Land of Opportunity? Maybe...

A young Glenn Beck contemplates his future success courtesy of the American Dream.

When wingnut blowhards like Glenn Beck push that spurious old 'opportunity-for-all' American Dream thing, it always feels like a lie intended only to excuse the idle rich and make the working poor look lazy. But, shocks, perhaps Beck actually believes it? See, Becky really is one of those guys who pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become a successful one-percenter. He really is a classic American Dreamer and, for that, I must applaud him (while cursing Lady Luck for her horrible judgment in his case). Says Michael O'Shea via Blatherwatch:

"I hired 15-year-old-Glenn Beck from Bellingham's Sehome High School to become KUBE's weekend overnight jock... Glenn sent us a tape that was OK... but he closed the deal by being willing to work for $2/hour (then the legal minimum wage). So he got the gig."

Wow. If a cretin like Beck can make it in America, who could argue that this isn't the land of opportunity for all?

Forgotten Beck's Desperate Bid For Attention

I'm sure social conservative conmen like Glen Beck get boners every time they hear about natural disasters. Hurricanes, earthquakes, fires... whatever... they're all golden opportunities for them to get on the news spouting god-awfully callous garbage that's sure to get them noticed.

Hadn't everyone forgotten about Glen Beck already? I guess Becky worried we might have so here he comes with this wrathful-god-referencing salvo of stupid:

Glenn Beck: Hurricane Irene Is A 'Blessing'

This artfully timed crap will raise Becky's diminished profile no end... he's even got me mentioning him again... dammit! So let's forget that schmuck and remember a few of the greats instead:

Pat Robertson on the Haiti earthquake: Haiti "Cursed" After "Pact to the Devil"

"Pastor" John Hagee on Katrina: New Orleans was struck because it was "Planning A Sinful Homosexual Rally"

Jerry Falwell on 9-11: "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this" and "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians"

Rush Limbaugh on the Icelandic volcano: "God’s reaction to health care’s passage"

"Pastor" Danny Nalliah of the suitably named "Catch the Fire Ministries" on the Australian wildfires: "His conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb"

Man, these sh*theads are the most convincing argument for atheism out there. If there really was a God like theirs, could you imagine the short tempered pr*ck ever having patience enough to build the world in the first place? The first time, say, a head didn't fit right on a giraffe, he'd have just yelled "f*ck it!", thrown his cosmic toolbox down and abandoned the whole project. C*ntservative God sounds more like a mean drunk with ADD than a deity. Can you say "projection"?

Glenn Beck Fired

Fox News looks forward to working with Glenn Beck "on unnamed future projects". Or, in layman's terms, the dumb Nazi sonofabitch finally got fired. Rejoice! At least until they announce Palin will take over the early evening bigoted ranting slot.

The End of an Era?

According to Blatherwatch, Glenn Beck’s days on Fox News could be numbered. New York Times media critic David Carr reports Fox officials are considering ending Beck’s contract in December.

I'm sure Becky would explain it away as persecution by the liberal Jew media nabobs at... errm... Fox.

Good To Know...

Thanks good people at Blatherwatch for cheering me up with the news that Glenn Beck's ratings are in free fall:

Year over year [Beck] posted the biggest loss of any cable news show averaging 1.8 million viewers, down 39% from January 2010. In 25-54 demo he dropped 48%, to 397,000.

Is America getting smarter? Maybe...

Let Them Eat Koch

Hundreds demonstrate outside the Rancho Las Palmas Resort where the Koch brothers held a closed retreat.

The Tea Party financing Koch brothers have been holding a retreat to discuss "strategies to promote policies that will help grow our economy, foster free enterprise and create American jobs." Yeh, right... They were joined by other such concerned citizens as Eric Cantor and Glenn Beck.

So who put these d*ckheads in charge? No, really... when a bunch of billionaires get together to spitball new ideas to derail the government, shouldn't we care? A few did.

The orderly protest, involving 800 to 1,000 people, ended after the arrest of 25 people for trespassing, according to authorities.

