HOW DO PROGRESSIVES HANDLE INTERVIEWS ON RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA TV? ELIOT SPITZER, RUSS FEINGOLD AND RICK PENBERTHY CAN SHOW YOU HOW

I have to admit that back in the roaring 90's I sometimes had CNBC on in my office so I could revel in how smart I was to own this stock or that stock while I went about my mundane business. One of the more unpleasant aspects of watching CNBC was the cast of characters you were exposed to while trying to revel. With the possible exception of Larry Kudlow, none was worse than Neil Cavuto. I couldn't believe-- well, actually I could-- that CNBC would force viewers to have to listen to this quasi-brainless, far right bag of wind when all you wanted was the confirm how brilliant you had been for purchasing shares of Enron or Global Crossing or TimeWarner (ahh... it seemed like such a good deal at 90; now in the low 20's it should be a real bargain).

Anyway, eventually Cavuto made the preordained step right onto Fox "News," where he promptly removed the "quasi" from his description. When in Rome... And now he holds forth as some kind of pillar of neo-fascist business wisdom, excoriating liberals and spewing out the Party line like that freak from V for Vendetta. Whether there's a shower scene in his future or not, it was enjoyable this week when a friend of mine reminded me of Cavuto's run-in with a no-nonsense liberal confronting him head on and making him stare in the mirror of his own ignorance and utter stupidity and... ultimately abandon the field of battle. This is how Democrats should handle the Neil Cavutos and Bill O'Lielys and Sean Hannitys of the Mainstream Media. If they can't do it, maybe they need to consider another line of work.

Coincidentally, yesterday I watched Arianna with that silly Howard Kurtz on CNN. He's wary of her. Why? She's brilliant and he's a dullard. She's got all the facts at her fingertips and she's incredibly articulate. He's... a dullard. She's light on her feet; he's a plodding moron. She wiped the floor with him.

But let me get back to Cavuto and his unfortunate-- for him-- run-in with Eliot Spitzer, the next Governor of New York, feared and loathed for his corporate crime-busting as N.Y. Attorney General by Cavuto's paymasters. The neo-nazi Club For Growth and Chamber of Commerce spin on Spitzer (always parroted by Fox and the other corporate propagandists) is that his crusading for honesty and transparency in the boardrooms will make it impossible to do business. Cavuto, a hack and a hatchetman, did his best to demonize and unnerve Spitzer. Maybe he thought he was dealing with Anthony Weiner or Ken Salazar. Spitzer was there for the airtime not to swat a fly like Cavuto. Always cool, always calm, always collected, very polite, the Attorney General left Cavuto to mutter incoherently to himself and skewered the GOP shills at the Chamber of Commerce so badly that even Fox's red-meat Republican audience must have been scratching their heads trying to understand why they're on the side of criminality.

CAVUTO: Let me ask you something that, Mr. Attorney General, when our viewers knew that you were going to be on here, many of them are investors, some directly in AIG. One of them wrote me and said: "I wonder if Mr. Spitzer can be sued for the losses suffered by AIG investors?"

What do you think of the losses that they've been incurring, just on your request for information from the company?

SPITZER: Well, the law enforcement process is one by which government gathers information. I would suggest to him, as an investor, that he is paying the unfortunate price for a leadership in a company that was not sufficiently attentive to its legal obligations.

There are stock drops in companies which are the recipients of subpoenas and ultimately plead guilty. Marsh is perhaps a more unfortunate example. And we feel terrible for the losses that are incurred by investors, by employees, but our responsibility is to ensure integrity in the marketplace. And that is what we have been doing.

Marsh has paid a fine of $850 million. Their market cap has dropped significantly, because there was a core illegality in their business model. They have now been acting to get rid of it. They are doing what is necessary and appropriate to clean up that business model.

The culpable parties are the executives at the companies who oversee and know and participate in the illegality. That is where liability falls. That's where it should fall. Our job, whether it's mine or the SEC or any other federal entity, is to examine and enforce the law to ensure integrity and transparency in the marketplace. That is what we are trying to do.

CAVUTO: Continuing my conversation with New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He talks about the criticism he faces and his ongoing battle with former NYSE boss Dick Grasso. But first, Spitzer weighs in on one of his biggest critics, Tom Donohue who heads the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

SPITZER: I think he is a shill for guilty people, and Tom Donohue has never once found a crime that he couldn't justify, as long as it was committed by one of his dues-paying members. And it is too bad. The Chamber of Commerce should rise above that sort of rhetoric.

