The Pelosi Project

Ha, ha! What did I tell you?

KSFO's Melanie Morgan has clambered from the fetid swamp that is her morning talk show and taken her anti-Pelosi campaign to the big time—Hannity & Colmes. I'm sure she felt right at home. Last week she ranted on the air about the “dirt” that would keep Pelosi from ever becoming Speaker of the House. (You can see my original post on Morgan's threat immediately below; I wasn't too far off in predicting what Morgan would do.) The loonies at Free Republic are trying to push the story into the mainstream media:

KSFO's Melanie Morgan says illegal aliens are working in Nancy Pelosi's vineyard
Hannity and Colmes ^ | 11-13-06 | dfu

Posted on 11/13/2006 7:53:56 PM PST by doug from upland

NOTE: if anyone saw the show, please report

YOUTUBE PRESENTATION WITH INFO ON HER VINEYARD AND HER FAILURE TO HIRE UNION LABOR

I don't know if it is on the FOXNEWS site yet, but something potentially very important occured on Hannity and Colmes tonight.

KSFO's Melanie Morgan was a guest and exposed Nancy Pelosi, speaker in waiting, as employing illegal aliens to work on her wine vineyard in the Napa Valley.

If the charges are proven, how can the House possibly allow Pelosi to become speaker? Draining the swamp, will mean draining her.

As you might recall, Linda Chavez had to withdraw her nomination as Labor Secretary after it was revealed that she had hired an illegal alien in the 1990s.

FReepers, make the mainstream media cover this.

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Oh, dear! Am I helping the Free Republic wackos and Melanie Morgan distribute a smear about Speaker-presumptive Pelosi? Yeah, right. Like a posting here constitutes major publicity. No, I'm merely pointing out how lame their efforts are. So very sad.

(The following was originally posted on November 10.)

Another right-wing delusion

I agree that it is unseemly for the victors in a hard-fought contest to gloat over the fate of their defeated opponents. Therefore I was pleased that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were gracious in their acknowledgments of the Democrats' success in taking over both houses of the U.S. Congress. I, on the other hand, can gloat all I want.

The day after the election, I radio-surfed among the various talk-radio stations (AM dial, of course) in northern California. Depending on location and time of day, I can usually pick up the Air America affiliate in Sacramento (KCTC, AM 1320) and the regional outlet for the Stephanie Miller Show and other Jones Radio progressive programs (KSAC, AM 1240). That's right—California's state capital has two liberal talk-radio stations. Bouncing back and forth between the two stations on November 8 gave me a heady dose of unreserved celebration and gloating. Yay! Take that, right-wing suckers!

Speaking of right-wing suckers, I can also pick up the highest profile regional source for reactionary rant radio, KSFO AM 560. Stuck in the belly of the beast in the Bay Area, struggling desperately to remain afloat in a region awash with dreaded “San Francisco values,” the conservative talkers on KSFO are led by local luminaries Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan. Since a gloat-fest can only benefit from a dash of Schadenfreude (not that I was feeling much Schade about my unrestrained Freude), I included KSFO in my post-election radio surfing.

Rodgers and Morgan were already trying out the now-official right-wing excuse for the Democratic romp (“The Democrats didn't really win—the Republicans lost; conservatives actually won a moral victory while the GOP took a tumble”). Morgan, however, was also her usual combative and aggressive self. Instead of lying back and acquiescing in the rout of her political allies, Morgan was already planning a counterattack:

She thinks Pelosi can be denied the House speakership.

“I have a lot of dirt on her,” said Morgan, “and I'm not afraid to use it. Nancy Pelosi will never be speaker.” (I'm quoting from memory since KSFO does not archive its broadcasts, but this is an accurate reconstruction of the content of her on-air remarks.)

I grinned at yet another example of Morgan's hubris. The week before she and her political group, Move America Forward, had taken their own shot at creating a “November surprise.” By all indications, Morgan really thought it would have an impact on the election. Now she was sharing another delusion of grandeur.

Using my own gigantic brain, I can speculate on Morgan's brilliant plans to head off a Pelosi speakership. Some aspects of this pipe dream have already been passed around in the redder portions of the blogosphere, although the size of the Democratic victory has muted their voices. The theory has been that several members of the Democratic caucus (particularly those newly elected in recently Republican districts) might be uncomfortable—or even balk—at voting for a dreaded San Francisco liberal as their leader. Here's an apposite quote from Free Republic:

Wouldn't it be sweet if those “Conservative” dems wake up tomorrow and see the light and defect over to the Republicans???

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Yeah, that's going to happen.

First of all, Pelosi is a very smart woman who understands the two roles that she plays. She is the liberal representative of a liberal congressional district. That's an important role that she fills very well, giving her constituents a voice and a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is also the leader of the Democratic caucus in the House. As the leader of the Democrats, Pelosi's role is to keep the caucus together and to see that it prospers (as indeed it has under her leadership). She therefore works pragmatically with people who do not fully mirror her district or her political philosophy. Even the Democrats from the reddest districts know how much Pelosi contributed to their victories by keeping the troops focused on the key issues. They will unhesitatingly vote to make her Speaker.

Morgan and others will try to resurrect the failed “San Francisco values” attack on Pelosi, no doubt with the addition of the old whispering campaign against the Speaker-presumptive. For example, did you know she's wealthy? That's supposed to expose her as a hypocrite because wealth is obviously a Republican family value. And did you know that the Pelosi family owns a vineyard whose workers aren't unionized? This supposedly makes her a union-buster, contrary to her avowed support of the labor movement. Since no evidence of anti-union activities has ever been offered (and you can be sure the Republicans would serve it up if it existed), the absence of a union at the vineyard probably means the workers are well compensated and have never seen the need to organize. That's a far cry from being a union-busting hypocrite.

That's the sort of “dirt” the right-wing thinks it has on Nancy Pelosi.

We can expect to hear more big talk from Morgan before the Democratic caucus makes it official and confirms Pelosi as their leader and future Speaker of the House. And whatever Morgan says, I'm sure she'll be shooting blanks.

As usual.

When liars figure

It's not the figures that lie

Right-wing radio talk-show host Melanie Morgan is trying her hand at a little journalism. When she's not ranting on San Francisco's KSFO, a bastion of neo-conservative cant in the Bay Area, she's heading up a couple of pressure groups (Move America Forward and the Censure Jimmy Carter campaign) or writing for WorldNetDaily. The latter is an on-line news journal whose relationship to reality is similar to that of The Onion, but it's not intentionally funny.

In her guise as an intrepid reporter, Morgan tenders up an amazing scoop—a story you'll never see on one of the responsible news outlets. She used her Move America Forward mailing list to send out a press release (and, no, she didn't forget to include a pitch for monetary contributions):

Move America Forward Chairman, Melanie Morgan, has broken a story that the mainstream media refuses to report: for the past several months the number of U.S. fatalities in Iraq has consistently fallen.

This blockbuster information is contained in this WorldNetDaily Exclusive column, “Separating the Men From the Boys”

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While Morgan may be one of the least responsible radio voices out there, certainly this is welcome news. Is it too good to be true? What is Morgan's evidence for her startling claim? She adds just a little more detail in the actual column:

So far this month, there have been fewer U.S. troops killed in Iraq than died in the month of July. July's fatality figures were lower than those of June. June's were lower than May's. And May's fatalities were lower than April's. The news is that we are WINNING!

