Did you know- and if you rely upon our pathetic national media, you most likely didn’t- that there is a nation that actually said, in essence, hell no we’re not paying off the banks? That actually pointed fingers at the thieves and arrested them? That marched in the streets until they re-wrote their constitution?

Oh, to be Iceland.

Pressenza Reikjavik, 3/28/11 Last week 9 people were arrested in London and Reykjavik for their possible responsibility for Iceland’s financial collapse in 2008, a deep crisis which developed into an unprecedented public reaction that is changing the country’s direction.

In this country, the banks elect our leaders. They elect the President, Congress, anywhere that there is a human near a government checkbook, they funnel cash to them. In return for being funded via usury and unregulated financial “devices”, our ruling class keeps the elites in their gated communities safe from the restless rabble, safe from even the most modest of regulatory agencies, and bail them out when they go bust at the craps table…I mean Wall Street. Our nation limps along in endless recession, but somehow, corporate profits are surging, the stock market looks pink, and the rich keep getting richer.

Now, Iceland is a vastly smaller nation than America, of course. Yet somehow they manage universal healthcare, legalized gay marriage, and generate nearly all their energy from renewable sources. They clearly have a will that is either not evident in this country- or more likely, squashed by our national discourse of nonsense. Now, Iceland has its share of nonsensical beliefs as well, such as the folks there who still believe in elves. However, probably not in as large numbers as your fellow citizens who believe in angels.

America of course will never become the common-sense nirvana that is Iceland- we’re too big, for one. And dim-witted, for another. But we can start down the path with a few simple steps.

First, never again vote for a candidate who takes contributions from the banking and energy industries. Never. They are all, top to bottom, crooks. Its just the nature of the system. Their interests are not, and never have been, yours.

Second, stop the endless- and corporately funded fraudulent- debate over climate change. The science is against you, so take your “The Greens only want to kill capitalism!” gibberish and go put sandbags around the nuke plant in North Dakota. You know, something useful.

Finally, everywhere you go, teach people to ignore our fascist, corporate media. Turn off Fox, CNN, all of them, anywhere you find them. Read independent media. Read about the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, and imagine such a thing in this country.

Oh, to be Iceland.

Republicans Seek Specifics From FCC on Fairness Doctrine Departure

Top House Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans thanked FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday for saying he planned to strike the Fairness Doctrine from the Code of Federal Regulations, but said they wanted more info on when and how he was going to do that, as well as on other regs that could be ripe for repeal.

The doctrine required TV stations to air controversial issues of public importance and seek out opposing viewpoints. Also still on the books are corollaries to the doctrine providing for free response time for personal attacks and providing equal time for other candidates if a station endorsed a candidate in an editorial. The corollaries were repealed by the FCC in 2000 but the legislators want those deep-sixed as well, which Genachowski said he expected would happen.

Now, right off the bat, let me say I find the Fairness Doctrine- which is basically just the state telling us what can or cannot be said in public- to be profoundly unconstitutional. So before my libertarian friends heads explode, I have no desire to see it return, purely on constitutional grounds.

I only wish the right felt the same way. See, conservatives have no problem limiting free speech, be it that of a doctor in Florida asking about guns in the home to new parents, or potential protesters at their debates, but the notion that their ability to spew nonsense 24/7 on cable news without debate could be challenged by an alternative viewpoint, well, that’s just a bridge too far for these fair weather defenders of freedom.

To some, this would appear to be yet another example of GOP hypocrisy in action, and to some extent it is. But beyond that, and far more chilling, is what this disconnect really points to- the actual motivation behind all right wing actions for at least the last thirty years- winning. The right has adopted Lombardi’s “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” as their motto, and its their guiding principle on everything. Free speech requires debate- it can’t be called “free speech” if only one side gets to talk- and in the process of debating someone, you are forced to not only discuss their side of an issue, you’re forced to defend your own.

