to be specific. This was a small shop in a strip mall, and I’d never been there before. But I know from years of experience that to purchase Claritin-D, you’ve got to show your driver’s license, sign a bunch of forms and waivers, and the pharmacist has to do the same.

The feds and their failed war on drugs.

I was the only person in the store and the pharmacist was busy filling a prescription when he looked up and said “can I help you?” “Claritin-D, 24-hour, 30-count box, please” I said. He said “not sure if I’ve got the brand name, but I know I have a generic that’ll work.” As he rummaged through his stock of allergy meds, I removed my driver’s license from my wallet and set it on the counter along with my debit card.

After a moment of examining his stock, he said “I’ve got something that’ll work, but each box is only 12 pills.” “I’ll take two, then”, I said. He glanced down at my driver’s license and debit card and said “you’ve been through the routine before, I take it.” “Yup. I know the drill”, I said.

He consulted some table and said “I can only sell you one box today – two would put you over the daily limit.” I shook my head. “Can’t have you stocking up for your meth lab”, he said, with a smile. I said “oh, no, I do a P-2-P cook.” “Large scale manufacture, huh?” the pharmacist said. I said “the name on my driver’s license is fake; you can call me Heisenberg.”

The pharmacist laughed out loud and said “I loved that show”. The show, of course, is Breaking Bad, and the picture at the top of this post, for those who didn’t follow the show through its five tumultuous seasons, is the rolling meth lab where Walter White and Jesse Pinkman began their career as meth cooks.

As he tried to find the right combination of allergy pills that would hold me for a couple weeks, and that the feds would let me walk out of the store with, the pharmacist began a diatribe about the feds and their complex and absolutely inflexible rules about how much allergy medicine you can buy at one time.

“There’s an opioid crisis in America”, he said as we both filled out all the paperwork that goes with the transaction, “and it’s because the feds made meth so expensive on the street that junkies turned to heroin – not that the feds would ever admit it”. “Amen, brother”, I said.

“And now Sessions wants to lock up even more people for smoking a joint”, he continued. We talked about the futility of the war on drugs and the misguided thinking that’s behind it, from people like Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and his ilk. And we talked about the for-profit prison industry, which is another huge factor in the war on drugs.

At long last, the paperwork was completed, and I slid my debit card through the sensor. “All this rigmarole for a transaction that you might make- what, a buck – on?”, I said. “Get rich or die tryin’”, the pharmacist said, with a wry smile. I thanked him and left the store, taking my generic contraband with me.

The irony of this whole thing is that my allergies are wicked from April to October, and my primary care doc has written a prescription for me, for Claritin-D. I get it at Walgreens, with all the rest of the meds that keep me alive. But yesterday, when I went to take a Claritin-D pill in the morning, I discovered that I had stupidly let my supply run out. And my eyes were killin’ me. And my nose was flowing like Niagara Falls.

And when I called Walgreens to get my prescription refilled, the nice lady told me that my prescription had expired, and that they’d have to call my doc to get a renewal before they could refill it. Usually that takes a total of three or four days, and I needed relief NOW. Which is how I wound up in the west side strip mall pharmacy yesterday.

Oh, and by the way – when I stop in at Walgreens later this week to pick up my Claritin-D 24-hour prescription, I’ll get a 90-day supply. I’ll drive off with enough pseudoephedrine for Walt and Jesse to cook up a nice big batch of meth. No signature, no driver's license, no federal paperwork. Just the co-pay and I'm on my way. Ridiculous.

My Body’s “Service Engine Soon” Light Is On

My Venerable Road Warrior SUV’s “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” warning lit up about a month ago, a couple days after the guys at Zimbrick had just given it a little more than fifteen hundred bucks’ worth of TLC. The Road Warrior is just shy of turning a hundred thousand miles on the odometer and in a few months it will be 12 model years old.

The Venerable Road Warrior is as old as our wonderful purebred collie Shadow. Both were “born” in 2006. Our old gal Shadow was born at our breeder’s home in suburban Franklin, WI and we took her home when she was six months old. The Venerable Road Warrior was born at an assembly plant in Ramos Arzipe, Mexico, a couple hundred miles southwest of Laredo, TX and began life as a Hertz rent-a-car at the San Francisco airport.

It’s amazing how easy it is these days to find out things about your car’s history. I have no idea how it wound up on the lot at Zimbrick in Madison, where I bought it in ’08. At that time, it had only about 20K on the odometer.

As usual, I digress.

