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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Tempers boil over as town runs out of water while drought deepens in TX; Devastating famine spreads in East Africa; New rules for heavy trucks; Japanese officials withheld radiation information from residents; PLUS: Al Gore calls 'BULLSH**T!' --- literally --- on the Climate Change Denial industry ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Fracking: groundwater contamination documented by EPA in 1987; Koch's ALEC Conf touts 'The Many Benefits of Atmospheric CO2 Enrichment'; Australia's new carbon tax will boost jobs, revenues: study; China shuts down 583 lead-acid battery plants; U.S. invests in more solar power; TN nuke plant shut down due to hot river; Japan withheld radiation data, leaving evacuees in peril; 'Brave' Fukushima workers expect to 'die within weeks'; Israel to build $423m desalination plant; Consumers get a break on gas prices; St. Louis to pay $5B to repair sewers; Last of the Lobstermen: Chasing a vanishing treasure... PLUS: BBC’s ‘Top Gear’ FAKES test in order to criticize electric cars...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Despite what Rush Limbaugh says, record breaking heat wave breaks heat records; Speaking of climate change deniers, guess what the Norwegian terrorist was?; And speaking of climate change, a new study says it's causing the release of long-buried toxins; Fukushima, four months later; PLUS: House Republicans attack clean air and clean water --- AGAIN ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Appalachian Poverty Concentrated Around Mine Sites; More big Yellowstone fires predicted with climate change; Biting the Bullet, VT Yankee Orders Fuel; Smart Grid Stimulus Creates a Global Player in CO; GA's coastal infrastructure under threat; 'Toxic 20' list released of states with most air pollution; Painting roofs white keeps buildings cool, save $$$; Alarming 'Dead Zone' Grows in Chesapeake Bay; Coal Ash Taints Groundwater at TVA Sites; EPA Program on Children's Toxic Exposure "Flawed"; Natural Gas Drillers Lowball Leases; New Rules Put Pressure On Outdate Power Plants ... PLUS: The true cost of gasoline? $13 a gallon ...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Deadly heat wave in the Midwest; Deadly famine in Somalia; More American jobs in clean energy than in oil & gas; Meet America's newest oil spill, now in Alaska (Thanks again, BP!) ... PLUS: It's the end of the line for NASA's space shuttle program --- Can America still do Big Things? ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Climate change 'threatens peace', UN official warns; Most of the U.S. could be energy self-sufficient; Judge denies BP request for White House emails; The true cost of gasoline? $13 a gallon; Polluted China plans carbon emissions trading scheme; Koch brothers declare war on offshore wind; OH Leads List of Top 20 States with Toxic Air; Can Bluefin Tuna Farms Work?; GAO: States Underreporting Violations of Drinking Water Standards; Fracking At Drinking Water Source for 80k in PA Raises Alarms; Staff Tells N.R.C. That U.S. Rules Need Overhaul After Fukushima; Japan Links More Cattle to Cesium-Tainted Feed; Mapping mercury fallout from coal-fired power plants ... PLUS: It's HOT! But Fox only talks about global warming when it's snowing ...

Our friend Mike Stark got through to Rush Limbaugh's radio show on Thursday and introduced a few actual facts over our public airwaves. Rush was clueless about how to handle it and had to resort to telling listeners that all of the independently verifiable facts Stark was presenting were completely made up fantasies.

Of course, they weren't. They are are easily verifiable and correct.

But this is the world we now live in, folks. Reality vs. Rush and the Right. As of now, Rush and the Right are winning. Those of us in the World of Reality are taking a serious hit in the bargain, thanks to corporate ownership of the public airwaves which allows a guy like Rush to use our own airwaves against we, the people who own them to pretend to millions of Americans each day that Facts are Lies, that Up is Down, that White is Black, that killing Medicare is saving Medicare, that Global Warming is a hoax, that "conservatives" believe in small government and the rule of law and the Constitution, that teachers and firefighters are the cause for our debt problems, and that Obama is a radical Leftist who hates America, is anti-business, and has raised your taxes.