And therein lies the rub. I recently read Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and while I had been aware of the notion before, his 1964 examination of the topic really drove the point home, that rather than being a by-product of conservative belief systems, it was the underlying foundation of them all. Conservatives tend to be more of the “true believer” type than liberals; its been this way since church leaders railed against education in our early days, because they knew that an inquiring mind may well one day discover fault in their previously held notions and abandon them, thus diminishing the power of the church, or the state- or the GOP. Much of the true believer mentality is rooted in religious faith, and since the bedrock tenet of faith- “a belief in things unseen”- means it cannot be proven, its understandable that any group vested in this belief would not welcome debate, for it would ultimately lose. This is the reason the right fears the Fairness Doctrine- not out of some liberty loving Constitutional fervor, but rather the fear that honest open debate would leave them on the losing side, and that would mean that not only their ideas, but they themselves would be forced to change, and for many, that is a terrifying notion. A popular bumper sticker states “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it”. That is the belief system of a closed mind, fearful of debate.

And when the true believers are forced to defend their beliefs and lose, then suddenly debate is vital. Take the fraudulent “teach the controversy” movement among creationists. There is no debate over evolution, the science of the issue has been repeatedly tested, thousands of times. And the faithful know this, it is why they have to rely on the power of the state to force people to hear their erroneous notion of the origins of life. Same with climate change, peak oil, WMDs, and the “choice” of homosexuality. These topics have been debated, tested, and conclusions reached. Just because a small, yet very vocal minority of people don’t happen to like the answers, doesn’t mean the debate is still open- it just means their viewpoint, after examination, was found to be false.

So when Rush Limbaugh begins yet another harangue about the perils of liberals forcing the Fairness Doctrine back into law- as he sees it, a part of a master plan to kill conservative speech- take it for what it is. It’s just fear of being shown to be wrong. As the saying goes, “Any belief worth having must survive doubt”. So the next time you hear some right wing blowhard clutching their prayer beads and bemoaning “fairness”, understand its just fear talking, and take pity on them. Because to live your life by principles and beliefs you know in your heart you cannot defend, that must be a scary life indeed.

Tell me this isn’t just the bestest news evah:

Lights, Camera, Positive-Spin Action: Sarah Palin Is Back

Just when Republicans were starting to worry their 2012 presidential field would be too boring to bother with, Sarah Palin might be fixing to ride in like a movie hero just at the nick of time.

Be still my cynical heart. I was literally dreading another year plus of some sad sack GOP meat puppet sneaking around, attempting to look electable against Obama. Now Newt would have been fun to bash into the dirt, but alas, he decided to perform that task himself in the first week, robbing us of months of comedy gold. Mitt? Ha. It had gotten to the point that I felt that the GOP would go ahead and concede the election to Obama in actual fact, instead of by just not having a candidate. It would be great material for Sunday chat shows- “Look, we just saved the American people billions of dollars by not nominating a candidate…see ya in 2016!”

But this, this is good stuff right here:

Conroy reports Team Palin has yet to go looking for a campaign HQ, though they’re “operating under the notion that they are laying the groundwork for a future campaign, until they are told otherwise.”

Run, Sarah, run.

I have mentioned several times that I voted for Obama for one reason only- to watch the freaks come out from under their rocks so that we could deal with them face to face. And surely the biggest, most significant freak to slither out has been Governor Half Term, Sarah Palin. So please Sarah, answer the call of the 3,004,871 fans of your Facebook page, who slavishly refer to you as “President Palin” already, and run! Steer even more dupes to Sarah Pac, add to that Discovery Channel nest egg. Buy that house in Arizona…because if you had to pick the most obvious place for a person like you to relocate, it would be the State of Hate.

I honestly, sincerely hope Sarah Palin is the next Republican nominee. The good old boys of the party don’t want her- she’s toxic outside of Facebook and Fox- but on the other hand, what better way to completely remove her from the national scene once and for all by actually allowing her to run? Because unlike her current method of operation, where Sarah blathers only to carefully chosen minions who respond back with hugs and kisses, she’ll actually have to speak to people who actually have a clue. Thought Katie Couric was tough? Wait until you press that Grizzly Mama ass down on a chair at Meet The Press. Now, beholden as they are to power they’ll attempt to go easy on you, but its a hopeless task, since you have absolutely no idea on how the real world operates. Granted, you have the ability to be both bellicose and ignorant at the same time, but ask Herman Cain how well that works out.

