Puppets, Hawks & Doves

Copyright February 24th, 2003 and updated periodically  

This article is heavily supplemented by hyperlinks that are important to the content. It was inspired by two weeks of listening to AM 1280 the Patriot, an ultra-fascist franchise radio station that broadcasts syndicated garbage from Fox (owned by Rupert Murdoch, who is showing us all he has learned from his party controlled media empire in Communist China).  Following the 2006 election, the sudden shift of sentiment against Bush's Nero-esque dictatorship tells us that they are all ready for a new president.  However, this tells us nothing about what the real power players are doing behind the scenes.  Don't expect the Democrats to do anything miraculous, and I'm sure we'll see the usual haranguing criticisms of every Democratic initiative that we grew accustomed to during the years when discussion of Clinton's sex life replaced actual news.  

Part One: The Grand Illusion

Class warfare is in full sway, and the favorite ruse of the haves is to retaliate for all attempts to respond on the part of the have-nots by accusing them of waging class warfare, when in fact the have-nots have no such power.  The second favorite ruse is to drive a cultural wedge between the college educated professionals and the working class.  This effectively neutralizes electoral and labor attempts to fight back.  By accusing the Democrats of tax-and-spend, they distract the talk radio zombies from the fact that they are the ones rapidly moving yet more tax burden onto the productive class, reducing their wages, destroying their environment, placing enormous debts on our children, while expanding both government power and spending.  Not to mention the fact that the grunt work in the military is done by the productive class, while people from Bush's class get to pretend they had illustrious careers in the more prestigious Air National Guard.  

Their fundamental principle is cheap labor.  While they accuse liberals of wasting money on big government, Bush has only succeeded in creating MORE government jobs and exporting MORE manufacturing, office and even public employee labor to foreign countries like India.  So, instead of being fiscal conservatives, we are talking about an oilygarchy of crony capitalist, cheap labor conservatives whose every single political effort is aimed at making you and me a lot poorer so they can knock us down and screw us even more.  An excellent and honest discussion of the irony of blue collar conservatism is presented by historian PM Carpenter.  It is bleak, mean and ironic, but frighteningly precise. 

Over the heads of the divided middle and working classes are self-serving puppeteers.  Powerful trade unions once manipulated blue-collar workers, nurses, support staff, security services and transportation workers.  Now the masses are manipulated by corporate media pseudonews, Madison Avenue and Hollywood.   Among the powerful forces vying to control the minds and policies of this country is the powerful Federalist Society [and also 1, 2, 3, 4, 5], right wing lawyers and judges who wish to destroy many of our constitutional rights and recreate our country in the name of crony capitalism and Evangelical Christianity in the form of Dominion Theology.  The most direct media pipeline for this powerful political entity is Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (including Fox network, see also 1).  The bold claim that I am going to argue in this essay is that the ultra-wealthy people who own the infrastructure of television, Internet, printed news, radio, billboards and movie distribution/production are not in the least bit liberal, but they have no qualms about selling anything that distracts us from actually thinking.   That may include token liberal voices, most of whom are weak, absurd punching bags the conservatives don't feel threatened by (for example, a stealth Republican like Bill Clinton or a flamboyant eccentric like Al Sharpton or Barbara Streissand).  Mostly it's pro-corporate, fascist, and anti-intellectual garbage.  (For more on the illusion of the Liberal Media, click here.)  Finally, I will show some laws of reality and ethics that wealthy, corporate interests are attempting to hide from us.

Cheap labor conservatives whine incessantly about the evils of Hollywood, without noticing that their hero Ronald Reagan was a product of Hollywood.  Reagan had fewer political qualifications than Sean Penn, but he had a charisma that appealed to conservatives.  More importantly, Federalists and warmongers easily manipulated him.  Reagan was not even an especially talented actor in comparison to Charlton Heston (not that Heston was outstanding).  One could plausibly argue that George W. Bush, one of the few intellectual peers of Reagan in presidential history, did not have the qualifications to be either president or a Hollywood actor.  Obviously, arguments for or against the merits of political figures based upon their connections to Hollywood (or vice versa) have no merit.  Crossovers from the entertainment world are becoming increasingly common.  Jesse Ventura probably ignited the aspirations of many uninformed, opinionated saps and bullies.  Besides, Federalists are feeling confident enough to overturn a presidential election, and to seat inexperienced lawyers on important federal courts.  George W. Bush and Miguel Estrada are blatant proofs that qualifications matter much less than ideology and controllability.  This is a very doctrinaire, conformist administration.  Many empty suits are needed to keep it going.  

In the recent context, Hollywood is under attack for opposing a wrong-headed war.   For the moment, let’s ignore this debate over the morality and probable effects of "Shock and Awe" on the entire Middle East, and look at the more content-oriented attacks on Hollywood itself.  I already have plenty of ranting on the various war issues.  This is the religion and ethics section of my site, so I'm looking at the situation from a rather different angle.  The reason I wish to engage this argument instead is because the right wing uses a false image of Hollywood as support for their Nazi arguments to squelch liberal opposition.  In other words, my point here has nothing at all to do with the war, but the war is a convenient tool for the media (meaning our corporate puppet masters) to whip up a grassroots anti-liberal insanity like the Salem Witch hunts, or Spanish Inquisition.  There are very few places to escape this astoundingly fascist and witless frothing and shouting on the AM dial, or the cable news stations.  Although most of the call-ins sound zombie-like or hyperangry, some the call-ins are more articulate than the hosts.  (Actors perhaps, like the "request" phone-ins on Clear Channel radio stations, or "leaners.")

This past week I have been listening to Michael Savage of Faux Radio's "The Patriot."  The Patriot is a vile, obnoxious outlet of xenophobia, homophobia, Federalist Society cheap labor propaganda and McCarthy-style anti-liberalism.  In terms of news quality and connection to the local community, "The Patriot" is a political rant station based on the Clear Channel model.  Clear Channel of Texas is the major competitor of the News Corporation's Fox>Patriot, but they have surprisingly similar political slants:

Clear Channel Entertainment (aka SFX, one of their more well-known subsidiaries) owns and operates over 200 venues nationwide. They are in 248 of the top 250 radio markets, controlling 60% of all rock programming. They outright own the tours of musicians like Janet Jackson, Aerosmith, Pearl Jam, Madonna and N'Sync. They own the network which airs Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, Casey Kasem, and the Fox Sports Radio Network. With 103,000,000 listeners in the U.S. and 1,000,000,000 globally (1/6 of the world population), this powerful company has grown unchecked, using their monopoly to control the entire music industry. If you find this alarming, ClearChannelSucks.org is the place for you.

