An Afternoon with the Great Elderski (Part 3)

Intellectual Firepower: Who has it?

Larry Elder takes a break from the Treyvon Martin issue and starts talking about who the smart people are in politics and political commentary.  Larry argues that most of the intellect is on the Right with people like Paul Ryan, Charles Krauthammer, Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham.  (Interesting to note that Larry unwittingly categorized this list into white males, black males, and white females)

Who's on the Left? (Crickets, then audience laughter)

Larry argues it wasn't always this way.  He points out Michael Kinsley who was once on Crossfire with Pat Buchanan.  He also mentions blogger Andrew Sullivan.

Then he brings up Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and comments "That's the best you guys have?"

The case for a bigger government with a broad interpretation of the commerce clause in the Constitution is hard to make.  How do you intellectually argue that the commerce clause allows the government to mandate you to buy something?  The commerce clause is there to prevent one state from taxing another, "it wasn't designed to tell you what to pay somebody, what hours to pay, how far away from a computer screen your chair has to be.” 

Ron Suskind wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Price of Loyalty about the George W. Bush Administration.  It was unflattering and Suskind was treated well by the media and was invited on shows like The Today Show several times.  After he wrote Confidence Men, un unflattering book about the Obama Administration, he was ostracized.

Suskind wrote about two Obama economic advisors Christina Romer and Alan Krueger and how they tried to convince President Obama that it is not true that productivity causes unemployment.  This is about such claims Obama made about ATMs putting people out of work.  ATM machines don’t cause unemployment. They shift employment to those who have to manufacture, improve, distribute, maintain and repair the machines.  It is also a fact that there are now more tellers than before ATM machines.  Obama, upon hearing these arguments, wouldn't budge according to the economists.  “Obama was just wrong!”

Larry goes into how ABC News reporter Charles Gibson reminds then-candidate Obama that if you raise Capital gains tax, then revenue goes down.  Obama agrees but says “it’s a matter of fairness”.  Then, Obama goes on to say he needs the extra revenue to invest in infrastructure and our schools.  HELLO!, YOU’RE NOT GETTING EXTRA REVENUE BY INCREASING THE CAPITAL GAINS TAX!!!!!

In the same interview, Obama condemns spending without cutting and hiking up the deficit to 4 trillion dollars during the 8 year Bush Administration.  (It’s gone up 5 trillion in his 3+ years)

"History, shmistory"

Here's the audio: Larry Elder Show from the Reagan Library 3

An Afternoon with the Great Elderski (Part 2)

Race Relations and Current Events

The show segues into the current controversy regarding the Treyvon Martin Killing.  I admit that I figured there was a good chance this issue would be in the past once I got around to blogging this.  No chance, this is not going away, unfortunately.

A caller named "Rod" slams director Spike Lee for domestic terrorism in attempting to broadcast the address of George Zimmerman.  Lee only apologized for tweeting the wrong address.  Other than that, he sees no wrong-doing. 

Larry reminds us of how Spike Lee disapproves of inter-racial couples which should offend 1 out of every three couples in California since a third of marriages here consist of two people of a different race.  Spike Lee also publicly called Senator Trent Lott a "card-carrying member of the Klan" to Diane Sawyer.  Listen to Elder's impersonation of Sawyer with the audio link below, it's priceless.

If you really want to get Larry Elder's wheels turning, just mention Al Sharpton.  No one mentioned him here, Larry just decided to talk about him and remind us of Sharpton's resume of of immoral behavior.   He goes into the Tawana Brawley incident where Sharpton accused a white man of rape and said "If I lie, you sue me."  When the man was acquitted, he did, indeed sue Sharpton.  Sharpton transferred his assets to his wife's name and basically pleaded poverty.  He only paid it so he could come clean in his Presidential run.  Elder tells of how he called into the Ghiraldo Rivera show and Rivera said that "anybody can make a mistake." 

He then talks of Crown Heights, a section of New York City where in 1991, a 7 year old black child was killed by an Hasidic Jew in an accident.  Sharpton fired up the African-American community by calling the Jews in Crown Heights "diamond merchants" and challenged them to "pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house".  This led to 3 days of riots and 100 people injured and a young jewish scholar was stabbed to death by a black mob yelling "Kill the jew!".  The New York Times reported this incident as an even fight between blacks and jews even though virtually none of the violence was committed by any jews.  Sharpton never apologized and Elder questions how Sharpton has any moral authority to stick his nose into the Treyvon Martin incident.

