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Let’s Impeach the President for Lyin'!

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-- Neil Young, Living with War

A friendly reminder: folks, here are the 12 Warning Signs of Fascism. Look them over and observe how many of them this country has achieved.

12 Warning Signs of Fascism

1. Exuberant Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic images, slogans and symbols. National flags are seen everywhere in public display. Territorial aggression is explained to be mere destiny--an unbidden greatness thrust upon the nation by history.

It is this burden of unique responsibility that now raises the fascist state above all previous constraint, no longer bound by international obligations, treaties or law.

2. Enemies Identified

This national cause is identified as unity against enemies. The people are rallied around a unifying patriotism directed against some common threat: communists, liberals, radicals, ethnic or religious minorities, intellectuals, homosexuals, terrorists, and on and on.

The state's message is sometimes couched in an easily recognized religious theme. Amazingly, this language is used even when the full context of the teaching shows the meaning to be diametrically opposed. Any dissent is siding with the enemy, and therefor treasonous.

3. Rights Disappear

Disdain for human and political rights. Fascist regimes foster an artificial climate of fear by intentionally amplifying stress and anxiety. Citizens naturally feel a strong need for security and are easily persuaded to ignore abuses in the name of safety. The few still willing to question are met with bullying and smear campaigns of intimidation.

Legislative bodies, if still in existence at all, are cowed into rubber-stamp submission with occasional ceremonial opposition. The judiciary tends to become activist in support of state views. The public often looks away, or even enthusiastically approves as rights are stripped away.

The concept of the individual inevitably yields ground, exchanged for the promised safety of the all-powerful state.

4. Secrecy Demanded

Obsession with secrecy and national security. The workings of government become increasingly hidden. Questioning of authority is discouraged at all levels of society. From office talk at the water cooler up through the entire apparatus of rule, guarded speech and secrecy become ends in themselves.

Troubling questions are muted and entire areas of scrutiny are placed out of bounds by simply invoking national security.

5. Military Glorified

Supremacy of the military. The military establishment receives a disproportionate share of government resources, even as pressing domestic needs are neglected. Individual soldiers and military culture are glamorized and made constantly visible.

This provides both an object for public glorification, as well as sharp warning to possibly restless citizens that the power of the state stands close at hand, ready to use its great potential for violence.

6. Corporations Shielded

Corporate power is protected. Typically, a segment of the business elite plays a major role in bringing fascists to national leadership, often from an unsavory obscurity. This marriage of big money and raw violence is often considered by historians to be the hallmark and backbone of fascism.

As these business-government-military interests meld, the significant threat of organized labor is clearly recognized. Labor unions and their support organizations are either co-opted successfully or ruthlessly suppressed and eliminated as soon as possible.

7. Corruption Unchecked

Rampant cronyism and corruption. Fascist states maintain power through this relatively small group of associates, mutually appointing each other to interlocking and rotating positions in government, business, and the military.

With this degree of control, they make full use of both official secrecy and the ready threat of state violence to insulate themselves from any meaningful criticism. They are not accountable and are shielded from scrutiny in a way unthinkable in a democratic society.

8. Media Controlled

Controlled mass media. Sometimes the media are controlled directly by clumsy government functionaries. At other times, sympathetic corporate media insiders shape the themes indirectly, and therefor more skillfully. Image regularly trumps content as the "news" is presented breathlessly and with flashy stage effects.

A practiced formula of tenacious repetition brings even the most absurd lie into acceptance over time. By design, the very language itself and the coloration employed will push alternate views "out of the mainstream."

The terms of any remaining debate are narrowly defined to the state's advantage, making it easy to marginalize a truly differing perspective. Censorship and self-censorship, especially in wartime, is common.

9. Rampant Sexism

Rampant sexism. Governments of fascist states tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Traditional gender roles are made even more rigid and exaggerated. Condemnation of abortion and a virulent homophobia are commonly built into broad policy.

10. Intellectual Bullying

Disdain for intellectuals. Fascist society tends to create an environment of extreme hostility to critical thought in general, and to academics in particular.

Editor’s Note: ever hear of Regent University? It’s Pat Robertson’s legacy to the teachings of Creationism in place of science. Regent University ranks dead last in the lexicon of American universities, but that doesn’t stop it from teaching Creationism. Furthermore, our government is peppered with graduates of Regent.

Ideologically driven science is elevated and lavishly funded, while any expression not in line with the state view is at first ignored, then challenged, then ridiculed and finally stamped out.

It is not uncommon for academics to be pressured to attack the work of their insufficiently patriotic peers. Writings are censored; teachers are fired and arrested. Free artistic expression in new works is openly attacked, and existing works deemed unpatriotic are often publicly destroyed.

11. Militarized Police

Obsession with crime and punishment. Fascist society is often willing to overlook police abuses and forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. Long jail sentences for clearly political offenses, torture and then assassination are at first uncomfortably tolerated, and then start to pile up to become the norm.

Often a national police force is given virtually unlimited power to snoop through the civilian population. Networks of surveillance and informers are employed, both for actual intelligence gathering and also as a means to keep neighbors and co-workers isolated and mistrustful of each other.

12. Elections Stolen

Fraudulent elections. In the disordered time as fascists are rising to power, the electoral arena becomes increasingly confusing, corrupted, and manipulated.

There is rising public cynicism and distrust over what are widely believed to be phony elections manipulated by moneyed influence, obvious media bias, smear campaigns, ballot tampering, judicial interference, intimidation, or outright assassination of potential opposition. Fascists in power have been known to use this disorder as the rationale to delay elections indefinitely.