Does this information surprise you?

It should, because the mainstream media has done everything it can to paint Operation Iraqi Freedom as a failure. The progress that is made in rebuilding Iraq on a daily basis is seldom reported.

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Okay, she didn't give any numbers, but there are specific claims in her article. The monthly death toll among U.S. troops in Iraq has been dropping since April. When we count May, June, July, and August, that's four straight months of declining death counts. Is Morgan misleading us?

Of course she is. Morgan is part of the Republican noise machine and a typical specimen of the right-wing propagandist. They lie bravely and boldly in the service of their ideology. The fig leaf covering Morgan's lie consists of the two words “so far” in describing the August body count. There were at least six days left to go in the month when she penned her column, which was published on-line on August 26, 2006. She had to trim off 20% or more of August in order to make her talking point stick and, sadly, it has already unraveled.

The website antiwar.com maintains a tally of fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan (counting deaths among civilians and foreign troops as well as our own). I checked the monthly totals for U.S. troops yesterday, the day that Morgan's column came out. At that moment, her claim was barely true. U.S. casualties had spiked in April with a shocking death count of 76, after which the numbers slowly receded, till in July it was down to 44. As you can see, the August count was even lower, at 40 to date (and the date was August 26).

The moment I saw the actual count, I knew there was no way that we would be fortunate enough to make it the rest of the month without enduring enough American deaths to break the July numbers. After all, we are still losing our men and women at a rate that averages more than one a day. Does Morgan not know this? I dare say she does, but remember: her job is not news reporting, it's propaganda. A day later, and the August count had tied the July count. Lucky Melanie Morgan: she published her misleading column just in the nick of time!


Morgan brags in her column that tough gals like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham have to take up the slack left by the girlie-men reporters (she cites Tucker Carlson, an apt choice) in encouraging (fooling?) the American public to support the war. By the evidence of her latest WorldNetDaily column, Morgan has learned the first lesson of Coulterism: the blatant falsehood is your friend whenever the truth is against you.

Spocko doesn't live here anymore

Note: Is this story getting some attention? Oh, yes! Many bloggers are reporting on it, as you can see from this Blogger list and this Technorati search. Even BoingBoing has now picked it up. Spocko has given an interview to the San Francisco Chronicle, so expect wide distribution in the old-fashioned media soon.

Jack boots and SLAPP suits

I have recounted in a number of previous posts that Coulter-wannabe Melanie Morgan is one of the more noxious creatures to be found on the airwaves. She and her AM-radio partner Lee Rodgers specialize in spewing right-wing venom during their morning talk show on San Francisco's KSFO.

Unless you're as wacky as they are, listening to Morgan and Rodgers is a stomach-churning experience. Few sane people are strong enough or dedicated enough to listen at length and to document the egregious rhetoric of KSFO's dismal duo. One hero who has done so is the blogger known as Spocko. Working diligently on his own, Spocko captured audio files of Morgan and Rodgers issuing threats (how else do you interpret “putting the bull's-eye on” Nancy Pelosi?), gleefully slandering minorities (all Muslims are basically evil, did you know that?), and recommending the torture of prisoners as sound practice for correctional officers (or merely summary execution for journalists who displease the administration).

For a one-man show, Spocko was remarkably effective, persuading some of KSFO's advertisers to pull their commercials from the Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan Show. Last month the Visa credit card company yanked its spots, a big win for Spocko over the forces of evil.

Recently I was trying to help Spocko out a little bit by making inquiries concerning the California Teachers Association's incomprehensible practice of running ads on KSFO during the Rogers & Morgan talk show. One of my former coworkers, who has experience at the highest levels of California public education, agreed to ask a CTA leader of his acquaintance why the organization was spending advertising money on a program whose hosts who hate unions, despise public school teachers, and multiply that rancor together when they denounce teachers' unions. The CTA leader replied

CTA generally chooses stations based on the demographics of the listeners to get out whatever message it is that is being sent to the intended target group. I will ask specifically about KSFO and the background rationale.

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I wasn't expecting to post anything until we got a more specific response, but events overtook us. KSFO finally noticed that Spocko was more than an annoying gadfly: he was starting to get significant results. He had to be stopped!

In retaliation, ABC Radio (the owner of KSFO) set their lawyers on Spocko, insisting that he was violating the station's copyright on its transmissions. They him hard with a SLAPP—strategic lawsuit against public participation—and shut down his blog. Ha, ha! Victory for the bad guys! No one will ever remember Spocko and his quixotic crusade!

Actually, however, the blogosphere is starting to take note. Spocko's blog is down for now, but his voice is still being heard. In fact, let him fill you in on the details of what happened.

ABC Radio Lawyer tells Spocko to Shut Up

Three days before Christmas I got a Cease and Desist letter from ABC Radio regarding my use of audio clips from KSFO radio hosts Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers on my blog, Spocko’s Brain.

KSFO is a Disney affiliate whose radio hosts broadcast violent rhetoric directed toward journalists, liberals, Democrats, Arabs and Muslims all over the SF Bay Area and to the world via the Internet. I commented about the content of these host’s broadcasts on my blog and informed KSFO’s advertisers about what they were supporting by letting them listen to the exact audio quotes from the hosts.

Why the C&L Letter Now?

In mid-December I got confirmation that a major national advertiser, Visa, pulled their ads from the Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers show, based on listening to audio clips I provided them. I also think that FedEx, AT&T and Kaiser are considering pulling their ads. Visa isn’t the first advertiser who has left KSFO, multiple advertisers have left the station, especially from the Brian Sussman show. In July of this year when KSFO lost MasterCard as an advertiser someone from KSFO “outed” me on a counter-blog (which I won’t link to). This same person has also threatened me with local and federal criminal action for using the audio (which I clearly used under the fair use portion of copyright law). And because they have suggested violence toward me (in addition to talking about suing me “for everything I have”) I have chosen to remain anonymous.

As Thers has said, 95 percent of blog fights don’t mean anything, but I think this one does since KSFO is using the full weight and force of an ABC/Disney lawyer and copyright law against a private citizen blogger. I dared to use the audio content in question for nonprofit educational purposes (I don’t even have ads on my blog!), and thus under the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.§107.

It’s about Money not Ideology

Talk Radio is a multi-billion dollar industry. It is also a regulated industry because the public gave the broadcast airwaves to radio stations. There are rules. First there are FCC rules with fines of $325,000 for obscene and indecent speech, thanks to the Christian Right. Interestingly, the radio union (which KSFO hosts hate so much) worked very hard to stop those fines from being directed to individual radio hosts. So the corporation will bear the burden of any fines. Next, there are guidelines at the local station level, the network level and the parent company level. So even if the inciting of violence and hate speech is ignored by the FCC, the continued violent rhetoric has been, and continues to be, approved at the station level (KSFO) the group level (KGO-KSFO) the company level (ABC Radio) and the parent company level (Disney). They are ALL aware of this speech, and because they have not acted in a meaningful way, they all are giving approval for it to continue.

