This topic is far more important than many will give it credit for being.

To the extent that we talk about white Europeans' (frequently, perhaps mostly) negative impact on other cultures, a valid starting point would be an effort toward understanding both migration and conquest as two primary dynamics that shaped the ancient world.

For instance, it's easy to see the harsh, brutal impact of the Spanish on Meso-, Central-, and South American peoples. The forced conversions, the religious torments, the genocidal effect of disease all make it unavoidable. What is much more difficult, however, is to talk about the cultures that were largely eliminated by the genocidal effects, for instance, of Gaius Iulius Caesar's incursions into Gaul and Brittania. As someone of Brittanic/Scots/Irish stock, I can say with certainty that I have no real idea of any cultural identity that was not imprinted on my ancient forebears by virtue of Roman conquest. The religion of my ancient ancestors was largely wiped out wholesale by the Romans, and any remnants were definitely ground into the dirt by Holy Mother Church. The same applies to the relevant cultures.

It's no surprise, then, that a culture that has been scrubbed clean of identity finds it easy to do the same to the next group down the line in the next migration. I'm thinking of my multi-great grandfather who had no misgivings at all about shooting the Indians whose land he had stolen here in what is now West Virginia.

It's a pity there isn't someone willing to do it.

The problem lies in the fact that atheists don't believe in an afterlife, treat all religions as mummery, at best, and as such, generally won't refuse to treat a suffering human.

On the other hand, the stories of the day are rife with accounts of "christian" freaks who won't help a suffering person.

I sometimes get a sense that if all the christian hooey turns out to be true, there's gonna be an awful surprise when Jesus-In-Glory says "All you atheists who did the best you could for folks even though you didn't think there was anything to all the hooey? Guess what?! Go to the head of the class!"

I've got a pretty good idea this is how it's gonna play out.

get him to come to Appalachia to look at the devastation caused by Mountaintop Removal coal extraction. We can't get him to look at even ONE of the more than 500 mountains that are gone forever. We can't get him to see where even ONE of the more than one thousand miles of headwater streams used to be. We can't get him to meet with even ONE of the families poisoned by coal sludge in their ruined wells. He did come here, however, after the UBB Disaster and utter the WV Coal Association's marketing slogan for them: "Coal Keeps The Lights On."

Still, we work. We meet with officials of his administration. We go door-to-door through the halls of Congress, hats in hand, begging for a legislative remedy. Over a hundred of my friends and neighbors were arrested in front of the White House on September 27, the vast majority of them liberals/progressives, all of us BEGGING him to take decisive action to stop the attacks on our homes and communities.

That's what we're doing here in Appalachia. And still, every DAY, more than 3 MILLION pounds of high explosives rock the foundations of our homes, our schools, our churches. Every DAY, more of our water is forever ruined. Every DAY more of the oldest mountains on earth are reduced to dust and devastation.

We're not throwing stones. We're getting BOULDERS thrown at us.

They're keeping you from seeing the forest.

It's all ever so much simpler. Assange's "motive," if we must call it that, I would speculate (as all of this is) is nothing more than to gather information and make that information available. With the information available, one would hope that people can actually reach informed decisions. Granted, that's much more likely in other parts of the world than here in the United States of Dancing With the Stars, but it could happen.

On a broader note, I don't agree with your assessment that people necessarily want the U.S. economy de-corporatized. Many of us simply want those corporations adequately, fully and fairly regulated. There are things that large institutions can do that individuals and small businesses cannot. I want corporations to be able to do those things. I do not, however, think it necessary that corporations have a super vote in able to do them. Neither do they need near-blanket immunity from taxation.

It seems to me you've set up a false dichotomy between Total Corporate Rule and No Corporations At All. There is middle ground you don't seem to acknowledge.

Some of you may know, others perhaps not, that for the last six years I've hosted a nightly liberal talk radio show ("Head-On With Bob Kincaid"). As part of that process, I've found myself on a LOT of PR email lists. Suffice to say there are many more PR folks doing wingnut issues than those on our side.