Editor’s Note: following is the entire interview BuzzFlash did with Mike Malloy, who hosts a talk show on NovaM Talk Radio. It appears tonight, June 29, 2007, as I contemplate the monumental reversal this Supreme Court has foisted upon our society. As our country careens backwards for our African-American brothers and sisters, I am truly saddened. I am further concerned for my sisters as Roe v. Wade next becomes fixed in their cross hairs.

Mike Malloy Doesn't Mince Words --

And His Progressive Talk Radio Fans Love Him for It

Submitted by BuzzFlash

June 26, 2007

The playing field has never, ever, ever, ever been level between right wing and liberal. The genius of Limbaugh was not Limbaugh, it was Roger Ailes....the person who comes up with the best marketing idea is the person who usually comes up with the winner, not the person who comes up with the best product. Right-wing talk radio is not a good product. It's toxic. It's destructive. It's negative. But it had behind it a marketing genius, Roger Ailes.

--Mike Malloy

Mike Malloy has spent nearly two decades representing an aggressively progressive perspective on radio programs in various markets. After departing in contentious circumstances from Air America Radio during their period of financial bankruptcy, Malloy was hired by NovaM Radio Network, the new kid on the block for developing progressive radio outlets and talent. (Interestingly enough, NovaM was founded by Anita and Sheldon Drobny, who began Air America Radio before leaving the struggling network during a "reorganization.")

Malloy has developed a core of fans known as "truthseekers." They are loyal and devoted, many of them BuzzFlash readers.

Mike is the fourth periodic BuzzFlash interview to introduce progressive talk show hosts to BuzzFlash readers. Our first three were with Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, and Stephanie Miller. We will be talking with other progressive radio personalities in the coming months. Our goal is to help build an audience for these programs.

Give them a listen. Most of them can be streamed online during their live broadcasts -- or check to see if they can be heard on a radio station in your area.

*****

BuzzFlash: Where can people find out about when you're on, where you're on, and when to listen to you, including on the Internet?

Mike Malloy: Two sites - they can go to novamradio.com or they can go to mikemalloy.com. Preferably to novamradio.com, because there's so much there in addition to just my program, although it does carry a lot of information about my show, too.

BuzzFlash: Does your show stream live on the Internet?

Mike Malloy: Yes, from 9 ‘til midnight Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

BuzzFlash: How do you describe your style on the radio?

Mike Malloy: Regarding the political issues, it's very confrontational. Regarding my callers, I have no patience with Republicans or right-wingers, and very little patience with people who are middle of the road. I believe in what Jim Hightower said a long time ago: "The only thing you find in the middle of the road is a yellow line and dead armadillos."

To me, the only issues that exist right now are the issues of the corruption and the utter incompetence of the Bush Administration. Regarding those issues, my style, my approach, is very confrontational. I think this republic is under direct assault by a cadre of people who want to destroy it and replace it with totalitarianism. And that pisses me off to a degree I didn't know was possible. So I scream, I yell, I pound things, and occasionally I've been known to use bad language.

BuzzFlash: We've asked the other progressive talk-show hosts we've talked to very specifically, how you do handle callers? If a caller upsets you, do you just cut them off?

Mike Malloy: It depends on the nature of the caller. Over twenty years of talk radio, but especially in the past three or four years, I've found that most right-wing or conservative callers, or people who call who think they're going to challenge me on a specific point, are functionally illiterate. Their minds are capable of parroting only what they've heard from Rush Limbaugh, or a Free Republic, or Sean Hannity. They are incapable of carrying on a dialogue. They are eaten up with right-wing religious garbage.

I know that the majority of my audience doesn't want to hear this. They don't want to hear it because they deal with it constantly out in the real world -- at the workplace, in their churches, in their synagogues, on the bus, in the carpool, at the PTA meeting. They hear these right-wing parrots who are utterly eaten up with fear, utterly eaten up with ignorance. And these right-wingers get their strength only from repeating over and over what they've heard from right-wing radio or right-wing television. So I don't want them to call me.

I have no interest in converting them. I have no interest in hearing their point of view, because I know what their point of view is. The only thing I'm interested in doing with right-wingers or conservatives is hoping that maybe -- and I realize this is really reaching -- maybe they'll just sit back and listen to my program, and some spark will go off in their head that will make them want to do some independent research for the first time in their lives to find out how they've been lied to and led into this blind alley of right-wing idiocy.

BuzzFlash: Isn't that like expecting a reverse lobotomy to occur?

Mike Malloy: It is indeed. But hope springs eternal in the human breast, right? If I had completely given up, I think I would just resign from talk radio.

BuzzFlash: I think most BuzzFlash readers are aware that, when a talk-show host of any stripe is on the air, you have a monitor in front of you that tells you the calls that are in the queue and what the person wants to talk about.

Mike Malloy: Yes.

BuzzFlash: How do you use that, and how do you pick who you're going to talk to?

Mike Malloy: The callers who are most connected to what I just said in the previous ten minutes are the ones that I usually put on first. The other criterion is how long they've been on hold. With a three-hour program, I have a bad reputation of maybe not taking phone calls until the last 30 or 45 minutes. Consequently, while we have six lines for callers to get in the queue, I'll look at the times in addition to the subject. I look how long they've been on hold. And for example, last night, the first caller I took had been on hold for two hours and ten minutes. And her call was not necessarily exactly parallel to what I'd been talking about the previous ten minutes.

So it depends on what they told my call screener in Phoenix. He doesn't screen calls out. He just screens them to find out what it is they want to say. He'll type in maybe eight or nine pertinent words up on the screen for me, and how long they've been on hold. Those are usually the two criteria.

BuzzFlash: How do you prepare for a program? How much is planned in advance?

