Fire Hydrant of Freedom
Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on November 27, 2009, 08:09:56 AM
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A post this morning on "The Way Forward for the American Creed" thread made the excellent point about the need to clearly and effectively say what the American Creed is all about-- to speak in positives.
Someone who has been doing that REALLY well in my opinion, is Glen Beck, whose show I watch most days.
Therefore, I'd like to open this thread for discussion of the points raised by GB.
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A liberal friend expressed surprise at my interest in GB-- "Why even the ADL thinks he's anti-semitic" and sent me a copy of this from , , , either Pravda on the Hudson (NYT) or Pravda on the Beach (LA Times).
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Opinion
Who's watching Glenn Beck?
Much like the Depression-era demagogue Father Charles Coughlin, the Fox News personality is promoting a mass movement. Should his bosses be pulling the plug?
By Tim Rutten
November 25, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size For nearly a century, the Anti-Defamation League has stared unflinchingly into the dark corners of America's social psyche -- the places where combustible tendencies such as hatred and paranoia pool and, sometimes, burst into flame.
As a Jewish organization, the ADL's first preoccupation naturally is anti-Semitism, but in the last few decades it has extended its scrutiny to the whole range of bigoted malevolence -- white supremacy, the militia movement, neo-nativism and conspiratorial fantasies in all of their improbable permutations. These days, the organization's research is characterized by the sense of proportion and sobriety that long experience brings.
That makes its recent report on the extremist groups and propagandists that have emerged since President Obama's election -- "Rage Grows In America: Anti-Government Conspiracies" -- particularly notable. For the first time in living memory, the ADL is sounding the alarm about a mainstream media personality: Fox News' Glenn Beck, who also hosts a popular radio show.
The report notes that while "other conservative media hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, routinely attack Obama and his administration, typically on partisan grounds, they have usually dismissed or refused to give a platform to the conspiracy theorists and anti-government extremists." By contrast, "Beck and his guests have made a habit of demonizing President Obama and promoting conspiracy theories about his administration. ... Beck has even gone so far as to make comparisons between Hitler and Obama."
What gives all of this nonsense an ominous twist is Beck's announcement that he intends to use his TV and radio shows to promote a mass movement that will involve voter registration drives, training in community organizing and a series of regional conventions that will produce a "100-year plan" for America to be read from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a mass rally Aug. 28.
As Beck wrote on his website, "I know that the bipartisan corruption in Washington that has brought us to this brink and it will not be defeated easily. It will require unconventional thinking and a radical plan to restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting. ... All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding."
Hard times predictably throw up their demagogues. Still, even allowing for the frenetic pace of our wired world's 24-hour news cycle, it's remarkable how quickly the arc of Beck's career has come to resemble that of the Great Depression's uber-demagogue, Father Charles Coughlin. In the months after the crash of '29, Coughlin turned what had been a conventionally religious weekly radio broadcast into a platform for championing the downtrodden working man. He was an early supporter of the New Deal, coining the slogan "Roosevelt or Ruin," but quickly turned on the president for a variety of complex ideological and personal reasons. Coughlin flirted with Huey Long, launched an unsuccessful political party, published a popular newspaper, Social Justice, and even inspired and supported a kind of militia, the Christian Front, some of whose members were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting a fascist coup.
As the 1930s dragged on, Coughlin, a longtime admirer of Francisco Franco, became virulently anti-Semitic, isolationist and pro-German. He also was extraordinarily popular. At their height, his weekly broadcasts attracted more than 40 million listeners. Still, after he lashed out at German Jews in the wake of Kristallnacht, many major urban radio stations dropped his program. Influential American prelates, the Vatican and prominent Catholic New Dealers had worked for some time to persuade Coughlin's superior, the archbishop of Detroit, to silence him. Shortly before the U.S. entered World War II, a new bishop was installed, and Coughlin was ordered to cease broadcasting. He accepted the clerical discipline and retired into a long life of bitter silence.
It's hard to imagine any contemporary cable system dropping Fox News simply because Beck is an offensively dangerous demagogue -- not with his ratings at least. His new foray into politics, though, presents Rupert Murdoch's network with a profound challenge. Is it willing to become the platform for an extremist political campaign, or will it draw a line as even the authoritarian Catholic Church of the 1940s did? CNN recently parted ways with its resident ranter, Lou Dobbs -- who now confirms he's weighing a presidential bid.
Does Fox see a similar problem with Beck -- and, if not, why?
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I noticed that Crafty mentioned watching Glen Beck daily and the LA TImes entertainment writer didn't. Someone told Tim Rutten that Glen Beck was overly provocative and the audience of vulnerable adults is dangerous so he wrote a piece about it. Rush has gone through that for 2 decades. Haters collect quotes and clips eliminating meaning and context. Then they post at the NY Times and left-wing sites and elites feel justified hating and ripping the program and its following.
I've listened to Glen Beck on radio plenty. His 'conspiracy' charge is that this administration's playbook is right out of extremist Saul Alinsky's radical rules. That happens to be true whether by design or coincidence. Rutten is accusing Beck of correctly noticing it and pointing it out. He suggests that Beck should be pulled off the air for doing so.
Also like Rush critics, he assumes the audience has no mind of their own and considers it dangerous for them to hear (honest) criticism of the President.
Why not take on ANY of Beck's points head-on, like that Valerie Jarret is a radical, Jeremy Wright - obviously, Van Jones and on and on and on. The attacker declined to do that.
I have no idea of the Hitler context, just know from listening that he has it wrong and that he was mum when worse was done to Bush, when Kerry, Durban, Murtha called our own troops terrorists, when Harry Reid declared the Iraq War lost, and when Obama and his Proxies ran a full page to say our commanding General was perhaps 'Betraying us'.
The selective outrage is sickening.
Regarding the Anti-defamation League: I assume ADL was once a respected group looking out for Jewish interests and unfair treatment. I regret linking them here when looking into the Pat Buchanan complaint because what I learned by looking was that besides some serious charges against PB's words, they went on and on accusing him of other bigotry that simply wasn't. For example, castigating him for not backing the gay preferred rights agenda or equating anti-welfare stances with racism. Those to me say something about their politics and agenda and nothing about him, and they dilute, weaken and cheapen their original point IMO assuming it had any validity in the first place.
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Typical leftist smear tactics. Glen Beck has been the one effective watchdog over this adminisitration. Of course he's being targeted.
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My reaction is that even by the standards of a POTB columnist, this is a remarkable specious, and bigoted, piece.
The lack of specifics is striking, and the absence of any basis for for comparison to Father Coughlin is complete.
What on earth does the ADL have to do with any of this? What is the basis for smearing Beck with charges of bigotry?
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Funny how the same people that can so easily link Father Coughlin to Glen Beck are still at a loss as what motivated Maj. Hasan. :roll:
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Doug writes:
"I've listened to Glen Beck on radio plenty. His 'conspiracy' charge is that this administration's playbook is right out of extremist Saul Alinsky's radical rules. That happens to be true whether by design or coincidence."
It IS by design. From Saul Alinsky's own son who blows the cover by pointing out the connection with Obama and his father is no coincidence:
****Communist guru
Saul Alinsky’s son: “Obama learned his lesson well”
By Judi McLeod Tuesday, September 2, 2008
In Artful Dodger style, Barack Obama, plays down his mentorship with Communist author Saul Alinsky. But Alinsky’s son, L. David Alinsky, credits Obama for “learning his lesson well” from the Communist guru.
Indeed, Alinsky Jr. who credits his late father for the success of last week’s Democratic National Convention, may have done something that Obama’s detractors couldn’t: blown the cover on the presidential hopeful’s communist leanings.
No one can blame Alinsky for the pretentiousness of the Ancient Greek Temple from which Obama addressed plebes, or for the tacky neon colours on display at the Pepsi Centre, but it was Alinsky who wrote Rules for Radicals, the bible of the far left.
Says Alinsky’s son L. David Alinsky of his father’s influence at the Dem Convention: “ALL the elements were present: the individual stories told by real people of their situation and hardships, the packed-to-the rafters crowd, the crowd’s chanting of key phrases and names, the action on the spot of texting and phoning to show instant support and commitment to jump into the political battle, the rallying selections of music, the setting of the agenda by the power people.”
“The Democratic National Convention had all the elements of the perfectly organized event, Saul Alinsky style, the Communist guru’s son wrote in a letter published yesterday in the Boston Globe.
The Artful Dodger may be less than pleased that he has been pegged as a Saul Alinsky Poster Boy by the guru’s own son.
“Barack Obama’s training in Chicago by the great community organizers is showing its effectiveness,” Alinsky Jr. wrote to the Globe. “It is an amazingly powerful format, and the method of my late father always works to get the message out and get the supporters on board. When executed meticulously and thoughtfully, it is a powerful strategy for initiating change and making it really happen. Obama learned his lesson well.
“I am proud to see that my father’s model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday.”
Alinsky should be reminded that the West has stared down communism everywhere it has raised its hideous head.
influencing a Democratic convention from the grave pales in comparison to the results that followed President Ronald Reagan’s famous words, “Mr. Gorbachev, take down this wall.”
The commonsense and freedom-loving Gipper would have chuckled at the audacity of Obama’s Ancient Greek Temple stage setting and would have told Obama what he told the world: “All great change in America begins at the dinner table.”
Reagan also said: “I have seen the rise and fall of Nazi tyranny, the subsequent cold war and the nuclear nightmare that for 50 years haunted the dreams of children everywhere. During that time my generation defeated totalitarianism. As a result, your world is poised for better tomorrows. What will you do on your journey?”
“Alinsky considered himself a realist above all, the ultimate pragmatist.” (American Thinker, Aug. 30, 2008). “As a confirmed atheist, Alinsky believed that the here and now is all there is, and therefore had no qualms about assorted versions of morality in the pursuit of worldly power. He didn’t coddle his radical acolytes or encourage their bourgeois distinctions between good and evil when it came to transferring power from the Haves to the Have Nots. Alinsky saw the already formed church communities as being the perfect springboards for agitation and creating bonds for demanding goods and services.”
Obama followed the same path.
It is a fact that activist-cum senator Barack Hussein Obama started off his career as an activist with a position as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project (DCP) of the Calumet Community Religious conference (CCRC) in Chicago. Both the CCRC and the DCP were built on the Alinsky model of community agitation, wherein paid organizers learned, in Alinsky’s own words, how to “rub raw the sores of discontent”.
Meanwhile L. David Alinsky, perhaps unwittingly put Obama into the proper perspective by stating without reservation: “Obama learned his lesson well.”****
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I am already at (well, beyond) all reasonable time limits on what I put into this forum. Any chance I could persuade someone to write up a daily summary of the show M-F to help kick off conversation?
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Well, , , maybe its just because its the holidays. I sure do hope this thread gets some traction , , ,
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Glenn is back from vacation and his show last night announced some big changes.
Starting yesterday, there will be 5 days summarizing what GB says he has proven during the past year.
Starting next week, the show will be about taking America back.
I will be watching EVERY night this week and next.
I'm thinking/hoping this has a good shot at becoming the spark that ignites the flames of American freedom.
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I'm usually sleeping when his TV show is on, and I listen to Opie and Anthony as I drive home from work. Sorry.
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- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com -
Frontpage’s Man of the Year: Glenn Beck – by David Forsmark
Posted By David Forsmark On January 4, 2010 @ 12:09 am In FrontPage | 133 Comments
The year of Obamarific “change” quickly became the year of dissent as Americans grew disillusioned with the “trillion here and a trillion there” spending of President Barack Obama even as unemployment rose. The so-called “Stimulus Package,” which promised to cap unemployment at 8%, did nothing to generate private sector jobs. The only area that seemed to be stimulated was joblessness, which soared above 10%.
Despite an economic disaster, the Democrats in Congress and the White House focused on socializing American health care and an economy-busting “cap and trade” scheme to hike energy taxes. To top it off, it seemed every day brought revelations about radicals with unconscionable views who either held high offices in the new administration or were funded with taxpayer money.
Suddenly, the loudmouths of the Left and the poobahs of the Lame-Stream Media — who had deemed dissent to be “the highest form of patriotism” when George W. Bush occupied the White House — whistled another tune. They began savaging of opponents of the Obama regime as Nazis, racists and ignorant rubes. Their targets weren’t just public figures who stood in the way of their agenda; rather, they viciously attacked ordinary Americans, the tea partiers, to whom they gave a sobriquet (tea-baggers) that no network censors would have allowed just a few years ago.
For our Man of the Year issue, we justifiably could have taken the cheap and easy route (such as Time circa 2006 [1]) and said it was the year of the “ordinary citizen.” After all, the anti-Obama Tea Party movement shook the foundations of the political establishment this summer.
All of our nominees contributed mightily to the informed dissent that gave hope for the right kind of change in the next few election cycles. Here are the nominees:
Dick Cheney
Ex-Veep Cheney, the man most hated (and feared) by the Left, won every argument he picked with Obama, scoring huge in the public arena on Attorney General Eric Holder’s ridiculous persecution of the CIA staffers who interrogated suspected terrorists; and he has been effective in all other national security debates. Almost as important as the vice president’s comeback is the emergence of daughter Liz Cheney as one of conservatism’s most articulate defenders. If this award were for Family of the Year, the Cheneys would be the hands-down winners.
Andrew Breitbart
Orginally known as Matt Drudge’s lieutenant in compiling the still-essential Drudge Report, Breitbart became the most influential conservative figure on the Internet this year. His smash hit site Big Hollywood [2] immediately became a must-read on a daily basis, and he launched Big Government [3] with the Story of the Year — the ACORN prostitution sting videos. With more sites on the way, Breitbart will continue to be one of the brightest lights in the conservative movement.
Sarah Palin
Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee in 2008, deserves a slot on this list just for the self-revealing rage she generates with the liberal establishment. The former Alaska governor also is the most beloved figure among the ordinary people who are newly minted activists in the wake of Obama’s big government excess. Is there any other person who can change the debate and the political lexicon with a mere Facebook entry? Death Panel is certainly the phrase of the year.
Rush Limbaugh
One could make the case that Limbaugh has been the conservative MVP — most valuable player or politico — every year since 1994. It’s doubtful Obama ’s approval rating would be under 50% and Obamacare would hover at about 60% disapproval without El Rushbo. Instead of a routine annual update on Rush’s contribution to the debate, however, it’s time to just name the trophy after him and move on.
And the winner is…
Glenn Beck
Whether you love him or hate him, or consider him to be a must-see TV or DVR necessity, radio and TV talker Beck is a bright new star in the conservative firmament. You might get fired up by his calls to action or wince at his emotional outbursts – you even might tune in today only to see if this is when his head finally explodes—but you have to admit, this was the Year of the Beck.
In the past 12 months, Beck rose from hosting an obscure TV show on CNN Headline News to a terrible time slot on Fox News’ cable juggernaut. Regardless, his show at 5 p.m. became a ratings smash hit and attracted direct angry response from the White House.
Beck’s show now attracts a far bigger audience than his competitors on CNN, MSNBC and Headline News combined. In fact, he doesn’t really have any competition – on any given day, Beck can attracts 20 times the audience of Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC.
This, indeed, was the Year of the Beck. In NBA terms, Limbaugh is the 30-points-per game superstar with several championship rings, who last year played for an otherwise pathetic team. Beck is the team’s rookie draft pick who exceeded expectations and brought fresh energy that caught the other team flat-footed and changed the game.
Beck is such a major part of the political landscape today that it’s hard to remember he was still a minor factor just a year ago. Sure, his books sold very well, and his radio show was making a move to the top tier of the market; but during the 2008 election, the Left and the MSM were not sneering and using the term, “Limbaugh/Hannity /Beck,” and Obama was not calling him out by name.
In one short year, the epithet has become “Limbaugh/Beck/Palin,” and the White House is responding defensively.
Beck made the cover of Time magazine, was one of Barbara Walters’ “10 Most Fascinating People of 2009″ and makes an almost nightly appearance as one of Keith Olbermann’s “Worst People in the World.” (A great honor, no doubt.)
Probably no other broadcaster in any medium is as in tune with the feisty mood of the times. While other talk show hosts certainly connect with the Tea Partiers, and I’m sure the vast majority of them listen to Limbaugh and watch a certain amount of Hannity, no media figure has the direct connection to the Tea Party dissidents that Glenn Beck enjoys. No one.
Only Sarah Palin gets that kind of love from the crowds that have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shaking in fear, and making up wild accusations on the while the cameras roll.
In his rookie year on live television, Beck has the White House reeling. He already has two major scalps dangling from his lance—self-proclaimed communist Van Jones, the green jobs czar, and White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, a devout fan of Maso Tse-Tung.
Leftist Cass Sunstein, the proposed “Regulatory Czar” who puts animal rights on a par with human rights, and Keith Jennings, a pedophilic Activist ironically named as Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” are also in his sights. While Breitbart deserves the lion’s share of the credit if ACORN goes down, no one has supplied more context on the community activist/con job organization and its tentacles into the Obama a Administration than Beck.
So where does Beck go from here? His meteoric rise in 2009 will be a tough act to follow. He obviously cannot again increase his TV audience tenfold — that would put him in “Who Shot J.R.” territory. He has gained an audience and, for now, seems to be holding it.
The cheap and easy analysis would be to suppose that Beck’s emotional approach will wear on the audience or he will burn out. However, as I learned when reviewing Beck’s latest bestseller, Arguing with Idiots [4], (still sitting at No. 3 as of this writing), Beck’s antics may draw people in, but there is a deep well of substance behind his act.
Beck, to be sure, is a performer and a showman. He takes risks, and enough of them pay off to make up for his small mistakes. Beck is attuned to the times, perfectly situated to benefit from the Obama backlash. However, he has the substance for the long haul.
Whether 2010 is another Year of the Beck, or not, it is poised to be a comeback year for conservatism. If it is, then Glenn Beck will have been a major part of the reason — and my bet is that is what will matter most to him.
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Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com
URL to article: http://frontpagemag.com/2010/01/04/frontpages-man-of-the-year-by-david-forsmark/
URLs in this post:
[1] Time circa 2006: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html
[2] Big Hollywood: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
[3] Big Government: http://biggovernment.com/
[4] reviewing Beck’s latest bestseller, Arguing with Idiots: http://frontpagemag.com../2009/10/12/the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-of-glenn-beck%E2%80%99s-idiots-by-david-forsmark/
[5] Image: http://www.addtoany.com/share_save?linkurl=http%3A%2F%2Ffrontpagemag.com%2F2010%2F01%2F04%2Ffrontpages-man-of-the-year-by-david-forsmark%2F&linkname=Frontpage%26%238217%3Bs%20Man%20of%20the%20Year%3A%20Glenn%20Beck%20%26%238211%3B%20by%20David%20Forsmark
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GM:
Nice to see that article.
I've never heard his radio show. We have satellite TV and I simply set the DVR to record the show-- which airs here in LA at 14:00 and 21:00.
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I'm probably one of the last Americans without a DVR.
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By JAMES TARANTO
New York
Glenn Beck didn't always believe in what he was doing. "When I was young, I used to hear people say, 'He's a golden boy. Look at that guy. Can you imagine what he's going to be like when he grows up?' Well, I unfortunately bought into that. And I hadn't even found myself. Quite honestly, I was running from myself. But I knew how to work Top 40 radio."
"Golden boy" was no exaggeration. "I was in Washington, D.C., on the morning show, by the time I was 18, programming a station by 19, No. 1 in the mornings. I think I was making, I don't know, a quarter of a million dollars by the time I was 25," he tells me in his midtown Manhattan office, a few blocks from the Fox News Channel studio where he now broadcasts his eponymous program every afternoon.
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Associated Press
.A drinking problem helped plunge Mr. Beck into personal and professional crisis: "By the time I was 30," he says, "nobody would work with me. I was friendless, I was hopeless, I was suicidal, lost my family—I mean, it was bad. Bottomed out, didn't know what I was going to do. I actually thought I was going to be a chef—go to work in a kitchen someplace."
Instead he found a calling in talk radio. It was late in the 1990s: "I did one of my first shows at WABC [in New York]. I was filling in for somebody. . . . I used to have to write everything out and keep copious notes on everything. I overprepped everything. And I got to the end of my first hour, and I looked down at all the notes, and I hadn't touched the first piece of paper. It was all off the top of my head. It was me being me. That's when I knew: This is what I have to do."
Mr. Beck, 45, has many detractors, but there's no denying that he has made a success of himself. In addition to his Fox show, he hosts "The Glenn Beck Program," syndicated on radio, publishes a magazine and a Web site, and has written seven books. "Somebody told me that our footprint in a month"—the number of people he reaches in all media—"is about 30 million," he says.
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Randy Jones
.His politics are libertarian. "I really kind of dig this whole freedom thing," he says. "I'd like to pass it on to the kids." But he is pessimistic about the prospects for doing so: "I'm a dad, and I no longer see a way for my kids to even inherit the money that I'm making, let alone go out there, have an idea, and create it in their own lifetime."
Mr. Beck blames a political system that he describes as corrupt and out of touch, a sentiment that is widely shared: "People in Washington . . . not all of them, but a lot of them, are not men and women of honor anymore," he says. "I just saw a poll today that said 25% of Americans now believe that their government officials will, for the most part, do the right thing. Only 25%. It's the lowest number ever recorded."
Mr. Beck appeals to a slice of the remaining 75% with a style that is earnest and emotional; he is known to cry on air. Although he has reported on some major news stories, including the scandals involving Acorn and former Obama aide Van Jones, he thinks of himself as a commentator and entertainer rather than a journalist. "I'm not interested in breaking news," he tells me. "I'm interested in telling the story of what's going on and then trying to figure it out."
In doing so, Mr. Beck draws strong negative reactions for both his right-of-center views and his populist style. "Right now, I'm getting hammered by the left and the right, and I get hammered for being an opportunist," he says.
He pleads innocent, arguing that he was as hard on George W. Bush—especially over spending and immigration—as he is on Barack Obama: "Nobody seems to recall the years . . . when I was saying the same thing and program directors were calling me saying, . . . 'Are you kidding me? You're on a conservative talk radio network. You can't come out against George W. Bush.' Well, here it goes.
"That's why I connect now with the American people, because the listeners that . . . have been with me for a long time know that I have said these things at my own peril, that I'm not in it for—I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm a capitalist. I dig money. But I'm not in it for the money."
Cheerful and affable, Mr. Beck responds good-naturedly, even eagerly, when I ask him to respond to his critics. It's a far cry from the liberal stereotype of an angry hater. But his worldview has a dark side: "I don't believe our government officials will do the right thing. They will do the right thing for special interests and for some sort of agenda that they're not bringing me in on."
When I ask him to respond to the charge that he is a conspiracy theorist, he answers, "I am the guy who debunked conspiracy theory."
Mr. Beck says he received death threats from "truthers"—crackpots of the far left and the far right who believe that the U.S. government was behind 9/11—after he denounced them on his old CNN Headline News show in 2007. (Mr. Beck's revelation that Van Jones had signed a truther petition helped force Mr. Jones to resign from the White House Council on Environmental Quality in September 2009.)
"I said those people were a gigantic danger from within, because we must trust each other," Mr. Beck says. "There are limits to debasement of this country, aren't there? I mean, it's one thing to believe that our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff. It's another to think that they are willing to kill 3,000 Americans. Once you cross that line, you're in a whole new territory."
Yet while this is all to Mr. Beck's credit, it is not quite responsive to the question. It is possible, after all, to reject one conspiracy theory while espousing others, and the claim that "our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff" is, to say the least, a rather sweeping indictment.
Mr. Beck's answer: "I believe the conspiracies, quote-unquote, that are happening now are happening all out in the open. All you have to do is track their actions. Their actions speak louder than their words. It's easy to throw out, 'Well, he's a conspiracy theorist.' Why do you say that? 'Well, because they say they're not doing that.' But their actions show that they are.
"TARP, stimulus—a stimulus package that makes no sense whatsoever. No sense whatsoever! TARP, stimulus, health care that is behind closed doors, where they're giving Medicaid free to states, where they're saying, 'We're going to pay for it by reducing the cost of Medicare while we expand Medicare.' When you look at all those things, and you know that the people who are in and around the planning of those things believe in [welfare activists Richard] Cloward and [Frances Fox] Piven, believe in ["Rules for Radicals'" author] Saul Alinksy—that's not a conspiracy. That's a pretty good educated guess."
As an example, Mr. Beck notes that Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, last month described the Senate health-care bill as a "starter home." Says Mr. Beck: "Sen. Harkin says to the progressive left, 'This is a starter home. Don't worry, we can add additions to this, and we'll grow it'"—a paraphrase of Mr. Harkin's remarks, but an accurate one. Mr. Beck continues: "Excuse me? That's everything that I've been saying you're going to do, and you've been denying it."
This fall, Mr. Beck drew friendly fire on an American Enterprise Institute blog from Charles Murray, a social scientist with strong libertarian political leanings, who conceded that "Beck is spectacularly right (translation: I agree with him) on about 95 percent of the substantive issues he talks about." But Mr. Murray does not care for Mr. Beck's manner: "Our job is to engage in a debate on great issues and make converts to our point of view. The key word is converts—referring to people who didn't start out agreeing with us. We shouldn't be civil and reasonable just because we want to be nice guys. It is the only option we've got if we want to succeed instead of just posture. The Glenn Becks of the world posture, and make our work harder."
Mr. Beck answers carefully: "I'm sorry he doesn't agree with me—doesn't agree with my approach." Then he notes the irony of a think-tank intellectual criticizing a populist media star for lacking broad appeal: "How many are reading his blog, and how many are listening to my radio show, television show, reading my books, going to conventions, seeing me on stage? I mean, I think, while I respect his position and his difference in opinion on presentation, I think one of us is probably reaching more people daily."
He continues: "Look, I know a lot of people will disagree with the way I present things. I am being myself—I am a guy who is a recovering alcoholic, who lived a pretty fast life, who works hard every day, quite honestly, not to use the F-word—it used to be an art for me. I am a work in progress. But I also am a businessman that looks to get the word out to the maximum number of people."
And he rejects the implication that his is a lowbrow appeal: "You name the conservative that can do a full hour—a full hour—on Woodrow Wilson and the roots of modern liberalism—for an hour—and have high ratings with it. . . . I had like three really big eggheads on the show, and people watched it. Now, you could be Charlie Rose all you want, but nobody's watching Charlie Rose."
Mr. Beck identifies with the Howard Beale character from the 1976 film "Network." Beale, played by Peter Finch, is a news anchor on a fictional broadcast network who has a nervous breakdown on air, becomes a raving populist, and is a big hit with viewers. Mr. Beck invokes the fictional anchorman's most famous line: "I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore. The part of Howard Beale that I liken myself to is the moment when he was in the raincoat, where he figures everything out, and he's like, 'Whoa, whoa, wait a minute! Why the hell aren't you up at the window shouting outside?'"
Mr. Beck adds, "What the media wants to make me is the Howard Beale at the end, the crazy showman that's doing anything for money. That I don't liken myself to."
Some of Mr. Beck's detractors on the left, including MSNBC ranter Keith Olbermann, draw a more sinister cinematic analogy. Mr. Olbermann calls Mr. Beck "Lonesome Rhodes," the cynical TV demagogue played by Andy Griffith in 1957's "A Face in the Crowd."
"I had never heard of Lonesome Rhodes," Mr. Beck says. "I had never seen the movie. . . . As soon as I heard that, I watched it. . . . Lonesome Rhodes and I, I guess, had a few things in common. He was a drunk. I'm in AA; he wasn't. He, at the very beginning, said things that he believed—I think. I'm not really even sure on that. I used to not say the things I believe. . . . Now I've made a vow to myself—it actually comes from Immanuel Kant, the philosopher: 'There are many things that I believe that I shall never say. But I shall never say the things that I do not believe.' . . . The minute I violate that, I'm back to the old drunk Glenn."
The source of the comparison points to another difference between Mr. Beck and Lonesome Rhodes. Mr. Olbermann is no closer to the old ideal of the straightforward, objective newsman than is Mr. Beck, and cable television has yielded up a multitude of other personalities who blend news, strong opinion and entertainment in varying degrees, including Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart and, until his recent departure from CNN, Lou Dobbs.
By contrast, the authors of "A Face in the Crowd" and "Network" imagined their protagonists as singular sensations who drew massive audiences at a time when viewing options were far fewer. At his peak, Lonesome Rhodes claims 65 million viewers, more than one-third of the entire U.S. population in 1957. Mr. Beck's Fox show, the third-highest-rated on the cable news channels, averaged 2.9 million viewers a day in 2009, according to Nielsen Media Research. Even his estimated monthly multimedia audience of 30 million amounts to less than 10% of all Americans.
The development of cable television, with its diversity and audience segmentation, seems to have been a necessary condition for the emergence of such programming. Charles Murray may be right that Mr. Beck mostly preaches to the choir, but the observation applies equally to Mr. Beck's competitors and their respective choirs.
Mr. Taranto, a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, writes the Best of the Web Today column for OpinionJournal.com.
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Woof,
Set your recorders for Glen's Friday show at 5 PM EST, it should be interesting.
P.C.
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My son and I watched today. Very interesting piece (though I thought it could have been done a bit better) and I hope there will be discussion here.
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Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDK1ND9f0KM&feature=related
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rw7DtjO4V6c&feature=related
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XLKNUJzMQ&feature=related
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMPWIqHli00&feature=related
Part 5: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzWLkzcnwp4&feature=related
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It certainly didn't break any new ground, missed Pol Pot, and seemed a primer all the way around. Think it would have been useful to draw some of the links between Baathist, Palestinian, liberation theology, et al.
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Having read Goldberg's book (Liberal Fascism) I think the piece would have been well served by bringing in the shared intellectual analysis of Mussolini and FDR. Indeed not doing so was a real missed opportunity. Also I found some of the editing graphics weird and distracting.
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Glenn reports that the Obama Administration has ordered the CIA to REDUCE :-o :-o :-o intel observation of Red China!?! :x :x :x
In conjunction with the acceleration of our unsustainable debt, do we see the beginning of the endgame of this unsustainable dynamics in which we have placed ourselves???
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You know, after the arms sale to Taiwan I was saying to myself, "self, this bonehead pres don't have a set of stones so the only reason to do something as bold as sell 60 billion worth of arms to Taiwan is to misdirect attention from other forms of collusion.
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Glenn has been on quite a tear this week.
PS: I do wish he would learn to draw the Laffer Curve correctly though
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Glenn closes the CPAC!!! 8-) 8-) 8-)
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2010/02/20/HP/R/29845/Beck+wrapped+up+CPAC+conference.aspx
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Monday's shows I thought quite good, and last night's show outstanding.
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Glenn had several awesome shows last week, but I found the Friday one on education to be quite a letdown and not all that well reasoned.
As for tonight's show with ex-Congressman Masa-- Glenn said it best when he said "I have wasted your time. I am sorry".
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Time magazine aleady had a hit piece on GB saying this interview with Massa is the beginning of the end for Beck - wishful thinking in my opinion. There are two books coming out - most likely left wing zealot hit pieces. I am not sure the MSM in its efforts to destroy Beck understand the phenomenon surrouding him is not about him - it is what he represents.
IMO they will not take him down so easily.
Thank God for courageous fellows like him.
There are a lot of Americans behind him. And we are not going away.
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Speaking of hit pieces, here's a humor hit on Glenn:
http://beck.cnnbcvideo.com/?rc=fb.publish&fv=b|799600-dsmr8Yx
I will say his take on environmental issues irks me a bit. Yes the Green movement is a watermelon front (green on the outside, red on the inside) for liberal fascism, and yes human caused global warming is a crock, but there REALLY are deep serious problems out there. His mini-rant last night on Obama taking away fathes' fishing with their sons like on the Andy Griffith show IMHO simply was facetious or even disingenuous. When species of fish are being fished to the point of utter depletion it is not an unreasonable thought to say "Hey! No fishing for a few years!"
Anyway, Glenn IS awesome. He will not be taken down. Too many people watch his show for the Big Lie to work.
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I liked last night's show. Fascinating to see the footage of just how strong Naziism, Fascism and Communism were in the US in the 1930s.
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The theme this whole week will be what spending to cut. Last night's show I thought did an excellent job of setting up the discussion.
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Crafty,
I don't know about Beck. While agree with much of what he says when it comes to politics and encroaching government et al. I have a hard time listening to him for more than ten minutes. He is really starting to sound like a televangilist. Today on the way to work he starts talking about some woman whose father died on Easter and she thought it was a blessing that that is when he died and then goes on talking about not to let name calling bother one and it sounds so religious and preacher like.
I think he is going off the wall and his success is going to his his head. I have to say he sounds a bit nuts giving the left some fodder.
Even Hannity who has this car salesman quality about him is much preferable to me. Beck sound like a cult leader like Jim Jones or something.
I much prefer Marc Levin or even Savage.
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CCP, See what crafty says but it sounds like you are referring to radio and I think Crafty is watching his television show. I don't see cable shows so I only know him through radio. There can be a big difference in how they come across on the different media. Also Crafty may be viewing with commercials cut out (?) which I imagine makes quite an improvement in the quality of the time for the viewer.
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Quite right Doug. I have never heard GB's radio show and, having satellite TV, I record the show and fastforward through the commercials.
Like the Founding Fathers, like me, GB believes in a Creator. As Ben Franklin said
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the Ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid?" --Benjamin Franklin, To Colleagues at the Constitutional Convention
Therefore I am unperturbed that this is part of GB's message; though I think he goes about it in a way that should not concern atheists as well.
Hannity I simply find to be a mediocrity. He irritates me even when I agree with him. I only watch him if there is something/someone I want to see e.g. Newt Gingrich. Perhaps my opinion of Savage is based upon too small a sample of airtime, but he struck me as a cranky guy past his prime , , , and his prime was never that good. As for Marc Levin, I have seen some youtube clips wherein his comments are but semi-witty insults for the true believers; recently though someone forwarded a 70 minute speech he gave at the Reagan Library which I thought had intellectual heft. Therefore at present I have him filed under "Need to know more about him".
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On the way to the office today I turn on Beck radio and the first thing I hear is him discussing how shortly after his staff comes in in the morning they have a prayer session.
I am not kidding.
He sounds like he is giving us the spiritual stuff from alcoholics anonymous twelve step program.
He really sounds like a cult leader.
It is creepy.
And I appreciate the religious right and feel Jews have more in common with them than liberal Jews would think but I don't want the tea party to be hyjacked by Christian conservatives. Their voice should be heard but they don't control an entire political party as for me.
I sincerely hope I don't offend my Christian friends here.
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What on earth is wrong with a prayer session?
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Nothing. And for people who want to tune in that is their privilege.
What I am concerned about is our political system and the encroachment of government.
If I want to pray I'll go to temple.
There is just something goofy about Beck.
I don't know.
I certainly agree with much of his politics but he just is hard for me to stomach for more than ten minutes.
I prefer Sarah P. more but she just seems a bit short on something too, I don't know.
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As he did last night, Beck can look the camera in the eye and speak from the heart for an hour off the cuff. Don't be fooled by his "regular Joe, self taught" spiel, IMHO the man actuall has a substantial grasp of quite a few issues and does a remarkable job of conveying complex issues to regular people.
As for the religion thing, I think his larger point, made by being a bit ostentatious about it, is that we do better as individuals and as a people when we look to our spiritual values instead of our government for substance in how to live.
I like Sarah and she certainly has the right enemies, but I doubt the intellectual heft or the life experiences to prepare for higher office. Perhaps a term or two in the Senate could give her some more substance.
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Crafty wrote: "Like the Founding Fathers, like me, [Glen Beck] believes in a Creator."
CCP:When they speak of reaching to Christ for strength and direction, you need to translate to you own faith for meaning. I can't remember having a President who just won't go to church except for political reasons and his lack of belief or faith finds its way into policy, like the transfer of power from the people to the bureaucrats. Liberalism and atheism have a connection that must make liberal Jewish voters cringe. Wearing Christianity too openly turns them off worse.
I agree in general with CCP that this is no time politically to wear a specific religion on our sleeves. Fiscal survival - tax and spend issues, basically agreeing to a constitutionally limited definition and role for government should take center stage and difficult and divisive social issues beyond that can wait.
But commentators don't need 51% to succeed. There is an authenticity to Beck telling his audience who he is, where that focus may need to be different if he were a candidate.
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Exactly so. Beck is consistently clear that he is not suitable material for being a candidate. He is also consistently clear about religious tolerance and regularly uses a wonderful Ben Franklin quote about the American religion.
Nice show last night. All last year the intro graphics for the show showed George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King. IMHO it is brilliant and profound to include MLK as a Founding Father (btw, I have done the same on our Founding Fathers thread on the SCH forum , , , great minds think alike :lol: )
One of the three guests last night was MLKing's niece. The other two were Ted Nugent and, said with love, a pointy head Princeton professor. Its a helluva a new coalition that Beck is building IMHO. Beck's theme and closing riff about the Anvil of Truth and the Hammer of Non-violence (MLK and Ghandi) is well and wisely chosen.
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GB is running Founding Father Fridays for at least a month. #1 was Sam Adams. My son and I watched this together. Saved and awaiting our viewing is #2 on George Washington. #3 will be on the black patriots in MA.
Based upon what my son and I saw in #1, I recommend this heartily. Good family viewing too! Help educate your children right!
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I awoke in the middle of the night and turned on cable and the GB show pops up. This was an interesting show about unions in America.
The untold story. The rest of the story not told in liberal schools.
I didn't know for example the FDR was AGAINST public unions. He said they would hold the public sector hostage which is EXATLY what we see now.
Sorry if there are any teachers or police officers on the board. I am not against either but thier unions do hold us hostage in NJ, at least. I believe it is happening in Kolifornia too.
It was JFK who originally signed the law in 1962 that would allow Federal employees to unionize.
It is interesting it was him since I've heard rumors he won the Democratin nomination thanks to mafia controlled unions.
Gee I wonder if there was a connection between those dots.
Beck's TV show is different and better generally than his radio show.
I also didn't know the history of unions was based on racisim.
Now thier strategy is almost a form of reverse racism.
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I guess I missed something here as teachers and police officers are generally not Fed empolyees but work for towns, cities, counties etc.
But I think my point about public sector unions is still the same.
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DELIGHTED to see someone here besides me posting on this thread! :-D
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By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: August 27, 2010
WASHINGTON — It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington, and address them from the very place where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech 47 years ago. After all, the Tea Party and its critics have been facing off for months over accusations of racism.
