You might think that Mike Rosen would be super-sensitive to over-confident “money” men with fancy titles, since Rosen lost big money in the Bernie Madoff Ponzie scheme.

But KOA’s Rosen showed no skepticism Thursday when State Treasurer Walker Stapleton told him:

Stapleton: “Most of us have no anticipation of actually getting Social Security.”

Rosen didn’t challenge, much less debate Stapleton, on his prediction that Social Security won’t be there for most people.  Not that you’d expect Rosen to disagree with Stapleton, but still, why not have a rational debate about it?

Social Security is one of the best programs ever devised by our government.. It’s been slightly modified over its 75 years or so of existence, as you’d expect for any long-lasting operation, public or private, and it continues to be a lifeline for seniors.

It’s on solid ground for about 20 more years, even without further tweaks. With minor changes, it will last indefinitely.

For example, simply taxing benefits on wages above $110,000, which are currently not taxed at all, would eliminate about 75% of Social Security’s projected long-term shortfall.

Rosen probably won’t rely on Social Security during his own retirement, despite his Madoff losses. But that doesn’t mean he should let Colorado’s Treasurer scare people of lesser means who are depending on their Social Security check being there for them.

If I’m Post Publisher Dean Singleton, it’s hard to bear hug Peter Boyles.

Since Boyles began his downward spiral with the paranoid right, he’s done more than his share to mindlessly trash The Denver Post and journalism as a profession.

It’s not as bad as his attacks on Muslims and illegal immigrants, because, unlike those people,  journalism exists to be attacked. But still.

But this didn’t stop Singleton from slobbering all over Boyles (and vice versa) on Boyles new KNUS show this morning.

Boyles introduced Singleton as “one of my favorite people in the world.”

To which Singleton said how much he missed Boyles on the air and joked that he had “no one to beat me up.” (Is there a union exec out there?)

Boyles told listeners that when he got fired, Singleton “was there and made sure I was ok.”

“Hey, I treasure your friendship,” Singleton responded. “You get me up every morning, and you know, you can’t have a carnival without a carnival barker.”

But I don’t want a carnival on the radio! Do you?

“We love our carnival barker,” Singleton told Boyles.

Really?

“You know what?” Boyles said with at least a handful of people listening to KNUS at 6:30 a.m. “I miss seeing you. Are you in town for a while?”

“I’m back,” Singleton replied. “This is the first time I’ve heard you on 710. We’ve had a lot of fun times together, and done a lot of fun things, and I wanted to welcome you back to the air, me and Colorado missed ya.”

Not the Muslims or the undocumented immigrants or, I would venture to say, most of the rational-minded journalists at The Denver Post. They didn’t miss him.

Still, we can agree that almost any local radio show is better than no local show. And even if Boyles is bad in many ways, he’s not all bad.

I’m just hoping Boyles stops himself from going to the deep end, and tearing down vulnerable people and institutions, as frequently as he did at his last job.

Listen to Dean Singleton on KNUS 710 AM’s Peter Boyles Show 7-12-13
 

You may recall that when House Republicans blocked the extension of the U.S. debt ceiling a couple years ago, the stock market went into cardiac arrest and America’s credit rating was downgraded.

So are you shocked that Rep. Cory Gardner is on the radio talking about doing it again?

Maybe you’re not shocked, but, still, if you presided over a talk-radio show, your brain might tell you to ask a follow-up question when Gardner says he wants to leverage the debt-ceiling extension to push his anti-government agenda.

Gardner told KFTM’s John Waters Monday that he sees the upcoming extension of the debt ceiling as an “opportunity to reduce the size and scope of government, and how we can require opportunities to look for savings, look for cuts, and what we’re going to do to grow the economy through common sense tax reform.  I think there’s great opportunities for us to get back on track.” (Listen here.)

Gardner is obviously free to push his anti-government agenda in Congress, as well has his anti-abortion one, but why not ask him why he doesn’t use the budget process for this? That’s where debate about these issues is supposed to take place.