No Management Action

When Keith Olbermann and Media Matters ran Melanie Morgan’s comments about “putting the bull’s-eye on” Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi, management did nothing. Morgan did a jokey non-apology where she never even mentioned she used the term bull’s-eye.

I’m guessing Lee Rodgers may have gotten a memo telling him to stop talking about burning people alive, torturing them and blowing their brains out, because on November 30th, he defiantly said to management and advertisers, “Nobody is gonna tell me what to talk about or not talk about or in what fashion on this radio program. It ain't gonna happen!”

ABC/Disney acted only when they lost revenue. Then they went after ME with a cease and desist letter.

Why me? I’m not the one saying journalists should be hanged, thieves should be tortured and killed, people should be burned alive, stomped to death or have their testicles cut off. I’m not the one saying that millions of Muslims should be killed on the presumption that they are extremists or just because they live in Indonesia. I’m not the one who says that lying is as natural as breathing to Egyptians and Arabs or demanding that a caller “Say Allah is a Whore” to prove he is not an Islamist. I’m simply documenting this speech and providing it to the people who are paying KSFO hosts on commercially supported broadcast radio.

They have Lawyers, Guns and Money. I’ve got a 5th-tier blog and no money

Because I and some other listeners hit right-wing talk radio in the pocket book, they are acting like wounded animals and brought out the big guns, Corporate Lawyers. Am I scared? Hell yes. They can easily squish me like a bug and tie me up in legal battles for the rest of my natural life (and Vulcans live a long time), not to mention that unlike KSFO radio hosts, I’m not getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and generating millions of revenue for a multibillion-dollar parent company. If I pursue this further I expect the next step is a “CyberSLAPP” suit.

I don’t want to consider the possibility of Morgan’s good friend Michelle Malkin deciding to publish my address and real name so that her minions can send me death threats or “white powder” in the mail. Chad Castagana, was charged with mailing more than a dozen threatening letters containing white powder to liberals. He got the idea from someone that journalists, liberals and Democrats were the enemy and deserved to die.

Brian Sussman proudly poses with his handgun in KSFO publicity shots and says that he thinks that everyone should have the right to have a machine gun. Maybe I’m over reacting, why would they attack me? I’m not famous, I’m not an elected official, I tried very hard to be accurate about what THEY said BY USING THEIR OWN WORDS.

I tried to help companies protect their brands from being tainted with the violent rhetoric and anti-any-religion-but- right-wing-christianism speech. I wanted to help the VPs of marketing avoid being associated with Lee Rodger’s “testicle talk” or Sussman talking about cutting off a finger and a penis of an Iraqi in his imaginary torture sessions.

It’s about Brands: All the Blessings, None of the Taint

I have found out that KSFO is sold to advertisers as “a Disney affiliate” with all the associated family-friendly connotations. So KSFO is getting all the benefit of the Disney name as well as the massive infrastructure of ad sales at the national level. Clearly ABC Radio doesn’t want KSFO hosts’ horrific comments to actually reach advertisers. Advertisers are kept in the dark so KSFO can benefit from the Disney brand glow (ABC Radio News creditability glow?).

Advertisers should be able to decide if they want to keep supporting this show based on complete information. We already know that management at ABC and Disney support these hosts, which means that the ABC/Disney Radio brand now apparently includes support for violent hate speech toward Muslims, Democrats and liberals.

But instead of directing the hosts to refrain from violent rhetoric and hate speech, they go after the weakest person with the fewest resources. It’s cheaper and easier.

Bottom line: ABC/Disney is supporting and profiting from this violent speech, they should at least also accept any negative connotations or financial impact it might have to their image.

What can you do?

1. As El Gato Negro suggested, let’s distribute the audio clips of violent rhetoric and hate speech to multiple locations on the Internet so that the ABC/Disney lawyers will have to find and send cease and desist letters to ISPs with stronger policies than the nice people at 1&1.


2. Crank this up around the blogosphere, if you have a blog please post about this.


3. Let’s see if anyone in the mainstream media cares. Sadly they have a hard time writing about people who want them dead. I would think that at least the PUBLISHERS and MANAGEMENT at the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press would want to at least defend their own journalists and photojournalists. To date only the LA Times has called Morgan out for accusing them of photojournalist misconduct.
   
   Some members of the press HAVE covered this. When Joe Conason at Salon did a story about Morgan and KSFO he got called a hack by Morgan. When Todd Milbourn of the Sacramento Bee did a story about Move America Forward he got called a liar by Morgan.


4. Donate to groups who would defend bloggers, journalists and others that Morgan, Rodgers and Sussman attack. Specifically I’m recommending you donate money to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Media Matters. You can also support the journalists who are doing their jobs and are threatened with death from talk radio hosts.


5. Write the advertisers of KSFO. I have a list of SOME of the advertisers who advertise on KSFO. Drop me a line at spockosemail @ gmail.com and I’ll send you a link to an updated list.
   
   As always, be polite, let them know what they are supporting and how it is impacting their brand in your eyes. They often times have their own stated values that they want to maintain, you may want to ask if their corporate values align with what is being said on KSFO (often times the hosts are the VOICE of their brand in the Bay Area, so it’s not just the fact that their ad is run right after some violent hate speech, but that the person who is reading their copy is the person who is spewing the violent rhetoric.)

I’m open to other ideas too.

I’d like to thank everyone who has written letters to advertisers, especially PTcruiser, BP, and Zeno. Thanks, Online Blogintegrity folks for the forum, and special thanks to El Gato Negro.

LLAP,

Spocko

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Thanks to his friends in the blogosphere, Spocko is getting a little bit of recognition and a growing amount of support. Mike Stark at Daily Kos has now picked up the story and Juan Cole posted a comment at Informed Comment. When the big boys and girls begin to notice, you're not along anymore.

Good luck, Spocko! (And perhaps soon I'll have news on CTA's plans.)

Postscript

Spocko e-mailed me the content of the above message, which he originally sent to several bloggers and was able to post at Online Blogintegrity. When I visited the original post, I noticed that he had been nice enough in the version he sent to me to to insert my blog name in the list of people he thanked. You're welcome, guy, and I wish I could do more!

Cashing in on Jimmy Carter

Shake the right-wing money tree

Clio is notoriously fickle. The muse of history frequently changes her mind about the men and women she records in her diary. In the longer run, however, her opinion tends to settle down a bit. In recent times, Clio has been warming up to Jimmy Carter, who once seemed a strong contender for worst president ever.

Carter has been helped by two major factors. His much-maligned energy policy, with its emphasis on conservation and alternative fuels, is now seen as visionary. When an oil-stained wretch like George W. Bush feels forced in the light of current circumstances to give lip service (though little else) to alternative fuels, you know a seismic upheaval has occurred. Bush himself, of course, is the second factor: a president of such breathtaking incompetence and mendacity that people are now nostalgic for the virtues they once mocked in the peanut farmer from Georgia.

No doubt today's circumstances are a nightmare to the right-wing parasites who cling like unsated leeches to George Bush's body politic. Where will they suck up their sustenance if their host is running dry? In the great tradition of the classic Republican ploy “Look over there!”, some of the conservative extremists who wagered on Bush's continued success are now hedging their bets by seeking to milk the paranoia of the ignorant masses who propelled Reagan and Bush into office. To this end, they are trying to resurrect the old animus toward Jimmy Carter and exploit his status as a long-time bête noire of the right.