Not exactly Cairo. But it's a start.

Quote of The Day

Glenn Beck on the Democrats:

"They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you."

OK, Becky said this back in June... so it's not really a quote for today. Excuse me for not being more up-to-date on Becky's retarded dogsh*t. Evidently, the "don't-blame-conservatives-for-inspiring-violence" crowd don't listen to him much either.

Tragedy & False Equivalence. Again.

The mass shooting in Tucson inspired the NYT to step up the game of false equivalence the American media love to play:

Within minutes of the first reports Saturday that Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and a score of people with her had been shot in Tucson, pages began disappearing from the Web. One was Sarah Palin’s infamous “cross hairs” map from last year, which showed a series of contested Congressional districts, including Ms. Giffords’s, with gun targets trained on them. Another was from Daily Kos, the liberal blog, where one of the congresswoman’s apparently liberal constituents declared her “dead to me” after Ms. Giffords voted against Nancy Pelosi in House leadership elections last week.

How could anyone in their right mind, with even a shred of journalistic integrity, equate the violent right wing posturing that inspired the shooting with some random bitching from a liberal? This is unforgivable and pathetic.

For every Palin/Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity stoked atrocity, there is not an equal and opposite liberal impetus. This is not some law of moral physics. And there should be no "hang on, let's not rush to judgment...". F*cks like the Arizona 'libertarian' who gunned down Giffords and killed at least six other people today are not influenced by talk from the left. These people take notice of Palin/Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity. Palin/Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity are the fluffers of the psychotics with the power to turn nutbags into fully-functioning terrorists.

So in short, f*ck you NYT. And a f*ck you too to all those conservative blogs who are now busily clogging the Web with defenses of eliminationist rhetoric and pretending the violent bullsh*t being spewed out by Palin/Beck/Limbaugh/Hannity cannot possibly be to blame.

Glenn Beck's New Theory

Glenn Beck's new theory is something about the evil EU building a new tower of Babel... zzzzzz...

America has been stuck sitting next to this babbling lunatic on the bus for years now. However much we might turn up our iPods or stare intently into our newspapers, he just keeps going on about black helicopters, internment camps and anti-Christs. But if we just gave him enough spare change, would he shut up? It might be worth a try...

Irony Alert

John Fetto, senior marketing manager at Experian Simmons, has conducted a survey on what the most popular TV shows are for Republican and Democrat viewers. Because this is the kind of important sh*t we need to spend time and money figuring out.

With shows like 30 Rock, Community and Mad Men figuring high on the Dem list, Fetto says:

"Looking at the Democrats' side, I don't mean to make light of it, but they seem to like shows about damaged people. Those are the kind of shows Republicans just stay away from."

Damaged people? An odd choice of words given that the number one show for Republican viewers is Glenn f*cking Beck.

Rally For Sanity Meets News For The Retarded

WTF is it with rational news people who constantly seek to validate the insanity of the extreme right wing? For instance, I'm sick of them equating Rush Limbaugh with Keith Olbermann as if they represent two equal but opposite poles of opinion. Wrong. Keith Olbermann is a professional journalist with a liberal bias. Rush Limbaugh is a vicious liar pushing racism, misogynism, fascism and general misanthropy for the benefit of the rich fascists who pay his salary. How the f*ck are they the same?

Same goes for Karl Johnson (whoever the hell he may be) at the We Love DC blog writing about Jon Stewart's Rally To Restore Sanity. According to Johnson:

Stewart’s Rally for Sanity Causes Crowd Size Insanity: Rough estimates from various sources say somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people were in attendance for the Rally for Sanity and/or Fear hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert Saturday afternoon. Check out this crowd pic. If those numbers are accurate, however, it puts the rally size right around the same size as the Glenn Beck Rally to Restore Honor from a few months ago.

Why is it necessary to do this? As one commenter on the blog says:

"Most estimates for Beck’s rally were 86,000-96,000. The only estimate higher was Fox, and theirs was so ridiculous as to be laughable (500,000 to a million). So, this was two to three times that size, even if you don’t want to focus on numbers."

