Working the night shift as a truck driver affords one an ample amount of time to listen to the best electronic media.

Radio. AM specifically, as the FM stations fade in and out on the open road.

My favorite show used to be Coast To Coast AM, before they became little more than an apologist for the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Seemingly in existence only to disseminate disinformation and cover up the abuses of the ruling elite. There's a reason that Jim Marrs, the man who wrote "Rule By Secrecy", hasn't been invited back on the show since 9-11. Once frequent guests who wrote of the New World Order are not welcome.

Ian Punnett, who hosted weekends for about a year, is moving on to Minnesota to host his own show. On Sunday, his final show with Coast, he had on as a guest Devon Jackson.

Jackson's book, Conspiranoia, is loaded with almost every conspiracy theory, real or imagined. Verifiable or not, rumor and innuendo, with no editorial direction.

Here's an excerpt of a review of the book at Amazon.

His choice of a guidebook format (each chapter proposing an evanescent overall conspiracy, in which all relevant paragraphs are cross-referenced by pictogram to the other conspiracy chapters) makes the material easier to grasp than a narrative like Gravitys Rainbow, but strangely numbs the unease that much of it provokes. Jacksons buzz-friendly nature demonstrates how such conspiracy culture ( at once personal, therefore unsettling) has been vitiated by the public mode of entertainment, in which myth becomes inseparable from malfeasance, the vital nature of malign conspiracy arguably reduced to simulacra. Whats missing is any effort to perform a larger, graver task: to figure out which of these malicious netherworlds of corruption might still be brought to account by an increasingly fractious, distracted citizenry.

He's good, Mr. Art Bell may someday have a rival as Chief Disinformation Officer. At one point the fact that a member of the Bush family had dinner with John Hinkley's brother the eve of Reagan's attempted assassination almost seemed to trouble him. The possibility that Bush Sr was the mastermind behind the tragedy, was shrugged at in expert fashion. The CIA-Bush connection seemed not to warrant any reflection on the events swirling about us today.

Bye bye, Ian. We hardly knew ye. Minnesotans beware, Operation Mockingbird is moving in.

The subtle propaganda from the likes of Ian Punnett is perhaps even more annoying than the blatantly partisan Barbara Simpson. A poorly disguised religious ideologue who never fails to attack liberalism or humanism at any opportunity.

In fact, I became so disgusted with the Stepford Operative one night that I switched over to the Oldies But Goodies channel.

It was like a breath of fresh air, the first song I heard was the Buffalo Springfield classic

"FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH", written by Stephen Stills.

There's something happening here

What it is ain't exactly clear

There's a man with a gun over there

Telling me I got to beware

I think it's time we stop, children, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

There's battle lines being drawn

Nobody's right if everybody's wrong

Young people speaking their minds

Getting so much resistance from behind

I think it's time we stop, hey, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

What a field-day for the heat

A thousand people in the street

Singing songs and carrying signs

Mostly say, hooray for our side

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you're always afraid

You step out of line, the man come and take you away

We better stop, hey, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

Stop, hey, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

Stop, now, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

Stop, children, what's that sound

Everybody look what's going down

I reflected on the incredible relevance still inherent in a song that was written 35 years ago. The same Right Wing power complex that ran things then are still in charge. Only this time they seem to have their domestic media on the leash of the state. Blatant flag waving propaganda is everywhere to promote this "War On Some Terrorism".

If anything, the corporate/military industrialists are even further to the right now. Barry Goldwater would be seen as a centrist by this crew.

Can you imagine at any other time, under any other circumstances, when a scandal that is the Enron-Bush connection would receive such little coverage? Why?

Simply put, because Enron and it's chief Ken Lay are linked to the Dictator. Rather inconvenient, but a little matter when they can own the headlines of the day with tales of War and Terror - and incredible timing in offsetting "bad" news like the NORC recounts and the Patriot Act hearings.

Bush stole the election? A plane falls out of the sky.

General Achtung...Attorney Ashcroft being called on Bush's Gestapo Act? A madman goes on a killing spree, reported by Joie Chen of CNN as a "mass shooting". As many as 35 dead!

Of course, much later, we find out it was 4 injured, 2 dead. Including the gunman, who reportedly shot himself.

Much, much later we find out that the madman was a Super being. He shot himself four times with a shotgun, TWICE in the head.

It's of the highest import to note WHEN CNN broke this story. At the PRECISE moment during the show Talkback Live when Bob Barr ( a Republican! That's important, it's far too inconvenient for consumption of the brownshirts who still slavishly adore Rush, Dubya, Rummy and the Free market Jesus) was about to shred the Gestapo Act to shreds. What propitious timing.

It certainly puts Walter Isaacson's pre 9-11 pilgrimage to Washington, to pledge fealty to the Bush Administration and the House Republicans, into a rather disturbing perspective. What?

Isn't it strange how Isaacson had all those major changes in personnel and content all in place, ready to roll for the tragic events of 9-11?

Who's really running things Isaacson? Has Karl Rove moved into the control room?

Then I presume it's off to Joie's place to pretend you are the master? Why'd you quietly remove her after this act of press manipulation, Walter? Was it so obvious that you felt compelled to sanitize the crime scene?

We the free people, the ones who can still think for ourselves, the meek who'll survive the mess that your complicity has helped create, yes...us! The unwashed masses, the useless eaters, we will remember.

Enron is the tip of the iceberg, more will follow. The deregulation industry is about to implode, like a cheap house of cards.

With deflation and recession ready to pounce on the populace, the reckoning will be realized. As the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, the middle class will slip back. Primarily because the middle class will not reap the rewards that the Bush Monarchy is heaping upon their Super Rich friends and supporters in a massive scheme to loot the treasury.

An overburdened, under-funded "faith based" social policy initiative will do little to stem the coming American humanitarian crisis. It's never worked before, or do you think the "dark ages" were the "good old days"?

This rather telling exchange occurred recently on CNN's crossfire with the Liberal Bill Press debating Conservative Bob Novak.

PRESS: Bob, why is giving money to the rich investing in America and giving money to the poor down the drain?

NOVAK: Because -- because we've got to separate the productive and nonproductive elements of society.

PRESS: You better watch out walking the streets when you call all those people unproductive.These well-connected billionaires must still be laughing at the "suckers" that continue to be raped and used by them.

Meanwhile, I have found a new appreciation for the much-maligned Classic Rock stations. All those old protest songs and statements of conscience are new again. What goes around comes around.

And seeing as how overloaded it is on the one side, I shudder to think of the response that will surely be unleashed.

It's the first law of physics, that every action causes an opposite and equal reaction. Eventually, when the free market fraud becomes too apparent for even the Conservative base to stomach, it'll be ugly. Real ugly.

Unless, of course, Democracy and the Free Press is outlawed; and I believe they're working on that.

At that point the new breed of activists will have a plethora of older allies joining their ranks.

Talkin' bout a revolution.

Don't you know

They're talkin' bout a revolution

It sounds like a whisper

Don't you know

They're talkin' about a revolution

It sounds like a whisper

While they're standing in the welfare lines

Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation

Wasting time in the unemployment lines

Sitting around waiting for a promotion Poor people gonna rise up

And get their share

Poor people gonna rise up

And take what's theirs

Don't you know

You better run, run, run...

Oh I said you better

Run, run, run...

Finally the tables are starting to turn

Talkin' bout a revolution

-Tracy Chapman