Melanie Morgan of KSFO radio in San Francisco, a hectoring voice of right-wing extremism throughout the Bay Area, is one of the leaders of a campaign to censure Carter. She and her allies accuse the former president of what amounts to treason:

Since leaving office, President Jimmy Carter has repeatedly undermined U.S. foreign policy, criticized the missions of the men and women of the United States Armed Forces, as well as embracing known terrorists and terrorist organizations.

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Given that Bush's foreign policy has consisted of unilateral and irresponsible adventurism at the expense of our armed forces and the national treasury, we should be grateful there are still some adults around to criticize it. Morgan, however, prefers to use Carter's opposition to the Bush administration to do a little fundraising. She and former California assemblyman Howard Kaloogian created Move America Forward as a lobbying group whose ostensible purpose is to rally public support for the troops (as if anyone is actually against our men and women in uniform, in a clear distinction to being opposed to our commander-in-chief). While Move America Forward tried to garner media attention with publicity stunts such as a national tour in opposite to Cindy Sheehan (the “You Don't Speak for Me, Cindy” road show), the participation of Howard Kaloogian was certainly a negative component of its effort. He tried to use his position in Move America Forward to promote his candidacy for a congressional in the special election to succeed convicted felon Duke Cunningham. He drew unwanted attention, however, after posting a picture taken in Turkey on his campaign website and claiming it was evidence he had toured a pacified downtown Baghdad. Having been exposed as either an incompetent or a liar (or at least someone who employs same), Kaloogian garnered a mere 7.4% of the vote in April's special primary election.

In a flurry of May e-mails to the Move America Forward mailing list, Morgan hyped the supposed progress of the Censure Carter effort: “The Censure Carter campaign is about to make a lot of noise.” While the Move America Forward junk mail campaign continues, it may be having trouble gaining traction with such items as the “Bush Was Right” music video. (Although pretty funny, it's not an intentional comedy skit. The music is performed by the Right Brothers, who sing of our glorious leader's “successes” in foreign and domestic policy.) Just as with Move America Forward, each Censure Carter message concludes with a solicitation for funds. Some of them even begin with money-begging. Here's the subject line of the May 18 e-mail: $3,127 to Stop “Blame America First” Liberal.

Is it all about the money? Frankly, I think that Melanie Morgan is probably a completely sincere right-winger who abhors Carter and wishes she could have George Bush's bastard children. But, yes, it's also all about the money. Look at what she's doing with it:

On Sunday, May 21st we will have a Censure Carter message delivered in an email message sent to over 350,000 subscribers to the online news journal, Newsmax.

On Monday, May 22nd we will launch our TV ad blitz on the CNN and CNN Headline News television networks reaching several hundred thousand households.

Also on Monday we will launch online "Censure Jimmy Carter" banner ads on the Drudge Report and Human Events Online websites.

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Excuse me, NewsMax? Who reads this purveyor of faux news except for committed rightists and the occasional slumming liberal? (I confess!) Talk about preaching to the choir! The exact same thing is true for Drudge and Human Events. These sites would have promoted Melanie Morgan's campaign for free, treating it as if it were a legitimate news story. (In fact, they have.) If it weren't for the spots on CNN, the Censure Carter campaign would be doing nothing more than shaking down the paranoid brethren for more contributions.

When the steam runs out of the Censure Carter effort and the contributions slow to a trickle, what will the stalwart right-wingers do next? No doubt Melanie Morgan and friends will have something to say about the California governor's race, although they're not big fans of Arnold (but his opponent will be a liberal! maybe even a devil worshipper!). Since Arnold is not a pro-lifer, perhaps Morgan will focus on the parental notification initiative that California voters rejected last year but is being recycled by its proponents. I do hope that Morgan stays active in politics, because her support is always a reliable indicator that something is worthy of opposition.

Melanie Morgan shrieks for help

An urgent appeal!

Right-wing propagandist Melanie Morgan is feeling the pressure. The toxic talkers of KSFO radio in San Francisco have been losing advertisers ever since those advertisers started hearing what Morgan and her cohorts actually say on their programs. Once Spocko began drawing attention to the high-spirited racism and sadism of KSFO's talk show hosts, Visa and other major corporations decided that they would rather not be associated with such vileness. It's a free market, folks, and no one has to advertise in a cesspool!

Today Morgan fired off a message to her minions. Halfway There has a copy of this e-mailed call to arms, by means of which Morgan hopes to inspire an outpouring of love and support for her and KSFO's hate talk. (Love and support from people who have prune-sized hearts like that of Montgomery Burns? Excellent!)

From: Melanie Morgan<Melanie@RMRWest.net>
Subject: Trying to Silence Me – URGENT URGENT!
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2007 13:37:11 -0800

*Please read and see the Action Item about how your help is needed below…

A smear campaign by liberal bloggers is currently underway to silence the conservative opinions offered by myself and other conservative talk radio hosts at one of the highest-rated conservative talk radio stations in the nation. (KSFO 560 AM).

It began when one liberal blogger tried to get us fired. When that didn’t work he began an anonymous campaign to intimidate advertisers to not support “hate speech.”

Now liberal bloggers are calling for our firing. They are also pushing for implication [sic: she means “implementation”] of the Fairness Doctrine to force liberal radio programming down the public’s throat. (They tried to compete in the free market with “Air America” and that failed miserably, so now they are using these tactics to silence conservative radio voices). [sic: the period belongs inside the parentheses]

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

*ACTION ITEM: To respond to growing pressure from these ruthless liberal bloggers and political activists to silence us, we are going to do something unprecedented. We are opening up our airwaves, cancelling our normal programming and having an open forum where the public, news media, bloggers, critics and friends alike can call in and address any issues surrounding this matter.

I am asking you to call in and voice your support!

We will do this from 12:00 Noon ­ 3:00 PM Pacific (or longer if need be!) which is equivalent to 3:00 PM ­ 6:00 PM Eastern.

The media will be covering this event live, and I want to make sure you are invited to weigh in on this matter. We will give out the phone number to call in during the special program.

I’d ask that you FAX in letters/notes of support to:
(415) 954-4013

You can also send email to our station here:
http://www.ksfo.com/contactus.asp

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

A final note…

I want you to know the lengths these people are going to smear us and to try to silence us. They’ve gotten reporters to say that I’ve called for targeting Nancy Pelosi for assassination because of the following comment.

1. I want you to go here and play this clip (on the liberal Media Matters website of all places) and see for yourself how these people are engaging in a shameless effort to misrepresent our comments:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200611210011

2. There have been times when I have regretted making a comment or felt I was insensitive in characterizing a situation. When such incidents have occurred, I have been forthright in offering a retraction and apology. Here’s one incident from December 2006.
http://www.melaniemorgan.com/frommelanie.html

And related to a similar incident here was the comments made by my co-host Brian Sussman:
http://melaniemorgan.com/1_short_sussman_apology.mp3

I am sharing these clips with you so you can know that I take my efforts to fight for conservative causes very seriously. I would never sink to levels of advocating violence or other such inappropriate comments.

I hope I can continue to count on your support.