Mike Malloy: My background before I ever came to talk radio was in deadline writing, when I wrote for a newspaper, and deadline newscasts, when I worked at CNN. As a result, I have been known to have an entire show prepared for the radio, and if there's breaking news at six p.m. and I go on at nine, I'll just toss out what I have prepared for that day and go with the breaking news.

I try to keep my program as immediate as possible. If there is a major news story that happens at, say, eight o'clock at night, I'll try to have it on at nine o'clock. That's the result of working on deadline for newspapers and especially television. I worked as a writer at CNN, and you had to be able to completely rewrite your script on just a moment's notice if the story changed, or the executive producer wanted something else.

I pay attention to what's going on in broadcast media, including not just television, but also NPR or BBC Radio. I tune in periodically to as much broadcast media as I can during the day, and I subscribe to The New York Times and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I will read those papers, and then go online and read LA Times, Washington Post, the British press, the Asian press, and if it's in English, the Middle Eastern press.

That also comes as a result of training at CNN. We were always told, back in the day -- I'm not sure it's true anymore -- but in the early Eighties, we were told to take a look at a story from four or five different reporting sources. If you had a story from the Associated Press, see what Reuters had. Then go ahead and see what the Soviet News Agency said, back then. See what the British news agency said. Take a look at the same story from four or five different angles. Sadly, that has kind of changed in the past twenty years. You have pretty much two points of view now -- the American point of view, and the rest of the world. What I have found is that the rest of the world is pretty much on the same page regarding American foreign policy, and it's usually almost diametrically opposed to what is being consumed by American news consumers.

BuzzFlash: What do you like most about being on radio as compared to doing news writing?

Mike Malloy: News writing was very restrictive, especially at CNN. Again, this was back when CNN was run by Turner, and it was run as a news organization. It is not run as a news organization now. But it was very restricted back then. Our senior editors, senior producers, supervising producers, would tell us repeatedly they did not want to find even a nuance of opinion in what we wrote, to the extent that it became a game.

There were about six of us working as writers at the same time, including Christiane Amanpour. Some of us would attempt to slant our stories with just one word, changing, for example, "would" to "could" -- and see if we could get it by the senior editor. We never could. We would kind of get our asses slapped for even attempting that. Writing news was very restricted back then.

Doing talk radio, there are absolutely no boundaries for me except those that might be imposed by FCC language rules and regs. At the last two networks I've worked for, Air America and now Nova M, there are no restrictions on what I've said. So the difference is 180 degrees in the opposite direction.

News writing for television is a medium of very restricted time. The anchor people on the network news have about 22 minutes, after you take away the commercial and station breaks, to tell their story. Talk radio is a lot less restricted. I have three hours, and I can inject as much editorial or emotional content as I want to. As a matter of fact, that's what I'm supposed to do. That's what talk radio is all about -- injecting me, Mike Malloy, into the story -- my personal, gut-level feelings about things. I also bring in what has funneled into me from the listeners via e-mail, letters, phone calls, or what-have-you.

I consider myself to be pretty much 90% as common as dirt. I feel like, if I like a movie, most of America likes the movie, and vice-versa. If I have a liberal point of view on something, I know it's shared by most liberals.

BuzzFlash: We asked this of Randi Rhodes, and I'll ask it of you. What would you be doing if you weren't a radio talk-show host?

Mike Malloy: Probably writing for television news. It might have to be the foreign media, like Greg Palast has been working for the BBC because his approach was too strong for American television. I'd probably be writing for television or broadcast, somewhere on the planet, for my income. For catharsis, I would be writing columns or feature articles that had a political point of view. And if I could find the time and the discipline, I would write fiction. Writing would pretty much be it.

BuzzFlash: Talk radio is quite different from writing, in that you're connected to your audience and there's an immediacy.

Mike Malloy: That's true. I also had five years of theater here in Atlanta. I went into theater to do playwriting, and wound up getting into the acting end of it because it looked very easy, which it's not. But I took classes and was with a theater company here for four or five years, the Southern Theater Consortium. While I'm certainly not by any means an accomplished actor, I still had the training to understand the importance of breaking down as much as possible the so-called "fourth wall" between the actors and the audience. And theater is an immediate medium, because when the play's over, you get the applause or the garbage thrown at you.

I think I carry that into talk radio, and I've done it specifically and deliberately. There's an awful lot of theater in the kind of talk radio that I do. And I relish that; I'm proud of that; I think that's a good thing, to be able to translate the day's horrific political events into something that connects with people on an emotional level, because it damn sure connects with me on an emotional level. If I can do that, then I feel like I'm doing what talk radio should be about.

I go for the gut, not the head, because that's where I'm motivated. I can intellectualize until the cows come home, and that's fine. I mean, there certainly is a time for intellectualization. But most of us don't live in our heads, we live in our emotions. That's what motivates us. That's what makes us get up. So I try to stay in that strong, emotional, theatrical area.

BuzzFlash: In talk radio there's a yardstick people use in talking about building a large audience, and it's usually Rush Limbaugh. Clearly, they've had money behind them to get them going and to build an audience. Do you think progressives are going to get just as invested in an emotional sort of way, in a radio program about the issues, or are the people on the right more raw-meat oriented -- more likely to listen to someone who gets them all charged up or appeals to their basest instincts? Or are we just at a point still where we haven't marketed progressive talk well enough?

