Mark in Fridley

Let me address a few things from today's Mark in Fridley call.  For anyone who doesn't know, Mark in Fridley is a passionate, far left progressive with some very interesting takes on politics.  He gets bogged down on the details at times and some of his issues are hard for even me to follow.  He used to come on 4-5 times a week, for what he felt was his "designated time," @ 7:40 AM.  I finally pulled the plug on his daily rants because 1) he was rarely on topic, 2) he would go on for five or six minutes, on multiple, unrelated issues, 3) it felt like most of the time he was just taking a shot at Obama or the Clintons, and 4) the number of people who liked his daily visit was far outnumbered by the amount of listeners who wanted it to stop.

This morning, after I was making a point about WalMart and their anti-American worker policies, Mark called in to chime in on something from earlier in the show, but decided to first poke the Clintons by pointing out the Koch Brothers and WalMart are big funders of the Clinton Foundation.  I congratulated him on getting his shot in on the Clintons, a comment which seemed to anger him.  He insisted he was only stating the facts, something I'm not necessarily arguing, but what he did say was a loaded comment.  It was designed to make the Clintons look as bad as possible, and then for him to run away from it.  When I called him on it, he turned it into a Kucinich and Warren promotional endorsement, implying a more progressive candidate would never take dirty money (HA!), and he insisted his not mentioning the GOP gets far more money from Koch and Walmart entities was a harmless omission.

There is an element of the left which HATES the Clintons.  That's fine with me, but do not try to use my show as a platform to smear and begrudge what will likely be the Democratic candidate for the 2016 Presidential race.  I will not take sides on the air, and I won't sit back while one candidate gets slammed because they haven't passed through the extreme far left organic purity test.

Reality:  Hillary Clinton will likely be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016.  She was caught off guard by Obama in 2008, but has spent her time getting her ducks in a row.  When she does announce, she'll be in full campaign mode, in an intimidating position over the rest of the left leaning pack.  If she becomes the Democratic nominee, and you decide to throw a temper tantrum and stay home on election day in protest, you might be helping to elect a Republican who likely will start a war with Iran.  Your call.

Elizabeth Warren announced she isn't running.  Until she changes her mind, you holding Clinton to a Warren litmus test is unfair.  There are going to be progressive candidates running in 2016, trying to catch fire in a bottle like Obama did, but that's a very unlikely scenario.  The most likely person to give Hillary a run for her money is the current Vice President, Joe Biden.  If you really hate Hillary, you might want to pressure him to run.  He's the only other current Democrat who could win the nomination and potentially win the Presidency.

Also, the Clinton Foundation is not a Hillary Clinton PAC.  That implication was left hanging out there, a purposeful distortion made by omitting the context and purpose of the organization getting the donation.  That's not fair either.

I will not let the left do what the right tried to do when I started on AM 950 five years ago; get on the air, state things that are either outright lies and/or agenda driven, and after getting all of them out say, "but my real reason for calling is...", hoping I let the other things they snuck in go unchallenged.  No!  I will not let you throw out lies and distortions as facts, and because you used the avalanche method of topic discussion, think I'm just going to skip on past something I know is distorted or dishonest.  Be prepared to discuss everything you throw into the arena of my show.