— Melanie

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Melanie and her radio buddies have started making apologies, have they? How it must gall them! And now they have to resort to ginning up support like a PBS station during a pledge drive. Maybe she can call up some friends at KQED to help her out manning the phone lines—if only she had any friends at KQED.

One more item: Melanie forgot to tell us when the KSFO love-in broadcast will be held. It's Friday, January 12. If you're free tomorrow afternoon, try to record the show. I'm sure there'll be plenty of examples of sweetness and light! (But keep a barf bag handy, just in case.)

An explanation of science

By someone who doesn't know any!

Since I am within reach of KSFO's Bay Area radio signal, I sometimes sample snippets of the programming at HotTalk 650. Most of it is rancid, of course, but it's good to keep an eye on what the wacko right is up to. For fringe rhetoric and incendiary hate speech, KSFO is hard to beat.

Thus it was on Friday morning, March 16, 2007, I was treated to a discourse by Lee Rodgers on the nature of science. He was heaping abuse on one of his favorite topics: Al Gore and global warming. His equally nasty co-host, Melanie Morgan, was instantly ready to chime in.

What follows is my own transcript of the on-air commentary. A few interjections and false starts were omitted to improve the readability, but all of the words were spoken by Rodgers or Morgan:

Rodgers: Got an e-mail from Nevada, Chuck in Fernley, and he raises a point that Al Gore and the poor gullible dupes who follow him can't seem to get through their thick stupid heads. He says the term “scientific consensus” is an oxymoron—regarding global warming or for that matter anything else. In science something is either so or it is not so. Taking a vote doesn't change the reality of it.

It's like saying that there is consensus among mathematicians that two plus two equals four. Those who believe otherwise are not outside the consensus, they are simply wrong.

Morgan: Exactly!

Rodgers: How hard is this to figure out? This is the first thing I learned in, I don't know, seventh grade science or whatever it was.

Morgan: What scientists do is they try to take a premise and prove it to be false. I mean that's what their job is.

Rodgers: Sure! Questioning.

Morgan: Yes, so the fact that they would try to come to a consensus—that's not how the scientific community works.

Rodgers: No. No.

Morgan: And Al Gore is an idiot. He's a big fat idiot, I believe would be the correct term.

Rodgers:Well, we don't want to get personal about this, do we?

Morgan: Yes, we do. We enjoy that.

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Thanks to Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan (and good old Chuck in Fernley), we now understand that science is about what's right. Rodgers, however, can't tell the difference between right and extreme right. Heck, he can't even tell the difference between right and wrong—and his description of science is just plain wrong.

Morgan gropes around for the germ of the idea of falsifiability, which is indeed one criterion for a scientific hypothesis: can you think of an experiment which would invalidate it? (That's why intelligent design is merely one more version of creationism and not, as noted in the Kitzmiller decision, any version of science.) She completely misunderstands, as does Rodgers, the role of consensus in establishing provisional scientific truth. All scientific truth is regarded as fundamentally provisional—as opposed to absolute—although different aspects of the scientific consensus vary dramatically in their likelihood of being overturned. (No one is talking about discarding the theory that the earth is roughly spherical.)

Consensus is one of the keystones of modern science and not the simple-minded true/false dichotomy espoused by dim thinkers like Rodgers and Morgan. They should mind their own business (right-wing radio ranting) and let the scientists take care of science.

And scientists, by the way, agree with Al Gore in a broad consensus about global warming and climate change. Sorry about that.

Update: Thanks to the kind assistance of Spocko, I was able to create a detailed transcript of last week's babbling by Rodgers and Morgan. This post was then revised to reflect a more complete version of what was said on the air. I'm pleased, however, that my original post turned out to be quite true to the sense of the comments I originally heard on my car radio (with a certain amount of disdainful gnashing of the teeth).

Iraq victory: outlook cloudy

Don't bother asking again later

It was highly appropriate (and certainly not an accident) that the president received the Iraq war funding bill on the fourth anniversary of his “Mission Accomplished” publicity stunt. If George W. Bush were capable of feeling embarrassment, recollections of that macho strut down the runway would bring a flush of red to his cheeks. Don't worry: That's not going to happen.

Crystal balls are notorious unreliable, but the Bush administration seems to be wrong about everything. I think it's a consequence of making decisions based on ideology rather than information. Although facts may be stubborn things, one derives enormous freedom from simply ignoring them. Bush and his handlers and enablers and supporters all cling to a weird faith-based conviction that they can do or say anything and get away with it. To be fair, they did get to enjoy a few years where that appeared to be true. Certainly it is true no longer.

One of my favorite examples of right-wing inanity is KSFO's Melanie Morgan, who earlier this week trotted out her own special mix of vacuous political savvy. On Monday, the eve of “Mission Accomplished” Day, Morgan shared with her listening audience a non-prediction that the 2008 presidential nominees would be Al Gore for the Democrats and Fred Thompson for the Republicans. Wallowing in prospective schadenfreude, she chortled that the current gaggle of presidential candidates would all suffer disappointment at the hands of candidates who were not even declared contenders. Morgan finds it amusing when people's hopes are dashed in cruel ways.

I did say that Morgan offered her insight as a “non-prediction.” That's right. She declared her forecast for 2008 and then immediately disavowed it. Morgan did so by qualifying her statement to the point of meaninglessness. “As of today,” she observed, Gore and Thompson would be the major party nominees. Golly, Melanie, thanks! Just how valuable is such a forecast for the future? I'm sure she was just trying to be careful, of course, providing herself with some cover. In effect, though, she was merely saying something like “At this moment, I know the future, but it will probably be something different because something could change.” Like I said: a non-prediction.

It is too easy to pillory Morgan for her vapid political commentary, so let's consider another aspect of her prognostication skills. Remember last year when she castigated the mainstream media for not telling everyone the news that we were winning in Iraq? Morgan based her analysis on a short string of consecutive months of lower casualties—and stretched that string by counting a month that was not yet complete. As I noted in my comment on Morgan's analytical incompetence (or deliberate misrepresentation), the actual body count in August 2006 broke the string and put paid to her nonsensical spin. I assume that she was particularly unhappy that she had missed the “victory” of March 2006, when the U.S. deaths fell to 31 (only one a day!), so she had to make do with the partial count in August 2006, which as of the date of her writing had yet to exceed the toll for July. Morgan must have typed quickly before reality could give the lie to her claim.

Check out the tally for yourself. We have a “victory” of the Morgan type every few months.


More victories like this we can't afford. The Democratic Congress must hang tough with the president and stanch our country's bleeding wound. Four years of “Mission Accomplished” is too much.

A good day for paranoia

Carefully contextualized

Yesterday I witnessed an amusing confluence of right-wing angst. In the early morning, Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan of KSFO commiserated over the their exposure to the baleful eye (or is it ear?) of Media Matters for America. In rather subdued tones, they groused over the attention that Media Matters gives to their broadcasts, recording each word and reporting Rodgers and Morgan's more egregious statements on the Media Matters website. They were casting anxious looks over their shoulders, furious at the way that self-anointed media watchdogs were taking their comments “out of context.”

