History Of Steve Winwood-SiriusXM This Week

Tune in Tuesday August 6th to Volume 106, 7 PM East, 4 PM West.

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The Shootings

This is why we want change.

Nobody can sacrifice in America. Screw the greater good, I’ve got mine and you’re on your own. As for a shooting at Wal-Mart, when was the last time the east coast elite ventured into one, the intellectuals who keep telling us they know better when the truth is they’ve got less of a handle on America at large than the people walking the streets, trying to make ends meet.

Let’s face it folks. In a week, max, this will be an old story. We get no change. WHY? Because people love their guns. They want to feel safe in their houses when the truth is family members end up shooting each other, or committing suicide.

And then there are the hunters. Okay, it’s a sport. But if the NFL instituted new rules to cut down on CTE, can’t we have new rules re gun ownership and hunting? Guns should go the way of the NFL. The NFL is gonna die. Parents don’t let kids play. The only ones on the field are those who come from underprivileged circumstances and see this as a way to get ahead. Of course that’s not completely true, but generally it is. That’s right, we live in a gotcha culture. Unless your statement is 100% accurate, you’re gonna be shouted down. America has become a land of facts, but the truth is society runs on emotions.

And what are the emotions of the many? You just can’t get ahead. That’s why they play the lottery. Forget the odds, that’s their only chance of getting rich. And if you go to college, which you need to to become a receptionist, you end up with a ton of debt so you can’t buy a house and…

Ever notice the media keeps running articles against self-driving cars? These are the same wankers against streaming music and digital books. Hell, I just bought a book yesterday, the Kindle version was only a buck less than the hardcover. I’d say the publishers have another thing (I know it’s THINK, don’t e-mail me!) coming, but they inhabit such a backwater most people don’t care, they buy a book a year, if that. We had the same situation in music, and as soon as the public had an option to $15 CDs with one good track, they took it, they called it file-trading, Napster.

It’s like the intelligentsia are against the future. They want to bring Tesla down. I’d say the problem is they didn’t invent it, but the truth is they like life just the way it is, they want to play it safe, so they don’t lose a thing.

This is how Trump won.

Oh come on, don’t point to racism or some other b.s., the guy won because he was new and different and promised to upset the apple cart. What did the Democrats offer? The status quo. And that was only working for the entitled elites. The same elites freaking out about Sanders and Warren, they want to be in control, when the truth is they lost it years ago!

So you’re a nobody in America, unnoticed, unable to get ahead, unable to get laid. There’s no money for mental health, and you don’t have insurance anyway. You can’t afford it and don’t even want to pay for Obamacare.

So you’re looking for something to believe in. Call it Al-Qaeda. Call it the Incels. Call it white supremacy. I don’t see anybody sacrificing to help these people, to get them on the right track. As for the guns they employ in mass shootings, cancel them, make them illegal. The government has the power, but it doesn’t want to use it. And right wingers rule the Supreme Court and their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment is the people have to have guns to stand up to the government. This is like trying to use your IBM Selectric to fight the internet. It’s 2019 folks. The danger is data, not guns for war. Hell, we use drones!

But all this digitization, these technical advancements, leave people overwhelmed. Which is why the old whites watch Fox and those who lean left can’t stop trying to put their finger in the dike of the future. Yup, that’s the problem, screen time! Yup, the anti-tech police believe they can fight mass shootings by banning 8chan. Can I remind you that after the music industry shut down Napster it was replaced with KaZaA and a host of other P2P services? Revenue didn’t go up until you got ahead of the game, which in the case of music was Spotify.

You don’t eradicate online, you replace. Find something more enticing. It can be done, never forget Facebook killed MySpace and Instagram has diminished Facebook and…

Give these guys on 8chan a chance of advancement job-wise, a chance to get laid, or counseling to achieve both and…they ain’t gonna be wasting time looking how to blow things up. THEY WON’T HAVE ANY TIME!