Democrats and Republicans have extended the debt ceiling over 100 times since 1940, with little opposition (until 2011). Reagan did it 18 times; G.W. Bush seven.

Do we really want to risk another credit downgrade, as well as a stock market collapse, to debate budget issues that are properly addressed elsewhere?

It’s a question that Waters should have put to Gardner.

Conservative talk radio hosts are sure to mock today’s rally at Colorado Republican Headquarters, by immigrant rights activists, urging GOP Congressmen like Rep. Mike Coffman to support immigration reform, including–and here’s where the hissing from talk-radio land really starts–a path to citizenship.

The depressing part about the frowny faces on talk radio is they don’t see that immigration reform is more likely to help Republicans than Democrats.

Here’s the best conservative political argument for immigration reform that you never hear on talk radio.

The current Republican playbook, of demonizing immigrants or scaring people about border security, with the possible hope of attracting swing voters or mobilizing base voters, isn’t working. (See the last two presidential elections and races large and small across the U.S.)

Already inclined to lean left, Hispanics have responded to GOP hostility by becoming an even more solid Democratic bloc.

This will only get worse if the GOP Congressmen, like Coffman, continue to insult Hispanics by voting not only against immigration reform but for deporting young undocumented immigrants who were raised in America, consider it their home, and were brought to this country through no fault of their own.

Still, the talk-radio yappers fret, offering citizenship to 13 million undocumented immigrants will kill an already dying Republican Party, overwhelming America with new Democratic voters.

Really? It’s unclear how many new immigrants will even become citizens, but, in any case, it will take about 13 years or more! Who knows what America will look like then and the political dynamics that will be in play.

And if they accept immigration reform, and stop painting themselves as anti-Hispanic, Republicans will have a realistic prayer of reaching out to Hispanics and bringing them into the GOP tent.

There’s a chance, as new Hispanic immigrants become more integrated into American life, and more successful, that they’ll like the Republican anti-government talking points more than they do now.

But there’s zero hope of this happening if the Republican brand represents hostility toward Hispanics.

Isn’t this argument at least worth debating on the conservative airwaves?

The current GOP strategy is good if you want to lose elections, and the GOP is doing a great job of it. But if you want to win, it’s not working.

Accepting immigration reform, with a path to citizenship, might stop the GOP bleeding, even just a little bit–and provide hope in the long term, particularly when you compare it to the absence of hope for the GOP in the status quo.

Plus, passing immigration reform is the right thing to do. My interred illegal-immigrant Italian in-laws will tell you that.

UPDATED 7/1 with a response from Dana Loesch via a blog post of hers.

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Syndicated talk-radio host Dana Loesch dropped into Glendale Saturday and surprised me by being even more offensive and nasty than she is usually.

Maybe the mile-high air pushed her further into the deep end? Maybe she saves her worst stuff for in-person delivery? Whatever was going on, as you can see for yourself below, Loesch clearly owes even her own pro-gun crowd, gathered in Glendale to oppose gun safety laws, an apology for her behavior Saturday.

As first reported on the Raw Story:

Loesch: “On my way here this morning flying in from St. Louis, I thought of a civil rights leader,” Loesch said. “He made a very impassioned speech, a historic speech, in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. I too have a dream. I have a dream that one day we as law-abiding, God-fearing, America-loving, Second Amendment-exercising gun owners will be judged on the strength of our character and not the content of our magazines!”

Here’s an exceprt of Loesch’s response to criticism of her speech. Read her entire comments here.

Loesch: Over the weekend at the “Farewell to Arms” event I purposefully quoted and riffed from Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic “I Have A Dream Speech.” The entire point of my doing so was at the end, when I said “And the entire point of this? This historic civil rights leader was disarmed, just as you, Colorado, are being disarmed. The left never tells you that King’s gun permit was rejected.”

Would King have been alive today had he been granted the right by the racist, Democrat south to own a gun? Who knows. But my point stands.