But many of the busloads of Tea Party activists expected in Washington this weekend do not see any irony or offense. In fact, they have come to see the Tea Party as the aggrieved — its loosely affiliated members unfairly characterized, even persecuted, as extremists.
Eighteen months ago, many were moved to the streets by a belief that they had been not listened to by their representatives in Washington. (“How dare they ignore us?” reads a sign often seen at Tea Party rallies.) Now, encouraged by Tea Party leaders and people like Mr. Beck and Andrew Breitbart, whose BigGovernment.com is a source of news for many Tea Party supporters, they have adopted the language of the civil rights movement to describe their cause. Their sense of persecution has become a galvanizing force.
Consider the response last month when the N.A.A.C.P., the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, called on Tea Party leaders to denounce racist elements in their ranks — citing signs with racist slogans at Tea Party rallies.
Tea Party Patriots, the largest umbrella organization for thousands of local groups across the country, posted a petition on its Web site calling for the N.A.A.C.P. to revoke its resolution “condemning the Tea Party movement as ‘racist.’ ”
“It is nothing less than ‘hate speech’ for the N.A.A.C.P. to be smearing us as ‘racists’ and ‘bigots,’ ” the petition declared. “We believe, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a colorblind, postracial society. And we believe that when an organization lies and resorts to desperate tactics of racial division and hatred, they should be publicly called on it.”
On his radio show, Mr. Beck said he had not intended to choose the anniversary for his “Restoring Honor” rally on Saturday but had since decided it was “divine providence.”
Dr. King’s dream, he told listeners, “has been so corrupted.”
“Judge a man by the content of his character?” he said. “Character doesn’t even matter in this country. It’s time we picked back up the job.”
He later added: “We are the people of the civil rights movement. We are the ones that must stand for civil and equal rights, justice, equal justice. Not special justice, not social justice. We are the inheritors and protectors of the civil rights movement. They are perverting it.”
It has become an article of faith among Tea Party groups that any racist signs at rallies — “Go back to Kenya,” directed at President Obama, is just one example — are carried by Democratic plants sent in to make the Tea Party look bad.
In March, when members of the Congressional Black Caucus accused protesters at a Tea Party rally against health care of spitting on them and shouting racist epithets, Tea Party leaders suggested that those episodes had not occurred, saying there was no video proof.
At a rally in Searchlight, Nev., a week later, Mr. Breitbart argued that black Democratic lawmakers had set out to provoke the protesters. When they did not make racist comments, Mr. Breitbart said, the Democrats simply accused them of doing so.
He looked into the crowd and said it proved that the Tea Party was not racist. “I see black faces, Hispanic faces. I’m Jewish,” he said. “Shalom, Nevada!”
In response to the N.A.A.C.P. resolution last month, Mr. Breitbart claimed reverse racism. He publicized a video of an Agriculture Department official, Shirley Sherrod, saying that she had discriminated against a white farmer. The video turned out to be heavily edited — in fact, Ms. Sherrod had helped the farmer and had actually been telling a longer story to make a point about the need for racial understanding.
Still, Tea Party leaders say they are outraged, as anyone would be, by accusations of racism: they do not see themselves that way.
FreedomWorks, a Washington advocacy group that has encouraged the growth of the Tea Party, is planning to take out full-page newspaper advertisements highlighting black, Hispanic and Jewish Tea Party members to make the point that the movement is diverse. It is also sponsoring a new documentary about black involvement in the cause.
Tea Party supporters argue that it is progressives who are fomenting racial division.
In a rally in April here at the National Mall, Deneen Borelli, a black conservative, told the crowd that Tea Party supporters were in an impossible position: “If you are white they call you racist or a redneck. If you are black, they call you a token, a traitor, an Uncle Tom.”
Polls show that the movement has not attracted blacks proportionate to their representation in the larger population. And some Tea Party leaders acknowledge that.
FreedomWorks advises Tea Party leaders to put Hispanics and blacks on stage at rallies to show that the movement is not racist.
Alveda King, a niece of Dr. King, is scheduled to speak at Mr. Beck’s rally, and many Tea Party supporters say this is evidence that they hold no racial animus.
Lloyd Marcus, a black singer who has performed on the cross-country tours of the Tea Party Express, often introduces himself by saying, “I am not an African-American, I am a Lloyd Marcus American!”
In a letter posted Friday on the social networking Web site Tea Party Nation, Mr. Marcus wrote, “Glenn Beck’s values and principles are far more consistent with M.L.K.’s values than the black civil rights leaders who have sold their souls to the anti-God, anti-family and anti-America progressives for political power.” He signed it, “Lloyd Marcus, unhyphenated American.”
In the Tea Party’s talk of states’ rights, critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace. Tea Party activists call that ridiculous: they do not want to take the country back to the discrimination of the past, they say, they just want the states to be able to block the federal mandate on health insurance.
Still, the government programs that many Tea Party supporters call unconstitutional are the ones that have helped many black people emerge from poverty and discrimination. It is not just that Rand Paul, the Republican nominee for Senate in Kentucky, said that he disagreed on principle with the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that required business owners to serve blacks. It is that many Tea Party activists believe that laws establishing a minimum wage or the federal safety net are an improper expansion of federal power.
Critics rightly note that Dr. King spoke over and over of the need for this country to acknowledge its “debt to the poor,” calling for an “economic bill of rights” that would “guarantee a job to all people who want to work and are able to work.” In Mr. Beck’s taxonomy, this would make him a Marxist.
Even if Tea Party members are right that any racist signs are those of mischief-makers, even if Glenn Beck had chosen any other Saturday to hold his rally, it would be hard to quiet the argument about the Tea Party and race.
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Second post of the day
America Is Better Than This
By BOB HERBERT
Published: August 27, 2010
America is better than Glenn Beck. For all of his celebrity, Mr. Beck is an ignorant, divisive, pathetic figure. On the anniversary of the great 1963 March on Washington he will stand in the shadows of giants — Abraham Lincoln and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Who do you think is more representative of this nation?
Consider a brief sampling of their rhetoric.
Lincoln: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
King: “Never succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter.”
Beck: “I think the president is a racist.”
Washington was on edge on the morning of Aug. 28, 1963. The day was sunny and very warm and Negroes, as we were called in those days, were coming into town by the tens of thousands. The sale of liquor was banned. Troops stood by to restore order if matters got out of control. President John F. Kennedy waited anxiously in the White House to see how the day would unfold.
It unfolded splendidly. The crowd for the “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom” grew to some 250,000. Nearly a quarter of the marchers were white. They gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, where they were enthralled by the singing of Mahalia Jackson and Joan Baez. The march was all about inclusion and the day seemed to swell with an extraordinary sense of camaraderie and good feeling.
The climax, of course, was Dr. King’s transcendent “I Have a Dream” speech. Jerald Podair, a professor of American studies at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, has called Aug. 28, 1963, “the most important single day in civil rights history.” This is the historical legacy that Glenn Beck, a small man with a mean message, has chosen to tread upon with his cynical rally on Saturday at that very same Lincoln Memorial.
Beck is a provocateur who likes to play with matches in the tinderbox of racial and ethnic confrontation. He seems oblivious to the real danger of his execrable behavior. He famously described President Obama as a man “who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”
He is an integral part of the vicious effort by the Tea Party and other elements of the right wing to portray Mr. Obama as somehow alien, a strange figure who is separate and apart from — outside of — ordinary American life. As the watchdog group Media Matters for America has noted, Beck said of the president, “He chose to use the name, Barack, for a reason, to identify not with America — you don’t take the name Barack to identify with America. You take the name Barack to identify, with what? Your heritage? The heritage, maybe, of your father in Kenya, who is a radical?”
Facts and reality mean nothing to Beck. And there is no road too low for him to slither upon. The Southern Poverty Law Center tells us that in a twist on the civil rights movement, Beck said on the air that he “wouldn’t be surprised if in our lifetime dogs and fire hoses are released or opened on us. I wouldn’t be surprised if a few of us get a billy club to the head. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of us go to jail — just like Martin Luther King did — on trumped-up charges. Tough times are coming.”
He makes you want to take a shower.
In Beck’s view, President Obama is driven by a desire to settle “old racial scores” and his ultimate goal is “reparations” for black Americans. Abe Lincoln and Dr. King could only look on aghast at this clown.
Beck has been advertising his rally as nonpolitical, but its main speaker is Sarah Palin. She had her own low moment recently as a racial provocateur, publicly voicing her support for Laura Schlessinger, radio’s “Dr. Laura,” who went out of her way to humiliate a black caller by continuously using the n-word to make a point, even after the caller had made it clear that she was offended.
Palin’s advice to Schlessinger: “Don’t retreat — reload.”
(MARC: I have listened to the phone call in question and thought Dr.Laura, whom I generally like, in an effort to be anti-PC, which I certainly support, badly missed the mark. Palin, who unlike Dr. Laura was not working live, has less of an excuse. This comment of hers will come back to haunt her I think.)
There is a great deal of hatred and bigotry in this country, but it does not define the country. The daily experience of most Americans is not a bitter experience and for all of our problems we are in a much better place on these matters than we were a half century ago.
But I worry about the potential for violence that grows out of unrestrained, hostile bombast. We’ve seen it so often. A little more than two weeks after the 1963 March on Washington, the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan and four young black girls were killed. And three months after the march, Jack Kennedy was assassinated.
My sincere advice to Beck, Palin and their followers is chill, baby, chill.
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**Best thing written about Beck evah** :-D
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/27/i-like-glenn-beck-because-hes
My right honorable colleague Michael Moynihan has amusingly limned Beck’s freedom from accuracy, but the real reason I and my fellow coastal elites are wary of Glenn Beck is a lot more basic: He’s the fat kid you don’t want to be seen with at the lunch table. I'll admit it! I find Beck a little bit creepy and gross and needy, and he gives me this sense that things are not going to end well. But after hearing all this carping about him, I checked out a recent episode of his show to see if it had somehow changed from the breathless, flop-sweating dormroom tirade I remembered with some fondness. (It was the August 21 ep. if you want to check my math.) And my impression remains: Why is everybody down on this guy? Above all why are libertarians down on this guy?
Yes, he’s trying, as Moynihan memorably put it, to learn history and teach it at the same time. But so what? Like the dumpy woman with low self-esteem we all dream of, Beck makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in natural gifts. I like the sense that he’s bringing you his findings as fast as they come in. You get the impression that two weeks ago Beck had never heard of Woodrow Wilson, yet now he has figured out that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most evil people of the 20th century, and he wants to tell everybody. There's something fun about that, a performance that invites you to help fill in details and fix errors. It's certainly something you don't see anywhere else on TV, a medium populated almost entirely by people who are more cocksure about everything than I am about anything.
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Charles Blow
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was already dead when I was born, and yet I idolized him the way most children idolized athletes and pop stars. I had the poster and the T-shirt, I knew the speeches and the places he’d marched. He was smart and brave, steadfast and unmovable. He was a man consumed by conviction and possessed by the magnificent radiance of the earnestly humble. He was an eloquent speaker and a beautiful writer. He cared more about justice and equality than fame or fortune. He was a beacon of light in a world beset by darkness.
That’s why the nightmarish idea of Glenn Beck (who has called President Obama a racist and compared Obama’s America to “The Planet of the Apes”) holding a “Restoring Honor” rally on the 47th anniversary of — and on the same site as — King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, so incensed me.
Glenn Beck is the anti-King.
(I find it curious that many of the same people who object so strenuously to the Islamic cultural center proposed for Lower Manhattan, many on the grounds that it is inappropriate and disrespectful, are virtually silent on the impropriety and disrespect inherent in Beck’s giving a speech on the anniversary of King’s address.)
But Beck seems bent on appropriating the civil rights movement. In April, he read his audience the civil rights movement’s commitment card and then said, “Looks to me like the next phase of the 9/12 Project.” (9/12 is a “nonpolitical movement” started by Beck last year to “protect the greatest nation ever created.”) And Beck has said of this rally, “This is a moment, quite honestly, that I think we reclaim the civil rights movement.” Reclaim? From whom?
Beck wants to swaddle his movement in the cloth of the civil rights movement, a cloth soaked in the blood and tears of the innocent and oppressed, a cloth his divisiveness and self-aggrandizing threatens to defile.
In fact, to even insinuate that the president’s policies are in any way equivalent to the brutality of the Jim Crow South at the time of the civil rights movement is the highest order of insult, particularly to those who lived and suffered through it, as well as to those who live with its legacy. If Beck truly thinks these movements are comparable, I have some pictures of “strange fruit” I’d like for him to see.
And yet, I’ve come to the conclusion that anger is the wrong reaction to Beck’s rally in Washington. Anger provides too low a return on investment. It consumes a tremendous amount of energy, but yields little progress. Instead, we should each take this opportunity to listen to the “I Have a Dream” speech once more, paying particular attention to how the echoes of yesterday’s struggles reverberate in our present struggles, and to recommit ourselves to the nobility of righteous pursuits.
We should use Glenn’s nightmare to reconnect with Martin’s dream.
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Charles Blow sucks as well.
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Well, my internal nickname for him is in the subject heading for my post of his article: "Blowhard" :lol:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/28/thousands-expected-glenn-beck-rally-civil-rights-leaders-protest-event/
Thousands Expected at Glenn Beck Rally as Civil Rights Leaders Protest Event
Published August 28, 2010
| FoxNews.com
Fox News' Glenn Beck and thousands of like-minded activists gathered Saturday in the nation's capital on the anniversary and at the same site of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech, a demonstration meant to pay tribute to American troops.
Civil rights leaders, meanwhile, are planning to protest the event, claiming that the timing and location of the rally is a dishonor to King's legacy.
Beck, a Fox News personality and a conservative favorite, has said it is a coincidence that his "Restoring Honor" rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is overlapping with the 47th anniversary of King's speech. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is expected to attend along with some 100,000 people. District of Columbia officials had granted a permit for some 300,000.
Beck and other organizers say the aim is to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." The broadcaster toured the site Friday as supporters cheered.
"It was not my intention to select 8-28 because of the Martin Luther King tie,” Beck said on his radio show in June. “It is the day he made that speech. I had no idea until I announced it.”
The Rev. Al Sharpton called the demonstration an anti-government rally advocating states' rights. And Sharpton said that goes against the message in King's speech, in which the civil rights leader appealed to the federal government to ensure equality.
"The structural breakdown of a strong national government, which is what they're calling for, is something that does not serve the interests of the nation and it's something that Dr. King and others fought against," Sharpton said Saturday on C-SPAN.
"It is ironic to me that they come on the day of a speech where Dr. King appealed for a strong government to protect civil rights and they're going to the site of Abraham Lincoln who saved the union against the state rebellion," he said.
Sharpton and others planned to rally at a high school and march to the site of a proposed King memorial not far from the Lincoln Memorial.
Beck, a Fox News personality and favorite of conservatives, has given voice to those angry and frustrated with President Obama and other Democrats this election year, especially members of the tea party movement.
A conservative blogger's assertion that parts of the nation's capital should be avoided as unsafe, created an uproar on the blogosphere, accusations of racism and a sharp response by angry city leaders.
With emotions already high, the work of a largely unknown tea party blogger, Bruce Majors, brought them to a fever pitch on Friday.
The blog, which first appeared last Monday and has been widely viewed and distributed since then, warned conservative protesters visiting the nation's capital to avoid certain subway lines, suggesting they are unsafe, that certain neighborhoods should be avoided, that the city is populated by the world's refugees -- that taxi drivers are often Arab or African -- and that generally visitors should be wary.
And it inspired a satirical map of Washington with all of the city marked unsafe, except for the tiny sliver of the National Mall, home to the Lincoln Memorial. Some people mistakenly assumed the map was put out by Beck rally supporters.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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My 5th post of the morning:
For those not familiar with GB's show, I would point out that for all of 2009 the show's opening graphics featured 3 pictures; one each of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King. The message to me was pretty clear: MLK is an American Father just as much as were GW and TJ. The point was underlined by the inclusion in the montage of other fotos of a famous one from the 60s civil rights era of a black man holding up a sign "I am a man".
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I don't recall C. Blow or any other member of the race-baiting industrial complex condemning Al "Tawana Brawley" Shapton or any other huckster for invoking MLK.
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Perhaps you saw Sharpton on Geraldo this weekend. Geraldo stated that he generally does not agree with Beck but graciously admitted his rally was great, his presentation, his message was "flawlessly" delivered.
Sharpton was literally pissed at this complimentary tone and that he had nothing he could extract out of the events or speeches of the day to use as fodder to criticize Beck.
All he could do was state the Beck we saw today was not the one who we saw earlier and use previous comments from Beck as a line of attack. Like you know, "Obama is a racist". (Like he is not, of course he is).
So Rev Al argues Beck does not advance civil rights when Glenn promotes the concepts of equal opportunity and freedom for *all*. That Beck has no right to promote MLK as one of the many in the Civil Rights movement who helped make sure Blacks have the same freedoms whites do and that that is worthy of all our respect, admiration, and honor.
Frankly, Sharpton as well as the rest of these self proclaimed leaders of civil rights have made their intent clear. It is not about freedom and opportunity for minorities. It is not enough for conservatives to have this to offer. We keep hearing Black Democrats asking what does the GOP have to offer Blacks? Their point is they want special reparations. They will use past injustices forever as a tool to extract more concessions from Whites. They appear to never be able to admit that the nanny state has arguably made the condition of minorities worse - not better off. They want more and they want it now.
I guess these self proclaimed leaders also don't want to lose the privileges that afford them with celebritism, wealth, power. Why these guys have all become rich with this stuff!
But lets forget them! They are smaller than they think. The important question is can the GOP, Tea Party, Beck, et al. actually convince minorities that by joining their side they will be better off as will all of Americans???
The answer is maybe. And this possibility is what the Dem Blacks who have co-opted leadership power as the spokespeople for their group fear the most.
I can't say I am not impressed with Beck's achievement so far. I am also surprised. I still find him in some way a bit creepy and goofy. But I won't deny he may very well be a political force to recken with. And thank God we have a new voice to bring back the pride to all Americans rather than a President who angrily and arrogantly insists on demeaning this country.
My hats off to Beck. Maybe one answer to being hip and cool like the ONE is to be a bit goofy. And down to Earth.
Does anyone think TIME magazine will place Beck on the cover with admiriation like they did with Sharpton recently? :wink:
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What word on the numbers in attendance?
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http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/08/29/wildly-conflicting-reports-about-beck-rally-crowd-size/#more-119796
Depends who you ask.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-beck-rally-20100829,0,3925348.story
Pravda on the Beach (POTB) a.k.a. LA Times, grits its teeth and admits to 200,000.
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/08/29/the-honor-of-a-great-people/
A very good read.
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Likewise, WOW!
Obama's historic victory speech was before 'tens of thousands', according to CBS.
CCP: Does anyone think TIME magazine will place Beck on the cover with admiration like they did with Sharpton recently? wink
Yes on the cover with obligatory coverage of a phenomenon that they cannot stop, but not with admiration. This is a story.
After 2004, the last Republican victory (it has been a while now), there were NY Times reporters who said they didn't even know anyone who voted for Bush. Rush L. predicted they would have to send foreign correspondents out into regions like Kansas to find out more about these people who don't think like they do. That victory was subtle and somewhat hollow. This one is energized. People did not wait for the pollsters and the correspondents to come out and ask their opinion.
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Video: The Entire Glenn Beck 'Restoring Honor' Rally
The Hope For America ^ | 8/28/10 | Glenn Beck, et. al.
(click on link in red )
http://www.thehopeforamerica.com/play.php?id=4955
It's in RTMP format, which means you can zip around to any part you like without having to wait for the whole thing to load.
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http://dailycaller.com/2010/08/29/what-theyre-saying-about-the-828-rally/
Media bias.
Journolist?
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Did google try to sabotage Beck's rally?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/204373/google_maps_misplaces_lincoln_memorial.html?tk=hp_new
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Today's POTB (LA Times) reports "thousands". I am told MSNBC has stated "upwards of 300,000" but do not have a URL.
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LOL.
GM,
"Journolist"
*EXACTLY* :wink:
Every single one points out: "overwhelmingly white crowd"
The talking point is obvious.
Well everyone should note/point out that Sharpton's rally was overwhelmingly Black. How about that for implying racism!
Why is it we only see mostly Black people at his rallies??
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Awesome show from Glenn tonight.
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A gay conservative on Beck's rally:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2010/09/01/828-restoring-honor-rally-emblematic-of-ideological-divide/
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Alexander's Essay – September 2, 2010
The Brushfires of Freedom
"It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." --Samuel Adams
The Resurrection of First PrinciplesA few decades ago, my great aunt, a lady whom I admired, passed away. I was listed as a relative, though not a material beneficiary, of her small estate. An official notice went out to all of our living relatives announcing the date of her estate settlement, but it listed my name as the deceased instead of her name.
In the days that followed, I received many faux messages of condolence from my siblings and cousins, whom I assured, in a manner befitting Samuel Clemens, "The report of my death was an exaggeration."
Likewise, a few decades ago, the economy was given last rites and the Republican Party with it, and Democrats elected Jimmy Carter to solve the nation's problems at home and abroad. However, reports of the Republican demise were also greatly exaggerated.
Though Republicans appeared down for the count, constitutional conservatives, The Patriot heart and soul of our nation, never wavered in their devotion to Essential Liberty and Rule of Law established by our Constitution.
From our ranks arose a formidable spokesman for conservative principles, Ronald Reagan.
Fortunately, after four years of Carter and his congressional Democrats, Reagan's clear articulation of the principles of economic and individual liberty brought the Republican Party back from the brink of extinction. His 1980 election and his leadership as president provided a timeless template for the restoration of our nation's economic and moral prosperity.
In his 1981 inaugural address, President Reagan reassured the nation: "The economic ills we suffer ... will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we, as Americans, have the capacity now, as we have had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. ... Our government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed. It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the federal government and those reserved to the states or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the federal government did not create the states; the states created the federal government."
Ronald Reagan implemented massive tax reductions, deregulation and anti-inflation monetary policies, which reduced inflation to 3.2 percent by 1983 and unleashed a historic period of economic growth. Of course, behind all the right-minded policy was the most important element of the recovery: Ronald Reagan himself. He was a man of character and substance, and he restored American prestige and confidence. His re-election in 1984 was a landslide of historic proportions: He carried 49 states and collected 525 electoral votes, while his overmatched Democrat opponent, Walter Mondale, could carry only his home state of Minnesota and, of course, the District of Columbia.
Reagan's genius was in his ability to communicate the timeless message of American Liberty with simplicity and purpose. Unfortunately, by the end of his eight years, establishment Republicans of the old-money dynastic variety had retaken control of the party and squandered the Reagan legacy in just a single term under George H.W. Bush.
With the election of the young, charismatic Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992, conservatives once again had to rebuild the foundation of Liberty. It didn't take long. By Clinton's first midterm election, they had successfully, for the first time in four decades, seated a Republican majority in the House of Representatives. That majority managed, under the leadership of Newt Gingrich, to fulfill almost all the conservative commitments outlined in its Contract with America. In doing so, they also pushed Clinton to the center, forcing him to balance budgets and reform welfare. Unfortunately, though, the Republican establishment ran elder statesman Bob Dole against Clinton in 1996, and like Bush(41) before him, Dole could not match wits with Clinton.
In the run-up to the 2000 election, conservatives had made progress toward restoring the Reagan legacy. Despite this, establishment Republicans still held sway within the Party, and by the end of Clinton's reign, they had allocated more attention to his extra-marital debauchery than the agenda advanced by conservatives. In doing so, they lost their focus and almost lost the 2000 presidential election to Clinton's lapdog, Albert Arnold Gore. Fortunately for our nation, Gore could never muster Clinton's alpha-dog hubris and gravitas.
George W. Bush campaigned on some Reaganesque themes, but he entered office wounded by "dangling chads" in Florida. Bush's resolve, however, was solidly forged on the morning of 11 September 2001. The devastating attack on our country that day killed some 3,000 Americans and sent our economy into a tailspin. Still, in the months that followed, President Bush exhibited a purpose and resolve unlike anything he had exhibited prior to that day. His great popularity lasted for the first two years of his presidency, during which he enjoyed the unwavering support of conservative Patriots across the nation.
Fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, though, and by the end of his first term, Bush(43) and like-minded establishment Republicans in the House and Senate had abandoned the conservative base to the extent that many of their domestic policies were indistinguishable from Democrat policies. Consequently, they were hamstrung by the midterm elections of Bush's second term, and as the economy collapsed around them in 2008, Republicans ran a senior member of their establishment club, John McCain, against a young, charismatic unknown, Barack Hussein Obama.
The McCain v. Obama contest had all the excitement of the Dole v. Clinton match, even though Obama is a featherweight when compared to Clinton, with one exception -- Obama's resolve to implement socialist ideology. Given the added campaign benefit of a collapsing economy under an opposing party president, and the good sense to, in the words of his chief of staff, "Never allow a crisis to go to waste," Obama managed to dupe a majority of American voters.
Thus ends this painfully short history of the ups and downs of the Republican Party over the last three decades. Yet despite the significant reversals due to the malfeasance of establishment Republicans, conservatives have always held fast to the legacy of Liberty bequeathed to us by our Founders, understanding as did Samuel Adams, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
Now, as it was by midterm of Jimmy Carter's presidency, an angry electorate is awakening from its malaise, shaking off its feel-good stupor, and sensing that "hope and change" is a metaphor for rope and chains.
And now, as then, conservatives have been hard at work again, laying the foundation to repair all of the damage done by the establishment wing of the Republican Party. This time around, however, conservative Patriots are establishing an identity apart from being the "Republican base." There are still Reagan Republicans in Congress -- about 120 of them between the House and Senate. But the new conservative movement is now positioned to challenge establishment Republicans, who fake right in campaigns and then run left after election day, forsaking both their commitments to voters and their "sacred oath" to support and defend our Constitution.
Restoring HonorThe "Tea Party" movement has grown from its humble roots a couple of years ago to now include millions of Patriot conservatives across the nation, who, first and foremost, reject the notion of a "living constitution" and instead are firmly committed to the First Principles upon which our nation was founded.
In 1980, the conservative movement had Ronald Reagan to rally around, but in the absence of such a stalwart leader, the movement is rallying around the enduring principles of Liberty that Reagan advocated.
The Tea Party's influence was abundantly clear across the nation this past week, from Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, to Tea Party candidate Joe Miller's defeat of establishment Republican incumbent Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski.
Our objectives are aptly summed up in The Patriot Declaration and the less specific but more ambitious Contract from America endorsed by a strong consortium of conservative groups organized by former House Majority Leader and now FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey.
Predictably but regrettably, many establishment Republicans still don't get it.
In a recent opinion piece for The Washington Post, Michael Gerson, erstwhile speechwriter for George W. Bush, condescends, "Tea party populism is ... clearly incompatible with some conservative and Republican beliefs."
I am not suggesting that Gerson is wrong, but that some Republican beliefs are not consistent with those that are the foundation of our Republic.
Gerson seems most upset about the fact that the majority of conservative Patriots now identified with the Tea Party movement are unafraid to list rebellion among their political options.
Gerson notes, "Far from reflecting the spirit of the Founders, the implied resort to political violence is an affectation -- more foolish than frightening. But it is toxic for the GOP to be associated with the armed and juvenile."
I'm not sure what "spirit of the Founders" Gerson consulted in séance, but the one who wrote our Declaration of Independence also wrote with steadfast determination, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
What's more, the scribe who later penned our Constitution also noted, "[T]he advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any which a simple government of any form can admit of."
Like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, respectively, their Patriot descendants understand that the Second Amendment was and remains, in the words of Justice Joseph Story, "the palladium of liberties of a republic."
I suppose the preceding is an unsettling notion for Beltway bow-tie establishment Republicans, just as it should be for every Leftist disciple of Obama and the Socialist Bourgeoisie nationwide. Get over it.
The Tea Party movement, if it can maintain its identity as a set of principles rather than become an institution, may well succeed in reversing much of the insult done against our Constitution during the last century. However, this will take more than one election cycle, and it will take leadership as bold as that of Ronald Reagan.
In the meantime, for those establishment Republicans who have yet to repent of their ways and join our ranks, those who are as yet unwilling to stand in the gap between Liberty and Obama's objective to "fundamentally transform the United States of America," I offer these words from Sam Adams: "If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!"
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Mark Alexander
Publisher, The Patriot Post
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Op-Ed Contributor
Dr. King’s Newest Marcher
By TAYLOR BRANCH
Published: September 4, 2010
LIKE the historic original in 1963, Glenn Beck’s commemorative march on Washington has produced a clash of perception. Marchers celebrated rather than besieged the capital, and sweet piety floated above tribal antagonisms. Responses of disbelief have mingled once again with giddy, puzzled surprise. This time, by embracing the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., stridently conservative speakers revived hard questions about symbolic fusion in politics. Did their words invite a rare shift in the landscape? Or did they merely paint a mirage?
A week ago Saturday, from the Lincoln Memorial steps, Mr. Beck himself described undergoing a stark conversion as he organized the rally. “When I put this together, in my head,” he told the crowd, “I felt it was supposed to be political.” His promotional announcement had put him “into a cold sweat” of doubt, however, until personal crisis made him grab an assistant by the lapels, Mr. Beck declared, “and I pulled him in close, and I screamed in his ear, ‘I don’t know how, but we’re wrong!’” He said an inner voice had told him to drop his slashing polemics, then politics entirely, for an unspecified new theme grounded in spiritual values. “I don’t understand it,” he said he had told his flabbergasted staff, “but this is where we’re going.”
A skilled dramatist, given to surging displays of emotion, Mr. Beck announced that paralysis had gripped him until last spring, when “we were still kind of lost, and we didn’t know what we were going to do when we got here.” He offered his audience no further clues to a mysterious transformation, but my cringing search of his program archives turned up — amid diatribes on Dr. King as a dangerous socialist, and on President Obama as an alien Muslim — a novel encounter with Dr. King’s niece, Alveda. Her first invitation to appear on Mr. Beck’s show suited his political mold, because she is a defiant crusader against abortion rights and gay marriage.
In their interview, Mr. Beck focused instead on a souvenir from the civil rights movement that Alveda King brought with her. The 10-point “pledge of nonviolence,” a copy of the form signed by demonstrators preparing to face persecution and jail, seemed to strike him with the force of revelation. “These people were serious about nonviolence,” Mr. Beck told his cable audience.
He posted the commandments on his Web site, then analyzed them over several broadcasts on the Fox network last April: “No. 3 is ‘walk and talk in the manner of love.’ This one’s going to be hard.” Sacrifice personal wishes, he recited, that all may be free. Observe with friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy. Remember the nonviolent movement seeks justice and reconciliation, not victory.
Mr. Beck extolled disciplined sacrifice by marginal, misunderstood people, noting that most newspapers had branded Dr. King a troublemaker stirring up violence. He added his own saucy twist to the final pledge: As you prepare to march, meditate on the life and teachings of Jesus. “If it’s Buddha, it’s Buddha. If it’s Moses, it’s Moses. But meditate,” Mr. Beck exhorted his viewers. “Jesus, he’s my guy. Your guy might be different.”
Glenn Beck did not adopt nonviolence explicitly for the “Restoring Honor” rally in Washington. That would have been too wrenching a leap for his followers and opponents alike. After all, nonviolent doctrines have been submerged, ignored or forgotten across decades of ethnic assertion and perpetual warfare, even by many heirs of the nonviolent movement themselves.
Mr. Beck obtained a simpler, tamer version from Alveda King last spring, when she recalled her childhood counsel from “Uncle Martin” that nonviolence boiled down to St. Paul’s three abiding guides in the Bible: faith, hope and charity. Mr. Beck told viewers back then that he walked dazed from the studio, gripped by a new theme. “I love this woman!” he announced on April 21. His crisis was ending. “I see the landing strip after last night,” he declared. He would apply organizing techniques from the civil rights movement. On the 47th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, he would bestow citizenship medals for faith, hope and charity.
Only Mr. Beck knows the alternative. Perhaps he would have mocked the 1963 march on its sacrosanct turf, remaining the daredevil ideologue who has posed in a Nazi-like uniform to spice his torment of liberals. The actual rally befuddled and bored many viewers, especially sophisticated ones. A huge crowd swayed to a three-hour tent revival of prayer and patriotism. “God is the answer!” cried Mr. Beck. Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” echoed above the vast National Mall for tributes to the bravery of American soldiers.
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Mr. Beck’s history was sloppy at times. He said Moses led the Hebrew people out of slavery “5,000 years ago,” centuries too early, and somehow he had the Pilgrims landing “with malice toward none,” anticipating Lincoln. He said Alveda King’s father, like her uncle, was “killed for standing for what is right,” when in fact A. D. King drowned at home after a long bout with alcohol and depression. His interpretation of the 1963 march diminished the prior mass movement to portray Dr. King as the lone spark in dark national despair. “Every great achievement in human history,” intoned the rally’s announcer, “has started with one person, one crazy idea.”
Still, Mr. Beck’s rally extended respect to the civil rights movement. The giant screen played well-chosen quotations over historic images. The platform mustered far more diversity than the crowd. The program featured a refrain from “Lift Every Voice and Sing” along with remarks by Ms. King, who acknowledged “the great evil divide of racism.” A narrator saluted the fight for racial freedom and an “even harder” fight for equality. “The dream is not completed,” he went on. “It’s an ongoing struggle, one that all Americans should always be willing to undertake.”
Most important, all the speakers placed Dr. King’s cause squarely among the peaks of American history. They sounded a litany from the founders to Frederick Douglass, from slavery to space flight. “Would you have crossed the mountains?” Mr. Beck asked. “I think I would have been stuck at the first river.” He read the Gettysburg Address, and observed that Dr. King had stood beneath the statue of Abraham Lincoln for good reason. “The words are alive,” he told the crowd. “Our most famous speeches are American scripture.”
He explained why the “sacred honor” conclusion to the Declaration of Independence is his cherished favorite despite the religious skepticism of its author, Thomas Jefferson. “Blindfolded fear does not lead to an awakening,” said Mr. Beck, paraphrasing Jefferson. “Questioning with boldness does.” For a nation in crisis, and indeed for a looming “global storm,” he prescribed the nonviolent regimen that had inspired him. “We must get the poison of hatred out of us,” he said. “Go to your churches, your synagogues, your mosques, anyone that is not preaching hate and division, anyone that is not teaching to kill another man.”
Mr. Beck claimed that his urgent call for restoration “has nothing to do with politics” — and pundits, true enough, discerned almost none of the usual partisan propaganda. The rally was considered right-wing mostly by presumption. Mr. Beck wandered into deeper waters elsewhere. He said Dr. King and other patriots whom we honor on the Mall had risked everything for the American experiment in self-government. “It’s not just a country, it’s an idea,” he asserted, and citizens today must renew that affirmation or admit that “the experiment cannot work, that man must be ruled by someone.”
This appeal is thoroughly and inherently political. “I have been looking for the next George Washington,” Mr. Beck said. “I can’t find him.”
When it came to politics at the rally, Mr. Beck always stopped short, perhaps because his new framework points directly away from anti-government orthodoxy. Washington and the founders established freedom by upholding experimental government against those who would tear it down. Lincoln saved the Union from deconstructionist zealots. Dr. King’s dream speech, from patriotic and spiritual ground, appealed unreservedly for the nation to “rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed” by passing a civil rights bill to end segregation.
FEAR is a hazard of great endeavors to bridge political differences. In 1963, racial apprehension before Dr. King’s rally drove the federal government to furlough its workers for the day. The Pentagon deployed 20,000 paratroopers. Hospitals stockpiled plasma. Washington banned sales of alcohol, and Major League Baseball canceled not one but two days of Senators baseball, just to be safe. When the march of benign inspiration embarrassed these measures, opponents still insisted that the civil rights bill would enslave white people.
In the years since, the search for common ground has not gotten any easier. Americans are at an impasse over the capacity of national government, torn between hope and resentment, tyranny and liberation, fettered by checks without balance.
Glenn Beck calls himself a damaged product of family tragedy, failed education and past addiction — mercurial and unsure, like many of his hard-pressed audience. He may never follow through from his “new starting point” into constructive politics. Even so, he made peace for one day with the liberal half of the American heritage. That is a good thing. Our political health, in the spirit of Dr. King’s march, requires thoughtful and bold initiatives from all quarters.
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Beck is on vacation this week and Judge Napolitano is hosting a week dedicated to reviewing "the world according to Beck"-- a good week for new comers to get a sense of things and for regular viewers to get a good broad review.
Changing subjects, here's this from the WSJ:
The tea party movement has largely been a boon for the country, reviving the case for limited government and a properly understood Constitution. Now that the general election campaign is near, however, we'll see how well the movement and its favored candidates can close the sale and pragmatically advance their goals.
We say this in particular about their relationship to the Republican Party, and vice versa. The GOP is a more natural ideological home for most tea partiers than is the other major party, but they also suspect many Republicans of committing pragmatism, if not selling out too easily to Beltway mores. They have a point.
On the other hand, sometimes you need a few "wets" to gain a majority and advance your own ideas. Ask Nancy Pelosi, who rode the victories of Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked Blue Dog Democrats to the House Speakership in 2006 and then used them to pass 40 years of liberal dreams in this Congress.
This political dilemma is coming to a head in next week's Senate primary in Delaware to determine the GOP nominee for Joe Biden's former seat. Congressman and former Governor Mike Castle is running and is thought to be an easy general election winner. This would be a net GOP gain in a blue state that gave President Obama 62% of the vote in 2008. Such pickups aren't easy to come by.
Mr. Castle will never be mistaken for South Carolina's Jim DeMint, however, and he has a moderate voting record across his 18 years in Congress. His (still unapologetic) support for cap and tax last year is especially radioactive for many GOP primary voters, whether or not they are tea party fellow-travelers. That voting record has drawn a primary challenge from Christine O'Donnell, an itinerant conservative commentator and activist who is supported by some in the tea party movement and national talk radio. She is close in the polls and could pull an upset.
View Full Image
Associated Press
Christine O'Donnell, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, addresses supporters during a Tea Party Express news conference.
.If she does defeat Mr. Castle, however, she has little chance to win in November. A two-time loser statewide, Ms. O'Donnell has a history of financial troubles and recently told the Weekly Standard her home and office were vandalized, though she hadn't reported it to police. She recently accused a conservative local talk radio host that he had been "paid off" by Mr. Castle's supporters after he asked her tough questions.