Mike Malloy: I tend not to think it's an either/or situation. Limbaugh is a standard only to right-wingers. Now how did Rush Limbaugh get to where he's at, and why is talk radio dominated by right wingers? It has nothing to do with audience choices whatsoever. As a matter of fact, when Limbaugh broke out in the mid-Eighties, the way he broke out was that Roger Ailes, who went on to found the Fox News Network, came up with a marketing idea. He said to small and medium markets in places like Bowling Green, Kentucky, or Albuquerque, New Mexico, "I have a three-hour program. It's on from noon to three, and it's conservative, so it'll gel well with your advertisers. And I'll give it to you free. All you have to do is give me X number of minutes per hour that I will, in turn, sell to national advertisers."

Well, the small to medium markets salivated over that. They said: Oh, my God. We get a free program, and all it costs us is a few minutes out of each hour for advertising that Roger Ailes turns around and sells. Rush Limbaugh went from being -- now I'm exaggerating, but not by much -- he went from being on maybe five stations to being on five hundred. And as a marketing approach, it had nothing whatsoever, and it never has had anything to do, with people calling radio stations and saying: Gee, will you put Rush Limbaugh on? Will you put right-wing talk radio on? That has never been the case.

The playing field has never, ever, ever, ever been level between right wing and liberal. The genius of Limbaugh was not Limbaugh, it was Roger Ailes. This is America, but you can't buy it. This is a marketing Petri dish, this country, this society of ours. So the person who comes up with the best marketing idea is the person who usually comes up with the winner, not the person who comes up with the best product. Right-wing talk radio is not a good product. It's toxic. It's destructive. It's negative. But it had behind it a marketing genius, Roger Ailes. So all of a sudden, you had the availability of a conservative talk show.

So what happens next? Mid-level managers in this country -- I don't care if they're in media or in manufacturing -- mid-level managers, for the most part, are conservative. They're conservative because they're cowardly. If you remember, there was a book from the Sixties called The Peter Principle, which stated clearly that people in organizations rise to their level of incompetence and then stay there. Now in radio, in the Eighties especially, there was a level of mid-level management in radio stations that was totally uncreative. They couldn't find their ass with both hands. All of a sudden, you have a guy who's on five hundred radio stations. Well, what are you going to do? You're going to say: Ooh, there's a success. And you're going to grab for it.

It doesn't make any difference that Limbaugh is anti-American, he's anti-woman, he's anti-democratic process, he's anti-U.S. Constitution, he's pro-war, he's pro-death, he's pro-upper class. None of that matters. What matters is the program was free. This is America.

So there's never been a level playing field. When you have a Limbaugh or a Hannity, or any of these jerks on the right, say that the marketplace determines what's on radio, not only is that a lie, it's a goddamn lie. The marketplace has never, ever, ever been fair and balanced for people to make a choice.

Now there's a postscript to this. As talk radio became more and more right wing, the audience started to shrink. There are 75 million adults in this country who would listen to talk radio but don't because it's mostly right wing. The other 75 million who do listen are right wingers. So if you pick a city, and Rush Limbaugh has X amount of market share there, that doesn't mean that he's got X amount of potential listeners. It means he has X amount of the people who are listening. If most of the people who are listening are right wingers, it becomes a closed loop, and it makes it appear that a Limbaugh or a Hannity have these phenomenal ratings when they don't. The universe of talk radio has shrunk.

Now liberal talk or progressive talk networks are opening up the market. They're bringing people back into that universe of those who want to listen to talk radio. If the progressive networks can continue, people like Hannity and Limbaugh and Mike Savage will become nothing but postscripts or asterisks to the history of talk radio, because people don't want to hear that. They'll listen to it if they're already committed to the kind of right-wing drivel that these people put out. But the average American doesn't want to hear it anymore. They don't want to hear all of the reasons why we've got to continue to send our people into the meat grinder of Iraq. They don't want to hear why it's good to have polluted air and filthy water, and products that will kill us. They don't want to hear that. But that's what the right-wing talkers promote.

BuzzFlash: You were at CNN under Ted Turner. It has obviously changed ownership, management, and style since then. The other day, The Daily Show had a satirical piece with Samantha Bee where basically she did a review of the attractive female anchors on television, and particularly CNN and Fox. Her theory was basically that we've got sex pots and hunks on television now, and that a large number of anchors are hired for their looks. I have to say that while it was satirical, her presentation was fairly convincing. You see women discussing the Iraq war in mini-skirts, leather boots and so forth, and kind of giggling and laughing and so forth. What has happened here? It's gone beyond being entertainment. It's almost titillation.

Mike Malloy: When I started at CNN, we had generic anchors. There was no sexualization, no titillation. The anchors sat behind a desk. There was no flirting with the camera.

But the target audience now for television news is people 18 to 34, whether they're men or women. Consequently, you're going to target that age group with what they're used to being targeted by, and that's an approach that's sexualized. But in the entire society, everything is sexualized.

If you're trying to attract young women, which advertisers are, then you put guys on who look like they might be able to go for a romp in the bed. On the other hand, if you take a close look a male anchors, you'll see that they're almost asexual. They're appealing in a cross-gender way. They don't put men on to appeal to women, and women on to appeal to men. They put people on to appeal across sexual orientation lines. There's a lot of male anchors that are on television right now who are very appealing on a homosexual level. And that's by design. They're trying to bring in viewers based on psychological marketing and market testing. Again, whether you're gay or straight, you are being targeted if you're in that 18 to 35 age group.

BuzzFlash: Isn't that consistent with how news has trivialized the Presidential races, for instance?

Mike Malloy: Oh, absolutely.

BuzzFlash: It's not where you stand on the issues, but do you look like a president? Bill O'Reilly was saying the other night that Mitt Romney looks like a president, so, how could he lose? He's got that jutting jaw. He's got the graying flecks of hair. He's over six feet. This man should be president because he looks like a president.

