Tag: Glenn Beck

“Unfair to Crazy Conspiracy Theories”

Simulposted at http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

    Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.

    Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it politics as usual?

    Yes, it is – and that’s why it’s unforgivable.

    Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole – but the existential threat from climate change is all too real.

nytimes.com

ACORN And Burger King And Glenn Beck, Oh My

Glenn Beck’s program on Fox News is a daily cavalcade of crazy and yesterday was no exception. Beck’s guest was Scott Levenson, the national spokesman for ACORN. As ACORN is a perennial target of Fox News paranoiacs like Beck, there was bound to be a major train wreck looming. And Beck didn’t disappoint (video).

The occasion for the visit was a recent report that ACORN employees in Nevada had been charged with violations related to voter registration. This is where panicky right wingers rush to mischaracterize such charges as voter fraud, when in fact, none occurred. So Beck was true to form as he asserted the same old tired lies in his signature juvenile style – substituting funny faces and noises for rational debate.

The real comedy came when Beck attempted to offer an analogy that was ludicrous on its face. Levenson defended ACORN as a victim of employees who failed to comply with the organization’s standards. Beck sought to argue that ACORN was responsible for the misbehavior of their employees and ran a tape of the infamous Burger King bather (who had his buddies shoot a video of him bathing in the restaurant’s sink) to make a point that must have made sense somewhere in his cartoon brain.

Actually, Beck’s point had something to do with ACORN’s management being deficient because fourteen or so ACORN employees, out of some 13,000, were alleged to have submitted fake registration forms. Beck contended that this proves it was not a case of a rogue employee, but an unacceptable pattern of malfeasance. And after telling Levenson to “pipe down” and cutting off his mic, Beck said:

“If you had that many employees at Burger King bathing in the sink, would you ever eat a burger there? Ever? No. This is unreasonable to believe he had that many bad employees.”

Well, I did a quick Google search looking for criminally wayward Burger King employees and found this:

  • Burger King employee arrested in homicide
  • Burger King employee arrested for giving away free meals, stealing
  • Burger King Employee Arrested After Jumping Through Drive-Up Window to Attack a Customer
  • Burger King employee arrested for serving pot
  • Burger King employee arrested for alleged identity theft
  • Ex-Employee, Pal Arrested in Burger King Kidnap Case
  • Burger King employees arrested for faking robbery
  • Coke Being Sold At Burger King
  • Burger King Franchise Pays $400,000 for Alleged Sexual Harassment of teens
  • 27 illegal aliens working at seven Delaware Burger Kings

Granted murder, drugs, robbery, etc., are not exactly in the same league as unlawful bathing, but some people might consider those to be serious offenses too. It should also be noted that the Burger King violators represent only those with the sort of criminal profile likely to be written up in the news. There are surely corporate personnel who have engaged in more mundane activities ranging from pilfering office supplies to extortion or other financial improprieties.

Fox News Confidential: The Truth Behind Its Secret Mission

Ever since October of 1996, Fox News has been regarded by serious media analysts as a somewhat less than objective mouthpiece for conservative propaganda. From the start they adopted a posture that appeared to be bent on shilling for Republicans by drenching their reports with partisan disinformation.



       (Stickers of the above image can be purchased at Crass Commerce)

The intent couldn’t have been more transparent. This was a network birthed by the planet’s most notorious practitioner of tabloid piffle, Rupert Murdoch, who adorned it with a spritz of soft-core porn, and masqueraded it across America’s TV screens as if it were actually news.

But the real intent was something else altogether…

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Help! Help! I’m surrounded!

Glenn Beck, well-known wingnut, has come loose from his bolt!  His “We Surround Them” campaign seeks to let other wingnuts know that they “are not alone.”

How ’bout those principles?

The Nine Principles


  1. America is good.

Rush: I hope Obama Fails!


  1. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

 Said Jesus, as quoted in Matthew 19:24 — “And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

  1. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.



Well, if it’s market-moving manipulation, it’s not really a lie.


  1. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.



Unless you tell your spouse to hit the highway!

   * Ronald Reagan – divorced the mother of two of his children.  Married Nancy Davis who bore him a daughter only 7 months after the marriage.

   * Bob Dole – divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through the long recovery from his war wounds.

   * Newt Gingrich – divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.

   * Dick Armey – Former House Majority Leader – divorced

   * Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas – divorced

   * Gov. John Engler of Michigan – divorced

   * Former Gov. Pete Wilson of California – divorced

   * George Will – divorced

   * Sen. Lauch Faircloth – divorced

   * Rush Limbaugh – Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and four divorces between them.

   * Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia – Barr has been married three times.  Barr had the audacity to author and push the “Defense of Marriage Act.”

     The current joke making the rounds on Capitol Hill is “Bob Barr, WHICH marriage are you defending?”

   * Sen. Alfonse D’Amato of New York – divorced

   * Sen. John Warner of Virginia – divorced (once married to Liz Taylor)

   * Gov. George Allen of Virginia – divorced

   * Henry Kissinger – divorced

   * Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho – divorced

   * Sen. John McCain of Arizona – divorced

   * Rep. John Kasich of Ohio – divorced

   * Rep. Susan Molinari of New York (2000 Republican National Convention Keynote Speaker) – divorced

   

  1. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.



Unless your name is Rove, Bush, Cheney, Libby, etc.

  1. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.


Especially if you control the results.

  1. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.



Well, maybe for a tax write-off.

   

We are supposed to applaud philanthropy–the very word connotes altruism and “giving back”–but Walton and Wal-Mart giving serves as a reminder that philanthropy provides an alternative to taxation, a way for rich people and corporations to decide what to do with their extra money, as opposed to letting the rest of us decide through our elected governments. Since charitable donations are a tax write-off, as Krehely points out, “they are supposed to benefit the public good.” He thinks it is reasonable to ask whether a family’s–or a company’s–philanthropy serves the common good, or at least enough good “to make up for the public revenue that we’re losing.”

Funny he should mention taxes: Wal-Mart and the Waltons have, after all, been notably reluctant to pay them. Not only has the company lobbied for tax breaks in communities all over the nation, the Waltons–the family that former Wal-Mart board member Hillary Clinton has called “the best America has to offer”–have campaigned vigorously against the estate tax. They have donated money to its opponents, Republicans like John Thune of South Dakota and David Vitter of Louisiana, and enlisted one of Washington’s top lobbying firms, Patton Boggs–a leading anti-estate tax lobbyist–to represent their interests.

   

  1. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.



Oh, really?  Tell me more!

   Ari Fleischer:

   There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and this is not a time for remarks like that; there never is.

   

  1. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.



I’m Henry Paulson, and I hold this principle dearly!

Section 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

 

They Hanged Julius Streicher Didn’t They?

Photobucket

I would like to take an opportunity to recommend a piece from a friend of mine, William Cormier who has written today on the role of the mouthpieces in the fascist propaganda machine in the crimes that they so eagerly encourage. Such an essay is especially important to bring awareness to with the $40 million a year ‘populist’ spokesman for the anti-American virulent Republican party form of dead-ender fascism that is the last bastion of scoundrels trying to save their think tank paymasters, the malefactors of great wealth who have subsidized their careers and purchased the media from which they belch their hate and bile. Now with the paymasters of the extremist right in The Homeland doing their damn level best to incite violence, revolution and a crusade against the hated libruls, brown-skinned devils, commies, gays and every other scapegoat that could be invoked at the snakepit of sin and stupidity that was this week’s CPAC bund conference it is imperative that we ask the forbidden question.

How complicit are the establishment hatemongers in the crimes that they have done so much to endorse and in many cases encourage? In my personal opinion, and I have brought this up recently in my own writings – the propagandists and the whores in the media should no longer be able to cower behind the defense of free-speech as a shield as they and the oligarchy that employs their sordid services use the First Amendment as a shield from behind which they can use their money as ‘free speech’ while seeking to destroy the rights of everybody else.

So without further adieu, I present the following with the request that it be taken into account just how complicit that the purveyors of hatred are in the crimes of those that they encourage to commit.

Denial is no excuse, not any longer, not when the stakes are this high. The smell from those smokestacks downwind from Auschwitz wasn’t from freshly baked apple pie.

Did we misplace reality?

We must have, because there’s no other way to explain shit like this.

I think my personal favorite quote that explains the mentality (and I use that word in the loosest and most generous sense possible) of these idiots is this:

They’re the same people who believed that Bill Clinton’s use of the FISA court to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on Americans was a grave threat to liberty, but believed that George Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law was a profound defense of freedom.

Get that? Read it once again, please.

Glenn Beck Gets It, But Thinks It’s Funny

From Media Matters Friday the 13th, a video excerpt from Fox News:

“This is what’s coming, America: Depression and revolution”

“The poor are gonna eat the rich…”

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