Remember when Karl Rove said "We create our own reality," in 2004? That's the world we all now live in. One created from whole cloth and spewed to millions of gullible citizens each and every day over our own public airwaves. No actual facts required. No public interest obligations met in exchange for use of those airwaves. And so we all keeping heading down the long road to nowhere, or to ruin.

The Majority Report's Sam Seder takes us through Stark's call to Rush...and through the looking glass...

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IN TODAY'S RADIO REPORT: Limbaugh and Santorum, positively frothy in their propaganda jihad against climate science; Unfair & Unbalanced coverage of the Environmental Protection Agency; Crunch time at the UN on the Kyoto climate treaty; Feds shut down an oil pipeline; PLUS: Scientists are screaming that global warming is accelerating, but our media is obsessed with Weiner --- Anthony Weiner ... All that and more in today's Green News Report!

Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Breakthroughs, launches, and warnings on World Oceans Day; Pollution worsens kids' asthma, but Congress split on action; 'Dramatic' solar flare could disrupt earth communications; UN's Food & Agriculture Organization sees stubbornly high food prices; Food demand eating into tropical forests; Judge upholds environmentalist lawsuit against Exxon; Hundreds protest Marcellus Shale drilling in PA; Utility groups trade blows on new EPA emissions rules; Autism experts urge reform of U.S. chemicals law; Decontamination trial planned at Japanese nuclear plant; After Japan, where's the next nuclear weak link?; Federal regulators: Nuclear accident plans are lacking; Oil falls after Saudis face opposition to OPEC quota increase; FDA: some chicken may contain arsenic ... PLUS: Planet Earth doesn't know how to make it any clearer It wants everyone to leave ...

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

After revealing his "long form" birth certificate Wednesday, President Obama scolded the news media for letting this non-issue become a national obsession.

But if President Obama really wants to restore reporting to its rightful role, he needs to act on commitments he made immediately after his inauguration. As I wrote in September 2009 for The BRAD BLOG:

Okay, let me connect some dots here.

For more than two years, GOP extremists have made the President's birth certificate an issue that has successfully permeated the country's consciousness. According to a New York Times-CBS News poll last week, 43% of the country is not sure Barack Obama was born in this country, despite long standing factual evidence to the contrary.

How did GOP extremists manage to make a non issue such a huge issue? They used the power of broadcasting to beat the drums of paranoia into 50 million people across our land. They used the power of talk radio, which they have used successfully tomarginalize Democrats and anyone else outside their narrow point of view.

That's right. According to Arbitron, 53 million people listen to talk radio every day in this country. When Glenn Beck loses his Fox "News" audience of 2 million, he still will have his radio audience of 10 million...

[Now UPDATED with audio archives from tonight's show.]

The Malloys are heading out for a week of Progressive Cruising next week (no, that's not some sort of sexual metaphor, it's an actual cruise in the Caribbean with a bunch of progressives, including a bunch of our pals!), so we'll be sitting in for the next week as guest host for the nationally syndicated Mike Malloy Show beginning tonight!

As usual, we'll be BradCasting LIVE 9pm-Midnight ET (6p-9p PT), coast-to-coast and around the globe from the studios of L.A.'s KTLK am1150. Join us by tuning in, chatting in, Tweeting in and calling in! Our LIVE and lively chat room will be up and rolling right here at The BRAD BLOG during the show, so please come on by and say hey while you're listening! (The Chat Room will open at the bottom of this item a few minutes before airtime, see down below, just above "Comments" section.)

Tonight:

• EGYPT Latest news from the continuing uprising, and a look at recent U.S. history of cooperating with and supporting the country's decades-old torture regime --- with STEPHEN ZUNES, University of San Franciso professor of Middle Eastern Studies and author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism.
• ERIC BOEHLERT, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, on why Fox "News" is virtually unable to cover the goings-on in Egypt, and much more related!
• SKIPPY THE BUSH KANGAROO Yup. You heard me right. Skippy the Bush Kangaroo on this year's "Blog Amnesty Day"
• PLUS: The disgusting Rush Limbaugh and whatever else comes up along the way, including your calls at 877-520-1150 and tweets to @TheBradBlog!...