Mike Malloy: Yes. That's a primary example of why the American public is the most politically ignorant on earth, at least in industrialized countries. We are the most politically ignorant. And it's by design. Don't forget -- television specifically is a medium to make people forget. That is the sole function of television -- to make you forget.

Now I'm not talking about the commercials. The operative words in advertising are repetition and irritation. Those are the words that sell products -- repetition and irritation. But television itself -- the programming -- is designed to make you forget. You know, everybody talks about the fast news cycles. Well, sure, of course there are fast news cycles, because you are supposed to forget what you saw at 6:30 yesterday and replace it with what you're seeing at 6:30 today. As a result, the American public has absolutely zero historical sense, whether that history is twenty years or twenty days. People don't remember.

For example, this new guy that's the head of the World Bank, Robert B. Zoellick. How many people know that he was one of the signatories to this "Project for a New American Century" letter that went to Bill Clinton, demanding that he invade Iraq? Wolfowitz was involved in that, too. How many people remember that about Zoellick? Nobody. How many people can sit down and tell you about Bill Frist diagnosing a dying woman by looking at a videotape? And how many people can tell you that a special session of Congress was put together on the Terri Schiavo case, and that Bush came back from a vacation to sign that bill?

Television is designed to make people forget. Because if we remembered too much, we would all go mad. But the vast majority of people get the vast majority of current events and information that they think they need to survive from television. And they're getting misinformation, disinformation, lies, distortions.

When George Herbert Walker Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, then all of a sudden you have the networks marketing the war as if it's a goddamn car -- with graphics, and music, and drums, and new phrasing, and teaching America that it has to watch this network if it wants the real coverage of the Iraq war. I mean, this is beyond an obscenity. And what happens is Americans become unable to make decisions that are in their own best interest. And this is so upsetting to me, as you can probably tell.

BuzzFlash: One of the most symbolic mergers of news, entertainment, and Republican politics was the evening of the US attack on Iraq in 1991, the so-called shock and awe thing. I was watching CNN, and it was covered as if this was a fireworks display.

Mike Malloy: That's right. And every year on the anniversary of our 2003 invasion, I play a six-minute audio from CNN of the explosions going off. People always e-mail me and say: Oh, my God. Where did you get that? And I want to say, you know, that just happened four years ago. You saw it, and you watched it on CNN. But we play that audio every year just to remind people what it sounds like when you invade a country for no reason, and bomb the Christ out of it!

BuzzFlash: I think, if you played the visual tape as well as the audio tape, with a split screen with someone reporting on a fireworks display for July 4th, it would be the same thing. "Over there in the sky, that's quite a bright one there. And look, there's a little bit of yellow, and a little tungsten. Wait, wait, wait - there's one over there."

Mike Malloy: Yes.

BuzzFlash: War is a little bit louder. It's quite an amazing display of firepower. To me, sadly, the merger is complete between the political, mob-style muscling us into a war, and the entertainment and news that they have allowed to merge into one.

Mike Malloy: I had a very interesting experience when I left Chicago in 2000 and went to work for CNN International writing scripts for newscasts that went to CNN's international audience, not for domestic consumption. There was none of that bulls**t. The male anchor I worked for was some old fart that if you saw him walking down the street, you'd think, “Wow, there's somebody getting ready for a retirement check.” The female anchors at CNNI were all from different parts of the globe. We would have a South Asian Indian woman and a Russian woman and someone from Wales. They would come to CNN to learn how to be anchors, and they'd go back to their own countries.

They would be hour-long newscasts, with no flash, no pizzazz. It would be kind of like the BBC Television newscast, with two people sitting there literally reading the news from teleprompters. There would be videotape and voiceovers -- there would be all the bells and whistles that you find in any newscast -- but there was no horses**t. There was no trying to seduce an audience.

The reason for it is very simple. In Israel, in Nigeria, in India, in Japan, when people sit down to look at the news, they want to find out what in the hell is going on. They don't want to have the latest news on some movie star. They want to know what the news is. So it was a real eye-opener for me as recently as 2000, and that was not what I was seeing on my nightly news.

BuzzFlash: BuzzFlash readers who have access to CNN International through satellite occasionally write to us. They complain that the angle that CNN International takes is very different than the American CNN -- that the American CNN is very close to the American government, in this case, the Bush Administration.

Mike Malloy: That's right. You know, on CNNI, you would never find a Wolf Blitzer, for one example. You're just not going to find that.

BuzzFlash: In radio, what difference does it make that people don't know what you look like, unless they go to your website? They're hearing a voice. They might imagine what you look like. But there's no chance of them being impacted by your visual presence. What difference does that make in radio as a medium, as compared to television?

Mike Malloy: I think it's a good thing. One of the descriptions of radio is that it provides a theater of the mind. You think about some of the most stunning examples in the history of radio was, of course, Orson Welles's "War of the Worlds." People thought they were being invade by Martians because radio does provide a theater of the mind.

And I think it applies for talk radio now. When you listen to radio, you can construct scenarios, images, way beyond what television provides. Radio requires you to really get involved. If somebody has a three-hour program, whether it's me or anyone else, that's really expecting a lot of people.

But there's an element of talk radio that is that theater of the mind. If the person behind the microphone can do it effectively, he or she can construct inside the listener's mind the images that the talk-show host wants that person to see. I think radio is more effective in a lot of ways than television, because it's a cooler medium in a McLuhanesqe sense. It's a cooler medium in that it requires more involvement.

Just listen to the difference in the two words: "watch television" versus "listen to talk radio." There's a big difference. Where television far exceeds every other medium is in the use of videotape -- the old idea that a picture is worth a thousand words. But again, that's a very forgetful thing. I think radio is more effective in that it sticks with you longer. It's the difference between having a donut for breakfast -- that would be television - or having a bowl of oatmeal -- and that would be radio.