Of course Trump is fanning the flames. But the story there is how the Republicans are afraid of him. Come on, break ranks, if Trump goes you’re still in control, you’ve got Pence, but NO!!

That’s right, people fire guns, and people make laws allowing people to get guns.

And then they throw their hands up, saying there are too many guns in America, you can never shut them down. The best solution for this is Chris Rock’s, make the bullets damn expensive. Say a thousand bucks. Believe me, there will be no mass shootings by the underclass, they won’t be able to afford it! But Hail Mary solutions…isn’t that why they put down Sanders and Warren?

So if you’re sitting at home, if you are not famous, you feel frustrated, powerless in this situation. You might as well sit on the couch and smoke dope. And I’m against dope-smoking, but I am for legalization. For a whole host of reasons. And one thing’s for sure, no one is gonna vape and then go commit a mass murder!

So there’s a school shooting in Florida and Laura Ingraham can’t stop excoriating David Hogg. What’s next, picking on babies?

And we always hear about the children, we only care about the children, then why are they separated from their parents at the border?

And that’s the right’s position. Bogeymen. Gay marriage. Illegal immigration. Dope. But even Republicans have gay children. And even Republicans have kids addicted and O.D.’ing on opioids. Yup, that’s why we’ve suddenly got movement on opioids, the right’s kids are affected.

And the only place people are really standing up to the opioid manufacturers is at museums, refusing to take Sackler money or giving the manufacturers’ money back. And forget the cash, they’ve got so much, but what they’re looking for is respectability, like Jeffrey Epstein, they want to be part of the rich and beautiful club. Which the hoi polloi cannot join.

Used to be all about rock stars. They challenged the status quo and did whatever they wanted, they had cash to cover the consequences of their behavior. But now, Bono becomes a VC. That’s how you hang in Davos, you need more cash than you can ever make in the music industry.

The only people who laud performers are the ignorant young. Who are unaware of how the game is played. They don’t know the game is rigged, run by people they don’t know the names of.

Yup, this is another consequence of income inequality. No one with a brain wants to go into music, and the people who do are selling out constantly, to corporations, trying to make a few bucks.

You know what the status symbol is today? A PRIVATE PLANE! In almost all circumstances it makes no sense, you’re better off with a NetJet account. But not only does it connote wealth and status, it allows you to give people rides and curry favor. It’s like free records on steroids. And break the code and you’re banned. You can’t write a negative review and you can’t call your benefactor out and if they get caught, you owe it to them to get them off, that’s how the game works.

And instead of all the tax cuts for corporations and the rich, why not put it towards mental health problems, the homeless problem, try to pull these people up from the bottom. BUT NO! The Republicans keep on pointing at bogeymen, it’s always somebody else’s fault. And they play offense and the Democrats play defense and as soon as someone goes on offense, they’re a pariah and must be shouted down. Tell me the solutions Biden is proffering again? What are his plans?

So there you have it folks. I’m lucky I live in California, which might as well be Russia to the Republicans, Gavin Newsom is worse than Putin in the eyes of the President. Newsom got new fuel standards agreed upon, close to the Obama rules as opposed to the pollute for all plan of the Administration. That’s right, burn that coal, don’t electrify cars, enact those tariffs. What did we learn decades ago? We live in a global economy! Oftentimes it does not make sense to make it here. And the truth is almost everything constructed here uses foreign parts. Trump keeps telling Tim Cook to build the new Mac Pro in America, but the truth is the old Mac Pro was hobbled by not being able to access enough high quality screws! I could go on, but please just see this as an illustration that there’s a lot going on beneath the headlines, but in a tribal, cacophonic news world, who knows what the truth is unless you’re reading all day long.

So you want a solution?

Start taking away the guns. And yes, take away their private health insurance too. How many people do you think need their guns? How many people have such great private health insurance they don’t want to cough it up?

So kids get killed in Newtown and Parkland and we go into national mourning.

But if they kill some Latinos or poor people…forget about it. Because those who pull the strings don’t care about them.