Gun rights are civil rights.

This was bait. And the leftist media, namely Raw Story, took it — but they predictably had to bastardize my speech and omit its entirety so they could play a race card. Why not report how your policies disarmed a civil rights leader?

Former state GOP Senate President John Andrews, who’s the lead-organizer of the Western Conservative Summit, said on talk radio last month that Sen. Marco Rubio could be booed if he took the stage during the gathering at Colorado Christian University July 26-28.

KNUS host Matt Dunn doubled down Sunday, telling listeners that Rubio would indeed be booed and should be dumped out of the Tea Party, just like you-know-what into Boston Harbor.

Rubio is done, as far as the Tea Party is concerned, Dunn said on air, due to Rubio’s support of the comprehensive immigration bill passed by the U.S. Senate.

Dunn didn’t talk about booing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is now confirmed for the Western Conservative Summit, keynoting the July 27 lunch. Cruz was probably the most outspoken Senate critic of the immigration legislation.

As he argued against the Senate bill recently, Cruz stood by a photo of a graveyard and mourned the lives of undocumented immigrants who died crossing the border. As Greg Sargent reported in the Washington Post:

Cruz: “No one who cares about our humanity would want to maintain a system where the border isn’t secure,” Cruz said, noting that ”vulnerable women and children” are being preyed upon by drug dealers and are being “left to die in the desert.”

All you have to do is look out your car as you drive around Denver to know that we’d be doing a better job caring for humanity with Rubio and company’s legislation, including its pathway to citizenship and border security, than we’d be doing with Cruz’s border-security-only bill, which does nothing for all those hard-working people you see around town.

Yet, Dunn would boo Rubio and throw him out of the Tea Party, without even a real debate on his talk-radio show first? How stupid.

If you choose staid National Public Radio over the rollicking and squirmy world of conservative talk radio, you may not know about the war brewing over how Republicans would pick a candidate to oppose Senate President John Morse, if a recall election takes place in the peaceful land of El Paso County.

Two Republicans, Jaxine Bubis and Bernie Herpin, want to take on Morse, which leaves inquisitive minds on conservative talk radio to wonder how to choose between the two.

KVOR talk-radio host Jeff Crank, along with Rep. Doug Lamborn, Sheriff Terry Maketa, Laura Carno, and Steve Schuck, signed a letter suggesting that the “duly elected Republican Central Committee of Senate District 11 decide which candidate shall be the best candidate to face the Democrat.”

On KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado Wed., co-hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley discussed the Crank, et al., letter on air, as well as former State Sen. Shawn Mitchell’s Facebook reaction, which included the line that the letter amounted to “the establishment telling the grass roots to get lost.”

Worley said he doesn’t “like the idea of the ‘those-that-be’ coming in with money and choosing who the person is going to be.”

Co-host Ken Clark added that he thought Herpin would “just barely” be a better legislator than Morse.

Clark, who doubles as the Colorado Director of Freedom Works, told listeners that Crank and Colorado GOP Ryan Call refused to help in the Morse recall effort.

Clark: Jaxine Bubis was one of those people who was out there gathering signatures.  She gathered thousands of them herself, on her own. [Bigmedia note: Was she paid like many others?]  Okay?  She was part of that effort.  She was neck-deep in that effort.  She was making phone calls.  She was going door to door.  She was working on the recall effort….

Then you’ve got the Jeff Cranks of the world; you’ve got the Ryan Calls of the world. Everybody starts flooding El Paso County, running down there, going, “Oh! Me, too!  Me, too!  We’re going to put in our candidate.  Now that you guys did all the work, we’re going to put in our candidate.  We’re going to take this thing over, and you are going to vote for ours, because we say so!”

