A Special Thanks To Clear Channel

Clear Channel functions as a part of the Republican political machine. In the past they have rejected Blue America radio ads for the flimsiest of excuses and this cycle their billboard division told us flatly that they don't care what kind of message we have, they flat out refuse to run any billboards in Santa Clarita, where they own all the good billboard locations, against Republican Buck McKeon or for Democrat Lee Rogers. So why am I thanking them? If they hadn't turned down our billboards-- which we needed to go along with our extensive radio campaign in the district-- I would never have complained to Alan Grayson and he would never have explained to me how much more cost effective it is to use a mobile billboard.

It sounded whack to me at first-- like something out of Spanish Harlem when I was growing up in New York. But mobile billboards have come a long way since then-- they're sleek, clean and even back-lit-- and when we looked into it we realized we would be reaching far more people in the district and for a lot less money. So this week we have our two sided mobile billboard prowling 8 hours a day, 7 days a week in Simi Valley, all over the Santa Clarita Valley, in Lancaster, Palmdale and all places in between.



And we wound up using some of the money we saved to rent a mobile billboard for the race in PA-16, a district Obama won in 2008 and will win again in November, which pits Aryanna Strader against hopeless reactionary shithead Joe Pitts, Congress' most misogynistic member (yes, worse than even Todd Akin). We take over the truck as soon as Billboards2Go is finished running a project CBS' Rachael Ray Show featuring Tyra Banks giving a makeover to one of the audience members. If you'd like to pitch in and help Blue America's independent efforts to defeat the worst Republicans and replace them with great progressives... we have a page for that. And aside from helping Lee Rogers and Aryanna Strader replace Buck McKeon and Joe Pitts, we're also flooding WI-01 with... communication, to help Rob Zerban beat Paul Ryan in his own congressional seat.

Bain Still Uses The Romney Model To Loot And Wreck Companies

There's been a lot of talk about how Romney's experience in the private sector has made him especially unfit for any kind of government service. Certainly the Bain experience at Warner Bros. Records proved that to everyone at the company as they slashed and burned, dropped heritage artists, drained the company of capital, destroyed the concept of artist development, and left the whole institution a smoldering wreck. This week Jerry Del Colliano, editor of the Inside Music Media trade publication posted on how Bain continues to rob Clear Channel blind.

There is increasing evidence that Bain Capital in cahoots with Lee Capital Partners continues to pillage what was once a great radio company driving it deep into debt as it collects huge fees and makes unbelievable profits even as employees get sacrificed.

We’ve all known something is fishy but the details I am about to share are staggering.

The situation is getting worse even as I write this which means that you will be shocked and perhaps amazed at how deeply Clear Channel will have to further reduce its work force to keep paying its investment banks.

Bain is not creating jobs. 

It is robbing Clear Channel blind.

And ready to layoff large numbers of people, as you will soon read.

Here’s how bad things are and how Clear Channel employees are going to have to pay the price again-- soon.

...Let me tell you what questions will be answered:

1.  What Clear Channel will lose this year-- a whopping number and nowhere near the $1 billion it used to make.

2.  What owner/investment banks Lee and Bain make in fees every year. Go ahead and guess. You’re too low! I’ve not only got the accurate number but how much they made in fees in the first three months of 2012. Plus, when this sweet arrangement ends. (This is why you’re being laid off at Clear Channel!)

3.  How Lee and Bain came up with the money to do the original Clear Channel acquisition and how they plan on paying for it.

4.  The number of layoffs at Clear Channel since Lee & Bain took over – I’ve been looking for an accurate number and I’ve got it for you.

5.  Why Clear Channel is on the default list-- that’s right, default is expected and only 10% of the money they borrowed is likely to be recovered-- if that. This is incredible!

6.  Why shell-shocked employees don’t want to believe the massive layoffs that are yet to come.  As the Boy Scouts say “be prepared.”

The answers begin here.