Mr. Savage, and other AM “personalities” like Oliver North, make offensive jabs at everyone who opposes the Bush agenda.  For example, Savage described urban children who are victims of gun violence as “ghetto slime, ” which is also an indirect suggestion that liberals who complain about the gun violence in poor, minority neighborhoods are actually supporting immoral, subhumans.   Savage’s three keywords are "Language, Culture and Borders," which indicates that he stands to the right of the Republican party, along with the truly right wing Pat Buchanan.  On Mr. Savage’s web site, we find his Nine Commandments.

The Paul Revere Society 9-Point Program
MEN AND WOMEN PROTECTING AMERICA

1. Make tax cuts permanent.
2. Close the borders now.
3. Deport all illegal immigrants now.
4. Eliminate bilingual education in all states.
5. Require health tests for all recent foreign born immigrants.
6. Eliminate as many entitlement programs as possible.
7. Reduce the number of Federal Employees.
8. Oil Drilling on U.S. Soil.
9. Tort Reform "STOP LAWYERS".

Besides the fact that he is obviously in-line with the Federalists [Tort reform, Property & environment, Stalking Clintons, Bilingual education & Affirmative action ] and Fascists on most of his issues, we should note that he is a vocal supporter of the idea of formally declaring war through congress, and then reinstating the Sedition Act, which could allow the right wing to repeat what they accomplished in 1918, and during the McCarthy years—to rid the world of liberal voices.  Savage and Ann Coulter (who writes for the Federalist Society web site) are perhaps the most active of modern media fascists, but they could easily become targets of the same repressive culture they are trying to create out of hatred and fear.  It’s apparent to me from reading and listening to Savage that he carries ideas that don’t entirely agree with Bush’s.  It is possible that a resurrection of the Sedition Act could backfire on him when he questions Bush’s enormous spending on unnecessary things like Tom Ridge and John Poindexter.  Cheap labor conservatives like Savage are themselves puppets of a ruling elite who will eventually swallow them up when they start to ask too many questions.  [ January 9, 2004--it looks like Savage is getting the aftertaste of dirty bunghole in his mouth now.  Click here. November 2005 post Katrina, Michael Savage looks at the images on the news and screams out one of the most radical examples of class warfare--poor blacks against "the man" who doesn't give a damn about them.  For several days he ranted against the entire corporate-political system in ways they could only have lusted for on Pacifica.  I notice that in December 2006 that he has taken a 180 deg. turn there and almost never talks of Katrina, though he has been a consistent critic of the Bush administration.]

America has a long history of treachery in the government, and it appears that the Bush administration has taken impeachable offenses to a new height.  Michael Savage ought not to assume that he is safe from the forces he serves.  For a more detailed debunking of the liberal stereotyping of anti-war protesters, click here.  Furthermore, we only need look back to the 1990's to see an even more vile, vindictive and obstructionist kind of obnoxious disloyalty and "sedition" leveled against Clinton on the basis of a trivial sex fling.  Republican rhetoric during that time period ought to be dug up and repeated at length in their face--defying, blocking and harassing the president during a time of war.  This is hypocrisy in its most profound form.  [ July 9, 2004: MoveOn.Org is accused of outrageous tactics for allowing members to rate a few publicly solicited video ads against Bush that suggest he is like Hitler, though Grover Norquist told Terry Gross that supporting the Estate Tax was like supporting the Holocaust.]

I could expand the list for pages with such examples of Hitlerian discourse oozing into Savage's microphone.  For the liberal listener it’s as obvious as the sun in the sky.  But, for anyone who still thinks Bush is looking out for the best interests of Americans, no explanation would suffice.  So, let’s keep it simple, and focus on the morality and Hollywood.  Since I actually do ignore Hollywood as much as I can, I rarely know what they are up to.  Hollywood is dreck of the worst kind, and for none of the reasons conservative Christians (who are sucking up to the cheap labor conservatives) complain about.  But, the liberal-hating, fire breathing windbags on talk radio seem to make it a point to go out and get themselves offended by the crap, and then whine about it afterward.  It’s like a "John" bitching that his prostitute didn't give him real love.  

[example of Savage’s kinky Hollywood fetish, and this one too, both from his own website.  He complains vociferously about the crotch shots in Julia Roberts’ “In the Wild” film, and he writes this eulogy for the toning down of the sex and violence in the Sopranos script.  I'd like to add that I never even heard about Julia Robert's orangutan flick until Savage brought it up.  What made him think that would be a good family film?  Poor judgment?  Inability to evaluate the quality of information before consuming it?  Or, more likely, a strange desire to confirm his presumptions and further fan the flames of his fury?]

Do these anti-liberal banshees believe that Hollywood has a responsibility to produce quality material? (Do handgun manufacturers have a responsibility to produce safe guns?)  Do we need government regulators to assure that only quality, politically correct material is produced?  (Do corporations need regulations to assure ethical behavior and accountability?) Should there be government subsidy and tax breaks to encourage the production of movies that won't piss them off? (do schools need funding in order to produce better educational outcomes?)  Perhaps Hollywood and the Internet should be censored for Americans.  “Really now, we can't keep turning to government to solve every little headache that comes along.”  It’s rather entertaining to watch conservatives argue both sides of that one.  I am vehemently opposed to censorship, even of the hateful rhetoric of Michael Savage.  However, one of the purposes of this essay is to illustrate the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of his ideas.  That is the proper way to handle offensive, low quality manifestations of “culture.”  We must stand up and criticize evil and stupidity when we see it—especially when it is promoted as truth and intelligence.  There is no reason to ban free speech, or arrest political dissidents.  Such institutional intolerance is the essence of Stalinism, Maoism and Nazism.  It is precisely this sort of thinking that we are fighting against in the War on Terror.  