So GOP primary voters must decide if they want to vote for Mr. Castle, a moderate who would help Republicans organize the Senate and who opposed ObamaCare but who will give them heartburn on some issue in the future. Or they can vote their heart even if it means giving up a Senate seat.
A similar case is the race for the GOP nomination in upstate New York's 23rd Congressional District. Doug Hoffman ran on the Conservative line in a special election last year after being shut out by GOP bosses, and a Democrat ended up victorious in a three-candidate race. Mr. Hoffman is threatening another third-party run if he loses the GOP primary next Tuesday, even though this time voters are deciding, not party insiders. At some point, voters will wonder if Mr. Hoffman's candidacy is about his principles, or his personal ambition.
Politics in our two-party system is about coalition building, and any successful party must stretch across many groups. Republicans will have to accommodate much of the tea party agenda if they hope to assemble a new majority and avoid third-party challenges. But tea partiers who want to restore proper Constitutional limits, rather than merely pad the ratings of talk radio, might recall William F. Buckley Jr.'s counsel that his policy was to vote for the most conservative candidate who could win.
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If the republicans don't get it right this time, time to build a new party.
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42068.html
In announcing DiverseTea, though, Kibbe pointed to the diversity of the speakers at the rally his group sponsored Sunday on Washington’s National Mall, including the Rev. C.L. Bryant, who is African-American, and activists Tito Munoz, who is Hispanic, and Ryan Hecker, who is Jewish.
Hecker, who will appear in the ads with Bryant and other tea partiers, led the effort to develop a crowd-sourced statement of tea party principles called the Contract From America — intended as a populist take on the 1994 Contract With America that Republicans used in their campaign to retake Congress that year — which was a theme of Sunday’s rally. It has been signed by movement-favored Senate candidates including Marco Rubio of Florida, Ken Buck of Colorado and Mike Lee of Utah.
Unlike Bryant’s race or Munoz’s ethnicity, Hecker seldom speaks of his religion at tea party events, but he said “it’s definitely a part of who I am.”
He said he was happy to do the ads because “for me, it was to make a statement that the tea party is not just a one-religion movement — it’s not just a Christian movement. It’s about fiscal issues, not about religion or the color of our skin.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0910/42068.html#ixzz0zYuu1HKb
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This fact marks our political age: The pendulum is swinging faster and in shorter arcs than it ever has in our lifetimes. Few foresaw the earthquake of 2008 in 2006. No board-certified political professional predicted, on Election Day 2008, what happened in 2009-10 (New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts) and has been happening, and will happen, since then. It all moves so quickly now, it all turns on a dime.
But at this moment we are witnessing a shift that will likely have some enduring political impact. Another way of saying that: The past few years, a lot of people in politics have wondered about the possibility of a third party. Would it be possible to organize one? While they were wondering, a virtual third party was being born. And nobody organized it.
Related Video
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News Hub: Tea Party Considers Future
Tea Party Movement's Risks for Republicans
.Here is Jonathan Rauch in National Journal on the tea party's innovative, broad-based network: "In the expansive dominion of the Tea Party Patriots, which extends to thousands of local groups and literally countless activists," there is no chain of command, no hierarchy. Individuals "move the movement." Popular issues gain traction and are emphasized, unpopular ones die. "In American politics, radical decentralization has never been tried on such a large scale."
Here are pollsters Scott Rasmussen and Doug Schoen in the Washington Examiner: "The Tea Party has become one of the most powerful and extraordinary movements in American political history." "It is as popular as both the Democratic and Republican parties." "Over half of the electorate now say they favor the Tea Party movement, around 35 percent say they support the movement, 20 to 25 percent self-identify as members of the movement."
So far, the tea party is not a wing of the GOP but a critique of it. This was demonstrated in spectacular fashion when GOP operatives dismissed tea party-backed Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. The Republican establishment is "the reason we even have the Tea Party movement," shot back columnist and tea party enthusiast Andrea Tantaros in the New York Daily News. It was the Bush administration that "ran up deficits" and gave us "open borders" and "Medicare Part D and busted budgets."
Everyone has an explanation for the tea party that is actually not an explanation but a description. They're "angry." They're "antiestablishment," "populist," "anti-elite." All to varying degrees true. But as a network television executive said this week, "They should be fed up. Our institutions have failed."
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Barbara Kelley
.I see two central reasons for the tea party's rise. The first is the yardstick, and the second is the clock. First, the yardstick. Imagine that over at the 36-inch end you've got pure liberal thinking—more and larger government programs, a bigger government that costs more in the many ways that cost can be calculated. Over at the other end you've got conservative thinking—a government that is growing smaller and less demanding and is less expensive. You assume that when the two major parties are negotiating bills in Washington, they sort of lay down the yardstick and begin negotiations at the 18-inch line. Each party pulls in the direction it wants, and the dominant party moves the government a few inches in their direction.
But if you look at the past half century or so you have to think: How come even when Republicans are in charge, even when they're dominant, government has always gotten larger and more expensive? It's always grown! It's as if something inexorable in our political reality—with those who think in liberal terms dominating the establishment, the media, the academy—has always tilted the starting point in negotiations away from 18 inches, and always toward liberalism, toward the 36-inch point.
Democrats on the Hill or in the White House try to pull it up to 30, Republicans try to pull it back to 25. A deal is struck at 28. Washington Republicans call it victory: "Hey, it coulda been 29!" But regular conservative-minded or Republican voters see yet another loss. They could live with 18. They'd like eight. Instead it's 28.
For conservatives on the ground, it has often felt as if Democrats (and moderate Republicans) were always saying, "We should spend a trillion dollars," and the Republican Party would respond, "No, too costly. How about $700 billion?" Conservatives on the ground are thinking, "How about nothing? How about we don't spend more money but finally start cutting."
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.What they want is representatives who'll begin the negotiations at 18 inches and tug the final bill toward five inches. And they believe tea party candidates will do that.
The second thing is the clock. Here is a great virtue of the tea party: They know what time it is. It's getting late. If we don't get the size and cost of government in line now, we won't be able to. We're teetering on the brink of some vast, dark new world—states and cities on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government too. The issue isn't "big spending" anymore. It's ruinous spending that they fear will end America as we know it, as they promised it to their children.
So there's a sense that dramatic action is needed, and a sense of profound urgency. Add drama to urgency and you get the victory of a tea party-backed candidate.
That is the context. Local tea parties seem—so far—not to be falling in love with the particular talents or background of their candidates. It's more detached than that. They don't say their candidates will be reflective, skilled in negotiations, a great senator, a Paul Douglas or Pat Moynihan or a sturdy Scoop Jackson. These qualities are not what they think are urgently needed. What they want is someone who will walk in, put her foot on the conservative end of the yardstick, and make everything slip down in that direction.
Nobody knows how all this will play out, but we are seeing something big—something homegrown, broad-based and independent. In part it is a rising up of those who truly believe America is imperiled and truly mean to save her. The dangers, both present and potential, are obvious.
A movement like this can help a nation by acting as a corrective, or it can descend into a corrosive populism that celebrates unknowingness as authenticity, that confuses showiness with seriousness and vulgarity with true conviction. Parts could become swept by a desire just to tear down, to destroy.
But establishments exist for a reason. It is true that the party establishment is compromised, and by many things, but one of them is experience. They've lived through a lot, seen a lot, know the national terrain. They know how things work. They know the history. I wonder if tea party members know how fragile are the institutions that help keep the country together.
One difference so far between the tea party and the great wave of conservatives that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 is the latter was a true coalition—not only North and South, East and West but right-wingers, intellectuals who were former leftists, and former Democrats. When they won presidential landslides in 1980, '84 and '88, they brought the center with them. That in the end is how you win. Will the center join arms and work with the tea party? That's a great question of 2012.
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Glenn has been on a kick about Cass Sunstein being the most dangerous man in America because of his notion that "We are all Homer Simpson and need the State to nudge us into what is good for us" and CS writes a goodly amount of the regulations and that the net result is a tremendous threat to freedom
I just wish he would come up with better examples than Michelle Obama calling for carrots or fruit to be the default side order to protein instead of french fries. Lets face it, America is a seriously FAT FAT FAT country and defending stupidity in eating is not really a very shrewd tip of the spear for the cause against being manipulated and controlled by the State.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6weDMH-SCOE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
The Last Best Hope
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Helluva show last night from GB. I thought it did a fine job in search of the underlying coherence of BO's world view.
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By KATE ZERNIKE
Published: October 1, 2010
The Tea Party is a thoroughly modern movement, organizing on Twitter and Facebook to become the most dynamic force of the midterm elections.
The books Glenn Beck cites during his speaking engagements usually draw the interest and curiosity of his supporters.
But when it comes to ideology, it has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.
It has resurrected once-obscure texts by dead writers — in some cases elevating them to best-seller status — to form a kind of Tea Party canon. Recommended by Tea Party icons like Ron Paul and Glenn Beck, the texts are being quoted everywhere from protest signs to Republican Party platforms.
Pamphlets in the Tea Party bid for a Second American Revolution, the works include Frédéric Bastiat’s “The Law,” published in 1850, which proclaimed that taxing people to pay for schools or roads was government-sanctioned theft, and Friedrich Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” (1944), which argued that a government that intervened in the economy would inevitably intervene in every aspect of its citizens’ lives.
The relative newcomer is “The 5000 Year Leap,” self-published in 1981 by an anti-communist crusader shunned by his fellow Mormons for his more controversial positions, including a hearty defense of the John Birch Society. It asserts that the Founding Fathers had not intended separation of church and state, and would have considered taxes to provide for the welfare of others “a sin.”
If their arguments can be out there (like getting rid of the 17th Amendment, which established the direct election of senators by popular vote) or out of date (Bastiat warned that if government taxed wine and tobacco, “beggars and vagabonds will demand the right to vote”), the works have provided intellectual ballast for a segment of the electorate angry or frustrated about the economy and the growing reach of government.
They have convinced their readers that economists, the Founding Fathers, and indeed, God, are on their side when they accuse President Obama and the Democrats of being “socialists.” And they have established a counternarrative to what Tea Party supporters denounce as the “progressive” interpretation of economics and history in mainstream texts.
All told, the canon argues for a vision of the country where government’s role is to protect private property — against taxes as much as against thieves. Where religion plays a bigger role in public life. Where any public safety net is unconstitutional. And where the way back to prosperity is for markets to be left free from regulation.
As the Tea Party has exerted increasing force over American politics, the influence of the books has shown up in many ways.
Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, alluded to “The Road to Serfdom” in introducing his economic “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which many other Republicans have embraced. Ron Johnson, who entered politics through a Tea Party meeting and is now the Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”
Justin Amash, the 30-year-old Republican state legislator running for the House seat once held by Gerald Ford in Michigan, frequently posts links to essays by Hayek and Bastiat on his Facebook page, his chief vehicle for communicating with voters. “There is no single economist or philosopher I admire more than F. A. Hayek,” he wrote in May. “I have his portrait on the wall of my legislative office and the Justin Amash for Congress office.”
In Maine, Tea Party activists jammed the state Republican convention last spring to reject the party platform, replacing it with one that urged “a return to the principles of Austrian economics,” as espoused by Hayek, and the belief that “freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion.” The new platform also embraced the idea that “it is immoral to steal the property earned by one individual and give it to another who has no claim or right to its benefits” — a line ripped from Bastiat’s jeremiad against taxation and welfare.
The Tea Party canon includes other works, some of them unlikely. Organizers have promoted “Rules for Radicals,” by Saul D. Alinsky, as a primer on community organizing tactics, and “The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations,” by Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom, an argument for the strength of movements built around ideas rather than leaders.
But the ideological works tend to draw heavily on the classics of Austrian economics (Hayek, Bastiat and Ludwig von Mises) and on works arguing for a new perspective on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers. (“The 5000 Year Leap,” “The Real George Washington” and “The Real Thomas Jefferson.”)
Doug Bramley, a postal worker and Tea Party activist in Maine, picked up “The Road to Serfdom” after Mr. Beck mentioned it on air in June. (Next up for Mr. Bramley, another classic of libertarian thought: “I’ve got to read ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ ” he said.) He found Hayek “dense reading,” but he loved “The 5000 Year Leap.”
“You don’t read it,” Mr. Bramley said, “you study it.”
Across the country, many Tea Party groups are doing just that, often taking a chapter to discuss at each meeting.
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The book was published in 1981 by W. Cleon Skousen, a former Salt Lake City police chief who had a best seller in “The Naked Communist” in the 1960s, and died in 2006 at the age of 92. “The 5000 Year Leap” hit the top of the Amazon rankings in 2009 after Mr. Beck put it on his list for the 9/12 groups, his brand of Tea Party.
“The 5000 Year Leap,” published in 1981, asserts that the Founding Fathers had not intended separation of church and state.
It spins the Constitution in a way most legal scholars would not recognize — even those who embrace an “originalist” interpretation.
It argues that the Founding Fathers were guided by 28 “principles of liberty,” above all, a belief that government should be based on “Natural Law,” or “a code of right reason from the Creator himself.” The founders, Skousen wrote, believed in the equal protection of rights, but not the equal distribution of things — an argument that many Tea Party activists now make against the health care overhaul passed in March.
“One of the worst sins of government, according to the Founders, was the exercise of coercive taxing powers to take property from one group and give it to another,” he wrote.
“Leap” argues that when Jefferson spoke of a “wall of separation between church and state,” he was referring only to the federal government, and was in fact “anxious” for the state governments to promote religion. In Skousen’s interpretation, public schools should be used for religious study, and should encourage Bible reading.
It is from this book that many Tea Party supporters and candidates have argued for repeal of the 17th Amendment. Prior to the amendment, state legislators elected United States senators. “Since that time,” Skousen wrote, “there has been no veto power which the states could exercise against the Congress in those cases where a federal statute was deemed in violation of states’ rights.”
Neither Hayek nor Bastiat were writing with the United States in mind. But their arguments, too, have become fodder for a movement that believes that government intervention is the wrong solution to the country’s economic woes — and is, in fact, the problem, resulting in runaway national debt.
Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in economic sciences in 1974, argued that when a government begins any kind of central economic planning, it must decide which needs are more and less important, and therefore ends up controlling every aspect of its citizens lives.
Bastiat called taxation “legal plunder,” allowing the government to take something from one person and use it for the benefit of someone else, “doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” In his view, protective tariffs, subsidies, progressive taxation, public schools, a minimum wage, and public assistance programs were of a piece. “All of these plans as a whole,” he wrote, “constitute socialism.”
The works are more suited to protest than to policy making, as Bastiat himself recognized. “If you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation,” he urged. “This will be no light task.”
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http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/times_and_tea_party
LATE last week, New York Times reporter Kate Zernike noted that many tea partiers, often at Glenn Beck's urging, have availed themselves of several classic texts, including F.A. Hayek's 1943 blockbuster "The Road to Serfdom"—surely one of the most influential political tracts of the last century. Ms Zernike, however, appears somewhat out of her element handling this sort of exotica. She writes:
Representative Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, alluded to “The Road to Serfdom” in introducing his economic “Roadmap for America’s Future,” which many other Republicans have embraced. Ron Johnson, who entered politics through a Tea Party meeting and is now the Republican nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, asserted that the $20 billion escrow fund that the Obama administration forced BP to set up to pay damages from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill circumvented “the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”
It's the last sentence that has me in stitches. Have you heard of this peculiar thing some call "the rule of law"? To be fair, Mr Hayek did eventually develop a distinctive conception of the rule of law, but it's not that distinctive, and the idea of "an unwritten code" certainly isn't part of it. Mr Hayek's late-period thought on cultural evolution did emphasise the heavy reliance of successful societies on unwritten and often inarticulable norms of behaviour, and our culture's will to uphold the ideals of the rule of law flows in large part from our unwrittern cultural endowment, but the idea of an unwritten code is pretty much the opposite of what Hayek had in mind when it came to the rule of law.
Perhaps Ms Zernike missed the chapter titled "Planning and the Rule of Law" as she read "The Road to Serfdom" in preparation for this article. There, Hayek draws out the difference between "a free country" and "a country under arbitrary government". A country counts as free only if its government is bound by the rule of law, which, according to Hayek, "means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand". Typically, these rules, once fixed, are written down and then published through official state organs. The idea is that politically-determined rules need to be relatively fixed and publicly known in order to create a stable and certain framework in which individual planning and complex social coordination can flourish. The goal of replacing arbitrary government with the rule of law implies for Hayek, among other things, that executive discretion ought to be reduced "as much as possible".
As far as I can tell, Ron Johnson, the Republican Senate candidate from Wisconsin, hit the nail on the head when he identified the Obama administration's demand that BP set up an escrow fund as an instance of arbitrary government at odds with the rule of law. The issue here is not whether requiring such an account was a good idea. It probably was. The question is whether the executive branch, in issuing this demand, acted according to general legal rules already in place, or if it ignored established procedure and simply exercised power without prior authorisation in a manner unconstrained by known rules. One can ask similar questions about the Wall Street bail-outs, the partial nationalisation of General Motors, and the growing list of new executive powers claimed under the Bush and Obama administrations.
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October 8, 2010 - 11:46 ET
Glenn Beck is seen here on GlennBeck.TV, a feature available exclusively to Glenn Beck Insider Extreme members. Learn more...
GLENN: Today I want to talk to you about something. I want to talk to you about a portion of my life that I want to share with you because I think it's going to lead me in different places. I don't necessarily mean physical, but mentally I think this is going to be a spiritual journey. It is going to be a physical journey. It is going to be a mental journey. And I would like to, I'd like to be able to share it with you and the things that I have learned, and you'll be able also to see why I'm going the places that I am and what I am doing.
Next week on Monday and Tuesday, I am going to take time off. I'm going out West to have some testing done. I have told you before that I have been losing feeling in my hands and my feet and I have been feeling tingling in my hands and my feet, and it's traveling up my arms and it's just a very bizarre sensation. It almost feels like I'm wearing gloves at times because I was talking to my kids the other day about fingerprints and I couldn't, I couldn't feel my fingerprints and it was bizarre. And I thought if that was only true, man, I could be like a master thief. So it's been very it's been strange. I've told you also that I have been diagnosed with macular dystrophy, which means that I love this diagnosis I could be totally fine with eyesight for the rest of my life, or I could be blind within a year. The macular dystrophy has not progressed at all in the two months since it's been diagnosed, but there's something else that has also been going on. And if you're a long time listener, you might be even be able to tell it I can just by listening to my voice now. There is something wrong with my voice, and we're not sure what it is. I went in and had some testing done and there's nothing like sticking scopes through your nose and then having doctors look through the scopes in your nose. And they're passing the scope back and forth going, look at this, doctor, what do you think this is? And I'm like, what do you guys see? What are you looking at? What do you see? Show it to me. And I'll tell you more about this next week. But there's just some things that are happening, and we don't know what they are yet. And they're doing all kinds of testing. They're going to be doing CAT scans and MREs or MRIs and PET scans and they're going to be doing blood work like crazy. And the thing that they said to me, I've seen five different doctors and I've got an incredible group of doctors who are, I think only one of them really hates me, and I have the other four watching that one. But they're looking one of them said to me the other night, we have to do all of these blood tests because we have to look for toxins and poisons, and that word stuck out to me. And it's not poison like you know, it's like lead paint. And I'm like, no, I haven't been eating lead chips. And that word stuck out to me.
Night before last I was laying in bed next to my wife and she put her hand on my back and she said to me, what are you doing? Honey, go to sleep. She said that to me at 3:00 in the morning. I had been reading a couple of books, as I'm so far behind in my reading. But I had closed one of these books, as I'm doing research and I'm trying to understand more. And I had closed one of these books about an hour before and I said, I just to myself I just can't look at this anymore. Then I said a prayer, and as I was praying, I noticed that I wasn't praying as hard for healing as I should, which led me to the first conversation I had with a neurologist who said to me, well, we don't know what this is. He said, but we're investigating here, here, and here. And I said, could this be brought on by stress? Could this be brought on because I'm just, you know and he said, no, not this. He said, you know, that's not making it better. And I said, so should I maybe should I stop? And he said, no, you're okay. I was disappointed. And the other day I thought about it and I thought, I can't even pray and cry out to the Lord. I have cried out to the Lord a lot in the last four years. I couldn't cry out to him for that. That got me to thinking. A house divided against itself cannot stand. People will say about me, they have written about me. In fact, the New York Times just did their big piece and they said, I don't think Glenn Beck even knows who he is. In some ways that is true. I know who I am. I am just like you. A son of a father in heaven that loves me, and I try to serve him. But that is, that is something that I have never even come close to mastering and worked my whole life. I am a guy who's trying to be better every day. I know who I am. But when they wrote that, it is so true because I don't know where I'm supposed to end up. I don't know how to do this.
The last 24 hours as I've been thinking about the doctors saying we're looking for toxins, we're looking for poisons in your body, I know what they are. For four years I have tried to understand the mind of what I believe are monsters. It started with Walter Lippmann. The first book that I closed and said I can't read this anymore was Walter Lippmann. And it was about how they can breed better people and how there are undesirables. I never finished the book. That was the first one. And for four years I have been trying to understand the minds of people that I think are so misled, and they are the exact opposite of what I have tried to be, what I want to be, what I strive for. But I have done it because I have to, I have to understand it, I have to see what's try to understand to explain what's coming, what's happening. And not for you but for my children.
I believe we can be better people. I believe in the American experiment. But I also believe there are very misguided people, and I have been drinking that poison, which others may not find poison, but I do because it is exact opposite of me. And I have been "That which you gaze upon, you become."
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Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nation
Gary Hubbell
Aspen Times Weekly
Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America's future. He is the best thing ever.
Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America's resurrection. Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.
That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.
**Read it all!**
http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20100228/ASPENWEEKLY/100229854
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http://www.american.com/archive/2009/april-2009/the-coming-of-the-fourth-american-republic/
Long and very much worth reading.
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Glenn has been on a good rampage about the connection between George Soros giving nearly $2m to NPR and the firing of Juan Williams.
I do wish he would get off the kick in favor of bad food though :roll:
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Beck's greatest sin seems to be that he has become an effective advocate against the modern left.......which is unforgiveable and a call for complete demonization from the MSM machine.
The goal seems to be make Beck a poster child for the entire Tea Party movement.......utilizing the Alinksyesque stragegies for fixing individuals as representatives of a movement, polarizing and attack those individuals as surrogates for the movement.
Unfortunately for the left, folks like Beck have learned their lessons from the radical left, and are effectively utilizing some of those 'community organizing' lessons against the left......and have been quite effective at it.
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The U.S. is Broke, is it too Late?
The battle against progressivism has reached a high water mark - the country is
broke, our spirits are down, and President Obama and the Pelosi-Reid led Congress
has dramatically made things worse. How did things get this way? Conservative star
Glenn Beck has the answers in his hit new book Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust,
Truth, and Treasure. Beck starts his analysis at the American Revolution and goes
all the way through to the Obama regime. Highlighting key lurches towards
progressivism, Beck sketches out why we have turned away from the Constitutional
principles of the founding fathers.
All is not lost, however. Beck details a plan to bring our country back from the
brink. We must buy into the concept of "shared sacrifice" in order to preserve
freedom. In an educated, enlightened and entertaining style that only Glenn Beck can
deliver, the rallying cry has been heard - it's time for action! Get Townhall
Magazine today and receive Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth, and Treasure
by Glenn Beck absolutely free!
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http://www.amazon.com/Broke-Restore-Trust-Truth-Treasure/dp/1439187193
THE FACTS.
THE FUTURE.
THE FIGHT TO FIX AMERICA—
BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.
In the words of Harvard economist Niall Ferguson, the United States is “an empire on the edge of chaos.” Why? Glenn Beck thinks the answer is pretty simple: Because we’ve turned our backs on the Constitution.
Yes, our country is financially broke, but that’s just a side effect of our broken spirit, our broken faith in government, the broken promises by our leaders, and a broken political system that has centralized power at the expense of individual rights.
There is a lot of work ahead, but we can’t move forward until we first understand how we got here. Starting with the American Revolution, Glenn takes readers on an express train through 234 years of history, culminating with the Great Recession and the bipartisan recklessness of Presidents Bush and Obama. It’s the history lesson we all wished we’d had in school. (Did you know, for example, that FDR once made a key New Deal policy decision based on his lucky number?)
Along the way, you’ll see how everything you thought you knew about the political parties is a lie, how Democrats and Republicans alike used to fight for minimum government and maximum freedom, and how both parties have been taken over by a cancer called “progressivism.” By the end, you’ll understand why no president, no congress and no court can fix this problem alone. Looking toward them for answers is like looking toward the ocean for drinking water— it looks promising, but the end result is catastrophic.
After revealing the trail of lies that brought us here, Broke exposes the truth about what we’re really facing. Most people have seen pieces of the puzzle, but very few have ever seen the whole picture—and for very good reason: Our leaders have done everything in their power to hide it. If Americans understood how dire things really are, they would be demanding radical reform right now. Despite the rhetoric, that’s not the kind of change our politicians really believe in.
Finally, Broke provides the hope that comes with knowing the truth. Once you see what we’re really up against, it’s much easier to develop a realistic plan. To fix ourselves financially, Glenn argues, we have to fix ourselves first. That means some serious introspection and, ultimately, a series of actions that will unite all Americans around the concept of shared sacrifice. After all, this generation may not be asked to storm beaches, but we are being asked to do something just as critical to preserving freedom.
Packed with great stories from history, chalkboard-style teachable moments, custom illustrations, and Glenn Beck’s trademark combination of entertainment and enlightenment, Broke makes the case that when you’re traveling in the wrong direction, slight course corrections won’t cut it—you need to take drastic action. Through a return to individual rights, an uncompromising adherence to the Constitution, and a complete rethinking about the role of government in a free society, Glenn exposes the idea of “transformation” for the progressive smokescreen that it is, and instead builds a compelling case that restoration is the only way forward.
About the Author
Glenn Beck, the nationally syndicated radio and Fox News television show host, is the author of six #1 New York Times bestsellers: An Inconvenient Book, The Christmas Sweater, Glenn Beck’s Common Sense, Arguing with Idiots, the children’s version of The Christmas Sweater, and The Overton Window. America’s March to Socialism is available now from Simon & Schuster Audio or downloadable from Simon & Schuster Online. He is also the author of The Real America and publisher of Fusion magazine. Visit www.glennbeck.com.
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The perfect snapshot of the Rally for People Who Are Smarter Than You So Shut Up
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/10/31/the-perfect-snapshot-of-the-rally-for-people-who-are-smarter-than-you-so-shut-up/
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http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/3551
Jon Stewart's Rally for Sanity yesterday featured Yusuf Islam aka Cat Stevens singing "Peace Train". Islam/Stevens previously showed his commitment to peace and sanity by saying that death was the appropriate punishment for Salman Rushdie's "blasphemy".
He has tried to wiggle out of it and issued all kinds of denials.
But here is what he said to Geoffrey Robertson QC in 1989. (Video here.)
Robertson: You don't think that this man deserves to die?
Y. Islam: Who, Salman Rushdie?
Robertson: Yes.
Y. Islam: Yes, yes.
Robertson: And do you have a duty to be his executioner?
Y. Islam: Uh, no, not necessarily, unless we were in an Islamic state and I was ordered by a judge or by the authority to carry out such an act - perhaps, yes.
[Some minutes later, Robertson on the subject of a protest where an effigy of the author is to be burned]
Robertson: Would you be part of that protest, Yusuf Islam, would you go to a demonstration where you knew that an effigy was going to be burned?
Y. Islam: I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing.
And here is what Rushdie said about him
However much Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam may wish to rewrite his past, he was neither misunderstood nor misquoted over his views on the Khomeini fatwa against The Satanic Verses (Seven, April 29). In an article in The New York Times on May 22, 1989, Craig R Whitney reported Stevens/Islam saying on a British television programme "that rather than go to a demonstration to burn an effigy of the author Salman Rushdie, 'I would have hoped that it'd be the real thing'.''
He added that "if Mr Rushdie turned up at his doorstep looking for help, 'I might ring somebody who might do more damage to him than he would like. I'd try to phone the Ayatollah Khomeini and tell him exactly where this man is'.''
In a subsequent interview with The New York Times, Mr Whitney added, Stevens/Islam, who had seen a preview of the programme, said that he "stood by his comments".
Let's have no more rubbish about how "green" and innocent this man was.
Salman Rushdie, New York
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMq1R-64Qc&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlMq1R-64Qc&feature=player_embedded
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http://hotair.com/archives/2010/11/01/question-for-stewart-ralliers-is-obama-a-keynesian-or-was-he-born-in-america/
Just ask them.
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Alexander's Essay – November 4, 2010
The Cause of Liberty
"Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions. The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the tyranny mediated against them." --George Washington
2012 Battle PlanHaving taken a moment to account for the considerable battleground gained in the most significant political offensive between Liberty and tyranny in three decades -- the fight being led by the Tea Party movement against the institution of statism headed by Barack Hussein Obama and his Socialist Bourgeoisie -- we must now press on, as there is no time for rest.
The ranks of conservatives in our national Congress, and in our state executive and legislative branches across the nation, were greatly strengthened in Tuesday's midterm election, but those campaigns were just the beginning of a movement to restore Liberty.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "Excessive taxation ... will carry reason and reflection to every man's door, and particularly in the hour of election."
Indeed, taxation was a factor in the seating of House and Senate conservatives, but as was the case with the original Tea Party in December of 1773, these victories were driven by a renewed concern for not just taxation, but taxation without representation.
The new Tea Party movement is much more than a coalition of fiscally conservative Independents and those still under the banner of the Republican Party. This movement is, at its foundation, a philosophical federation of American Patriots who are, first and foremost, bound together by a devotion to the Essential Liberty defined in our Declaration of Independence and the Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution.
The renewal of this timeless battle between Liberty and tyranny has reanimated the political contests of our era, yet the conventional spin from pundits and news-cycle talkingheads indicates that they have yet to realize that there is much more than "a political pendulum swing" afoot with the legions of American Patriots who now identify with the organic Tea Party movement.
Of course, Obama and his Leftist cadres can't comprehend it either. He insists, "The reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument do not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared." He says further that those who do not support statism have an inability to "think clearly," and that his detractors' "basic political strategy has been to count on you having amnesia."
May Obama and his ilk continue to cling to those delusions...
Likewise, there are some so-called "moderate" House and Senate Republicans who are nearly as delusional -- those who think they'll be able to return to "business as usual" with a restored Republican majority. If they try to do just that, they'll face the same formidable challenge Democrats now face, because the ranks of conservatives in the House and Senate have been refortified with outspoken constitutional constructionists like Allen West, Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio and dozens of others. Some of these Patriots unseated Democrats who had held office for decades, and others tossed Republican moderates onto the trash heap of mediocrity.
Establishment Republicans in the GOP are poised to declare "Mission Accomplished" and insist that the "New and Improved GOP" will hold to its stated principles this time around. Patriots won't adopt a "wait and see" strategy, however. Establishment Republicans had their opportunity when they held both the House and Senate under George W. Bush -- and they failed miserably. Instead, we'll insist that they revitalize the Reagan Model for Restoration now.
The re-energized movement for Liberty demands that our elected representatives, regardless of their political affiliation, act in accordance with their sacred oaths to "Support and Defend" our Constitution, and that they reduce the bloated size, function and cost of the central government to comport with its limited constitutional mandate and limited authority.
In the 2012 election and those which follow, we will root up and toss out Democrats and Republicans who fail to honor their oaths. There can be no doubt, though, that Obama and his party will do everything in their power to prevent the decentralization of the Socialist regime they have created.
Beyond these entrenched threats posed by the adversaries of Liberty, there exist other more subtle dangers to the Tea Party movement.
The most significant hazard is the natural tendency by well-meaning Patriots to contain the movement, to bottle it up, to organize it under one umbrella, which would erode its grassroots strength and render it subject to the same corruption that organized political parties now embody.
To keep the Tea Party movement true to its roots, we must avoid centralization and continue to strengthen every individual link in the chain. The strength of that chain is a unified understanding and articulation of what is at stake: the contest between Rule of Law and rule of men.
To that end, The Patriot Post, since its inception, has been plowing the fields and sewing the seed for this Great Awakening, and we have a vital and essential role to ensure that the movement remains, first and foremost, about the restoration of constitutional integrity, and to support its momentum.
We have much more ground to take if we are to restore the cause of Liberty, and we need your help. For we can only restore constitutional Rule of Law if our growing tide of conservative voices makes it so. We cannot undo generations of civic negligence in one or two election cycles, but we can -- no, we must -- halt our nation's downward spiral toward the tyranny of Democratic Socialism.
Among the character traits that distinguish you, as a Patriot Post reader, from too many other Americans is the mission you share with other Patriot readers who are, in the words of Samuel Adams, "keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."
I thank you for your vigilance, strength, preparedness and faithfulness.
We rely upon your generosity to help us maintain the clarion call for Liberty for countless thousands of our military, collegiate, political and mission field readers -- all of whom are vital links in the chain to hold back tyranny and restore Liberty.
So, it is with due respect to the urgency of our times that I announce our 2010 Annual Fund campaign. We typically raise about 50 percent of our annual operating revenues in the last eight weeks of each year. We do so on faith in the goodwill of Patriots like you.
I humbly request that you support The Patriot Post online today by making a contribution -- however large or small. (If you prefer to support us by mail, please use our printable donor form or print the donor guide below.) We are not sustained by any political, special interest or parent organization. Our mission and operations are funded by -- and depend entirely upon -- the voluntary financial support of American Patriots like YOU.
As always, I thank you for the honor and privilege of serving you as editor and publisher of The Patriot Post. We are humbled to count you among our ranks. On behalf of our National Advisory Committee and staff, thank you and may God bless you and your family, and may He grant us victory over the formidable challenges to Liberty just ahead!
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
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Publisher, The Patriot Post
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My 5th post of the morning:
For those not familiar with GB's show, I would point out that for all of 2009 the show's opening graphics featured 3 pictures; one each of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Martin Luther King. The message to me was pretty clear: MLK is an American Father just as much as were GW and TJ. The point was underlined by the inclusion in the montage of other fotos of a famous one from the 60s civil rights era of a black man holding up a sign "I am a man".
I have to agree that MLK was an American father. Perhaps not in the extent that he helped to initiate or spark a country, but certainly in what he did to champion civil rights for so many.
I have to admit that I am not a fan of the ACLU as they IMO have taken the meaning of civil rights way too far, but I certainly applaud what King did in the way of standing up to an injustice (and it was an injustice), and seeing it through, even if to do so would mean his death. This is nothing short of heroic.
I often wonder where black/white relations are going in this country. Just last night they were rioting in Oakland over the sentence of an officer that they didn't agree with.
I am a Tea Partier, I like Glenn Beck and there is not a racist bone in my body. I like that we live in a country where we can disagree, but still each have the opportunity to become successfull in whichever endeavor that we might chose.
The reason why I like Glenn Beck so much, is because he does the research and calls them on their games. There is enough lacking of accountability in government from either side and Mr. Beck is helping to change this. I am staunchly conservative. I know that there are those that are Liberal, which is fine, but no matter which side of the aisle one represents, we need to have accountability by all. Beck helps to accomplish this.
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This piece could go on the Economics thread on the SCH forum, but I put it here because of the reference to Glenn Beck-- who BTW IMHO had a fine week this week.
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Buttonwood
Nov 18th 2010
Taking von Mises to pieces
Why is the Austrian explanation for the crisis so little discussed?
JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES is back. The British economist has modern intellectual champions in Paul Krugman and Robert Skidelsky. For all today’s talk of austerity, a policy of Keynesian fiscal stimulus was adopted by most governments in the immediate aftermath of the credit crisis.
In contrast policymakers seem to show a lot less interest in the economic ideas of the “Austrian school” led by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, who once battled Keynes for intellectual supremacy. Yet the more you think about recent events, the odder that neglect seems.
A one-paragraph explanation of the Austrian theory of business cycles would run as follows. Interest rates are held at too low a level, creating a credit boom. Low financing costs persuade entrepreneurs to fund too many projects. Capital is misallocated into wasteful areas. When the bust comes the economy is stuck with the burden of excess capacity, which then takes years to clear up.
Take that analysis piece by piece. Were interest rates held too low? The case seems self-evident for Ireland and Spain, where the European Central Bank was setting a one-size-fits-all monetary policy. Many people would also argue that the Federal Reserve kept rates too low. Some lay the housing boom of 2003-06 at the Fed’s door, others criticise the central bank’s tendency to slash rates whenever the financial markets wobbled.
Was capital misallocated? Again most people would accept that too many houses and apartments were built in Ireland and Spain, as well as individual American states like Florida and Nevada. In some places these dwellings may sit idle for a while, keeping downward pressure on property prices.
Economists who would not describe themselves as Austrian have reached conclusions that chime with Hayek. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, in their book “This Time is Different”, argued that past financial crises have been followed by long periods of sluggish growth. Hyman Minsky, an American economist who died in 1996, said that the financial cycle led to economic volatility. Long booms tended to result in excessive risk-taking and “Ponzi finance”, where investors buy assets with borrowed money in the hope of quick capital gains. Minsky’s reputation has soared since the start of the credit crunch.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a very popular financial author thanks to his books “Fooled by Randomness” and “The Black Swan”. One of his principal ideas is the difficulty of forecasting given the role of chance and extreme events. That echoes the views of Hayek, who wrote that “the curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
The Austrians may have said smart things about the boom, but what about the bust? One criticism is that the Austrians offered a “counsel of despair”, suggesting that the authorities do nothing while a crisis blows itself out. At least the monetarists propose cutting rates and expanding the money supply and the Keynesians promote deficit spending.
But Lawrence White, an economist at George Mason University in Washington, DC, argues that this is an unfair characterisation. “Hayek was not a liquidationist,” he says, referring to the philosophy of Andrew Mellon, President Herbert Hoover’s Depression-era treasury secretary, who wanted to “purge the rottenness out of the system”. Hayek believed the central bank should aim to stabilise nominal incomes. On that basis Mr White thinks the Fed was right to pursue the first round of quantitative easing, since nominal GDP was falling, but wrong to pursue a second round with activity recovering.