At any rate, I'm bombarded daily with pitches for this, that and the other revolting wingnut talking point, complete with the offer of a "guest" to advance them on my show (Obama a Kenyan FascIslamUnist? There's a guest for that!). I remain on the lists simply because it's interesting and informative to watch the Right Wing Messaging Megaphone at work.

So I start culling through my email this morning and what do I find but the latest pitch for a right-wing guest to push the outrage envelope even further on the TSA kerfuffle. I thought you all might like a peek at the right-wing megaphone in action, from a behind-the-scenes perspective:



Issue management like this doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen by accident. These are sophisticated, well-funded, longterm PR efforts. Bear in mind that the email I received this morning probably went out to dozens, if not hundreds of talk radio hosts and producers, many of whom will be more than happy to advance this disgusting trope, since right-wing hatecasting outguns liberal radio by a factor of 1000 hours to 1.

Don't think for an instant that the right-wing, the Baggers, Birthers, Deathers, Tenthers and other assorted sundry BoogerEaters aren't working this issue for all it's worth. The Right is manifestly more adept, and better-funded than ANY PR effort our side has going. With that in mind, do please continue to ask yourself how this "issue" suddenly exploded in the national consciousness. There are NO accidents in right wing PR.

I fully understand the highly-charged, emotional response people are having to the current airport security outrage. Truly, I do. It's no fun to get touched without inviting it. That's why the Common Law in Olde Engelonde established the tort (and the crime) of battery. Most people believe "battery" involves being the recipient of a significant physical touching, like Smokin' Joe Frazier laid on Ali in 1971. It doesn't. A "battery," in its purest form, is "an unconsented-to touching of an insulting or provoking nature." Those ancient lights of the law understood that mere touching could set off bloodshed among semi-barbarians.

I also understand that a great number of people are outraged at what they perceive to be a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights.

Some (using the FoxNews style book here) might even object on Fifth Amendment grounds.

In short, there's a ton of outrage going around, visceral outrage, as I referenced in the title. Visceral means "gut," of course. Our response is gut-level and, by definition not cerebral, not born of intellectual rigor or examination. There are a lot of reasons for that. One reason might have to do with the fact that we, as Americans, are among the most prudish, most puritanical, most sexually hung-up people on the planet. We don't want our "privates" (see that? we call genitals "privates" because we're too hung up to say "scrotum" or "penis" or "breasts" or "vagina")touched because we have hundreds of years of inbred puritanism reminding us how "dirty, Dirty, DIRTY" we are, how "utterly FILTHY is the body of sinful humankind." (No, I won't attribute the quote. Just wander into a fundie church sometime this week and you'll likely find someone opining in that direction).

Some of this TSA business reminds me of the response of Dr. Laura when she got caught in her "nigger-nigger-nigger"-fest. Remember? She said she had to stop broadcasting in order to "regain" her "First Amendment rights?" Of course, anyone with even a modest comprehension of the First Amendment realized she hadn't been deprived of them, right? Most on our side understood, I hope, that the First Amendment applies to governmental suppression of speech, and as such, her departure manifested a great deal of heat, but not just a whole lot of light.

Like I said, some of the TSA business reminds me of that. Here we have folks like the guy from California saying "If you touch me, I'll have you arrested." For what, Perry Mason? Battery? When you go to board the plane, you consent to regulations relating to what you may and may not carry aboard. As such, having consented, there can't be a battery. Well, Matlock, maybe they're violating your Fourth Amendment rights, right? Wrong! The Fourth Amendment in its pure form is quite starkly austere. It doesn't have a lot of weasel room in it. That's what courts are for. Long before September 11, 2001 was even a twinkle in (you pick: Bin Laden's, Bush's, The Illuminati's) eye, the Fourth Amendment had been significantly eroded by so-called "good faith" exceptions (See U.S. v. Leon) and zones in which one had varying degrees of expectation of privacy. One has, for instance, a MUCH greater expectation of privacy in one's own home than in one's car. One has an even lower expectation of privacy in the airport. Sorry. No Fourth Amendment issues here.