But they care when their teenage daughter gets pregnant, when their kid is shot or O.D.’s. Yup, that’s self-centered America, it only matters if it happens to you. And the regular people are seen as chumps.

So, once again, we all feel powerless. We’ve lost belief in government. It’s not only about holding Trump accountable for his lies, but letting the Democrats know it’s not business as usual, and the rank and file are sick of being talked down to and ignored as people like Chuck Schumer, who uses a flip phone, I still can’t get over that, deliver nothing.

One thing is for sure in America, we need change.

And we got it in Trump. But he’s pushing us backward and antagonizing people all the while.

But the Democrats are afraid.

No, you bozos. EVERYTHING Bernie and Elizabeth are saying resonates with the hoi polloi, it’s YOU, the media, the pundits, who it doesn’t resonate with, dreaming about helicoptering to the Hamptons with someone rich, or taking their private jet to Cannes or the Caribbean.

Of course the shooters are bad actors.

But the truth is the elites are responsible. Trump first and foremost for stirring the pot, the Democrats for doing nothing, the well off who live behind walls and have contempt for the rest of the population.

Yup, we need to change our focus. If we want fewer mass shootings, we have to hold WASHINGTON, D.C. responsible!

That’s the only way we’re gonna get change.

I’m just looking for something to believe in, ironically just like these shooters.

Dick’s Sporting Goods stopped selling guns and all the elites can talk about is their stock price, the hit to their earnings.

But what about morality, what about doing the right thing?

Wal-Mart needs to stop selling guns immediately. They need to be held responsible, they can afford it.

Like Republicans with abortions, guns should be hard to get.

But they’ve really got to go.

I can’t believe in musicians, if you can even call them that.

I can’t believe in Zuckerberg.

I can’t believe in Sergei and Larry.

I can’t believe in Gates.

I can’t believe in McConnell.

I can’t believe in Fox.

I can’t believe in Biden.

I can’t believe in Trump.

I can’t believe in Remington.

I can’t believe in Koch Brothers.

I can’t believe in Wall Street.

I can’t believe in Congress.

I can’t believe in tariffs.

I can’t believe in clean coal.

I can’t believe in Rihanna.

I can’t believe in Putin.

Just give me something to believe in, PLEASE!

The Great Hack

People need movies to explain it to them.

And streaming services have elevated documentaries as an art form, and given them more heft.

You think it’s about theatrical, when the truth is it’s about streaming.

But theatrical is like the “Billboard” chart, a facsimile of what’s happening. If a film grosses a hundred million, and few do, how many people actually saw it? The key is access. We learned this in the era of “free music.” Those who did not make their music free, got passed by. Those who embraced new technologies emerged victorious. This is one way hip-hop beat rock, it embraced Soundcloud and mixtapes and…

Netflix gives you access. You pay your monthly fee, and then you partake of what you want, and it doesn’t feel like it costs anything. Charge per film/show, and you have to make a decision. And you’re not always going to say yes. This is like music streaming services, suddenly you can hear everything, the history of recorded music, as opposed to having to purchase albums one by one. Same thing is happening in theatrical. It makes no economic sense. You overpay for one flick. Whereas on Netflix you’re now gonna even get Scorsese. That’s right, unlike the Democrats Netflix goes big, the company knows it’s important to stay out front, to innovate, to leave little margin for newcomers. Come on, Katzenberg’s Quibi? Like people are really gonna pay five bucks for another streaming service. Even worse is Graydon Carter’s new weekly newsletter, at fifty bucks a year. Are you paying ANYTHING for your news? And if you are, you’re paying for the newspaper, which you get every damn day. Both Katzenberg and Carter are behind the times. They figured out a business, figured out how much it needed to cost, and didn’t bother looking at the platform it was going to appear on, i.e. the Internet. Everybody I asked thought fifty bucks was too much for Carter’s “Air Mail,” I don’t know a single person who has subscribed. On the internet it’s about growing your niche, getting traction, you don’t want to marginalize yourself from the start, which is why Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat are FREE!