Mr White is one of the few current economists to promote the Austrian approach. This may be because economists divided into Keynesians and monetarists in the 1970s. You might think that the Austrians would find common cause with the monetarists. But Milton Friedman rejected their analysis, stating in 1998 that: “The Austrian business-cycle theory has done the world a great deal of harm.” Efficient-market theorists disliked the Austrians because they appeared to assume that businessmen could act irrationally.
The libertarian streak of the Austrians still has its fans. Glenn Beck, a lachrymose Fox News pundit, turned Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom” into an unlikely bestseller earlier this year. Being associated with Mr Beck will not persuade many academics to take Austrian economic ideas seriously. Given the repeated credit booms and busts of the past 40 years, that may be a pity.
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Amongst the many points GB has made in the last couple of days is all this brouhaha over the new TSA scanners and genital grabs may serve the interests of those busily trying to unionize the TSA; a list which apparently includes the President an d the head of the TSA (We're shocked! Absolutely shocked!)
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The lack of political diversity on the forum leads me to sometimes post an opposing opinion even though I thoroughly disagree with it. Maybe I have Christopher Hitchens confused with someone else but I thought he was a intelligent conservative who I just happen to disagree with on a few issues. In this case he totally rips everything he thinks the tea party stands for and Glen Beck by name. I can't find an ounce of validity in it but maybe someone else make sense of it or at least be aware what the critics are saying.
His main point seems to be that without the wackos, R's should have taken both chambers. I don't see how we would be better off had we won 50 or 51 seats in the senate with RINOs who would then give Obama bipartisan cover for a leftist agenda. The stronger more experienced tea party candidates won and the weaker candidates lost. That means it takes two election cycles to take majority in the senate. Control of the senate is 60 seats and veto override is 67, so whether you have 47 good ones or 50 with divisions is all part of a process of assembling a stronger team with a coherent and persuasive message.
I have found Glen Beck to be far from hateful and videos of Tea Party events to be Right on the Money in terms of issues, priorities and direction. Not so for this columnist:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2011/01/hitchens-201101
Tea’d Off
Forfeiting a both-houses Republican victory, rational conservatives ignored or excused the most hateful kind of populist claptrap (e.g., the fetid weirdness of Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project). The poison they’ve helped disseminate will still be in the American bloodstream when the country needs it least.
By Christopher Hitchens
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Pravda on the Hudson struggles to comprehend the Repeal Amendment:
With public attention focused on taxes, the deficit, gays in the military and nuclear arms reduction, little attention has been paid, so far, to the Tea Party’s most far-reaching move to remake American governance. It is contained within a bill, called the repeal amendment, that was introduced in Congress after the election. The bill won the support of the incoming House majority leader, Eric Cantor, and is supported by legislative leaders in 12 states.
The proposal is sweeping, expressing with bold simplicity the view of the Tea Party and others that the federal government’s influence is far too broad. It would give state legislatures the power to veto any federal law or regulation if two-thirds of the legislatures approved.
The chances of the proposal becoming the Constitution’s 28th Amendment are exceedingly low. But it helps explain further the anger-fueled, myth-based politics of the populist new right. It also highlights the absence of a strong counterforce in American politics.
With the Equal Rights Amendment as a model, it demonstrates the scope of the Tea Party’s ambition to drive politics and law far to the right. The E.R.A. failed to win passage, but it influenced Congress and the courts in equalizing the law’s treatment of gender.
Under the Tea Party proposal, the states would have much greater power than the president to veto federal laws. Because the amendment includes no limit on the time in which states could exercise their veto, it would cast a long shadow over any program under federal law.
Because it focuses on giving states power to veto (e.g., taxes) without their shouldering responsibility for asserting it (trimming appropriations because of lost tax revenue), the unintended consequences would likely be at least as important as the intended.
These flaws make the proposed amendment self-defeating, but they are far less significant than the mistaken vision of federalism on which it rests. Its foundation is that the United States defined in the Constitution are a set of decentralized sovereignties where personal responsibility, private property and a laissez-faire economy should reign. In this vision, the federal government is an intrusive parent.
The error that matters most here is about the Constitution’s history. America’s fundamental law holds competing elements, some constraining the national government, others energizing it. But the government the Constitution shaped was founded to create a sum greater than the parts, to promote economic development that would lift the fortunes of the American people.
In past economic crises, populist fervor has been for expanding the power of the national government to address America’s pressing needs. Pleas for making good the nation’s commitment to equality and welfare have been as loud as those for liberty. Now the many who are struggling have no progressive champion. The left have ceded the field to the Tea Party and, in doing so, allowed it to make history. It is building political power by selling the promise of a return to a mythic past.
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Any comments on Glenn's theme for 2011, the E4?
Enlightenment
Education
Empowerment
Entrepeneurship
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This video could go under interesting thought pieces, but seems to follow a tea party theme. What would the founders and previous Presidents think of what we are doing now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KGlBHyVeYU&feature=player_embedded#!
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Woof,
Glenn is being recognized as a serious problem by the Left for exposing them for what they are really up to and they are doing everything they can to shut him up. The Left only believes in freedom of speech when they are spewing their lies.
http://www.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110127/media_nm/us_glennbeck
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/22/business/media/22beck.html
P.C.
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Indeed!
It was yesterday or the day before that Glenn was discussing something (I haven't seen the whole broadcast yet) about which I had not heard previously: Working from memory here, apparently in September 2010 (i.e. during the height of the election compaign) a hard lefty with a huge trail of his leftness attempted to assassinate a Democratic governor with a knife-- only he mis-identified his target and instead stabbed the Dean of the university that had invited the governor to speak.
You never heard of that? Me neither-- until GB.
IMHO GB is a remarkable man in search of Truth for the good of America. The powers that be fear him-- and they should.
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Indeed!
It was yesterday or the day before that Glenn was discussing something (I haven't seen the whole broadcast yet) about which I had not heard previously: Working from memory here, apparently in September 2010 (i.e. during the height of the election compaign) a hard lefty with a huge trail of his leftness attempted to assassinate a Democratic governor with a knife-- only he mis-identified his target and instead stabbed the Dean of the university that had invited the governor to speak.
You never heard of that? Me neither-- until GB.
IMHO GB is a remarkable man in search of Truth for the good of America. The powers that be fear him-- and they should.
I had:
http://www.nbcactionnews.com/dpp/news/crime/report%3A-missouri-gov.-jay-nixon-was-intended-target-in-penn-valley-community-college-stabbing
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Thank you for the citation BD.
Remarkable how little the same chattering classes who pounced on the AZ killer for hate speech noticed this.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/feb/02/far-right-glenn-beck
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Bigdog,
You posting this because you find it interesting or because you agree?
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So, if I was to discuss the history of organized crime in the US and I mentioned Meyer Lansky, is that anti-semetic?
So then how is Glenn Beck's discussion of various leftists, some of whom are supposed to be Jewish, anti-semetic? Anti-semites hate Israel, so how exactly do the accusers explain this?
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BD:
That Brit hit piece on Beck is so utterly devoid of merit that I too wonder at its presence here. Has the man ever even watched the show? Certainly he never caught the episodes of GB discussing Father Coughlin!
GM: I watched last night's show; very interesting. I would note that he was careful to say the scenario he was outlining was a worst case scenario.
I understand that the world can be a dark, dangerous place sometimes and that sometimes we need to deal with bad people, but this brings with it its own costs.
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Crafty,
Well, if we only deal with decent upstanding countries, then we better get out of the UN!
Say, that's not a bad idea..... :wink:
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BD,
The anti-semitism slur against Glenn Beck is the same as the racist slur against the Tea Party. Those that make it can't debate the points, so they try to defame their political opponents.
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"I understand that the world can be a dark, dangerous place sometimes and that sometimes we need to deal with bad people, but this brings with it its own costs."
We also have opportunities when we ally with less than free nations. Aside from rebuilding Germany and Japan after WWII, we took a brutal, oppressive South Korea and a Taiwan that had a thuggish strongman running it and grew them into free nations with civil liberties. It took time, but it happened. If we had shunned them, I doubt very much this would have happened.
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No intent to pile on here, just offering my own two cents. BD can defend himself, but the question was posed about where the anti-Semitic charge came from and this article (without merit) is at least an example.
"There is no evidence anywhere that Beck has made a clearly anti-Jewish statement. He is a supporter of Israel."
That is the quote of substance from the BD link at the Guardian. The author then reaches for a different conclusion, but I don't see why any reader would based on any information presented.
Quoting the article again: "Beck...did one show called the "Big Lie", which identified numerous people as enemies of freedom. Of nine people given prominence in the show, eight of them were Jewish: ranging from New York academic Frances Fox Piven to Sigmund Freud (and, naturally, Soros). Beck, of course, never mentions their ethnicity."
Once again, the author reaches for one conclusion, but the reader or viewer does not have any reason I see to draw that conclusion. Beck has staff but not necessarily enough to say to someone, get me the religion and ethnicity of each person I am about to slam for their political views or insincerity before I go on the air, and balance it out with different people to attack if there is a problem.
When you are not anti-Semitic, you are sensitive to all the subtleties of avoiding the accusation.
Reminds me of Rush and the attacks of racism. Rush wants nothing more than for people to individually achieve greatness on their own (and for millions to tune in everyday to the broadcast). His closest business confidant is black; his agenda is political policy, not groups. When lies surfaced, they had 'credibility' because Rush is white and Rush is conservative. With that logic, the racist is the accuser.
I was taught the theories of Sigmund Freud in the public sphere. I was not taught about his religion or private life. Was his publicly recognized work tied to his religion? I don't know. Soros to me is a very wealthy liberal activist trying to leverage his wealth and power to elect people all over of polar opposite political beliefs to mine, not a Jew. In private I assume he is Jewish from what is said. That point is completely irrelevant to me and to Glen Beck I am assuming unless you read his mission to be something other than what it is. Soros is tied to moveon.org. That group ran the most despicable anti-American (IMO) ad in my lifetime - General Betray-Us. He can receive hatred back or at least intense, public, verbal political attacks back for the rest of his life and longer as far as I am concerned. To say Soros shouldn't be harshly singled out and criticized or can't handle verbal attacks coming back because he is Jewish, or that groups to be criticized need to have their religion checked first, to me is anti-Semitic.
Reminds of a friend who is Jewish taking some offense quoting McCain in the primaries saying he wanted the next President to be a Christian. What McCain meant was that HE is Christian and supporting himself for President. His best friend politically is Joe Liebermann (Jewish) and that was probably McCain's first choice for President if he could not serve. Again, sensitivities to how that is heard are missed when you are not anti-something. Beck is anti-liberal, anti-Marxism/leftism/socialism, anti big government etc. I don't listen much or watch but I'm sure he singles out Obama plenty too, who is not Jewish, or Hillary Clinton if she had won. And that is not anti-half-black or anti-woman. It is anti- a governing philosophy.
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Bigdog,
You posting this because you find it interesting or because you agree?
GM: Fair question. Because it interested me. I'll try to remember to clarify reasons for posting pieces. Thanks for asking.
Guro: I actually thought of putting it in the Media Matters thread. I agree that it is not meaningful, except in the sense that it is being said.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/right-turn/2011/02/others_agree_with_right_turn_e.html
Posted at 10:45 AM ET, 02/ 2/2011
More objections to selective outrage about the Holocaust
By Jennifer Rubin
Last week I took to task the large group of rabbis who, after having not voiced similar objections to the equally egregious behavior of liberals, chose to go after Glenn Beck for his use of Holocaust language.
Yesterday, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League (with whom I don't always see eye to eye) took issue with the rabbis' ad in the Wall Street Journal (where the ad originally ran). In a letter to the editor Foxman wrote:
I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to "sanction" Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.
I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.
While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.
Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself--bizarrely timed for release on United Nations's Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.
Now, Foxman's words were not taken out of context. But unlike the left-wing rabbis of the Jewish Funds for Justice, Foxman has blasted Keith Olbermann, Time magazine, Steve Cohen, MoveOn.org, Huffington Post and other left-leaning outlets and figures.
In another letter to the editor, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, wrote, in part:
I have no position on Mr. Beck, but I am frankly puzzled as to how he merits so great an expenditure by this group. What a waste of communal resources this represents when there are so many needy people, Holocaust survivors and others. Herein lies the mercy of religious figures--not in politics.
This absurdity and the fact that these rabbis have never seen fit to comment on Mr. Soros's support for entities that have harmed Israel and Jewish interests (and in my view, Western interests generally), force me to speak out.
Elan Steinberg is quoted in the advertisement in his capacity as vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. He has no more right than I do to speak in the name of the survivors on this topic. I know this because I, too, am vice president of the American Gathering. I also know that in my 30 years of participation in large-scale annual commemorations I have yet to meet a survivor who expressed support for Mr. Soros.
**Read it all.
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DH Comments on GB's shows this week:
http://www.newsrealblog.com/2011/02/02/glenn-beck-and-the-muslim-brotherhood/
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http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2011/02/4-out-of-5-groups-cited-in-anti-glenn.html
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Groups Whose Quotes Used By Soros Group to Attack Glenn Beck, Repudiate Anti-Beck Effort
Carried in the January 27th edition of the Wall Street Journal was an advertisement/open letter from four-hundred Rabbis organized by a socialist Jewish organization called Jewish Funds for Justice (JFJ), with strong ties to financier George Soros (the full ad is embedded at the bottom of this page). As discussed the day the ad came out, the rabbis efforts brought shame upon themselves, their holy profession and the entire Jewish people, and even worse have committed a Chillul Hashem (desecration of God's name). A conversation with one of the signers, Rabbi Steven Wernick , the day after my initial post raised more questions (which as of this moment the Rabbi still hasn't answered).
That however, is the not the end of the story. Over the past few days, three of the groups used to corroborate the false charges raised by Jewish Funds For Justice have repudiated the letter arraigned by the George Soros proxy. All three weren't contacted prior to the use of their names, disagreed with the thrust of the letter and were not happy that they were included. A fourth came out and said the letter was too one sided. Not surprisingly the only group/person not raising some objection to the letter has an association with George Soros.
The text of letter/advertisement in the Wall Street Journal offers quotations from outside sources as support of their case against the Fox commentator:
Abe Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, a child survivor of the Holocaust, described Beck's attack on George Soros as "not only offensive, but horrific, over-the-top, and out-of-line." Commentary magazine said that "Beck's denunciation of him [Soros] is marred by ignorance and offensive innuendo." Elan Steinberg, vice president of The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors, called Mr. Beck's accusations "monstrous." Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, called them "beyond repugnant." And Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, says Beck is using traditional anti-Semitic imagery.
The first one to weigh in was Jeffrey Tobin of Commentary who saw the letter as an overt attempt to silence someone with home they disagree politically:
In the body of their ad is a quote from a COMMENTARY Web Exclusive article written by me about Beck’s willingness to raise questions about George Soros’s behavior during the Holocaust. In it I made it clear that while we consider Soros’s political stands abhorrent, his alleged activities as a 14-year-old boy during the Nazi occupation of his native Hungary ought to be out of bounds for his critics. As the Jewish Funds for Justice ad states, the piece said Beck’s attack on Soros on this point was marred by ignorance and innuendo, and I stand by that characterization....
The difference between COMMENTARY and the rabbis who speak in the name of the Jewish Funds for Justice couldn’t be clearer. We agree that Holocaust imagery and related topics ought not to be abused for partisan political purposes, though we have to say in passing that Beck’s idiotic attack on Soros is nowhere near as great an offense as Rep. Cohen’s calling his Republican opponents Nazis on the floor of the House of Representatives. But unlike those rabbis, we do not do so only when the offenders are people we disagree with on other issues. Had these rabbis sought to denounce both right-wing and left-wing figures that have called their foes Nazis or made specious comparisons to Adolf Hitler or Joseph Goebbels, they might have done so with some credibility. But since they have invoked their status as spiritual leaders as well as the prestige of the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist movements solely to silence a conservative political speaker whom they dislike, they have none.
(http://bigjournalism.com/files/2011/02/George-Soros_Dr-Evil.jpg)
Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal there were two letters published from organizations named in the JFJ open letter:
Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld Vice President American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors wrote:
I suppose that I am to rest easy now that these rabbis and the individuals they quote in their advertisement find Glenn Beck and Roger Ailes... represent a greater threat to the welfare of the Jews than George Soros. I have no position on Mr. Beck, but I am frankly puzzled as to how he merits so great an expenditure by this group. What a waste of communal resources this represents when there are so many needy people, Holocaust survivors and others.
This absurdity and the fact that these rabbis have never seen fit to comment on Mr. Soros's support for entities that have harmed Israel and Jewish interests (and in my view, Western interests generally), force me to speak out. [my emphasis]
Elan Steinberg is quoted in the advertisement in his capacity as vice president of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors. He has no more right than I do to speak in the name of the survivors on this topic. I know this because I, too, am vice president of the American Gathering. I also know that in my 30 years of participation in large-scale annual commemorations I have yet to meet a survivor who expressed support for Mr. Soros.
Most surprising was the second letter which was from Abe Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League, who has often used his organization as an arm of the progressive movement. Foxman defended Beck and Fox News as friends of Israel :
I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to "sanction" Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.
I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.
While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.
Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself—bizarrely timed for release on United Nations's Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.
A fourth person sited in the letter Deborah Lipstadt, professor of Holocaust Studies at Emory University, said that she didn't disagree with the thrust of the letter but felt it was distorted because of it was one-sided:
I don’t disagree with the thrust of JFSJ’s ad. That said, I do worry that it is a distortion to focus solely on the conservative end of the political spectrum.
During his term in office, President George W. Bush was frequently compared to Hitler. A 2006 New York Times ad from a group called the World Can’t Wait, signed by a number of prominent leftists (as well as five Democratic members of Congress), cited a litany of complaints about the Bush administration’s policies and concluded: “People look at all this and think of Hitler — and rightly so.” British playwright and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter, who signed onto the ad, went to so far as to call the Bush administration “more dangerous than Nazi Germany.” (Emphasis added.)
Similarly, references to Israelis as “Nazis” and claims that Israel is committing genocide abound in left-wing discourse. Because of their ubiquity, we have almost become inured to the horror of such comparisons.
One need not minimize the danger of Beck’s rhetoric in order to wonder why JFSJ — which has significant credibility among progressives — has not mounted an equally passionate critique of misbegotten analogies on the left. Is this about principle, or is it about politics? Is this about anti-Semitism, or about Rupert Murdoch? (Of course, there are also some conservatives who have no trouble spotting anti-Semitic innuendo except when it is appearing on Fox.)
Rev. Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance has not commented on the JFJ effort, perhaps because he is so busy. After all the Reverend is also on the Faith Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign Relations an organization tied into George Soros on many levels (Soros is a former board member, his Corporation is a sponsor and one of the council's resident experts, Morton Halprin is also an adviser to Soros' Open Society Foundation).
Despite its best attempts to attack Fox News' Glenn Beck, the vast majority people/organizations cited by the Jewish Funds for Justice as corroboration for their slander have labeled their open letter for what it is, a hypocritical effort on their part and by the 400 rabbis, to exploit the Holocaust for political purposes. I said it before and I will say it again, each and every one of those Rabbis should feel ashamed for their attempt to libel Glenn Beck and Fox News.
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Glenn has, how rare, been taking a contrarian interpretation of the events in Egypt. He sees them as the result of a Green-Red alliance dedicated to overthrowing western values world-wide and as the first step of much more to come. He is very emphatic that there is a reason the BO et al (e.g. intel chief Clapper!) are underplaying the true nature of the MB.
I'd be glad to see continuing discussion here of Glenn's ideas this past week and next.
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I'm pretty much there with him.
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We are looking at protests throughout the Arab world in the coming days. What is the US policy to be?
I begin with a glance in the rear view mirror by noting that we would be in rather good shape right now if the Baraq, Pelosi, Reid, Kerrey, Gore, Clinton, et al had supported Bush and the Neocons's idea of supporting democracy in Iraq and elsewhere. I note the absence of support by Baraq for the freedom marchers in Iran last year (though I note with approval the comments of VP Biden jabbing Ahmadinejad to allow the same freedoms to the people of Iran).
Turning to the question I present, at this moment what makes sense to me is to support freedom and democracy-- for those who support it.
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The silver lining in all this is seeing that a revolt against against the mullahs appears to be developing. Aside from that, I don't think things are going to go well.
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Well, that IS a rather big deal :-)
Here's these from that Islamo-Communist conspiracy, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal:
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As it happens, yesterday was also the 32nd anniversary of the Shah's downfall in Iran. The hard men of Tehran are now seeking to tap into Egypt's revolutionary fervor, hailing Hosni Mubarak's downfall as "a great victory." Earlier on this Islamic Revolution's Victory Day, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called on Arabs to "free" themselves from the "arrogant powers" (i.e., the U.S. and Israel) in the spirit of Ayatollah Khomeini.
The regime's words were all about 1979, but its actions suggested their minds are far more focused on 2009. Recall the Cairo-like scenes from Tehran two summers ago, when hundreds of thousands rose up over a stolen presidential election. Their uprising was brutally put down. The frustrations with a crony authoritarian regime that is far more savage than Mubarak's Egypt continue to fester.
Iran this week jammed the BBC Persian TV's coverage of the Egyptian uprising. According to the Guardian, the Iranians acted after the BBC brought together Iranian and Egyptian callers on air to exchange ideas.
Opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who challenged Mr. Ahmadinejad for the presidency, asked permission to stage a rally in solidarity with the people of Egypt and Tunisia this Monday. It was a clever idea to get around the long-standing ban on public gatherings. The government turned them down. At least eight opposition activists and journalists have been detained since Wednesday. Clearly the mullahs are nervous about contagion.
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Hosni Mubarak left Cairo and nearly three decades in power last night, and Egypt erupted with cheers, fireworks and dancing. A better immediate outcome to Egypt's three-week crisis is hard to imagine. Now comes the morning after, and the beginning of another drama for the Arab world's leading nation.
The collapse of the Mubarak regime, wholly unexpected a month ago, offers an overdue opportunity to let Egypt and fellow Arab states catch the global democracy wave that began in 1989. The way to a truly liberal democracy is long and filled with many potential wrong turns. But Egypt starts on it with an enthusiastic mandate for reform, and advantages as well as handicaps.
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Among the advantages, the military council that says it will oversee a transition has had its reputation and popular support enhanced by the uprising. By most appearances, the brass pushed Mr. Mubarak out yesterday, after the Egyptian leader refused to step down in a greatly anticipated speech on Thursday night. He enraged the streets and jeopardized the army's position of neutrality, increasing the chances of violence.
View Full Image
Zuma Press
.Dictators of long standing rarely leave easily, or quickly, and at least Mr. Mubarak left before more blood was shed. His consiglieri, an ashen-faced Vice President Omar Suleiman, read a 30-second statement to announce Mr. Mubarak's departure and the transfer of power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Services. Mr. Suleiman, who was previously expected to take over, may be left out of the transition, too tarnished by the events of the past three weeks to play an effective leadership role.
The military has been the power behind the Egyptian throne since the 1952 coup, and skeptics called yesterday's power shift another military coup. Many other Third World countries have seen generals take over and promise a transition to democracy, only to stay for good. The military has interests that run deep into Egypt's politics and economy, and the generals will want those safeguarded. But the circumstances of this "coup" are unique. The military yesterday promised to honor the people's demands for democracy. The last month was also a good lesson for them that in this century free societies tend to be more stable.
Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, who was Egypt's defense minister, and the other senior officers on the military council can take some obvious steps to build their legitimacy. As soon as possible they should lift emergency rule, which has been enforced since Anwar Sadat's assassination in 1981 and Mr. Mubarak's rise to the throne.
By rising up in January, Egyptians claimed their right to free speech and assembly. Such habits of a free society are worth decriminalizing and promoting. Long stifled by Mr. Mubarak's tight grip, the country hasn't had time to debate and disagree, nurture opposition figures and join political parties.
This transition will take time, a reality acknowledged by many in Cairo's Tahrir Square. The demonstrations were all the more remarkable for throwing up no leader in the mold of a Lech Walesa. Speaking on al Jazeera last night, former U.N. official Mohamed ElBaradei talked about "a one-year transition" to free elections. Before those take place, he said that Egypt needs a new constitution drawn up by a provisional council, including figures from the military and opposition. Ayman Nour, an opposition leader jailed by the Mubarak regime, said that Egyptians waited for yesterday for many years and would be patient. This is wise counsel.
Who knows what leader might emerge. Mr. ElBaradei lived abroad until the revolution started, and Mr. Nour's party lacks deep support and is divided. Marshal Tantawi won good will by appearing on Tahrir Square during the protests.
But the most galvanizing figure of the uprising is the Google executive, Wael Ghonim, who was jailed for a time but emerged with the Nelson Mandela-like message that he sought no revenge against his captors. This, too, is wisdom, because in history's successful revolutions victors have sought reconciliation rather than reprisals. Think the Philippines and South Africa, not France or Iran.
To satisfy the aspirations of this revolution, the political reforms will have to be credible and deep, not merely cosmetic. A Mubarak in new clothing will invite more trouble down the road. A democracy with proper constitutional checks, competing branches of government and the rule of law offers the best insurance against the rise of a different form of autocracy led by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Brotherhood is disciplined and organized and will no doubt fight to gain power. But it's worth noting that the words heard most often from protestors in Egypt have been "dignity," "modernity," "freedom," "jobs." We shouldn't overlook that at this moment the hallmarks of successful societies—democracy and a vibrant free market—appear to have displaced Allah as the galvanizing ideas for the young in Egypt and Tunisia.
Political Islam is so 1979—nowhere more so than in Iran, where an opposition rose up two years ago with the same demands as the Egyptians, only to fail amid a ruthless and violent government crackdown. (See editorial below.) Egypt's revolt should inspire the Iranians anew, and it will if it ends in greater freedom.
The U.S. and Europe can't dictate events in Egypt, but they can influence this transition. America's close ties and $1.5 billion in yearly aid to the military, which has been armed by Washington since the 1979 Camp David accords, will give the U.S. influence with the generals. Another carrot to Egypt's next leaders would be a free trade agreement and open access to the U.S. and EU markets for its goods as democracy advances.
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President Obama spoke for many Americans yesterday by saying that Egypt's nonviolent revolution "inspired us" with "a moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice." He has learned since his embarrassing silence over Iran in 2009. But this is also a day to note that George W. Bush was the President who broke with the foreign policy establishment and declared that Arabs deserved political freedom as much as the rest of the world. He was reviled for it by many of the same pundits who are now claiming solidarity with Egyptians in the streets. We are all neocons now.
Egypt's march toward political freedom is only beginning, and we can expect more drama and disagreement as it unfolds. But this new Egypt is the best opportunity since 9/11 to change the sclerotic Arab world, and it ought to be seized by Egyptians and their friends.
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Glenn is doing some really interesting work. If I had the time I would love to write up a little (or not so little) summary of each day's show -- but I don't have the time.
Is there someone here willing to step forward on this?
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Anyone? Pretty please?
Last night's show was quite remarkable-- (I think GM would have found it quite congenial).
It would be really awesome if someone could write up 1-3 paragraphs about it, about each night. (The night's where he blathers on could be covered with one to two sentences :lol: )
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I missed it last night. The shows I have see recently sounded quite GM-ish though. :-D
I doubt very much India will be reconquered by islam though. Glenn had it in his map of the new caliphate.
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Yes they have :-)
Concerning India, the night he was first showing that "worst case scenario" map, I commented to my son that the India assertion was quite dubious IMO. Last night GB had some comment to the effect that acknowledged the point.
So, anyway, GM, may I ask you to be our intrepid daily reporter of the GB Show? :-D
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SIX weeks after that horrific day in Tucson, America has half-forgotten its violent debate over the power of violent speech to incite violence. It’s Gabrielle Giffords’s own power of speech that rightly concerns us now. But all those arguments over political language did leave a discernible legacy. In the aftermath of President Obama’s Tucson sermon, civility has had a mini-restoration in Washington. And some of the most combative national figures in our politics have been losing altitude ever since, much as they did after Bill Clinton’s oratorical response to the inferno of Oklahoma City.
Glenn Beck’s ratings at Fox News continued their steady decline, falling to an all-time low last month. He has lost 39 percent of his viewers in a year and 48 percent of the prime 25-to-54 age demographic. His strenuous recent efforts to portray the Egyptian revolution as an apocalyptic leftist-jihadist conspiracy have inspired more laughs than adherents.
Sarah Palin’s tailspin is also pronounced. It can be seen in polls, certainly: the ABC News-Washington Post survey found that 30 percent of Americans approved of her response to the Tucson massacre and 46 percent did not. (Obama’s numbers in the same poll were 78 percent favorable, 12 percent negative.) But equally telling was the fate of a Palin speech scheduled for May at a so-called Patriots & Warriors Gala in Glendale, Colo.
Tickets to see Palin, announced at $185 on Jan. 16, eight days after Tucson, were slashed to half-price in early February. Then the speech was canceled altogether, with the organizers blaming “safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback.” But when The Denver Post sought out the Glendale police chief, he reported there had been no threats or other causes for alarm. The real “negative feedback” may have been anemic ticket sales, particularly if they were to cover Palin’s standard $100,000 fee.
What may at long last be dawning on some Republican grandees is that a provocateur who puts her political adversaries in the cross hairs and then instructs her acolytes to “RELOAD” frightens most voters.
Even the Rupert Murdoch empire shows signs of opting for retreat over reload. Its newest right-wing book imprint had set its splashy debut for Jan. 18, with the rollout of a screed, “Death by Liberalism,” arguing that “more Americans have been killed by well-meaning liberal policies than by all the wars of the last century combined.” But that publication date was 10 days after Tucson, and clearly someone had second thoughts. You’ll look in vain for the usual hype, or mere mentions, of “Death by Liberalism” in other Murdoch media outlets (or anywhere else). Even more unexpectedly, Murdoch’s flagship newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, ran an op-ed essay last week by the reliably conservative Michael Medved trashing over-the-top Obama critiques from Palin, Rush Limbaugh and Dinesh D’Souza as “paranoid” and “destructive to the conservative cause” — the cause defined as winning national elections.
If the next step in this declension is less face time for Palin on Fox News, then we’ll have proof that pigs can fly. But a larger question remains. If the right puts its rabid Obama hatred on the down-low, what will — or can — conservatism stand for instead? The only apparent agendas are repealing “Obamacare” and slashing federal spending as long as the cuts are quarantined to the small percentage of the budget covering discretionary safety-net programs, education and Big Bird.
This shortfall of substance was showcased by last weekend’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, a premier Republican rite that doubles as a cattle call for potential presidential candidates. Palin didn’t appear — CPAC, as the event is known, doesn’t pay — and neither did her fellow Fox News personality Mike Huckabee. But all the others were there, including that great white hope of un-Palin Republicans, Mitt Romney. What they said — and didn’t say — from the CPAC podium not only shows a political opposition running on empty but also dramatizes the remarkable leadership opportunity their fecklessness has handed to the incumbent president in post-shellacking Washington.
As it happened, CPAC overlapped with the extraordinary onrush of history in the Middle East. But the Egyptian uprising, supposedly a prime example of the freedom agenda championed by George W. Bush, was rarely, and then only minimally, mentioned by the parade of would-be presidents. Indeed, with the exception of Ron Paul — who would let the Egyptians fend for themselves and cut off all foreign aid — the most detailed discussions of Egypt came from Ann Coulter and Rick Santorum.
Santorum, a former Pennsylvania senator who lost his 2006 re-election bid by a landslide of 17 percentage points, believes he can be president despite being best known for having likened homosexuality to “man on dog” sex. Even less conversant in foreign affairs than canine coitus, he attacked Obama for deserting Hosni Mubarak, questioning the message it sent to America’s “friends.” But no one (with the odd exception of George Will) takes Santorum’s presidential ambitions seriously. Romney, on the other hand, is the closest thing the G.O.P. has to a front-runner, and he is even more hollow than Santorum. Indeed, his appearance at CPAC on the morning of Friday, Feb. 11, was entirely consistent with his public image as an otherworldly visitor from an Aqua Velva commercial circa 1985.
That Friday was the day after Mubarak’s bizarre speech vowing to keep his hold on power. At 9:45 a.m. that morning, as a rapt world waited for his next move, CNN reported that there would soon be a new statement from Mubarak — whose abdication was confirmed around 11 a.m. But when Romney took the stage in Washington at 10:35, he made not a single allusion of any kind to Egypt — even as he lambasted Obama for not having a foreign policy. His snarky, cowardly address also tiptoed around “Obamacare” lest it remind Tea Partiers of Massachusetts’s “Romneycare.” He was nearly as out of touch with reality as Mubarak the night before.
There was one serious speech at CPAC — an economic colloquy delivered that night by Mitch Daniels, the Indiana governor much beloved by what remains of mainstream conservative punditry. But Daniels was quickly thrashed: Limbaugh attacked him for his mild suggestion that the G.O.P. welcome voters who are not ideological purists, and CPAC attendees awarded him with only 4 percent of the vote in their straw poll. (The winners were Paul, with 30 percent, and Romney, with 23 percent.) Indeed, Daniels couldn’t even compete with the surprise CPAC appearance of Donald Trump, a sometime Democrat whose own substance-free Obama-bashing oration drew an overflow crowd. Apparently few at CPAC could imagine that Trump might be using them to drum up publicity for his own ratings-challenged television show, “Celebrity Apprentice,” which returns in just two weeks — or that he had contributed $50,000 to the Chicago mayoral campaign of no less an Obama ally than Rahm Emanuel.
THE G.O.P. has already reached its praying-for-a-miracle phase — hoping some neo-Reagan will emerge to usurp the tired field. Trump! Thune! T-Paw! Christie! Jeb Bush! Soon it’ll be time for another Fred Thompson or Rudy groundswell. But hardly had CPAC folded its tent than a new Public Policy Polling survey revealed where the Republican base’s heart truly remains — despite the new civility and the temporary moratorium on the term “job-killing.” The poll found that 51 percent of G.O.P. primary voters don’t believe that the president was born in America and that only 28 percent do. (For another 21 percent, the jury is still out, as it presumably is on evolution as well.)
The party leadership is no less cowed by that majority today than it was pre-Tucson. That’s why John Boehner, appearing on “Meet the Press” last weekend, stonewalled David Gregory’s repeated queries asking him to close the door on the “birther” nonsense. (“It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think,” Boehner said.) The power of the G.O.P.’s hard-core base may also yet deliver a Palin comeback no matter what the rest of the country thinks of her. In the CNN poll nearly two weeks after Tucson, Republicans still gave her a 70 percent favorable approval rating, just behind Huckabee (72 percent) and ahead of Romney (64 percent).
An opposition this adrift from reality — whether about Obama’s birth certificate, history unfolding in the Middle East or the consequences of a federal or state government shutdown — is a paper tiger. It’s a golden chance for the president to seize the moment. What we don’t know is if he sees it that way. As we’ve learned from his track record both in the 2008 campaign and in the White House, he sometimes coasts at these junctures or lapses into a pro forma bipartisanship that amounts, for all practical purposes, to inertia.
Obama’s outspokenness about the labor battle in Wisconsin offers a glimmer of hope that he might lead the fight for what many Americans, not just Democrats, care about — from job creation to an energy plan to an attack on the deficit that brackets the high-end Bush-era tax cuts with serious Medicare/Medicaid reform and further strengthening of the health care law. Will he do so? The answer to that question is at least as mysterious as the identity of whatever candidate the desperate G.O.P. finds to run against him.
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The main topic was the creepy parallels between the bible's description of the anti-christ and the muslim description of their mahdi. More of what have some have called a mormon version of the "700 Club" rather than hard news, IMHO.
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The main topic was the creepy parallels between the bible's description of the anti-christ and the muslim description of their mahdi. More of what have some have called a mormon version of the "700 Club" rather than hard news, IMHO.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2011/02/18/2011-02-18_glenn_beck_broadcasts_theory_that_some_muslim_leaders_want_the_antichrist_to_ret.html
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GM:
Blessing upon you for undertaking this :-) :-) :-)
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Just be advised that my viewing of GB tends to be spotty. Sometimes I catch it, sometimes not.
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Fair enough :-D
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"Obama’s outspokenness about the labor battle in Wisconsin offers a glimmer of hope that he might lead the fight for what many Americans, not just Democrats, care about — from job creation to an energy plan to an attack on the deficit that brackets the high-end Bush-era tax cuts with serious Medicare/Medicaid reform and further strengthening of the health care law."
Frank Rich is nuts. "many Americans" are for the labor battle in Wisconsin??? Oh really? So he thinks most Americans are for bailing out government unions benefits, pensions and fully covered health care with their hard earned money?
On job creation Obama gets an F.
On energy plan, Obama is doing everything to weaken the US. 50Bill for a couple of train tracks?
Strengthening health care? Nice try putting it that way - sound pretty damn phoney to me.
Serious MeidcareMedicaid reform. First the Dems say that can't be touched and that is obviously why Obama and MSM jornolists are hoping the Repubs will make bold moves - so the ONE can demagogue them to death till his election.
Rich is a typical liberal. Still dreaming that most Americans are for progressivism. This country is still right of center - not way to the left.
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Although I find GB's take on the events in the Arab world to be very worthwhile, for the record I would like to register a complaint.
It is well-known that many in the Arab world use the word "genocide" as much as they can so as to obscure the true genocide that was attempted, and is intended, for Jews. Sometimes too, it is just a matter of melodrama.
Whatever the case, someone in Libya this week, either a soldier or a defecting diplomat, spoke of Kadaffy attempting genocide; as murderous as what Kaddaffy Duck is trying to do may be, is he really trying to wipe out a people? I think not.
Yet GB has taken up the word "genocide" in his description of what is going on, as in "Why didn't BO take the time to do XYZ to help stop the genocide in Libya?"
This devalues the word, a word whose meaning should be respected and protected.
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/genocide
gen·o·cide
/ˈdʒɛnəˌsaɪd/ Show Spelled[jen-uh-sahyd] Show IPA
–noun
the deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group.
Although horrific, I don't think what is happening in Libya qualifies.
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Lawrence of MSNBC has been crusading against Beck. Apparantly Beck said a few things about the reformed rabbies who critcized him. I am not that familiar with the whole thing. Rachel who disappeared from this board after her post about Beck and Rabbie complainst and I came back and criticized Soros would probably find this apology inadaquate. I am not sure what to say specifically on the issue of Beck on this though I stand by my comments on Soros. As for criticizing Obama on not speaking out enough ON Ghaddafi I think this wrong headed and political. There are thousands of Americans trapped in Libya and their lives are at stake. It is not a leap to worry that US over - condemnation could cost them their lives.