BuzzFlash: Mike, thanks so much. And best of luck.

Mike Malloy: Thank you.

BuzzFlash interview conducted

by Mark Karlin.

Resources:

http://novamradio.com/index.php?pid=25&HID=2

http://www.mikemalloy.com/

*****

Bork’s Day In Court

Thursday, July 5, 2007

by Jim Hightower

It's almost impossible to write satire these days, because reality itself is so ridiculous.

Remember Robert Bork -- the former law professor, right-wing judge, and justice department official who did dirty work for Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal? Bork is a lawyer whose career has been based on bashing lawyers -- in particular, personal injury lawyers. He has railed long and loud against these plaintiff's attorneys, demonizing them as greedy conniving hucksters who file frivolous lawsuits and seek high-dollar punative damage awards.

Cheney Argues: Energy Meetings Should Remain Secret

By Don Van Natta Jr.

The New York Times

Washington, 27 September, 2002

Lawyers for the General Accounting Office and Vice President Dick Cheney clashed today before a federal judge here over which branch of government's claim is paramount: the executive power to keep records confidential or the legislative right to investigate how public money is spent.

For the first time in the 81-year history of the agency, the auditing arm of Congress, the comptroller general of the United States went to federal court to ask a judge to order a member of the executive branch to turn over records to Congress.

Lawyers for David M. Walker, the comptroller general and head of the General Accounting Office, and for the vice president argued over whether a judge could require the White House to reveal the identities of industry executives who helped the administration develop its energy policy last year.

Judge John D. Bates* of Federal District Court, who was appointed in December by President Bush, did not decide the case today. "I will consider this as quickly as I can," Judge Bates said before returning to his chamber.

The lawsuit, Walker v. Cheney, raises important constitutional questions, including whether the vice president can ignore a request for information from the accounting office without the president's exercising executive privilege.

It also carries potential political consequences for the White House, since the dispute has made it difficult for the administration to distance itself from the collapse of the Enron Corporation, whose executives met with Mr. Cheney and other task force members six times last year.

Carter G. Phillips, a lawyer representing the accounting office, argued that if Judge Bates sided with the administration, the decision would have a devastating effect on "the GAO's ability to do its job."

"It would have an extraordinarily sweeping effect and would significantly halt the Congress's use of the General Accounting Office to conduct nonpartisan investigations," said Mr. Phillips, a partner in the Washington law firm of Sidley, Austin, Brown & Wood.

Mr. Phillips argued that a 22-year-old law allowed the comptroller general to "investigate all matters related to the receipt, disbursement and use of public money."

He also contended that the law gives the comptroller general the right to obtain all "information the comptroller requires about the duties, powers, activities, organization and financial transactions" of the agency under investigation.

Paul D. Clement, the principal deputy solicitor general, representing Mr. Cheney, told the judge that the agency lacked the legal standing to bring the case against the vice president. Mr. Clement also argued that the law cited by Mr. Phillips did not give the accounting office the authority to demand records from the vice president.

"No court that I'm aware of has ever ordered the executive branch to turn over a document to a Congressional agent," Mr. Clement argued. "This is unprecedented."

Mr. Clement said that if the judge ordered the records to be released, there would be no end to similar lawsuits filed by the GAO against the executive branch.

Mr. Clement was joined at the defense table by the solicitor general, Theodore B. Olson, who does not often attend arguments at the district court level. Mr. Olson's presence demonstrated the importance of the case to both Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush, who have said that disclosure of the information would hamper the executive branch's ability to solicit the advice of outside experts.

Both sides told the judge that an important constitutional principle was at stake in the dispute. Mr. Phillips said if Mr. Cheney was forced to release the information, it was not "going to bring the republic to its knees." But the information was essential, he said, for the agency to do its job to "look over the shoulder" of the executive branch as it spent taxpayers' money.

"How do you engage in a meaningful oversight function of the way public funds are spent if you cannot look at the highest level of the executive branch?" Mr. Phillips said.

In a series of questions to lawyers on both sides, Judge Bates seemed to grapple with the question of whether the agency could sue the vice president.

Lawyers for Mr. Cheney argued that the comptroller general lacked standing because he had not suffered any personal injury and has no genuine stake in the outcome of the litigation.

From February to May last year, Mr. Cheney and the task force held a series of meetings with as many as 400 people from 150 corporations, trade associations, environmental groups and labor unions, to devise a new energy policy for the nation. The task force report recommended more drilling for oil and gas, and promoted the need to build 1,300 to 1,900 electric plants to meet the nation's projected energy demand over the next two decades.

Since May 2001, the administration has repeatedly refused to turn over the documents the General Accounting Office seeks: lists of people present at each meeting of the national energy task force, and lists of the people who met with each member of the task force, including the date, subject and location of each meeting.

In February, the office sued Mr. Cheney for the documents.

Last summer, the administration turned over 77 pages of documents to the accounting office related to the costs of the task force. But Mr. Walter said those documents did not provide the identities of the industry executives who had advised the task force.

The documents were first sought in April 2001 by Representatives John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, and Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California.

Mr. Clement argued that there were other means that Congress could have used to obtain the documents, including a subpoena sent by the committee on which both men serve, the House Governmental Affairs Committee. But it is unlikely that the full committee, which is controlled by Republicans, would have approved the subpoena of the White House.

Editors Note: the judge hearing this case, John D. Bates, is not only a recent Bush appointee but a former underling of Ken Starr. It was Bates who, in 1997 acting then as Deputy Independent Counsel, argued that First Lady Hillary Clinton had to turn over notes of conversations about Whitewater. This is "The Guy" the White House wants to hear this case – ant it’s no coincidence. What is at stake here is whether we will ever know if representatives of several companies now under investigation and indictment were ushered into the White House to help plan what now serves as National Energy Policy.