The Mike Malloy Show is nationally syndicated on air affiliates acros the country and also on Sirius Ch. 146 & XM Ch. 167. You may also listen online to the free LIVE audio stream at affiliate GREEN 960 in San Francisco or via MikeMalloy.com.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Great show tonight (at least in my opinion). Audio archives are now posted below, along with the archives of tonight's chat room! Happy listening and tune in all next week too!...

Rush Limbaugh is a disgusting human being. But you probably knew that. If you didn't, audio from his show today --- which is broadcast over our public airwaves to some 15 million Americans a day, and even over U.S. Armed Forces Radio --- makes it as clear as ever.

First, as highlighted by Media Matters, Limbaugh made light of foreign journalists, including two reporters from the New York Times, being rounded-up in Cairo today because being detained while covering a story of huge import to this nation and the world, by a regime that has spent decades torturing such people is, of course, hilarious...

Next, later on in the very the same show, after he's learned that two Fox "News" reporters had been beaten and hospitalized following detention in Egypt, suddenly Rush gives a damn, and says he was just "kidding before about The New York Times"...

Moral depravity. As appalling as it gets.

For the record, as White House correspondent Paul Brandus tweeted last night as the round-up was beginning, "79 journalists were killed around the world last year - just for trying to tell a story."

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, 849 journalists have been killed since 1992. Isn't that hysterical, Rush?

UPDATE 2/4/11: ABC News has compiled a rather lengthy list of the journalists rounded-up in Egypt this week and what happened to each. Rachel Maddow explains why she believes it is being done.

UPDATE 2/5/11: Thanks to UK's Guardian for citing our coverage in their own coverage of Egypt yesterday, helping the world to understand that Limbaugh does not represent the true values of this nation.

Good for Congressman Nadler! Calling on the people's airwaves to be used, as required by law, in the "public interest"...

Nadler's comments follow on the heals of remarks by Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) following the shootings in Tucscon. "Free speech is as free speech does," he is quoted by the The Post and Courier as saying. "You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that."

Despite originally calling for a "clarif[ication of] the public interest obligations of broadcasters who occupy the nation's spectrum" on the White House website the day he was inaugurated, the Obama Administration has since retreated after false charges by the Right that Democrats intended to "censor" Rightwing talk radio. The passage was quickly removed from the White House website and, more recently, the Administrationhas said they have no interest in revisiting the Fairness Doctrine. (Though, we should note, that doctrine is not the only way to help restore fairness and balance to our public airwaves.)

The Fairness Doctrine, which had been enforced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 1949, required those who used the limited and publicly licensed broadcast airwaves to at least attempt to offer opposing views on controversial issues, was ordered abolished by President Reagan in 1987.

The doctrine's abandonment immediately paved the way for round-the-clock, one-sided propaganda from nationally syndicated talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh and scores of others.

Diversity of viewpoints shared in the public interest over our public airwaves was further brought to an end by the federal Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed by President Clinton. The act, sold as a "boon to competition in the market" lifted the cap on the number of radio and TV station licenses that could be procured by a single corporation. For example, prior to the Telecom Act, the Clear Channel corporation owned just 59 radio and TV stations nationwide. After passage of the act, they were allowed to purchase and control more than 1,200.

In the bargain, real competition --- and virtually all pretense of fairness and balance --- on our public broadcast airwaves largely died, rather than flourish as supporters of the Telecom act had claimed (and as detractors, such as Ralph Nader, had predicted), as corporations were allowed to hold virtual monopoly control over political viewpoints on the nation's airwaves in nearly all major cities across the country.

The BRAD BLOG has covered this topic for years, long calling for fairness and balance to be restored to our public airwaves. Following the recent shootings in Tucson, we have revisited the topic again, most recently in an article highlighting Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik's spotlight on "vitriolic rhetoric" on radio and TV as an element helping to incite violence and bigotry in his city which features six Rightwing radio stations, but none offering a progressive voice. And in another article, posted the day after the shooting, we offered statistics on how bad the problem is across the entire nation.