OK, let's try the Fifth Amendment, Clarence Darrow. How would that work? Let's see: I have a right not to incriminate myself via having the BOMB/GUN/KNIFE/BAG OF RAMP JUICE AROUND MY WAIST x-rayed and revealed? Shall we take it as read that that one's a non-starter?

So where does that leave us? It leaves us, or at least me, remembering once more that the last time I wanted to be President of the United States was about age six, when it was a tossup between that, astronaut and cowboy. I certainly wouldn't want the job now. This outrage, which, I admit, leaves me feeling queasily like it's being "managed," is President Obama's biggest Kobayashi Maru incident to date. It is an unwinnable situation. It is unwinnable in large part because the right-wing drives messaging in this country to the point that the White House couldn't message "FIRE!" in a crowded firehouse. Witness the fact that the corporate ForProfit Media is on this like a duck on a junebug. Witness the fact that it only got "legs" right after the mid-term elections. Witness that it's happening at a time when it's managed to completely overshadow the right-wing assault on the START Treaty.

At any rate, Obama is damned-if-he-does-and-damned-if-he-doesn't. I recognize that, even though, as a liberal, I'm largely frustrated with a number of his positions.

That's my question: what would we have him do? It's all well and good for us to watch clips of George Carlin saying "I think flying should be MORE dangerous, goddammit," but do we really think that when it's our daughter flying home from college, or a husband leaving on a cross-country business trip? Do we? Are we that politically jaded?

What would we have him do? What would we have him do, understanding that WHATEVER he does will be declared creeping FascIslamUnism because he "has a deep-seated hatred of white people"? What would we have him do? Is it better to have something in place and work on it, and deal with it as adults, or have a squealing, tea-baggin', puritanical hissy because someone patted down our hoo-hoos and ding-dongs whose only intent in so doing was to (a) do their job as instructed and (b) keep their job so their kids keep eating and (c) perhaps stop the one-in-a-million idiot who thought to do real harm (understanding that the pros would never use the passenger apparatus for their nefarious deeds)?

Please understand: I don't walk around every day looking out in case a six-foot, seven-inch Arab with a portable dialysis machine should jump out to git me. I don't. I'm neither scared of terrorists, nor thunderstorms (both having similarly remote likelihoods of harming me). I do look both ways crossing the street, though, and I seldom run with scissors. That's just prudence.

I'll also be taking to the skies in the not-too-distant future. I'll do what I've always done of late: wear slip-on shoes, carry no change, empty my pockets of everything and go through security. I'll be civil to the working stiffs in the blue uniforms, even to the point of being pleasant. I'm like that. God help me for the recovering Southern Baptist that I am, but all that "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" stuff they drilled into my tiny, impressionable mind back in the basement of the baptist church actually "took," and darned if it doesn't work about 99% of the time.

Under those circumstances, I expect my experience to be no more miserable than any other airline experience, miserable air flight experiences being a function not of enhanced security, but of crappy airlines.

Tommy's story is one of the most inspiring of all the CMoH stories I've ever been made aware.

A young man of great promise from Morgantown, West Virginia, Tommy was active on the WVU campus, opposed the war, followed a deeply faithful xtian path, and had his number come up. His story can be found in the book "Peaceful Patriot."

He entered the United States Army during the Vietnam Nightmare as a Conscientious Objector. He served as a medic, refusing to carry any weapon that could cause death.