That turned out to be the meme of the day. Later, on the same radio station, Rush Limbaugh decried the way that Media Matters monitored his broadcasts and then took his remarks “out of context.” (Is Karl Rove still faxing daily talking points to Fox News and other right-wing media outlets?) One wonders, of course, just how much context is necessary to properly construe Morgan's remark that “We've got a bull's-eye painted on [Pelosi's] big, wide laughing eyes” or Limbaugh's thoughtful conclusion that the Virginia Tech mass murderer “had to be a liberal.” Both Morgan and Limbaugh also continued to flog the false notion that Media Matters is funded by the wealth of George Soros, one of their favorite bogeymen from the left.

It was deeply satisfying to listen to Rodgers, Morgan, and Limbaugh trying to deal with the fact that they are being held responsible for their words. Ever since the Spocko incident a few months ago, Rodgers and Morgan have been—if not exactly subdued—noticeably anxious and preoccupied with pre-emptive ass-covering. They know they can no longer simply deny having said the things they spout on the air (those words are no longer evaporating into the ether), so they intermittently wring their hands, abruptly check themselves on the verge of launching into a full-throated spate of hate speech, and mewl about “free speech” and “context.” How nuanced they are now!

To do them justice, I should not dismiss their concerns as being nothing more than paranoia. As someone once said, “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.” Rodgers and Morgan are right to be worried. It's not a matter of free speech. They have the right to climb up on their soapbox any old time they want and rant to their hearts' content. I, for one, would prefer that it be an actual soapbox, perhaps turned upside-down on a street corner in San Francisco's famous Tenderloin district. Appreciative listeners and passers-by could toss them pennies.

You see, freedom of speech has nothing to do with guaranteeing that Rodgers and Morgan continue to enjoy a platform on a five-thousand-watt radio station that blankets northern California. KSFO is a commercial undertaking and is therefore subject to the market forces that its talk-show hosts purport to idolize. If their right-wing rants chase away advertisers and listeners, that's just too bad. Whining about “context” is just making excuses. In the meantime, the Media Matters dossiers on Rodgers and Morgan and Limbaugh just keep getting longer and longer and longer. You'd think they would be pleased that people are listening so closely, hanging on their every word.

We shouldn't be under any illusion that the monitoring of right-wing hate media is likely to drive any of its major exponents into penury. Rodgers is doing well enough to cut back his work week at KSFO to four days. Morgan hawks her book (a sliming of Cindy Sheehan) and uses her radio platform to promote Move America Forward, her vehicle for nonstop fundraising and publicizing the “good news” from Iraq.

Limbaugh continues to be the behemoth of talk radio, even if his ratings have ebbed from their earlier peaks. His acolytes seem capable of forgiving him for anything. Drug abuse? Well, that's understandable for someone in such a high-stress job. Multiple marriages and dalliances? Be reasonable: how can marriage survive when Rush has to work so hard? And do as he says, not as he does. Caught at an airport customs checkpoint on his way back from a visit to the Dominican Republic with a Viagra prescription not in his own name? Okay, everyone needs a little recreation. And we already dismissed any concerns about drugs, right?

We don't have to worry about Rush's survival, even as he moves into his declining years under the burden of constant observation and the specter of continuing difficulties with drug dependencies. His future is secure. One day soon an attractive young thing will look across the room at a GOP fundraiser and what will she see? An anxious, half-deaf, OxyContin-perfused multi-millionaire who has trouble getting it up.

Priceless.

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Update

Media Matters has posted a partial transcript of Limbaugh's remarks on April 20. Here's a pertinent excerpt:

Media Matters, whatever—that website, the front organization for the Clinton campaign, bought and paid for by George Soros and the Clinton people. Media Matters for America, which takes everything that we say here out of context and puts it up there

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Go check it out and decide for yourself how “out of context” Limbaugh is being taken.

Melanie Morgan, née Goebbels

The angry update

In a previous post, I reported how Melanie Morgan of KSFO radio in San Francisco used an article in WorldNetDaily to lie about Iraq. She said we were definitely “winning” because American troop deaths were dropping every month. That's a questionable criterion for success in the ill-advised Iraq war—surely a necessary condition but hardly a sufficient one. Furthermore, her claim is demonstrably untrue. She could give it a certain truthiness only by truncating the month of August. The day after she published her WorldNetDaily column, her claim had already been invalidated.

One of the truly damnable things about Morgan and her ilk is how they make easily refutable statements about Iraq, terrorism, patriotism, or what have you, and, when you refute them, they claim you are glad they are wrong. Yes, aren't we all delighted that the rising body count quickly gave the lie to Morgan's specious claims? It's nasty, but it's how they do business. “The Iraq war is foolish and unnecessary,” you say. “Oh, well then you support terrorists!” they say. “We're going to lose hundreds (now thousands) of men and women in our armed forces in this unnecessary war!” you say. “Aha! You hate America and you're happy about our casualties!” they scream.

The September casualty count has been compiled now and here is the “happy” result. Morgan penned her propaganda with several days left in August, enabling her to float the fiction that the U.S. body count was still dropping. Instead, however, we see that the August result was a secondary spike, jumping back up to 67, just short of the May total of 69. We are continuing to feed our troops into a meat grinder for no better reason than that George W. Bush wanted to “get” Saddam Hussein, to show that he's a bigger and tougher man than his Daddy (who was smart enough in the first Gulf War to stop after achieving the goal of liberating Kuwait).

As I write this, on September 11, the U.S. body count for the month is already at 26, with nineteen days left to go. At this rate, September will match or exceed August. This is miserable, galling news. I keep forgetting how pleased I should be that the loons who support the Iraq war are always being proved wrong. What comfort is there in being right when it doesn't matter? The man in the White House will keep staying the course, even if he has trouble explaining what that course is, and there'll be no improvement in the lot of our military until he is hobbled and neutralized. Even a determined Democratic congress, however, will have trouble reining in our imperial president, who thinks that “commander-in-chief” means “king.”

It makes you want to vomit.

A little mind with a big mouth

No foolish consistency here

Move America Forward is a small group of right-wingers under the leadership of Melanie Morgan. Morgan is a second-string Ann Coulter, a tireless propagandist who never lets a little inaccuracy stand in the way of her rosy vision of victory in Iraq. She shares her extremist views by means of her pressure group's mailing lists and her morning talk show program on San Francisco's KSFO.

Morgan is terribly upset by the release of the report of the Iraq Study Group. She fears that George W. Bush—whom she often criticizes for not being conservative enough—will fold under pressure from the learned elders of his father's administration and agree to a thinly disguised cut-and-run policy. Morgan has issued a hilarious missive to rally her troops in defense of a stay-the-course program. She didn't mean for her message to be amusing. Her tunnel vision prevents her from seeing just how funny she is. Can you find the punch line in Morgan's call to arms?

We had to know that the Iraq Study Group would be short-sighted when it was announced that the members of the group were politicians and political insiders.

None of the principal members of the Iraq Study Group have served in Iraq or had immediate family members who served in Iraq.

None of these members even bothered to visit the peaceful part of Iraq—Iraqi Kurdistan—to see where things were working out well.

Move America Forward has issued the “Gold Star Families Iraq Survey Group Report” which is authored by several individuals who have either served in Operation Iraqi Freedom or had a family member who had served.