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2011/02/glenn-beck-apology-admits-making-one-of-the-worst-analogies-of-all-time.html
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Sauron, er I mean Soros isn't even a practicing Jew. Just another leftwing sociopath.
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I almost forgot how the Pundit Right smacked down Glenn Beck over his wholly rational concern that out of Tahrir Square a new caliphate might arise in the Islamic world until I read William Kristol's op-ed this week.
Earlier this month, Weekly Standard editor and Fox analyst Kristol had led off the anti-Beck attack with a heated column accusing Beck of "hysteria" for his "rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East" and connections to the American Left. Kristol was seconded by National Review editor Rich Lowry. The New York Times' David Brooks entered the debate lambasting Beck for his "delusional ravings about the caliphate coming back" while "the conservative establishment" saw Mubarak's fall as "a fulfillment of Ronald Reagan's democracy dream." (Count me out.)
For the next week or so, taunting "delusional" Beck became a regular feature on cable TV. The Pundit Left congratulated the responsible Right for "addressing" the Beck "problem." And maybe a solution was near. "I've heard, from more than a couple of conservative sources, that prominent Republicans have approached Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes about the potential embarrassment that the paranoid-messianic rodeo clown may bring upon their brand," Time's Joe Klein blogged. "I wouldn't be surprised if we saw a mirror-Olbermann situation soon."
Somehow it all slipped my mind.
And then I read Kristol's Wednesday lament in the Washington Post over what he sees as President Obama's dithering over what he also sees as "Arab spring." This is a jarringly dainty euphemism for a blur of regional events that now includes: the triumphal return to Egypt of the poisonous Yusef al Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood's favorite cleric who just drew 2 million Egyptians back to Tahrir Square where he prayed for the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem; panicky EU promises of billions of dollars in aid (protection money?) to its "Southern neighborhood"; emergency preparations for as many as 300,000 Islamic "migrants" washing up on just Italy's shores any day. By the way, one disastrous effect of mass Islamic immigration (hijra) to Europe to date may be gleaned from the current political climate in which a new edition of Jean Raspail's 1973 novel "Camp of the Saints," the prophetic account of France's inability to survive massive Third World immigration, is expected to land the 85-year-old author and his publisher in French court on "hate speech" charges.
But I digress, sort of. What is noteworthy about the beef against Beck is the rock-hard certitude with which his critics, Right and Left, dismiss the caliphate concept as though it were a mythological beast, not a historical system of Islamic governance still revered and yearned for by most Muslims. Speaking of Tahrir Square, a 2007 University of Maryland/WorldOpinon poll indicated that 74 percent of Egyptians favor "strict Shariah," while 67 percent favor a "caliphate" uniting all of Islam.
But woe to anyone who takes notice. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, for example, was recently accused on a noted blog of "(slinging) caliphate tripe" when Ferguson pointed out that the Muslim Brotherhood "remains by far the best organized opposition force in the country, and wholly committed to the restoration of the caliphate and the strict application of Shariah." "Hilariously stupid" was the not-so-hilariously stupid comment.
But even if "Arab spring" should fail, Kristol writes, "there would be still be a case, for reasons of honor and duty ... to stand with the opponents of tyranny." Doing so, he continues, would not only "vindicate American principles and mean a gain for American interests but because we claim those American principles to be universal principles."
Here is what is "delusional": the belief that American principles -- freedom of religion, freedom of speech, equality before the law -- have a natural place as "universal principles" in a culture grounded in Shariah principles. This is the pure fantasy that has driven our foreign policy through a decade of "nation-building" wars. Meanwhile, the only way I know how to get to anything you might call "universal principles" into the Islamic world is through the establishment of ... a caliphate
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Marc: So, what does she propose? What does Beck propose? What do we propose?
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Well, we could clearly and firmly stand by an imperfect ally like Mubarak...... Whoops!
Nevermind.
We can use military spare parts and money as leverage with the Egyptian military. Maybe stop them from attacking monasteries for a while....
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For one possible course of action I duplicate this from the Islam and Theocracy thread:
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By BARI WEISS For 18 days, the people of Cairo massed in Tahrir Square to bring down their pharaoh. Many carried signs: "Mubarak: shift + delete," "Forgive me God, for I was scared and kept quiet," or simply "Go Away." Barbara Ibrahim, a veteran professor at the American University in Cairo, wore large photographs of her husband—Egypt's most famous democratic dissident—as a makeshift sandwich board.
Her husband, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, couldn't be there. After being imprisoned and tortured by the Mubarak regime from 2000 to 2003, he went into a sort of exile, living and teaching abroad. But the day Hosni Mubarak gave up power, Feb. 11, Mr. Ibrahim hopped a plane from JFK International. Landing in his native Cairo, he went directly to the square.
"It was just like, how do you say, the day of judgment," Mr. Ibrahim says. "The way the day of judgment is described in our scripture, in the Quran, is where you have all of humanity in one place. And nobody recognizes anybody else, just faces, faces."
And what faces they were: bearded, shorn, framed by hijabs, young, old—and at one point even a bride and groom. "The spirit in the square was just unbelievable," says Mr. Ibrahim, whose children and grandchildren were among the masses. "These people, these young people, are so empowered. They will never be cowed again by any ruler—at least for a generation."
For the 72-year-old sociologist, the revolution against Hosni Mubarak has been many years in the making. His struggle began 10 years ago with a word: jumlukiya. A combination of the Arabic words for republic (jumhuriya) and monarchy (malikiya), the term was coined by Mr. Ibrahim to characterize the family dynasties of the Mubaraks of Egypt and the Assads of Syria.
He first described jumlukiya on television during the June 2000 funeral of Syrian dictator Hafez al-Assad. Then he wrote about it in a magazine article that "challenged all the autocrats of the region to open up and have a competitive election."
The magazine appeared on the morning of June 30, 2000. But it vanished from Egyptian newsstands by midday. By midnight, Mr. Ibrahim was arrested at his home. "Then began my confrontation with the Mubarak regime—the trials, and three year imprisonment, and the defamation, all of that. That was the beginning."
Not a month before, he had written a speech about women's rights for Mr. Mubarak's wife Suzanne—Mr. Ibrahim had been her thesis adviser in the 1970s at the American University in Cairo, when her husband was vice president to Anwar Sadat. None of it mattered. In the end, some 30 people connected to Mr. Ibrahim's Ibn Khaldun Center—the Muslim world's leading think tank for the study of democracy and civil society—were rounded up.
Most were ultimately released. But Mr. Ibrahim was tried in a cage within a courtroom, sentenced for "defaming" Egypt (criticizing Mr. Mubarak) and "embezzlement" (for accepting a grant to conduct election monitoring through his center). His stints in prison—always in solitary confinement and, for a period, enduring sleep deprivation and water torture—left him with a serious limp. The former runner now relies on a cane.
Yet he believes that his case helped create the atmosphere for this year's uprising. "It started as a series of challenges with individuals. With me, with [liberal opposition leader] Ayman Nour . . . What you saw is the accumulation of all these incremental steps that have taken place in the past 10 years," he says.
"But to give credit where it is due," Mr. Ibrahim adds, "the younger generation was more innovative and far more clever than we were by using the technology at their disposal. These guys discovered the tools that could not be combated by the government." He notes that many of them, like Wael Ghonim from Google, operated from outside of Egypt. "That's something new."
With elections set for September, the most urgent question facing Egypt is how to structure the democratic process—and how dominant the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood may become. In a 2005 election, the Brotherhood won 20% of the seats in parliament. According to the Ibn Khaldun Center's research, the group could earn about 30% in an upcoming vote.
Mr. Ibrahim thinks that holding elections six months from now is "not wise." If he had his druthers, it would be put off for several years to allow alternative groups to mature. Still, he insists that the Brothers—some of whom he knows well from prison, including senior leader Essam el-Erian—are changing.
"They did not start this movement, nor were they the principal actors, nor were they the majority," he says. When they showed up in Tahrir Square on the fourth day of the protests, most were members of the group's young guard. Mr. Ibrahim points out that they didn't use any Islamist slogans. "Their famous slogan is 'Islam is the solution.' They use that usually in elections and marches. But they did not." This time, they chose "Religion is for God, country is for all." That slogan dates to 1919 and Egypt's secular nationalist movement.
What's more, some Brothers carried signs depicting the crescent and the cross together. "One of the great scenes was of young Copts [Christians], boys and girls, bringing water for the Muslim brothers to do their ablution, and also making a big circle—a temporary worship space—for them. And then come Sunday, the Muslims reciprocated by allowing space for the Copts to have their service. That of course was very moving. "
Maybe so. But this week Muslim Brotherhood member Mohsen Radi declared that the group finds it "unsuitable" for a Copt or a woman to hold a high post like the presidency. Then there's the Brotherhood's motto: "'Allah is our objective; the Prophet is our leader; the Quran is our law; Jihad is our way; dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope." Looking around Egypt's neighborhood, it's not hard to guess what life would be like for Coptic Christians, let alone women, under a state guided by Quranic Shariah law.
"That's still their creed and their motto," Mr. Ibrahim says. "What they have done is to lower that profile. Not to give it up, but to lower it." He adds that the Brothers have promised not to run a candidate for the presidency for the next two election cycles.
To skeptics like me, such gestures seem like opportunism—superficial ploys aimed at winning votes, not a genuine transformation. I press Mr. Ibrahim and he insists that the younger guard is evolving, and that they are "fairly tolerant and enlightened." Enlightened seems a stretch, but nevertheless, what other option is there? Banning the Brotherhood, as the Mubarak regime did, is a nonstarter.
If Mr. Ibrahim is a fundamentalist about anything, it's democracy. And his hope is that participating in the democratic process will liberalize the Muslim Brothers over the long term. They "have survived for 80 years, and one mechanism for survival is adaptation," he says. "If the pressure continues, by women and by the middle class, they will continue to evolve. Far from taking their word, we should keep demanding that they prove that they really are pluralistic, that they are not going to turn against democracy, that they are not going to make it one man, one vote, one time."
He compares the Brothers to the Christian Democrats in Western Europe after World War II. "They started with more Christianity than democracy 100 years ago. Now they are more democracy than Christianity." True, but the Christian Democrats never embraced violent radicalism in the way the Muslim Brotherhood has.
Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP)—formerly the Virtue Party—is a more recent model. "The Muslim Brothers seem to be moving in the same direction," he says.
That would probably be a best case, but it too is problematic. The AKP—and, by extension, contemporary Turkey—is democratic but hardly liberal. Over the past decade, it has dramatically limited press freedom, stoked anti-Semitism, supported Hamas, and defended murderous figures like Sudan's Omar al-Bashir.
Still, the Turkish scenario is far better than the Iranian one—the hijacking of Egypt's revolution by radical clerics like Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who returned from Qatar to Cairo last week. For his part, Mr. Ibrahim doesn't think that Mr. Qaradawi—a rock-star televangelist with an Al Jazeera viewership of some 60 million—is positioned to dominate the new Egypt as Ayatollah Khomeini dominated post-1979 Iran.
Mr. Qaradawi had messages of Muslim-Christian unity for the hundreds of thousands who heard him preach in the square. But about Jews, he has said that Hitler "managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hands of the believers [Muslims]."
When I asked Mr. Ibrahim about the scourge of anti-Semitism in the Middle East generally, he's dismissive. "Have you seen any pogroms in Morocco or Tunisia or Egypt?" he asks rhetorically. As I point out, though, the Arab Middle East has had a negligible Jewish population since 1948, when roughly 800,000 Jews were expelled. It's hard to carry out a pogrom when Jews aren't around.
So what if the Brothers prove increasingly radical, not moderate? "I would struggle against them. . . . As a democrat and as a human rights activist I would fight, just as I fought Mubarak, like I fought Nasser. All my life I've been fighting people who do not abide by human rights and basic freedoms."
Might he run for political office when his professorship at New Jersey's Drew University ends in May? "I'm 72 years old. And I'd really like to see a younger generation." But, he adds, "in politics you never say no."
"I am more interested in having the kind of presidential campaign similar to what you have here or in Western Europe. . . . That's part of creating or socializing our people into pluralism—to see it at work, to have debates, to have a free media," he says.
One political role he's already playing is as an informal adviser to Obama administration officials, his friends Michael McFaul and Samantha Power, scholars who serve on the National Security Council staff. But he doesn't mince words about Mr. Obama's record so far. The president "wasted two and a half years" cozying up to dictators and abandoning dissidents, he says. "Partly to distance himself from Bush, democracy promotion became a kind of bad phrase for him." He also made the Israeli-Palestinian conflict his top priority, at the expense of pushing for freedom. "By putting the democracy file on hold, on the back burner, he did not accomplish peace nor did he serve democracy," says Mr. Ibrahim.
'Dislikable as [President Bush] may have been to many liberals, including my own wife, we have to give him credit," says Mr. Ibrahim. "He started a process of some conditionality with American aid and American foreign policy which opened some doors and ultimately was one of the building blocks for what's happening now." That conditionality extended to Mr. Ibrahim: In 2002, the Bush administration successfully threatened to withhold $130 million in aid from Egypt if Mr. Mubarak didn't release him.
So what should the White House do? "Publicly endorse every democratic movement in the Middle East and offer help," he says. The least the administration can do is withhold "aid and trade and diplomatic endorsement. Because now the people can do the job. America doesn't have to send armies and navies to change the regimes. Let the people do their change."
Ms. Weiss is an assistant editorial features editor at the Journal.
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That's the course to take to deliver up the ME to the MB on a silver platter.
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So, what do you suggest?
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We actually try to support our remaining allies and use our leverage with the Egyptian military to keep the MB and stealth MB groups out of the elections.
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Who are our remaining allies and how do we support them? Do we give them money? Guns and more serious toys? Military protection? What?
What I understand you to be suggesting seems to me like it could well turn out like what we have now in Pakistan.
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We are stuck with trying to find the least sh*tty option. There are no good options. We can't lose Saudi, no matter what. Losing Jordan would be very bad. We use every carrot and stick we have and turn a blind eye to some ugly things that these countries do for internal security, just as we most always have.
Overall, what is to be avoided is the "Six Day War, Pt. II Israel vs. the troops of the new caliphate", as well as the aforementioned formation of Sharia-PEC.
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Also to be avoided is peeing into the wind of historical forces-- which may or may not be present.
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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the New Caliphate?
So, if we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us kafirs?
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1. The US is exporting inflation around the world, causing instability.
2. The International Socialist Organization and the AFL/CIO Wisc. have seemingly merged.
3. Van Jones is still a communist douche.
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Good summary! :lol:
I would add to Number 3 that VJ speaks in cognito; he has learned to be a communist without sounding like one.
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Kinda like BHO.
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1. "Perfect Storm" Borders, Jihad, economic collapse and others ills gathering to destroy the US.
2. Economic Warfare. Beck discussed the DoD report on the 2008 economic collapse, as seen in the political economics thread.
3. Beck pointed out socialist indoctrination in a textbook.
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I thought GB did a good job of summarizing the possible 3 point attack plan:
a)getting lots of money with the manipulation of the oil market in 2007-2008
b) naked bear raids on Bear Stearns and Lehman and the intended direconsequences thereto which nearly occurred according to some
c) the intention to finish off the dollar as an international currency.
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1. Van Jones still a communist douche.
2. Police unions should take a long, hard look at whom they are allied with.
3. Radicals like VJ use mainstream groups to hide their radical agendas.
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Re 2: The AFL-CIO is a socialist organization, so too many others with whom the police are standing with regard to matters in WI. By allowing commies like VJ to participate, the Fraternal Order of Police et al are lending their patina of respectability to them.
4: VJ et al have infiltrated NY State school books and are using them to spread the socialist message.
and from GB's email today:
5: In a very candid interview, President Obama said that 'race is still an issue' for him and that a 'key component' of the Tea Party is racism. That's quite a claim considering there's no evidence of racism - the best argument supporting that theory is 'President Obama is African American. Tea Parties oppose the President's policies. Therefore Tea Parties are racist. What'd Glenn think of the comments? He explained on radio today.
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Not Glen Beck directly, but I have a bone to pick with his radio show guest host Joe "Pags" Pagliarulo yesterday who if understood correctly advocated a ban on speculators making a market for oil futures.
That type of economic illiteracy sets us back centuries, I hope the real host is setting the record straight.
The last time gasoline spiked like this was the Katrina aftermath. By allowing gas prices to adjust upward during a supply interruption, no American went to a gas station unable to buy gas. Instead what they found was no waiting. The scarce resource was allocated to its most valuable use.
My judgment is that a gallon of gas is worth about a dollar including our excessive taxation. The rest is the electoral penalty for allowing these buffoons for all of these years to prevent us from producing quantities of energy similar to what we use. Distorting that argument, blaming the market, to such a vast audience does quite a disservice .
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I didn't watch yesterday's show when I saw the host was Judge Napolitano (for the rest of the week too? GB being on a well deserved vacation?) I like Napolitano just fine, indeed I like him a lot sometimes, but there are times I find him a little formulaic.
Anyway, concerning oil futures: I fully get the logic of market efficiency and futures trading. I also remember wondering WTF was up 2-3 years ago when oil shot to $150 a barrel for reasons that eluded me. As a read around, I ran across a couple of pieces noting that oil futures required only a 5% margin :-o-- which was far less than for stocks (Anyone know what the margin requirement for stocks is?) As such, these articles argued, oil futures were by far the most highly leveraged hot money/gambling play left.
It is not clear to me that such highly leveraged speculation truly serves market efficiency.
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Crafty, You make a great point regarding margin. On stocks I believe it is currently 25% overall http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/margin.htm, stricter depending on brokerage account rules. My belief in the right to offer 140 for a barrel in a month means that you in fact contractually have to pay 140 for a barrel in a month, beg, borrow or steal.
If we had responsible supply strategies IMO the natural market spike from turmoil in Libya would take oil maybe from $27 to $28 dollars and we would be begging private companies in Alaska, Florida or California to increase production to cover the shortage instead of the dictatorship/Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - and 'ugo Chavez.
http://futures.tradingcharts.com/charts/COW.GIF
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http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/03/07/new-york-times-fox-news-and-glenn-beck-seeking-a-divorce/
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Intriguing and scary show from GB today; like all of us, he is trying to make sense of a world that is no longer making sense.
He made a very plausible case that the secret plan is to dump Israel as an ally. He went into this at length. I suspect if someone were to search function here for Cass Sunstein's wife and BO Israel-Palestine advisor Samantha Powers you would see what she was saying before plucked into the inner circle by Baraq. The gist of it is that we need to ignore certain powerful domestic constituencies, stop supporting Israel, and use the money to build up Palestine.
Not sure if I will get this right, but the same basis "the duty to prevent harm to civilians" for the intervention in Libya will be used against Israel to keep it from hurting the Palestinians-- GB named a WH aide to Baraq who is already making this case. Egypt's army in alliance with Muslim Brotherhood, now that Baraq has eased Murbarak out the door, will be ready to assist.
Of course it is a coincidence that Jordan Air's map now shows Jordan including where Israel now is and that Turkey is planning anohter flotilla to break the Gaza embargo.
Separately he discussed Baraq's trip to Brazil, the US helping fund Petrobras's deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while Cass Sunstein denies US companies permits to do the same thing with their money. Of course it is just a coincidence that this comes after Soros has been trading in Petrobas.
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http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-beck-show-march-24-2011/
Just click on the link.
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From GM's link: "Samantha Powers, the wife of Cass Sunstein, who was instrumental in advising Obama on Libya... has called for a Mammoth Protection Force against Israel."
On radio, Beck said we don't need to follow her advice and fund a massive force against Israel. We just got that for free in Egypt, they are called the Muslim Brotherhood.
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"Separately he discussed Baraq's trip to Brazil, the US helping fund Petrobras's deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico"
I heard that too. I made the mistake of buying some petrobas after they had made huge undersea discoveries the last oil spike.
The government controls PBR and takes much of the profit to spend on Brazilian domestic programs thus leaving foreign suckers like me holding the bag. The stock went from 130 to 30. Despite the re rise of oil the price is still only around 40. The dividend stinks.
And now I read we are sending them tax moeny too???
So who can wonder why the Brazialians love OBama as reported in the liberal MSM?
Of course they do. Like all the countries where he is loved. He is spreading our wealth around and buying their love.
I am ready to vote for Trump. :cry:
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Last night Glenn really went after the idea that the "Duty to Protect" strand of "the Obama doctrine" :roll: is part of a big deep play to set up Israel. Players involve George Soros, Susan Rice, some other names I forget, as well as Obama himself. I am not doing the idea justice and recognize that someone reading only my words here may find the idea , , , a bit "out there", but he had me intrigued. Perhaps GM can once again step into the breach with the URL for last night's show?
Also yesterday he spoke yet again about the pressure that the Soros conspiracy has been putting on FOX to get rid of him. Coincidentally enough I have seen but not read some internet reference to "Glenn Beck considers web show".
I find the idea being bandied about by some on the left that FOX would get rid of such a successful show to be odd-- he makes A LOT of money for FOX, but for what it is worth, here's this:
http://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2011/03/29/the_final_days_of_the_glenn_beck_phenomenon/page/full/
The mainstream media has been reporting with glee that Glenn Beck may be leaving his Fox News show for a web-only show or his own cable station. Beck’s detractors are hoping he is imploding and this is the end of his superstardom in politics. There have been signs of friction between Beck and Fox News, and the network will not confirm whether his contract will be renewed in December.
The left is terrified of Beck. He has become one of the biggest leaders in the conservative movement. His enemies have responded by trying to force him out of his Fox News show. The far left group Color of Change organized a boycott of the show in 2009 after Beck called Obama a racist. The group claims that 300 advertisers have left, including Wal-Mart, Geico and Sprint. Liberal rabbis took out a full page ad in the Washington Post earlier this year asking Fox News to sanction Beck over critical statements he had made about them. Some Christian conservatives have kept quiet instead of defending him because of his Mormon faith. His theological differences with mainstream Christians occasionally surface on his television show.
The Glenn Beck Show has become one of the top cable news shows in just a few years. Unlike other prominent conservative talk show hosts, Beck educates his audience about our country’s history and philosophical foundations. He has figured out how to do so in a way that appeals to even our younger generations with their shorter attention spans. He wisely puts on many shows discussing Tea Party concerns that have become front and center over the past couple of years; hammering on the dangers of our expanding debt and deficits that risk economic doom if something does not change. He frequently lays into far left activists and exposes their seedy connections, unafraid to connect the dots when it comes to real conspiracies. His honest, folksy style of speaking with its sense of urgency, accompanied by unusual camera angles, invitingly draws viewers in. People from all walks of life easily identify with him due to his troubled past, which includes overcoming alcoholism, drug addiction and the suicide of his mother when he was only 13.
Lately, Beck’s shows have explored radical Islam, including whether Islamic prophecies coincide with Biblical endtime prophesies. Beck believes there is a possibility that the Antichrist foretold in the Bible will come from radical Islam. Considering around 80% of the U.S. population considers themselves to be Christians, and there are political overtones to Biblical end times prophesy, it makes sense for Beck to cover a topic that many of his viewers are interested in. Fox News viewers are even more likely to be Christians interested in these kinds of issues.
But Beck has become so wildly popular that every thing he says is a potential lightening rod. He has reached Sarah Palin levels of media scrutiny. There is now talk that his plain-talking style of covering controversial topics like radical Islam is hurting him and that his ratings have dropped drastically. Is there any truth to this? The big networks are down double digits, while cable networks have increased their viewers. Last year, Beck had the third most popular show on cable news, and just last week his ratings jumped up to second place, putting him ahead of Hannity and behind the number one O’Reilly Factor. And unlike O’Reilly and Hannity, Beck’s pre-evening time slot is not even a prime spot. O’Reilly has Beck on his show as a guest every Friday, no doubt realizing it helps his own ratings too.
Beck is even more successful outside of Fox News. Forbes Magazine has estimated that Beck’s web operations earn him $4 million per year, twice as much as the $2 million he earns from his Fox News show. He launched the website “The Blaze” last fall. It has more traffic than Fox News’ Fox Nation website.
Beck’s total earnings between March 2009 and March 2010 were $23 million according to Forbes. His radio show is carried by more than 350 stations, and he is the third-most-popular political radio talk show host after Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. He regularly goes on live comedy tours around the nation. He has his own magazine, Fusion. He’s authored six New York Times bestsellers.
He launched the popular 9-12 Project in 2009 and quickly became one of the biggest faces of the Tea Party movement. Over 500,000 attended his “Restoring Honor” rally last August in Washington, D.C., dubbed “Beckapalooza” due to its draw. Unlike most conservative rallies, it wasn’t put on by a conglomerate organization, this was a rally where people came because Beck was the theme. Prominent groups like the National Rifle Association, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks and Tea Party Patriots supported the rally. It raised $5.5 million, which went to the veterans’ charity Special Operations Warrior Foundation after costs.
Critics of Beck reveal their desperation at finding a real flaw in him by trying to have it both ways in their attacks on him. They do not like the way he has been able to present the historical and philosophical background underlying political issues in an appealing way that doesn’t bore the average person. But at the same time, they attack his intelligence. They claim he has sold out and gone mainstream. Beck’s website The Blaze criticized investigative filmmaker James O’Keefe for selectively releasing portions of incriminating videotapes of figures on the left. Beck hired former Huffington Post CEO Betsy Morgan to run The Blaze. Yet on the other hand, critics claim he is part of the fringe right for attacking radical Islam, discussing Biblical end times prophecy, and calling Obama a racist.
The efforts to ruin Beck will not be successful. The boycott isn’t hurting Fox News. Those advertisers affected have simply moved to other shows on the network. The controversies Beck has brought while at Fox News are just enough to help the network, not hinder it. Beck is covering mildly controversial issues, he is not behaving like Charlie Sheen or David Duke. The fact he is Mormon means he is not the perfect conservative talk show host for most of Fox News’ base, but he is the only one on the network willing to cover subjects that desperately need to be aired on a popular network. Beck is charismatic, tireless and always coming up with creative new ideas that reflect the times. If Beck and Fox News cannot agree on renewing his contract, Beck will have no problem expanding his empire and drawing viewers elsewhere.
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http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-beck-show-march-29-2011/
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The Beck vs. Fox story is interesting except nothing but speculation is known. The previous report of it came out of the NY Times showing both bias and envy. Beck has 3rd best ratings and the 3rd best time slot. What would he have in the top time slot? Does he bring viewers to Fox or does Fox bring viewers to him? He isn't giving up and he isn't going away from the public eye, so I would assume it is all just the ordinary gossip that gets tossed around before a major league contract re-signing or a jump. A little like Leno-Letterman-Conan. I'm sure he considers the possibility of making a greater impact by taking the number one time slot somewhere else, maybe a network thought to be liberal or a new channel. If he wants to be an entrepreneur I'm sure he could set up a 24 hour alternative with his headline show running live at whatever time he wants it to, for whatever length. Plus they can televise his radio show and grow his morning audience. With the people who put together content for the Blaze along with a few guest hosts and re-run the headline show would fill the day easily. I doubt that will be the result but who knows. Those who thought Fox News was too conservative should be scared.
The Blaze BTW looks like the best site of that type. Both Huff Post and the Blaze tried to run with an improved version of what Matt Drudge pioneered. (I would like to turn off the automatic refresh feature on all of those, which drives me nuts with medium speed internet.) http://www.theblaze.com/ Drudge in particular has forced the msm to grudgingly cover topics that used to just slide by. An example on Blaze: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/for-the-record-heres-the-caught-on-audio-clip-of-sen-schumers-extreme-moment/ I doubt that was front page of the pravda-hudson or the red star(Mpls paper).
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As an organizer, I go to a lot of meetings, panels and discussions and often leave feeling like I’m caught in the movie Groundhog Day, where I am reliving the same discussions and debates over and over again, and wondering if they hold any relevance for anyone else. That’s why I was so surprised when my secretly taped comments about the need to challenge Wall Street and corporate power using direct action, delivered on March 19 at the Left Forum in New York City, set off a right-wing firestorm.
About Stephen Lerner
Stephen Lerner serves on the Service Employees International Union’s International Executive Board and is the....Related Topics.Glenn Beck Groundhog Day New York City Social Issues .A funny thing happened on the way home from the forum. Overnight I was transformed by Glenn Beck into an all-powerful agent of “economic terrorism.” Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz called for a federal investigation of me, and right-wing blogs claimed that my comments revealed a vast conspiracy to take over the country and the economy.
What did I say that led Beck to spend two nights attacking me and defending big banks and Wall Street CEOs?
I think I may have found part of the answer in what disgraced former Wall Street stock analyst Henry Blodget admitted when he echoed Beck’s wild theories on Business Insider. Describing my remarks, he wrote, “Many Americans will undoubtedly sympathize with and support them.”
So that was it: Beck, right-wingers and Wall Street sympathizers went ballistic because they knew the ideas I talked about are far from being a secret leftist conspiracy; in fact, they’re in sync with the thinking of most Americans. In my talk, I raised a very simple yet powerful idea: that homeowners, students, citizens and workers should make the same practical decisions Wall Street and corporate CEOs make every day—they should reject bad financial deals.
Beck and Wall Street are terrified that regular Americans will begin to challenge the double standard that allows one set of rules for the rich and another for the rest of us. They are petrified of the growing understanding, among people of diverse political backgrounds, that our country isn’t broke; that the tiny elite at the top has manipulated the economic crisis it created to grow even richer and more powerful while the rest of us suffer the consequences; and that Wall Street and corporations, sitting on record profits, are holding the country hostage, essentially threatening a capital strike if they don’t get further tax and regulatory breaks.
As long as Wall Street and the superrich feel secure and confident, they have no reason to negotiate a fair deal with the rest of us. Only by creating uncertainty and instability for them—by disrupting unfair business as usual—can we build the strength to challenge their stranglehold on our economy and our democracy.
But I don’t think it was just my theorizing about power relationships and the economy that set off such a frenzy. It was the prospect that average Americans could take a series of concrete and practical steps, including direct action and civil disobedience, to make Wall Street pay for the trillions it stole from us. Ordinary Americans have the power and the opportunity to go on offense right now—with the immediate goals of keeping millions of people in their homes and raising revenue for cities and states to save jobs and critical services.
Here’s how we can start:
§ Homeowners and students can stop paying unfair debt. If growing numbers of homeowners and students organize toward a loan strike—threatening to refuse to pay their toxic mortgages and student loans unless banks agree to negotiate lower rates—it could force banks to modify loans and provide relief to our families.
§ Citizens can demand that our governments stop doing business with bandit banks. Local governments conduct trillions in business with Wall Street banks. That leverage can be used to force the banks to pay their fair share in taxes, renegotiate high-cost deals that are bankrupting taxpayers with astronomical interest rates, and stop foreclosures by reducing mortgage principals.
§ Public employees can use their collective bargaining power to protect taxpayer dollars. Teachers, nurses and other public employees can go to the bargaining table armed with solutions that would save billions, like renegotiating the toxic interest rate swaps that are costing taxpayers at least $1.8 billion a year nationally. Swaps were supposed to save taxpayers money, but they backfired when the Federal Reserve cut interest rates after the financial crash to help the banks. Now, as taxpayers deal with devastating cuts, the banks are using these swaps to suck millions out of government coffers. Imagine public employees voting to strike in order to pressure the city or state to use its power to protect taxpayers and critical services while also stopping foreclosures and stabilizing the housing market and tax base.
So let’s give Wall Street, Glenn Beck and the right something to be scared about. It’s time to use our collective power to challenge the economic and political stranglehold they have on our country.
Join thousands of Americans on April 4 in cities across the country for a dramatic series of actions to stand up for the middle class. On April 5, join the national teach-in with Frances Piven and Cornel West. Or start organizing in your own community to challenge the power of Wall Street and corporate CEOs.
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http://www.watchglennbeck.com/
Yesterday's show:
All this week, Glenn has been asking the questions - Who is looking out for Israel? And, who is standing up for freedom here and all over the world? Well, one thing is for certain- we know the answer to these questions is certainly not Iran. They want to take both the United States and Israel down and clear the path for the Twelfth Imam. Tonight, Glenn welcomes a special guest to the program...a former member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard shares some frightening video that proves the regime is indeed preparing for the return of the Twelfth Imam. Plus, CBN Host Erick Stackelbeck.
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http://www.denverpost.com/frontpage/ci_17784035?source=rss_igoogle
NEW YORK—Glenn Beck later this year will end his Fox News Channel talk show, which has sunk in the ratings and has suffered from an advertiser boycott.
Fox and Beck's company, Mercury Radio Arts, said Wednesday they will stay in business creating other projects for Fox television and digital, starting with some documentaries Beck is preparing.
Beck was a quick burn on Fox News Channel. Almost immediately after joining the network in January 2009, he doubled the ratings at his afternoon time slot. Fans found his conservative populism entertaining, while Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert described Beck's "crank up the crazy and rip off the knob" moments.
He was popular with tea party activists and drew thousands of people to the National Mall in Washington last August for a "restoring honor" rally.
Yet some of his statements were getting him in trouble, and critics appealed to advertisers to boycott his show last summer after Beck said President Barack Obama had "a deep-seated hatred for white people."
Beck said that he went to Roger Ailes, Fox News chairman and CEO, in January to discuss ways they could continue to work together without the daily show.
"Half of the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes said. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."
Beck said he noted on his show Tuesday that "how many times can I tell the (George) Soros story," referring the liberal donor that Beck has made a target of attacks.
"We felt Glenn brought additional information, a unique perspective, a certain amount of passion and insight to the channel and he did," Ailes said. "But that story of what's going on and why America is in trouble today, I think he told that story as well as could be told. Whether you can just keep telling that story or not ... we're not so sure."
Beck, who outlined on Wednesday's show his reasons for believing that "we're heading into deep and treacherous waters," told his viewers at the end of the show that his Fox talk show would conclude.
"I will continue to tell the story and I will be showing other ways for us to connect," he said.
More than 400 Fox advertisers told the company they did not want their commercials on Beck's show. Beck's advertisers were dominated by financial services firms, many touting gold as an investment.
Ailes dismissed the financial impact of the boycott but expressed some frustration with it.
"Advertisers who get weak-kneed because some idiot on a blog site writes to them and says we need to stifle speech, I get a little frustrated by that," he said.
One of Beck's most prominent critics—David Brock, founder of the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America—said that "the only surprise is that it took Fox News months to reach this decision."
"Fox News Channel clearly understands that Beck's increasingly erratic behavior is a liability to their ratings and their bottom line, and we are glad to see them take this action," said James Rucker, executive director of ColorofChange.org, which organized the advertiser boycott.
Beck was a lightning rod for other critics, as well. The Jewish Funds for Justice organized a petition drive last fall to get Beck fired for what it called his misuse of Nazis and the Holocaust phrases against political opponents.
Viewers had begun turning away. Beck's 5 p.m. ET show averaged 2.7 million viewers during the first three months of 2010, and was at just under 2 million for the same period this year, the Nielsen Co. said. His decline was sharper among younger viewers sought by advertisers.
Increasingly, the show began to be dominated by Beck standing in front of a chalk board giving his theories about the world's troubles.
However, Beck has built a powerful brand for himself through a daily radio show, best-selling books and personal appearances. Mercury Radio Arts is expanding and a key Fox executive, Joel Cheatwood, is joining the company later this month.
Beck's company created and operates a news and opinion website, TheBlaze.com. For $9.95 a month, he offers fans access to "Insider Extreme," a website that beams documentaries, Beck personal appearances and a video simulcast of Beck's daily radio show, with an extra hour featuring Beck cohorts.
Beck said ratings for his television show were not an issue, noting that "we have buried the competition in every sense." His supporters believe that the recent decline is more a reflection that ratings were abnormally high early last year.
"Call CNN and MSNBC and ask them if they'd like to have Glenn's ratings at 5 in the afternoon," Ailes said.
Ailes emphasized that Fox and Beck will continue to work together.
"We like each other," he said in a dual interview with Beck. "We're not drawing pictures of each other on the walls, having staff fights and stealing each other's food out of the refrigerator or any of that stuff."
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They left out how GB effectively made revelation after revalation of things the left/MSM would rather have kept from the public eye. Also, without looking, I recall that he still had the best ratings in that time slot and had better ratingings than anything on MSLSD.
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After several days off (understandably!) GB is back 8-) Both yesterday's show and the day before were excellent.
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I thought he got fired :-o
He's still on the air :?
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No, he didn't get fired. :roll:
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I guess we are both right....
"Half of the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes (Fox CEO) said. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."
Or I suppose you could say he would have been fired if he hadn't quit. :-D
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/as-glenn-becks-future-is-announced-overnight-ratings-reveal-he-can-still-draw-a-crowd/
JDN,
Beck has ratings CNN and MSLSD can only dream of. You don't fire someone that pulls that audience share.
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Is that 500+k number measuring the same thing as Beck's previously >2mil numbers? (Granted it comes after nearly two weeks of GB substitutes such as Napolitano , , ,)
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Without looking it up, it's my understanding that although Beck's numbers are less than at his peak, he's still trending above 2 mil on average.
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Glenn kicked ass on the Federal Reserve and Beranke tonight.
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A rather accurate and succinct summary from a Republican.
Cindy McCain isn't a fan of conservative host Glenn Beck. The wife of Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain tweeted her disdain for the departing Fox News pundit Wednesday saying, "I'm so glad Glenn Beck is leaving Fox. Enough vitriol and hate."
And if Beck was confused about his role on the network, which he's often equated with being an entertainer, Mrs. McCain sought to clear it up.
"Glenn, you are no rodeo clown," she said. "They are decent and nice. You aren't."
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Woof,
It makes me wonder if she has ever watched his show. Glenn is sometimes over the top in his delivery and sarcastic toward Liberals and their ideas but I have never seen him express vitriol and hate at anytime to anyone; as a matter of fact he often goes out of the way to express the exact opposite. McCain needs to set his wife and daughter down and explain to them if they keep showing themselves as being hard core Lefties he's going to have a harder time convincing voters that he is to the right of moderate; which of course he isn't and anyone with half a brain should know this. :-P http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/?itemid=3240 (http://www.unconfirmedsources.com/?itemid=3240) Are you even paying attention AZ Republicans?
P.C.
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Well, McC just got another six years and to my eye seems too physically old to run again six years from now.