Let's examine the logic of the connection drawn between liberalism, the media and Hollywood.   Educated people tend to be liberal, if we exclude MBA's of course.  Liberal people tend to be educated, or at least more able to discern biased information.  Many liberals are fairly poor, but they represent a much more informed and politically engaged group than the "swing voters" and blue collar Republicans.  Educated liberals I know don't watch much TV or Hollywood.  They develop the ability to detect cheap labor conservative bullshit, and they avoid such deceptive and unreliable "news" sources as Fox or Disney.  Educated Republicans and all types of educated liberals make up the listeners of National Public Radio because it is the least politically slanted news source available.  AM talk radio provides the most radically slanted information available in the most outlandish and absurd form.  The listeners tend to have less education, and are unaware of the broad monopoly of corporate power that has overtaken the radio waves.  If the AM dial is right wing, and NPR is centrist, then that means the true left wing is practically non-existent in the media.  Even though the right wing talks a lot about a radical left, we who actually do consider ourselves on the left of the political spectrum find it very difficult to see any real left-leaning propaganda in the media.  It's ALL corporate propaganda.  

Liberals with brains prefer to read books about current events and history, and to watch independent films and foreign films.  It is liberals who make it possible the existence of films that Hollywood won’t make.  Any liberal can tell you that spotting working class conservatives is fairly easy.  Talk about things that offend them, or that they know nothing about: films with subtitles, men with nail polish, Howard Zinn, music that doesn’t win Grammy Awards, travel in France, Buddhist scriptures, organic foods.  I am going to make a bold association, mainly because I’m relatively certain that anyone who read this far won’t be offended: Apparently, there is a class of people who are capable of voting for Republicans or Democrats, depending on the effectiveness of media manipulation, or if Michael Savage is right, depending on the amount of hair the candidate has.  This is a mysterious lot, and we know very little about their entertainment choices, but we can surmise that they do not have very clear ideas about what is going on around them.  I refer to them as the “muddle-headed.”  The media calls them “swing voters.”  Without polling data and research, I can only make a guess, but would anyone object to the assumption that the people who vacillated on their decision to vote for Bush or Gore are by far the most inclined to be frequent customers of Blockbuster Video, and the most avid consumers of reality TV?  These are the people who watch reality TV shows while living in TV-based realities.  Rather than staying informed about world events, they consume a bit of right wing propaganda, and spend the rest of the day escaping into the trivial nonsense of working class masochistic exhibitionists.  As someone who avoids spectator sports and extreme sports too, I see a very fine line between Ricky Lake and the show "Jackass."  

The less-educated conservatives (blue collar Republicans suicidally working hard to promote the cheap labor conservative agenda) and swing voters gobble Hollywood crap up, and then have the nerve to complain about it, yet they don’t go to the happy, uncontroversial, non-sexual, non-violent films that do come from Hollywood.  Perhaps blue collar Republicans will start waking up when the cheap labor conservatives start replacing reruns of Baywatch with Prayer TV hosted by John Ashcroft.  But, it is entirely possible that conservative media moguls like Murdoch and Anschutz have no interest in changing the American taste for guns, perverted murderers, giggly girls with silicone enhanced bodies and “real life” TV.  Maybe that's exactly what they want us to watch.  It keeps us from paying attention to the gutting of our progressive tax code and the impending doom of civilization as we know it.  

I have to confess a rabid dislike for TV and films with overtly didactic conservative morality, but that's probably because I have yet to see one better than the Brady Bunch.  Once you've done that, what more is there to say?  You could bring in sin, redemption, prayers and angels and such, and I suppose that a few people out there might actually buy it.  The Davey and Goliath show is a great example of Evangelical Lutheran morality from 1958.  I hardly think it could stand up to Japanese anime and violent superhero cartoons.  How about action figures of Moses and David with his sling? The last of the truly good, truly conservative media figures just left this screwed up planet: Mister Rogers.  Bless his soul.

It appears that Republican voters and the AM talk radio call-in speakers are not aware that the majority of movie theatres are owned by the number one right wing corporate thief, far bigger than Kenneth Ley.  Philip Anschutz, an avowed queer hating, Jesus loving, cheap labor conservative (supports the GOP) who arguably stole 2.5 billion from Qwest Communications.  He is responsible for the crap that United Artists theatres show.  He is trying to create a monopoly on theatres [see also this, 1].  He already has a major holding in our theatres, so if Hollywood produced crap that he, as a moral paternalist fanatic philanthropist Christian, didn't think wouldn't sell to his audience, or would corrupt or offend them, don't you think he would shut it down?  His theatres are playing "Bowling for Columbine", I doubt that movie is a favorite of Mr. Savage or Olie North.  I wonder what Mr. Savage thinks of Mr. Anschutz's decisions about what he will play in his theatres.  I wouldn't pay money to see most of it.  "Bowling for Columbine" was worth seeing.  I'm sure Anschutz is showing it because he can make a buck on it, and he's banking on the fact that manipulated puppets of Rupert Murdoch and Philip Anschutz really like to pay good money to see Hollywood crap because they do like to see Julia Roberts' crotch--even if Michael Savage whines about it afterwards.  Hollywood’s outlets are controlled by cheap labor conservatives, so if they wanted to squelch Hollywood, it would be a simple matter.

Nevertheless, it is likely that Anschutz has a plan to slowly wean Americans away from our “alternative lifestyles,” and owning all the theatres is a good way to do it. With only a couple of major corporations controlling all the cable TV sources, and air-broadcast TV soon to be eliminated by Donald Rumsfeld’s Motorola/digital HDTV plans, we can easily and handily declare that not just the media, but every damned thing that comes to us via a TV set or a computer is coming to you through a cheap labor conservative-owned infrastructure.  They buy up radio stations and billboards, filling them all with patriotic marching music and flags.  [ClearChannel 1, 2] In the meanwhile, he’ll show us movies that we’ll buy, as he sneaks in the vapid, wholesome drivel and xenophobic fear fests that inhabit the fantasies of Himmlers, Goebels and Hitlers the world-over. [Have a look at some of Goebbels’ speeches and see for yourself how much it resembles what Fox and CNN are doing.  I particularly enjoyed this one on propaganda, this one on teaching the people to hate in order to win a war, and this one that sounds like the Republicans and Cato Institute responding to Enron and Worldcom]

It is worth noting that the back catalog of MGM contains many films that moral conservatives wouldn’t like at all.  Since Anschutz came into the picture, they have been producing a great deal of moralistic pabulum.  But, not all of their new material would measure up to the standards of Jerry Falwell.  The new show “She Spies” doesn’t look very Christian.  Cheap labor conservatives and “swing voters” have this almost patriotic sense of duty to spend their hard earned money on the latest waste of celluloid that conservative media corporations promote as the latest “block buster.”  The secret is that they convince them that it’s all the fault of a bunch of liberals controlling the whole game. 

