Today’s discussion about National Missile Defense was pretty intense, but even Avi the Roofer, John from Cleveland and Todd from Florida seemed to agree at least somewhat with Pete that the idea is off-kilter.

Here is how I knew what Russia says is its actual reason for opposing an American missile shield, from a Congressional Research Office document:

If a nation could intercept missiles launched in retaliation, particularly if it had diminished their numbers in its initial strike, it might believe it could launch a first strike without fearing retaliation. Knowing this, the nation without the defensive system might conclude that it had to launch preemptively, before losing any of its forces in an initial attack. Under these circumstances, stability would be lost and a nation might have an incentive to launch first in a crisis.

Now ask yourself, if the US government has relayed such a cogent argument, why won’t the mainstream media ever expose that simple reasoning?

NMD is not just a waste of money. And I’m not convinced it could never work as advertised (or, like I said, Russia wouldn’t be so upset about us wasting our riches on it). But it surely does sound like Russia may respond by developing a system of counter-measures, China will beef up its nuclear ICBM arsenal, and then we’ll have to keep building and developing this system.

And US corporations will keep getting rich off the Star Wars fantasy while our national economy sinks into a pit and we can’t afford food or health care. What else could we do with $10 billion a year?

Pete read some questions on the air that he would like to ask Sen. Obama. Here’s the full list. Some of the questions are pretty shallow, but several should make even ardent supporters think twice. Would you guys like to add any questions, in case we can get him on the air for an interview? (Don’t hold your breath.)

Two whole hours on the oil industry? And the lines were lit up the whole time! Americans are pissed, at their government and at the big oil companies. I can’t help noting that we get what we deserve as long as we accept a system that encourages those who amass wealth to exploit the rest of us. Until we change the system, we can’t really expect these goons to stop working it, can we?

Here’s a list of automobile fuel-efficiency pointers Pete read on the air. I tried for a little while to verify caller Ronnie’s advice about “fresh gasoline” being more efficient than the allegedly stale gas allegedly found at mom-and-pop gas stations. I couldn’t find anything backing that up, so if you find something about it, post a link.

Getting deeper into the politics, here’s an article I worked on a couple years ago about gas price manipulation by the oil companies. And here’s an article with links to the internal memos talking about how they can make gas prices go up.

How does that “liberal” mainstream media handle the issue? Most of the articles I’ve seen on today’s hearings with Big Oil executives just parrot what the executives said, relaying their excuses. Sure, they talk about how badly gas prices are hurting us all, but they don’t seem interested in challenging any of the bullshit the witnesses spewed to excuse their behavior. Here’s the ABC News article on the matter, called “Oil Execs Grilled Over High Prices.” See if you can find the grilling, then compare it to the cry-baby whining by the witnesses about how they need to keep reinvesting their profits so they can keep making mind-boggling profits.

John from Cleveland called in and pointed out that the poor pharmaceutical companies say they spend “billions of dollars” on ten failed drugs for every successful drug. That’s a really common argument that the drug companies and their supporters like to trot out at every chance.

Except it’s not true. In fact, the prices drug companies charge often have almost nothing to do with the cost of developing or manufacturing a given drug. They sometimes charge up to 20 times the actual cost of production on drugs when they neither conducted nor paid for the research.

In fact, companies spend 2.5 times as much on marketing as they do on research and development. And a lot of the R&D they don’t even do themselves — it’s performed by universities and government labs and then practically donated to corporations so they can make whopping profits. Or it’s performed by independent biotech firms and sold to the big companies after development.

And since pharmaceuticals is one of the most profitable industries, in terms of the actual margin, even after their gigantic marketing expenditures — how can it be remotely true that what we’re paying for is their design and testing costs? And how come those same companies are willing to sell the very same drugs to other countries, where caps are instituted, for less money than they charge American retailers? If we refused to pay more (or rather, if insurance companies refused or the government forced a ceiling on prices), they’d still sell the same drugs, and they’d still make huge profits.

So the next time you hear the violins playing for the Big Pharma, break the violin over your knee.

Caller Pete from Idaho mentioned the rumored nationwide truck strike. There’s no telling how widespread it will be until it happens, but he wasn’t pulling the idea out of his ass. Here’s a New York Times story on it.

Here’s the online version of Bush’s War, the PBS Frontline special. Personally, I was disappointed that the documentary really is not about the war at all. It’s actually about the White House, State Department, Pentagon and Coalition Provisional Authority, and the politics and decisions surrounding and interlinking them all. It’s not about the troops, or Iraqis, and makes virtually no mention of international public opinion or the unprecedented antiwar movement. Still, it’s very good reporting for what it actually covers, and it will likely drop your jaw at several points.

Update: Here’s the website for We Can Solve It, the project that guest Cathy Zoi of the Alliance for Climate Protection.

I was laughing more than usual throughout the show. Telling our dad’s new policeman ski buddy that the Old Man “hates cops” had to be the highlight for me, but only because I know how much Pops really does hate cops. That’s going to make for an awkward weekend on the slopes.

Lee Camp’s appearance on the show today topped it off for me. Todd called in with a serious agenda, and I have to say I think he handled himself pretty well on the air… until he tried denigrating Lee. That set Pete off on a Bill O’Reilly-style rant. Oh, the humanity. But Todd made good points about Paul Begala and George Stephanopoulos moving from the Democratic machine into the media, which I think was a counterpoint to Carl Rove moving to Fox News. Lee noted the preposterous imbalance of it all, but Todd’s points were well-made until it all degraded. I think his point was that a party operative moving to a network does not necessarily render the network invalid. Maybe he can clear that up. I’ll say it’s exactly why both CNN and Fox are shams.

Anyway, if you thought Lee was as sharp and funny as I did, check out his website (I guess leecamp.com was taken by a Civil War reenactment group or something) and his MySpace page (2815-friend loser). The priceless clip of him calling Fox News a “parade of propaganda” is on there. He also mentioned 236.com — here’s his link on that site. Busy guy, and very, very unsophisticated.

Here’s a link to the WhyTuesday website.

Here’s the Harper’s interview with Michael Scheuer.

And here’s the official website of Anti-Flag, the kick-ass band Pete is going to have on today’s show, plus their WikiPedia page.

Pete’s guest today was Omar Fekeiki. Here’s the Salon.com article Pete referred to during the interview. And here’s search results for his articles in the Washington Post.One comment on the interview: Omar said he couldn’t understand why Americans would protest a recruiting center in their own town. The reasons they’re protesting are quite explicit: they don’t want young people from their community getting swindled into fighting wars that don’t serve the interests of their community. Disagree or not, I just think it’s important that, before criticizing people for doing something and implying they don’t have a reason, asking them why they’re doing it is a good move. I’m not a big fan of Code Pink, the group Omar was referring to, but here’s what they say about why they are protesting recruitment.

Here’s a link to the video Pete and Scott the Trucker are discussing on the air right now.

Here’s a link to the summary of media coverage I referenced on the air a little while ago. It is from an anti-war source, and a lot of it is anecdotal, but some of it is based on studies of the media, and the source is impeccably honest. It’s a long document, but if you read it or skim it and don’t come out feeling like we were not only duped but fucked by the media, let me know.