Blue Gal and Driftglass of The Professional Left Podcast sit down with Hal Sparks (@HalSparks), who will be touring with John Fugelsang on the "Politics, Sex and Religion Tour" starting in Santa Fe on July 6. You can follow @PSRTour on Twitter for future show dates.

Politics, Sex and Religion turn out to be an excellent set of topics for a podcast conversation, too! Thanks to Hal Sparks for taking the time to sit down with us.

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My buddy, comedian John Fugelsang, is filling in for Stephanie Miller while she's on vacation. Friday morning, Fugelsang had on your favorite Crooks and Liars managing editor (favorite or at least in the top three*), yours truly. It was an all out riot. I'll be calling in a bunch next week too. So tune in!

Also, yes, Fugelsang is married - so stop asking.

*Crooks and Liars has had only three managing editors.

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Neil Cavuto has had enough, and doggone it, we should just quit the introspection and blame the crazy. Because you know, John Wilkes Booth didn't have talk radio, or chalkboards, or Fox News, or MSNBC, but he still shot Abraham Lincoln.

Yes, he really said that, which means to me that he also hasn't cracked a history book in a long, long time.

Forget Cavuto's effort to make us think insanity happens in a bubble outside the world we live in. His John Wilkes Booth analogy falls on its face right out of the gate, because John Wilkes Booth may not have had talk radio, but he did have access to the Secret Service, and the high echelons of the Confederacy.

John Wilkes Booth was a spy for the Confederate cause. As an actor, he had access to people and places others might not have and used his skills to shuttle information back to Confederate generals throughout the war. He wasn't crazy; he was a traitor.

This was what he believed:

"This country was formed for the white not for the black man. And looking upon African slavery from the same stand-point, as held by those noble framers of our Constitution, I for one, have ever considered it, one of the greatest blessings (both for themselves and us) that God ever bestowed upon a favored nation."

Not all that far off from some things we've heard in the past two years, is it?

Booth's association with the Confederacy was not recent, either. He had functioned as a double agent at the hanging of John Brown. He donned a militia uniform and assumed the role of guard, to make sure there were no attempts to rescue Brown ahead of the hanging. That was in 1859. Throughout the war, he was an ardent sympathizer and spy, and when he saw an opportunity, he aimed his gun and assassinated the President of the United States because he (violently) did not agree with him.

Not because he was "nutcase." This wasn't an "isolated incident."

What an unfortunate analogy for Cavuto to make. I can't think of one more inappropriate than that one, given Booth's role and attitude toward Lincoln. Booth was as sane as the rest of us. He was simply angry that the North had prevailed -- so angry he plotted and succeeded at assassinating Lincoln.

And why did he choose Booth? Because there was talk radio and hate talk when JFK and RFK were assassinated? Because there is talk radio and hate talk now? Because there are many, many similarities between the toxicity of today's airwaves and those of the 1960's?

But no. Instead he chooses one of the most sane and rational assassins in American history to argue his case that Saturday's shooting was just another lunatic gone crazy.

That sucking sound you hear is Dr. Laura's career being flushed down the toilet. She might stay on the radio, but she won't really have any credibility with anyone but the racist masses.

On August 10th, Dr. Laura responded to an African-American caller who was offended that her white husband allowed racist conversation to pass without calling it out by telling said caller that her examples of racist conversation were not racist, that she was too sensitive, and then proceeded to use the "n-word" over and over again in a string.

Not content to stop there, she berated the listener until said listener hung up on her, then went off for another three minutes or so about how sensitive people are about race, and how "black speak" allows for use of the n-word with no problem.

Someone forgot her happy pills, I think. (Thanks to Media Matters for capturing the full audio.)

Here's the first segment:

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David and I joined KFPK's host Maria Amoudian for almost thirty minutes discussing our new book Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane.

The show airs on KPFK Radio 90.7 FM in Los Angeles and 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, and on WPRR Radio 1680 AM in Grand Rapids, MI.

It'll be available on podcast pretty soon also.

And don't forget to buy our book.

I'll also be speaking at a fundraiser Friday night in Beverly Hills for the Hollywood Alliance at 7:30 PM.

The LA Progressive writes:

John Amato Speaking at LA Media Reform Fundraiser in Beverly Hills on July 16 John Amato Reading
Friday, July 16, 7:30 p.m., in Beverly Hills
(Address available after RSVP)
RSVP to lamrg@commoncause.org
Suggested donation of $35 includes signed copy of “Over the Cliff

The LA Media Reform group is sponsoring this event in collaboration with the LA Progressive and Alliance Hollywood.

Please email them for the info and click over to the LA Progressive for more details.

TBogg: Decision-making and why it fails.

The Non Sequitur: That's icky, your argument is invalid.

The Progressive Puppy: West Virginia gay man assaulted by police.

skippy: RIP Robert Byrd.

Annals of Journalism: The 119 words you can't use on the radio... Embrace the wonk... Political analysis and BS... Thanks for protecting us from relevant information... Clowns to the left of me, jokers on the right... Conservative exclusion is a right-wing delusion... The Atlantic has found its perfect idiot... Debunking a "Christian nationalist pseudo-historian”... BP "reporters" give flowery account of disaster... Unknown parties kill jobless aid in Senate... A message to Jeffrey Goldberg's anonymous sources... Mencken would get the boot, too.

Last guest post by Batocchio. Thanks! Next up is Blue Gal. Temporarily e-mail tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail.

If only it were this easy for FOX News to fire Glenn Beck. Still, I'll take progress wherever I can get it.

Arizona FOX affiliate KYCA fired Steve Blair today over the mural controversy painted on a wall at Miller Valley School. Actually, he wasn't fired over the controversy. He was fired for creating the controversy.