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Sorry! I couldn't help myself. The emphasis was added by me. It wasn't in the original. Without a thought in her amazing brain, Morgan actually criticized the Iraq Study Group for its lack of personal connection to the civil war in Iraq. Here's a statement that she did not write, perhaps because it's too true:

None of the principal members of the Bush administration have served in Iraq or had immediate family members who served in Iraq.

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Morgan apparently thinks it's okay if a bunch of privileged civilians get to play soldier with real blood and guts (blood and guts conveniently belonging to other people), but it's shockingly presumptuous for a panel of similarly privileged patricians to pass judgment on the egregious errors of the first group.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is famous for (among other things) saying that “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” and Walt Whitman boldly proclaimed, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” Morgan, however, would never admit that she contradicts herself. Oh, no: She had achieved foolish inconsistency.

Top Secret!

And send money!

What kind of mass-mailing contains a line like the following?

We have already secretly begun work on a TV ad campaign that will keep the heat on Berkeley

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“Secretly”? No doubt it must come from someone who trusts the hundreds (thousands?) of recipients to keep quiet about her secret. A mass e-mailing is secure from prying eyes, right?

What we have here is low-brow comedy.

To be fair, I suppose it's hard work being the political conscience of patriotic America. Poor Melanie Morgan and her Move America Forward front group need lots and lots of money to persuade people that Berkeley is a kooky city. (I would have never guessed!) This relates, of course, to the recent flap over the Berkeley City Council's decision to thumb its collective nose at the Marine recruiting station in their midst. With her own nose trained to the scent of blood and a gift for simulating hysterical outrage, Morgan saw an opportunity to rally her right-wing following and dip into their pockets. After all, we know that municipalities all over America are eager to emulate trendsetting Berkeley unless the heroes of Move America Forward discourage them!

To make this ad campaign successful—in part to make sure no other city in America thinks it is acceptable to repeat Berkeley's actions—we will need to run A GREAT MANY television ads, so as to get our message heard far and wide.

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Yes, indeed, if not for Melanie Morgan and her battalions of hyper-patriots, your city might become another Berkeley! We should all be grateful to her, even if we choose not to click the “Contribute” link that is featured in most messages from Move America Forward.

Melanie knows that you should milk every opportunity to its max. The gigantic struggle against evil in Berkeley prompted her to exhort her minions with mass mailings on February 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 19, 21, and 22. I'm sure you feel safer already.

A flunking grade

CTA doesn't do its homework

I am a member of the American Federation of Teachers. My union does a reasonably good job of representing my concerns and ensuring that I enjoy superior working conditions, so you can put me down as a firm supporter of organized labor. The California Teachers Association is another generally reputable teachers union. I am inclined to regard it positively. That's why it pains me when the CTA acts in an utterly boneheaded way. You'd like to think that an organization of educators would possess a certain amount of smarts.

The California Teachers Association runs promotional advertisements on KSFO radio, a right-wing station out of San Francisco that specializes in hate-mongering. KSFO's leading lights are such actinic luminaries as Melanie Morgan and Lee Rodgers, the morning talk-show hosts who make drive-time into a seething puddle of vitriol. Media Matters and Spocko's Brain have amply documented KSFO's advocacy of extremism and eliminationism. KSFO talk-show hosts despise many things. Among these things are labor unions. So why does CTA subsidize this station with their advertising dollars? Or are the CTA commercials merely public service ads that KSFO broadcasts because they are provided for free by the Ad Council?

These questions should not be difficult to answer. CTA, however, declines to respond to inquiries, whether direct or indirect. When I first heard the CTA radio spots myself, I contacted a former colleague who worked as an education specialist in various legislative and civil service offices. He relayed my concerns to CTA representatives in Sacramento but never got an answer. A college professor mailed a letter of inquiry directly to CTA president Barbara Kerr back in February. As of today, well into May, the letter writer has not received the courtesy of a reply from Kerr or any of her staff members. I am in possession of an electronic copy of that letter, which I have permission to publish here. Check it out:

February 19, 2007

Barbara E. Kerr, President
California Teachers Association
Post Office Box 921
Burlingame, CA 94011-0921

Dear President Kerr:

Although I do not listen to KSFO frequently, preferring to choose radio stations that do not insult my intelligence or my profession as a teacher in a public institution, I sometimes tune in for a few minutes during my morning drive to school. I have been amazed to hear advertisements sponsored by the California Teachers Association. What possible reason could CTA have for spending money on one of the most rabid right-wing radio stations in the country, especially during the morning program of Lee Rodgers and Melanie Morgan?

These people despise unions (referring always to “labor bosses” and never to “union leaders”), ooze contempt for public education (“government schools” is their term for “public schools”), and routinely heap abuse on the notion of human rights (which should be denied to some minorities because they’re probably “illegals,” others because they’re “rag-heads,” and still others because they’re in “immoral lifestyles”). They treat “diversity” like a swear word and rant about how they are oppressed by “political correctness.” The talk-show hosts at KSFO are not your friends. They hold you and your fellow CTA members in contempt.

Documentation of KSFO’s extremism is readily available for anyone who bothers to take a moment to check. One detailed source is http://mediamatters.org/items/200701160001, which I heartily recommend. It contains the actual words of the KSFO on-air hosts.

If CTA uses a publicity service that places radio ads based simply on geographical location and ratings, I can see how CTA’s spots might end up on KSFO. Its listeners, however, are not your demographic and you are wasting every dollar you spend supporting Bay Area hate radio. You should pull all advertising from KSFO and move it to more congenial venues, such as KCBS and KGO, which are in all respects more moderate and mainstream. Otherwise, I question your commitment to your stated mission “to ensure that the human dignity and civil rights of all children and youth are protected.”

Thank you for your attention to my concerns. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

A Teacher & Union Member

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It seems unlikely that the U.S. Postal Service failed to deliver the letter to CTA headquarters in Burlingame. Either Barbara Kerr or someone on her staff decided that the writer's questions were best ignored. Three weeks ago, the letter writer mailed the CTA a reminder, a one-paragraph missive. I have a copy of that, too:

I have not yet received the courtesy of a reply to my letter of February 19, 2007 (copy enclosed). It seems reasonable to assume that two months is sufficient time for someone at the California Teachers Association to look up the reason that the organization chooses to advertise on KSFO and respond to an inquiry concerning that reason. Would someone at CTA be so kind as to inform me why KSFO is considered a suitable venue for CTA’s promotional spots?

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Since that didn't work either, I conclude that the letter writer is wasting his time. The California Teachers Association is continuing to run promotional advertisements on a radio station that pines for the good old unionless days of the robber barons.

What the hell is wrong with the CTA?

Rehabilitating a lie

Now it's truthiness!

The right-wing extremists think we're idiots. Well, Bush is still president, so I suppose they have a point. Nevertheless, KSFO's Melanie Morgan isn't just pushing the envelope on this one. She's torn it all to bits. Today she sent out a breathless message to her Move America Forward mailing list:

I'm sure you've heard the big news coming out of Iraq this morning—the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, has been killed in an air strike launched by the incomparable and unstoppable men and women of the United States military.

The anti-war contingent of our “mainstream” news media are devastated this morning, as this successful mission flies in the face of everything they've been telling you. They've falsely reported that there is NO connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda, so how can they tell you that the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq has been killed? They tell you that U.S. Troops are failing, that they are in a quagmire, that they are reduced to animalistic acts of torture and mayhem. But today's mission was the result of months of hard work and planning by our brave troops.

