One of the favorite methods of right-wing radio hosts is to allow callers to make radical statements that the host would never want directly attributed to themselves. While far-out sentiments from the opposite side of the political spectrum would be vigorously challenged by the host, far-right vitriol is left unchallenged. A perfect example of this occurred on the January 30th edition of the John Carlson show when the topic of discussion was the recently passed gay rights legislation in Washington State:

CALLER CAROL: Hello? Hi. I have a friend who manages a large apartment complex in Redmond, and they have families there and they have people that, you know, are from different countries, more traditional, etc, and when this thing went through last week she was asked by several people that live there that have families, that said 'Are you going to now allow this?', because up until now that simply has not been acceptable. I mean, it never occurred to anybody that that would happen, etc.

So now with this her statement to them was 'Absolutely not, we'll continue the policy and we're not going to let the gay people, whether they know it or not, we're not going to do it.' These people have families and I would like for a lot of us to stop calling it sexual orientation. The behavior is perverted, it's always been perverted, it's perverted globally, it's been perverted globally for, since time began.

And so when you've got an apartment complex and you've got two gay guys you know out there, with each other hugging, and you've got families there and you know people from different parts of the country or other parts of the world or country where places are more traditional, it is, they feel like they are on First Hill here. And so to dress this thing up, to call it sexual orientation is offensive to me and I'm sure offensive to a lot of people and it is what it is.

CARLSON: Carol, thanks very much.

So after several weeks of discounting the need for job and housing protections for gays and lesbians in the state, John is confronted with solid proof that discrimination exists in a large suburban apartment complex. Unsurprisingly, that cognitive dissonance is left unchallenged and unexplored.

On the February 2nd edition of the John Carlson Show, Mr. Carlson made the following misstatement about protests in the US House of Representatives:

There are some people who think you should have a right to, uh, to demonstrate or at least express your opinion by what you wear, in the house chamber, uh in the house gallery. The answer is no, no you really don't. I don't think so.

Actually, yes, yes you really do:

"Neither guest should have been confronted about the expressive T-shirts," [Capitol Police Chief Terrance] Gainer's statement said.

I'm sure John wants to be accurate, but just doesn't have time to get the facts straight due to the demands of his new morning debate show.

From the 2/2/2006 John Carlson Show:

The Seahawks are going to win by 11 points on Sunday

Sadly, John's nearly unbroken string of wrongness combined with awful officiating, shameful pass dropping, and mystifying coaching to cause a Seahawks loss in Superbowl XL. Attentive sports fans will note that John was exactly 180 degrees wrong.

The Lesson: Whatever Carlson says, expect the exact opposite to be reality.

The key thing to remember about John Carlson is that he's a Republican first, and an ideological conservative second. In addition, he is a very useful indicator of the strategy and desires of the older non-theocratic Republican establishment. John has often been out in front in his early picks of Republican candidates that have eventually become the consensus party choice.

That is why it was so interesting to hear his discussion with Kirby Wilbur about their current favorites in the 2008 Republican presidential race, where John began the sales process for John McCain:

JOHN CARLSON: I like John McCain for 3 reasons. Number 1, John McCain will be a superb Commander in Chief. He has been right about national security. And ladies and gentlemen, John McCain's approach to how to fight the Iraq war was vindicated, I believe, by what has happened since. It was John McCain who said flood the zone with half a million troops and destroy the guerrillas before they can start an insurgency. I believe McCain was right. Second, ... I also think he has bailed out the President, literally saved his career twice.

He did it in 2000, when after an embittered loss in South Carolina, the primary, ended his campaign, he could have sat on the sidelines. Instead, he barnstormed the country with Bush. And Bush, barely by the skin of his teeth, won that race...

Third, I believe that he has been carrying the President's water on National Security in the United States Congress and before the national media, and I give him credit for that.

My final reason for supporting McCain is cultural. John McCain is an outsider to what I call the creeping corporate Republicanism. The relationship between the culture of the Republican congress and the lobbyists on K Street. We need someone who wants to slay that dragon, I mean a bombthrower, an outsider who really does want to end that. And I think John McCain is exactly the kind of guy who will do that.

A great one term, short term President, because you're right, he'd be 72 years old.