What kind of movies do the guys in jacked up pickups with Norm Coleman stickers and American flags go to see?  French art house film?  Family films with no sex or violence?  Explosions, guns and steroid stars with shaved chests covered with oil?  Sexy films with brainless plots and annoying dialogue?  Do the liberals that Michael Savage loathes actually go to see the vile crap that emanates from Hollywood?  It strikes me that people who voted for Bush are a lot more likely to go see these kinds of films than those who did not.  Hence, the accusation that Hollywood is full of liberal perverts making films for liberal perverts falls on its face.  At best, we might say that it’s full of liberal and cheap labor conservative opportunists taking advantage of a not-so-liberal population with mildly kinky tastes.  At best, it might be fair to say that some liberals are successfully convincing middle class GOP voters to give them money in exchange for garbage--which means they are very gullible.  

Perhaps a better example of right-wing hypocrisy is pornography.  It certainly isn't liberals alone, many of whom are anti-pornography, who have made pornography the biggest money making industry on the Internet.  The very partisan Republican AT&T broadband media empire [see these: 1 & 2] has deep holdings in the porn industry.   Along with the other corporate porn giant General Motors, these two hosted a nice fund raiser for George W. Bush in May of 2000.  [Here is a nice letter written by AT&T CEO Daniel E. Somers in defense of his porn distribution]  Bill Clinton, and now Bush changed laws so that our media can continue to consolidate and place more and more of our information under the control of just a few powerful corporate interests, like Murdoch.  The bottom line is, these opportunist capitalists with no souls would sell their grandmothers into slavery if it made them rich.  They spend massive amounts of money lobbying congress to create media monopolies and perpetuate pornography, in spite of the fact that many of their staunchest opponents are the constituents who vote for their puppet candidates.  Ironically, these wealthy corporate lobbyists donate the largest amount of money to Republicans, and they gladly take it and give them the policies they ask for. [1, 2]

[ October 11th 2003 update: Perhaps more to the point is the fact that these very same conservative media distribution corporations are very closely connected to the spam e-mail you are receiving.  Recently, I noticed a sudden burst of solicitations for hardcore narcotics like Vicodin.  In order for this to occur, corporations like Qwest, AOL and AT&T (big Republican donors) are pretending that they don't know about these illegal drug pushers tempting us and our children with the most addictive and powerful drugs available from a doctor.  Several months after I noticed this rather shocking phenomenon, we find out that Rush Limbaugh is going into treatment for addiction to these drugs.   Limbaugh is one of the more extreme, though not the most extreme, AM talk radio cheap labor conservatives.  He has insulted and ridiculed drug users and addicts many times over the years.  In a rant about the disparity between the drug related imprisonment of whites and blacks, he said:

"What this says to me," he told his listeners that day, "is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we're not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too." (Limbaugh, Oct. 5, 1995)

"'When you strip it all away," Rush had said of the Grateful Dead guitarist, "Jerry Garcia destroyed his life on drugs. And yet he's being honored, like some godlike figure. Our priorities are out of whack, folks."  [refer to this editorial,  more,  Limbaugh quotes on drugs.  Apparently, abuse of the drug causes hearing loss, which would explain his hearing problems, but fails to explain the volume of his habit.  However, it does explain the strange compulsion he has to believe the lies of corporate thugs.]

No doubt, we liberals are all chuckling at the karmic justice.  But, there is a problem with the story as Limbaugh tells it.  Apparently he was purchasing at a rate of one hundred pills a day.  Let's think about this a minute.  These Oxycodone based drugs are extremely powerful.  Basically, this is the modern version of heroin.  At the rate of 100 pills a day, and in light of his obvious ability to maintain his grueling schedule of radio shows, one has to wonder where all those pills were going?  Was it perhaps he and some "colleagues" who have been sending us those spam mails advertising pharmaceutical smack for sale from discrete mail-order pharmacies?  Could Rush be pretending to be in treatment to obscure a far worse truth--he's also a pusher?  If indeed he was using it for back pain, it seems a bit odd that he'd be out playing golf.  If he is innocent, why was he paying blackmail money to his dealer?  As of 2006 it looks like Rush will dodge bullet, but the election 2006 bullet went right between his eyes.]

Cheap labor conservatives frequently whine about a conspiratorial cadre of liberal, gay Hollywood executives filling our heads with subversive ideas like normalizing gay lifestyles.  Whether or not this is true, I think that most Americans are not particularly threatened by the idea of having a gay couple next door to them.  I hardly think that a gay couple on a sitcom will cause kids to decide to become gay.  

Those of us who are aware, some of whom support the GOP, know that the reality is that rich corporations do in fact lobby Republicans for favorable monopolistic legislation to pick winners (them), and the exclusive rights to sell a controlled, monitored stream of misogynist, male-dominant tacky Hollywood dreck and cable TV pornography.  Think about the ethical issues there, my friend.  Bill Clinton in the past, and now George Bush are setting up people who are filling the heads of Americans with low quality, corrosive entertainment, and then mixing it together with distorted news.  This blurring of the boundaries between Hollywood (entertainment), pornography (inflammatory propaganda) and news is clearly the primary weapon of the corporate interests who are moving us quickly into a fascist/corporate state. 

It is absurd and unfair to suggest that all Christian Republicans are hypocrites like Jimmy Swaggart, driving around with a hooker, a bottle of booze and a stack of Hustler magazines under the car seat.  However, there is clearly a profound moral duplicity at work here for the wealthy figures that work so hard to control the opinions of Christian Republicans.   On the other hand, anyone who thinks that the sexually titillating ooze from California (Hollywood and Porn) is not consumed by a larger proportion of people who also listen to and believe AM talk radio, is suffering from denial.  Forgive me if I am so bold as to question the Christian devotion of cheap labor conservatives like Michael Savage and Oliver North, whose hateful, ignorant rhetoric belies the heterodoxy and divergence of their interpretations of scriptures.  I find it fascinating that the AM windbags are so vile and stereotypical, “talking smack” about the French, but they are clearly afraid to take on the Catholic Church or the numerous Christians opposed to the war. [1, 2, 3, 4]  In my anecdotal experience, the war protests I have attended are heavily attended by Christian religious groups.  There are veterans there too.