Next, Elder talks about how two British students vacationing in Florida were called "crackers" and beaten to death by 17 year old Shawn Tyson.  The parents of the two students tried to contact President Barack Obama.  Obama never responded yet he was rather quick to put his two cents in on the Treyvon Martin case.  What's the difference?  Is it because neither of the Brits would have looked like Obama's son?

Here's the audio:  Larry Elder Show from Reagan Library 2

An Afternoon with the Great Elderski (Part 1)

On Friday, March 30, 2012, Talk Show Host Larry Elder broadcasted his afternoon show from the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.  I'm a big fan of Mr. Elder as I have been listening to him for 14 years or so.  I decided to take the afternoon off from work and see him broadcast live.  It was totally worth it, although, admittedly, admission was free.
Larry Elder must be the most congenial talk show host you'll ever find.  I believe that many of those who disagree with him politically, like him nevertheless.  He is so good-natured that it's hard to imagine someone strongly disliking him.  Sadly, those who dislike Mr. Elder are those who can benefit the most from his wisdom.  You see, Larry Elder grew up in South Central Los Angeles but due to a strong family upbringing, he doesn't fit the stereotype of a black male who believes he is an oppressed victim.  Because of this, those who follow the likes of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Louis Farrakhan see Larry Elder as a sellout and therefore, a threat.  Larry Elder, like so many, isn't appreciated in his home community.  Larry Elder is a Libertarian Republican.  He's pragmatic enough to understand that it's best to support the Republican Party in order for his Libertarian beliefs of small, non-intrusive government to survive.

On to the show.  I'm sharing this because although this was in an unusual venue, it was a very typical Larry Elder show and maybe someone will read this and consider listening to him.  The show begins with a rousing round of applause as Mr. Elder walks in and sits down at his station. 

ObamaCare
Larry first gets into the Supreme Court and President Barack Obama's health care law.  The Solicitor General did an awful job defending ObamaCare.  He couldn't answer the fundamental question "If it is okay to compel me to buy health insurance, then it's okay to compel me to buy broccoli.  It's okay to compel me to do 45 minutes on my treadmill 3 times a week.   It's okay to compel me to get 6 hours of sleep."  Elder asserts that Obama now wants his law to go down and he wasn't unhappy with his guy's performance.  Why would Obama want it to go down?  Basically, so he can blame Republicans for messing up his landmark legislation. 

Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of law at UC Irvine told Larry in a previous show that the law is legal and "those terrible appointees of the Supreme Court are running down a very good law."  Larry challenges that ObamaCare is so bad and nobody in politics or the media can defend it with anything factual.  So the best thing is, to let it go and blame the Republicans. 

"Obama will bring us together." is what a friend of Larry told him.  How is Obama bringing us together when his health care mandate didn't get a single Republican vote?  What if George W Bush had gone to Iraq without a single Democrat vote?

Doctors don't like ObamaCare.  Doctors represent one of the most respected professions and two-thirds of them believe it will worsen health care and a majority of them will either cut back hours or leave the profession altogether if ObamaCare gets implemented.

Richard Foster, the chief actuator of Medicare shoots down two big assertions of ObamaCare.  One is that it will cut costs.  Two is that one can keep their current plan.

Michael Hilton of the L.A. Times says ObamaCare is unpopular because people are unaware of the benefits.  Elder asks that if this is so, why aren't we hearing about these benefits?  Elder points out that a book titled "Left Turns" by a UCLA professor Tim Groseclose looks at the 20 largest media outlets and 18 of them (ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN among them), are left-oriented.  The two right-leaning organizations are the Washington Times and Fox News.  He also references a book by Ben Shapiro called "Prime Time Propaganda" that indicates how much to the left Hollywood is.  So why aren't these organizations telling us how great ObamaCare is?  Answer: they can't because it isn't so wonderful.

Here's the audio:   Larry Elder Show from Reagan Library 1

Larry Elder can be heard Monday through Friday at 3 pm Pacific Time at KABC AM 790.  He can also be heard online at http://player.streamtheworld.com/_players/citadel/?sid=966.

Larry Elder's website