The thing most surprising about this is that McCain has always been one of talk radio's biggest Republican bogeymen. The main reason is due to his work in campaign finance reform. But it is also a consequence of McCain not properly falling in line with the mindless Bushism of the last 5 years. Since the start of the war in Iraq, McCain has been going on the Sunday talkshows and openly criticizing Rumsfeld and the other civilian leaders at the pentagon. This obviously didn't work for the typical right-wing radio listener who can't abide anything but sunny stay-the-course talk about Iraq.

In fact, this is the first time I've heard Carlson admit that many of Bush's Iraq critics are correct: the administration has screwed up the war from the beginning by committing too few troops and without a workable strategy to win. John has been especially protective of Rumsfeld in the past, vocally supporting the defense transformation theories that directly spawned the flawed Iraq strategy.

This appears to be more than the usual case of a talk radio host conveniently changing his deeply held beliefs. It appears to be the first local indication of the party establishment buying into a McCain ticket in 2008.

As we prove so often here, the opinions of right-wingers often end up on the wrong side of the facts. Luckily for them, they have a bag of tricks to employ whenever they have an opposing caller that makes inconvenient factual statements. One of John Carlson's favorite methods is to make aggressive demands for a caller to produce specific citations for facts that have been widely reported by the news media. This quickly becomes a losing proposition for the typical caller who is on a cell phone and thus lacks such minute details.

A good example of this occurred on the February 15th edition of the John Carlson show when caller made the following statement regarding the Vice President's hunting accident:

CALLER: We all know that he has an alcohol problem. He's had two DUI's in his lifetime.

CARLSON: No no no no. We don't know that about Dick Cheney at all.

CALLER: Yeah we do. We know it's a fact that he has a problem with alcohol, and that he's been stopped twice for driving under the influence of alcohol.

CARLSON: When did that happen? When did that happen?

CALLER: Within the last 20 years.

CARLSON: No, you don't know what you're talking about and you can't cite it either.

Actually, it's been publicly known for years that Cheney had two DUI arrests in his younger years:

Cheney first privately disclosed the arrests in 1989, after he had been nominated for Secretary of Defense. According to an account in Bob Woodward's "The Commanders," Cheney told members of the Senate Armed Services committee about the DWI arrests during a closed confirmation hearing.

Unlike a casual caller, a talk show host spends a large chunk of his day doing show prep, including fairly detailed research on the topics of the day. It becomes pretty hard to believe that a host could be so consistently ignorant of the facts that are contrary to his own opinions.

Is it possible that someone as knowledgeable about politics as John Carlson was unaware of this? Possible, yes. Likely, no.

On February 28th John Carlson gave complete control of his 2nd hour to David Horowitz, who was pushing his new book on college professors gone wild. In the 30 minutes that Horowitz was on the air, Carlson asked maybe a half-dozen softball questions and made a few statements of fawning praise. The rest of the time in the show was handed over to Horowitz to filibuster on his crackpot theories of how unknown professors hidden in the bowls of academia are an existential threat to the country.

Carlson allowed his guest to make a number of unfounded allegations against David Barash, a psychology professor at the University of Washington. A choice example:

HOROWITZ: David Barash is in violation of academic freedom standards and professional standards at the University of Washington, and at present there's no way to hold him to account.

This is a classic situation where John Carlson allows a fellow right winger to make personal attacks and outrageous claims without any attempt at clarification, investigation, or even a demand for specific examples of the alleged behavior. If a host was interested in providing listeners with the truth, he would be expected to ask actual follow up questions. In this case, one would expect actual first-hand evidence from Professor Barash's students or his peers in the faculty that would prove that he inappropriately forces his own political views on his classes.

Unfortunately for listeners, today was not a day where Carlson felt like providing any actual value to his audience. Perhaps he should rename the show "The Random Radical Right Bookselling Hour".

Readers who want some actual facts on David Barash can refer to very good article in today's Seattle Times.

The last segment of the March 3rd, 2006 John Carlson show was devoted to a discussion of how the American public is so poorly informed about the President's plan to turn several US ports over to a corporation owned by the United Arab Emirates. John stated that as he's become more educated about the port issue, he's more and more in favor of it. And just to drive home his previous discussion of how bad US car companies are, he make the following statement:

JOHN CARLSON: There is no American company big enough to do this, to assume operation of uh, terminal operations of six major US ports. There's only a few firms that can do it, and they're all foreign.