What is most puzzling to me is the political complicity of fiscally conservative, moral liberal libertarians (such as Jesse Ventura) who do enjoy entertainment that disturbs Jerry Fawell and Osama Bin Laden.  They look the other way as Limbaugh and the AM windbags mix tax policy, veiled cheap labor agenda and international politics with homophobia, anti-abortion, sexual repression and McCarthy-esque fascism.  John Ashcroft makes shocking criticisms of Islam, spies on our e-mails and shopping habits, but considers gun purchases a sacred, private transaction.  Cheap labor conservatives see no problem with Ashcroft's rabid unwillingness to let the FBI look through instant background check lists to search for terrorists--who do in fact buy their guns from America.  They are also undisturbed by Ashcroft's willingness to squash states' rights to stop euthanasia, medical marijuana and who knows what else.  Wave some flags, hint at cheap oil, show some pictures of eagles and the burning World Trade Center, and the most secular libertarian will goose step and genuflect for Bush and Rumsfeld.  The tax cut is a powerful electoral weapon of the conservatives, even though they have never delivered on that promise for the middle and lower classes. 

Another example of GOP voters being jacked around by their cheap labor conservative corporate puppet masters is the recent duct tape and plastic sheeting sham.  Liberals did not fall for this blatant attempt to instill fear in Americans.  I do not believe that Carl Rove was dumb enough to think we would.  However, many GOP voters who believe everything they hear on cheap labor conservative radio and from the cheap labor conservative Bush administration went out and bought duct tape.  Perhaps they will awaken, thanks to the harsh ridicule they get from the few intelligent right-wingers who were smart enough to realize that Tom Ridge is full of shit, and probably has 3M stock investments. I doubt that Michael Savage, Imus or Rush Limbaugh bought any duct tape.  It would surprise me to find out that Barbara Streissand or liberal college professors bought any duct tape.  More gullible people who did may be feeling like they were duped by their puppet masters and ridiculed for it.  

One problem with Savage and his listeners is that they pay way too much attention to Hollywood personalities.  I avoid them.  Besides if Barbara Streissand says something offensive or untrue at a publicity event, and the media covers it, and Savage watches it, and some blue collar worker with an NRA sticker in the window of his Ford Excursion listens to it and agrees with Savage's vitriolic remarks about the self-absorbed chanteuse, then who is to to blame?  Somehow, I have managed to not see or hear a single word spoken by Streissand in regards to the war.   If she has stood up and said something like "Saddam's not such a bad guy after all." then she is an idiot.  I wouldn't argue that.  

What does that make Michael Savage?  an intellectual coward who refuses to address the anti-war arguments made by Paul Craig Roberts, Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, the Cato Institute, and, on the left, people like Noam Chomsky, Granny D.  Instead, Savage takes alleged call-ins from an occasional liberal who is incapable of producing a cogent argument,  or electronically stifled by his own straw man interruption, which is inevitably followed by three minutes of commercials.  The reason that important and intelligent people won't call in, or come on a show like Savage's to argue with him is that the entire genre of right wing talk radio revolves around the power of the shocking loudmouth.  Limbaugh and Savage love to create this idea that it's really easy to intellectually shut down a lib'ral without noticing the fallacy of assuming that anyone dumb enough to go into the ring with him represents the epitome of liberal intelligence.  Savage helped Barbara Streissand get some much needed free publicity--not to mention Larry Hageman.  I skeptical of Savage's assessment that Larry Hageman merits any attention, and had it not been for the coverage gave him, we might have gone another five years or more without hearing his name, or even thinking about him.    

Savage demonstrates regularly his cowardly idiocy in spite of a PhD degree (?).  If his degree is real, like George W. Bush's MBA, and Sean Penn has only a High school education, then doesn't this prove that their college educations are worthless? Perhaps the extreme right wing arguments to the extent that college is worthless are true, and the whole Hollywood Education Scandal that Savage is attempting to create undermines itself and his own authority as a PhD.  See what I mean?  The logical flaws in this are so many that it's like walking through a hall of mirrors.   

The idea that anti-war protesters are all war criminals who support Saddam is not only false, but clear evidence that the cheap labor conservatives have declared war on liberals, and the war on Iraq is a mere diversion and excuse for that other war.  Listening to cheap labor conservative talk radio, I have come to the conclusion that there is a socially sanctioned, corporate sponsored and censored war being acted out against liberals.  The war has been going on for some time, but now that they are taking over the entire media, the liberals are finally waking up to the sound of angry mobs battering the gates of their hard-earned political world.

On the other hand, liberals all over the planet, not just in America, are manipulated by a corporate media into believing that Bill Clinton and John F. Kennedy were actually liberals, rather than tools of venal forces of corporate shenanigans.  The Fox Network had an ingenious idea in Bart Simpson--vicarious rebellion for mass consumption to sedate marginal liberals.   They don’t realize that the comparatively liberal Microsoft is in cahoots with General Electric to distribute Michael Savage on MSNBC. 

I will expand this discussion of how the media fools liberals into thinking that Clinton wasn't out to accomplish most of the same things Bush now wants.  Perhaps one of the most unsettling of the unveilings I will make is this one: The venerable Buddhist monk the Dalai Lama has been an employee of the CIA and consistently avoids making any criticisms of US foreign policy, including the hideous Iraq Invasion.  In other words, one of the favorite idols of the liberals is really a tool of the anti-Communist forces within our government.  Refer to these articles: Dalai Lama's remarks on Iraq War, What Would Buddha Do?

Part Two: The Two Big Secrets

The first big secret that the cheap labor conservative puppet masters don't want us to think about is this: all of the political bickering and liberal-conservative hatred boils down to an argument over the validity of different models of human rights.  The corporate interests have everyone believing that the most important human right is a fuzzy thing called "democracy."  When you dig under the superficial shine and press them on it, the fundamental issue for them is a sense of a right to personal profit without limits--which is a thin veil over the cheap labor conservative agenda.  Selling this idea to working class Americans is a major challenge, since it depends on undermining their standard of living too.  They obviously devised an ingenious two-fold scheme: cheap electronics (and other products) made in Third World countries for slave wages sold in mega stores like Walmart and Sam's Club, combined with what  I call "lottery mentality."  It works like this: You create a cheap labor conservative media that fills people's heads with fantasies of what it's like to be super rich.  With credit cards and Best Buy, a high school teacher or a cube farm galley slave can buy a home theatre/video game/internet system.  You give them TV shows, lotteries, overpaid athletes and talk show hosts.  You give them stories of how Enron and Worldcom are models of corporate success.  You tell them in great, glowing detail about CEOs with enormous compensation packages.  Then you tell them this simple lie: "Wouldn't it be awful if you didn't have the opportunity to get super rich like that too?  America is the land of opportunity.  Anyone can get rich like that if they are smart enough and work hard enough."   With this scheme they rule the complacent in their Lazy-Boys.

