licentious radio

Monday, August 25, 2003
[11:25:07 PM]

If three out of nine Democratic candidates for president have offices in a certain downtown mall, and the mall still has eight vacant storefronts, how many Democratic candidates would there need to be in order to fill the mall?

[8:28:29 PM]

A few notes on Crossfire....

Al Franken gets too angry. I do, too, so I'm not complaining. It's too easy to get too angry when vile, lying, treasonous, bastard Republican propagandists are "in the zone". You can be *really* good at treasonous, lying, propaganda, with the aim of destroying the foundations of what America stands for. Bill O'Reilly is great at it. Tucker Carlson is even better, in his own, more insidious way.

The trick I'm trying to learn is to be grateful to these m-f-ers for making everything so obvious. Even when Reagan was fronting Poppy Bush, things weren't so obvious. Also, I hope for Molly's perspective -- finding the humor in the right-wing buffoonery. I wish Al luck.

Speaking of "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right"....

Carlson quipped: "During an appearance on 'Meet the Press' earlier this summer, Dean admitted that he had no earthly idea how many American troops are currently on active duty or even, in an ideal world, how many there should be."

Note the "no earthly idea how many American troops are currently on active duty" -- LIE.

Here's the transcript of that response from the interview: "I know that it's somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two million people".

The response to LIARS like Carlson, and media whores like Russert should come straight from Monty Python -- the question was, "what is the wingspeed of a swallow", and the winning answer was (roughly) "do you mean the African swallow or the European swallow"?

If you are talking about the size of the US military, do you mean active duty only, active duty plus reserves that have been called up, active duty plus all reserves, or what? Don't forget to subtract the ever-increasing number who have died in the occupation of Iraq. I don't think Tim Russert or Tucker Carlson can talk about force levels in any detail, and I doubt seriously if Dumbya can recite statistics on military personnel.

I just called Carlson a LIAR, and Russert a MEDIA WHORE.

Carlson is really a PROPAGANDA LIAR -- you could conceviably argue that the answer "one to two million" means "no earthly idea", and that is the proof of the propaganda LIAR -- Carlson, in this case. Because "no earthly idea" is vague enough to *imply* that Dean had no idea how many soldiers there are, when -- obviously -- he *did* have an approximate idea of how many there are.

Russert as a MEDIA WHORE is something you can check for yourself -- try searching for mentions of Russert at Media Whores Online.

But here's an example of the fundamental issue with whore journalists: polls show that something like 60% of Americans believe that many of the infamous September 11 hijackers were Iraqis. According to the official government story, there were no Iraqis among the hijackers. How did so many Americans get to be so badly misinformed? They watched TV, they read newspapers, they read magazines. The information was presented to them by the journalism so-called "professionals", even if the actual PROPAGANDA LIES came mostly from vile right-wing political operatives like Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Rumsfeld.

If Americans have beliefs that are known to be false, the media should answer for it. They can quote Bush telling a propaganda lie, but it's entirely irresponsible not to document the fact. Every time Bush used Al Qaeda and Iraq in the same breath, journalists should have said something like: "Bush is repeating one of his favorite propaganda lies -- trying to get you to believe there is a link between Iraq and September 11, even though every bit of the evidence presented for that link has been exposed to be a lie."

Journalism has a special place in democracy. Media whores like Russert are abject failures, and betray the American people and American democracy.

Who did Cheney meet with? Why didn't the Air Force respond in time to protect us on September 11? Did Junior Bush really order the FBI not to investigate Al Qaeda before September 11? Did Poppy really give a mining company a billion dollar free ride and then take a directorship in the company a few days later? Did Cheney really take the lead on terrorism before September 11, and did he really do *absolutely* nothing, as it appears? Was the NSC busy negotiating a pipeline deal with the Taliban to save Enron's bacon? Did Marion "Spke" Bradley really get a $100,000+ pay-off and a presidential citation for his role in keeping the FBI from stopping the September 11 attacks? Before General Abizaid said the force level in Iraq was good enough, did Rumsfeld really fire *everyone* who dared to say we needed more troops in Iraq? How much of his pension would Abizaid lose if he, too, said he needed more troops and Rumsfeld fired him? If we don't need more troops, why send Powell to beg the UN for more troops? If we *do* need more troops, shouldn't *Rumsfeld* be fired, and the many generals who told the obvious truth be re-instated, or at least given their full pensions?

The fact that most Americans can't answer these questions is prima facia evidence that the journalists and their employers have failed us, and *betrayed* their crucial role in American democracy.

One more point about today's Crossfire.... It's a crying shame that Joe Conason didn't get to talk much. In fact, that's mostly the fault of Al Franken and the *STUPID* media whore blonde woman. She should really die her hair brown so as not to promote "dumb blonde" jokes.

