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XM Satellite Radio Backlash
mrchubbs writes "Sponsors and subscribers to XM Radio are protesting the decision by XM management to suspend the Opie and Anthony show for comments made on an uncensored channel. Subscribers are canceling subscriptions — some estimate that between 20,000 and 40,000 have cancelled. Some are even smashing their radios in protest. Sponsors are pulling ads. Also, there is some evidence of XM not honoring cancellation requests, forcing multiple calls to finally get accounts canceled." Of course this dispute isn't a free-speech issue. "Free speech" refers to a prohibition on censorship by the government; XM is free to do as it wishes with the content it broadcasts, within the law.
It's hardly a censorship issue. XM, as a private company can hire ad fire whoever they like, so long as they don't violate anyones rights. XM took offense as to what they did and handed them their walking papers.
Too bad it doesn't validate your accidental birth...
ZING!
They said something someone didn't like, and they're being taken off the air for it. The fact that the official public sphere (meaning the FCC) doesn't claim an interest is a detail -- the issues are still the same. Censorship is speech denied, and the "gubmint" isn't the only entity that practices it. Whatever Opie and Anthony said (something about raping Condoleeza Rice, am I right?), their right to say it should be defended and it's good to see a groundswell of support on principle.
"The deep-fried Mars bar is a symptom of a wider crisis." -- Nutritionist Ann Ralph, on the Scottish diet
the o/p show is completely unlistenable. complete snore fest. they took a very funny idea, raping the presidents wife, and made it unfunny, like every bit they have ever stolen from Howard Stern. I've only known 1 o/p fan, and he has asperger syndrome.
20-40k have canceled... they were suspended, not fired. What will these losers do when their heros go back on the air?
ster? entertaining?
hurr look at me i have a STRIPPER on da RADIO and i are touching BEWBIES. listen everyone that is the sound of my hand on boobs isn't my show great.
O&A are retarded, but at least they are retarded in different ways each time.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
I think they just need their village idiot back.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
They weren't fired because of their comments. They were fired because they suck. This was just a convenient excuse for XM to release them from their contracts. They had next to no ratings which is evident from the 20K - 40K subscribers canceling. For a nationwide broadcast, that is just pathetic. These guys couldn't pull any ratings on terrestrial radio, how did anyone expect them to get ratings on satellite radio?
Wow! The 4 people that listen to Opie and Anthony are rebelling!
Extremists exists on all sides
Not in the USA. You'd have to go to N Korea to find crazy leftist extremists to match the many crazy right wing extremists we have here.
Funny but I was on the other side. I went with XM because they didn't have Howard Stern. I don't like "shock" jocks I don't think they are funny. I wrote into XM saying simply that I didn't want to have anything as like that again. No request that they fire or cancel the show just enforce some standards. Honestly you might be supprised how many subscribers did complain about the show. This isn't a freedom of speech issue it is consumer choice. If more people want that than don't then I guess we will see more of that kind show if not then we will see less.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It was perfectly acceptable if you believe in free speech.
There is a former Iraqi general who claims that russia help move most of the WMDs to Syria were they were moved again to other locations after that. He claims they did it a month or so before we went in while we were dicking around at the UN. (These are my words not his)
There is also a defected soviet spy who claims that way the move was described fits their tactics to a tee and he also claims that he was in communications with comrades who have told him it was true. But of course this is all second hand a collaborative evidence.
We have found Sarine gas an VX nerve gas in iraq. Most of it was in banned ordinances that Iraq refused to destroy and because of time and improper storage it is ineffective as a military weapon now, but we didn't know that until it was found. Something else that is interesting is the banned missiles iraq had (found by inspectors) in a bunker that was built after the first gulf war and the inspector already searched once. The inspectors also found mobile biological and chemical labs that are thought to be parts of a weapons program. The strange thing is that these labs don't match the descriptions of the ones they were getting reports of before the invasion. Saddam had supposedly claimed they weren't being used but were being kept around to start programs up as soon as the UN got off his back. Seems to me that the older one might have went to Syria too.
Anyone who wants to claim they had nothing is just fooling themselves or really gullible.
It is unamerican or many people feel it is, to offer unsolicited anti-american statements and trash-talking a sitting president on foreign soil to a foreign audience. This offended people more then what was said. And that is the point.
You are free to say whatever you want. But people are also free to be offended and they don't have to like what you said in any ways shape or form. They also don't have to continue buying your products or doing business with you. And that it what the people who were offended did.
Well, according to the former Iraqi general and this ex-russian spy, they were loaded in small aircraft and they used the bombing of a bridge as cover for flights into Syria. Do some googleing on it.
And yes, It could be entirely true, we have radar images with increased traffic in the area at the time is was supposed to have happened but with the collapse of the bridge, there was going to be increased aircraft flights in that area anyways. And we do know the russians sent aircraft to the area specifically to move medical supplies and food across the dam/bridge.
And no, you don't have to move weapons in large trucks and containers. If you were trying to hid the movement of those weapons, you would place them in smaller vehicles so "you" wouldn't suspect anything when all the large trucks come rolling around.