On the left is that idea that the fundamental human right that we must fight for is a right to communal happiness and health.  At first, the left told us that this idea and the Locke/Smith laissez-faire liberalism (the kind of liberal that the Republicans love) were incompatible.  But, nobody seems to be pointing out that this is a false dilemma.  We don't have to go one way or the other, nor do we even have to seek the "golden mean," or "mushy middle."  We can choose to reject the entire dichotomy.  Jesus Christ was not a cheap labor conservative and he did not hate socialists.  The Catholic Church and America made a sick and twisted campaign against it to maintain the capitalist-neocolonial economy.  Karl Marx would have cringed to see what Lenin, Stalin and Mao did with his ideas.  We must realize that the economic system that emanates from America is not capitalism in the sense of free markets, pluralism and competition.  It is crony plutocracy and kleptocracy with rich corporations buying public policy to entrench their monopoly--everything aimed at driving down wages.  This has nothing to do with democracy and real competition.  We must also come to realize that communist economies throughout American history have been vigorously suppressed and harassed.  They were corrupted by selfish interests, and recreated feudalism in a bureaucratic context.  Socialism does not have to become collectivism in even the ideal Marxist sense.  Europe has already proven this, much to the chagrin of the Vatican and the Republicans.

The second big secret that the puppet masters don’t want us to think about, or even know is this: in regards to dealing with nasty dictators, war and embargos do not work.  They only make the dictators stronger by harming the people, and they cost everyone a lot of money.  It is more than a little relevant that in the interim period between Gulf War 1 and the Supreme Court appointment of the Bush-Cheney team that Dick Cheney was lobbying congress to drop trade restrictions against Iraq and Iran because we were unable to compete with countries who did not support those restrictions.  The ultimate dirty secret is that weapons inspections and human rights observers do work.  When these people are there with their cameras, satellite phones and armed guards, a dictator can’t do much harm to us, let alone his own people.  After the arrival of this round of inspectors in Iraq, Saddam released a large number of prisoners to create a positive public image.  People protested because the real political prisoners had been killed already, and Saddam did not do a thing.  His hands were tied by inspectors.   El Salvador is an excellent example of how human rights observers can put an end to political oppression, and bring democracy.

It is obvious to me that Bush fears weapons inspectors because they will find all that Halliburton equipment pumping oil, and lots of Made in USA labels on the weapons.  By bombing all the oil installations, and the munitions depots, they will effectively erase all traces of Dick Cheney's clandestine trade with Iraq in spite of sanctions.  It will also create a need for replacement equipment, that will be purchased from Dick Cheney's Halliburton with your tax dollars.  More importantly, Donald Rumsfeld's technological-aerospace-military industry will make money off of the war itself, paid for by your tax dollars.  Through Motorola, he has an interest in setting up the first wireless phone network and probably a satellite TV system in Iraq.  

There is something very strange and deeply ironic about the current situation.  In Christian symbolism, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Ghost--the presence of God, as he illuminates individuals.  In the current arena of political propaganda, the media has created an army of unthinking, angry, liberal-hating thugs who believe that Jesus Christ is on their side.  Ironically, these Christians (who do not represent the majority of Christians world wide) are openly accepting the term "Hawks" as a description of their position, and mocking the “doves” for their weakness. 

Every Republican Christian who favors this war with Iraq should be forced to read Mark Twain's "War Prayer."

May 6, 2004 Update on Savage.

Recently, the Patriot radio station stopped rebroadcasting Michael Savage for my morning commute.  They replaced him with the more moderate and eminently dull William Bennet--that hypocritical, moralizing gambling junky.  I haven't been able to hear him, but i have visited his website to see what he puts up there in response to various news events.  Obviously, the rant du jour is the S&M gay porno that the private contractors and US Military are making in Iraqi prisons.  The shocking photos and narratives are appalling beyond words.  Internationally, the US has moved one giant step closer to the Holocaust chapter in future textbooks on global history.  Savage is obviously shocked by the pictures, but I noticed that on his website he is attempting to defend those atrocities by publishing hitherto unseen photos of people falling from the World Trade Center.  The caption reads "Show these to your liberal friends."  Apparently he hopes that we will salve our consciences by remember that horrible day when George Bush happily endangered school children by continuing to read to them while terrorists flew jet liners into buildings.  Obviously, he's hoping to reinvoke that absurd bogeyman of Iraqi connections to Al Qaida and September 11th.  How many Iraqis were in those planes?  None.  Even if Saddam had been connected to this Afghani attempt to strike the US before they attacked them over the failed Enron pipe deal, upon what moral grounds can Savage justify applying Saddam's own torture techniques in Saddam's old prison?  How can he, with a straight face, suggest that the very horrors that Saddam committed against his own people (who we were allegedly liberating) were now acceptable because of the evil done by Egyptians, Saudis and Afghanis?  Not long ago Savage was crying out for a Dresden style bombing campaign on Fallujah, and now he's supporting the recent decision to hand over power to old Ba'athist military authorities.  A friend of mine who listens said that he suggested bringing Saddam back on a short leash.  Say, weren't these the horrible monsters that we needed to get rid of?  Clearly, this means one of two things: a) they screwed the situation up so badly they have to surrender to the enemy.  b) this war never really was about moral issues or democracy.  It was about oil.  Evidently, both options are true.   

January 9, 2004 update on Savage. 

Temper Tantrum Unveils Racist Ideology

This so nonplused him that he was positively beside himself.  It was as if he had for the first time realized that George W. Bush is not on the same page with him.  Savage was so angry that he announced he was finally going to open up a discussion that he had been holding back, and that everyone else was afraid to discuss.  He boldly stated that 95% of all important inventions and innovations in the world are of European origin, and Latin Americans are in fact racially inferior because, he claimed, they have no important innovations to their account.  He went on to suggest that these people have nothing to offer our country that can't be supplied by our own citizens on welfare.  Before entering a brief rebuttal of this stupid remark, I want to remind you that the obvious precipitating factor for his decision to come out of the closet as a white supremacist was George Bush's decision to make it easier for Mexican illegal immigrants to work here.  I am betting that a decision by Bush to promote abortion on demand would not have provoked such a "savage" attack on the president during a time war (meaning that he now falls under his own call to arrest critics of Bush as traitors and enemies to the state.)