And the rest is behind a paywall. But the billionaire sociopaths behind Romney know exactly what's behind that paywall... which is why they're going all out to finance his bid to take over the White House. Rolling Stones names 16 dangerous predators who are looking the use Romney to buy the U.S. government: William "the other brother" Koch ($4 billion), Harold Simmons ($9.8 billion), Bob Perry ($600 million), Jim Davis ($1.8 billion; stop buying New Balanced Shoes), Bill Marriott, Jr. ($1.7 billion), Edward Conrad (over a billion), Frank VanderSloot ($1 billion), Steven Lund ($31.9 million), Julian Robertson, Jr. ($2.5 billion), John Paulson ($12.5 billion), Paul Singer ($1 billion), Robert Mercer (secretive and dangerous predator who made $125 million in 2011 but has managed to hide his net worth), Kenneth Griffin ($3 billion), Francis Rooney III ($1.8 billion), and Steven Webster (billionaire).

Presidential politics has always been a rich man's game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. "I have lots of money, and can give it legally now," Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to the Wall Street Journal. "Just never to Democrats."

In past elections, big donors like Simmons gave millions for advocacy groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. By law, such groups were only allowed to run issue ads-- but instead they directly targeted John Kerry, drawing big fines from the Federal Elections Commission. Now, with the blessing of the Supreme Court, the wealthy can legally hand out unlimited sums to groups that openly campaign for a candidate, knowing that their "dark money" donations will be kept entirely secret. The billionaire Koch brothers, for instance, have reportedly pledged $60 million to defeat President Obama this year-- but their off-the-book contributions don't appear in any FEC filings.

Even more money from megadonors is flowing into newly created Super PACs, which, unlike advocacy groups, can spend every cent they raise on direct attacks on an opponent. Under the new rules, the richest men in America are plying candidates with donations far beyond what Congress intended. "They can still give the maximum $2,500 directly to the campaign-- and then turn around and give $25 million to the Super PAC," says Trevor Potter, general counsel of the Campaign Legal Center. A single patron can now prop up an entire candidacy, as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson did with a $20 million donation to the Super PAC backing Newt Gingrich.

The undisputed master of Super PAC money is Mitt Romney. In the primary season alone, Romney's rich friends invested $52 million in his Super PAC, Restore Our Future-- a number that's expected to more than double in the coming months. This unprecedented infusion of money from America's monied elites underscores the radical transformation of the Republican Party, which has made defending the interests of 0.0001 percent the basis of its entire platform. "Money buys power," the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman observed recently, "and the increasing wealth of a tiny minority has effectively bought the allegiance of one of our two major political parties." In short, the political polarization and gridlock in Washington are a direct result of the GOP's capitulation to Big Money.

That capitulation is evident in Romney's campaign. Most of the megadonors backing his candidacy are elderly billionaires: Their median age is 66, and their median wealth is $1 billion. Each is looking for a payoff that will benefit his business interests, and they will all profit from Romney's pledge to eliminate inheritance taxes, extend the Bush tax cuts for the superwealthy-- and then slash the top tax rate by another 20 percent. Romney has firmly joined the ranks of the economic nutcases who spout the lie of trickle-down economics. "Support from billionaires has always been the main thing keeping those charlatans and cranks in business," Krugman noted. "And now the same people effectively own a whole political party."

And as Glenn Greenwald put it on Twitter early this morning, "In a nation of whiny, self-pitying billionaires, the chronic bully Frank VanderSloot may be the most petulant of all." Ken Vogel has a fuller story at Politico on how the billionaires who are trying to buy the White House don't like being criticized for their perfidy. They claim they're being abused for their generosity. And if you use Melaleuca products, you are funding this dangerous anti-democracy predator.

VanderSloot is one of the loudest of the aggrieved mega-donors, announcing that his family’s privacy has been invaded and his health and home products company, Melaleuca, had lost hundreds of customers, and asserting the Obama campaign list and liberal websites have misrepresented his company and political activism.