No doubt she’d pump some life into this contest, which, since real candidates aren’t allowed to participate, is even more a sham facade than our usual electoral embarrassment, but I think Palin would discover right quick that she’s at 14.5 minutes on the Warhol scale, and any attempt to stretch that out isn’t going to be pretty. Barack Obama has been rumored to want to raise a billion dollars for 2012, but if facing Palin, he needs only to get his suit pressed for his single debate. It would only take about 30 minutes of airtime- real airtime, not the faux atmosphere of Fox “News” to completely shred what small amount of credibility she enjoys. Thought Newt looked stupid racing around smooching hiney trying to walk back his frankly logical statements on Ryan’s idiotic Medicare plan? Or Herman Cain amusingly befuddled by the Palestinian right of return? Imagine the effort Sarah Palin would have to make “clarifying” how the “lamestream media” played “gotcha” by asking the softball sort of questions you face in a debate? Got damn that would be great political theatre, dontcha think?

The reality is, a year and a half out, Obama leads Palin 53% to 35% in a straw poll. Obama could literally die before November of 2012 and still beat the stuffing out of that airheaded sock puppet, and everyone knows it. But since John McCain quixotically added her to the ticket, a fever of unreality has swept this nation. You can’t lay it all at her feet, certainly- she didn’t invent the birthers, or the Tea Party- but once some segment of this nation started taking her seriously, against all evidence, then it seemed as if all bets were off, and whatever gibberish some hillbilly from Georgia decided to yark up to the cameras gets repeated and discussed as if it was a serious statement from a serious person. That suspension of reality, that I lay at the feet of Sarah Palin.

If Palin runs, and I truly, truly hope she does, there will come a moment when the studio lights will be beginning to melt her makeup, and some media flunky will ask her a question about, say nuclear reactors, and it will take all of her bladder control not to spray fear down her leg in panic. We’ll see it in her eyes, and that will be the beginning of the end of The Quitter. Because otherwise, Mencken said it best:

“As democracy is perfected, the office of President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

So Sarah, seriously? Run, and prove Mencken wrong. Because if the unreality-based freak show that is Sarah Palin is our inner soul, then…well.

Let’s stop right there, shall we?

“Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity”
George Eliot

Hospital visitation rights for same sex couples under threat in Wisconsin

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker (R) this week asked a judge if the state may stop defending a law that gives citizens in same sex relationships the right to visit their partner if they’re in a hospital.

Gov. Walker contends that this is unconstitutional. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel examination of the governor’s legal brief, he claims that allowing partners these basic rights does not serve “the public interest,” insisting that the state should not have to pay attorneys to defend it.

In a larger sense, Walker is right, the state shouldn’t have to “defend” the law- because there never should have been a law to begin with. The state has no business regulating the private actions of two people regarding anything that two consenting adults choose to do. It’s that simple. If they wish to wed, record it in a book and move on. If one wishes to die in the arms of their lover, who is so grotesquely swelled with power to think they have any input into that situation at all? We have a word for such people.

Sadists.

To inflict pain upon people for no reason save that you can, that is sadism. It is cruelty personified. It is an attempt to degrade and dehumanize another, simply because at some irrational, root level, you’re threatened by the very existence of someone different than yourself. Be it religion or environment, somewhere along the line ignorant, sadistic people got it in their head that they actually have an input into those most private of moments of other people, that somehow they are less than you.

Less than human.

Governor Walker has already proven himself nothing more than a corporate lackey, a whore to power who cares nothing at all for the people of his state, excepting those who installed him in power in order to rob the state blind and kill unions. And he’s been justly vilified for it, too. But here’s what I want Walker to do. I want him to visit any hospital in Wisconsin, find a gay couple, and I want him to sit with the partner who isn’t ill- in the waiting room, or the parking lot, wherever “such people” are “allowed” to sit, and I want him to listen to their pain. The pain they feel when a loved one is suffering. The pain of helplessness that grips us all when another is ill. And finally, to feel the pain they do when yet again, someone tells them that they aren’t quite human enough to merit dignity. Or love. Or, in the very least, tolerance. You sit there, Walker, and look in their eyes, and see their tears. I would hope it might change your notion of “public interest”.

