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After virtually ignoring the upcoming SOPA legislation and the upcoming online blackout to protest the pending legislation, now that the blackout is upon us, the corporate news channels that also support the bill finally decided to let their viewers know what was going on, because they had no choice. Were it not for the blackout, I'm sure they'd still be ignoring it for the most part.

MSNBC decided to bring on recently retired Senator and now lobbyist for the motion picture industry, Chris Dodd, for a nice "fair and balanced" discussion on the blackout. Dodd more or less accused the web sites participating in the blackout of acting like a bunch of spoiled children and offered little in the way of details to address the concerns of those who are against the legislation.

Glenn Greenwald wrote a pretty scathing piece on Dodd and the letter he issued via the L.A. Times. You can read the rest for his criticisms of Dodd's lobbying activity among other issues, but I thought I'd share some of his thoughts on Dodd and the MPAA's response to the protest -- Chris Dodd’s paid SOPA crusading:

The L.A. Times, yesterday – “MPAA’s Chris Dodd takes aim at SOPA strike”:

Hollywood’s chief lobbyist lashed out at tech companies for mounting Tuesday night’s planned online blackout to protest proposed anti-piracy legislation that has pitted Southern California movie and music distributors against Silicon Valley Internet corporations.

Motion Picture Assn. of America Chief Executive Chris Dodd, the former Senator from Connecticut, accused technology companies such as Google, Mozilla and Wikipedia of resorting to stunts. . . .

“It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and who use their services,” Dodd said in a statement. “It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today.”

[...]

It is in that capacity that Dodd has become the leading public spokesman and private lobbyist for the truly dangerous PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, bills craved by the industry that pays him. These bills, which vest the power in large corporations and the government to seize and shutdown websites with little or no due process in the name of stopping piracy, pose the greatest dangers to Internet freedom of any bill in the last decade, at least. So serious are these threats that they have prompted a rare — and inspiring — protest movement from numerous large Internet companies and blogs in the form of an Internet “blackout” today.

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Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) should be in jail instead of the bankers responsible for the financial meltdown.

"I think the people who are protesting on Wall Street break into two groups," Gingrich told an audience at The Washington Post/Bloomberg debate. "One is left-wing agitators who would be happy to show up next week on any other topic, and the other are sincere middle-class people who are, frankly, close to the tea party people and actually care. You can tell which group are which. The people who are decent and responsible citizens pick up after themselves. The people who are just out there as activist trashed the place and walk off and are proud of having trashed it."

"I think it's perfectly reasonable for people to be angry, but let's be clear who put the fix in. The fix was put in by the federal government. If you want to put people in jail, I'll second what [Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN)] said. Start with Barney Frank and Chris Dodd and let's look at the politicians who created the environment."

"Clearly, you're not saying they should go to jail?" Bloomberg TV's Charlie Rose asked.

"Well in Chris Dodd's case, go back and look at the Countryside deals," Gingrich insisted. "In Barney Frank's case, go back and look at the lobbyists he was close to at Freddie Mac. All I'm saying is that everybody in the media who wants to go after the business community ought to start to go after the politicians who have been at the heart of the sickness which is weakening this country."

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Since his recent talking point conflating resolution authority with a "bailout" didn't seem to work out so well, Frank Luntz has a new talking point for Republicans which Sean Hannity happily allows him to pass along; Chris Dodd's financial services bill is going to result in a "checkbook tax".

Apparently Arriana Huffington didn't mind allowing him a format to peddle this garbage as well. From his post at the HuffPo Why the Dodd Financial Services Bill Is Bad... For Democrats:

But here's where it gets really interesting. The Democrats supporting the current legislation have assured an anxious electorate that whatever funds are used to create whatever regulatory scheme created will come from the banks, not the taxpayers. Let me emphasize that so that even casual readers will catch it: the Democrats promise that you won't pay for their legislation, banks will.

Really?

Since when have corporations ever paid taxes, fees or penalties? Employees end up paying in the form of lower salaries and benefits. Customers end up paying in the form of higher costs.