COMPLETE agreement on the merits of PC's comments. GB is actually exemplary in his expression of his emotions (last night's show had him featuring a liberal progressive woman on a matter of agreement btw) ; C McC's tweet reveals her to be , , , a twit.
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"A rather accurate and succinct summary from a Republican."
Accurate how exactly? I can make a better case for you hating Jews, JDN.
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I can make a better case for you hating Jews, JDN.
:? :? :?
Interesting note, McCain DID get another six years and GB got dumped.
And yes, I do pay attention to AZ Republicans. They seem to lose round after round in the court, they seem to be at the forefront of racial bias,
and frankly, I don't think they are helping Republicans win the next election with their rhetoric and paper laws.
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Well, McC got re-elected by pretending to be a hardass on defending the border and GB got dumped because of economic pressure organized by George Soros-- which IMHO should concern all lovers of free speech.
Losing in court proves NOTHING on the merits, only that activist judges can be found there.
"Racial bias"? The term is certainly tossed about readily by the race-baiting left. Do you have any more support for it than they do? or for your assertion of "vitriol and hate" from GB?
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Funny how you incorrectly project racism on AZ republicans while missing the anti-semetic timber in your own eye. Wanting to have local level law enforcement enforce immigration law is hardly racist, or do you like the impact illegal aliens are inflicting on California?
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GM: I am not anti-semetic nor am I anti Muslim or any other religious group. I do however try to be objective, rather than blindly favor one group over another.
Beck got dumped because his ratings were going down and too many people found him offensive. I think you give too much credit to the invisible hand of Soros. If Beck's ratings
had risen or stayed the same instead of plummeting no one would care about economic pressure.
And I respectfully disagree, losing in the Court (District Court AND Appellate Court) IS indicative of the merits.
"The United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the State of Arizona and blocked the most contentious parts of their immigration enforcement law from going into effect. This ruling asserts the federal government’s authority over immigration and has determined that it is unconstitutional for states to take immigration matters into their own hands. As you may recall, last July a Federal District Court Judge, Susan Bolton, issued an injunction blocking parts of the law just days before it would have gone into effect, an act that was followed by Arizona’s Governor, Jan Brewer, filing an appeal to have the injunction lifted for the law to be implemented.
As it were, the law would have made it illegal for immigrants not to carry their immigration papers, and would have required the police to question people about their immigration status if they had been stopped and if the officers found reasonable suspicion that they were illegal immigrants. Because the law was viewed as an open invitation for racial profiling, critics of the law, who have constantly held protests and filed lawsuits to strike it down, were thrilled with the ruling. "
I think we are on the wrong forum, but when one is stopped for a speeding ticket, what is "reasonable suspicion that they were illegal immigrants"? I find it to be racial profiling. I am white; no one in my life has ever asked me for my Social Security Card. They simply believe me when I give them the number. The same applies when I answer, "I am an American Citizen". Odd; how many Mexicans have to produce papers when they are asked the same questions. Isn't that racial profiling?
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JDN, You are white but speak midwest/west coast English fluently (though some of it makes no sense :-)). If you were just as white and spoke Tajik or Russian in your first month in the country and understood nothing the officer said trying to engage you in conversation or obtain information, then the comparison might be more apt. That is not race nor something you can profile before pulling someone over for a traffic stop.
Close friends can say only part of an old joke or story to share another laugh. McCain, to conservatives, is such a joke and he is the one who started that fight on many fronts on many occasions. Beck calls McCain "not a real conservative" and I suppose uses his name as a lesson of how not to move conservatism forward. The wife strikes back with vitriol that she accuses. If free speech is so great, may I say - goods riddance to her too, off the national stage, unlike Beck who has not left (18 hours a week on radio if not TV) and will most certainly return.
Why do we say Cindy McCain is a Republican, a self designation? Arizona-Republican used to be a term used before RINO to mean something of the opposite to a core-values conservative. (Example: Sandra Day O'Connor!) CM I think is more of a Beltway Republican where the core value is to be invited and liked at all the best DC cocktail events. I am not aware of any conservative cause she ever advanced. GB is just the opposite, day after day.
Ratings "trend"? or ratings? Beck has huge ratings by cable standards and Fox did not fire him or distance themselves from him to my knowledge. (Is he still on?) After that show is gone Fox has said they plan to use him again in other ways. People took offense or did they just take an opportunity to attack him personally and try to silence him? Looked to me like the latter.
JDN may not be anti-Semitic, a wife beater, or other false slur, but how would you like being named, having the allegations broadcast and then have others without any evidence or example chime in publicly, repeat it, spread it and call it accurate!
The AZ legal issue arises out of the Fed's shirking their responsibility. If the Feds have the right to take that responsibility back from a border state then they should do so.
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As it were, the law would have made it illegal for immigrants not to carry their immigration papers, and would have required the police to question people about their immigration status if they had been stopped and if the officers found reasonable suspicion that they were illegal immigrants. Because the law was viewed as an open invitation for racial profiling, critics of the law, who have constantly held protests and filed lawsuits to strike it down, were thrilled with the ruling. "
My wife is a legal immigrant who is required by federal law to carry her Permanent Resident card with her at all times. Although she is fluent in english, she has an obvious accent that would indicate to any reasonable person that she was not born/raised in the US. She is quite happy to produce her "green card" to any gov't official who might want to see it. Legal immigrants, such as my wife are angry at the catering the left does to those who break the laws in coming here.
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"As it were, the law would have made it illegal for immigrants not to carry their immigration papers"
Ummm , , , it is my distinct understanding that it already IS illegal not to carry papers establishing the legality of one's presence here-- not that the Feds seem to pay any attention to it.
But, trying to stay on track here JDN -- again I invite you to back up your assertions about hate and vitriol on the part of GB.
PS: I read GM's comment about anti-semitism not to be an accusation of anti-semitism but to be a statement that if GB were considered hateful, then the same could be said but more so of JDN.
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After a Green Card is Granted
http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=f1903a4107083210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD&vgnextchannel=f1903a4107083210VgnVCM100000082ca60aRCRD
See the following links on this page to find information on the following:
Renewing a Green Card
Replacing a Green Card
Conditional Permanent Residence and Removing Conditions
International Travel as a Permanent Resident
Maintaining Permanent Residence
Rights and Responsibilities of a Permanent Resident
Voting as a Permanent Resident (The Right to Vote)
Granted a Green Card by an Immigration Judge
A green card is issued to all permanent residents as proof that they are authorized to live and work in the United States. If you are a permanent resident age 18 or older, you are required to have a valid green card in your possession at all times. Current green cards are valid for 10 years, or 2 years in the case of a conditional resident, and must be renewed before the card expires.
A green card can be used to prove employment eligibility in the United States when completing the Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification. It can also be used to apply for a Social Security Card and a state issued driver’s license. A green card is valid for readmission to the United States after a trip abroad if you do not leave for longer than 1 year. If your trip will last longer than 1 year, a reentry permit is needed.
You have certain rights and responsibilities as a permanent resident. This section will give you a general idea of what these are and provide you with some other useful information related to your immigration status.
You may also wish to read Welcome to the United States: A Guide for New Immigrants, a guide (in English and 10 other languages) containing practical information to help immigrants settle into everyday life in the United States, as well as basic civics information that introduces new immigrants to the U.S. system of government (see the links to the right).
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"As it were, the law would have made it illegal for immigrants not to carry their immigration papers"
Ummm , , , it is my distinct understanding that it already IS illegal not to carry papers establishing the legality of one's presence here-- not that the Feds seem to pay any attention to it.
Actually, I am not required to carry papers establishing the legality of my presence here. Further, since I happen to be white, blue eyed, etc. and while I may have a small Milwaukee accent, I have NEVER been asked for papers or proof of citizenship except when I applied for a Passport. In contrast, I know or have read about many Chinese, Indians and Mexicans who are asked when stopped. Their skin color seems to be the deciding factor; accent or no accent. That is wrong.
GM; oddly enough I agree with you wife. Why do we cater to those who break the laws? (I don't; I just don't like racial profiling - make ALL people carry proof and that would be fair) I find it wrong that IF we do offer amnesty, those who are illegal will benefit, yet those here on legal student or work visa's, i.e. individuals complying with the law, yet most truly desire to become permanent residents or citizens, will not be eligible for amnesty. Only the illegals will be eligible. That doesn't seem fair either; to reward those breaking the law and penalize those who are complying with the law.
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"In contrast, I know or have read about many Chinese, Indians and Mexicans who are asked when stopped. Their skin color seems to be the deciding factor; accent or no accent. That is wrong."
Really? Where and when was this? These are almost always bogus claims by illegal alien advocates. The core job of law enforcement officers is to determine if laws are being broken and act if they are. Often, this means determining identification. So, cops can be trusted to determine if the driver of a vehicle is legally permitted to do so,is or is not a fugitive from justice, can determine if the vehicle is legally possessed by the driver, but can't be trusted to determine if the person contacted is legally present in the US?
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GB is actually exemplary in his expression of his emotions (last night's show had him featuring a liberal progressive woman on a matter of agreement btw) ; C McC's tweet reveals her to be , , , a twit.
Exemplary? :?
She may be a "twit", but I happen to like her considered response. As for GB, he may have been good, but he has clearly lost it. Good riddance.
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After Meghan McCain wore a revealing dress in a skin-cancer PSA, Glenn Beck launched a vicious tirade about her body—suggesting she wear a burqa and saying the idea of her naked made him want to vomit. In an open letter to Beck, McCain asks if this is the legacy he wants to leave his daughters.
Dear Mr. Beck,
I am writing to thank you for helping me spread the word about a serious condition.
A few months ago, I filmed a PSA for skin-cancer awareness where I posed in a strapless Juicy dress to appear “naked,” as a metaphor for the dangers of going out in the sun without sunscreen. I thought that pretending to be naked (even if I only disrobed to my collar bone) would hopefully call attention to skin cancer, a disease that both my parents have suffered from.
I don’t know if you know this, Mr. Beck, but that scar on the side of my father’s face is from a melanoma he had removed when I was in middle school. Did you know melanoma is the most serious type of skin cancer? Did you also know that between 40 and 50 percent of Americans who live to be 65 will have either basal-cell carcinoma or squamous-cell carcinoma skin cancer? And that there are more than 2 million cases of skin cancer discovered in the United States every year? It’s pretty scary, Glenn, and something everyone in America should be made aware of.
But the thing is, Glenn, I wasn’t really naked, and I know the idea of me being naked caused you to vomit on your radio show for 10 minutes. You suggested I should wear a burqa, since you believe that's probably the only clothing that could possibly fit me. By the way, you should really see a doctor because it isn’t normal to vomit for that long.
While you're at the doctor's office, why not get checked for moles on your skin to make sure you don’t have any signs of skin cancer? Skincancer.org suggests, “Throughout the year, you should examine your skin head to toe once a month, looking for any suspicious lesions. Self-exams can help you identify potential skin cancers early, when they can almost always be completely cured.”
While we’re on the subject of you vomiting on air, maybe we should have a little talk. Clearly you have a problem with me, and possibly women in general, but the truth is, it’s 2011 and I heard your show on Fox was canceled. Isn’t that an indication that the era of the shock-jock pundit is over? Don’t you think that’s a sign you should be pulling it back a little? I mean, if you’re too conservative and outrageous for Fox, that should tell you something. There really is no need to make something like my participation in a skin-cancer PSA into a sexist rant about my weight and physical appearance, because I’m going to let you in on a little secret, Glenn: you are the only one who looks bad in this scenario, and at the end of the day you have helped me generate publicity for my skin-cancer PSA, a cause that I feel quite passionate about.
As a person known for his hot body, you must find it easy to judge the weight fluctuations of others, especially young women.
You’re a full-grown man with teenage daughters who are probably dealing with the sexist, body-obsessed media environment that is difficult for all women. Is this really the legacy you want to be leaving for yourself?
As a person who is known for his hot body, you must find it easy to judge the weight fluctuations of others, especially young women. If any of your daughters are ever faced with some kind of criticism of their physical appearance or weight, they should call me, because women’s body image is another issue I feel passionate about, and have become accustomed to dealing with and speaking with young women about on my college tours.
So thanks for spreading the word, Glenn. And next time, instead of jumping straight to the “Meghan McCain fat jokes,” maybe try out some new material. Because the fat-joke thing, it’s been done so many times, I know a creative intellect such as yourself can do better than that.
Love,
Meghan
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2011-05-12/meghan-mccain-to-glenn-beck-dont-call-me-fat/?cid=hp:beastoriginalsL2
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Well, not having heard/seen GB's comments in context or otherwise, or seen Meghan McCain in the dress in question, I see no particular reason to take a side here-- though I do note that GB can be pretty hard (in a humorous way) on his own appearance so her comments about him in this regard are , , , hard for me to follow.
Bottom line, whatever. I watch the show most days and I know what I see and hear and I read and hear how others describe what I see and hear.
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I wasted the time experiencing both clips. This is the issue we face? The Beck clip at the link was a RADIO show, the image shown is not from the radio show! The vomiting attempt at humor was the sidekick. The stated reason was his middle east trip, just getting off the plane, changing diet, he was queezy earlier before viewing the commercial etc. The Burqa comment was to PREVENT SKIN CANCER.
The central criticism was he called her "fat" and that was never said! WHY DO THEY LIE?
The biggest insult articulated was: imagine John McCain naked, with long blond hair. Take that any way you want, it's her father - and he's NOT FAT!
Seems to me that in a world of free speech, in a world where a woman wonders what people will think if they expose themselves, people who see it and may have a thought when they do see you expose yourself. Then someone says compliments with sarcasm. Should we pass a law?
The point of the commercial was skin cancer, put some clothes on. They were agreeing with her, put some clothes on, ha ha.
It was a radio bit, a bunch of sarcasm. They called her luscious, too luscious. Not flattering if you detect sarcasm. Seductive, they wondered if they should even show it. (It was a radio bit!) Not funny, not helpful and not newsworthy, but maybe it explains to me why the McCains don't like him.
There is a rule that you don't attack the kid of a candidate. She isn't a kid and he isn't a candidate. She is trying to ride her 10 minutes of fame into being a pundit on her own and activist of sort. She puts her opinions out there, attacks others. In this case, she puts her not x-rated nakedness out there, draws attention and comment, helps a charity cause and also definitely self-promoting, and she gets unwanted feedback. Big deal.
I have read and heard endless vile comments the other direction, aimed at Beck and many other hosts. Staying with the off limit topic of women's looks, comments that Ann Coulter has an adams apple, used to be a man, are all over liberal media. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x1725237 http://www.anncoultersadamsapple.com/ http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090920192313AA9PNhS http://cellar.org/showthread.php?&threadid=2211 And Condoleezza Rice disgustingly caricatured instead of respected as America's Secretary of State. https://zone.artizans.com/caricature/r/Condoleezza_Rice.html http://www.amptoons.com/blog/2004/11/20/racist-cartoons-of-condoleezza-rice/
Selective outrage is what this is. Show me where JDN or Meghan McCain or Cindy McCain wrote, tweated, spoke out or objected when any of the rest of it happened. Sen. McCain's "friend" and colleague Al Franken wrote a best selling book about Rush Limbaugh calling him "Fat" in the title, and he is a RADIO host - didn't do any naked commercials. That would have been a good opportunity to nip this in the bud. Show me where these two-faced, lying phonies tried to do that then. Did they attack Sen. Franken for his vile work or welcome him to the US Senate? It was the latter.
Glenn Beck is not running for senate, he is accountable to his audience, and the radio show is generally far less serious than what I hear he does on television. I'd rather see him stay on-topic. Radio shows move too slowly already because of endless commercial interruptions.
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I'm not sure if this is best described as hateful vitriol or vitriolic hate, but brace yourselves:
http://www.therightscoop.com/glenn-becks-vomit-attack-over-naked-meghan-mccain/
CAUTION: soul searing hatred and vitriol content! :-o
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/meghan-mccain-goes-naked-for-racy-skin-cancer-psa/
Hey Crafty, you might want to skip this since you just flew back from the middle east...... :wink:
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The only thing better would be to see BG naked. :-D
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http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/28/video-the-funniest-thing-meghan-mccains-ever-seen/
Glass houses.
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So with a quickie blast of his mighty Google Fu, GM has huffed and puffed and blown down JDN and MMcC's glass house. :roll: I'm shocked, absolutely shocked. :roll:
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:?
The video is hilarious and if you read between the lines; so true!
Oh and P.S. check your sources/facts or just check Meghan McCain's twitter; she never posted those comments. It's bogus.
But regardless, if I was the McCain family, I would be laughing too. I am.
I guess BG's house is crumbling; but then he got fired for cause. Bye BG... :-D
The glass house? BG will soon be gone... :-)
PPS Isn't McCain the last guy the Republicans ran for President? :-D
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I did check Meghan McCain's twitter.
http://twitter.com/#!/McCainBlogette/status/1409392863
@McCainBlogette
Meghan McCain
To the people at current that created this, I am flattered beyond words. I can officially die a happy woman. Officially the funniest thing
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Sorry, I click on your link and it shows nothing. As I said, "nothing".
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This medium won't do a twitter link correctly. Go to this: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/28/video-the-funniest-thing-meghan-mccains-ever-seen/
You can click on the twitter link there.
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I watched BG's show tonight; live audience of college students focused on representing Founding Father ideas in the hostile environment of universities of today. Looks like GB will be doing a lot of work in this area. Good call for him.
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This medium won't do a twitter link correctly. Go to this: http://hotair.com/archives/2009/03/28/video-the-funniest-thing-meghan-mccains-ever-seen/
You can click on the twitter link there.
I think we are beating this subject to death, but I belong (twitter) and went directly McCain's twitter.
She never said that. Yet I can understand she would.
It was funny. :-)
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For the record, I thought GB's remarks yesterday on Pakistan were unsound and unfair.
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What did he say?
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That BO was, once again, turning on an ally.
Also, he misdescribed the SCOTUS 8th Amendment ruling on CA prison population.
Overall, I thought the theme of the day's show to be sound, but the Catch 22 of his analysis of Pakistan and the sloppiness of his description of the 8th amendment case irked me.
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Lots of prominent commentators do not have the dedication to detail found here.
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Lots of prominent commentators do not have the dedication to detail found here.
And they are getting hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars... :?
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"Lots of prominent commentators do not have the dedication to detail found here."
Around here we search for Truth.
The Adventure continues!
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/05/26/why-are-people-silent-as-old-hatreds-rise-again/
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GB posts this as evidence of a hypothesis of his. Makes sense to me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdI0A1KLKmM&feature=player_embedded
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http://www.rollcall.com/issues/56_131/-206085-1.html?pos=hln
Lolita Mancheno-Smoak, an immigrant from Ecuador who once dreamed of becoming her country’s president, has found an unlikely home in the tea party movement.
When she launched her campaign for county school board last week at Brion’s Grille in Fairfax, Va., she was not alone — flanked by immigrants from Europe, Asia and Latin America who have joined tea pascrty groups in the face of unrelenting criticism that the movement is isolationist and anti-immigrant.
Mancheno-Smoak, who started attending tea party meetings in February, is one of several immigrants running for local office in Virginia under the tea party banner.
Tito Muñoz, a Colombian immigrant who owns a construction company and won the nickname “Tito the Builder” as a vocal supporter of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in 2008, is running for Virginia Senate. Jo-Ann Chase, a Puerto Rican, says she is the first Latina candidate for a state House seat.
In Northern Virginia, many of the immigrants who have gravitated to the tea party have roots in socialist countries and are intensely afraid that the U.S. is headed down the same path. They embrace the tea party’s small government, socially conservative messages and say the only immigration they are for is the legal kind. They don’t bat an eye when it comes to the movement’s tough anti-illegal-immigrant rhetoric.
Muñoz hosts a one-hour Spanish language radio show called “America Eres Tu” broadcast Saturday afternoons on WURA 920 AM out of a trailer in Dumfries, Va. He prints copies of the Constitution in Spanish and answers questions about U.S. politics from those who are new to the country.
“If the immigrants understood what was happening in America there would be a revolt against those politicians,” said Muñoz, who became a citizen in 2008. “Obama’s talking one way and doing another and the Hispanics do not know about that hanky-panky.”
He has launched a state political action committee, TitoPAC, and a federal 527 called the Conservative Hispanic Coalition, to fund his run for state Senate.
“Why do immigrants leave their country? Because they don’t have opportunity and they don’t have freedom, because politicians control everything,” he said. “We come to America and we are going to have the same crap? Then we might as well go back there.”
Genaro Pedroarias, the national committeeman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly of Virginia, said the tea party is a natural fit for many of northern Virginia’s immigrants from countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.
“Most Hispanics who come to this country come here to flee socialistic and oppressive regimes,” said Pedroarias, who is Cuban. “They are some of the most vibrant members of the tea party.”
Lin Dai Kendall, who left Honduras when she was 33, blames the U.S. immigration system for persistent unemployment among those who are here legally. She’s part Chinese, part Spanish and part Hispanic and doesn’t hesitate to call President Barack Obama a Marxist.
“These people want to call themselves progressive; I call them regressive,” Kendall said. “What is immoral to me is standing there with my hand out waiting for the government to support me.”
Vera Martin moved to the U.S. from what is now the Czech Republic when she was 5 years old. Now, she is hitting the campaign trail for her husband, who is running for state Senate, and Mancheno-Smoak.
“I come from a socialist country,” said Martin, who worked for a consulting firm that helped her country’s transition to capitalism after the fall of the Communist Soviet Union. “I know what socialism means. I know what socialized health care is like and I know what you pay to support that system.”
Latinos voted for Obama over McCain by a margin of more than 2-to-1 in 2008, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. But his failure to deliver on his promise for comprehensive immigration reform has many feeling disheartened.
Muñoz and tea party-affiliated immigrants said the news media are just as complicit as the politicians, casting the tea party as anti-immigrant and racist – which he calls lies and propaganda.
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Glen has announced that his last day on Fox will be June 30th.
I look forward to where he goes and what he does next!
The Adventure continues!
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This was a very long, very slow exit for someone who according to early liberal reporting was tossed out on his ass. Somehow I will guess that his affiliation with Fox will continue. Also I expect his 3 hour per day, 15 hours per week radio show will continue, the third highest rated show in the nation. (Plus an internet site.) So worst case he will fade from sight about like Rush Limbaugh did when he left television in the mid-1990s, and is still considered the right's most influential person.
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Glenn Beck is planning to charge his fans a monthly subscription for his daily talk show online starting this summer, as he makes the move from being a Fox News host to the owner of his own Internet network.
Glenn Beck's new Internet venture avoids violations of his exit agreement with Fox News.
On Tuesday, Mr. Beck will announce a first-of-its-kind effort to take a popular — but also fiercely polarizing — television show and turn it into its own subscription enterprise. It is an adaptation of the business models of both HBO and Netflix for one man’s personal brand — and a huge risk, as he and his staff members acknowledged in interviews in recent days.
“I think we might be a little early,” Mr. Beck said of his plan for the Internet network, called GBTV, which will cost $5 to $10. “But I’d rather be ahead of the pack than part of it.”
The business decision by Mr. Beck’s company, Mercury Radio Arts, hinges on an expectation that more and more people will figure out how to view online shows on their TV sets through set-top boxes and video game consoles — and that they will subscribe directly to their favorite brands.
Eventually, Mr. Beck said, his goal is to have an array of scripted and unscripted shows alongside his own daily show, which will simply be titled “Glenn Beck” and will run for two hours on weekday afternoons.
“If you’re a fan of Jon Stewart, you’re going to find something on GBTV that you’re going to enjoy,” Mr. Beck said. “If you’re a fan of ‘24,’ you’re going to find something on GBTV that you’re going to enjoy.”
What GBTV will not be, he and his associates emphasized, is a news channel.
Mr. Beck is leaving the Fox News Channel, a unit of the News Corporation, on June 30 after two and a half years of regular clashes with management. One Fox executive, Joel Cheatwood, is moving with him to GBTV; Mr. Cheatwood, who started at Mercury in April, will be the Internet network’s president for programming.
Mr. Cheatwood said he was attracted by the chance to pioneer “a different platform of media.” The Web, he said, “really is where the growth exists.”
GBTV will be accessible starting Tuesday when Mr. Beck talks about it on his three-hour radio show (which he will keep doing). One of its first features will be a behind-the-scenes show about the making of the network, somewhat akin to the behind-the-scenes show on Oprah Winfrey’s cable channel about the final season of her syndicated talk show.
Then, on Sept. 12, “Glenn Beck” will begin. The two-hour show will be scheduled for 5 p.m. Eastern time, the same time as Mr. Beck’s current show on Fox, putting him in direct competition with whoever replaces him at the cable news channel. But because it will stream only over the Internet, and not be shown on television, it is not a violation of his exit agreement with Fox. And Mr. Beck’s representatives note that the show will be available on-demand on the Internet, further reducing the competitive element.
The on-demand nature of an Internet network was one of the appeals to Mr. Beck and the president of Mercury, Chris Balfe.
Also appealing, Mr. Balfe said, was not having to worry about whether the shows that lead into and out of Mr. Beck’s show have “exactly the same sort of tone.” (That was perceived to be a problem at Fox, since Mr. Beck’s conservative sermons and speeches at 5 p.m. were followed by a straightforward political newscast at 6 p.m.)
The lead-in and lead-outs do not matter, Mr. Balfe said, because “we’re not trying to keep viewers, we’re trying to please subscribers.”
Mr. Beck pointed out another potential advantage: “It’s my network, so if I want the show to run 2 hours and 15 minutes one night, it will.”
Fox has declined to comment about what program or host will replace Mr. Beck in the 5 p.m. time slot.
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(Page 2 of 2)
In 2009, Mr. Beck more than doubled the ratings in the time slot when he moved to Fox from HLN, a unit of Time Warner that was previously known as Headline News. But he also created many headaches for Fox, and the split, announced in April, was said to be mutual.
The exit agreement between Fox and Mr. Beck is so strict that his representatives said they could not talk about Fox in any detail. But Mr. Balfe said of the Internet network plan, “I think if we were still at Headline News at this point, we would have been thinking about leaving at the end of this deal and creating our own thing. This wasn’t about being at Fox, this was about doing something different.”
Earlier this year, at the same time Mr. Beck and his representatives considered starting a full-fledged Internet network, they considered taking over part or all of a cable channel. Mr. Balfe said some informal conversations about such a takeover took place this spring. He did not rule out such a move in the future, but there are no indications that Mr. Beck has any immediate television plans, beyond the occasional special.
To power GBTV, Mr. Beck’s company has teamed with MLB Advanced Media, the interactive arm of Major League Baseball, which streams hundreds of games to online users each year. It also has a deal with Clear Channel, its radio partner, to promote the online network.
GBTV will cost $4.95 a month for subscribers who want to watch only Mr. Beck’s two-hour show, and $9.95 a month for subscribers who want access to all of GBTV. “We want to create a network that has more than just Glenn’s show,” Mr. Balfe said, talking generally but ambitiously about acquiring scripted programming in the future — assuming enough subscribers sign up to justify the costs.
Richard Greenfield, a media analyst for BTIG Research who was briefed on Mercury’s plans, said that while “GBTV may sacrifice the near-term financial rewards that working in the traditional ecosystem provide, full ownership — no longer beholden to the content gatekeepers at the major media companies — and complete creative control to exploit content across all platforms globally could create far more value over time for Glenn and his company.”
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http://www.gbtv.com/
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Any comment on it's expected success or failure?
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Glenn is in his final few weeks and is summarizing the themes with which he has been working these past few years before moving on to the next step in his mission. Some really good stuff every day.
Today some powerful stuff on sexual slavery for infidel women and in a very separate matter an interesting aside about the underlying strategy to putting former Congressional budget maven Panetta in charge of DoD-- it is to prepare the way for major cuts.
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"Any comment on it's expected success or failure?"
It will succeed to some extent, but not take over the world. I think he may be right about the format which I think is view extremely current internet content to the television, as easy as downloaded movies, and who needs cable tv or dish anymore.
Official start is 9/12, but content over the summer in advance of that as well.
Want it to succeed? Send him money, 50 or 100 dollars buys a full year of content. New ventures succeed by taking in money...
I believe it is the 3rd rated national radio talk show. He can promote content and viewership 3 hours a day, 15 hours a week nationwide to people who already show an interest.
(While you are at it, send money to the tea party candidate of your choice. They all need increasing numbers of contributors as well as dollars to survive and succeed.)
Freedom isn't free.
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Of all the details surrounding the liberal mob attack on Glenn Beck and his family in New York's Bryant Park last Monday night, one element stands out. "No, it won't be like that, Dad," his daughter said when Beck questioned the wisdom of attending a free, outdoor movie showing in a New York park.
People who have never been set upon by a mob of liberals have absolutely no idea what it's like to be a publicly recognizable conservative. Even your friends will constantly be telling you: "Oh, it will be fine. Don't worry. Nothing will happen. This place isn't like that."
Liberals are not like most Americans. They are the biggest pussies on Earth, city-bred weaklings who didn't play a sport and have never been in a fight in their entire lives. Their mothers made excuses for them when they threw tantrums and spent way too much time praising them during toilet training.
I could draw a mug shot of every one of Beck's tormentors, and I wasn't there.
Beck and his family would have been fine at an outdoor rap concert. They would have been fine at a sporting event. They would have been fine at any paid event, mostly because people who work for the government and live in rent-controlled apartments would be too cheap to attend.
Only a sad leftist with a crappy job could be so brimming with self-righteousness to harangue a complete stranger in public.
A liberal's idea of being a bad-ass is to say vicious things to a conservative public figure who can't afford to strike back. Getting in a stranger's face and hurling insults at him, knowing full well he has too much at risk to deck you, is like baiting a bear chained to a wall.
They are not only exploiting our lawsuit-mad culture, they are exploiting other people's manners. I know I'll be safe because this person has better manners than I do.
These brave-hearts know exactly what they can get away with. They assault a conservative only when it's a sucker-punch, they outnumber him, or he can't fight back for reasons of law or decorum.
Liberals don't get that when you're outnumbering the enemy 100-1, you're not brave.
But they're not even embarrassed. To the contrary, being part of the majority makes liberals feel great! Honey, wasn't I amazing? I stood in a crowd of liberals and called that conservative a c**t. Wasn't I awesome?
This is a liberal's idea of raw physical courage.
When someone does fight back, liberals transform from aggressor to victim in an instant, collapsing on the ground and screaming bloody murder. I've seen it happen in a nearly empty auditorium when there was quite obviously no other human within 5 feet of the gutless invertebrate.
People incapable of conforming to the demands of civilized society are frightening precisely because you never know what else such individuals are capable of. Sometimes -- a lot more often than you've heard about -- liberals do engage in physical violence against conservatives ... and then bravely run away.
That's why not one person stepped up to aid Beck and his family as they were being catcalled and having wine dumped on them at a nice outdoor gathering.
No one ever steps in. Never, not once, not ever. (Except at the University of Arizona, where college Republicans chased my assailant and broke his collarbone, God bless them.)
Most people are shocked into paralysis at the sight of sociopathic liberal behavior. The only ones who aren't are the conservative's bodyguards -- and they can't do anything without risking a lawsuit or an arrest.
My hero Tim Profitt is now facing charges for stopping a physical assault on Senate candidate Rand Paul by a crazed woman disguised in a wig.
But the disturbed liberal whose assault Profitt stopped faces no charges -- she instigated the entire confrontation and then instantly claimed victim status. In a better America, the cop would say, "Well, you provoked him."
Kentucky prosecutors must be very proud of how they so dutifully hew to the letter of the law (except in the case of Paul's assailant).
Maybe they wouldn't be such good little rules-followers if they ever, just once, had to face the liberal mob themselves. But if Beck's own daughter can't imagine the liberal mob, I suppose prosecutors can't be expected to, either.
Michael Moore and James Carville can stroll anywhere in America without risking the sort of behavior the Beck family experienced. But all recognizable conservatives are eternally trapped in David Dinkins' New York: Simply by virtue of leaving their homes, they assume a 20 percent chance of being assaulted.
Bullying is on the rise everywhere in America -- and not just because Obama decided to address it. It's because no one hits back. The message in our entire culture over the last two decades has been: DON'T FIGHT!
There were a lot fewer public confrontations when bullies got their faces smashed.
Maybe it's time for Beck to pony up some of those millions of dollars he's earned and hire people to rough up the liberal mob, or, at a minimum, to provide a legal defense to those like Profitt who do.
These liberal pukes have never taken a punch in their lives. A sock to the yap would be an eye-opening experience, and I believe it would do wonders.
They need to have their behavior corrected. It's a shame this job wasn't done by their parents. It won't be done by the police.
As long as liberals can't be normal and prosecutors can't be reasonable, how about a one-punch rule against anyone bothering a stranger in public? Then we'll see how brave these lactose-intolerant mama's boys are.
Believe me, liberal mobbings will stop very quickly after the first toilet-training champion takes his inaugural punch.
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second post of the morning.
Just a reminder. Tonight is Glenn's last night on FOX. Should be a humdinger!
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Glenn's Fox Finale Tonight…What’s Next?
You have enjoyed watching Glenn take on liberals, progressives and even radical leftists for the last two and a half years at 5pm on Fox News. From the corruption at ACORN to the Czars to Van Jones, Glenn exposed the left's agenda and routinely flustered the White House in the process. Glenn's Fox Finale tonight marks the end of a history making program, but far from the end, this also marks the beginning of something even bigger: GBTV.
What is GBTV? GBTV is a live, streaming video network that will feature a wide variety of programming, but most important it is the brand new home of Glenn's daily 5pm-7pm live show. The place to find everything you loved about Glenn on TV, plus a lot more. Glenn's show will expand to two hours a night, five nights a week and be streamed live in HD exclusively on GBTV.
How do I get GBTV? GBTV goes wherever you do. From your laptop to your desktop to your iPad, iPhone or television (via a Roku device), GBTV is always available. No more faking illnesses to ensure you're home to watch Glenn. If you've got Internet access, you've got GBTV – live or on demand whenever you want to watch.
Join GBTV! If you are one of the many who have become tired of calling your Congressman and getting no result - GBTV is the place for you. GBTV is not just a place to view shows you love; it's a way to get involved and to turn ideas into action. The sensational scandals and partisan bickering will be left to others and GBTV, led by the viewer, will move forward and find real solutions. Get in on the ground floor and get started turning this country around - without the help of the federal government.
TUNE IN TONIGHT: Tune in to GBTV tonight at 6:30 pm ET for a special GBTV broadcast and get a sneak peek into Beck's most ambitious project yet.
Welcome to GBTV. The Truth Lives Here
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Of all the details surrounding the liberal mob attack on Glenn Beck and his family in New York's Bryant Park last Monday night, one element stands out. "No, it won't be like that, Dad," his daughter said when Beck questioned the wisdom of attending a free, outdoor movie showing in a New York park.
People who have never been set upon by a mob of liberals have absolutely no idea what it's like to be a publicly recognizable conservative. Even your friends will constantly be telling you: "Oh, it will be fine. Don't worry. Nothing will happen. This place isn't like that."
Liberals are not like most Americans. They are the biggest pussies on Earth, city-bred weaklings who didn't play a sport and have never been in a fight in their entire lives. Their mothers made excuses for them when they threw tantrums and spent way too much time praising them during toilet training.
I could draw a mug shot of every one of Beck's tormentors, and I wasn't there.
If the gloves ever come off.....The left better hope they don't.
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Beck Bids Adieu
Posted By Arnold Ahlert On July 1, 2011 @ 12:13 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 5 Comments
Yesterday was Glenn Beck’s last day on Fox. In his run there, which began in 2008 after Fox hired him away from rival network CNN, Mr. Beck was a lighting rod for relentless progressive vitriol. Perhaps only George W. Bush and Sarah Palin have been subjected to more criticism than the controversial TV and radio host. Yet despite the controversy, Beck leaves behind a solid legacy in two arenas: his attention to the far-left’s alliance with Islamic radicalism, and his exposure of the breathtaking degree of leftist radicalism that permeates the Democratic Party.
Beck has done yeoman’s work with regard to exposing radical Islam, as demonstrated by a a six-part series of videos (available here, here, here, here, here and here). In fact, Beck’s ongoing exposés of that radicalism remain unmatched by most in the mainstream media. Yet when Beck offered his rationale connecting Muslim radicals with the “hard-core socialist Left,” he was not only taken on by the Left, but conservatives as well. For instance, the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol accused Beck of “hysteria,” and National Review’s Rich Lowry called it a “well-deserved shot.”
The leftist/Islamist alliance is in fact quite ubiquitous and there are many disturbing examples of it that Beck took care to document. The radical leftist group Code Pink, which has forged ties with Hamas, did indeed spend time in early 2011 agitating in Cairo and at the Egyptian Rafah crossing, a border which many Egyptians believe Mubarak closed because he was a pawn of the Israelis. It was Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, along with leftist Weather Underground terrorists Bernadine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, who helped organize last year’s Free Gaza Movement which launched the “peace” flotilla attempting to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. This year’s 11-ship flotilla, with the same objective, includes a boat named the “Audacity of Hope” and carries American leftists, including author Alice Walker, who this week called Israel and America “terrorist states” (as the Iranians do). Beck also created a video montage of leftist organizations mingled with Islamic radicals, all promoting the same anti-Semitic message. Ironically, that video begins with Chris Matthews mocking Beck for making the connection.
Yesterday, on the same day Beck’s Fox career was coming to an end, he may have received one of the more satisfying vindications of his assertions: Commentary Magazine reported that the Obama administration is reversing a five-year ban on contact with the Muslim Brotherhood. That would be the same Muslim Brotherhood which spawned Hamas, whose charter is dedicated to the destruction of Israel and calls for the extermination of Jews. “We believe, given the changing political landscape in Egypt, that it is in the interests of the United States to engage with all parties that are peaceful, and committed to non-violence, that intend to compete for the parliament and the presidency,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Perhaps Beck is equally vindicated by another revelation which occurred recently. Left-wing Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), despite assertions that his statements had been “mischaracterized” by the Syrian media, was caught praising President Bashar Assad as a man “thinking about the different ways that would be the best way to address the needs of the people…And frankly, that’s a positive development.” How has Assad been addressing the needs of his people? By gunning them down in the streets for daring to stand against his thug regime. Over 1,400 men, women and children have been murdered so far.