It would help, I guess, if you were human.

“The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them….To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

George Orwell wrote that in 1984, and yet again we can thank him for stating things so plainly, and giving name, in advance, to the nonsensical behavior one must exercise to be a “conservative” these days.

To wit:

Florida Bill Will Come ‘Between Doctors And Patients’ By Prohibiting Pediatricians From Asking About Guns

…Scott is expected to soon sign a first-of-its-kind bill that does just that by forbidding doctors from asking their patients if they own guns. To prevent accidental injuries, pediatricians routinely ask new parents if they have guns at home and if they are stored safely. But the NRA and its allies in the Florida legislature see something more sinister at work — a radical agenda to curb the rights of gun owners.

Ok, hold that thought in your head while you read this:

Court Rules for Pharmacists on Morning-After Pill

Pharmacists with religious objections to “morning-after” emergency contraceptives cannot be compelled to sell the product, an Illinois Circuit Judge ruled Tuesday.

The Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act was passed in 1998 to shield health care workers from going against their own beliefs. In 2005, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a ruling to force “pharmacies to fill prescriptions without making moral judgments.”

So, let me get this straight. If you’re a conservative, you find it completely fine that the state prohibits the conduct of medical professionals in their duties for fear of offending the NRA and whackadoo gun owners, yet the pill filler at Walgreens, his morality trumps the medical needs of a pregnant woman? Sorry, my brain isn’t wired that way. I have guns, and while I can appreciate- to some extent- the actions of the NRA on behalf of gun owners, I really think you have to be some sort of, well, we’ll stick with whackadoo, to think that a doctor asking new parents if they have a gun in the house is a “radical agenda to curb the rights of gun owners“. Did the doctor refuse to treat the child until the gun was removed? No. Did he attempt to get the family to surrender the weapon? No. He simply stated, as any competent doctor would, the risks to be aware of when you have loaded guns around young children. Not exactly radical, I don’t think. Is it his business? Maybe, maybe not. Depends on how you take it, but as a gun owner, I wouldn’t be offended or feel threatened if a doctor asked me the question, but then again, I don’t see legions of jackbooted thugs behind every tree attempting to make me surrender my manhood, I mean gun.

Now, is it any possible business of the guy at Walgreens who gets what medicine or why? Absolutely not, and if the guy who reads the script, opens the jar and pours a few tablets into a bottle thinks differently, then he should have thought of that before entering the profession. That profession being dispensing pills. Not morality. It’s simply none of his business- unless he believes that some adults aren’t allowed to have more of a say in their own lives than he does.

That’s the comforting warmth that is Doublethink. As long as your pet agenda gets stroked, rights be damned. The “state” is a over-bearing monster- that is, until a woman attempts to exert some measure of control over her own body, and then “the state” must put it’s weight behind your efforts to refuse her medical care, because of your “morality”. For those of us not infected with the curse of holding dueling and contradictory notions in our heads, as well as those who value the rights of each person, regardless of their gender, we say screw your morality. Do your job.

And let the doctor do his. It really is that simple.

I spent last Wednesday getting kicked around on Daily Kos for daring to ponder how the emperors new clothes fit. Now, I wasn’t expecting anything different- those folks would vote for Obama (or Clinton, or Kerry, et al) even if their campaign poster had a severed baby head on it. The regulars there apparently believe that anything not vouched for on the nightly news is a conspiracy theory, at least, if you’re speaking about Democrats. Their reaction, while not unexpected, was just another helping of the nonsensical, grotesque reaction this nation had to the supposed murder of Osama bin Laden. Cheerleading death is never tolerable to me, not to mention my inability to believe anything on the subject since oh, about 10:30 AM on 9.11.01. But as they said in Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend”. The legend has indeed been printed.