He’s waged an aggressive response, making a series of appearances on the Fox News Channel in which he called for donations to Romney in protest of the list. He also spoke at a Heritage Foundation event in Washington this week. And he told Politico he intended to make additional donations to the pro-Romney super PAC each time something untruthful was published about him-- a plan he said his wife predicted could yield “several hundred thousand dollars” more in contributions.

The top lawyer for VanderSloot’s company has demanded corrections from media outlets writing about VanderSloot’s political activity. When one blogger emailed back, “I do not appreciate thinly veiled threats,” the lawyer responded, “We have been neither thin nor veiled. … Melaleuca is more than capable and willing to protect its reputation from false and defamatory statements as it sees fit.”

Plus, VanderSloot launched a website where he defends himself against what he calls attacks from “extreme, far left blog sites.”

Ramping Up the Wingnut Propaganda for 2012: Clear Channel Radio Moves in San Francisco

Mike Malloy talks about the demise of San Francisco's Green 960, and a parallel development in Sacramento -- and the late stages of the right-wing corporate capture of American radio.

by Noah

The Plague Of Texas is upon us. Will it ever stop? This time it’s not children’s textbooks warping the minds of the younger citizenry and it’s also not a bunch of Texans shouting “We’re number one” when their governor proudly announces that his state has executed more people than any other state. No, this time it’s San Antonio-born Clear Channel (now owned by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital) moving once again to add more pollution to the radio airwaves with their disease, just in time for the 2012 election year.

Clear Channel plans to make over, effective January 3rd, the San Francisco area’s last progressive AM radio station, Green 960-KKGN, and give the radio jackboot to progressive talkers Stephanie Miller, Mike Malloy, and Thom Hartmann, replacing them with incoherent conspiracy monger Glenn Beck and a cabal of FOX “News” Radio freaks like John Gibson and Dave Ramsey. On the plus side, progressive talker Randi Rhodes (who works for Clear Channel’s Premier Network) will serve as a token lefty and still have her noon-to-3:00 slot, at least for now. FOX calls it “Fair and Balanced.” The pointless Alan Colmes gets an evening slot. Only FOX could call him a liberal.


Randi Rhodes survives on the soon-to-be-former Green 960 -- for now.

Short of a Christmas Miracle, the progressive talk format in San Francisco will now be, courtesy of Clear Channel, super ghetto-ized on the FM-HD2 band as Malloy, Hartmann, and Miller move there in what amounts to a forced relocation to the radio reservation. How many people do you know that even own an HD2 receiver or phone app? Republicans like to refer to things like this as “shrinking it down so much that you can drown it in a bathtub.” As I said, jackboots.

The final touches have yet to be applied, and the move is no doubt being met with the moves of smaller competitors and the anger and derision from many who were operating under the assumption that the airwave licenses really are publicly owned, but this is happening right in San Francisco, the city Republicans love to hate. They just can’t stand its "live and let live" brand of healthy, nourishing liberalism. Oh, how they long to change its ways!

Says Clear Channel’s San Francisco Director of Operations, Don Parker:

We saw the opportunity to expand our footprint in this crucial arena as we head into an election year and a population increasingly engaged in local, state, and national events and activism.

I’ll give this fascist PR flack credit. At least he’s honest. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to read between the lines of his mission statement. He could have just said, “We need to ramp up the wingnut propaganda for 2012!” I bet he even wears some kind of quasi-military uniform while he struts around his office, though, to be kind, maybe he just wears it at home behind closed doors.

Remember hearing about when Germany invaded France and installed their teams of media propagandists and governing officials in every city and town in the country? It took D-Day and a whole lot of deaths to fumigate the place. Let’s also not forget that some state governors such as Michigan’s Rick Snyder are doing something similar when they essentially declare elections null and void and bring in their own teams to run things. Local media and government control have long been favored tools of the right. It’s not just for history books. It’s happening right now.