Here's the citation:

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Cpl. Bennett distinguished himself while serving as a platoon medical aidman with the 2d Platoon, Company B, during a reconnaissance-in-force mission. On 9 February the platoon was moving to assist the 1st Platoon of Company D which had run into a North Vietnamese ambush when it became heavily engaged by the intense small arms, automatic weapons, mortar and rocket fire from a well fortified and numerically superior enemy unit. In the initial barrage of fire, 3 of the point members of the platoon fell wounded. Cpl. Bennett, with complete disregard for his safety, ran through the heavy fire to his fallen comrades, administered life-saving first aid under fire and then made repeated trips carrying the wounded men to positions of relative safety from which they would be medically evacuated from the battle position. Cpl. Bennett repeatedly braved the intense enemy fire moving across open areas to give aid and comfort to his wounded comrades. He valiantly exposed himself to the heavy fire in order to retrieve the bodies of several fallen personnel. Throughout the night and following day, Cpl. Bennett moved from position to position treating and comforting the several personnel who had suffered shrapnel and gunshot wounds. On 11 February, Company B again moved in an assault on the well fortified enemy positions and became heavily engaged with the numerically superior enemy force. Five members of the company fell wounded in the initial assault. Cpl. Bennett ran to their aid without regard to the heavy fire. He treated 1 wounded comrade and began running toward another seriously wounded man. Although the wounded man was located forward of the company position covered by heavy enemy grazing fire and Cpl. Bennett was warned that it was impossible to reach the position, he leaped forward with complete disregard for his safety to save his comrade's life. In attempting to save his fellow soldier, he was mortally wounded. Cpl. Bennett's undaunted concern for his comrades at the cost of his life above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army."

He was the first Conscientious Objector since Alvin York to be awarded the CMoH

I guess he's just a big ol' sissy to the brave, burly killing machines at the Amurrikkkan Fambly Assoserashun of Tupleo, Muzzoopee. Maybe I should ask 'em. As a matter of fact, I think I will.

. . . is that employer and employee do NOT occupy an equal bargaining position on a level playing field. A potential employee needs the work much more than the potential employer needs any given potential employee. As such, that potential employee may feel a greater compulsion to comply with an employer's demands. I'm sure the management at that company understands this. It's a not-so-subtle attempt at workplace proselytization.

Such conduct is either OK across-the-board or Not OK across-the-board, as the points raised on this thread have shown.

As for me, I will, by dint of my own leanings, generally side with the worker, whether the worker's issue be religiously mandated headgear (although I personally find such a thing stupid beyond expression, I realize that many people live in abject fear of their imaginary "friend"), dietary issues (a "no vegetarian meals" rule at a slaughterhouse would be egregiously improper), gender accomodation or any other subject in which the unequal bargaining position between worker and employer allows the employer to exploit the worker's need to make a living.

. . . I'd like to offer a teensy-tinsy hint:

Given that Obama was pilloried by the right-wing and its wholly-owned subsidiary, the ForProfit Media as "the most liberal candidate since Pontius Pilate ate the Lindbergh Baby for breakfast," running a more liberal primary candidate against Obama won't help. As badly as we'd like NOT to be living in a profoundly dysfunctional political nation, we do. The FPM and the RW have already seen to it that the president is seen by a majority in this country as being just to the left of Mao.

Another hint: running a "Democrat" who's to his right (Evan Bayh) would be equally fruitless, since THAT candidate would be portrayed by the RW and the FPM as a "man who's left his conservative roots," challenging Obama for the mantle of the leader of the Librulz.

At this point, barring any significant change in the next year, the presidential contest will be a choice between the incumbent and someone who is even further to the right than he is. A primary challenge to the president will only serve to give whomever loses a reason to stay home. I offer as proof the years 2000 and 1980, wherein the presumed nominee faced a challenge within his own party that worked to his direct detriment. I wish it wasn't so, but it is.

Nationally, the only hope the president has is that the RNC really WILL nominate Caribou Barbie or Mike "WhoCaresHowManyDogsMyKidTortured" Hucksterbee or Willard Romney. It's his only hope. ONLY.

And since George W. Moran has recently said he's lead-pipe-cinch, dead-certain his brother Jebbie won't run, I'm personally convinced that Jebbie WILL run, at which point the presidency of Barrack Obama Will.Be.Done. The last election proves it. The American people ARE dumb enough to give the White House to ANOTHER Bush.

At the end, it said there were "no plans for rescue." I love that someone would even think there might be. A jellyfish rescue.