You know what, a lot of people are pissed off about that.  And it’s wrong!  In my opinion, there is no reason why the El Paso Republicans and the Colorado Republicans couldn’t get involved in that recall.  But they didn’t!   And Jeff Hays ran for cover.  He did not help with that recall effort.  Neither did Ryan Call.  So now, if they want to come in and put in their candidate, I’m crying – I’m saying, “Foul!” I’m saying, “Go back home! You didn’t start this!  We will finish it!”  That’s what I’m saying….

Worley:  Where was Jeff Crank?  I realize some of Crank’s allies came in at the last minute to help. understand that.   [Bigmedia note: paying for signature gathering, for example] Great.  Good news.  But the people who got it off the ground did it on their own.  And they didn’t get a whole lot of help.  So, it does kind of look like, “You know what?  You guys did all the heavy lifting.  Now we’ll come in and we’ll grandfather you.  We’ll grant you a candidate who we think can win.”  Now, you know what?  You didn’t get your hands dirty in the first place, so I do have a problem with that.  This is the same thing that pisses people off and gets them out of the Republican Party in the first place.

Clark:  Well, and I can tell you that the candidate that they’re working on, this Bernie Herpin, when he was a city councilman, you know, we’re talking train wreck.  We’re talking Waller.  He’s worse than Waller.  I mean, this guy is the – even the fact that he’s got an “R” next to his name.  My opinion, he was the only guy that said that Jeff Hays and Ryan Call could find out there that was willing to say, “Okay.  I’ll be your stooge….”

Worley:  You know what?  This grandstanding, this paternalism from the Republican Party here in Colorado, sucks!  And you know what?  I’m – for those who know me, they know I’ve been a Republican my whole life.  My grandfather would roll over in his grave if I [inaudible].  But you know what?  I’m damn close!  I am damn close!

The radio show then ended abruptly, and I found myself thinking, maybe these talk radio hosts, Crank, Clark, and Worley, should get together and urge the GOP to just drop the Morse recall campaign. Who knows if they’ll survive it.

UPDATED June 22 with a response from Jimmy Sengenberger and a correction that the organization I am Created Equal donated over $55,000 to Colorado-Springs consulting company Kennedy Enterprises, as opposed to at least $14,000 as previously reported, to gather signatures and perform other functions for the Morse recall campaign.

————–

On KNUS yesterday morning, guest host Jimmy Sengenberger convened a panel so that listeners could, as Sengenberger put it, “learn exactly what’s going on” regarding the campaign to recall State Senate President John Morse.

How you learn “exactly what’s going on” from a one-sided panel is beyond me, but that’s standard fare for conservative talk radio.

But Sengenberger’s discussion went beyond misleading into grossly-manipulating territory due to the way he introduced one of the three panelists.

The panelists were Jennifer Kerns, identified as a “Spokeswoman for Recall Morse;” Jeff Hays, identified as “Chairman of El Paso Republican Party;” and Mario Nicolais, identified as an “election attorney” on the panel to give “legal insights.” Sengenberger later referred to Nicolais as an “election attorney” or an “election lawyer.”

What Sengenberger didn’t say was that Nicolais is a staff attorney for Scott Gessler’s former firm, the Hackstaff Law Group (formerly called Hackstaff Gessler), which is obviously a conservative outfit. Gessler’s office will be presiding at a hearing to determine the validity of a protest, filed by Morse backers, of the language used on the Morse-recall petitions.

What’s more, and you wouldn’t expect Sengenberger to know this, Nicolais’ name, along with the Hackstaff Law Group, appears on the Articles of Incorporation for IAmCreatedEqual.com, Inc., which donated over $55,000 to the Morse recall effort in in-kind contributions to Kennedy Enterprises to support a paid signature-gathering campaign and other activities. The fact that the signature gatherers were paid is often omitted on talk radio.

Sengenberger should inform KNUS listeners about Nicolais’ conservative affiliations, as well as the fact that Nicolais’ law firm (which is also Gessler’s former law firm) represents a major funder of the recall, and now Gessler’s office is presiding over the petition-protest hearing.