When it comes to the war on terrorism, the media is WRONG, and our troops and Commander in Chief have been RIGHT. It's time to watch that great video by the patriotic group, “The Right Brothers,” again. You know the song, it's “Bush Was Right.” Come on—go watch it right now.

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As an anti-war, anti-Bush liberal, I guess I was supposed to be upset this morning. Oh, no! My hero al-Zarqawi is dead! Boo hoo! Alas and alack!

Let's keep this short and sweet: al-Zarqawi was a terrorist and his death is a good thing. Congratulations to the U.S. forces who finally nailed him. However, his main reason for being in Iraq was to exploit the opportunity provided to him by George W. Bush and the incompetent administration officials who put together our foolish incursion into Iraq. (These are the same people now working up plans to attack Iran just before the November elections.) Before we invaded, there was essentially no al-Qaeda presence in Iraq. Why? Because Saddam's regime was secular and Osama bin Laden is a religious extremist. To put it mildly, Saddam and Osama were not fond of each other. If any al-Qaeda operatives were in Iraq (al-Zarqawi hung out in the “no fly” zone, which was outside of Baghdad's control), it would have been to undermine Saddam Hussein and advance the cause of Muslim extremism. That doesn't make Saddam a good guy, but it did mean he regarded al-Qaeda as a problem rather than an ally.

As the 9-11 commission reported, there were no significant connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda before the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in September 2001. Despite that, the administration worked tirelessly to link Iraq and 9-11 in the minds of the American people, counting on our gullibility. Bush and company (thanks, Fox News!) did their work well and today shills like Melanie Morgan condemn the news media for having reported to the contrary. Of course, she spins it like a gyroscope: “They've falsely reported that there is NO connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda.” Oh, but al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq! Oh, what a vindication for Bush! His lie has become the truth! Ex post facto, you know.

The right-wing noise machine is breath-taking in its brazenness.

As I was saying

(Just between you and me)

In January 2007, I poked some fun at erstwhile radio banshee Melanie Morgan for her abuse of parentheses. She was trying to stack the deck for a call-in program that was likely to determine her fate as a talk-show host at KSFO. (That particular storm eventually died down, but in 2008 she was finally dismissed—but not missed.) In her 2007 call to arms, Morgan included the following paragraph, which I embellished with a couple of snide corrections:

Now liberal bloggers are calling for our firing. They are also pushing for implication [sic: she means “implementation”] of the Fairness Doctrine to force liberal radio programming down the public’s throat. (They tried to compete in the free market with “Air America” and that failed miserably, so now they are using these tactics to silence conservative radio voices). [sic: the period belongs inside the parentheses]

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I know it's slightly unsportsmanlike conduct to pick at small usage flaws in an e-mail bulletin, but I found it difficult to be charitable toward an eliminationist extremist like Morgan, who cackled cheerfully about abusing people she didn't like. So, as befits a mean, nasty, godless liberal, I couldn't resist taking a couple of cheap shots.

A more gentlemanly individual sprang to her (partial) defense:

Anonymous: The period doesn't necessarily belong inside the parenthesis. That's a stylistic choice—different style guides offer contradictory rules.

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Although my unnamed commenter didn't offer an example of a style guide that disagrees with my parenthetical preference, I've seen enough bad guides to believe that one (at least) exists. Yet I remain unmoved.

Logic, of course, is an unreliable guide to usage in as human an endeavor as written language, but it is nevertheless the slender reed on which I rely in this instance. A parenthetical remark is an aside. One should be able to delete the remark without doing violence to the main thought. In Morgan's example, deleting the parentheses and the material they contain would leave an orphaned period. It should have been enclosed in the parentheses, where it would live or die with the rest of the parenthetical remark. (And that's the truth.)

I don't like name calling

So stop it, jerk face!

Tommy and Larry are relatives of mine whom I've known all their lives. On my mother's side of the family, they are first cousins to each other. A few decades ago, when they were quite young, Larry made the momentous discovery that “Tommy” was not his cousin's given name. It was “Thomas.” This revelation delighted Larry, who then inaugurated a long sequence of questions and comments addressed to his cousin, each one containing at least one painstakingly exaggerated pronunciation of Tommy's given name:

• “Hi, Tom-ass, how are you?”
• “Sure is hot today, Tom-ass.”
• “Hello, Tom-ass. Nice to see you!”
• “You know, Tom-ass, I was just thinking that ‘Tom-ass’ is kind of a dumb name to give a kid. Wouldn't you agree, Tom-ass?”

I'm sure you get the idea. After some half-hearted attempts to spin Larry's name in a similar way (and “Larry,” not “Lawrence,” was indeed his name), Tommy gave up and resorted to the silent treatment. Larry eventually tired of the game.

That's the kind of behavior you expect from children. When they indulge in such activities in the presence of adults, at some point the adults have their fill and order the kids to cut it out. Unfortunately, childish behavior of this kind is standard practice in our nation's political discourse, and there's no sign that the adults are about to say that enough is enough.

The opening of the 110th Congress was the occasion of some attempts at civility. Even Republicans who spent the campaign shrieking about Nancy Pelosi's “San Francisco values” managed to suppress most of their baser instincts as she became the first Californian and the first woman in history to attain the position of Speaker of the House. Her opposite number, minority leader John Boehner, nevertheless promptly pulled a boner in his otherwise gracious concession speech when he referred to his rival in the “Democrat Party.”:

Today, the Democrat Party assumes the challenge and opportunity of majority power in the people’s House. Republicans will hold the incoming majority accountable for its promises and its actions, but we also want to work with the incoming majority for the good of our Nation that we were all elected to serve.

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Boehner is so steeped in the standard Republican practice of misstating the Democratic Party's name that he cannot avoid the childish mislocution even when he is trying to be nice. Even the president of the United States toes the line. It's sad.

Anyone who says “Democrat Party” is not your friend. This is an infallible dog-whistle test for Democrats.

I have never liked political name-calling. Although I am perfectly willing to heap invective on those with whom I disagree (for example, I can call the president a liar because he traffics in falsehoods), I quickly grow weary of vandalized vocabulary. Thus I refrain from such misbegotten misconstructions as “Rethuglican” (although I'll happily cite GOP members whom I regard as thugs: e.g., Tom Delay, Virgil Goode, and Tom Tancredo). Heck, I've come to think of the unadorned term “Republican” as an insult all by itself. As it should be, given their penchant for slurs like “Dhimmicrat.”

Just this week I heard radio propagandist Melanie Morgan stumble over Governor Schwarzenegger's name. “Oh, no,” she said, “we nearly said it right!” Indeed. Morgan and her talk-show partner Lee Rodgers have a policy of snidely referring to California's governor as “Schwarzen-Kennedy” See how funny that is? He's married to Maria Shriver, after all, and he's a RINO (Republican In Name Only) because of his centrist politics, so Rodgers and Morgan call him a Kennedy. This is priceless political wit at the exact intellectual level you would expect from KSFO.

No wonder I don't want to do it myself. I would be lowering myself to the level of Malady Morgan.