Mayans and Aztecs had a more accurate calendar in the Middle Ages than the European invaders had in the Colonial era seven hundred years later, and that Hernán Cortés himself stated that various technologies existed there in the sixteenth century that far exceeded the capabilities of Europeans.  Not that Cortés should be considered a spiritual predecessor to Lincoln and Gandhi, but the distinction between his perception and interpretation of Aztec technology and that of a modern right winger like Savage speaks volumes.  In Cortés' second letter to the king of Spain, describing the marvels of Sixtteenth Century Mexico City, he says:

...bien sé que serán de tanta admiración que no se podrán creer, porque los que acá con nuestros propios ojos las vemos, no las podemos con el entendimiento comprender.   (I know very well that [the things I have to tell you about what I have seen in Tenochtitlan] will be so astonishing that they will be unbelievable, because those things that we have seen here with our very own eyes, our minds are unable to comprehend.)

His narrative continues in this feverish, amazed tone.  Professor Wolf Lustig's univeristy web site posts a nice chunk of these breathless effusions of European amazement and praise for the achievements of this "barbarous people."  Although they are all permeated with obligatory praise for the Lord of the Catholic Church and formal ingratiation to his royal highness, Cortés' Cartas de Relación can be summarized briefly as a stream of consciousness flood of descriptions and astounding apologies for telling the king that Moctezuma had a lot cooler stuff than he had.  Savage would probably respond with some remark about human sacrifice practiced by the Aztecs--to which I would respond by reminding him of blankets covered with smallpox virus given to Indians by Europeans, and slave ships packed like sardines.  

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that an alleged PhD from UC Berkeley in alternative medicine could be ignorant of such things.  It makes me wonder if Savage realizes that Africans conquered Christian Spain, and stayed there for more than seven Centuries, until 1492.  I wonder if Savage realizes that if it hadn't been for this Islamic invasion, Europeans might still think that bathing was an effeminate luxury and the only book to read would be the Bible.  This mixture of Arabs and North African brown people was far more advanced than the Europeans were in 711 CE.  It was Arabic astronomy and navigational technology that made possible the Niña, Pinta and Santa María.  It's not difficult to argue that most of the important achievements in philosophy, religion, medicine and science before 1500 were either taught to Europeans by non-white people willingly or by force, and the achievements made by Europeans after that date were only possible because of the intelligence and labor of non-white peoples.  I am aware that Savage would now accuse me of being a self-hating liberal traitor.  This is completely false.  My point of contention has nothing to do with demeaning the white race in order to favor non-whites.  This is an issue of intellectual dishonesty, ignorance or amnesia.  

Nationalistic propaganda, demagoguery, war and fear were fundamental to Hitler's machine.  As far as Bush and Savage's disagreement goes, the issue there pertains to the location of the dark skinned people.  Bush and his oligarchy want them to clean the toilets and cook the food right here in America.  Savage wants to throw them all out and close the gates.  Because it's now de rigueur to give unconditional, blind love to Israel, and by association all Jewish people, Savage shifts his anti-Semitism toward the Arabic peoples--who are also Semitic. Otherwise, if you listen to enough of his shows, you'll get a chance to hear him rip apart every race.  I've even heard him tear apart different European cultures like the Greeks and Italians.  The next day he'll be talking about the importance of Aristotle and Aquinas.  All this flipping around is probably symptomatic of brain dysfunction caused by high blood pressure. 

Global Warming Discredited by Frothing Puppet

But, this blatant eugenic fascism isn't the only nonsense I heard this week.  Just this morning he stated that he had proof that global warming isn't man-made.  Using his dubious PhD as additional evidence, he referred to an Science Daily News article about research indicating that a greenhouse gas-induced global warming event occurred about 100 million years ago.  Long before humans.  (Never mind the fact that the religion he pretends to support and espouse only acknowledges less than 6,000 years of history)  In an annoying exchange between himself and an employee in the medical profession (maybe a male nurse, but probably a setup "punching bag"), he argued that because this evidence existed, and because the rather ignorant caller had no response to his interrogation "Why did this happen 100 million years ago, you ASS!?" that he, Michael Savage PhD, was right and the "medical ass" was wrong.  After shutting the poor fool down, and repeatedly referring to him as a "big ass" he assembled an incredibly flawed argument to which I felt immediately compelled to respond.  My compulsion was not so much driven by a belief that Savage deserves my attention, but rather the realization that his argument is widely used by "the oligarchic special interests" who are in control of the media (Savage's own claim, by the way, given that his hero Schwarzenegger has abandoned the anti-immigrant policies he got elected on).  I wanted to provide this argument to help those interested to respond to the Flat Earth Society sycophants of the oil and coal industries.

Let me illustrate the flaws in the argument for those who may not have thought about these issues. 

a) The Royal Netherlands Sea Institute study indicated that greenhouse gasses caused a severe increase in ocean temperatures 100 million years ago.  They don't seem to make any inference that this indicates it explains what is happening now.  It is absurd to compare a prehistoric, pre-human context with a modern human context.  Any analogies drawn from the comparison are ipso facto extremely dubious.  Also, the general idea of cyclical warming and cooling on the planet is far from new information.  The only thing new is the specifics of the measurements.  We now have some numbers to attach to it.  Savage was speaking as if this were a new revelation.  It was merely specific data and proof to demonstrate already existing general assumptions.  

b) Severe increases in ocean temperature have dramatic negative consequences on life in the ocean, and by its powerful influences on weather, on land-based life too. If our oceans warm up that much, we will probably have many serious and unimagined problems.

c) Very few species that existed 100 million years ago are still in existence.  The entire history of the human race, assuming the evolutionists are correct, fades into simian forms at around two million years ago.  The time period referred to in the study is known as the Early Cretaceous period.  It's the time dinosaurs started turning into birds (if you believe in evolution).  The transition probably is related to the transition from Jurassic to Cretaceous life forms.  Even though the dinosaurs didn't disappear, many species did. 

d) It is an undeniable fact that hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide cause what is known as the greenhouse effect, which results in overall temperature increases.  The planet Venus is a good example of this effect.  It's hot enough on the surface to melt lead.  Because small changes can accelerate in nature, we are gambling with a very complex and unknown collection of mechanisms.  The stakes are very high, so we can't just laugh off concerns the way I hear from the right wing.  

e) Humans are indeed producing massive amounts of greenhouse gasses, and they are destroying the biological mechanisms which sequester and recycle these carbon-based pollutants.  In other words, the process of killing forests and damaging water dwelling plant life by pollution means that the natural processes for protecting the Earth from these effects are disappearing.  According to an official United States Geological Survey document that is in my opinion pretty lame in terms of slapping these people around, 

The amount of carbon dioxide produced each year by human activities (mainly the use of fossil fuels and destruction of forests) exceeds our best estimate of the combined amount of carbon dioxide absorbed each year into the atmosphere and oceans by about 2 billion tons. 