Is this going to be the accepted mainstream media narrative? Attendance-wise, Jon Stewart's rally p*ssed on Glenn Beck's Million 80-90,000 Moron March. And the whole frigging point of Stewart's event was to demonstrate through strength of numbers that Beck's angry lunatics represent only a small proportion of us. Clearly, the numbers show that. But will the news media be too up-it's-own-ass, too obsessed with creating imaginary conflicts and equations to just report the plain truth? Will they go with the old "six-of-one, half-a-dozen-of-the-other" shtick that only boosts the fringe loons and diminishes the liberals? I'm guessing yes. Sad, sad, sad.

Quarks, Gluons & Beck's Brain

Becky said evolution is "ridiculous". She was all like...

"I don't know how God creates. I don't know how we got here. If I get to the other side and God's like, 'You know what, you were a monkey once,' I'll be shocked, but I'll be like, 'Whatever.'"

I love the way Beck's speaking style alternates between fascist demagogue and 16-year-old valley girl. He's clearly way more complex than his gooberish persona would suggest.

Glenn Beck Goes Full McArthy

Poor Becky. The upcoming "One Nation March" in DC is evidently worrying him so much he's gone into full red scare mode. Could his own 90,000 fake populist rally last month soon be totally made the bitch of a much bigger rally of non-wingnuts who really do represent the people? Panic in the propagandadrome... quick, pull on a fedora, pretend it's 1953... and make out like they're all commies:

And what I told you to do last night is go to CPA — CPUSA's Website, Communist Party USA. Radical ideas — you go there. Now, just a couple of clicks, you click there, right on their front page, One Nation join the movement today, and you will see the Young Communist League is organizing for One Nation Working Together in the rally in D.C.

So there's a sprinkling of communists and socialists among the many groups listed as backers on the One Nation March site? So that means the whole thing's one big Marxist conspiracy? Hmm... so if Beck's Restoring Bullsh*t rally attracted 90,000 fat white guys with t*ts and represented the "true voice of America", what happens if, say, twice that many people attend the One Nation March? I guess Becky will get hoisted by his own rhetorical petard unless he can figure out a way to explain how Marxism doesn't represent the will of the American people. Oops... why does Becky hate America? Cuz by his logic, we're all commies!

Glenn Beck: Nazi-Sympathizer Sympathizer

Is it just me, or is Glenn Beck starting to remind you of Tom Hanks' creepy neighbors on The 'Burbs?

Oh them 'baggers love them some Hitler comparisons. But maybe not this one...

Becky's long praised Elizabeth Dilling, author of the 1934 anti-communist book "The Red Network", calling her one of the "people who were doing what we're doing now."

With almost painful predictability, it also turned out that Dilling was a leading Nazi sympathizer who spoke at American Nazi rallies, praised Hitler and referred to Eisenhower as "Ike The Kike". Dilling is now revered by white supremacists and neonazis for her "fearless" work against Jewish people.

It's hard to conclude that even Becky could have been this innocently stupid. Could anyone read up on Dilling and just ignore several hundred eye-popping occurrences of words like "Nazi", "antisemite" and "aryan"? Could anyone still push her as an anti-Communist hero and hope to gloss over the awkward fact that she was also a Nazi? Seems unlikely. But whether Glenn Beck has become spokesman for both the Tea Party and the American Nazi Party by accident or design is largely immaterial. Simon Maloy at Media Matters summed up the upshot back in June:

This isn't just beyond the pale -- it's probably the most significant major-media endorsement of American fascist ideology since the 1930s.

At this point it may become necessary to pinch yourself and remember that it's 2010 - not 1934 - and that we were supposed to be long done with this sh*t. Consider, for example, how many of Becky's supporters must have had family members who gave their lives fighting Hitler as part of Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation". Or how many more must be aware of the holocaust and the real, non-Obama, Nazis through watching "Schindler's List" or at least "Hogan's Heroes"... So the fact that a modern-day Nazi apologist like Becky gets to be a prominent figure in our mainstream media is quite literally a mind f*ck. Not so much 'pretzel logic' as 'pretzel reality' with a side of very stale sauerkraut.