Of course, the righties can’t abide with calling the station Green 960 anymore. Plans call for it now to be called KNEW. I would have suggested KKKNEW or KLIE, but no one asked. Perhaps a guerilla billboard campaign is in order. After they find some reason to alter or burn Rhodes’ contract, we can honestly refer to KNEW as --

KLIE -- All Lies, All The Time!
KLIE -- Where Truth Goes To Die!
KLIE -- Beautiful Delusions!

Apologistas from the right will, no doubt, say that it was just a money and ratings decision, but statements like that don’t pass the smell test when progressive on-air talent like Stephanie Miller routinely beats neo-fascist/FOX guest loon Laura Ingraham in markets where they go head to head. Ingraham also happens to be carried by 300+ stations to Miller’s 36. Now go ahead and ask yourself if corporate Amerika has a bias or not. Liberal media? What liberal media?

How does something like this happen in America? It happens when two right-wing corporate fascists named Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich team up to ram the Telecommunications Act of 1996 down our throats, allowing some well-moneyed goons in Texas to buy up as many stations, even in the same market, as they possibly can, exterminating competition and assuring that only one message, a right-wing extremist one, will blanket communities across the country. Clinton and Gingrich obviously regarded the term “publicly owned airwaves” as quaint or outmoded.

Thanks, clowns.

You want a dark thought for the day after all of the above. Think about Mitt Romney in the White House, controlling Clear Channel, through Bain Capital, and all of its vast array of radio stations across the country. The ghosts of Saddam Hussein, Khrushchev, and so many other dictators will glow a bright gooey green with envy.

#

England Had The Right Idea With Michael Savage But Rush Limbaugh Is Far More Of A Problem

Normally when you think about the damage Rush Limbaugh does, it has to do with his use of gratuitous inflammatory divisiveness to win ratings points for his ad salesmen. He encourages narrow minded bigotry and hatred to feed his addictions-- a truly reprehensible individual and one of the most despicable public figures in America. Yesterday, however, my friend Eric Boehlert, published an extensive look at another aspect of the damage Limbaugh is responsible for-- the economic damage. Boehlert, whose new book, Bloggers on the Bus: How the Internet Changed Politics and the Press is just about to come out, takes a look at the devastation in the radio industry, particularly at Clear Channel. Before we get into it I want to point out a private speech that Think Progress caught last night, Limbaugh talking to wealthy right wing Heritage Foundation donors in DC. He was bragging about his $400 million contract with Clear Channel and mocked the very idea that ordinary American families are suffering through hard times.

"But during all this growth I haven’t lost any audience. I’ve never had financially a down year. There’s supposedly a recession, but we’ve got-- what is this May? Back in February we already had 102% of 2008 overbooked for 2009. [applause] So I always believed that if we’re going to have a recession, just don’t participate. [laughter]

Unfortunately, not everyone at Clear Channel can make that choice. And, in fact, not everyone at Clear Channel is at Clear Channel any longer. The supposed recession Limbaugh was mocking has forced the company to shed 12% of its employees, nearly 3,000 employees so they can keep up with his bloated contract. They also decided to suspend matching contributions to employee 401(k) retirement programs.

Drowning under massive debt and desperate to cut more costs, Clear Channel took an ax to its payroll-- again-- and hacked hundreds of radio pros out the door. Program directors, morning show hosts, production pros, news anchors-- all of them tossed over the side. A "bloodbath," one newspaper called it. (In Albany, New York, the entire on-air staff at a Clear Channel music station was sacked; same with a radio outpost in Exeter, New Hampshire)

...Clear Channel, the conservative-friendly media behemoth with a soft spot for right-wing radio -- and which emerged earlier this decade as the poster child for everything that's wrong with runaway media consolidation (aka "The Evil Empire") -- is now hanging on for dear life. "It's a house of cards," radio watcher and Clear Channel expert Alec Foege recently told me, noting the company's crippling debt payments, which are due at a time when advertising revenues are vanishing. (Foege is author of 2008's Right of the Dial: The Rise of Clear Channel and the Fall of Commercial Radio.)

