For those who heard John Stossel on Air America today

The hosts of Morning Sedition unfortunately got their asses kicked by Stossel, which is understandable because he's a professional propagandist.

They allowed him to make his phony Ayn Rand style philosophy sound half-way legitimate, which is the same sin that ABC News committs every time they have him on and call him a journalist.

I don't think any outlet can be excused for having John Stossel on, without disclosing this info, collected by MediaTransparency.org, about Stossel's connections with conservative think tanks, and about Stossel's and ABC News's ethical lapses:

http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/jstossel.htm

He's smooth. The benevolent hand of the free market concept is easy to dispel with the facts in front of you.

there are plenty of people, however, that could cut through his shit with ease, talk credibly about the implications of the radical republican agenda. Sanders, like I said, or even a lot of mainstream dems.

crap is Amy Goodman. She would call him on his lies and exaggerations. Trouble is she will probably never be allowed on Air America because she does not toe the party line.

She also challenged President Clinton when he called into her show one day last year, so I am sure she is not on Al Franken's Hannukkah card list.

she's been on at least one Air America show, maybe two. I've also heard Arundhati Roy, who does not toe the party line either.

I heard this too and was embarassed. I'm sure there are a lot of economists that can argue this one, but the hosts of the show weren't really prepared. One of the ideas he kept going back to was if you don't have companies do these things, the government will have to do it, and the hosts kept falling into that trap. Liberals generally don't argue for the government making loafers! But when they do they shouldn't pollute, harm people with defective products, etcetera. They should have been arguing with that instead of falling into this trap he kept laying about private versus public ownership of stuff.

The other thing was that he was arguing for a system which even I think is probably the best there is generally, but fails in myriad specific ways that should be regulated (through things like environmental protection and workers' rights for example). He could always go back to the argument "generally it's the best system" when the hosts couldn't provide very specific examples of places it lacks.

What's worse that this is that the system you admire no longer exists. The abuses and failures are no longer just a lot of specifics, but are now systemic and institutionalized. When the country engages in dialog about self-regulation vs. regulation by executive appointees from industry, then all that's at stake is the type is window dressing we prefer for what amounts to fascism.

'Conflict of interest' has exited the national lexicon, even among liberals. The absense makes any pretense at watch-dogging and regulation a complete sham.

Your discomfort with the discussion is a good sign, but merely whining about specifc issues is a very weak response that is sadly typical of American liberals. Stessel won with principles, carefully framed in the right context. The least you or AA can do is fire back with some principles of your own; AA could have attacked his public vs. private arguments as black-and-white thinking and warned that in either camp such arguments are a sign of extremism.

Jon Stossel looks like Burt Reynolds circa Bandit.

One of the hosts, the British woman, used as an example, what if I'm in a small town and all I have to choose from is McDonalds and Taco Bell, how can I get something nutrious to eat. And Stossel said, go to a grocery store, no one's forcing you to go to McDOnalds. I'm sure there were better examples of the need for consumer protection they could have made.

they easily could have refuted this ridiculous cartoon philosophy, which Stossel himself doesn't believe. It doesn't stand up to serious analysis, just look at history, back to the robber baron era, which is the logical outcome of the things these people are advocating.

And getting involved in the drug stuff was a big mistake, played right into Stossel's hands, made him look enlightened. And the cultural stuf is just a sideshow anyway, the real agenda is the stuff about money.

Start with the phone lines example. I worked in corporate AT&T in the 80's. Their philosophy was that since they were allowed to make a 12% profit over their costs, the more they spend, the more they make. The deliberately wasted money. Instead of arguing about Verizon and remembering the good old days of AT&T, when they were a monopoly, they should have remembered it was 10 dollars a month to rent a princess phone. Long distance used to cost a dollar a minute and you could not own your own phone or lines, just rent. When the government broke up the monopoly, it made life more confusing, but much more affordable and it pushed technology up a notch. I sincerely doubt we would have mobile phones if there was still the monolith AT&T.

As far as the MacDonald's and Taco bell arguments - argue that the character of a nation is being homogenized by these chains or that the government is required to inspect our meat and insure that labels are correct on food. As a person with food allergies, I have to read labels closely.

I really did lose respect for the morning group.

"What if I'm in a small town and all I have to choose from is McDonalds and Taco Bell" . . .

He adds a third choice where there was none.

THERE WERE ONLY TWO F-ING CHOICES, YET HE ADDS A THIRD ONE.

In essence, you were forced to eat at only one of two choices.

First we have Darryl "Chickenhawk Redneck" Worley then this!

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Never. So why does our side allow right wingers on?

I heard Stossel plugging his book on a local Dallas radio show about two weeks ago and the hosts ripped him to shreds. He basically admitted that he doesn't believe in the "liberal media" myth and that the subtitle of the book was stuck in by the publisher to cash in on the sales trends.

Damn, I wish I remember the name of that radio show.

Anybody stupid enough to have stossel should really do their homework,he once used a snake-oil treatment for cancer back about the turn of the century(1900) to make present day science look bad. Somebody should challenge him on stupid stuff like that.
The least AA could do is have really good LIBERAL brains on as an alternative to right wing talk radio.

Jon was making fun of the "free market", and Stossel almost fell off the sofa. These talk show hosts need to do a little background research and brush up on their responses. Maybe we could all do a collective DU wish and give them a good liberal arts education.

A year or so ago a relative was going on at a family gathering about Libertarian values and I just politely looked at him with eyebrows raised, and he stopped almost mid sentence, saying "That doesn't sound very realistic, does it?" Well, he's young, but I think thoughts of the wife and new baby gave him pause.

she would have kicked his ass!

Years ago, Stossel got into an argument by claiming that wrestling wasn't "real" in the face of a wrestler. The guy - who was an athlete even if wrestling wasn't a real sport - slapped him around, causing Stossel to lose hearing in one ear.

He needs a verbal, not physical, smackdown that calls him on his pretentions and reveals his "free-market" philosophy for the bag of hot air that it is. If, for example, Ms. Rhodes would like a regular feature to keep listerns tuning in, she could respond to his regular Tuesday-night "Give Me A Break!" feature on "20/20" with a Wednesday afternoon "Let's Break John Stossel!" report.