You gain mass and then figure out how to monetize.

And the way you monetize on a social network is the data. In “The Great Hack” it is said that data is now more valuable than oil. Think about that. We think of all the wealth and power in oil, but data is more important and worth more!

Ostensibly “The Great Hack” is about Cambridge Analytica. But really, it’s about the aforementioned data, and how no one has a grip on how it is used. How in truth, no election today is trustworthy. Did the data collectors/sellers ruin democracy? It appears so, just watch this movie and see.

“The Great Hack” is on Netflix. And I wasn’t interested until I caught the buzz. Now not everything gets buzz, but something that does…I want to be able to check it out immediately. Hell, there’s buzz on the Tarantino film, but I’ve got to drive to the theatre to see it at an appointed time for mucho dinero.

The real problem I have with theatrical movies is they never start when I’m calm, cool and collected. I go and I can’t get my regular life out of my brain. So the experience is compromised.

But when I’m at home…I only watch a movie or show on a streaming service when I’m ready, and Netflix is ready whenever I am. If I’m in a groove, I don’t have to wait for HBO to drip out an episode a week. That’s too much effort, I want it all when I want it. That’s the new paradigm, in all walks of life, and if you break it…you’re one of those Luddites left behind who wants to go back to physical media.

Now “The Great Hack” is not perfect, the arc is not perfect, you’re not always riveted. But when confronted with the real people who did this. And the lies they tell… You’re overwhelmed. Yes, the big issue is election security Moscow Mitch, and it’s not only the Russians who are hacking/influencing the process.

You can’t apply an old framework to a new model. When you see what Cambridge Analytica did in Trinidad, your head will explode. They started a fake movement to get people not to vote. It was genius, and it worked!

And the “star” of “The Great Hack” is one Brittany Kaiser. Oh, she’s been in the news, but her name slips away until you watch this flick. She did it for the money! She worked for Obama, but in 2016 the Democrats wouldn’t pay!

And Kaiser says how her family lost their house and you think this is a 2008/recession story, until you dig deeper and find out she went to Andover and college overseas. In other words, she’s obfuscating, like all rich and powerful people do. They say they’re broke when it’s patently untrue. And even if she is truly broke, Kaiser’s mother worked for Enron, the apple does not fall far from the tree.

In other words, you don’t know what to believe. Or who.

In his podcast, Michael Lewis featured a Cambridge Analytica employee who said that the service the company was selling didn’t work, they couldn’t target the persuadables like they said they could. But in this film, seemingly everybody who worked at Cambridge Analytica lies outright about who they work for and what they do. The bigwigs say they weren’t involved in the Leave campaign of Brexit, when that is patently untrue. And the head of Cambridge Analytica portrays himself as a victim! After all, the scandal forced the business to go bankrupt.

And when Zuckerberg goes to Congress he says he doesn’t know when he does. He makes it look like Facebook is innocent when its sales people met with Cambridge Analytica.

And the other star of the film is Carole Cadwalladr, an English reporter who is the opposite of the bozos making lists at Buzzfeed. She’s living the story 24/7, and she’s not doing it for the cash, but because it’s right! Remember that?

Yes, while the techies feed us pabulum for clicks, there are people who still know the power of truth.

Meanwhile, Trump twists the concept and calls the real news fake news.

No wonder people are clueless.

And we fight over transgender rights and immigration and the rest of the social issues dominating the conversation because no one can really understand what is going on in tech. The oldsters are too old, they didn’t learn it in school. And what’s worse is the techies themselves aren’t even aware of the power of the data they gather.

So you’ll be hearing about “The Great Hack” if you haven’t heard about it already.

You should watch it.

Why?

Because you want to be part of the conversation, which is what Netflix allows.

And…you might find out you know less than you think you do, and the world is more unstable than it appears, and the government really doesn’t want to tackle the big issues, they’re beyond its comprehension.