Tom Donohue cannot show you one fact we've alleged that is wrong. And yet, if Mr. Donohue wants to be an apologist for criminal conduct, so be it. Then he is, I think, tarnishing the reputations of many of his members who don't want that sort of voice out there saying that illegal conduct is good. It isn't.

My job has been to reveal facts, to bring the cases. And I think if you ask any investor, if you ask any executive, do you want to live in a world where analytical work is fraudulent, where mutual funds are diluting and skimming profits, where insurance companies are bid rigging, I think they will tell you no. The reason is that those behavior patterns cut against the market as we want it to operate.

I'm protecting the market. Mr. Donohue is protecting an ossified culture of illegality. And if he wants to be an apologist for crime, then I think his board members should consider whether or not that's the job.

CAVUTO: You know, I know now you're running for governor, sir. The present governor, George Pataki, still isn't clear if he's going to run for a fourth term, has said that your zeal going after the financial industry is one thing, but it could chase business away from the state. He said: "It does concern me that I've had corporate and other business leaders come to me and say, 'Why should we be in New York?'"

How do you answer that?

SPITZER: Well, because business leaders whom I deal with want an honest marketplace. And you would be amazed, Neil, how many CEOs come up to me every day and say, Eliot, thank you for what you're doing. Yes, you're going after the bad guys. We want you to do that. We depend on an honest, level playing field.

The honest players out there don't want a system that is rigged. They want to be able to compete, create jobs. Most of them say, you know what, a hundred years ago, a lot of CEOs didn't like it when Teddy Roosevelt went after the cartels. But we applauded that. We know what it did for the economy. It created jobs.

They say to me, we need somebody who cleans up the illegality to permit the rest of us to play fair. That's what we approve of. It encourages investment, encourages job creation. Look at the markets these days. They're doing fine.

In my own former business-- record industry-- the crooks and cheats hate Spitzer so much they want him to be elected Governor so he won't be Attorney General any more. But he's gone a long way towards undermining the business-as-usual criminality that pervades the record company/radio station relationship.  A friend of mine in the insurance industry told me they're having a very tough time with Spitzer as well. Just like he did with the music biz, "He's about the only person going after what are well known systemic problems. And I do mean well known, almost none of the things he hit people for were more than open secrets. He scares people in my industry spitless, because he could probably come for the entire business model. (He hasn't yet and I think he's got enough on his plate that he won't.) The compliance staff actually mostly admire him, at least the low and middle rankers and not the suits hired to massage lawmakers."

Of course Spitzer is far from the only Democrat who understands how to handle right-wing political hacks and the Goebbels-juniors corporate media throws up against them. Take a look at the video clip the Center For American Progress has up today of Russ Feingold taking on neo-Con former Democrat Joe Lieberman.

Lieberman, channeling Cheney and repeating his Republican talking points said "If we just pick up as Ned Lamont wants us to do and get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England, and it will strengthen them and they will strike us again." ABC-TV host George Stephanopoulos asked him to respond [to the coordinated Republican slur] that "your approach will strengthen the terrorists and it’s a victory for terrorists." Every Democrat running for office needs to understand how to answer that one. Feingold certainly did.

Well, I like Joe Lieberman, but I support Ned Lamont. Because Joe is showing with that regrettable statement that he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t get it. The fact is that we were attacked on 9/11 by Al Qaeda and its affiliates and its sympathizers, not by Saddam Hussein. And unfortunately Senator Lieberman has supported the Bush Administration’s disastrous strategic approach of getting us stuck in Iraq instead of focusing on those who attacked us. I mean, look at the places that have been attacked: India, Morocco, Turkey, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Spain, Great Britain. What does this have to do with Iraq? And Senator Lieberman is stuck on that point.  Ned Lamont and I believe that we should refocus on those who attacked us on 9/11 and not simply try to cover our tracks because this was such a very poor decision in terms of the overall battle against the terrorists who attacked us.

Spitzer and Feingold are practiced and polished. They have a lot of experience with media. How does a political novice handle this? Glad you asked. Take a look at our Blue America candidate for the seat in Florida's 5th congressional district, Rick Penberthy, not an Attorney General, not a U.S. Senator, just a modest military veteran and a school teacher in a rural Florida district. Modest, yes, but smart and someone who knows how to think of his feet and stay on message. The local ABC-TV video is something all Democratic candidates should watch. Rick is a very smart guy and anyone who watches this will understand why we need men and women like him in Congress. (In fact... Rick needs some financial help to get his message out and our ACT BLUE Page is open 24/7.)