Sengenberger was very precise, and fair, in identifying the other guests on the show but, for some reason, he was incredibly vague about Nicolais.

I asked Sengenberger via email why he didn’t identify Nicolais more precisely.

“Regrettably, I was unaware that Hackstaff is the former law firm of Secretary of State Scott Gessler, so that particular point of emphasis wouldn’t have come to mind,” wrote Sengenberger. “As for not mentioning the law firm where Mario Nicolais is an attorney, this was simply an unintentional oversight on my part that is inconsistent with what I usually do when I have attorneys on. However, I don’t see how anyone listening wouldn’t be able to determine his political leanings based on the tone and tenor of the conversation, including his comments.”

State Sen. Greg Brophy said yesterday on conservative radio that recent wildfires may have been started by terrorists and that “the Governor and Democrats” have left Colorado vulnerable to terrorist attacks due to their failure to spend millions of dollars on air tankers to fight forest fires.

Click Here for Audio

Brophy said on Fort Morgan’s KFTM that “the governor and the Democrats would spend three-hundred-and-some-odd-million dollars to implement Obamacare but we couldn’t find $17.8 million to buy airplanes for safety and security here in Colorado.”

“What most people don’t realize,” Brophy told host John Waters, “is that both of these fires weren’t naturally caused. These were human-set fires. The fire at Waldo Canyon last year, no one knows who set even to this day, John.

And then, if you remember, when Osama Bin Laden’s hideout was overrun in Pakistan by our Seals, and they captured his computer, one of the acts of terrorism that they were looking at getting involved in was setting wildfires in the western United States.  I mean, we really need to address this, and the Legislature failed us last session.”  [BigMedia emphasis]

All Waters could muster for a response was a lovable, “That’s very sad.” (Is there a medical term for co-dependency between a conservative radio host and a conservative guest? If so, this is it.)

I was hoping for a question like, “Are you troubled by the complete absence of evidence of terrorism in these two fires?”

Or how about this deep follow-up, “Do you think there’s an element of fear-mongering and politicization in your terrorist theory?”

Or, “Do you think Democrats are adequately protecting the water supply and Bronco games?”

The specter of wildfire terrorism was raised before by state Republicans but Brophy has raised it to a new level in terms of timing and specificity.

“[The Legislature] didn’t get it done,” said Brophy. “They failed us. Everybody knows that those planes wouldn’t have been available for this fire, but don’t we learn the lessons from this fire, and from the one a year ago?”

Brophy favored legislation authorizing the purchase of four air tankers capable of dropping water and retardant on fires. The bill, which was criticized by The Denver Post as unneeded, passed, but the $17 million wasn’t allocated.

Nothing wrong with a Congressman speculating on what President Obama might do.

But Rep. Cory Gardner’s speculation Saturday, on a national Voice of America show, that Obama will approve the Keystone pipeline later this year in exchange for a “regulatory action on greenhouse gasses” deserves media scrutiny.

The radio host apparently didn’t have the inclination to ask Gardner about his sources for the intel about Obama (presumably he has at least two such sources, and they’re not talk-radio hosts).

Neither was Gardner asked, more generally, for a ray of light into why he thinks Obama might do these things.

This leaves the door wide open for some journalist to ask Gardner for the substance behind his Keystone assertions.

Here’s more of Gardner’s thoughts on the topic:

GARDNER: You know, I actually think that the president will approve the pipeline. I think that sometime later in the fall of 2013 that the president will approve the pipeline. Now, I think there will be a trade-off, because he does have a significant number of his supporters that oppose the pipeline. So I think there is going to be some kind of a quid pro quo, so to speak, — an action that the president will take to try to say, “Well, all right. I’ve approved the Keystone pipeline. I’m also doing this” to try to appease or satisfy the people who [are] opposed to the approval of the pipeline. What that will be? My guess is it will be some kind of a regulatory action on greenhouse gases that could make it even more difficult to develop energy in this country. But I do think he wil approve it, but it’s going to come with something.