This is the world we live in.

Lionizing Obama

Every day, a new left wing trope. No wonder Republicans are laughing.

To progressives, Obama was a disappointment. He was a centrist in an era of tribalism, one could even call it extremism. On his watch, Democrats lost tons of governorships and state legislatures. Sure, he’s a dignified man, sure, he’s an African-American, BUT THAT’S NOT ENOUGH!

Lionizing Obama is like saying the Backstreet Boys are inviolate, can’t be criticized, because the era they triumphed in was good financially. Hell, let’s add in ‘N Sync while we’re at it, didn’t they sell in excess of two million CDs in a week? That’s right, let’s go back to not only CDs, but Nickelodeon, Hummers, all the “great” stuff that existed at the turn of the century.

Meanwhile, cars don’t come with CD players and the younger generation streams, think they’ll get excited about their parents’ music? I DON’T THINK SO!

Nothing is off the table. Hell, look, at the Republicans, our tweeter-in-chief. He blasts everybody, and it’s working for him. Hell, it’s hilarious to watch the Democrats react to everything he says and make no progress. Better to attack Trump’s financials, demonstrate in front of his faux (as in name-licensed) buildings every day, or TAKE ACTION! That’s what California did, by passing a law that candidates in primaries must show their tax returns. The right is FREAKING OUT over this! You want your enemy freaking out, not chuckling.

Meanwhile, Trump reverses seemingly every Obama advancement. It’s like giving credit to a general who took territory and then his successors lost it, because they were not prepared well enough. And Obama was Jackie Robinson, someone who broke up the white hegemony, but Jackie had to be calm and collected, he couldn’t fit the stereotype of the angry black man, and neither could Barack. Meanwhile, the stars in Obama’s vaunted NBA are completely the opposite, they run the game, and they stand up to racist acts all the damn time…AND THE PUBLIC LOVES THEM FOR IT!

But in the Democratic party, you must be a mouse.

Look at debate #2. Remember anything from it? Any candidate impress you? Did you even watch till the end?

CNN takes the lead from sports, with an intro worthy of a football game (a paradigm invented by Fox, when it scored NFL broadcasts), and the talent…huh? You watched waiting for Biden to fail and Harris demonstrated that she was as portrayed…a prosecutor not in touch with today’s ethos, and Tulsi Gabbard was composed and beautiful, but it’s disheveled Bernie Sanders who triumphed. And all media agrees that the overall winner was Elizabeth Warren, but instead of portraying her positive qualities, they’re making fun of her, saying her policies are pipe dreams.

Watch Fox. Do they attack other Republicans? No, they realize the enemy is the Democrats! Meanwhile, the “New York Times,” trying to appear fair and balanced to the right, which will never believe it anyway, bends over backwards to attack their own and say their candidacies are fantasies.

Look at music… Every few years a new sound comes along to wipe out the old. Until the twenty first century, the internet era, where it’s all hip-hop all the time. The non-hip-hop lovers? They get no attention, no dollars, they’re seen as a backwater in an internet era where nothing is that big and the backwaters are important. We’re ripe for revolution in recordings, but nothing is happening, whereas there’s turmoil in politics, which makes it so fascinating.

Our entire nation, our entire WORLD, was revolutionized by technology. But somehow in politics we must run to the past. Then again, the same media saying Obama is God write stories about the perils of technology, too much screen time. Hell, if it weren’t for apps and free distribution of articles the “New York Times” would be completely irrelevant. This is like musicians bitching about streaming payments, for free, online, via social media, after making their music for almost nothing on their computers. Talk about cognitive dissonance…

The future is not only coming, IT’S HERE!

And digital disruption shows that old farts who refuse to innovate get left behind. Hell, Netflix put a dent in Disney, and Imagine, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s production company, has now pivoted from theatrical to TV.

But in politics?

Everything must be gradual. We must honor the past. We must follow the precepts of the past, uttered by old men who think it’s still the last century.

HOGWASH!