Insanity You Can Count On

According to CBS:

An estimated 87,000 people attended a rally organized by talk-radio host and Fox News commentator Glenn Beck Saturday in Washington.

On the morning after the rally, Beck himself told Fox News Sunday that:

He believed the crowd was as low as 300,000 and as big as 650,000.

But according to bat-sh*t Bachmann:

We talked to one of the guys from the National Park Police who told us he thought it was 1.6 million.

So Bachmann sees the crowd as twenty times bigger than CBS's professional counters... Either she's got good drugs. Or she needs some.

Beck Hates America, God Stays Out of The Argument

The weekend rally brought us a "new and reasonable" Glenn Beck. Be afraid.

It used to be the wingnuts' favorite trick during those dark days of the Bush misadministration: telling liberals that we hated America because we weren't exactly fond of the neocon junta who were running the country. But somehow, demagogues like Palin, Limbaugh and Beck can literally tear everything Obama does to shreds and not find themselves guilty of hating America. Somehow, they can demand we repeal or rewrite virtually everything in the Constitution this country was founded on and still not be considered anti-American. How the hell does this work again? Anyway...

! was disappointed that this weekend's Beck-apalooza seemed to pass fairly politely and boringly. More church picnic than Klan rally. And that sucks because it's harder to attack a dangerous lunatic when they're posing as a reasonable person. It's harder to make people who don't pay attention understand what an extremist Beck is when he's up there in reading glasses chatting cozily instead of flailing and yelling like a dimestore Mussolini. But, God knows, Beck needs to be attacked. Beck needs to be stopped. And I wouldn't stop far short of wishing he could more fully emulate his 'hero' MLK and get gunned down on a motel balcony for the good of society.

With elections approaching, this c*cksucker is probably the most dangerous influence on the lumpen proles who'll decide the future of our democracy based on the whims of their own hate and ignorance as validated by Glenn f*cking Beck. But I'm getting the uneasy feeling that he's starting to ooze into the mainstream by projecting himself as a newer, calmer and more reasonable a**hole. Scared yet? You should be.

Glenn Beck: First Blood

Glenn Beck is busy denying he's a terrorist. And he's right. Terrorists take responsibility when they kill people. Becky does not.

Example: right-wing malcontent Byron Williams dies in a shoot-out with Oakland cops last week. Williams had been pulled over en route to carrying out an attack on the San Francisco offices of the Tides Foundation (a group that works "across the globe to promote economic justice, robust democratic processes, and the opportunity to live in a healthy and sustainable environment where human rights are preserved and protected.").

Williams' mother said he was angry about his own unemployment and about "what's happening to our country." She said he watched the news on television and was upset by "the way Congress was railroading through all these left-wing agenda items." Sure sounds like he'd been watching Glenn Beck for more than just the gold ads. But Becky denied any culpability and is trying to obfuscate by pinning blame for a separate but "equivalent" attack in Oakland as coming from the "left":

Um, you know, we had a sniper in, um, Oakland, California, trying to kill police. At the same time we have another guy who appears to be against the Tides Foundation, uh, and he goes down and he's going to try to kill people at the Tides Foundation. I'm tied to the Tides Foundation in this story because, quote, how scary is this? We have searched all the television records and Glenn Beck is the only host that spoke about the Tides Foundation in the past year. That's terrifying.

But I'm tied to that. But nobody's even talking about the sniper from the left trying to shoot the police officer.

There is no evidence of any political motivation whatsoever behind the sniper case in Oakland that Beck tries to pin on the "left". So the equivalence is false.

But as Becky admits, he was the only guy on TV railing against the obscure Tides Foundation. So would Byron Williams have even heard of them, let alone wanted to attack them, if he hadn't watched the Glenn Beck show? Beck is full-square to blame and too p*ssy to admit it or even keep quiet on the subject. This piece of sh*t is a living breathing example of "shouting fire in a crowded theater"... only he sits down quick and pretends it wasn't him when pandemonium breaks out.