[Update 4:26pm PT: Related to the story below, one of the victims of the Tucson shooting has just been arrested for issuing a threat against Rightwingers at a taping for an ABC News special. It seems incitements by some are taken more seriously than incitements by others. Story here... -BF]

Guest blogged by Ernest A. Canning

"I find it chilling to hear so many U.S. government officials calling for the leader of this organization, Julian Assange, to be labeled an 'enemy combatant' and jailed --- or worse."-Letter from Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) to Tom Hayden

Recently, a number of prominent politicians and pundits have called for the violent targeting of other individuals who have been neither accused nor charged with any crimes whatsoever, calling into the question the legality of such incitements to violence.

This article will transcend the issue of "moral responsibility" on the part of those politicians and pundits for the horrific consequences that may, and often do, ensue as the result of their deliberate appeals to fear, prejudice and hate so as to examine when such rhetoric actually amounts to an actual crime under the laws of our land.

There can be little doubt that, as observed by Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, the combination of 24/7 "vitriolic rhetoric" on TV and radio (See video below for poignant examples of such rhetoric), the absence of gun control, with leading U.S. politicians calling for "Second Amendment remedies," and the placement of "crosshairs" over a political opponent's district while calling on citizens to "reload," can produce lethal consequences --- consequences that are not limited to the actions of the deranged.

Such rhetoric is both the product and cause of dehumanization --- a process defined by Professor Phillip Zimbardo in The Lucifer Effect as a means "by which certain other people or collectives of them are depicted as less than human..."

Zimbardo writes:

Where we covered the scientific work of Zimbardo and others in "Hate Speech and the Process of Dehumanization," and in a follow-up, demonstrating how the process applies both when directed to foreign "threats" and domestic "foes," here the focus is the thin legal line, unique to the U.S. courtesy of the First Amendment, between advocacy and incitement, and whether some U.S. politicians and pundits may have, at least in the case of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as they have now charged, crossed that line so as to possibly warrant criminal prosecutions...

As you may have noticed (or expected), I've been doing a lot of radio lately, discussing the AZ Shooting and related issues, such as the RW media and Democratic Party culpability and what needs to be done about it.

A discussion I had earlier this week with the non-partisan Allen Handelman on North Carolina's powerful 100k watt "Super Station," FM Talk 101.1 WZTK was particularly enlightening, I think. Most interesting was that the bulk of the callers --- even though I had been hoping for folks to call in disagreeing with my take --- seemed to generally agree with me. That, even on this station in supposedly "red" NC which features both non-RW talkers as well as far RW misinformants and miscreants such as Michael Savage and Neal Boortz who use our publicly owned airwaves to skew the nation with damnable lies and propaganda.

Happily, NC's FM Talk 101.1 is the exception to the national rule, as it uses its licensed airwaves to serve the public interest, as they are supposed to by law, by offering a variety of political viewpoints. In the bargain, they are the area's #1 talk station (yes, even beating the stations which carry Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc.). That, of course, would go against a lot of the "conventional wisdom" (propagated, naturally, by RWingers) which says that NC is "red," that RWingers only want to listen to RW talk, and that folks like Limbaugh and Hannity are so "good" and so many people agree with their "point of view" that they can't be beat. Of course, having the biggest 100k watt blowtorch in town never hurts either, as is the case in most places where the most powerful signal also seems to receive the most listeners for some odd reason.

So where RW stations are placed on 50,000 watt clear channel transmitters, they tend to handily beat the 1k and 5k and 10k stations where one may be able to hear progressive talk --- if you are in a town lucky enough to have such a station and live close enough to its transmitter to actually hear it.

If you'd like to listen to my two "hours" (with commercials already removed, they're really about 40 mins each) with Allen, they can be downloaded or listened to online below. My thanks to Allen for both having me and for sharing the audio files. He also informs me that he'll be re-playing these two hours on his nationally syndicated show as well this weekend...

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

A moment in the culture.

A moment like Columbine, like Fort Hood, like Oklahoma City, yet different; different because the madman's rampage that targeted Tucson, Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was predictable.

It's hot in Tucson --- temperatures soar to 117 degrees in the summertime. But that's nothing compared to the political heat generated recently in this community just an hour north of the Mexican border. Nowhere in the country were the 'Tea Parties' angrier than in Arizona; rage over healthcare and immigration reform boiled over in Tucson.