Darn! Where's PETA when you need 'em?

PETA Jellyfish Rescue Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(San Francisco) "We're proudly OUCH! rescuing the OUCH GODDAMMIT! jellyfish and JESUS CHRIST THAT FUCKING HURTS! returning them to their CAN'T I JUST GO THROW PAINT ON SOMEBODY?! homes in the SCREW THESE LITTLE BASTARDS! I NEED A HALF-CAF CARAMEL MACHIATTO WITH SOY MILK FOAM AND A VEGAN ORGANIC BISCOTTI sea."
-30-

ice cream-flavored beer.

But I think we'll get that before the right-wing decides to play nice and be fair. It's not in the nature of a bully to be kind until the bully has been TAUGHT to be kind, usually by being as mean to the bully as the bully has been to everyone else.

They didn't tell Truman to "give them a nicely phrased speech intended to show them the error of their ways." They said "GIVE 'EM HELL, HARRY!" And he did. And a lot of good things happened for ordinary working people.

Five nights a week, for three hours, I've hosted live, liberal "conversation radio." We call it "The H.O.R.N., America's Liberal Voice" (www.headonradionetwork.com ) We hoot n' holler n' carry on and maintain a strict ban on wingnuts. Since they have a thousand hours to our one, I figure there's somewhere else they can go to talk about Kenyan Muslims Without Birth Certificates or whatever else ignorant babble's coming out of their head-holes at the given moment. While I do the occasional rant as much as anyone else, I try to make sure that everyone else gets more than enough time to get their ideas across. I take a small amount of pride being the only liberal radio host who was born and lives in the South. It makes for a different approach.

This year, I was named to the Talkers Magazine "Frontier 50" list of the best internet broadcasters in America.

Everything we do is volunteer-based and the entire operation is supported by occasional contributions from listeners, as well as one grassroots group fighting mountaintop removal, Coal River Mountain Watch. All the podcasts are free, we maintain a 24/7 stream accessible from both iTunes and a number of other aggregators and, most importantly, the work-a-day folks who call in are treated like the experts they are. No ads. No "BuyGoldNow," no "GetMyVaccumCleaner," no pitches for herbal remedies to maintain erections. None of the garbage that provides support for right-wing radio. We exist because our listeners have decided we MUST exist.

And no delay unit, either. Since we're still on the Wild West of the internet, we don't have to sweat bullets if a caller (or even I) let fly with one of those words that makes the FCC start feeling like they're about to birth a peach pit.

We've broken some significant ground along the way, with, among other things, the first 5x/wk LGBT conversation show ("Strictly Confidential With Peter Godbold"). At one point, we offered as much live, original content as Air America, and may again. We've devoted more time to the human rights crisis in Appalachia than all other broadcasters combined. It's all been done in conjunction with WhiteRoseSociety.org. That site literally saved liberal radio on the internet when liberal radio had nowhere else to go.

It's the most profound thing I've ever done in my life. And for neither love nor money can we get funding from the "big" liberal organizations. We've heard "Oh, but we're poor" from some of the wealthiest liberal organizations in America. Still, we persisted and, some might say, we've triumphed.

So I hope David Brock is successful. He's been VERY successful so far with Media Matters. Maybe doors open for him that don't open for others.

One of those circumstances is not a reality, to-wit: that both sides have an equal number of people being equally loud.

If you lined up "liberal" broadcasters opposite those of the right-wing, and yelled "Go," you'd never be able to hear the liberals. That's because we're outnumbered to the tune of 1000-to-1. Just TRY to overtalk a thousand people. It doesn't happen. That's because it's physically impossible.

Moreover, the falsehoods even pervade our attempts to discuss the phenomenon. What "Left?" If you look around the world, you can get a decent picture for what "left" actually means. We don't have any of that here, at least not at a statistically relevant level. What the right wing has taught America (via its media hegemony) is that the hardcore, proto-fascist right is the "center," when it's anything but. It's like being told that a habanero chile is "mild" and then finding out there are blisters forming inside your mouth as you run screaming to do something about the burn.