When asked about what his objections were to the mural, he replied:

"Number one, it was defacing a public building of a historic nature on one of the most heavily traveled roadways in Prescott, Arizona without any edification of what the mural was supposed to be, what it stood for, and it's a piece of public art that I don't support. Not there. Somewhere else, maybe yes, but not there.

And based upon the fact that nobody bothered to let the community know what that mural was supposed to depict made it very difficult to buy in on -- um -- what the mission statement of that mural was supposed to be. Plus it was too big, too in-your-face, wrong place, wrong time."

Defacing? Really? That particular verb, especially when taken in concert with what he says about the school mural project in general, really exposes him clearly.

It's difficult to transcribe everything he said, but at some point he listed the other three murals that, with the school mural, make up the Prescott Mural Project as being perfectly acceptable. The site is down under heavy traffic right now, but if it comes back up, you can see all the murals at http://www.prescottmurals.com/. The Miller School project was the last of four.

During the conversation about his confusion on what the Miller school mural is supposed to represent, he said:

"[It] looks like a guy black guy brown guy holding a stick and a big flowers and stuff, what was it supposed to mean? I don't know what it's supposed to mean, I really don't. If it means going green, what does that mean?

Not everything is okay, and not everything should be looked at as "I have to be politically correct...If I don't like public art like the mural, I have the right to say I don't like it...The hard part is where do people draw the line of standing up to what's right or wrong."

"I want somebody to tell me why I should like that. I like that one at the library. I like the one on the parking garage..."

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This mural is painted on the side of an elementary school in Prescott, Arizona. Recently completed, it features the faces of children who attend the school, but not everyone is pleased with the outcome.

Prescott City Councilman Steve Blair, who also has a daily radio show on Fox News-owned radio station KYCA-1490-AM wants the mural taken down completely. He claims it depicts an agenda, an indoctrination of public school children. Somehow I do not think this has much to do with indoctrination nor do I think he really cares much about public schools. Especially public schools with brown children in them.

Instead of removing it, the school principal asked the artists to lighten the faces of the children in the picture. This request follows harassment of those same artists by drive-by wingers flinging racial epithets at them while they were painting it. Welcome to Arizona.

Lighten the skin tone on the faces of the children in the picture, because we cannot have brown children representing the children of Prescott.

Hear that, Arizona? That's the sound of the term racist being slapped all over your state whether it's deserved or not. That's the sound of Rupert Murdoch bringing his peculiar brand of thought-cleansing to your backyards. Do not, under any circumstances, make brown children look beautiful without changing their skin color.

Via Wonkette:

And these children, for the past several months as this happy mural encouraging “green transportation” was being painted by local artists, have been treated to the city of Prescott’s finest citizens driving by and yelling “Nigger” and “Spic” at this school wall painted with pictures of the children who attend the school. And this has been encouraged by a city councilman, Steve Blair, who uses his local radio talk show to rile up these people and demand the mural be destroyed.

A few more gems from City Councilman Limbaugh wannabe Blair:

"I'm not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it's a word I can't stand." Daily Courier

"I will tell you depicting a black guy in the middle of that mural, based upon who's President of the United States today ..." Daily Courier

"To depict the biggest picture on the building as a Black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?" AZCentral.com

Of course, when Blair is directly accused of stirring up racial controversy, he cries innocence in the time-honored tradition of Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing loudmouths who immediately decry the accusation of racism while living it straight up for all to see.

"Personally, I think it's pathetic," he says. "You have changed the ambience of that building to excite some kind of diversity power struggle that doesn't exist in Prescott, Arizona. And I'm ashamed of that." - AZCentral.com

Blair isn't just a radio personality who leads off the talkfest there at KYCA-AM. He's a city councilman. He actually has a say in what can and cannot be done in the city of Prescott. His show leads straight into Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh's radio show.

And so the mural artists will probably lighten the skin of the actual children who are depicted in that mural. Children who actually attend the actual school with the wall where that mural is painted. Children who are making a positive statement about ecology, the environment, and living 'green'. Children who are being taught a lifestyle that might actually free us from the bondage of oil.

It makes that "family values" part of the right-wing mantra seem so trite, doesn't it?

I never watched the newest incarnation of Doctor Who in 2005 until recently, but I finally got hooked. I really liked Christopher Eccleston, but David Tennant's performance was awesome as "The Doctor." He was whimsical and brilliant and at the same time he also connected to the inner sadness and helplessness that came with being a powerful Time Lord.

Losing the people he loved was almost too much for him to take and it manifested itself in the episode called: The Waters of Mars. It set him on a course that he couldn't come back from.

Anyway, Matt Smith and Karen Gillan take over as the new duo that travel through time and space with the help of Steven Moffat, who takes over for Russel T. Davies as the lead writer and executive producer of the show.

Enjoy.

(PS, I love Torchwood too....)

Just when I thought things couldn't get any more bizarre today, this gem crossed my Twitter stream, courtesy of Media Matters. Really, some folks ought to think before hitting the "tweet button." From the hatriot Neal Boortz, known as Talkmaster on Twitter, this little pair of gems:

Yes, it really DOES say that. Not content to leave that little bomb in the stream, he followed up with this:

While Media Matters was content to show this insanity with no further comment, I'm not. Small business is better off today than it was under Bush. This is fact. Their taxes are lower, they get an immediate tax credit for providing health benefits to their workers, and they finally get some parity with the big corporations.

Neal Boortz calls himself a libertarian, but he's really just a fool with a big mouth and a microphone.

I wonder if he's ever researched his company's past. If so, he'd know the founder of Cox Radio was Franklin D. Roosevelt's running mate in 1920. FDR would NOT approve, and I somehow believe Mr. Cox would not either.