My opinion is to let that one go. That'a concession to the movement. No more fairness doctrine. When movement conservatives hear "fairness doctrine" they think that its a conspiracy to take their radio demogogues off the air.

Rolling back some of the media consolidation decisions would be a better area to focus on. In my opinion.

It's a matter of me being realistic about one can get accomplished and what can't. I think re-restoring the media ownership rules would go along way towards correcting the imbalances of the press and combatting the propaganda of the radio demagogues. And plus I don't believe theat the fight that it would take to get the Fairness Dctrine through is worth the effort. Better to let them have their demagogues in the spirit of democratic compromise.

Now when I say scrap the Fairness Doctrine, I don't mean the whole thing. One aspect of it that I think should be kept is that airtime should be made avaliable on local communicties for varying perspectives to be aloweed and what not.

That the a science class teaches science. A radio show disseminates opinion. Taking guys with idiot opinion off the air by gov't decree isn't quite the same thing as taking non-science out of the classroom.

I don't think that Limbaugh and the rest of those programs should be allowed to be called "news radio" however.

I was responding to your comment that it is a conspiracy to take them off the air. So possibly I misunderstood you.

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2005/08/generosity-of-coca-cola.html

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2005/10/follow-up-coca-cola-in-india.html

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2006/02/bhopal-disaster.html

For what's it worth, after reading your comment about the destruction of truth as a goal I started looking through your website for a way to contact you via e-mail as I've been working on some stuff along those lines.

From little I watched, the only thought going through my head was "ok, which one of these guys will be least likely to turn the United States of American into backwards theocratic banana republic."

Good god. The GOP is a sunk ship.

Since the blog has been doing a running motif on the poverty of the press, especially in regards to its election coverage; and especially since it's become apparent that the press has decided to make campaigning a perpetual event for the gossipy coverage it generates which allows them to disseminate Versailles views without having to actually make an investment in real investigative journalism, it might behoove us to re-watch Jon Stewart's absolute demolishment of Novak and Carlson on Crossfire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmj6JADOZ-8

That segment - Stewart's skewering of Carlson - ended his career on Crossfire. The new exec fired him when he took over CNN and cited Stewart's criticism.

http://www.amazon.com/Silence-Rational-Center-American-Foreign/dp/0465011411/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-8624641-1340839?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1178386469&sr=8-1

Silence of the Rational Center: Why American Policy is Failing

Skim through the book if you get a chance to go near a bookstore anytime soon. Then flip to the postscript, where the authors betray what they mean by "rational center"; which is to say, the Bush (41) - James Baker era type conservatism. A lot of the criticism in the book is well placed, but there is this general current that runs through the book that we need to return to the "rational center" which is for them back to the moderate right-wing status quo which is what makes the rest of the world look at us and think we've gone insane.

It's much worse than that if you actually look through the book. They do the same thing to Chalmers Johnson ... portray him as some kind of rogue intellectual because he's been warning that the military-industrial complex and Keynesian military spending is about to collapse the republic and that he should do the country a favor and stick to sober analysis of East Asian affairs.

Then there's a bit where talking about a debate between Paul Krugman and Bill O'Reilly about Bush's taxes cuts that the public interest isn't served because they aren't experts but instead have informed layperson knowledge of the subject. I was thinking to myself, "O'Reilly - yes. Krugman, as a PhD economist thought to be in line for a Nobel, I'm guessing most would classify his knowledge of tax cuts as slightly more than an informed layperson."

I think we're going to be in line for some dark years ahead. I've been spending some time looking at the response that Ron Paul has been getting. The supremacists and racists and right-wing anarchists are really stoked about his presidential run. Some of them are saying that his inevitable loss just goes to show the power of the Zionist controlled media.

But the thing is these are folks that are sick of Republicans and Democrats ... they started as Democrats. When the Democrats abandoned them economically they became Republicans for reasons Thomas Franks identified in What's the Matter With Kansas. Now chunks of them are leaving the Republican party and looking for proto-fascist alternatives because of xenophobia over Mexicans and the belief that their economic troubles are the result of "welfare queens", the IRS, and the EPA.

As Paul has already pointed out, the Rove led factions of the RNC are too committed now to reality denial to turn back, so they'll continue to look to cater to an extremist Religious right base and to find a way to entice the right-wing anarchists back into voting for them. That's why I think the GOP is a sunk ship unless some real heroes start standing up to save that party from within.

They ran a bit a while ago where they speculated that Fox News was drifting to the left. These are the sorts of people that would consider Heaven to be runnning the Inquisistion in the 1500s and what not.