Glenn Beck also made the Left hysterical when he took on one of its cherished icons, George Soros. Beck contended that Soros has a five-step plan to bring down America, a charge which was greeted with contempt. One of those steps, according to Beck, was to “control the airwaves.” Once again, Beck was vindicated when an in-depth Fox report revealed that Soros “has ties to more than 30 mainstream news outlets–including The New York Times, Washington Post, the Associated Press, NBC and ABC.” The breadth of Soros’ media connections are explained in great detail, but nothing sums up his influence better than this:
Readers unhappy with Soros’ media influence might be tempted to voice concerns to the Organization of News Ombudsmen–a professional group devoted to ‘monitoring accuracy, fairness and balance.’ Perhaps they might consider a direct complaint to one such as NPR’s Alicia Shepard or PBS’s Michael Getler, both directors of the organization. Unfortunately, that group is also funded by Soros.
The response to Beck’s efforts to expose Soros were characterized as anti-Semitic, with Daily Beast columnist Michelle Goldberg calling them an “updated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” ADL leader Abraham Foxman piled on as well, calling Beck’s coverage of Soros’ actions as a boy during the Holocaust (when he aided Nazis in the confiscation of Jewish property) as “completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top.” Yet a 60 Minutes interview with Steve Kroft is where this information originated, and most of the controversy surrounding the interview has to do with Soros’ near-sociopathic lack of guilty for his conscription: “No feeling of guilt?” asked Kroft. “No,” said Soros. “There was no sense that I shouldn’t be there. If I wasn’t doing it, somebody else would be taking it away anyhow. Whether I was there or not. So I had no sense of guilt.”
Of course, Beck’s exposure of the control of the far-left over what’s left of the Democratic Party, facilitated immensely by Soros, was monumental. From Obama’s czars, such as dedicated Marxist Van Jones and the FCC’s chief diversity czar and Hugo Chavez sympathizer Mark Lloyd, to the president’s spiritual advisor and self-admitted Marxist Rev. Jim Wallis, Beck has sought to shine the light on the assortment of radical elements that form the basis of this administration and its defenders.
For that he has been routinely excoriated by the American Left, various elements of which have actively worked toward or endorsed the abridgment of Beck’s free speech. Even to the end, as yesterday’s piece in the Baltimore Sun indicated, there will be no letup. Writer David Zurawik stated that Glenn Beck ”will leave a TV legacy of reckless, divisive and ugly speech in his wake,” and that “he and Fox News should both feel some shame for the harm they have done to the national political discourse — how they have taken an hour of dinnertime each weeknight and used it to help polarize us with paranoid and angry words.”
Despite such obtusely hyperbolic detractors — who consistently and bizarrely level more vitriol and hysteria toward Beck than the very “hate” they purport to despise him for — Beck remains popular. Even with a forty percent drop-off from his ratings high-water mark, Beck’s remained the most popular show on cable news in his time slot, with almost two and a half times the number of viewers as his closest rivals, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. And contrary to published reports that he was fired, Beck is leaving Fox because his contract is up, and his business and creative teams at Mercury Radio Arts prefer to get out from under the grind of producing his 5 p.m. show amid the corporate bureaucracy “where most ideas must be generated, spelled out in pitches, run by producers, budgeted, then run by more producers, approved by senior executives, etc.”
His next venture, GBTV, will be a web-based TV network, with two hour shows broadcast on weekdays from 5-7 PM EST, beginning on Sept. 12th. The show will also be available on demand. Subscriptions will cost $4.95 per month for access just to the show, or $9.95 for premium member access to all of the site’s programming. Advertising will provide additional revenue. “Lots of people are talking about the digital content revolution, but few are willing to risk it all and place a huge bet on the future,” said Christopher Balfe, President & COO of Mercury Radio Arts in a statement. “With GBTV, Mercury is doing just that. Fortunately, our incredible team at Mercury, as well as our industry-leading business partners, makes me confident that we will once again build something extraordinary.”
On his last show, Beck explained the reasons for his success. “I contend that is the reason we are successful here…because it’s true,” he said last night. “It seems as though there’s no truth anywhere anymore. We’ve made a lot of enemies on this program. We’ve taken on every single person we’ve been told not to take on…because the truth has no agenda. It will lead us where it leads us. This show has not only survived; we have thrived.” He then explained where he was going. “I have given up on admiring the problem. I am focused solely on the solution…I’m running to something. I know exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
Will Beck remain a controversial figure? Undoubtedly. Yet despite his well-publicized foibles, Beck was more than willing to take on the sacred cows of political correctness and their defenders, often by the most devastating method possible:
Their own words.
Arnold Ahlert is a contributing columnist to the conservative website JewishWorldReview.com.
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Good riddance.
He was fired. Even Fox couldn't take him anymore.
I predict his next venture at GBTV a web-based TV network will fail within one year.
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Yes, good riddance.
Can't have anyone pointing out the leftist-jihadist alliance or the communists in the white house, can we?
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Fox couldn't take him being 2.5 times the size audience of his nearest competitor? Sure , , , :roll:
IMO Beck is quite a remarkable man, someone whom I respect greatly.
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"Good riddance. He was fired"
Not in the too distant future we will all be saying the same for Brock.
He can travel the world and wine and dine with his wife on their dime.
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"Beck is quite a remarkable man, someone whom I respect greatly."
That has been pretty well known on the board. The ad hominem attack didn't seem necessary. Discussing or criticizing specific points he makes would be far more helpful. Otherwise when you don't like someone, the channel changer works pretty well.
If "he was fired" was the whole truth, the delayed exit didn't make very much sense either. Most people "fired" find the door rather quickly. But truth isn't crucial when the attack is emotional and against the person.
The prediction OTOH was asked for. Now we need to know what failure means if it includes being first in your slot and winning 2 1/2 times the audience share of your nearest competitor.
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Beck noted in his closing comments that if he had been fired, they would not have trusted him with a Live show, which they did. He also noted various points well before the announcement that the show was coming to an end that he clearly stated that he was not interested in doing what he was doing for much longer and would be moving on to the next chapter in his life/mission.
Given the pressure of the Soros conspiracy on advertisers and Fox, I would not be surprised if Fox did not beg him to stay, but that is different than Fox firing him.
As for how long his next venture will last or how successful it will be, time will tell. GB's trust in his own instincts to go well outside the box have served him pretty far so far. It took extraordinary vision and huge testicles to call for that 8/28 rally in DC -- and look how that turned out. Look how his ratings, even after their decline from their peak, turned out. And, if we judge a man by his enemies, GB is a class act and a great American.
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Odd, on this forum liberal commentators/politicians are frequently open to ad hominen attacks, but not conservatives?
As for being fired, well let's say he was shown the door by Fox and it hit him in the butt on the way out;
then the door clicked locked. No offer to stay. Even the niceties were ignored. Yep, he was so disliked
even conservative "Fox couldn't take him." That says a lot.
Failure means your own employer doesn't want you. Failure means no other channel want's you either. As I said,
I'm betting failure - at GBTV, a web-based TV network, he will be a bust in less than one year. Time will tell.
As I said, good riddance.
As for the same happening to Brock in the not "too distant future", well again, I say time will tell....
He might surprise you and win. :-D
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Hello America,
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks, filled with endings and beginnings. I ended my show on cable news and I have launched a new digital network – GBTV. I have been traveling the country and the globe in support of Israel and planning my upcoming event there, Restoring Courage. My team and I have launched new websites, books and businesses. I haven’t stopped, I haven’t had the chance. Until today.
Today is an important day in our country's history – probably the most important. But what lessons can we take away from the 4th of July? Like so many national holidays, we barely have a moment to think about what the day really means. Sure, it’s the day we declared our independence from Britain – but it’s much more than that. It was the beginning of the great American experiment.
When those 56 men gathered to declare our Independence on July 4th, 1776 they weren’t just saying no to British rule – they were saying no to all rulers. They were declaring the beginning of the great American experiment, which sought to answer the question “Can man rule himself?”
Even with all the hardships and troubles facing America, I still believe the answer is “YES”! And I say that as emphatically and enthusiastically as I possibly can. Man CAN rule himself – and we are going to prove it together!
If you’re reading this then you probably know a lot about what I am working on – but ultimately my goal is to prove that we have not failed in the goals set forth by our Founders so many years ago on July 4th. Everything I’ve been working on has been done with the intention on giving you the tools, the history, and the information you need to be self-reliant.
Last Thursday, GBTV subscribers got to see me announce the latest piece, a non-profit initiative that I am calling “Mercury One.” It will focus on putting Americans like you into action – helping one another without government interference or tax dollar support. Together we will fix America – one town, one person, one entrepreneur at a time.
This Fourth of July – remember the importance of what our Founders started all those years ago. Remember the great American experiment!
Laos Deo,
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/beck-reruns-beat-cnn-msnbc/
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A Jew Thanks Glenn Beck
Posted By Ben Shapiro On July 18, 2011 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 9 Comments
Since Glenn Beck’s dramatic rise to prominence two years ago, he has been portrayed by many members of the left as a kook. The members of the left condemning Beck most loudly, to my utter dismay, have been Jews. Jon Liebowitz, aka Jon Stewart, has dedicated his show to mocking Beck as a religious freak and a nut job; in his episode on Beck’s departure from his Fox News show, Stewart donned Beck-like glasses and then scoffed, “Glenn Beck was sent here by Jesus to take the 5:00 p.m. slot between Neil Cavuto and Shepard Smith for 27 months.” Rob Eshman of the atrocious Los Angeles Jewish Journal said that Beck’s expose of self-hating Jew and anti-Israel fanatic George Soros was “the verbal equivalent of a Der Sturmer cartoon.” Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, which spends far less time targeting radical Muslims who want to murder Jews than commentators who love Israel, condemned that same Beck vs. Soros episode as “completely inappropriate, offensive, and over the top.” The Jewish Funds for Justice, a far-left Jewish organization, ran a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal taking on Beck.
Let me say this: I stand with Glenn Beck, and against these Jews.
Glenn Beck is a friend of Israel. He is a friend of the Jewish people. And anyone who argues otherwise is either lying or ignorant.
Beck possesses a moral clarity with regard to the Jewish State that has no equivalent in the leftist Jewish community. He recognizes that Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians is not a conflict over land or over population exchange, but over fundamental values. This week, Beck travelled to Israel, where he spoke eloquently about the Fogel family butchered in its sleep by Palestinian terrorists earlier this year. “There’s something bigger than politics here,” he stated. “I don’t think in my lifetime I’ve seen a more clear definition of evil that has been dismissed.” In fact, Beck dedicated several segments on his Fox News show to explicating the Fogel family slaughter, exposing the American people to the true face of moral monstrosity as embodied by the Palestinians who celebrate such murders.
In his speech to the Knesset, Beck explained that he understood the conflict between Israel and anti-Semites the world over: “I got my first death threat, because I came back and said the truth – the conflict is about the destruction of Israel and the end to the Western way of life …. What’s disturbing is that if a guy gets on television or the radio and says the truth, and that’s so unusual, then Israel and the Western way of life are in great danger.”
More impressive than his speech to Knesset is the fact that Beck does tell the truth to the American people about the Israel situation. Too many on the conservative side of the aisle – Israel supporters! – will not label the conflict in pure moral terms. They grant legitimacy to President Obama’s attempts to leverage Israel into concessions, or to the mad musings of Thomas Friedman, who believes that a few bucks can buy off Palestinian radicals. They pretend that if the conditions are made just right, then peace will be achieved.
Beck, on the other hand, sees the conflict as it is, in its stark contrast between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. And he stands with the forces of light in that battle. “Where you go, I will go,” he told Knesset, quoting the Book of Ruth. “Where you lodge, I will lodge. Your people are my people. Your God is my God, and where you die I shall die.”
Israel has never had friends like Glenn Beck before the religious conservative movement in America. Jews are afraid to embrace Beck because he is so overtly religious, so utterly unafraid of mentioning God in public or with regard to Israel. That that is why Jews should embrace him. The Judeo-Christian notion of God is the unifying factor between America and Israel.
Beck sees the war, even though many Jews do not. Some Jews are too cosmopolitan for Beck – Jon Stewart, for example, doesn’t bear any great love for Israel, since that would presumably be “ethnocentric” and unprogressive. Some Jews are too parochial, like Eshman, thinking that Beck represents an old-school religion that will result in pogroms, or at the least, closed country clubs.
Those Jews are dead wrong. Beck is an ally, and a very real one. He represents millions of Americans who ally with Israel and the Jews. Jewish Americans ought to roll out the welcome mat to Beck. He’s certainly rolled out the red carpet for Israel.
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locations change
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/beck-announces-location-change-for-restoring-courage-event/
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Second post, posted here because of connection to Tea Party
The Debt Battle Is Good for the GOP
Tea party Republicans speak for a large group of voters who have been swinging back and forth between the parties for more than a decade..
By CLARK S. JUDGE
Watching the debt-ceiling battle on Capitol Hill—and even more the battle between the tea party young guns and older House Republicans—feels like déjà vu, or, rather, 1995, all over again.
Sixteen years ago, in the middle of the government shutdown, I found myself racing up Capitol Hill in a car filled with Republican congressmen. I had expected to hear talk of standing firm, of arguing their case for spending cuts on the House floor, of raising banners with bright, bold colors.
As I'd learned from years in the Reagan White House, confidence, clarity and consistency were essential to winning such high-stakes showdowns. Instead, these seasoned politicians were wringing their hands, snapping at any stalwart suggestion, and asking, "How did we get ourselves into this mess and how do we get out?"
Then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich takes criticism to this day for surrendering too quickly in his face-off with President Bill Clinton. Exhibit One has been the incredulous jubilation of Clinton staffers when Mr. Gingrich accepted an offer they regarded as the start of serious bargaining, not the end. But the speaker was dealing with what I saw in that car ride up the Hill—a majority that could not hold. Too many members were melting under White House and, even more, media heat. Raising the white flag reflected no more than a bow to reality. The GOP retreat could be orderly or chaotic. Mr. Gingrich prevented panic.
Today, again, the GOP caucus is divided, but with a difference. The tea party freshmen are insisting on a strong negotiating stance. They want real spending cuts without tax increases. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has become their voice in the budget talks. Reflecting uncertainty about holding non-freshmen in line, both Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker John Boehner have signaled readiness to accept cosmetic compromises.
Mr. Boehner in particular is responding to House members desperately in search of cover from fallout over the president's threat to delay Social Security checks if the debt ceiling isn't raised. Many are terrified of Democratic attack ads painting them as would-be destroyers of Medicare. The GOP defeat this May in the special election in New York's 26th District shook them, which is a sign of how badly they've defended their positions.
View Full Image
Associated Press
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.
.After all, if Social Security tax receipts don't cover all the checks in any month, the Social Security Trust Fund can sell its government bonds, bills and notes, as Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C), recently suggested. The holdings are enormous, and sales, even at a discount, could cover the system's needs for years, much less the time to finish budget parlaying.
So, if the checks stop coming, it will be the president who decided to stop them. That's not a hard message to get across.
Meanwhile, messaging on Medicare should be in Republicans' favor, not against them. Without reform, the system is doomed—and sooner than used to be thought, thanks to the half-trillion-dollar cuts written into Mr. Obama's health-reform legislation last year.
So, if Democrats don't like the budget reforms proposed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, they should propose something else. There will be lots of ideas put on the table before this is done. Medicare's only enemy is Dr. No, those who say "no" to exploring any reforms—and Dr. No is the role congressional Democrats and the administration are playing today.
Congressional tea party Republicans hold a stronger hand than anyone realizes. They speak for a large group of voters who have been swinging back and forth between the parties for more than a decade, determined the last three elections, and are likely to determine the 2012 outcome.
As early as 2005 at least one pollster—Kellyanne Conway—reported that part of the Bush 2004 vote was becoming disaffected over revulsion at federal spending. After the 2006 GOP debacle, then Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman told his troops they had got out their vote, which, as he said, then voted for the other guys.
Those same voters stayed with the other guys in 2008. But by 2010, the new Obama administration's multiple trillion-dollar bailouts and stimulus packages had driven them back toward the GOP, with one hitch. They still didn't trust the party and its officeholders.
The national tea party movement is just the most vocal element in this much larger wave. By and large, polling has not captured it. Pollsters follow the movements of demographic groups or the changing preferences of party loyalists and independents. They typically do not try to identify something like Bush voters of 2004 who became Obama voters in 2008 and GOP House voters in 2010. The tea party is the first broadly based American political insurgency since California's Proposition 13 in the 1970s. Sure, its fervor will make the old guard uncomfortable, but intensity is what the GOP needs.
In short, the tea party movement is Reaganism updated. A contest has been fought over and over in Washington since Republicans embraced cutting tax rates and nondefense spending under Ronald Reagan in the early '80s. When Republicans have united behind these priorities, they have won elections. Nervous Republicans should bear that in mind when they begin to go wobbly on something as basic as reining in spending and refusing to raise taxes. And achieving that unity has always been difficult.
Global markets must receive a clear signal that Washington has the political will to reduce spending radically. If market jitters over U.S. government debt do not convince congressional Republicans that, in the days ahead, they should hold firm for spending cuts, politics should.
Mr. Judge is managing director of the White House Writers Group and chairman of Pacific Research Institute. He was a speechwriter and special assistant to the president during the Reagan administration.
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**Perhaps Mr. Weiner should have listened to GB's advice on a lot of things......
http://theothermccain.com/2010/05/20/everybody-should-buy-gold-even-if-glenn-beck-gets-paid-to-tell-you-so/
Everybody Should Buy Gold, Even If Glenn Beck Gets Paid to Tell You So
Posted on | May 20, 2010 | 17 Comments and 0 Reactions
Look, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost more than 300 points today, and the DJIA is down more than 1,130 points since closing at 11,205 on April 26. The Greek debt crisis is pulling down the European economy, more than 700 U.S. banks are now on the FDIC “troubled” list, and concern about a “double-dip” recession is becoming mainstream. Now, let’s look at this chart of gold prices over the past five years:
If you were investing in real estate or plowing your 401(k) into stocks five years ago, don’t you wish you’d bought gold instead? Yet according to Democrats, it is somehow wrong for Glenn Beck to tell you about this, because his advertisers happen to share the same opinion:
“On numerous occasions, Glenn Beck has dedicated entire segments of his program to explaining why the U.S. money supply is destined for hyperinflation with Barack Obama as president. He will often promote the purchase of gold as the only safe investment alternative for consumers who want to safeguard their livelihoods. When the show cuts to commercial break, viewers are treated to an advertisement from Goldline . . .”
If you’re a Beck fan, you know that the guy who is trying to make this into a “scandal” is Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Ouchenozzle), and that Beck has responded by launching a new Web site, WeinerFacts.com.
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Nothing wrong with gold, but Goldline seems like a scam. Just google it.
But then Glenn Beck always did have problems keeping quality advertisers.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104070011
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Nothing wrong with gold, but Goldline seems like a scam. Just google it.
But then Glenn Beck always did have problems keeping quality advertisers.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201104070011
You want to cite George Sauron's (Soros) propaganda wing? How exactly is Goldline a scam?
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Just read the article; tell me the numbers don't make sense.
Beck and Goldline? Well it is a conflict of interest. Or should we accept the fact he is merely a huckster?
As for Goldline being a scam, sorry, it doesn't pass the smell test.
Given all your many choices on where and how to buy gold, why Goldline?
I suggest somewhere else.
Goldline - just a few thoughts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/20/glenn-becks-sponsor-goldl_n_652766.html
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/07/glenn-beck-goldline/
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/goldline-international-c171810.html
http://www.trustlink.org/Reviews/Goldline-International-Inc-205959000
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http://www.capitalresearch.org/pubs/pdf/v1293869054.pdf
A little education for you, JDN.
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**Oh my god! Glenn Beck dared to accept advertising money from a company with an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau. This eeeeeeevil company sold gold to consumers which in some cases has doubled in value since they bought it. The horror!
http://www.la.bbb.org/business-reviews/Gold-Silver-and-Platinum-Dealers/Goldline-International-Inc-in-Santa-Monica-CA-35002328
BBB ACCREDITED BUSINESS SINCE 01/04/1994
Goldline International, Inc.
(800) 827-46531601 Cloverfield Blvd. 100 South Tower, Santa Monica, CA 90404http://www.goldline.com
On a scale of A+ to F Reason for Rating BBB Ratings System Overview
Description
This company's business is offering investments in precious metals and coins and assisting metal and rare coin investors to acquire and preserve assets.
Request a Quote
Request a quote from Goldline International, Inc.
BBB Accreditation
A BBB Accredited business since 01/04/1994.
BBB has determined that this business meets BBB accreditation standards, which include a commitment to make a good faith effort to resolve any consumer complaints. BBB Accredited Businesses pay a fee for accreditation review/monitoring and for support of BBB services to the public.
BBB accreditation does not mean that the business's products or services have been evaluated or endorsed by BBB, or that BBB has made a determination as to the business's product quality or competency in performing services.
Reason for Rating
BBB rating is based on 16 factors. Get the details about the factors considered.
Factors that raised this business's rating include:
Length of time business has been operatingComplaint volume filed with BBB for business of this sizeResponse to complaint(s) filed against businessResolution of complaint(s) filed against businessBBB has sufficient background information on this business
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Now JDN, if you want to condemn Glenn Beck, look at his connections to a convicted felon who helped buy him a house in exchange for his political influence.
Oh, wait. I was thinking of Obama and Tony Rezko. Nevermind.
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I listen to some of the nation's no. 3 radio show (Glen Beck) and I hate the gold selling commercials. Gold is defense and a (often smart) bet against the the dollar and the success of the US and the world economy. It is an unproductive investment for capital on the sidelines instead of pumping it into plant expansion, new hiring, venture capital, S&P, DOW, corp. bonds, etc. There are times hopefully coming where you don't want your money in gold or your commercials in gold selling.
The reason they are on is because political hyper-partisanship drove off the other companies. The ads should be more Pepsi, Budweiser, Target, whatever, except the left is organized and shrill and creates a firestorm when publicly held companies put money there.
One notable exception is the locally based sleep number company. Not politically conservative management but they partner with Rush all these years because they like selling beds to his audience. Turn to liberal radio and they partner there too.
The shrill crowd would love to find something unsavory with Goldline, maybe they will. Another tack they could take would be to walk the walk on free speech.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/07/20/glenn-becks-christains-united-for-israel-keynote-speech/
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Good riddance.
He was fired. Even Fox couldn't take him anymore.
I predict his next venture at GBTV a web-based TV network will fail within one year.
I listen to a good deal of talk radio: Rush, Bortz, Savage, even Hannity. I can't take Beck. Sometimes these other guys are obviously twisting facts or following the party line to a level I can't understand, but Beck takes it to a point of self mockery. I just can't believe him. He is almost as disingenuous as Anton Lavey.
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Good riddance.
He was fired. Even Fox couldn't take him anymore.
I predict his next venture at GBTV a web-based TV network will fail within one year.
I listen to a good deal of talk radio: Rush, Bortz, Savage, even Hannity. I can't take Beck. Sometimes these other guys are obviously twisting facts or following the party line to a level I can't understand, but Beck takes it to a point of self mockery. I just can't believe him. He is almost as disingenuous as Anton Lavey.
I've never heard Bortz, but I can't handle Savage for more than a few minutes. Beck is good when his co-hosts are having fun, but when he gets teary-eyed, I have to bail.
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You should download some Neil Bortz if you like that kind of thing. He is probably the best out of the lot as far as being intelligent and reasonable.
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And people still wonder why he was fired.
Glenn Beck hits 'new low'; compares Norway victims to Hitler Youth
July 25, 2011 | 3:41 pm LA Times
Glenn Beck, who in June aired his final cable tv show on Fox News, is still on the radio and has found a new way to get his name into the headlines around the globe.
Instead of calling the president of the United States a racist, Beck focused on the scores of young people gunned down at a camp in Norway. Beck said the camp reminded him of Adolf Hitler's infamous Hitler Youth.
"There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing," Beck stated in the first minute of his syndicated radio show Monday.
Torbjørn Eriksen, the former press secretary to Norway's prime minister, was not amused.
"Young political activists have gathered at Utoya for over 60 years to learn about and be part of democracy, the very opposite of what the Hitler Youth was about," Eriksen told The Daily Telegraph. "Glenn Beck's comments are ignorant, incorrect and extremely hurtful," he added.
To answer Beck's question of "who does a camp for kids that's all about politics?": Caroline Shinkle does. The recent high school grad founded Camp USA two years ago. The free, nonprofit, nonpartisan political camp in Cape Cod, Mass., is designed for middle-schoolers.
According to its website, Camp USA aspires to have kids leave the camp "with knowledge, confidence, and eagerness to be politically involved."
Conservative columnist Jeff Lukens created a political camp in Tampa, Fla., which aligns itself closer to "tea party" values. One of the games described by the St. Petersburg Times would surely make presidential hopeful Ron Paul smile.
"Children will win hard, wrapped candies to use as currency for a store, symbolizing the gold standard. On the second day, the 'banker' will issue paper money instead. Over time, students will realize their paper money buys less and less, while the candies retain their value," the newspaper explained.
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"And people still wonder why he was fired."
I still wonder if you are brain damaged, a liar or both.
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Don't know about my brain :-D (let's not get too personal here) but the words are Glen Beck's. And he was fired.
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Don't know about my brain :-D (let's not get too personal here) but the words are Glen Beck's. And he was fired.
Yes, let's take a quote out of context and dishonestly spin it. Typical of you and your ilk.
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OK, so what is the full context, sans spin?
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"Typical of you and your ilk..."
Hahaha
Politics without spin? I'm not sure that exists these days.
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Also waiting for context and full quote. These quotes of talk show hosts always seems to come after the fact from people who did not hear the program. Typically people listening live took no offense, but then the words get clipped and framed by opposition opportunists. 'Whither on the vine' and 'Barack the magic negro' come to mind.
I disagree with the premise of nearly everyone in media that it is relevant, interesting or worthwhile to know the political views of the mass murderer. If he was liberal, conservative, moderate, had an identical voting record all his life to mine or even was a family member, he still is a mass murderer. What the hell difference do his 'views' make, he blew up public buildings and opened fire on innocent people!
That said, if everyone else is going to discuss everything about everything regarding so-called motivation, then some observations unflattering about the victims are possible. These people deserve respect and a period of silence IMO before their own cause needs to come to light. But if there is going to be free and instant dialog everywhere, even here, then criticism of their cause and their own behavior may come into the discussion. And if it does, one should not need to say in every sentence that while you disagree with or have suspicions of their cause, you do not condone mass murder. In civilized society, that goes without saying.
JDN, I'd rather not discuss the victims, but what was Hitler like in his youth? What were the Hitler's youth programs like? Did they kill at the conferences or did they just talk about how to control other people and re-make society in their own vision. I'll bet they had a bunch of bland platitudes (like hope and change). I am still waiting for documentation that Beck was fired - with 6 months notice. Repeating over and over doesn't count - 'sounds a little like' what Goebbels would do. Strange that they play Beck's re-runs after his departure, not really sharing the good-riddance theme with you, lol. Do words (like 'Fired!') have no meaning? I don't watch the TV but when Trump says 'You're fired!', do they stay on the program another season, lol?
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I too am awaiting for context and the full quote. All I have now is a direct quote from Beck. Quite damning in my opinion.
"There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing,"
I do agree; the main point is he is a "mass murderer". However, I notice if a Muslim group, or any other group that this forum and others disapprove of, they are quick to place blame and discuss motivation with snide comment after comment. So fair....
As for Hitler's Youth Programs, you man wish to consult those who lived through the times. Hitler's Youth were not all about "bland platitudes" like "hope and change", nor was it a benign "camp for kids", but rather quite violent. "The HJ were viewed as future "Aryan supermen" and were indoctrinated in anti-Semitism. One aim was to instill the motivation that would enable HJ members, as soldiers, to fight faithfully for the Third Reich." Families were turned against families.
As for Beck, I don't know what Goebbels would do, but like Trump's show, Beck is not "staying on the program for another season either", lol
I guess it's a matter of semantics. Do you prefer "laid off", "let go", relieved of duty", "cut", or simply "fired"?
He had a legal contract. At the end of his contract he wasn't asked to stay. No nice words from management. No going away party which is typical.
They all but kicked his butt on the way out the door. No one else wanted him. In the business world, after you read through the platitudes and smiles, he got fired.
It is a quiet way for Fox News to get rid of the headache that Beck has become without burning any bridges in the right wing movement. The reality is that if Fox News still wanted Glenn Beck on the air, they would have signed him to a new deal.
But the proof of Beck's "success" and popularity will be in the ratings and profit of his new show. Let's see how how many people, besides those on this forum, :-D pay $4.95 per month (or $9.95) for his show in September.
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I am away from my usual flow of intel, so the fact that I have not heard any outrage except JDS's proves little. I will say that to an unusual degree GB speaks with irony and sarcasm-- which makes it easy for those so inclined to take his literal words and print them so as to impute an actual meaning quite opposite to the one that actually was being conveyed.
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Besides 6 months notice, another difference between non-renewal and firing is that we have no reliable information about which party initiated non-renewal. If those terms blend into one and the same for you I will try not to read your posts so carefully or so literally in the future.
Beck is not the only one to use flawed nazi analogies. I read them constantly on left wing comment sites about everything to do with right wing. Just depends on who you are and how badly people want to destroy you. I can get how you disapprove of that phrase for that group and I likely agree. What I don't get is why or how that hatred runs so personal and so deep. You do not come across similarly flawed comparisons in your own internet readings, at least none that you have shared on the board?
I have already pointed out several striking successes of his so your prediction of failure will require some quantification: No. 1 in his time slot on tv in his category, no 1 in his time slot on radio, no.3 overall. Number one in his industry on facebook. No. 1 with re-runs on tv after he was gone. I propose we measure GBTV this way: $250k/yr is punishably rich in America. That would take less than 5k subscribers at 4.95 per month on GBTV. You predict < 5k subscribers to GBTV by the end of the year? lol
I caught myself just today referring to Minneapolis inspectors as Gestapo-like. They are of course not. I was wrong. They can destroy your life, your savings and your investment but they don't kill people en masse. In another case I detailed on this board how abortion is the holocaust of our time and offended people here beyond words yet no one pointed out a single flaw in the analogy. They just defend their continuing support or tolerance of the gruesome but legal practice of killing innocent life - like 'Hitler youth', from my point of view.
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Actually, Fox did not offer to renew, therefore Beck's opinion was irrelevant.
I do agree, others have used Nazi analogies. I think it's wrong. The severity of the crime is beyond comparison.
As for Beck, I too have pointed out "striking" failures; most important lack of advertising revenue. Plummeting ratings didn't help either.
As for your way to measure GBTV, I think you underestimate the word "success" in the entertainment field. $250,000 before expenses is "punishably" poor in America. Let's compare him to other talk shows. Let's talk listeners, ratings, and revenue. That's fair. And if he's number one, well good for him. And if he's near the bottom, well.....
As a side note, I have no hatred, surely no deep hatred for Beck. I simply don't like him nor do I respect him. However, I am not saying he is evil; perhaps he is a good man, he is definitely entitled to his opinion, it's his sensationalism and methodology that I don't like.
On a joking/friendly note, I do agree inspectors can be Gestapo-like. :-) My friend just did a major $500K+ renovation. Among minor issues was an expansion of his garage. It seems it is now 24' feet from the street. The inspector this week told him to tear it down; the code says 24'. My friend is not very happy.
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As for your way to measure GBTV, I think you underestimate the word "success" in the entertainment field. $250,000 before expenses is "punishably" poor in America. Let's compare him to other talk shows. Let's talk listeners, ratings, and revenue. That's fair. And if he's number one, well good for him. And if he's near the bottom, well.....
You know that the average person that calls himself an actor in the united states makes 400 dollars a year acting? That's factoring in guys like Tom Cruise.
The fact he can make a living, talking on the radio, is amazing. The Prime Time people on the local rock station here make about 20,000 a year. I knew a girl they used to let do the night show when she was in high school for penny's, and these are Clear Channel stations.
If he walks away with 250,000 he's doing AMAZING.
"A joint agreement between the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) guarantees all unionized motion picture and television actors with speaking parts a minimum daily rate of $782 or $2,713 for a 5-day week as of June 2009. Actors also receive contributions to their health and pension plans and additional compensation for reruns and foreign telecasts of the productions in which they appear." - Bureau of Labor Statistics
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You know that the average person that calls himself an actor in the united states makes 400 dollars a year acting? That's factoring in guys like Tom Cruise.
The fact he can make a living, talking on the radio, is amazing. The Prime Time people on the local rock station here make about 20,000 a year. I knew a girl they used to let do the night show when she was in high school for penny's, and these are Clear Channel stations.
If he walks away with 250,000 he's doing AMAZING.
I don't think Tom Cruise compares himself to the average unemployed wanna be actor. Nor does Glenn Beck.
"In June 2009, estimators at Forbes calculated Beck's earnings over the previous 12 months at $23 million, with 2009–2010 revenues on track to be higher."
As for you being "amazed" that he is making a living talking on the radio or that the local rock station pays your DJ $20,000 a year or that the Clear Channel pays pennies to the local high school girl, well, that is nice, but it's a function of the size of your town and more important, the ability of the talent.
In contrast, like him or not, here in Los Angels Ryan Seacrest recently signed a a three year deal (radio only pay - he makes more elsewhere) with Clear Channel for $60 million dollars!
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/38764/ryan-seacrest-paid-60-million-to-save-radio/
My point is that $250,000 is not "AMAZING". It's abominable. Glenn Beck will be quickly fired, oh sorry, "let go" with numbers like that.
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Criticize mine, fine, but if you are going to predict failure, put your benchmark out there.
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Criticize mine, fine, but if you are going to predict failure, put your benchmark out there.
That's fair.
Although I don't think it was the only or even the primary reason, Beck was "let go" when his ratings/viewers dropped nearly 50% to around 1.6million from 3million.
Everyone should do better next year; it's an election year. That's the nature of talk radio.
But being generous in my calculation, let's say that his ratings/viewers/paying customers drops even another 50% from his last days at Fox. Still, I will still call him a "success" and an influence to be reckoned with if his ratings/viewers/paying customer base is 800,000+.
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"My friend just did a major $500K+ renovation. Among minor issues was an expansion of his garage. It seems it is now 24' feet from the street. The inspector this week told him to tear it down; the code says 24'. My friend is not very happy."
The codes here in NJ obnoxious. I can't even put in an electical line from one side of my basement to the other without having to clear it with code "enforcement".
This is a great example of government gone too far. I say get government the hell off my property. There is no end to the government expanding its power its reach, its taxation, in a self fulfilling cycle. I say enough.
You say what?
They are looking out for us?
I am tired of being a victim of the Democrat/lawyer/union trifecta taxes.
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JDN see response on other thread.
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I will still call him a "success" and an influence to be reckoned with if his ratings/viewers/paying customer base is 800,000+.
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Funny. You remind me of tennis friends who say my neighbor who made it into the top ten in the world in his sport in his time, won the largest purse in history at the time, had wins over Agassi, Connors, Edberg, Lendl, Courier and Chang, won 6 tour events and went to the finals of 2 majors, Wimbledon semi-finalist etc., never amounted to anything because he wasn't ever ranked number one. Good grief. http://www.davidwheaton.com/highlights.htm
If Beck has ten followers, he is more influential than me, by more than ten-fold. If he makes a living for his family, after taxes, doing what he has a passion for, he is a success. If what he started becomes an ongoing entity with some positive influence, the venture is a success.
But let's go with your numbers. His new career includes GBTV subscriptions, listeners to his talk show, 'hits' on his website 'the blaze" (http://www.theblaze.com/), and people who follow him on facebook if he is using that venue to communicate. I think he will (continue to) hit the 800,000 mark with no problem.
If I were you, I would have stuck to the original point, (paraphrased) that you don't care for his type of message. Gaining a significant audience is a capability he already proved. The Blaze alone could be the fastest growing site of 2011-2012, we will see.
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"The Blaze is only four months old and according to Quantcast already clocking in 10 million page views per week." (last January)
http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-becks-site-the-blaze-hires-huffpos-head-of-hr-2011-1
Glenn Beck's Site The Blaze Also Hires HuffPo's HR Manager
Glynnis MacNicol | Jan. 6, 2011
Glenn BeckThe Huffington Post may have been conceived as the Left's Drudge Report but it looks like Glenn Beck's The Blaze is angling to be the new HuffPo...at least in terms of traffic and influence.
Yesterday it was reported that The Blaze had hired former HuffPo CEO Betsy Morgan to run the site, today The Wire has learned they have also scooped up HuffPo's HR manager Jackie Greaney.
Beck noted in his News Year's message that his company planned on hiring more than 40 people in the New Year and so in that sense these hires are not a surprise. But what's especially interesting here, particularly where Morgan's hire is concerned, is that it's clear Beck and Co. is interested in playing on a much larger stage with the Blaze.
And this isn't just about traffic.
The Blaze is only four months old and according to Quantcast already clocking in 10 million page views per week. That's mostly a reflection of Glenn Beck's large and built-in audience (the same audience that jettisons every book he mentions to the top of the Amazon charts) but it's solid traffic and if Beck merely wanted a vanity project that's more than enough to ensure some solid promotion and likely advertising dollars.
But Beck wants to go bigger. I suspect what he is looking for here the sort of cross platform relevance that Arianna has established with HuffPo. He wants to be a bigger player in more fields.
Also, I suspect he wants the sort of respect that has been accrued to Huffington who is now a go-to on all things politics and new media. Over the last year Beck has established himself as a media phenomenon but he is still largely skirted by the MSM who often find his brand of politics troubling. But if Beck turns The Blaze into a go-to for things other than Beck and starts breaking news to boot...well, one imagines it will be a bit like Drudge meets Arianna meets Oprah. Or a new New York Times, as the case may be!
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/too-soon-glenn-beck-compares-attacked-norway-camp-to-%e2%80%98hitler-youth%e2%80%99/
Gee, a quick aside about the camp isn't the same as a direct condemnation, is it?
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With all due respect to your friend who sounds like a superb tennis player, no one knows him except you and a few die hard tennis fans. It is the
Agassi, Connors, Edberg, and Lendl of his generation that will be remembered; the ones who made a difference and climbed the highest peaks. That is the measure of "success" that Beck has achieved to his compliment, albeit not in recent months, and is trying to achieve and compete with henceforward.