The idea for this post came when, the other day, I was helping my buddy Shadow navigate the seven stairs between my office and the next level of our quad-level home, where our kitchen, dining room, and “living room” are located. We found out in April that Shadow has degenerative myelopathy, a disease of the spinal cord that develops in some dogs. The spinal cord degeneration causes the dog to gradually lose control of the hindquarters, which makes going up stairs a challenge.

Eventually, and our vet tells us it’s likely a matter of months, perhaps weeks, Shadow will completely lose control of her back legs. She won’t be able to stand, much less navigate stairs. So – we’ll have to help her across the Rainbow Bridge, as pet-owners say, at that time.  Our vet assures us there’s no pain to the animal as the disease progresses, but it’s irreversible and untreatable.

Here's Shadow, In Her First Summer in '07

As I gently lifted Shadow’s butt a bit to help her ascend the stairs, I thought “you know, Shadow, we’ve got three things around here that have the ‘SERVICE ENGINE SOON’ light on: you, me, and the Venerable Road Warrior”.

About the same time our vet had made the diagnosis of degenerative myelopathy on Shadow, I was diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy. Usually it affects people with diabetes, which I do not have, but it’s pretty common, with about 3 million new cases every year. It’s a degeneration of the nerves in the hands and or feet that causes numbness and tingling. In my case, it’s the feet more than the hands. This whole thing started out for me when I told my primary care doc that I was having trouble keeping my balance. Long story short, I wound up sitting in front of a podiatrist who told me what was going on, and made the diagnosis.

The podiatrist explained that the balance issues come from the inability of the damaged nerves in my feet to communicate vital information to my brain – information that’s necessary to maintain your balance when standing. You can have surgery on your lower spinal cord to help mitigate the effects, but it’s risky, not at all a guaranteed fix, and has a long rehab.

Oh – and the reason for the “SERVICE ENGINE SOON” warning light on the Venerable Road Warrior? It could be a bad oxygen sensor. Or a bad catalytic converter. So, for right now, until I decide whether it’s worth it to stick another grand or so into the ’06 SUV, the warning light will be a permanent feature.

So I guess the three of us….me, Shadow, and the Venerable Road Warrior….will just wait to see what happens.

Why Does Madison Tolerate This Annual Auditory Assault?

I sometimes daydream that I am in possession of a high-powered drone, equipped with an infrared camera, possessing the capability of dropping a small but extremely powerful munition that could be detonated about 50 feet over the head of anyone blowing off fireworks, instantly rendering them temporarily deaf, causing their ears and nose to bleed profusely, leaving them with a monstrous headache, and shattering every piece of glass in their home.

This magnificent imaginary weapon would have such a highly-developed munition that its incredible blast of noise would be limited to a very small footprint, enabling highly localized pain and devastation.

Because Independence Day fell on a Tuesday this year, people apparently felt some sort of Constitutional right to blow off unlawful fireworks Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night, Monday night, all day and night Tuesday, and even Wednesday night. Five or six nights of relentless aerial bombardment by these wannabe pyrotechnicians.

In my tiny Town of Madison suburban neighborhood, which consists of a handful of homes arranged like spokes of wheel around a huge cul-de-sac (which I believe is the largest cul-de-sac in Dane County), the noise this year was relentless.

The explosions drive my younger collie nuts, causing me to have to stay up until 2 AM comforting her until the drunken pyros pass out or run out of ammunition. There is one particular cretin, who lives about a quarter-mile northwest of us, who each year loads up on professional-grade aerial bombs, and sets them off, about ten minutes apart, from 8 PM until 2 AM. This year, he started Friday night and continued through Tuesday night.

This is not the kind of stuff you can buy at the myriad tents set up around Dane County a couple weeks in advance of Independence Day. This is the kind of stuff that is used in professional fireworks shows. It doesn’t create a beautiful shower of brilliant colors when it’s launched; it just ascends to about 200 feet and then explodes. Its sole purpose is to make an extremely loud noise.

If I step outside, I can hear the WHUMPH of the mortar being fired, which propels the noise-making device to a couple hundred feet. A couple seconds after the initial, dull WHUMPH, the aerial bomb detonates, with a deafening roar. I have one of those decibel meter apps on my iPhone, and the explosion registers 116 db.

Suffice to say it’s loud enough to scare the wits out of my younger collie. She’s skittish in thunderstorms but the fireworks really scare her. Her older “sister”, who is less high-strung and far more mellow, couldn’t care less. Her ears flick when the aerial bombs go off, but she’s unperturbed.

There’s another guy about a quarter-mile southeast of us, who delights in setting off similar, but not quite as loud, aerial bombs all night. Those “only” register 95 on my handy-dandy DbA app.

I get it. People love to blow off fireworks on Independence Day. I can deal with one night of staying up late, comforting my scared collie. But five or six nights? Come on.