This missing tonnage probably corresponds to the amount that is still being sequestered by trees such.  Estimates indicate that humans alone produce 27 billion tons.  That means that we have a balance of 93% of the production that is absorbed into the atmosphere and oceans.  Keep in mind that a ton of gas at room temperature and pressure is a great deal larger in volume than a ton of water (250 gallons), which is about the size of a water bed.  That is a lot of gas.

f) Temperatures are rising, and we are in fact experiencing the effects of global warming.  The philosophical debate lies in the nature of the cause of this increase in temperature.  The corporate oligarchs want us to believe it's just a natural process.  Nearly every respected scientist on the planet wants us to believe that it's caused by human activity.  Everyone lacking a vested interest in the "corporate oligarchy" encounters vicious and stiff resistance.  Michael Savage suggested that anyone who doesn't accept the pro-corporate position is a self-hating communist "enemy within" the American state.  

So, can you see the flaws here? 

First, if the warming trend continues, no matter what the cause, we are doomed.  Of course, if you believe in a doomsday religion, this isn't especially bad news.  But, for the rest of us, this is awful news.  Even if we engage in Coleridge's "willing suspension of disbelief" in order to indulge this oligarchic illusion, one is confronted with the issue: there is a very large, known and measurable human source, and they assert that because 100 million years ago another similar event occurred we should assume that the Earth is currently letting multimegaton farts--after 100 million years of digestive stability.  This sort of logic helps me understand how a scientist can pretend to understand experimental methodology, and also support incoherent fascist religious wackos.  Only an idiot would look toward the unknown, and perhaps fictitious factor instead of trying to stop the known and measurable factor. More importantly, the effects of natural processes, like the greenhouse effect of atmospheric water vapor, are part of an accelerating interactive mechanism.  Warm air holds more moisture and moist air gets warmed faster by the sun.  So, the distinctions between natural and man-made causes are erased in this case.  If you slit a person's wrists and you put him into a bathtub of warm water, he will certainly bleed to death.  If you are charged with the murder, would it make sense to argue your innocence on the basis that the death was the result of a natural process of water preventing blood coagulation?  This is the fundamental logical form of his argument.

Second, he refused to acknowledge the fact that humans ARE engaged in environmentally destructive activities.  Savage consistently responds to left leaning socialism with an ad hominem argument.  In this case, as in all other cases of Savage's pontification, he accuses us environmentalists of being self-hating Marxist enemies of civilization because we are opposed to the corporate oligarchs who benefit from destroying the world. 

Third, these activities are not unavoidable, but the corporate oligarchs in control of the government are preventing the development of alternative energy sources.  In fact, they are creating tax incentives to help coal burners and oil burners steal more tax dollars from you and me. Even though these hypothetical Earth farts probably aren't controllable, the human causes are very controllable. Even pro-corporate capitalists know, if they aren't heavily invested in oil and coal, that a shift to cleaner energy would create employment and profit.  They aren't entrepreneurs, but rather recalcitrant vampires who value the status quo more than anything.

Fourth, history provides us evidence that environmental changes can quickly wipe out many species. 

Fifth, the object of Savage's current derision is the corporate oligarchy that controls the media and government.  Conclusion?  Do I need to connect the dots for you?  This self-proclaimed scientist is not only a bad logician, he's a damned idiot.  

However, he holds two ideas with which I agree: a corporate oligarchy is destroying everything we hold dear about America.  And, George W. Bush is a socialist of a more radical type than even the Democratic party has ever dared attempt.  He called him a true liberal--which is a dirty word in his jargon.  I have to disagree, unless by liberal he is referring to a corporate socialist (welfare for the wealthy drawn from the middle and lower classes).   What Savage fails to realize is that the Nazi regime asserted the legislative authority of corporations within a radically socialist system.  That's why it was known as "National Socialism."  So, although Savage frequently compares Democrats with Hitler, he, by supporting Bush up until now, is much closer to being a Nazi than Ted Kennedy.  We have seen clearly that Republicans borrow money to spend like drunken sailors, and that every time this happened in history, it took a Democratic president who implemented left-leaning socialist remedies to correct the oligarchic socialist excesses.  In spite of rhetoric to the contrary, fiscal responsibility is not a strong suit among Republicans.  Bush has shown that they aren't even good at foreign policy either.  Perhaps more significant, the whole "Vote Freedom First" campaign has turned out to be a lie.   The truth is more like "Vote Fear First." 

Add to this less heavy-duty fascism Savage's shameless espousal of eugenic and racist ideology, which he repeatedly expresses in violent hate speech, and you have the makings of a true Nazi.  Not just a George W. Bush style fascist--more akin to Mussolini, Franco and Salazar, but rather a real jackbooting, human-burning warmonger who is willing to lick the bungholes of corporate oligarchs, and use hate speech to enflame the ignorant.  It has been hilarious listening to him lose what little sanity he had left following the Schwarzenegger's praise for Bush's proposal for amnesty for illegal aliens.  You'd think the world was going to end.  He sounds more paranoid than we Bush-hating liberals.   It's just wonderful irony bordering on Greek Tragedy--if it weren't so outrageously tacky--even tackier than Jerry Springer.  I guess I should be ashamed of listening.  At this point it's like staring at a train wreck in which we are all victims.  Still, I can't help but feel a bit jubilant.  No doubt the right wing oligarchs will come lean on him over the weekend and brainwash him some more, but it was still entertaining to listen to him say that the Republicans deserved to lose their control because they did a better job in the minority.  [Thursday Jan. 15--listened briefly to Savage to see if he was still blasting Bush.  As I imagined, he has softened his tone, and is saying that his fascist followers have no choice but to vote for Bush.  That's what I like...a man of convictions.]