There are many people on this planet whose mouths move constantly, with no thought required. Incessant babble. Anything anyone says will trigger some stream of babble that they've babbled a thousand times before, and will babble a thousand times after. The point is not to discuss or communicate, but to be talking. Spare us from dumb blonde babblers.

Joe Conason got a couple of attempts to respond to Carlson's PROPAGANDA LIE, but between Al's excess anger and the blonde's motor-mouth, we didn't get much clean interaction between Conason and Carlson. Carlson, in a typical PROPAGANDA LIE, accused Conason of "demonizing" conservatives in general, by quoting a passage from the book Carlson claimed to have read. In fact, of course, the same chapter went on at great length that all individual conservatives shouldn't be demonized -- to use Carlson's word -- but rather, Conason pointed out that progress -- from the end of slavery, to better working conditions, to cleaner air and water, to better civil rights for minorities -- everywhere and always these are primarily championed by progressives, and primarily opposed by conservatives, and that when conservatives re-gain the upper hand, they seek to roll back the progress that was made.

In fact, this goes to the very definition of conservative -- it was conservative to oppose the end of slavery, and progressive to work to end slavery. Many years later, it was conservative to oppose voting rights for blacks, and progressive to work for equal rights. Now conservatives are in power, and they seek to roll back programs that were proven to be effective at lifting minorities out of deprivation -- including affirmative action, set-aside programs, and even voting rights. The same is true, obviously for environmental protections, where Reaganites and Bushites sought and seek to roll back environmental protections across the board -- so many that progressives can barely keep track of all the despicable proposals and rules changes that right-wing cranks appointed by Bush have made.

I would go a little further than Conason -- I'd say that someone who supports vile, anti-democratic, hate-mongering, war-mongering, thieving right-wing bastards is eventually responsible for that support. The true "axis of evil" is greed, war-mongering, and hate-mongering -- the modern-day Republican party. Anyone who supports these mortal sins had damned well better stop it.

The bottom line is that Carlson is a perfect example of right-wing propaganda lies... LIES, AND THE LYING LIARS WHO TELL THEM, A FAIR AND BALANCED LOOK AT THE RIGHT.

[6:51:23 PM]
Hmm. "Weekend Warrior" wannabes who aren't morons are going to wonder if the appeal of "one weekend per month" loses its charm when a "weekend" lasts eight months, and it's in the line of fire in Iraq, rather than a training base in their state.

Hmm. Dummy Rummy's scheming to put a rifle in the hands of military desk jockeys, file clerks, computer operators, mechanics, etc., and send them to the front lines. Wave of retirements sweeps the military bureaucracy?

Hmm. The new scheme is to send soldiers to war zones for twentyfour months at a time, rather than twelve. Another wave of retirements sweeps the active-duty personnel? Kiss your wife and children goodbye and see them in two years. That's an easy sell.

[5:52:56 PM]
Arnold's going down in the polls faster than he went down on -- well, we can't say what he went down on, because this is a family channel. But "eating isn't cheating" wasn't about junk food, but rather adulterous, unprotected sex. Quite a joke, indeed.

[4:26:50 PM]
We call on Ann Coulter to stop, apologize for, and publicly explain the error of joking about violence toward political opponents. Failing that, we call on publications to do it for her.

Whether it is joking about terrorists bombing journalists, or Democrats killed by friendly fire, these sorts of jokes have no place in a society where mentally challenged right-wing crazies attack and kill their perceived opponents.

Ann Coulter may truly be as vile as her actions, and may be unrepentent, but the publications -- employees, managers, and owners -- who have given her a voice should put a stop to it for their own humanity.

[2:40:36 PM]
Red alert for orange alerts!

More polls are out showing that most of the American People want Bush out of office. (Does that remind you of November, 2000?)

With economic catastrophe accelerating and a hopeless quagmire debacle in Iraq, people are tired of Bush's thieving, incompetent ways.

None of these situations are going to improve. Bush's hope is to scare us with the terrorist boogyman. He's tried it before, with success. How many times can Rove go back to that well before even the GE/Disney/AOL news start to say something?

All we can say is that we prefer phony terrorism alerts to wars of conquest based on phony evidence.

Bush is clearly the worst president in history, and we're likely to see a terrible race between the dire situations Bush/Rove has given us, and the new havoc they wreak to distract us from the old havoc.

[10:18:54 AM]
Seems to us that if the US doesn't want would-be terrorists to sneak across the border into Iraq, that the US should guard the borders of Iraq.

We don't threaten to make war on Mexico because Guatemalans sneak across the border.

The Bush/Rumsfeld war plan for Iraq was and is a catastrophic failure.

[9:42:21 AM]
"Bill Janklow speeds when he drives - shouldn't but he does. When he gets the ticket, he pays for it, but if someone told me I was going to jail for two days for speeding, my driving habits would change." --Bill Janklow, who just ran a stop sign 75 m.p.h. and killed the guy who had the right of way. Bill's a Republican Congressman. We suggest more than two days in jail.