Evidently John's education isn't quite complete. It seems he overlooked SSA Marine, a very large American company that operates 57 terminals around the US, and 8 terminals overseas. Even more embarrassing is the fact that this company has their headquarters just a couple of miles away from John's broadcast booth.

It's such a shame that talk show hosts have such uninformed opinions.

Josh Marshall's new website had an interesting piece earlier this week that pointed out how that maverick reformer John McCain had recently hired a rather dirty Republican operative. And as luck would have it, Senator McCain swung into Seattle today to promote the futile campaign of the Republican candidate for the Washington State senate race. Somewhere in between fundraisers the campaign finance reformer found time to stop by and help a local right-wing radio host with a different effort: the campaign to sell McCain to the local Republican base.

One clever caller decided to take advantage of McCain's appearance to try and get some "straight talk" on the senator's recent hire:

CALLER: Thanks, I had a question for the senator. For a reformer, I'm kind of curious why he would hire a guy like Terry Nelson as a senior advisor.

Here's a guy who was actually in the indictment of Delay on his money laundering charges. When he was at the RNC, he agreed to take the corporate contributions from Delay's PAC and then recycle them back into the Republican congressional races.

And he was also, this guy Nelson was also the supervisor for James Tobin, who was the guy convicted last year for helping jam the Democratic get-out-the-vote phone lines in New England a couple years ago.

So I'm curious why would you hire someone with such a shady background?

MCCAIN: None of those charges are true.

CALLER: Do you believe what was actually written in the indictment from Texas?

MCCAIN: No.

CARLSON: All right.

[nervous laughter]

MCCAIN: I will check it out. But I've never heard of such a thing. I know that he was a grassroots organizer for President Bush year 2000 and 2004, and had a very important job in the Bush campaign as late as 2004, but the other charges I will go and look and see if any of them are true, but I've never heard of them before.

Audio

Isn't it amazing how a few blogs can know more about McCain's senior advisor than McCain himself? I'll leave a few references that should speed up the good senator's "research", courtesy of TPM Media:

• The Delay indictment that lays out Nelson's role in money laundering is available here
• The witness list that shows Nelson's connection to the phone jamming scam is available here

The John Carlson slow-pitch was in full effect on his March 23rd show when his special guest was Congressman Dave Reichert from the 8th congressional district of Washington State. It's an amazing thing to hear: the normally sharp and confrontational Carlson goes all soft and cuddly in front of a GOP politician, limiting his range of questioning to things like "Congressman, how much do you love cute puppies?".

These fluffy interviews are always a nice event for the politician in the guest chair. It gives them an unparalleled opportunity to come on and spout Republican-friendly facts and numbers without any fear of being called out by the host. For example:

REICHERT: The other thing that I'm hearing from people is let's get control of this budget. Let's reduce our spending. Let's reduce the deficit. But people don't always hear the good news about what's happening. You know, last year we passed a budget that was a 1% across the board cut. There was $40 billion worth of cuts in the budget.

Luckily for the congressman, Carlson didn't skip a beat and segued into a hard-hitting discussion of just how good the economy is, what with all those unfilled orchard jobs available over in Eastern Washington. One might expect an informed host to be armed with some range of basic facts to prevent any unnecessary bamboozlement of their audience. For example, a simple google search might reveal a Congressional Budget Office document that lists the 2005 actual budget as $2.154 billion, and the 2006 projected budget as $2.313 billion. A little math reveals a budget increase of $159 billion, or 7.4%, which is quite a difference from a $40 billion decrease.

It's such a shame that right-wing radio listeners so often miss out on the "good news" that keeps coming out on the budget, Iraq, etc.

On the March 27th edition of the John Carlson Show, the host wrapped up a discussion of illegal immigration by making a baseless charge that Mexican immigrants are driving an increase in the crime rate:

CARLSON: I think what bothers people is not that we have Mexicans up here working, but that we have a lot of them staying, and we've seen a rise in crime and the affect on schools and other things, and taxpayer dollars and things like that.

There's nothing new about using immigrants as scapegoats for a variety of society's ills, but Carlson managed to break entirely new ground by accusing them of causing a problem that doesn't even exist. Since the mid-nineties there's been nothing but good news about the crime rate in Washington State. In fact, statistics show that violent crime decreased by 30% from 1992 to 2000, a period that saw sustained increases in illegal immigration. Property crime fell by 16% over the same timeframe.

