TOBY PETZOLD

How it works, see, is that when your shit doesn’t sell, then you wind up getting sold —at cut rates:

Bankrupt and about to lose Al Franken, its marquee star, Air America Radio is set to change hands for the bargain price of $4.25 million, according to new court documents. The sales figure was disclosed in a purchase agreement filed yesterday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.

Something that is underappreciated about the free market is that it’s really a manifestation of democratic principles. Products and services come and go because people have choices. They can choose economy or quality or convenience or whatever else. And people live by their choices, for good or ill, but they do keep on living so long as they make more correct choices than wrong ones.

That’s why this country is a success while Communist countries —which the anti-American Left fetishize for their supposed equalities— are failures. Because a lack of choice is a monopoly is a dictatorship.

Is it really so that talk radio in our country is a monopoly of the Right? Air America started with that premise —but are coming to the conclusion that humorless, uninformed, and hugely angry Leftist shit doesn’t sell ad time (even if there is [a Democratic mandate] out there).

So what’s going on? It must be that Air America is subject to the same market forces and personal choices as any other venue for political speech. Other ideologies and perspectives are succeeding in commercial radio —so why aren’t they?

I think it’s because the political and economic choices people make are informed by a sense of morality. It’s that individual moral choice that makes the “amorality” of the market so pitiless for those whose own moral and ideological positions are devalued thereby. Air America and its listeners are a demonstration of this: people whose lives revolve around partisan hatred and anti-Americanism. Therefore, in a country of sober, hard-working, and charitable patriots, the ungrateful speech of the anti-American hippie fringe cannot compete in a free market because they are the lesser moral choice.

That’s why Bill Moyers is funded by viewers like you. Thank you.

I’ll be damned! Who knew that parricide can also be spelled p-a-r-a-s-i-t-e?

This may be the first thing I’ve ever seen from Salon.com that didn’t have to be liberated from behind their little wall, so enjoy:

The right-wing blogosphere has gotten its scalps — John Edwards has fired the two controversial bloggers he recently hired to do liberal blogger outreach, Salon has learned.

The bloggers, Amanda Marcotte, formerly of Pandagon, and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, had come under fire from right-wing bloggers for statements they had previously made on their respective blogs. A statement by the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue, which called Marcotte and McEwan “anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots,” and an accompanying article on the controversy in the New York Times this morning, put extra pressure on the campaign.

I haven’t read enough of Marcotte or McEwan to know how valid the claim of anti-Catholic bigotry is, but I do know that trying to scrub your archives is enormously stupid. Not just because it’s an act of political cowardice, but because it won’t work —and Marcotte should have already known that.

And why did Edwards’ people hire these women in the first place? To show they’ve got street cred with the Left? I guess that would’ve done it, right? Now all they’ve got is a reputation for not knowing enough about the blogosphere to even hire the right people and for caving in to a little pressure from those they think are the wrong people.

Edwards should’ve hired me, instead, so that I could tell everybody that he’s one of the most superficial politicians of my lifetime. Oh, and that he’s really, really sorry about voting to authorize the use of force against Iraq.

Nah. He’ll do that himself. Just point him to the nearest TV camera.

What a surprise. I just saw the first three Super Bowl ads (from scrimmage) and —guess what. They were all full of stupid asshole violence.

Now, I don’t mean to be some annoying Andrea Dworkin of violence in TV commercials —especially on a sacred day such as this— but is this boring brutality necessary? It’s funny to strike a friend in the head with a rock because you wanted the last beer? It’s enjoyable to see a beautiful woman almost get struck by a car and knocked to her knees?

Just fuck off. There’s millions of degenerate alcoholics out there already who don’t need any more “ideas” on Super Ashura Bowl Sunday.

I’m watching John Edwards talking to Tim Russert and I cannot believe how phony this guy is. Russert’s not even trying to hand him his ass and Edwards is just reeling.

Edwards is why the Democrats failed to take the White House in 2005. Not because of anything he said —for nothing he said was anything more superficial or opportunistic than what his would-be boss was saying— but because he represents John Kerry’s poor judgement. Kerry picked Edwards as his running mate because he was a nice hair-do (if your notion of an attractive white guy-haircut was influenced by the Fisher-Price line of male action figures, circa 1970). If Kerry had instead chosen Dick Gephardt, there is a very strong likelihood that they would be in the White House today. Every Democrat knows this, but can’t bring himself to admit it. They’d rather mutter darkly about Ohio and Diebold.

Edwards’ stupidest refrain these days —and in this interview— is that his Senate vote to authorize the action against Iraq was a mistake. Although he “takes responsibility” for it, he also claims that the intelligence on Saddam’s weapons of mass murder programs was so wrong that he was hornswoggled into voting for military action. He also claims that he didn’t have any confidence in Bush’s competence to conduct the war.

So he gave him his vote to do so, anyway?

Edwards, who also wants the troops gone yesterday and for funding to be cut as another means of ending our involvement in the war, needs to force himself to remember that our Government’s official policy of supporting regime change in Iraq didn’t begin with George W. Bush —and that it wasn’t only about his weapons programs that we chose to invade Iraq and topple Saddam.

Saying you were tricked into voting for war —as though there were only one basis on which to wage it, anyway— is the same as saying that your judgement is poor and that you do not deserve to be President.