A photo posted by Evan Antin 🐊🐣🐒🐱🐶🐢🐖🐍🐅🐿🐇 (@dr.evanantin) on Jul 29, 2016 at 5:12pm PDT
Saturday Morning Juice
Kenneth-in-the-212 recently posted Juice Newton’s 80s hit, “Angel of the Morning,” on his popular blog this week, and it reminded me what a hit-maker she really was in the early 80s.
Juice had a terrific voice that was surprisingly powerful, and demonstrated a strong ability to deliver songs with country-pop crossover appeal. You can find much of her catalogue on iTunes.
From Wikipedia:
To date, Newton has received five Grammy Award nominations in the Pop and Country Best Female Vocalist categories (winning once in 1983), as well as an ACM Award for Top New Female Artist and two Billboard Female Album Artist of the Year awards (won consecutively).
During the 1980s, she charted 14 Top-10 hits across the Billboard Country, AC, and Billboard Hot 100 charts, with many of the recordings achieving crossover success and six of the songs hitting the No. 1 position.
Even though it seems like she hit the top of the charts for just the early 80s, I remember her songs being a constant presence on the radio.
Here’s just three of Juice’s big hits:
Trump To Father Of Fallen Muslim-American Soldier: “I’ve Made A Lot Of Sacrifices”
Responding for the first time to the father of a fallen Muslim-American soldier, Donald Trump told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that he has “sacrificed” by creating “thousands and thousands of jobs” and having “tremendous success.”
On the last night of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, Gold Star father Khizr Khan, his wife Ghazala by his side, recounted to the crowd how his son was killed in 2004 by a car bomb in Iraq.
Khan also chastised Trump for seeking to ban Muslims from entering the country, saying that his son, U.S. Army Capt. Humayun Khan, would not have been able to serve under a Trump presidency.
“Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America,” Khan said, addressing Trump. “You will see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing and no one.”
Trump appeared to try to brush the speech aside, saying that Khan “was, you know, very emotional and probably looked like a nice guy to me.”
Pressed by Stephanopoulos to name the sacrifices he’d made for his country, Trump said: “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.”
Just so I’m clear: Donald Trump sees his “tremendous success” as equitable to the service of fallen American soldiers?
Highlights From Final Night Of DNC 2106 In Four Minutes
The L.A. Times serves up a four minute highlight reel of the final day of the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Donald Trump Complains Presidential Debate Schedule, Set A Year Ago, Is Rigged For Hillary
GOP White House hopeful Donald Trump is already setting up the foundation for bailing on the three presidential debates, claiming the schedule is rigged in Hillary Clinton’s favor.
“As usual, Hillary & the Dems are trying to rig the debates so 2 are up against major NFL games. Same as last time w/ Bernie. Unacceptable!” Trump tweeted Friday night.
Of course, then there’s the fact the dates were set a year ago.
From The Hill:
Trump frequently took exception to the handling of the GOP primary debates, going so far as to skip the final event before the Iowa caucus amid a feud with Fox News.
This year’s general election is set to include three presidential and one vice presidential debates, all announced on Sept. 23 of last year by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.
Two of the presidential debates do indeed coincide with NFL games: The first, on Monday, Sept. 26, falls the same evening as a matchup between the Atlanta Falcons and New Orleans Saints. And the second, set for Sunday, Oct. 9, will air opposite a game between the New York Giants and Green Bay Packers.
As usual, Hillary & the Dems are trying to rig the debates so 2 are up against major NFL games. Same as last time w/ Bernie. Unacceptable!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2016
“Liberal Redneck” On DNC’s Email Problem
Trae Crowder, everyone’s favorite “Liberal Redneck,” isn’t interested in talking about the Democratic National Convention.
Instead he’s diving into the deep end of the Democrats email scandal and hacking, which he admits isn’t good, but is really just the Deflategate of political scandals.
Democratic Convention Trounces Republican Convention In TV Ratings By 8 Million Viewers
Folks were looking today to see if Hillary Clinton would win or lose to Donald Trump in the TV ratings race – something we know is near and dear to the Donald’s heart.
So here’s how the numbers break down:
The closing night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention drew numbers which closely tracked the final night of the Republican National Convention.
According to Variety, the Democrats scored 31.72 million viewers vs. the Repubs with 31.95 million viewers – a difference of about 230,000. This accounts for tracking across 6 networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News and MSNBC.
From Variety:
Even if you add in ratings from PBS to both the final nights of the DNC and RNC, the DNC still comes up slightly short (31.72 million vs. 31.95 million). The big difference-maker is, unsurprisingly, the audience for Fox News. For the Trump anointing, 9.35 million people tuned in. Less than a third of that number turned on Fox News for Clinton’s crowning.