And yet Clear Channel's most famous employee, Rush Limbaugh, remains oblivious to it all. I sometimes wonder what Limbaugh thinks when he reads about the not-so-slow-motion collapse of his radio employer while lounging in his 24,000-square-foot Florida estate or motoring in his $450,000 car to the airport to ride in his $54 million jet. Does Limbaugh feel bad? Does he feel a little guilty? And does he ever think about giving some of his riches back so that thousands of radio colleagues wouldn't have to be bounced to the curb?

And I wonder what those pink-slipped Clear Channel employees-- some of whom spent decades working for the company-- think about Limbaugh as they're ordered out the station door and onto "the beach." (That's radio-speak for unemployment.)

I wonder about Limbaugh and the thousands of his laid-off Clear Channel colleagues, because the dichotomy is striking: Last July, just months before the radio economy went into free-fall, Limbaugh's bosses at Clear Channel, who enjoy deep ties to Texas Republicans and who have been at the forefront of promoting right-wing radio, rewarded the turbo-talker with the biggest contract in terrestrial radio history. The contract included an eye-popping 40 percent raise over his already gargantuan pay, despite the fact it's doubtful any other radio competitors could have even matched Limbaugh's old pay scale.

The astronomical worth of Limbaugh's eight-year pact: $400 million. The amount of money Clear Channel execs have been trying to scrimp and save this year as they lay off thousands from the struggling company: $400 million. Ironic, don't you think?

The simple truth is that Limbaugh lives in the lap of Clear Channel-backed luxury, while Clear Channel employees are being axed with abandon. And those who are lucky enough to keep their jobs are told to do the work of three or four employees.

Meanwhile, another Republican poobah, Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), grovels in front of the de facto head of the Republican Party. What a pack of cowardly swine they are! But while Cantor and the other frightened and trembling Limbaugh worshippers don't have any backbone, at least one Republican was willing to stand up to the bully: Colin Powell. He repeated the obvious, that "the Republican Party is in deep trouble" and added, "I think what Rush [Limbaugh] does as an entertainer diminishes the party and intrudes or inserts into our public life a kind of nastiness that we would be better to do without." (By the way the drug addicted draft dodger smacked back at General Powell by telling him to go join the Democrats. I wonder how many Republicans will say enough is enough and speak up for Powell. Probably none.)

CLEAR CHANNEL, REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA NETWORK, OUT TO KILL SPRINGSTEEN'S MAGIC?

If you look for Springsteen in Google News, you get one rave review of his live sold out tour after another. Last Thursday and Friday he wowed 'em at the Oakland Coliseum. Last night he was in L.A.

At 58, Springsteen certainly can't call himself young any more-- at least not chronologically. Despite the hurricane force he and the E Street Band frequently mustered during their two-hour show, plenty of fans cheering them on no doubt recall the nights of yore when this fabled group was just starting to break a sweat at the two-hour mark.

Still, what this outfit does on stage each night remains fairly daring, and the older they get, the greater the risk of the without-a-net abandon with which they administer the sacrament of rock 'n' roll.

The invigorating thing about the New Jersey bard is the way he and his merry band embrace their coming of age. For all the kudos Springsteen's new Magic album is earning for the joyful rocking it delivers, it's rife with self-doubt, disillusionment, anger and acceptance of the disappointments and compromises life inevitably presents the thinking person.

A couple weeks ago the new album was #1 on the Billboard album chart. Kid Rock's new album knocked it down a peg and this week, Springsteen disposed on Kid Rock and is back at #1. The album is already gold and headed right towards platinum and he's got a great shot to win a Grammy for Best Album of the Year. Magic's reviews virtually everywhere are over the top and the intro to his latest interview in Rolling Stone refers to the album's subject matter as "weighty stuff like the direction of our democracy and party stuff that recalls the days when sparks first flew on E Street more than three decades ago."

Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no... not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year-- across all genres and demographics-- radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he's pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.

"When you have artists like the Dixie Chicks and Bruce Springsteen who have overtly spoken out against this Administration, they are taken to task in spite the clear and undeniable indications from the marketplace that people want to hear their music. What seems to be happening-- if sales are any kind of a barometer of what the marketplace is-- is that these politically-connected radio networks like Clear Channel are not looking to succeed as radio stations as much as pushing forward some political agenda.

Another friend of mine distinctly recalls the Senate hearings on radio consolidation in light of the Dixie Chicks boycott where Barbara Boxer and John McCain heard testimony including an internal Clear Channel memo threatening "Just wait and see what happens if Springsteen tries this." I guess we're seeing that right now.

Of course, Clear Channel hasn't publicly said they are boycotting Springsteen's music. But they are. Fox News, hardly a hotbed of liberal alarmists, reports that "Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from Magic... no new songs by Springsteen, even though it’s likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio."

Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It’s certainly what’s helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius.

I don't buy it. Clear Channel is a big-time and very consciously right-wing power player with a goal of changing American pop culture. They have done all they could to stifle progressive voices and to dumb down and trivialize the culture. Meaningless, offensive and inoffensive drivel by Fergie, Britney Spears, Nickelback, and Rihanna you'll hear. But not Springsteen. Clear Channel even has its very own rubber stamp Republican congressman to look out for it's interests, the boss' (not The Boss') son-in-law, the overly right-wing Michael McCaul (TX). You want to see Bruce back on the radio? Stop listening to Clear Channel stations-- and stop voting for Republicans. If there was no Clear Channel-- and no Republicans-- this is what would be on the radio instead of Britney Spears:




UPDATE: SOME ADULT-ORIENTED CLEAR CHANNEL STATIONS ARE PLAYING IT

The Fox News report I linked to isn't exactly right. Some Clear Channel stations are indeed playing it, although mostly Clear Channel stations with independent-minded programmers like KBCO in Denver. Overall, Clear Channel isn't giving it the kind of exposure a #1 record would normally get.


UPDATE: CLEAR CHANNEL BUYING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE

In 2006 Clear Channel Communications ponied up almost $800,000 in legal campaign contributions, 65% of which went to Republicans. The two top dogs at the company are long-time Bush family retainers and cronies, Tom Hicks and Lowry Mays. Mays has donated tens of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates for office over the years. A few: $69,500 for the Republican National Committee, $21,000 for the NRCC, $14,200 for Michael McCaul (TX), $2,500 for James Sensenbrenner (WI), $2,300 for Duncan Hunter (CA), $16,300 for Lamar Smith (TX), $6,500 for Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX), $3,000 for Tom DeLay (TX), $13,000 for Henry Bonilla (TX), $10,250 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, $2,500 for Heather Wilson (NM), $6,000 for John Cornyn (TX), and $2,100 for Flip Flop Mitt and grudging grand for Giuliani (NY). And there were tens of thousands more from other family members. Hicks was a similarly huge donator to Republicans: $65,000 to the RNC, $50,000 to the NRSC plus another $300,000 or so scattered around to grateful Republicans who have made it very worthwhile for have been so generous. When people talk about the need for campaign finance reform and public financing of elections, this is exactly what they're talking about.

WILL THE DEMOCRATS HAVE THE BALLS TO KICK LIMBAUGH OFF ARMED FORCES RADIO?

Yesterday John Amato, Lucas Gardner and myself spent some time with Congressman John Hall talking about, among other things, his plans to introduce a motion to "condemn" Rush Limbaugh for his virulently anti-military remarks the other day-- the "phony soldiers" episode. Hall represents a district that includes West Point and one of the cadets there is his nephew. He's an outspoken member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee and he's become one of Congress' most knowledgeable experts on the kinds of traumatic brain injuries that used to kill soldiers and are now leaving them in a severely debilitated state. This kinds of condemnations are largely viewed as game-playing by voters who would rather see Congress deal with ending the occupation of Iraq and starting down the road to a more equitable and just society, a road the rogue Bush Regime has veered sharply away from. And it isn't just game-playing; it's Republican game playing. This kind of diversionary tactic gets peoples' minds off the real issues. Democrats' want peoples' minds on the real issues. They aren't as practiced or as vicious and they don't do it as well.