It had been bad already, even before Obama had been elected to office in 2008. Take a look at this remarkable list of eliminationist rhetoric coming from the Right, as compiled as long ago as March 2007. But, as if that wasn't horrible enough, things have gotten even far worse since then.

Who wouldn't be incensed? Reports of increased crime, beheadings on the borders, government takeover of health care, death panels. Given all that, who would not stand and fight to protect their grandmothers?

If all that were actually true. But of course, it is not true. Those reports and other fabrications like them are a creation of Right Wing Talk Radio. It isn't just the vitriol spewing from Savage and Hannity and Boortz and others, it is what is behind the vitriol: a genuine fear born of propaganda. And as a culture, we the people are buying into it.

So, regardless of whether the alleged shooter Jared Lee Loughner actually listened to any of the six "Conservative" stations on the dial in Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik was correct when he blamed the attack on a cultural environment built of Talk Radio...

This flier was circulated in Dallas in the days before John F. Kennedy was assassinated...

Any of that look or sound familiar?

If not, and if you didn't see the Tucson Shooting coming months and months ago, then you are living in a world of complete and utter delusion.

[Update 1/11/11: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., responding to the Giffords shooting at Huffington Post, draws a similar allusion to the atmosphere in Dallas in the days prior to the murder of his uncle.]

If you, like pretend media critic Howard Kurtz, are finding rationalizations and excuses to justify what happened yesterday, dismissing it all as little more than the work of a "lone nutjob," you are similarly deluded and among the most dangerous of apologists.

You are also anything but "conservative," since the core of that ideology used to include personal responsibility. Taking none, unfortunately, seems to be the new hallmark of the no longer any more than name-only movement.

Remember what happened after this video-taped moment in September of 2009, when Nancy Pelosi called for "taking responsibility for our words" before tearing up while recalling the assassination of Harvey Milk in her own district in the 70's, and while decrying the scores of death threats and broken windows at offices of Democratic members of Congress after they'd voted in favor of Health Care Reform?...

Guest Blogged by Sue Wilson

In the October issue of O magazine, Democratic consultant and commentator Donna Brazile did the unthinkable: she used the "F" word --- in Oprah Winfrey's publication, no less! Eyebrows are being raised across the political spectrum.

Okay, not that "F" word, a different one which is, apparently, far more controversial these days: Brazile says that if she "were in charge" her first priority would be to bring back the Fairness Doctrine." She says that that would require "holders of broadcast licenses to present controversial issues of public importance in an honest, equitable, and balanced fashion."

To the uninitiated, bringing Fairness to the public airwaves --- broadcast radio and TV --- is a no-brainer. But to Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and an army of 550,000 amassed to keep the nation's radio airwaves under "conservative" control, Brazile's declaration of priorities could be a call to arms. Is it possible that the Democratic establishment is finally ready for a fight to take control of their message? While no longer with the DNC, Brazile is still closely aligned with the Democratic power establishment after all.

Okay, time for a bit of history.

Our elders will remember a time when radio was America's number one source of news and information. And they remember being horrified at how Tokyo Rose and our enemies used the radio airwaves to promote hate and propaganda against the U.S.

So they watched as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and radio station owners worked together to prevent propaganda from ever being broadcast over the public airwaves in these United States of America. This coalition of government and business put the "Fairness Doctrine" in place to ensure a healthy, reasoned discourse so critical to our democracy.

The thing is --- and a point important for those who believe much more information is now available on cable and the Internet --- radio is still America's number one source of news and information. More people listen to radio than watch television, read newspapers, or go online. Nearly fifty million people in the U.S. listen to talk radio.

But Fairness? Equal Time? Reasoned discourse? Those went out the window in 1987 with - drumroll, please - President Ronald Reagan...

And the far-too-rarely bestowed BRAD BLOG "Intellectually Honest Conservative Award" goes today to David Frum, former speech writer for George W. Bush, for his article last night on "Waterloo". Here are a few money quotes:

UPDATE 3/26/10: Frum is fired by rightwing American Enterprise Institute, where he's been employed since 2003, after having the temerity to pen the above. Guess the Right isn't into that whole "liberty" and "free speech" thing as much as they pretend to be. Who knew? Details...