CNN once again won the DNC coverage ratings race, with 7.5 million total viewers and 2.81 million in the cable-news-coveted 25-54 demographic. MSNBC weighed in with 5.72 million total and 1.53 million in the demo. Fox News had 3.03 million total and 785,000 in the demo.
As Variety notes, the bulk of the differential comes from the drop in viewership at Fox News last night, from 9 million the week before to last night’s 3 million.
Comparing the four nights of convention coverage, the Democrats came out the clear winner with 106.19 million total viewers over their full convention compared to the Republicans 98.12 million total viewers – a difference of 8.07 million more in the Democrats column.
All data from Variety via multiple posts:
24.7 + 24.03 + 25.74 + 31.74 = 106.19 million for Democrats
19.75 + 23.40 + 23.02 + 31.95 = 98.12 million for Republicans
However, I think to get to a clearer picture of which convention attracted a larger audience, you need to look at some additional metrics.
Neither C-SPAN nor Spanish language network Univision are factored into these numbers. As political junkies know, Hillary has held a huge lead over Trump when it comes to Hispanic voters. So, with a difference of only 230K, it’s easy to imagine that difference being overcome by even just one or two million Latino viewers.
Plus, Nielsen doesn’t track any online content where we know the younger voters are. When Variety looked at streaming content, the numbers lean decidedly the Dems way.
For the Democratic confab, ABC News notched more than 16.6 million video views across 44 Facebook Live streams, while for the Republican National Convention it tallied more than 11.6 million views for 52 individual Facebook Live streams.
YouTube, which was the official live-streaming partner for the RNC and DNC, said the conventions were viewed live on on the platform about 9.1 million times, with viewers tuning in for 25 minutes on average. The peak concurrent live audience across both conventions was 250,000 viewers during Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday evening, followed by Donald Trump’s July 21 speech at the RNC with 217,000.
Finally, you’ll recall that Donald Trump had sent out a request to his supporters to boycott the last night of the Democratic Convention so that his numbers might be higher than Hillary’s.
That doesn’t represent hard numbers, but it does explain some shift in audience to a small degree.
But don’t tell The Donald. He’s a little thin-skinned about these things, you know.
Video: Hillary Clinton’s Full Acceptance Speech
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| 2016 Democratic ticket – Tim Kaine & Hillary Clinton |
In case you missed it, I would be remiss if I didn’t post Hillary Clinton’s history-making acceptance speech from the final night of the 2016 Democratic Convention.
One of the best passages:
For decades, people have said this issue was too hard to solve and the politics were too hot to touch. But I ask you: how can we just stand by and do nothing? You heard, you saw, family members of people killed by gun violence. You heard, you saw, family members of police officers killed in the line of duty because they were outgunned by criminals. I refuse to believe we can’t find common ground here.
We have to heal the divides in our country. Not just on guns. But on race. Immigration. And more. That starts with listening to each other. Hearing each other. Trying, as best we can, to walk in each other’s shoes.
So let’s put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism, and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of police officers, kissing their kids and spouses goodbye every day and heading off to do a dangerous and necessary job. We will reform our criminal justice system from end-to-end, and rebuild trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve.
We will defend all our rights – civil rights, human rights and voting rights… women’s rights and workers’ rights… LGBT rights and the rights of people with disabilities!
[snip]
Yes, the world is watching what we do. Yes, America’s destiny is ours to choose. So let’s be stronger together, my fellow Americans. Let’s look to the future with courage and confidence. Let’s build a better tomorrow for our beloved children and our beloved country. And when we do, America will be greater than ever.
It was a thrilling moment in U.S. history to finally see that “hightest and hardest ceiling” shattered and to see Hillary standing on that stage as the first woman candidate of a major political party.
You can also find the full text of the speech here.
Radio Show: “The Left Of Str8 Show”
As we come to the end of two intense weeks of political wrangling, I thought I’d switch up the tone for a second on The Randy Report and share this radio interview I did with Scott Fullerton on The Left of Str8 Show.
I’ve listened to Scott’s show for several months, and he’s always got great guests week in, week out (and no, I’m not referring to me).
I love that there’s always a mix of LGBT musicians, authors, activists and more. Definitely my kind of show.
I was uber-impressed with the amount of research Scott did in preparation for my interview. I thought we were going to chat on the current political news cycle and instead I found myself recounting some of my infamous adventures from Broadway. If you hit play below, you’ll hear about my journey as an actor from Texas to the Great White Way
My segment starts at the 10 minute mark. But I encourage you to check out his other episodes archived on BlogTalkRadio. You can also subscribe to his show via podcast on iTunes here.
Political Cartoon Of The Day
From the brilliant Joe Heller.
For Hillary’s view, read from the bottom line up.
Click the pic to enlarge.