Front and center went right to the Senate, though, where Harry Reid excoriated Limbaugh as the day began. Here's what he had to say:

Freedom of speech is one of our country's most cherished values. Nothing sets us further apart than the countries and regimes we oppose than our belief that everyone's opinion matters, and everyone has the right to express it. That is why, when we hear things on the radio that are offensive, by and large, we tolerate them.

But last week, Rush Limbaugh went way over the line-- and while we respect his right to say anything he likes, his unpatriotic comments cannot be ignored.

During his show last Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh was engaged in one of his typical rants. This rant was unremarkable and indistinguishable from his usual drivel, which has been steadily losing listeners for years-- until he crossed that line by calling our men and women in uniform who oppose the war in Iraq "phony soldiers." This comment was so beyond the pale of decency that it cannot be left alone. And yet, he followed it up with denials and an attack on Congressman Jack Murtha, a 37-year active member of the Marine Corps.

We have been debating the Iraq war here in the Senate and throughout the country for not months, but years. There are good, patriotic Americans who favor the war - and good, patriotic Americans who oppose President Bush's handling of it. Neither party holds a patent on patriotism. I know all my Republican colleagues would agree with that.

Yet Rush Limbaugh took it upon himself to attack the courage and character of those fighting and dying for him and for all of us. Rush Limbaugh got himself a deferment from serving when he was a young man. He never served in uniform. He never saw in person the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in civil war. Yet he thinks that his opinion on the war is worth more than those who are on the front lines.

And what's worse-- Limbaugh's show is broadcast on Armed Forces Radio, which means that thousands of troops overseas and veterans here at home were forced to hear this attack on their patriotism. Rush Limbaugh owes the men and women of our Armed Forces an apology.

Reid then went on to reveal a letter he drafted to one of the GOP propaganda outlets, Clear Channel Communications and Bush financier/CEO Mark Mays. The right-wing network hosts Limbaugh's hateful programs and Reid wants them to repudiate him and his remarks. He ended his speech with something that was either sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek or extremely naive:

I am confident we will see Republicans join with us in overwhelming numbers. Anything less would be a double standard that has no place in the United States Senate. I ask my colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, to join together against this irresponsible, hateful, and unpatriotic attack by calling upon Rush Limbaugh to give our troops the apology they deserve.

Harkin's approach was more... forceful, not just condemning Limbaugh's remarks but pointing out the obvious, that he is willing to make these hateful odious statements "to make more money," which is why Reid's letter to Mays and Clear Channel is a complete waste of time. A license revocation would work a lot better. Harkin wondered aloud if Limbaugh's outburst was caused by him being "high on his drugs again."

As for Republicans doing the right thing... Well, how about the right-wing thing? Neo-fascist Georgia congressloon, Jack Kingston, whose rubber stamp voting record is a disgrace to his constituents, made an idiot out of himself-- and out of Georgia-- today by introducing a resolution commending Limbaugh.


UPDATE: WES CLARK WEIGHS IN: TAKE LIMBAUGH OFF ARMED FORCES RADIO

Limbaugh has always been viciously disparaging towards General Clark, and all other members of the military who don't toe the right-wing propaganda line. He refers to General Clark as Ashley Wilkes from Gone With The Wind, and, oddly, neither the House nor the Senate ever condemned him for it. Today, though, General Clark called on Congress to take the disrespectful and divisive hate-monger off Armed Forces Radio, not because of what he says about him but because of how vile his comments have been to active duty servicemembers he disagrees with. Long overdue!