And in this case, every account holder will be forced to pay higher fees on their checking account and savings account. That's you, my friendly reader. Can you say "checkbook tax"? I can, and I think lots of candidates will be saying it come November. Is that what you really want to do to your constituents, Senator Lincoln? Is that what you really want to explain on the campaign trail, Senator Bennett?

From the looks of the comments section over there, Luntz's latest script for the Republicans isn't going over so well. We'll see how many of them start repeating it like mindless drones in the next week or so.

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Chris Dodd looks like he's finally had about a belly full of the GOP and their obstructionism. The Democrats need to say the hell with bipartisanship and just pass a good bill instead. Dare the GOP to filibuster it. It looks like Blanche Lincoln is actually willing to get derivatives regulated so who knows, maybe we'll get something with some teeth passed. It's long overdue.

From the SenateDemocrats — April 14, 2010:

According to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, somehow Senator Chris Dodd's Wall Street reform legislation is pro-bailout. "If you need to know one thing about this bill, it's that it would make it official government policy to bail out the biggest Wall Street banks," said McConnell. Dodd rose to set the record straight on McConnell's claims today. "Suggesting somehow that there's a bailout provision in this bill -- nothing could be further from the truth," Dodd explained. "The bill, as drafted, ends bailouts. Nothing could be more clear in the legislation. And let me tell you how we do it...This bill imposes tougher standards on large, risky Wall Street firms. It eliminates the federal government's capacity to bail out financial companies and it requires that the financial firms write their own shut down plans an even pay for the liquidation process if it's needed."

From The Daily Show March 16, 2010:

Chris Dodd introduces financial reform legislation, and Jon pretends he has the same rights as a corporation.

Michael Moore joined Countdown to talk about Chris Dodd's plan to reign in the financial industry. I agree with Michael that it's a weak bill, if we don't punish Wall Street and get some meaningful regulation passed nothing's going to change. I've grown as tired of watching the Congress stall on doing anything about regulating the financial industry as I have watching this health care debate. I'm not sure just how much worse our economy has to get before the Congress finally decides to act.

From The Colbert Report Feb. 9, 2010:

Chris Dodd proposes a constitutional amendment to prevent elections from becoming the Super Bowl of advertising.

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From MSNBC's weekend morning show with Alex Witt and her "boys" Pat Buchanan and Peter Fenn, while discussing the retirements of Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan, Pat Buchanan is asked if the Dems losing their 60 seat majority in the Senate means that business on Capitol Hill comes grinding to a halt, to which Buchanan gleefully replies "Hopefully".

Peter Fenn begs to differ and thinks that the Democrats are going to "call the Republicans bluff" and things will return to normal business in the Senate. I think Fenn is kidding himself. The Republicans do not care about governing if they think it scores them political points. We can't get much in the way of decent legislation passed with the Conserva-Dems we've got now in the Senate. Replacing them with Republicans isn't going to make that any better.

And I don't see the Democrats calling anyone's "bluff". If they were going to do that they'd have done it already. The Republicans were good at ramming through every piece of crappy legislation they wanted to get passed with Bush with less than a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, but we never heard any talk of the government "grinding to a halt" from the Senate obstructing when they were in charge. The Democrats have too many awful members who may as well be Republicans within their own caucus to do the same thing.

h/t to GottaLaff at The Political Carnival with her "Shallow Thought" for the day on MSNBC giving air time to the likes of Buchanan in the first place for catching this one. And I agree with this completely:

Punditiots who advocate government failure should be given less, if any, air time, not more. Vigorous debate is a good thing, and freedom of speech should continue to be alive and well.

But to warmly welcome noxious obstructionists like Buchanan to the airwaves does not serve what's left of the news media well, because he does not inform, he infects. And that is destructive to a healthy democracy.

I hear ya' Laffy but they're not about democracy or any type of honest debate in this country. They're all about the ratings. I do hope Peter Fenn is right in this regard. If the Republicans over play their hand with their obstruction, maybe it finally becomes politically untenable for them to continue to do so, but I'm not holding my breath.

From The Daily Show:

The announcement that Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan are stepping down takes the Senate by surprise.