White House Security Violations May Be Widespread

Contrary to the recent claims of White House spokesperson Dana Perino, there is evidence that the White House has repeatedly failed to investigate security violations, take corrective action following breaches, and appropriately protect classified information.

In a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding,

Chairman Waxman describes evidence that

* White House security officials have been blocked from inspecting West Wing offices for compliance with procedures for handling classified information. The White House has its own security office that functions independently of the Information Security Oversight Office in the National Archives. According to several security officials who have worked in this White House office, the Bush White House blocked the White House security officers from conducting unannounced inspections of the West Wing. This is a departure from the practices of the prior administration, which allowed these inspections.

* The White House regularly ignored security breaches. The security officers described repeated instances in which security breaches were reported to the White House Security Office by Secret Service or CIA agents, but were never investigated. In one case, the White House Security Office took no action after receiving a report that a White House official left classified materials unattended in a hotel room. In numerous instances, reports that White House officials left classified information on their desks went un-investigated.

* The President’s top political advisor received a renewal of his security clearance despite presidential directives calling for the denial of security clearances for officials who misrepresent their involvement in security leaks. Under guidelines issued by President Bush, security clearances should not be renewed for individuals who deny their role in the release of classified information, regardless of whether the disclosure was intentional or negligent. Contrary to this guidance, the White House Security Office renewed the security clearance for Karl Rove in late 2006.

* The White House has condoned widespread mismanagement at the White House Security Office. According to the White House security officers, the White House allowed the White House Security Office to be run by managers who ignored basic security procedures and allowed other White House officials to do same.

Editor’s note: this little blog is run by little ole me. I am having a devil of a time keeping up with these thugs. Let us not forget this little nugget from Raw Story:

The Use of RNC E-Mail Accounts by White House Officials

Monday, June 18, 2007

Chairman Waxman releases a report detailing the use of RNC political e-mail accounts by 88 White House officials. Senior advisor Karl Rove sent and received at least 140,216 e-mails on his RNC e-mail account, more than any other White House official, including over 75,000 e-mails communicating with individuals using official ".gov" e-mail accounts. Deposition testimony from Susan Ralston, Mr. Rove's former executive assistant, provides evidence that the White House Counsel's office may have known in 2001 that Mr. Rove was using his RNC e-mail account for official correspondence but took no action to preserve these official communications.

The Federalist Papers

The Federalist Papers were written and published during the years 1787 and 1788 in several New York State newspapers to persuade New York voters to ratify the proposed constitution. They consist of 85 essays outlining how this new government would operate and why this type of government was the best choice for the United States of America. The essays were signed PUBLIUS. The authors of some papers are under dispute, but the general consensus is that Alexander Hamilton wrote fifty two, James Madison wrote twenty eight, and John Jay contributed the remaining five. The Federalist Papers remain today as an excellent reference for anyone who wants to understand the U.S. Constitution. The following is attributed to Alexander Hamilton.

To the People of the State of New York:

A FIRM Union will be of the utmost moment to the peace and liberty of the States, as a barrier against domestic faction and insurrection. It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were continually agitated, and at the rapid succession of revolutions by which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy. If they exhibit occasional calms, these only serve as short-lived contrast to the furious storms that are to succeed. If now and then intervals of felicity open to view, we behold them with a mixture of regret, arising from the reflection that the pleasing scenes before us are soon to be overwhelmed by the tempestuous waves of sedition and party rage. If momentary rays of glory break forth from the gloom, while they dazzle us with a transient and fleeting brilliancy, they at the same time admonish us to lament that the vices of government should pervert the direction and tarnish the lustre of those bright talents and exalted endowments for which the favored soils that produced them have been so justly celebrated.

From the disorders that disfigure the annals of those republics the advocates of despotism have drawn arguments, not only against the forms of republican government, but against the very principles of civil liberty. They have decried all free government as inconsistent with the order of society, and have indulged themselves in malicious exultation over its friends and partisans. Happily for mankind, stupendous fabrics reared on the basis of liberty, which have flourished for ages, have, in a few glorious instances, refuted their gloomy sophisms. And, I trust, America will be the broad and solid foundation of other edifices, not less magnificent, which will be equally permanent monuments of their errors.

But it is not to be denied that the portraits they have sketched of republican government were too just copies of the originals from which they were taken. If it had been found impracticable to have devised models of a more perfect structure, the enlightened friends to liberty would have been obliged to abandon the cause of that species of government as indefensible. The science of politics, however, like most other sciences, has received great improvement. The efficacy of various principles is now well understood, which were either not known at all, or imperfectly known to the ancients. The regular distribution of power into distinct departments; the introduction of legislative balances and checks; the institution of courts composed of judges holding their offices during good behavior; the representation of the people in the legislature by deputies of their own election: these are wholly new discoveries, or have made their principal progress towards perfection in modern times. They are means, and powerful means, by which the excellences of republican government may be retained and its imperfections lessened or avoided. To this catalogue of circumstances that tend to the amelioration of popular systems of civil government, I shall venture, however novel it may appear to some, to add one more, on a principle which has been made the foundation of an objection to the new Constitution; I mean the ENLARGEMENT of the ORBIT within which such systems are to revolve, either in respect to the dimensions of a single State or to the consolidation of several smaller States into one great Confederacy. The latter is that which immediately concerns the object under consideration. It will, however, be of use to examine the principle in its application to a single State, which shall be attended to in another place.