Thankfully I had something to take my mind off murder, at least for a while. Had the good fortune to see The Low Anthem play a tiny club in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For those not familiar, The Low Anthem are a band from Rhode Island who create the most intoxicating, organic music in America today. Four performers, dozens of instruments, they truly sound like nothing else you’ve ever heard. Sitting in a small room under the New Mexico night, I felt the tension leave me as song washed over me and I had a satori. Despite being labeled “… a conspiracy-theorist with abject hatred for his country and its government.”, I realized as I listened to the haunting, beautiful musical creation occurring before me, that I love America- because only here could these four people come together to invent something so wonderful, so magical, so American. Amid the wheezing chords from the WWII vintage organ and bowed banjo lives the true America. Not the blood-soaked hands of the couch commandos whooping “We did it!” when Osama was taken out, but the America of passion and heart, with talent beyond measure, born far from the plastic American Idol mediocrity of the masses, far from the partisan world of competitive politics, far from the gross distortions and unbelievable horror of America abroad- and at home. The Low Anthem are America, in all of it’s quiet, curious places. They speak to our dreams, our fears, our desires. The band rotates from instrument to instrument, one moment on clarinet, the next hammer dulcimer, followed by pounding garage rock. They adapt on the fly, they play a saw with a bow, they are, as Greil Marcus once said of the music of generations passed, “The old, weird America.”

This is the America I love, and I love it for many reasons. Only America could have invented rock and roll, destructed it, and rebuilt it a million times. No Predator drones or Navy Seals needed, no million viewers in sports bars barking in unison. This is the America worth fighting for, worth cheering. The America of creativity, of art, and taking chances. It is the America that provides hope despite our national depression, that can create a solace in sound that lightens our heart, and gives us a glimpse of genius amid the fools and know-nothings of a Daily Kos, or Redstate.com. The Low Anthem are America to me.

I hope you can find yours.

On Sunday evening this man

had this man murdered.

Or not. In the same way 9/11, The Media Event was presented to the world, the assassination of Osama bin Laden was rolled out, full of conflicting details from our military and intelligence agencies, just like 9/11. The entire world is reacting to an event that may never have occurred, is unverifiable, regardless of the final decision to release a photo of the corpse. If you believe the worlds bogeyman existed as portrayed, then you’ll probably accept an image as genuine, and if you believe it was a sham all along, then you won’t. It makes no difference at all to the powers that be if you accept their reality or not.

So this caps a few weeks that saw Obama release his birth certificate- or not, depending – as well as his deft slaying of rival Donald Trump at the Correspondents dinner to the amusement of his base. The man is on a roll, to put it mildly. He’s assured re-election, not that it was ever in doubt, despite what cable media attempts to drum up, he faces no competition at all from a generally loathed GOP. Obama controls the narrative, and while it might be comforting to think that the death of bin Laden will in any way change our military posture around the world, its not realistic. The supposed computer and hard drives that contain a “treasure trove” of data gathered during the raids are reportedly being examined “at a secret location in Afghanistan,” and a ‘volume of other materials’ that would be “exploited and analysed” has already begun to arrive at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The key word being “exploited”. I’m quite sure that the material “found” on this mythical computer will contain enough “threats” to keep our military and CIA wrecking havoc on innocents around the globe- and at home- for generations to come. They only need the barest of pretexts, after all, because if the Congress of the United States is no longer allowed to vote on military action, We The People sure as hell aren’t. No, we only pay for them- via taxes, or with our lives, but beyond that, a tyrant needs nothing more from his subjects. And Obama, just as Bush before him, and whomever follows Obama in 2016, are assuredly tyrants, for sadly our system, and more importantly us, are too weak to combat them in any meaningful way. Short of a military revolt, we are locked into this narrative seemingly without end. Just as sports bars around the nation erupted in drunken shouts of “USA!” when bombs lit up the skies over Baghdad in 2003, the crowds in Times Square went nuts Sunday night, cheering an illegal targeted killing put into motion by a single man. If this doesn’t scare you, then you really don’t pay much attention to the realities of the world you live in. Or you have devised some sort of moral sliding scale that says that our President has the right to reach out and slay anyone in the world he cares to, as long as they are the bad guys. Bad guys as defined by him, of course.

