No Static At All

Once upon a time - say, about fifty years ago - most cars had a radio like this.

And for many of not most of us, it was all you needed.  Even though you could only get AM radio, there was still plenty to listen to on the band.  There was news, there was talk, there was big-band music, and of course there were the Top Forty stations that played all kinds of pop from MOR and disco to . . . MOR and disco.  Okay, the "cool" stations on FM played Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd while people with only AM in their cars had to settle for the Carpenters and Donna Summer (with Barry Manilow in between), but hey, it wasn't all MOR and disco.  Remember that the Eagles and Elton John made the Top Forty back in the seventies, as did Edgar Winter with his instrumental "Frankenstein."  You still had FM at home; you didn't need it in your car.

Now, of course, AM has been largely abandoned.  The hit-single radio format migrated to FM in the early eighties, cassettes and compact discs allowed folks to being their favorite LPs with them, and Sirius XM has practically made all terrestrial radio obsolete, with its hundreds of channels offering music of all forms, hip-hop (see what I did there?), news, talk, and sports. And folks who listened to AM big-band stations like WNEW-AM and, later, WQEW-AM in New York never stopped loving big-band music . . . they just died.  Back in the eighties, folks with older cars had to bite the bullet and buy an FM adapter for their car radios (myself included) to hear our favorite music stations.  All that's pretty much left on AM radio are right-wing talk shows.  And of course, there will be sport.  

Which is exactly why many automakers want to get rid of the AM band entirely from car radios.   They believe that newer forms of communication can substitute for it.

Not so fast.  Senators Ed Markey (D-MA) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) have resurrected the old Boston-Austin alliance by joining forces to introduce the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would mandate AM radio in all motor vehicles sold in the United States.  Cruz called the exclusion of AM radio "enormously harmful to both free speech but also to a robust democratic process," citing the inability of motorists to hear conservative talk-radio host without AM radio in their car, while Markey has cited the fact that emergency broadcasts use AM radio for official news during natural disasters.  A comparable bill in the House also has bipartisan support.

For a technology that first emerged commercially a hundred years ago, AM radio is incredibly versatile. Its signals cover 90 percent of the American population, a single station's signal can be received hundreds of miles away (I once got in New Jersey an AM station from Fort Wayne, Indiana), it can be heard widely over rural areas that rely on it for news and information, and it continues to work in mass blackouts to allow emergency broadcasts to continue uninterrupted.  For all of the sophisticated digital broadcasting and satellite radio we have, AM is still enough for many people.

And some AM stations, by the way, still play music.  WMTR in Morris County, New Jersey still plays pop oldies from 1955 to 1980, which is good enough for me.  

Needle to say, for all of my love for satellite radio, I support the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act because a lot of people want it and, just as importantly, they need it.  I still listen to AM for news reports and weather forecasts.  I even listen to WMTR every now and then.  Newer sonic-communication technologies should only supplement, not replace, AM.

In fact, I sort of miss my Snoopy AM radio. 😊

Cruz (Damage) Control

I don't think I've seen the sort of incompetence over the handling of the power crisis in Texas in any previous crisis, and I remember Hurricane Katrina.  Texas, still thinking it's a independent republic, has its own power grid, and the deregulation of the electricity in the state allowed the grid to remain unwinterized despite the growing evidence that climate change not only causes hotter summer s and stronger hurricanes but colder winters in the nation's midsection thanks to a greater flow of polar air form up north.  Governor Greg Abbott is blaming the failure of the electricity on wind power despite the greater reliance on fossil fuels, and others are fingering the Green New Deal, which, last I checked, hasn't been implemented.  But all of this pales in comparison to how Texas's junior U.S. Senator has handled it.

As you all know by now, Ted Cruz (above) hightailed it out of Houston and took his wife and daughters to Cancun, Mexico to escape the cold while millions of Texans were freezing in the dark with no running water - and the water crisis and the burst pipes resulting from unheated buildings have made things exponentially worse.  Cruz tried to patch things up, saying that was only going to drop off his daughters and come back (not true), the trip had been planned ahead of time (it was a last-minute decision) and that he shouldn't have taken his daughters' advice to take the family to Mexico (sure, blame the kids, especially when your kids are girls).  And then he admitted it was a "mistake."

The only reason that isn't an understatement is because Cruz tried to stop Joe Biden's election to the President during the Capitol insurrection and hasn't even admitted to that being a mistake.  Everything Cruz does is meant to further his own interests and make himself look good. Too bad for him that he won't succeed at that.  Democrats and Republicans rarely agree on anything in Washington, by Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Senate all agree that Cruz is the biggest schmuck in the upper house of Congress and everyone hates him.

While Cruz was trying to get away to Cancun, Beto O'Rourke was back home in Texas distributing emergency supplies to local residents and getting others to help pitch in.  In other words, exactly what Cruz is supposed to do. You'd be forgiven for thinking that O'Rourke and not Cruz had won the 2018 Senate election in Texas.  In 2024, when Cruz is up again, that outcome is very much a possibility.

Beto Bet

I was just listening to a conversation on MSNBC about Texas Democratic Senate candidate and U.S. Representative Robert "Beto" O'Rourke (below) and how he's faring in his campaign against the insufferable Ted Cruz.  Despite raising more than $38 million for his campaign from voters all over America, he's behind Cruz by eight percentage points in the polls.

A pair of political strategists, one Republican and one Democrat, agreed that O'Rourke is impressive at inspiring people nationwide but, because Texas has not sent a Democrat to the Senate sine Lloyd Bentsen won his fourth and final term in 1988, always had an uphill battle.  The Republican strategist even said that Democrats wanted their money on a lost cause when their continuations could have gone to held imperiled Democratic Senate incumbents.  That is, Beto has more support outside Texas than in Texas.  He added that O'Rourke made a fatal mistake by nationalizing the race instead of talking about issues primarily concerning Texas, reminding Lone Star State voters that there is something worse than Ted Cruz, the least liked man in the Senate - a Democrat.

Former Democratic U.S. Representative Donna Edwards, responding to the strategists, seemed to concede that O'Rourke will lose (like O'Rourke, Edwards gave up a House seat for a quixotic quest for a Senate seat), but she did say that the enthusiasm he's generated in Texas may help Democratic House candidates there.

As for the polls . . . well, I think there's a chance that Cruz could be upset in Texas, just as his fellow Cuban-American senator Robert Menendez could be upset in New Jersey (more on that later).  The polls don't show first-time voters in their surveys, and the young people in Texas fired up by O'Rourke could end up making the difference.  But if he loses, he is likely politically dead, like so many one-time losers on the Democratic side who have come before, and coming from El Paso and having a rapport with Hispanic voters will only help Beto if a future Democratic President appoints him to a Cabinet position.