The utility of a Confederacy, as well to suppress faction and to guard the internal tranquillity of States, as to increase their external force and security, is in reality not a new idea. It has been practiced upon in different countries and ages, and has received the sanction of the most approved writers on the subject of politics. The opponents of the plan proposed have, with great assiduity, cited and circulated the observations of Montesquieu on the necessity of a contracted territory for a republican government. But they seem not to have been apprised of the sentiments of that great man expressed in another part of his work, nor to have adverted to the consequences of the principle to which they subscribe with such ready acquiescence.

When Montesquieu recommends a small extent for republics, the standards he had in view were of dimensions far short of the limits of almost every one of these States. Neither Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, nor Georgia can by any means be compared with the models from which he reasoned and to which the terms of his description apply. If we therefore take his ideas on this point as the criterion of truth, we shall be driven to the alternative either of taking refuge at once in the arms of monarchy, or of splitting ourselves into an infinity of little, jealous, clashing, tumultuous commonwealths, the wretched nurseries of unceasing discord, and the miserable objects of universal pity or contempt. Some of the writers who have come forward on the other side of the question seem to have been aware of the dilemma; and have even been bold enough to hint at the division of the larger States as a desirable thing. Such an infatuated policy, such a desperate expedient, might, by the multiplication of petty offices, answer the views of men who possess not qualifications to extend their influence beyond the narrow circles of personal intrigue, but it could never promote the greatness or happiness of the people of America.

Referring the examination of the principle itself to another place, as has been already mentioned, it will be sufficient to remark here that, in the sense of the author who has been most emphatically quoted upon the occasion, it would only dictate a reduction of the SIZE of the more considerable MEMBERS of the Union, but would not militate against their being all comprehended in one confederate government. And this is the true question, in the discussion of which we are at present interested.

So far are the suggestions of Montesquieu from standing in opposition to a general Union of the States, that he explicitly treats of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC as the expedient for extending the sphere of popular government, and reconciling the advantages of monarchy with those of republicanism. "It is very probable," (says he1) "that mankind would have been obliged at length to live constantly under the government of a single person, had they not contrived a kind of constitution that has all the internal advantages of a republican, together with the external force of a monarchical government. I mean a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC.

"This form of government is a convention by which several smaller STATES agree to become members of a larger ONE, which they intend to form. It is a kind of assemblage of societies that constitute a new one, capable of increasing, by means of new associations, till they arrive to such a degree of power as to be able to provide for the security of the united body.

"A republic of this kind, able to withstand an external force, may support itself without any internal corruptions. The form of this society prevents all manner of inconveniences.

"If a single member should attempt to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces independent of those which he had usurped and overpower him before he could be settled in his usurpation.

"Should a popular insurrection happen in one of the confederate states the others are able to quell it. Should abuses creep into one part, they are reformed by those that remain sound. The state may be destroyed on one side, and not on the other; the confederacy may be dissolved, and the confederates preserve their sovereignty.

"As this government is composed of small republics, it enjoys the internal happiness of each; and with respect to its external situation, it is possessed, by means of the association, of all the advantages of large monarchies."

I have thought it proper to quote at length these interesting passages, because they contain a luminous abridgment of the principal arguments in favor of the Union, and must effectually remove the false impressions which a misapplication of other parts of the work was calculated to make. They have, at the same time, an intimate connection with the more immediate design of this paper; which is, to illustrate the tendency of the Union to repress domestic faction and insurrection.

A distinction, more subtle than accurate, has been raised between a CONFEDERACY and a CONSOLIDATION of the States. The essential characteristic of the first is said to be, the restriction of its authority to the members in their collective capacities, without reaching to the individuals of whom they are composed. It is contended that the national council ought to have no concern with any object of internal administration. An exact equality of suffrage between the members has also been insisted upon as a leading feature of a confederate government. These positions are, in the main, arbitrary; they are supported neither by principle nor precedent. It has indeed happened, that governments of this kind have generally operated in the manner which the distinction taken notice of, supposes to be inherent in their nature; but there have been in most of them extensive exceptions to the practice, which serve to prove, as far as example will go, that there is no absolute rule on the subject. And it will be clearly shown in the course of this investigation that as far as the principle contended for has prevailed, it has been the cause of incurable disorder and imbecility in the government.

The definition of a CONFEDERATE REPUBLIC seems simply to be "an assemblage of societies," or an association of two or more states into one state. The extent, modifications, and objects of the federal authority are mere matters of discretion. So long as the separate organization of the members be not abolished; so long as it exists, by a constitutional necessity, for local purposes; though it should be in perfect subordination to the general authority of the union, it would still be, in fact and in theory, an association of states, or a confederacy. The proposed Constitution, so far from implying an abolition of the State governments, makes them constituent parts of the national sovereignty, by allowing them a direct representation in the Senate, and leaves in their possession certain exclusive and very important portions of sovereign power. This fully corresponds, in every rational import of the terms, with the idea of a federal government.

In the Lycian confederacy, which consisted of twenty-three CITIES or republics, the largest were entitled to THREE votes in the COMMON COUNCIL, those of the middle class to TWO, and the smallest to ONE. The COMMON COUNCIL had the appointment of all the judges and magistrates of the respective CITIES. This was certainly the most, delicate species of interference in their internal administration; for if there be any thing that seems exclusively appropriated to the local jurisdictions, it is the appointment of their own officers. Yet Montesquieu, speaking of this association, says: "Were I to give a model of an excellent Confederate Republic, it would be that of Lycia." Thus we perceive that the distinctions insisted upon were not within the contemplation of this enlightened civilian; and we shall be led to conclude, that they are the novel refinements of an erroneous theory.

PUBLIUS.