Signs of The Dumbpocalypse

According to Asian News International, polls reveal that a whopping one in four Americans have no clue which country the United States declared independence from. Weirdly, six percent thought it was either France, China, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

There's also another of those open-mic episodes making Republicans look seedier for preying on our collective dumbness: Michael Steele caught on tape calling the decade-long occupation of Afghanistan "a war of Obama's choosing". Dumb yes. But scarier yet, he was actually briefing GOP operatives to push the "Obama invaded Afghanistan" meme to distract attention from the vote-losing fact that the GOP is the party of George W. Bush. Are we really judged so stupid enough that that could be deemed a workable strategy??? Like... OMG.

But topping the list of Signs of The Dumbpocalypse has to be news that Glenn Beck is starting a university:

"Beck University is a unique academic experience bringing together experts in the fields of religion, American history and economics."

I have no words. If this is the level to which our nation has sunk, maybe we should throw in the towel and retract our declaration of independence from France.

The Special Olympics Candidate

Unnamed reporter reacting to a Sarah Palin speech on open-mic:

"Oh my God, I feel like I just got off a roller coaster, going round and round, and up and down. Sh-t flying out … everywhere."

Naturally, the wingnuts are mad that a bunch of reporters had the audacity to criticize their own lobotomized Reaganette. Says Fox:

Several people were caught on an open mike mocking Sarah Palin for delivering a "roller coaster"-type speech after she addressed California State University, Stanislaus on Friday.

First, why 'caught'? Do Fox wish to imply that criticizing Palin is now a crime that you're 'caught' committing?

Second, they weren't any old Joes and they weren't mocking Palin: They were reporters. You know, guys expressing a professional opinion that Palin's speech was a confusing garbage pile of hackneyed claptrap.

So would Fox demand that all reporters treat Palin with the kind of respect and sensitivity she's pathologically incapable of extending to anyone else? Is Palin the right wing extremist's "Special Olympics" candidate? Should reporters just say what a wonderful job she does considering the manifold intellectual and rhetorical handicaps she struggles to overcome every time she opens her big dumb trap?

Damn. If you couldn't hack Toastmasters, you couldn't pass a lie detector test answering your own name, you make Brian Kilmeade look like Mark f*cking Twain... just maybe you have no business running for public office. Maybe Palin should just quit like a bad American Idol audition.

I hate to agree with Glenn Beck, absolu-f*cking-lutely I do, but I'm almost onside when he criticizes teachers and parents who reward mediocrity by giving mediocre kids rewards just for taking part. Aren't we supposed to be living in a meritocracy where low-bars and quotas are anathema to the RW? Isn't life supposed to be tougher than that? So shouldn't Fox stop treating Palin like the fat asthmatic kid in the Little League game no-one's allowed to say sucks and who gets a trophy just for showing up?

Teasing The Panther

Glenn Beck's got a novel out called "The Overton Window". It's a Turner Diaries-style conspiracy yarn about a government (big and liberal of course) plot to explode a nuclear bomb somewhere in America and pin the blame on the Founders Keepers, a fictional Tea Party-like group. My, I wonder how many wingnut terrorists will cherish dog-eared copies of this slab o' crap and mutter "Glenn, you opened my eyes" as they plan future attacks? Becky will be so proud.

Media Matters has read this thing and calls it a "truly and remarkably awful novel". They also post excerpts to prove it.

My favorite bit is when Beck's hero Noah is in bed with his girlfriend and she asks him to lay off the hanky panky. Noah agrees on the condition that she "not do anything sexy." When she presses her cold feet against his legs, Noah responds:

"[Y]ou're playing with fire here. I've got some rules, too, and rule number one is, don't tease the panther."

"Teasing the panther"??? I'll bet a grand of anyone's money that'll catch on like wildfire!