More interestingly, a number of different studies have found that there is no causal relationship between immigration and crime. In fact, those studies have shown that border states actually have a lower crime rate than non-border states.

Additionally, a Harvard professor recently editorialized that increased immigration in the 1990's had a direct impact in lowering the crime rate.

It's so unfortunate how the facts tend to get in the way of the right-wing's divide-and-conquer strategies.

The March 30th edition of the John Carlson Show featured a golden-oldies throwback to the great entitlement cost bamboozlement of 2005. In a discussion about welfare reform, John made the following dubious statement:

CARLSON: Here is one very scary statistic that requires us to start thinking about unthinkable ideas. Right now, federal spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is nine percent of the nations economy. Nine percent of gross domestic product. By 2050, in 45 years, 44 years, at current growth rates we will go from spending 9% of GDP to 28% of GDP.

Unfortunately, John failed to specify a source for his information (something he would demand of a caller on a cell phone who had different numbers). But a simple internet search brings up two very official sources that dispute his bleak version of the future:

The official 2005 report on the financial status of Social Security and Mediare gives a 75-year outlook on the cost of those programs. For medicaid costs, the CBO has a handy forecast from 2003. Those combine to give the following:

Program	%GDP in 2050
Social Security:	9%
Medicare:	8.3%
Medicaid:	3.2%
Total:	20.5%

So Carlson is off by almost 8% vs. the current forecast of a Republican federal government. And that's assuming a very pessimistic outlook on the future of the US economy (let's call it the "Republicans Stay In Charge" forecast). The Social Security Administration estimates that long-term productivity growth will average 1.6% per year, which is lower than the post-World War II average of 1.8%, and significantly lower than the average annual average of 2.7% in the period of 1995-2005 (source: Department of Labor).

In fact, if the low productivity forecasts and the absurdly low estimate of future population growth are brought into line with historical trends, less pessimistic economists have made the case that we may not have an entitlement problem at all. Add back the trillions spent on Bush's tax cuts to the rich, and then we're talking about a completely different future.

When I first heard that John Carlson would discuss the exit of Tom Delay on the 4/4/2006 edition of the John Carlson Show, my first emotion was one of regret. Not for Delay, but regret that I wasn't keeping track of John's statements a year ago when every conservative was singing the praises of good old Tom. I fully expected to hear John submit to reality and disown Delay as a bad guy who has done bad things. But that regret soon faded as I realized that John was going to closely adhere to the message of Delay's PR team.

CARLSON: I think Tom Delay has always seen himself as an asset to his party. That he is in congress not to make a buck but to make a difference. That he really believes in things bigger than himself. And that he realized, not by any one thing, but more the proverbial death of a thousand cuts, that he was no longer an asset and that he could be a liability to Republicans as they struggle to maintain a majority in the house of representatives.

You heard that right: Tom Delay is a selfless patriot.

Those three Delay aides that are facing criminal charges? They're totally unrelated to Delay's high ethical standards and excellent judge of character.

That his closest and dearest friend Jack Abramoff is facing 9 1/2 to 11 years in prison? That's just another anomaly in Delay's otherwise squeaky clean career.

That indictment for breaking campaign finance laws in Texas?

CARLSON: I think the indictments brought by Ronnie Earl, the partisan anti-Delay, anti-Republican DA are without merit and they aren't going to go anywhere.

John Carlson will truly go to any length to hold on to the official party line, even when that line is tied to a pig that's pulling him face-first through the mud.

John Carlson has latched onto a new argument that he evidently thinks is a home run in the immigration debate. In fact, he's so proud of it that he has used it in almost every one of his daily immigration rants delivered over the last several weeks. Here is a sample from the April 10th edition of the John Carlson Show: (Audio)

CARLSON: Every time I talk to someone who has a liberal attitude about illegal immigration, I say name a pocket of America, anywhere, any neighborhood, any community, that is better off because large numbers of illegals live there. The schools are better? After all they pay taxes right? The schools are better? There's less crime, it's safer, right? Since they're in a hurry to assimilate, everyone can communicate well? No. It's not the case, and they know it. And they don't care.