So for now Obama is riding a wave of public approval- up 9 points post bin Laden murder. Who cares if the man controlling the world’s largest military- and economy- feels completely unrestrained by any silly notion like a rule of law or Constitutional government. He’s such a nice man, surely the most benevolent and intelligent tyrant we’ve seen in years. Ask Bradley Manning about that. So take a moment from your shouts of “America Uber Alles”, oh, sorry, “USA Fuck Yeah!” and take a look at what actually occurred- or didn’t.

Scared yet?

Before I sent that email, I should have stopped to think about the historical implications [of depicting a black man as an ape],” she said. “That can be offensive . . . and I am so sorry.”

“Can be offensive“? I’m having a hard time wondering when calling a person an ape WOULDN’T be offensive, but I’m not of Marilyn Davenport’s generation. She’s part of my mother’s generation, a generation that I recall using the term “pickaninny” to describe the children I’d meet once my elementary school was integrated in a fashion after a black school shut down. I was raised in a household where there was a clear distinction made between “those people” and us, and the term “they” meant blacks. In later years, her mind freed from tact by Alzheimers, my mother used the term “CPT” when describing length of lines in the supermarket, and I actually had to ask someone later what it meant.

Do I consider my mother a racist? Yes. Now, she wasn’t an “active” one- other than a few off hand remarks, she kept such feelings to herself, unlike the man who gave me my first job. Now he was (and still is) an unrepentant bigot who hides his loathing of non-Whites in a torrent of unrelated, unsupported “facts”, but it’s all just window dressing, as if you can’t be both smart and full of hate at the same time.

Now, at the moment Republican Party official Marilyn Davenport clicked “send” on the email containing the image of our President as an ape, I’m sure she chuckled and didn’t think too much more about it. I doubt it was the first time she’s done something like that, or laughed when she got something similar in her inbox. She’s never had to face any condemnation of herself based upon her race, and she’s clearly triumphed over the sexual discrimination that women still face, so I can see how she might be confused about calling a black man an ape- I’m sure she’s been witness to such “jokes” all her life, and probably was truly bewildered that someone called her on it.

But here’s the thing.

First off, calling a black guy an ape? Racist.

Highest paid radio broadcaster babbling on in faux Chinese? Racist.

And do you think a Texas reporter would have spoken to John McCain- who would have inherited the same f’d up economy, and would have bailed out the same rich friends that Obama did- as he did to Obama?

And lets not forget the Georgia clown Lynn Westmoreland, who defied belief by stating that he, as a Southerner raised in the 1950s, had “no idea” that calling the president and his wife “uppity” was offensive.

Racism is the concept that a person holds one race to be superior to another by genetics, not behavior. Only racism allows you the freedom to insult another person based solely on what you perceive their status to be versus yours. Sadly, a far too large segment of our nation finds such things as “Obama as ape” to be funny, and that entire “Taking America Back!” crap that the Hannity’s of the world foster? Don’t have to be a genius to see that Obama’s actions aren’t to blame- he’s simply George Bush on steroids, and you folks just loved you some George Bush, didn’t ya? But was George Bush a “good man” because he mouthed some platitudes about being “born again”, despite his un-Christian behavior, and you let his illegal wars, bailouts and prescription drug plan go unremarked for eight years. But elect – actually elect, instead of install via the courts- a black man, and the not so latent racism that is this young nation rears its ugly- and thankfully largely elderly- head.

So yeah, lady, you’re a racist. Now, reports refer to her as a “sweet grandmother”, and I’m sure she is. My mother is sweet too. I’ve stated several times that the only reason I voted for Obama was to watch the nut parade come out from under their rocks, so we could deal with them. Sunlight being the best disinfectant, as they say. Well, the sun has shone upon Marilyn Davenport. And if you think it’s a lot to do about nothing, you’re probably two things. One is white.

The other is wrong.

People sputter whenever the concept of the Fairness Doctrine is mentioned- and generally, for good reason. While an odious propaganda organ like Fox News, which clearly operates in bad faith and has a demonstrable ill effect on our nation probably wouldn’t (nor shouldn’t) be tolerated in a sane society, we don’t live in such. Nor do we wish to live in a nation where the government, via funding or a Fairness Doctrine, can dictate which ideas are allowed to be broadcast.