I posted a short rant about it on my Facebook page, and a friend, who is an executive at The Capital Times, commented “I keep waiting for someone to politically organize on this single issue. The volume and frequency increase each year and there are tents set up in parking lots up and down Verona Road selling the things. I'm told that veterans with PTSD are often affected by the constant explosions. Actual firing ranges don't sound as bad.”

This year and last year on July 5^th, I phoned in a noise complaint to the cops, giving them the exact addresses from which the professional-grade stuff was being launched. (How do I know? Drive by in the daylight and observe the abundant wreckage of scorched cardboard and wrappings strewn about their yard.)

The dispatcher, both times, has asked me if I want “personal contact with an officer”, and I politely say “no, just arrest the lawbreakers and confiscate their unlawful contraband.”

Maybe some year, if enough people make their voices heard, the cops will do just that.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

No, this isn't photoshopped. That's how Fox News introduced the story to its millions and millions of viewers last night.

In a few minutes, they pulled the "Resigned" story back. 

And then spent the rest of the night feigning befuddlement about why anyone would be upset that Don fired the FBI Director.

Fake news?

It's no wonder so few people trust the media. It's like the old joke, "one church says there ain't no hell; the other says the hell there ain't."

Charlie Hart: Gone Too Soon

That guy at the bar having a beer in the recent picture above is Charlie Hartwig, or, as his friends and colleagues knew him, Charlie Hart. Charlie unexpectedly passed away Friday morning. This story is about the many years I spent working in radio with Charlie.

When I came from WMKC-FM to WOSH-FM and WTYL-AM in Oshkosh in the late 70’s, Charlie Hart could have hated me. For a few years I’d competed with Charlie’s morning show on WYTL-AM, and when Kimball Broadcasting threw me under the bus, WOSH/WYTL scooped me up.

Word was leaked (I can’t prove it, but I know who did it) that I was going to be paid a lot of money – more than anybody else on the on-air staff – Charlie could have turned a cold shoulder and froze me out. He did just the opposite. What Charlie – and only three other people at WOSH/WYTL knew – is that I was going to be their new morning news anchor. Charlie welcomed me with open arms and said “really looking forward to working with you, big fella!”

I’d never had a radio news job before; I was a programmer and on-air talent, but not a news guy. The boss at WOSH/WYTL at that time, Phil Robbins, said he wanted to use my robust baritone voice (those were the days….) to anchor morning newscasts on both the AM and FM station. The News Director at that time, the irascible Mark Belling (who has since gone on to fame as a talk-show host in Milwaukee, and as the principal fill-in guy for Rush Limbaugh) was in on the plan, and fully endorsed it.

The guy who was mad, and in fact quit when I was hired, was the Program Director, Doug Lane. I knew Doug professionally and we were friends. He didn’t quit because he was mad that I was hired, which is what a lot of people thought. He quit because they didn’t force me to change my name. The policy in place at WOSH/WYTL at the time was that nobody could use their actual name on the air. They had forced Doug to use the name “Doug Allen” and he was never happy about that.

When Mr. Robbins said “Doug, we have to make an exception here: Tim is very well known in this market under his real name, and we would look silly to force him to change it. It would cause needless confusion.” Well, Doug said “fine. I quit.” And that’s how Charlie Hartwig, known on the air as Charlie Hart, became Program Director.

As usual, I digress.

I got the sad news of Charlie’s passing from Charlie’s daughter, Christy, who was not much more than a toddler when I first met her. She posted an item to her dad’s Facebook page, with the shocking news. To say I was stunned is an understatement. It knocked me back into my chair, and I was overcome with sadness. A flood of memories came back.

(Here's a 1982 photo taken at the EAA Fly-In in 1982. We had just finished the morning show, live from the event. I'm on the left, that's Charlie in the center, and Steve Erbach on the right.)

Charlie and I had stayed in contact through the years; he’d just moved from Appleton to Rochester, MN to be closer to his family, and in particular his grandchildren. He was looking forward to spending his golden retirement years with those wonderful little kids, watching them grow up.

Charlie was a natural radio talent because he knew how to talk to people and was completely unpretentious. After his service with the Marines (including a combat tour in Viet Nam) Charlie came back to his native Minnesota, went to radio broadcasting school there (Brown Institute) and wound up in Oshkosh.

Working with Charlie and the extremely talented staff at WOSH/WYTL remains one of the most fun and rewarding periods of my life. I rose through the ranks quickly there to become the #2 man in the operation, before they threw me under the bus, but it was a real rocket-ride with some of the most talented people ever to be assembled as a broadcast staff.

