Jonah “The Whale” Goldberg has been taking tons of heat for the latest revision to the title of his long-awaited magnum oafus Liberal Fascism, which now bears the unashamedly preposterous subtitle “The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods.” Rumor has it that “From Hegel to Whole Foods” edged out “From Walt Whitman to Weight Watchers” by only a slim (so to speak) margin.

People have been particularly perplexed by Jonah’s notion that fair-trade shade-grown coffee somehow goes “Hand im Handschuh” with the Final Solution, so Jonah tries to explain himselff over at America’s Shittiest Website™:

Indeed, one gets the sense reading . . . some of my libertarian-reader email, that because Mackey [the owner of Whole Foods] is a libertarian . . . anything having to do with him, Whole Foods or the organic food fetish is beyond criticism. [They] might want to read, for starters, the writings of Ludwig Klages, Hitler’s Table Talk, The Nazi War on Cancer or How Green Were the Nazis before [flying] off the handle. . . .

Well, now that clears everything up, doesn’t it? Since, allegedly, the Nazis liked ecology and healthy eating, then both those things become fascist. Similar logic, of course, makes cigars communist because Castro likes to smoke them and cotton sheets racist because Klansmen like to wear them.

Of course, Jonah’s real beef with Whole Foods is that they don’t sell jelly donuts and Orange Fanta.

The problem was not the lack of fairness (though isn’t it odd that so many Republicans and a significant minority of Democrats don’t mind being viewed as anti-fairness?) but with media consolidation.

As with any industry setting up trusts, broadcast networks limit competition in a way that’s just the opposite of free market theory. By controlling the message that they claim best serves their corporate interests (read: shareholder profits), they limit what should be the freest market in any democracy, the open discussion of competing ideas.

Republicans have argued that the Democratic Party are threatening to throw conservative hosts off talk radio, which is absurd. The vote total alone makes it clear their claim is false.

But the CEOs of talk radio and television news do not base their hosting choices on who draws the biggest traffic and generates the biggest ad dollars, which shareholders should want. Based on political leanings in the country, there should be a majority providing a centrist slant, maybe 30% offering conservative views and 20% offering liberal. Instead, the country’s getting about 90% conservative, 8% liberal and 2% centrist (give or take 2 to 3 points.)

Media CEOs could provide far more profits to shareholders by correcting that disparity. But in doing so, they’d lose the political clout to influence who gets elected and protects the economic and personal interests of the mega-wealthy (read: the CEOs and corporate board members).

The airwaves are finite. There’s a limited amount of spectrum to use and it’s been accepted that the public has a legitimate concern in seeing that spectrum doled out in a way that serves the broadest public interests. Which is no longer happening.

The broadcast trusts need to be busted. More owners is the answer, not Congressional control of opinion generators. If more owners existed and if every market had at least two cable-TV providers, companies would be forced to compete for listeners and viewers and offer better content to do so. That’s how the public’s largest interests are best served.

What we currently are doing is allowing potentially great ideas to be excluded from public discussion, or at least marginalized in a way that causes some regions of the country to be treated to a small slice of available ideas.

The industry has been twisted into a propaganda network that serves the fewest ideas which mostly serve the mega-wealthy. We are being robbed of the brilliance and creative talents of great innovators, which is the path to non-competition and shoddier services.

Not only is our country being robbed of jobs to countries with cheaper labor, worse environmental and human rights standards, but our public airwaves - like our nation’s auto industry - is headed for oblivion by failing to compete, while other nations rely on tried and true methods of innovation.

We don’t need a fairness doctrine to correct the imbalance. We either need a trustbusting effort from a government acting in our interests, or we need to relabel the business segment to reflect what it’s become: the mind control industry. As long as it limits the ideas that the majority of Americans can hear and reflect upon, it continues to usurp the best interests of the overwhelming majority to benefit very few.

That’s not a free market. It’s designed to kill freedom. And it’s doing a marvelous job of it.

cross-posted at skippy and a veritable cornucopia of other community blogs.

last night skippy enjoyed the company of some of the finest bloggers in southern california at the quarterly drinking liberally get-together at the famous cock and bull pub in santa monica.

the event was coordinated by skippy’s buddy d-day, who is working closely w/the calitics team to promote end of the quarter fund-raising (tho readers of this space know how skippy feels about giving money to dems).

economic agendas aside, however, it was a fine night of fellowship and interpersonal real-time physical space blogging, which used to be called “conversation” in the old school.

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A group of Democrats made their case Thursday afternoon to cut all funding for the executive branch office of Vice President Dick Cheney on the floor of the House of Representatives. The move prompted a Republican Congressman to ask whether Cheney would get a ‘Katrina trailer’ in place of his official residence.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, I swear I’ll go to Mass every bloody day if the Veep has to serve out the rest of his term in a ‘Katrina trailer’. With no air conditioning. Or running water. In New Orleans. In the Ninth Ward. Make it so, Mary. Show us there is justice here on earth.

In addition, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington, has sent a letter to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) saying Cheney’s office will not comply with oversight by the National Archives because it is not “an agency.”

This is a great sales job, eh?

With Bruce Fein at Slate calling for it and Scott Horton at Harper’s building the case, today’s the day to do your part: Email your Senator and Congressional Rep and beg them to impeach Dick Cheney.

There is no better time to push it than today.

Let’s light up those feet with some jump, jive, wail and any kineticism that moves ya.

Brian Setzer

Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy News:

WASHINGTON - While the U.S. presses its war against insurgents linked to al Qaida in Iraq, Osama bin Laden’s group is recruiting, regrouping and rebuilding in a new sanctuary along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, senior U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement officials said.

The threat from the radical Islamic enclave in Waziristan is more dangerous than that from Iraq, which President Bush and his aides call the “central front” of the war on terrorism, said some current and former U.S. officials and experts. Bin Laden himself is believed to be hiding in the region, guiding a new generation of lieutenants and inspiring allied extremist groups in Iraq and other parts of the world.

Al Qaida, its allies in Afghanistan’s Taliban movement and Pakistani radicals “have free rein there now,” said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst who’s with the Middle East Institute, a Washington policy organization.

The remote Pakistani region “is the real heart of the war on terror, and we’re losing,” said a U.S. intelligence official who, like most of his colleagues, requested anonymity because intelligence reports on the matter are highly classified and because their pessimism conflicts with the administration’s public statements. “We took our eye off the ball when we went into Iraq.”

It’s times like this when we could use a president ot vice president who are actually in the executive branch. Sanity would be nice for a change, too.

His hand is everywhere, as if he thinks he’s the President. No, it’s clear his new branch of government is an entire religion, Cheneyanity, and he’s merely God.

Health and fish be damned. There’s a buck to be made. And by causing a one year boost to farmers, he killed the fishing industry, so he even screwed up economically.

Bow to him.

Americans oppose the war in Iraq: 67-30, the lowest support level yet.

54% say the war is not morally justified.

44% say the war is going ‘very badly’, a 5% increase in the past 10 weeks, and 46% say it’s getting worse.

63% are calling for troop withdrawals, with 39% calling for them ALL to be withdrawn. In the GOP, 42% support some level of withdrawal.

Two more GOP Senators are bailing already, Voinovich and Lugar, and September’s still two months away.

Laura Bush has started dating Ron Paul, and the First Dog, Barney, was seen pissing on Dick Cheney’s leg. A nuclear strike on the SPCA was ordered in response.