. . . open more easily than we know.

I grew up in the Deep South, not all that far from where this incident took place. My first name is one that over time came to be deemed "a girl's name." As a child, I complained bitterly to my parents for the constant teasing I took over it at school. In my junior year of high school, I was "cordially invited to enter" the America's Junior Miss pageant . . . all based upon my first name. Those years hitting a blocking sled on the football team? Nada. Macho-ly peeling out of the high school parking lot? Nope.

Shakespeare asked "What's in a name?" My answer? "Plenty, buster! No one named you Wilhelmina."

It didn't come to violence, per se, but it did compel me to occasionally have to defend myself. Cf. "Boy Named Sue."

Against my better judgment, I acceded to my wife's desire to name our only son after me. "Honey, you don't know what you're letting him in for." "Oh, don't worry," she replied, "times have changed."

It's true. They have. They've gotten worse. Where I was teased and called out, my son spent his middle school years getting literally stomped to the ground and regularly called "Faggot." It took a good-hearted kid and turned him into something we've had to work hard to keep him from becoming: the mirror-image of his attackers.

And, as usual, it DOES all start in the church, at least in these parts. A river of venom and vomit flows from the local pulpits here, buoying along congregations ready to hate in the name of the "Prince of Peace."

The failure of Jon Stewart's "Can't We All Just Get Along" argument lies in the fact that we've already BEEN where he's saying we need to go. It didn't work out too well. It didn't work out well because the right wing doesn't WANT to get along. They want to win. They.Want.It.All

We've lived in a world where the so-called left abandoned the broadcast field to the right-wing and all its myriad toxins. That's what the 80's and 90s were, as well as the majority of this decade. It is a fact that for every hour of "liberal" broadcasting, there are ONE THOUSAND hours of right-wing hatecasting in our country.

With no opposition, the right-wing talking points vomited forth daily by the Limbaughs, Savages, Schlesingers et al. ad nauseam became, de facto, the way the nation saw the issues in those decades. Does anyone recall that the incoming '94 Repig freshmen named Limbaugh an honorary member? They didn't do that because he's cute. They did it because he played a major role in shaping and controlling the dialogue and discourse in this country. He was able to do that because there was almost no one (with the exception of Mike Malloy, who has soldiered on through it all; if Stewart heard Malloy he'd probably start having kittens with crocheted tails) opposing them.

So along came "Crossfire," with a pair of democrats giving as good as they got. It was quite popular for awhile. Then Jon Stewart came on, declared them "dicks," "Crossfire" was gone, and liberals were silenced again on cable. Jon Stewart is recycling that schtick again, only this time he's getting some pushback.

There's pushback this time because an itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensy few liberals have actually gotten some broadcast time. And they, in their varied ways, are giving as good as we've gotten for decades. In short, they're handing the right-wing what the right-wing's been dishing out with impunity for years and years. Apparently, Jon Stewart doesn't like that.

But again, the problem lies in the fact that Stewart's thesis is just plain wrong. If you take Maddow and Olbermann and Schultz off the air, Fox will not become more benign, more benevolent, less malignant and toxic. They and Limbaugh, Savage, Hannity, Beck etc. will continue to spew. The ONLY way to combat that is to oppose them on their own ground, in their own medium, and give the American people a choice between competing points of view.

The other side are bullies. It really IS that simple. One NEVER beats a bully by speaking gently to him in soothing, dulcet tones accompanied by a gentle refrain of "Kum-by-yah" in the background. When you do that, the bully punches you in the face, takes your milk money, spits on you and kicks dirt in your face.

I for one, have long been tired of eating right-wing dirt. I do what little I can to be part of the pushback. It's a wonder to me that some people who call themselves "liberal" and "progressive" want to keep eating the dirt. Then again, why should I wonder? When the Children of Israel sought freedom and wound up in the desert, there were plenty who advocated going back to Pharaoh. After all, they reasoned, Pharaoh gave them three hots and a cot.

On edit: caught a typo