Why on earth has the Dem Congress not held hearings into the right wing talk radio disinformation juggernaut, which dwarfs Fox and all other elements and exceeds anything Goebbels ever dreamed of.

The prestigious Annenberg School at Penn (funded by the conservo TV GUide fortune) has studied talk radio for a dozen years and finds massive "false certainty" on every issue affecting 50 million listeners who have swung the past 5 out of 6 elections. Kathleen Hall Jameson of Annenberg would be an excellent key witness in high-profile hearings designed to educate the public as to how their politics became so false and nasty, and to pressure ownership to being bringing some balance back to the AM radio dial.

Lacking this, the media corporations intend to keep AM radio entirely slanted to the right, as the recent rollout of Dennis Miller's new show on 100 stations proves - Rosanne debuted at the same time with exactly one station, tiny KCAA in Riverside, California (she had a live interview with Madonna which was as powerful as it was unheard).

You simply cannot win against these guys lacking a perfect storm of scandal and failed war. They hold the balance of power in this country with unchallenged ability to endlessly lie and distort 24/7 on most big AM stations in every market large and small. Yet their utter falsity is itself a scandal that would stun the majority who don't participate and aren't duped, yet experience the media food chain that promotes fantastical lies into conventional wisdom.

Meanwhile, tiny Air America as a failing business was beating many of the right's titans in assorted markets around the country, and is credited by Howard Dean in helping to swing a dozen 06 races. Even this was too much of a threat since Clear Channel began shutting down AAR affiliates (all 3 in key Ohio) right after the election on false premises. College Republicans openly targeted AAR at their convention for a dirty tricks brigade of bloggers and saboteurs. The right will fight to the death to protect the machine they used to take over and wreck the government. Only Congress can save us.

No state has been as responsible for the hideous state of our politics and the position of the U.S. now in the world than Georgia. You speak of race in historical terms but the fact is that those of us raised in redneck precincts of this nation ARE STILL to this day raised with race resentment so deeply engrained that stubborn willful ignorance permeates most of the South and lower Midwest on every issue. They masquerade as good Christians but are the most eager consumers of every nasty rumour that saturates our politics and drives aways good candidates today. You are talking about a retrograde population that will vote against its own interests just to stick it to liberals.

This is transparent to the rest of the world which has written off America because of it, yet isn't really discussed in polite company in the U.S. out of deference to the ignorant. I am frequently scolded for using the entirely descriptive term "redneck" even though I escaped from them and educated myself out of that morass. America doesn't seem to even want to know what hit them. Walter Cronkite pronounced the death of our democracy with his observation that we had lost the crucial ability for critical thinking. No better place than Columbus, Georgia can be pinpointed as ground zero for the dumbing down of America to a shrub.

Remember that these GOP reps are in fact representing an electorate that is dumbed down as far as can be and still be able to find their polling place. This happened in general through the incremental cuts to our education system that have now compounded to give us an electorate which Walter Cronkite opined no longer has the critical reasoning skills to pick a candidate from reasoned debate and inquiry. But even more significantly, this has happened by creating such a mess of the political system starting in 1994 that most rational voters were alientated out, replaced by the dregs whipped into a know-nothing frenzy by right wing talk radio and Fox. We know from the Annenberg School research of talk radio that these dupes hold completely false views on almost every issue yet with such intensity that it motivates them to vote more than any other Americans. So we are screwed, stuck with a small dumb-as-rocks electorate at a time where even a large educated electorate would be challenged to get to the truth on issues where the country's survival is literally hanging by a thread. Welcome to Redneck America, bane of the civilized world. Best to go out of business for all concerned?

...Patrick Leahy will not confirm another AG until Rove agrees to testify. I heard this and wondered if it is true. So I called Leahy's office and asked them. They said yes.

Having soon to make the annual trip back to visit the family in the Bible Buckle, where Bush is a hero whose incompetence is just added assurance that plans are on track for the rapture, I find this spot on. Probably half of the population of this country are willfully ignorant rednecks, suspicious of anyone (Al Gore) who is too smart, and needing of no more in a leader than someone who would be nice to have a beer with. This is why the rest of the world has completely written us off, only fearing how far our wrecklessness can go, no longer holding any hope for America, nation of rednecks.