Nor can we really force our media to tell the truth. In fact, our courts have held that its basically not against the law to distort or lie during a television broadcast. And none of this matters to those of us who would rather watch animal testing than cable news- we educate ourselves with the wealth of information available via other, non-corporate sources. But I have an idea that will possibly elevate the woeful level of understanding that the average citizen has about their government.

The government passed the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) in 1990, requiring “most food to bear nutrition labels and prescribes their form and content. They must state, among other things, the number of calories per serving and the amounts of fat, cholesterol, sodium, and fiber.” Now, one can debate if this makes a whits worth of difference in the long run- if people want to eat slop, by all means, eat slop, we’re just giving you information to make a choice. So I purpose doing the same for Congress.

Imagine the next time you turn on cable news or CSPAN, and they are running say, Paul Ryan pitching his really groovy, “serious” plan to hand over Medicare to private insurance and screw the poor, a graphic would pull information from opensecrets.org showing that he’s speaking on behalf of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries that hired him to represent them in Congress. When James Inhofe spews out more nonsense about climate change being the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people, you’ll be able to see that he’s simply reading the script handed him by the Koch brothers and the energy industry, his largest benefactors. This is not a radical idea- the information is largely in the public record, and not disputed at all. Now, I’m sure Congress wouldn’t like it, and might try and claim that they are acting on their own, but since nobody in Congress has a brain, spine or heart, I’m sticking with the employer/employee angle.

Oh, wait.

You thought they represented you?

NPR ‘appalled’ by former exec’s comments

Former NPR executive Ron Schiller slams Republicans and the tea party movement and suggests that NPR would be better off without any federal funding in a hidden-camera video released Tuesday by conservative filmmaker James O’Keefe.

Schiller, president of the NPR Foundation and a senior vice president for development until just last week, appears on the tape at Georgetown’s Café Milano with NPR director of institutional giving Betsy Liley and two men–Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar–posing as executives from a fake Islamic organization considering a $5 million donation to the network.

We’re going to leave aside the odious Mr. O’Keefe for now, other than to wonder, why isn’t he in jail in Louisiana somewhere? His gotcha video isn’t the issue. The issue is, should anyone have to support a media organization? Should conservatives be forced to fund a group who derides their existence daily, offends their sense of moral decency, and conspires against them? Of course not.

Nor should I get out of bed each day, go to work, come home and look at my paycheck, let my eyes wander to the withholdings, and realize that some small amount of that money went to fund Rush Limbaugh. Sean Hannity. Mike Huckabee. No, I shouldn’t have to be reminded of that. See, all those guys (as well Ed Schultz, Alan Colmes and NPR) are broadcast on the Armed Forces Network, which is a part of the Department of Defense, which, last time I checked, I paid for. Why should I pay these champions of the free market/capitalist cheerleading jackwad theocrats a fucking dime? Now, Rush earns something like 400 gazillion dollars a year to belch his brand of anti-American nonsense to a vast audience, he parades his income around like some sort of white boy bling, I doubt he really needs my minor contribution to his coffers. So, please, by all means, yank NPRs funding. It only amounts to about 3% of their budget, and without it- and the meddling aggravations of the no-nothing corner it invites- they would make up the difference in a week just by forgoing the money. Their demographic loves to support martyrs.

Please do this just as soon as you stop asking me to fund right wing demagogues and that homophobic clown from Arkansas. A group, need I remind you, have cost this nation far more than that brie-munching smarty pants crowd at NPR. Yeah, by relentlessly pimping the wars, by lampooning Abu Grahib, by endlessly cheerleading for Israel, these people have cost this nation dearly, both financially and morally. Sure, NPR might run a Noam Chomsky interview once in a blue moon, but that beats giving war criminals like Rumsfeld an open mic to spew his lethal lies. Big difference. By advancing the notion that somehow, after the last two years, the American public should rise up in arms against…school teachers…?…the Rush/Sean school of propaganda lets the real villains escape, while real people suffer.

So sure, I totally agree. You shouldn’t have to fund National Public Radio. And I shouldn’t have to fund right wing lie factories. So until I don’t have to, STFU.