And truthfully, it probably is a clever argument if your goal is to energize and further radicalize the right-wing base, because it is an almost perfect clone of the kind of race-baiting talk that has been in use for hundreds of years. People like David Neiwert have had some excellent pieces recently about how various organs of the right-wing noise machine are being used as tools to spread extremist ideas, and talk radio has provided some perfect examples with the steady drumbeat against latino immigrants.

Think about it: there's a single word in Carlson's quote that you can replace and it becomes an unquestionably racist statement. Just transport yourself to the post-civil-war South and replace "illegal" with "former slave", or in the 1950's with "black". Seems like a perfect speech to convince white voters to segregate and restrict the freedom of that scary group recently freed from bondage. Or replace "illegal" with "Jew", and picture yourself at any number of anti-Jewish pogroms over the last 2000 years.

In fact, rather than try in vain to complete Carlson's negative proof, callers should turn the question around and ask him to present specific proof of a community that is in desperate straits due to immigration. After all, if it's such a huge problem then he should be able to name at least one. Then we could have a real analysis and debate about some specifics rather than his wild generalizations.

Of course Carlson would angrily pound his fists and claim that he's not racist, he just wants to make sure that laws aren't broken. But it doesn't take more than a careful reading of that one quote or a few random minutes of his show to realize that in this case the law is a distinctly secondary concern. The vast majority of the right-wing anxiety about immigration is cultural. They fear a large group of newcomers that differ from themselves in terms of language, customs, and yes, skin-color. And so the call rings out: "Prove it! Prove that they aren't destroying the very fabric of our community!". After all, a group so dangerous and insidious leaves us with no choice but to get rid of them.

In that context, the word "illegal" is nothing but a carefully crafted code for "Mexican", and Carlson's clever argument is revealed in all of its race-baiting glory.

The Friday, April 28th episode of the John Carlson Show featured a passionate and highly misleading defense of Rush Limbaugh against his reported arrest and plea deal:

CARLSON: We will once again clear the air about some of the irresponsible reports you're hearing on radio and newspaper and internet that Rush Limbaugh was arrested again. No, what happened was the case against him has been brought to a conclusion. A conclusion that will result in the count that was officially brought against him today being dismissed in 18 months. It was all part of a plea deal, and the plea deal went into effect today, and you're hearing some elements of the media who are rushing ahead and saying 'oh, he's arrested again'. No, that is not what's happened. The case has come to a conclusion, that is what has happened.

Unfortunately, Carlson's spin is at odds with the facts. According to the Palm Beach Post:

And according to a jail official, Limbaugh's surrender on a warrant and his booking at the jail certainly is an arrest.

With a dad who is a former policeman and having sponsored several crime initiatives, John Carlson is no stranger to the way the criminal justice system works. He must know that someone who voluntarily surrenders to authorities is still "arrested". Unfortunately he chose to deliberately mislead his listeners in order to defend another conservative, and very troubled talk radio host.

Right-wing immigration opponents know that they can't find success for their agenda unless they can make the issue seem like an existential threat. It's the only way they can sell it to the average American who doesn't have a deep cultural or racial aversion to latinos. The most popular choice of threat is crime, with visions of out-of-control immigrants breaking into houses, stealing cars, and generally wreaking societal mayhem.

On the May 10th edition of The John Carlson Show, the host continued with his previous efforts to blame immigrants for a supposed crime wave:

CARLSON: Pick a high crime urban area like Hilltop, or like Washington DC nationally, most of those people are here legally. When you look at some of the crimes, you know Yakima made the top 10, the 10th leading city for car theft in terms of auto theft rates. Much of that crime is being committed by people who shouldn't be here in the first place.

Once again Carlson has made a blanket statement that pins "much" of the auto theft problem in Yakima on illegal immigrants. I suppose the logic is that since Yakima doesn't have many black folks (unlike the Hilltop neighborhood in Tacoma or Washington DC), the only remaining minorities that could be responsible are the latinos that have moved to Yakima to work in agriculture.

But while that may explain Carlson's frame of mind, it doesn't come close to proving his case. What data does he use to drive his conclusion? Surely he must have some hard proof if he is going to blame "much" of the crime in a specific location on a specific group of people.

I won't be holding my breath waiting for John to present that proof.