(Here's a late-70's photo of Charlie interviewing B.J. Thomas. The photo was taken in the main news studio that I worked in at WOSH/WYTL.)

Doing the morning show with Charlie was a constant hoot. His intense love of country music and his naturally engaging personality and sense of humor kept that program the number one morning show in the market for many years.

Without getting too far inside baseball, let me give you an idea of how popular that show was. I still have the ratings books to prove it, to those who think I’m exaggerating. Charlie’s morning show had a 32 share of listeners 12 years of age and older. In layman’s terms, that means that during the morning hours, roughly a third of the people who were listening to radio in the Fox Valley market were listening to Charlie’s show.

Ratings that good just don’t exist any more, and haven’t for decades. Both WYTL-AM, which is the station Charlie’s morning show was on, and WOSH-FM, the sister station which broadcast out of the same building with many of the same personnel, were extremely popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s. The two stations had a combined 43 share in the broadest possible audience measurement, listeners 12 years and older, Monday through Sunday, 6 AM through 12 midnight. Again, that sort of dominance is now unheard of.

Charlie, as morning show host, was quarterback of the team. He set the pace, showed the way. Oh, there are those who think management calls the shots and does the leading, but that’s never been true. Charlie got to work early and didn’t leave until everything that needed to get done that day got done. Charlie was in his office by 4 AM, preparing for his show, which started at 5:30 AM.

Around 9:30 or so, a half-hour after his show ended, pretty much every day a bunch of us from the station would drive a few blocks to Mike’s Place restaurant, to have breakfast, drink coffee, and talk smart. After that, it was back to work for the rest of the day.

Sometimes, after work meant going to Harry’s Bar downtown, one of Charlie’s favorite hangouts. It was a regular place with regular folks, nothing fancy about it: much like Charlie. What you see is what you get.

(I'm not sure where I got this photo - it's in my file as "Geeks at Sea" and it looks like it was taken on the Wolf River in Winneconne. At the top are Charile and Sheree Sommers; the bottom row is Duane Gay, Steve Erbach, and Judy Fowler.)

There are so many stories I could tell about those heady days, working hard and playing hard; I’m just sad that Charlie, who never did things half-assed, wasn’t granted more years to enjoy his grandchildren and his leisure.

Radio is a transient business for on-air folks. When Charlie’s days at WYTL came to an end, he worked at a couple other stations in the Fox Valley; WYNE-AM and WPKR-FM to name a couple. Then he got out of the biz and went to work for Pierce, the big company in Appleton that makes fire trucks

Charlie and I chatted occasionally in the past several years, most frequently about the folks we worked with back at WOSH/WYTL, and what they were doing these days. Some are still in broadcasting; others started their own successful small businesses; some climbed the corporate ladder to positions of power.

The last time we chatted, we talked about getting together in Rochester so I could see his new digs. We decided to wait until there was no chance of snow interfering with travel, and that we’d set a date in April.

I shouldn’t have waited. Rest in peace, Charlie.

"Health Savings Accounts For All!" - Said The Man Behind The Curtain

The man who some, for reasons I’ll never understand call “The Intellectual Leader Of The Republican Party”, was on the tube again today doing his best to pitch the “replace” part of the “repeal and replace” he claims his party has been preaching for the past eight years.

First off, let’s be clear: for 7.9 of those past 8 years, the rallying cry was “repeal”, not “repeal and replace”. But now that Mr. Ryan and his co-conspirators have control of all the levers of power, they’ve been forced to admit that simply repealing what they call “Obamacare” would likely lead to a real, honest-to-God revolution.

Since the election, apparently a lot of dweebs have figured out that their health insurance, obtained at HealthCare-dot-gov, is, in fact, “Obamacare”. And now these Trumpsters have had their “wait a minute” moment, and are beginning the rumblings of discontent about this “repeal” business.

As usual, I digress.

Ryan’s selling as hard as he can, but anyone who’s been around the block a few times knows that the stuff he’s peddling right now will never fly. Their hasty attempt to put some compromise crap together isn’t pleasing anyone except the fat cats that run the health insurance companies.

One of the big features of this new-and-improved Obamacare is the touting of Health Savings Accounts as a huge part of their “solution”. HSA’s for all!!! An HSA for you…and an HSA for you….and one for you.

Let me finally get to the point of this rant, which is Health Savings Accounts.

My wife and I have used the same accounting firm for more than twenty years. We’ve come to be friends with the man whose name is on the door of that company. His firm has more than 700 clients. He told us that of those 700+ clients, exactly ONE has an HSA.

That client is a multi-millionaire.

That’s all you need to know about HSA’s, folks. More stuff for the rich folks, from Ryan and his crew.