As for my 800,000 number, I was only referring to GBTV; Beck's supposed "replacement" for Fox. Can he achieve even half of his lowest ratings he had at Fox before he left. Let's see if he is "successful".
I am not addressing the Blaze. Nor book sales or any other endeavor.
I surely don't count hits on Facebook.
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/too-soon-glenn-beck-compares-attacked-norway-camp-to-%e2%80%98hitler-youth%e2%80%99/
Gee, a quick aside about the camp isn't the same as a direct condemnation, is it?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20083816-503544.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-nazis-the-times-and-glenn-beck/242632/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/jul/26/glenn-beck-norway-hitler-youth-video
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/07/glenn-beck-hits-a-new-low-compares-norway-victims-to-hitler-youth.html
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http://www.mediaite.com/online/too-soon-glenn-beck-compares-attacked-norway-camp-to-%e2%80%98hitler-youth%e2%80%99/
Gee, a quick aside about the camp isn't the same as a direct condemnation, is it?
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20083816-503544.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/the-nazis-the-times-and-glenn-beck/242632/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2011/jul/26/glenn-beck-norway-hitler-youth-video
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2011/07/glenn-beck-hits-a-new-low-compares-norway-victims-to-hitler-youth.html
Wow, you and your fellow leftist liars are trying to create something from nothing? What next, attack Beck for advertising a A+ rated gold dealer? Oh wait, you've already tried that....
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With no coherent definition of success, to 'not count' several serious business ventures, I will try to not read and not respond when you make your final judgment. Why don't you declare him a failure now? That's right - you already did. Without personal knowledge beyond the readings here, I proclaim you and all your friends complete failures also. Same definition. Regretting the time put into trying to clarify nonsense.
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With no coherent definition of success, to 'not count' several serious business ventures, I will try to not read and not respond when you make your final judgment. Why don't you declare him a failure now? That's right - you already did. Without personal knowledge beyond the readings here, I proclaim you and all your friends complete failures also. Same definition. Regretting the time put into trying to clarify nonsense.
I thought I was being very coherent. Obviously, GBTV is replacing Fox, therefore GBTV is all we are talking about. In your previous post you said, "I propose we measure GBTV this way". Again GBTV is also all that you talked about and I have responded to. Not his book deals, Facebook hits, or any other deals.
Numbers are numbers; ratings are ratings; frankly they are all quite coherent and measurable. Per your request, I stepped out and suggested GBTV success be defined as:
"But being generous in my calculation, let's say that his ratings/viewers/paying customers drops even another 50% from his last days at Fox. Still, I will still call him a "success" and an influence to be reckoned with if his ratings/viewers/paying customer base is 800,000+.
As for my "friends" level of success, it is all relative. My gardener is "successful" he has doubled his business in the past 3 years. But for example, using your tennis analogy, Federer is not by most definitions, having a "successful" year. Is he a success? Of course. He's one of the greatest ever. Can he come back? Win some more Majors? Maybe... Like Federer, I am defining Glenn Beck's success and influence on the national stage, not whether he is number one in the ratings in Cranewings small town where the Clear Channel person gets pennies for pay. As pertains to this discussion, I think even Glenn Beck defines success and himself that way. And so does Federer.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/08/10/london-still-on-fire-good-citizens-turn-on-rioters/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/08/16/rick-perry-calls-out-the-fed-for-treason/
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http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/08/glenn-beck-is-correct-on-middle-east.html
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http://web.gbtv.com/shows/index.jsp?content=israel
Primetime broadcasts from Jerusalem start this evening, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
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I guess the left is deflecting ties between Communism ideology and Jewish progressivism with this:
"The visit is focusing renewed attention on the growing, and some say unlikely, alliance between right-wing Israelis and Christian fundamentalists in the U.S."
Here's the article again from leftist Jews trying to make a stink about Beck:
****Glenn Beck's Israel tour raises eyebrows
The former Fox News host's event has triggered a debate over whether he is a true friend of Israel or just a fanatic who has been accused of anti-Semitism.
Glenn Beck speaks during an event in Caesarea, Israel. (Oliver Weiken, European Pressphoto Agency / August 23, 2011)
Obama's Jewish backers on edge over his Mideast peace plan
By Edmund Sanders, Los Angeles Times
August 23, 2011
Reporting from Jerusalem— Perhaps it was only a matter of time before conservative American commentator Glenn Beck, viewed by many supporters as a modern-day prophet, brought his messianic message to Jerusalem.
But even in an ancient city that has seen its share of religious enthusiasts, Beck's high-profile Holy Land tour this week, culminating Wednesday in a rally just a stone's throw from the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock mosque, is raising eyebrows.
Before Beck's arrival, most Israelis were unfamiliar with the former Fox News host, whose cable TV show went off the air in June amid sagging ratings. But his rally has triggered a debate over whether he should be embraced as a pro-Israel friend or condemned as a fanatic who has battled allegations of anti-Semitism.
The visit is focusing renewed attention on the growing, and some say unlikely, alliance between right-wing Israelis and Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.
Beck, who declined to be interviewed, is calling his Jerusalem rally "Restoring Courage," playing off his "Restoring Honor" event in Washington last summer. The purpose, he has said, is to demonstrate American solidarity with Israel. Hundreds of Christian supporters, many from the U.S., are expected to attend.
Beck's staunch support for Israeli control over Jerusalem and his criticism of Palestinians' ambitions to create their own state have won him praise from many conservative Israeli leaders.
"He is a friend who supports Israel, and we should work with him," said Danny Danon, an outspoken member of the Likud Party who advocates the annexation of the West Bank to Israel. "It's important for us to see that there are people out there who support us and not all the world is against us."
But critics say Beck's track record of controversial statements makes him an inappropriate ally. Last month he likened Norwegian youths gunned down at a political camp by an anti-Islamic extremist to "Hitler Youth." Twice in the last year Beck has been denounced by the Anti-Defamation League for "bigoted" and "horrific" comments on his show, one likening Reform Judaism to "radicalized Islam" and another in which he said Holocaust survivor and billionaire George Soros betrayed fellow Jews to Nazis.
Under pressure from Jewish groups in the U.S., Beck apologized for the remark about Reform Judaism.
He has several times had to fend off allegations of anti-Semitism. Last year he appeared to endorse the notion that Jews killed Jesus Christ; his list of the world's nine most "dangerous" people includes eight Jews; he speculated in 2009 "that Israel might be wiped off the map, leading to all-out Armageddon."
"If this is the only kind of friend Israel's government can find around the world, that's a very poor sign," said Yariv Oppenheimer, secretary-general of Peace Now, the Israeli anti-settlement group. "It's a reflection on our current leadership that instead of having the world on our side, we can only get someone like Glenn Beck."
Arab Israeli lawmaker Ahmed Tibi warned that Beck's tour could provoke violence, calling him "a neo-fascist comedian who is motivated by a hatred of Islam."
Beck's visit reflects the partnership between conservative Israelis and some American Christian groups. So-called Christian Zionist groups and evangelical churches, such as Texas-based John Hagee Ministries, donate millions of dollars to help fund settlement construction in the West Bank and support Israel.
The support comes, in part, from a belief among some Christian fundamentalists that Jews are God's "chosen people" and that a return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land and the rebuilding of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem are signs of the second coming. Beck, who converted to the Mormon faith in 1999, frequently discussed such end-of-the-world prophecies and biblical themes on his program.
For conservative Israelis, the benefits of the alliance are more pragmatic. American evangelical groups have become a key source of tourist dollars and political and financial support, particularly as the divide has grown between American Jews, who remain predominantly liberal, and Israelis, who are shifting more toward the right.
"It's a marriage of convenience," said Hebrew University political science professor David Ricci, an expert in U.S. relations. "Over the last 10 years, fewer liberals in the U.S. are willing to be clearly identified with the Israeli government."
But Ricci and others see potential fault lines in the partnership. For starters, evangelicals are often active in missionary work, something Israelis do not tolerate.
Last week, Texas-based Daystar Television Network hosted "Israel Day," in which it broadcast live from Jerusalem. In between on-air solicitations for $1,000 pledges, the program's hosts condemned efforts to make part of East Jerusalem the capital of a new Palestinian state, and they vowed unconditional support for Israel.
Yet at the same time, the station boasted of "bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the land of Israel." One host said that more Jews have been converted to Christianity in the last 20 years than in the last 2,000.
Such comments don't sit well with most Israelis. Likewise, Jewish people don't fare very well in some Christian "end times" scenarios, in which Israel will be destroyed by an apocalyptic war during which Jews are either converted to Christianity or killed.
"This type of Christianity believes in the gathering of the Jews in Israel in order to bring about Armageddon," said Jeremy Ben-Ami, executive director of J Street, a U.S. lobbying group that advocates for a two-state solution. "That's not exactly good for the long-term survival and security of Israel."
Ben Ami said that the tie between conservative Israelis and fundamentalist Christians "threatens to turn this whole conflict into ground zero for a religious war, rather than a territorial war, and a religious war is much more difficult to resolve through peaceful compromise."
Danon, who agreed that American evangelical groups were becoming an important political ally for Israel, said he's not worried about the religious divide.
"When the messiah comes, we'll ask whether this is the first time or the second time," Danon joked. "In the meantime, we have a lot in common. We don't need to argue about it today."
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times
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Thank you for posting that from POTB/Pravda on the Beach/Left Angeles Times/LA Times-- I meant to post it yesterday but the day got away from me.
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Glenn vs. Hugo Chavez
Glenn once again broadcasted from South Africa today, but immediately after the show he departed for none other than Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Despite efforts made by the Chavez regime to thwart Glenn's plane from landing there, Glenn is still making his way to the dictator's country to speak to 5,000 people there. Chavez is a dictator who has been president since 1999 and has nationalized several industries including the media, food and oil industries. Glenn explains why he's going into the lion’s den on radio today.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/so-why-did-hugo-chavez-force-glenn-to-land-in-egypt-lets-let-him-explain/
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Beckaphobia
Posted By Steven Plaut On August 29, 2011 @ 12:09 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage |
Israeli radical leftists have long had an intense hatred toward American conservatives. This is in spite of the fact that American conservatives are almost all pro-Israel. In actuality, the hatred of Israeli leftists toward conservatives is precisely because conservatives are pro-Israel. Like in most other countries, the radical leftists in the Jewish State are anti-Israel in addition to being anti-American.
Israeli leftists insist that overseas supporters of Israel who are conservative should be shunned. They demand that Israel proclaim that those conservatives are just not ethical enough to be accepted as friends. Israeli leftists insist that Israel should only allow itself to be befriended by foreign leftists. Never mind that the search for pro-Israel foreign leftists is about as productive as the search for human life on other planets. The Left outside of Israel is almost entirely anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, and foreign liberals are by and large (although not entirely) anti-Israel. Israeli leftists want foreign pro-Israel conservatives to be regarded as personae non gratae by Israel. A few years back, Amiram Goldblum, a professor at the Hebrew University and a founder of the leftist Peace Now, called upon Israel to prevent American evangelist Christians from entering Israel. He objected to them because they are too pro-Israel. The Israeli Left is outraged that Israeli cable TV carries Fox News, because it is pro-Israel. The anti-Israel BBC and CNN channels, however, are fine.
The most dramatic manifestation of the Israeli Left’s hatred of pro-Israel foreign conservatives was evident in the severity of “Beckaphobia” in recent days. The Israeli Left is suffering from an intense phobia regarding conservative media powerhouse Glenn Beck.
Beck was in Israel last week (and has been here a lot in recent months) for one purpose only – to support Israel. He is an outspoken and well-spoken American conservative. His political opinions are solidly conservative and you cannot listen to his recent speech in Jerusalem without being convinced of the sincerity of his love of Israel and solidarity with Jews. You might even be moved to tears (from his citing the Scroll of Ruth, for instance).
The Israeli Left has been jihading all week against Beck. Yossi Sarid, the ex-head of the semi-Marxist Meretz party, crayoned an op-ed demonizing Beck, and just recently had an op-ed in Haaretz claiming that Israel fought the Six Day War out of a Nazi-like quest for Lebensraum (his word) and expansionism. Sarid was joined by lots of left-wing Haaretz writers in Beck-bashing. And even the normally sensible Maariv editor, Ben-Dror Yemini, decided to gripe about Beck. Naturally, Peace Now denounced the decision to allow Beck into the country. The daily Haaretz, Israel’s analogue to The Nation, ran a nasty editorial denouncing Beck. The leftists demanding that Beck be regarded as persona non grata are almost without exception the same people who protested when Israel denied the neo-Nazi Norman Finkelstein, the anti-Semitic Stalinist Noam Chomsky and the pro-jihad pseudo-academic Richard Falk, entry into the country. Israel had prevented those people from entering because of their ties to Islamic terrorists and anti-Semites. The lesson is clear – the Left’s mantra is really this: Israel, hate it or leave it.
Meanwhile, Israeli patriots loved Beck and many attended his rallies. The conservative columnist Caroline Glick wrote:
Beck is rare, because he refuses to bow to the intellectual intimidation and groupthink that plagues the discourse on Israel in Israel itself and throughout the world…. Unlike the leftist public intellectuals such as New York Times columnist Tom Friedman who are celebrated and obsessively covered by the Israeli media, Beck exerts real influence on public opinion in the US. His calls for action are answered by hundreds of thousands of people. His statements are a guidepost for millions of Americans. Aside from radio host Rush Limbaugh, no media personality in the US has such influence. It is highly significant that thousands of Beck’s supporters followed his call and came with him to Israel for a week to express their support for Israel and the Jewish people. It is similarly significant that millions more of his supporters followed his actions on Internet.
Beck, of course, is also the right-winger that the American left-wingers most love to hate. He is perhaps the only TV and radio personality who can upset the Left even more than Rush Limbaugh does. But those who hate Beck, in almost all cases, also hate Israel. True, some American liberal “reform rabbis” denounced Beck for criticizing George Soros and even demanded that Fox News sanction Beck, but if anything, Beck should carry their condemnation as a badge of valor. And lots of those “reform rabbis” are supporters of radical anti-Israel groups like J Street, the New Israel Fund, Tikkun Magazine, or worse. Of course, few of those clergypersons have issued any complaints about National Public Radio’s Israel bashers, and none has ever had any complaints about liberals and leftists who appear alongside Holocaust deniers on Counterpunch, the pro-jihad Web magazine.
Some American Jewish liberals squirm when Beck’s name is mentioned because they have a hang-up about Mormons. Give me a nice team of Mormons any day over liberal Jewish pseudo-clergypersons preaching that all of Judaism is really “social justice” and pursuing the liberal political agenda. Mormons may invite you to join their faith and pray for you to do so. Liberal pseudo-rabbis fraudulently misrepresent Judaism as liberal political fads and are guilty of Chilul Hashem (sacrilege). I feel fine with the former. And I salute Glenn Beck.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/08/31/huffpo-stoops-to-new-lows-in-beck-attack/
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http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2011/09/01/thursday-morning-must-reads-22/
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It truly has been an incredible summer. We’ve been working non-stop ever since we left cable news in June and we are exactly one week away from showing you the result of our efforts – my new two hour daily show on GBTV.com debuts next Monday at 5 pm ET!
I’d like to thank those of you who have already joined me on GBTV as we start this journey. Those of you who have watched us build GBTV over the summer and came with us (either in person or through GBTV) to Israel for the Restoring Courage events have seen the beginning of some incredible things.
At the final Restoring Courage event, I kicked off a new direction for my company as I unveiled our plan to take our message global. Next Monday on 9/12, we bring the message of individual rights & responsibilities back to the 5 pm ET time slot.
I ask that you review the Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities below – print them, carry them with you, memorize them, and join us one week from today on GBTV.com for the debut of my new show.
Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities
Thus, we the people do hereby declare not only our rights, but do now establish this bill of responsibilities.
1. Because I have the right to choose, I recognize that I am accountable to God and have the responsibility to keep the 10 commandments in my own life.
2. Because I have the right to worship as I choose, I have the responsibility to honor the right of others to worship as they see fit.
3. Because I have freedom of speech, I have the responsibility to defend the speech of others, even if I strongly disagree with what they’re saying.
4. Because I have the right to pursue happiness, I have the responsibility to show humility and express gratitude for all the blessings I enjoy and the rights I’ve been given.
5. Because I have the right to honest and good government I will seek out honest and just representatives when possible. If I cannot find one then I accept the responsibility to take that place.
6. Because I have the God given right to liberty, I have the personal responsibility to have the courage to defend others to be secure in their persons, lives and property.
7. Because I have the right to equal justice, I will stand for those who are wrongly accused or unjustly blamed.
8. Because I have the right to knowledge, I will be accountable for myself and my children’s education…to live our lives in such a way that insures the continuation of truth.
9. Because I have the right to pursue my dreams and keep the fruits of my labor, I have the responsibility to feed, protect and shelter my family, the less fortunate, the fatherless, the old and infirm.
10. Because I have a right to the truth, I will not bear false witness nor will I stand idly by as others do.
Unconditionally, while maintaining my responsibility to compassionately yet fiercely stand against those things that decay the natural rights of all men. And for the support of this declaration, and with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, fortunes and sacred honor.
This is the beginning of a global movement. Don’t just witness it, be a part of it. Join me on GBTV.com.
Laus Deo,
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/onstar-announces-tracking-continues-even-after-cancellation/
and an additional citation:
Several years ago Glenn broke ties with GM as a sponsor, in large part because he was worried about their interactions with government. All that technology and access at the fingertips of the federal government just didn't sit well with Glenn. At the time, they said they wouldn't be doing any sort of tracking or anything like that. That was then, this is now. OnStar is now notifying its 6 million account holders that it will keep a complete account of the speed and location of OnStar-equipped vehicles even for drivers who discontinue the monthly service. Why? Glenn has more on radio today - check it out at GlennBeck.com.
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An Iranian pastor is set to be executed for apostasy if he doesn’t renounce his Christian faith – and while the latest updates provide hope for an acquittal the case is a strong warning against the spread of Islamic law in the Middle East.
The latest report from The Blaze says:
As we have already reported, the young pastor, now 32, made a conversion to Christianity years ago when he was a teenager. While this has become the basis for the Iranian case against him, his initial arrest surrounded his public opposition to Christian schoolchildren being forced to participate in Islamic religious education. He was subsequently convicted of apostasy in 2010 and remains in prison in Rasht.
So far, the courts have said that Nadarkhani must repent of his conversion or he will face the death penalty.
Under Islamic law, repenting would involve the pastor apologizing and denouncing his conversion to Christianity. To date, this has not happened, as Nadarkhani has stuck to his religious ideals during the past four days of his appeals trial.
The report does add that the lawyer is now 95% sure his client will be acquitted, although Blaze writer Billy Hallowell adds “Of course, considering the lack of transparency in Iranian governance and the unpredictability of officials there, this potential for a favorable outcome may be optimistic.”
Heather Sells with CBN added, “Many believe Pastor Nadarkhani was targeted because he spoke out. He recently questioned the Muslim monopoly on the religious instruction of children in Iran.”
“So we got a guy who’s speaking out and going to be executed. He’s Christian. He is going to be executed. Where is the world? Where ‑‑ where is the media? Where’s the president?” Glenn asked on radio this morning.
Glenn reminded listeners that there was endless media coverage of two American hikers who were held in Iran – but little coverage of this Christian Pastor.
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"Glenn reminded listeners that there was endless media coverage of two American hikers who were held in Iran – but little coverage of this Christian Pastor."
That is the key; they were AMERICAN hikers. The world, the media, and the President rarely get involved in other country's internal affairs. If we did, it would be a full time job.
It's sad, but...
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Given the American blood, sweat, tears, and money put into Iraq one would think the story would be of interest , , , except to the Pravdas :roll:
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/uncovered-737-million-green-jobs-loan-given-to-company-affiliated-with-pelosis-bro-in-law/
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:?
While we may have put "blood, sweat, tears, and money into Iraq" (I personally think it's all wasted) what does that have to
do with, or why does it entitle us to intercede with what happens to an Iranian citizen in Iran? It's an "internal" matter.
Of course it's a sad story. But the same story in different forms, happens in China, North Korea, Russia, and numerous other countries around the world.
Are we to get involved in each one?
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My brain fart-- for some reason I was thinking of Iraq :oops: -- though execution for apostasy would seem pretty noteworthy in its own right, particulary in a country that is violating its accords with the international community not to develop nuclear bombs and which has sworn to wipe Israel off the map , , ,
Anyway, once again, moving along-- here's this:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/uncovered-737-million-green-jobs-loan-given-to-company-affiliated-with-pelosis-bro-in-law/
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Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities
As the American Declaration of Independence clearly states, when in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to band together and collectively declare their rights and responsibilities to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle and bind them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should disclose the causes which impel them to such.
Therefore let us declare that we still hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But with those rights come responsibilities.
In order to continually experience life, liberty and happiness as promised, nature’s God demands obedience to His law to protect those rights. This is where we have fallen short and therefore, in order not to lose the blessings of freedom, the people of the world must turn from the sole focus on rights, and recognize the inherent and required responsibilities that we have.
Among the responsibilities to which we must adhere to maintain our God given rights are honor, courage and vigilance.
Over time, we believe that these basic human responsibilities have been trampled, and replaced with degradation, fear and apathy.
But when a long train of abuses of the people and conscience by the media and by other segments of society, pursuing the same path of reducing them to ridicule, scorn and even sub-human status, it is their right, it is their DUTY, to peacefully, but vehemently take a stand.
AdvertisementMen want to be king, and the more we concentrate on our rights and the more we are told not to worry about our responsibilities, the more we lose our rights.
Just as physics show, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. The time has come to declare that at least for the western world human rights are generally accepted and moving in the right direction however a new movement is required a movement of human responsibility.
The media, politicians and large institutions both academic and political have been lying to us, and we must demand the truth be told.
With that demand, comes the responsibility that we tell the truth first, in ourselves. Too many of us delegate our responsibility to the media…and too many believe there is no personal responsibility at all.
Political correctness has polluted our language and clouds our every discussion.
What was once accepted as good and right, is now considered bad and evil, and that which was bad and evil is now presented to the world as good and decent.
Opposing thoughts or opinions are referred to as crazy, insane, non-factual and utterly without merit. Furthermore, we are told, they should not even be heard.
Now, the time has come to take a stand by exhibiting the traits – honor, courage and vigilance.
What is honor? It is being honest in all of our dealings. It is showing loyalty and fairness, and being a beacon of integrity in all our beliefs and actions. It is showing respect for others.
Ruth honored Naomi when she told her that she would not leave her. That she would go wherever Naomi went, that she would live where Naomi lived and die where Naomi died. Her God would be Naomi’s God.
Courage is the ability to face danger, criticism or scorn – not without fear, but while overcoming fear to deal with that which comes our way.
When no one else in the Kingdom wanted to face the mighty giant, Goliath, young David was willing. David must have felt fear at the sight of his foe, but overcame it, and courageously vanquished his enemy.
Vigilance is being watchful for all forms of treachery and tyranny, lies and deceit. The person in the watchtower, waiting all night, suddenly sounding the alarm that the enemy is coming. The careful observer of the markets and economies who proclaims to the world, all is not well, there is trouble ahead and the outspoken critic of the powerful, going against societies’ grain, warning that all is not as we’re being told. These are the vigilant.
We implore all people to stand with these characteristics – honor, courage and vigilance.
To that end, we must restore honor in our own lives. Seek after the truth. Declare right now, that no longer will we simply accept what is told us by the media or anyone else.
The media has the responsibility to tell the truth, we have the responsibility to learn it.
Stand with courage, even if it means the end of our jobs, the end of our positions in life…or even the end of our very lives.
We must have the courage to be peaceful, while recognizing the courage to defend and respond to threats and/or attacks when necessary.
Turn the other cheek when possible.
We must be vigilant. We must think the unthinkable. The holocaust occurred because no one could imagine it, but evil never sleeps, and neither must we.
As Edmund Burke said, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” We must DO something. Stand watch. Speak up. Become involved.
Thus, we the people do hereby declare not only our rights, but do now establish this bill of responsibilities.
1. Because I have the right to choose, I recognize that I am accountable to God and have the responsibility to keep the 10 commandments in my own life.
2. Because I have the right to worship as I choose, I have the responsibility to honor the right of others to worship as they see fit.
3. Because I have freedom of speech, I have the responsibility to defend the speech of others, even if I strongly disagree with what they’re saying.
4. Because I have the right to pursue happiness, I have the responsibility to show humility and express gratitude for all the blessings I enjoy and the rights I’ve been given.
5. Because I have the right to honest and good government I will seek out honest and just representatives when possible. If I cannot find one then I accept the responsibility to take that place.
6. Because I have the God given right to liberty, I have the personal responsibility to have the courage to defend others to be secure in their persons, lives and property.
7. Because I have the right to equal justice, I will stand for those who are wrongly accused or unjustly blamed.
8. Because I have the right to knowledge, I will be accountable for myself and my children’s education…to live our lives in such a way that insures the continuation of truth.
9. Because I have the right to pursue my dreams and keep the fruits of my labor, I have the responsibility to feed, protect and shelter my family, the less fortunate, the fatherless, the old and infirm.
10. Because I have a right to the truth, I will not bear false witness nor will I stand idly by as others do.
Unconditionally, while maintaining my responsibility to compassionately yet fiercely stand against those things that decay the natural rights of all men. And for the support of this declaration, and with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives, fortunes and sacred honor.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFxfvP9hjhw&feature=related
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/10/28/msnbc-host-gets-humiliated-by-occupy-oakland-protester/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2011/10/28/msnbc-host-gets-humiliated-by-occupy-oakland-protester/
Awesome!
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http://web.gbtv.com/media/video.jsp?content_id=19948639&topic_id&v=3&tcid=fb_video_19948639
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Nothing wrong with gold, but Goldline seems like a scam. Just google it.
How exactly is Goldline a scam?
latimes.com
Goldline metals dealer is charged
The Santa Monica company that used radio talk show host Glenn Beck as a pitchman is accused of tricking customers into buying gold coins at inflated prices.
Stuart Pfeifer
November 3, 2011
Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against Goldline International Inc., a Santa Monica company that is one of the nation's largest gold dealers, for allegedly tricking customers into buying gold coins at inflated prices.
The Santa Monica city attorney's office accused Goldline of running a "bait and switch" operation in which customers seeking to invest in gold bullion were instead sold gold coins that were marked up more than 50%.
The company, which used radio talk show host Glenn Beck as a pitchman, has seen sales soar in recent years along with the price of gold. In one ad campaign, Beck said Goldline was "a top-notch organization" and in another said it was the "only gold company I recommend and use."
Beck did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
The 19-count criminal complaint accused Goldline Chief Executive Scott Carter and five other current and former employees of promoting coins as a better investment than bullion without disclosing the markup.
Goldline, which had more than $500 million in annual sales, denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight the charges. Founded in 1960, the company employs more than 300 people.
"The so-called bait-and-switch allegation is preposterous because bullion accounts for more than 40% of the ounces of gold sold by the company during the past year," Brian Crumbaker, the company's executive vice president, said in a statement.
"We believe Goldline has industry best practices in customer disclosures enabling the most informed decisions."
Among the charges against Goldline was one misdemeanor count of elder abuse for allegedly defrauding a client in July 2011. Prosecutors also accused the company of falsely promoting its coins as "rare" and claiming that bullion could be seized by the government while coins could not.
The company encouraged salespeople to steer customers into the overpriced coins by offering commissions on coin sales that were 2,000% more than the commissions for bullion sales, the complaint alleged.
Also accused in the criminal complaint were Goldline's former CEO Mark Albarian, executives Robert Fazio and Luis Beeli, and sales agents Charles Boratgis and Stephanie Howard. Each of the defendants is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 4 for arraignment. Albarian could not immediately be reached.
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Welcome back. I wonder if McDonalds will be similarly prosecuted for coercing sales people into pushing soft drinks and french fries where the profit margins are 2000% higher for an empty product 2000% worse than the dollar menu double cheeseburger, and I wonder if pitchman Ronald McDonald will be similarly persecuted. :wink:
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Nothing wrong with gold, but Goldline seems like a scam. Just google it.
How exactly is Goldline a scam?
latimes.com
Goldline metals dealer is charged
The Santa Monica company that used radio talk show host Glenn Beck as a pitchman is accused of tricking customers into buying gold coins at inflated prices.
Stuart Pfeifer
November 3, 2011
Prosecutors have filed criminal charges against Goldline International Inc., a Santa Monica company that is one of the nation's largest gold dealers, for allegedly tricking customers into buying gold coins at inflated prices.
The Santa Monica city attorney's office accused Goldline of running a "bait and switch" operation in which customers seeking to invest in gold bullion were instead sold gold coins that were marked up more than 50%.
The company, which used radio talk show host Glenn Beck as a pitchman, has seen sales soar in recent years along with the price of gold. In one ad campaign, Beck said Goldline was "a top-notch organization" and in another said it was the "only gold company I recommend and use."
Beck did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
The 19-count criminal complaint accused Goldline Chief Executive Scott Carter and five other current and former employees of promoting coins as a better investment than bullion without disclosing the markup.
Ok, we will see how this trial goes.
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I've been feeling rather frustrated with the scattered and advertising prone nature of the daily missives I receive, but recently I caught a freebie of Glenn's interviews with Newt and with Bachman. Serious, engaging stuff without commercials.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/palestinian-hip-hop-group-comparing-israelis-to-nazis-performs-for-oregon-public-high-school-students/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-gingrich-a-progressive-beck-and-oreilly-debate-issue-on-the-factor/
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December 30, 2011
Happy New Year
When I came back from my vacation last year, I laid out several plans for 2011. Over the past year, you have seen many of these plans come to fruition. I told you that I would no longer be looking towards elected officials for solutions and instead would look to individuals to chart the course and create real change in the world.
It all started in June when I left Fox News to launch my own independent network, GBTV. The network has been dedicated to bringing you the truth that you can’t get anywhere else - whether it be news stories ignored by the mainstream media, commentary on what is really going on in the world, or even comedy that seeks to appeal to people of all political viewpoints and break away from the traditional liberal entertainment industry.
In 2012, you will see GBTV continue to grow as a network. We’re adding new shows like Independence USA, a reality program that shows a real family finding out what life “off the grid” might be like. There are some other big announcements coming, but there are people in my office who would be pretty mad if I let the cat out of the bag this early (and yes, I’ve hired so many people in 2011 that when enough of them yell at me I listen. Sometimes.)
But aside from great programming on GBTV, I’ve made a lot of personal changes in 2011 as well. I traveled to Israel for the Restoring Courage events to stand with Israel and the Jewish people in one of the most defining moments of my life so far. Next year, I’ll be bringing people from around the country to my new home of Dallas, TX for “Restoring Love” - a three day event where thousands will gather and perform acts of service and charity across the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. We’ll also have an amazing evening of celebration, inspiration, and reflection on July 28th at Cowboys Stadium. This is something you will NOT want to miss as individuals stand together and fundamentally transform the country like never before.
I also launched Mercury One at the end of 2011, and this non-profit initiative will be a big part of my life going into 2012 and beyond. The organization will not only help me organize the “Restoring Love” event, but it will carry that spirit of service into places across the country and the globe. It will give you the chance to roll up your sleeves and get involved, as well as a chance to support others who are looking to make a difference. This is something I have been actively working on for over a year and an idea I have had for a very, very long time. You’ve been telling me “Ok, Glenn. I get it! I know the problems - but what can I do?” Mercury One is the answer. Stay tuned because there are some big things coming in 2012.
I’d like to leave you with a story I read on radio when I came back after the holidays last January. Read it and look at all the things we have done together over the past two years. I hope you can see how everything we have been working towards is about solutions born in the individual.
A man decided that he would change the world.
But, he wasn’t successful.
So he decided to change the country.
But, he wasn’t successful.
So he decided to change his community.
But, he wasn’t successful.
So he decided to change his street.
But, be wasn’t successful.
So he decided to change his family.
But, he wasn’t successful.
So he decided to change himself.
AND HE WAS SUCCESSFUL.
AND HIS FAMILY CHANGED AND THEY AFFECTED THEIR STREET.
AND THE PEOPLE ON THE STREET AFFECTED THEIR COMMUNITY.
AND THE PEOPLE OF THE COMMUNITY AFFECTED THEIR COUNTRY.
AND THE PEOPLE OF THE COUNTRY AFFECTED THE WORLD.
And gang, I promise you, we are so close to seeing things turn around in this country and changing for the better. We just need to start with ourselves, then our families, and then our communities. If we can start at home, each and every one of us, we can change the world. We will change the world.
2012 is going to be an incredible journey.
Laos Deo,
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Julian Assange goes to work for "KGB mouthpiece" Russia Today
When WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange initially threatened to do a massive doc dump which promised to be damaging to the Russians, he had to know he was going to be paid a visit by -- the Russians. They have a pattern of 'silencing' (read: murdering) journalists and others who damage Russia in one way, shape or form. Assange never did release the Russian docs -- instead, he now works for the Russian propaganda network RT News. Apparently Assange enjoys living more than doc dumping
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I could have put this in the Islam in America thread but put it here to bump Glen's presence aboud here :lol:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/there-is-no-truth-except-allah-colorado-student-quits-high-school-choir-over-islamic-song/
I tried again subscribing to his TV show, but am having problems doing so. I'll have to get my wife to help me :-D
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http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=106938
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/the-blazes-will-cain-confronts-sandra-fluke-on-cnn/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/03/15/beck-to-wsj-we-are-on-the-edge-of-something-that-is-bigger-than-industrial-revolution/
Beck to WSJ: “We are on the edge of something that is bigger than Industrial Revolution”
Thursday, Mar 15, 2012 at 10:39 AM EDT
Today’s Wall Street Journal features a profile of Glenn and GBTV and it’s hard to deny the success of a network that is still only six months old! Glenn spoke about GBTV and where it could be heading in the future.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
“We’re taking on the big guys,” Mr. Beck said in a recent interview at the Manhattan production studio of GBTV in the basement of a skyscraper. The conservative talk-show host had just flown in from Dallas, where he now lives—”away from the suits,” as he put it.
…
Driving Mr. Beck’s subscription-based network is a belief that television is going through an existential crisis, with the rise of online video outlets like Netflix Inc. and Google Inc.’s YouTube threatening to lure away viewers.
…
“The political and pop culture personalities going directly to their public is definitely a phenomenon that is starting to break,” said Michael Hirschorn, the former head of programming at VH1 who co-founded the entertainment company IconicTV, which is creating three channels for YouTube. But that notion of stars going straight to their fans online is still mostly uncharted. “We have yet to prove the business model out, but it feels inevitable” Mr. Hirschorn said.
…
Mr. Beck is intent on keeping his Fox fans while also capturing the younger Internet-surfing generation. “When the audience of 65 and over dies off,” he said, “then TV is in trouble if they haven’t found a new way to connect with the next vibrant and mobile generation.”
In contrast to traditional TV, which depends on people buying big bundles of channels, GBTV is available as an individual channel and must be watched on Internet-connected devices.
“We are on the edge of something that is bigger than industrial revolution,” Mr. Beck said of the industry changes. “How do you survive? What will people want?”
You can read the full article HERE
Since leaving FOX News, Glenn has attracted more than 300,000 subscribers to GBTV. These numbers dwarf cable news networks which have been on TV for years, such as CNBC “which drew an average of 189,000 viewers over the course of the total day in February, according to Nielsen.”
What do these 300,000+ subscribers get with GBTV that they aren’t getting anywhere else? After all, viewers are going outside the traditional mainstream media in order to seek out this programming – it must be something.
Not only does GBTV offer Glenn’s primetime daily show, it has a slate of original programming as well. Taking a cue from successful premium networks like HBO, the network does not focus on a single genre of television but instead has a mix of news, comedy, reality, and children’s programming. The model is different than traditional cable news, but it offers a way from fans of Glenn to find entertaining shows that share a similar set of values all based around the network’s model “The Truth Lives Here”.
AdvertisementGBTV is also more mobile and accesible that traditional cable news networks. Outside of being available on TV via a Roku, the full network can be accessed on iPhones, iPads, Boxee, the web, and more. Such availability makes it possible to access GBTV from anywhere, not just the confines of ones own home.
The Wall Street Journal profile ends with a question of whether or not he would ever return to traditional cable television.
But asked if he would ever return to cable, Mr. Beck said he wouldn’t rule out working with a network as a supplier—just not as an employee. “I am a content provider,” he said. “I’ll provide content to anybody.”"
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203961204577269230271521006.html
By CHRISTOPHER S. STEWART
Glenn Beck still rails against his usual enemies, from the "hardcore socialist left" to "extreme Islam." Now there is a new target: mainstream television.
After parting company with Fox News last year, Mr. Beck took his message of outrage and self-reliance online. He launched an Internet video network called GBTV, where he is on air for two hours a day, alongside six more hours of shows, from "Liberty Treehouse," a history and news program for children, to the reality program "Independence USA," where a family explores life off the grid.
Conservative firebrand Glenn Beck has big ambitions for his Web TV channel, GBTV, which currently has only a few hours of programming but plans become a 24/7 network. Christopher Stewart has details on The News Hub. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
.Ultimately, Mr. Beck said GBTV will become a 24/7 network, with plans to double programming this year. In January, he signed a deal with the production company Icebox —founded by writers from "The Simpsons" and "King of the Hill" —to create an animated comedy series. He also is readying a documentary about Occupy Wall Street.
"We're taking on the big guys," Mr. Beck said in a recent interview at the Manhattan production studio of GBTV in the basement of a skyscraper. The conservative talk-show host had just flown in from Dallas, where he now lives—"away from the suits," as he put it.
On one side of the room sits a glassed-in control room, packed with humming computers and servers. Then there are his signature set items: a wall of TVs playing loops of news clips and those famous chalkboards, which Mr. Beck uses to emphasize his on-air talking points, recent favorites of which are economic collapse, hate and war.
Driving Mr. Beck's subscription-based network is a belief that television is going through an existential crisis, with the rise of online video outlets like Netflix Inc. NFLX +4.67%and Google Inc.'s GOOG +0.83%YouTube threatening to lure away viewers.
.For established personalities, like Mr. Beck the barriers to entry are low on the Internet. Other celebrities have started to experiment online. In December, the comedian Louis C.K., who stars in FX's "Louie," sold his comedy show "Louis C. K: Live at the Beacon Theater" for $5 a download on his website. In about 12 days, he said he pulled in more than $1 million. Jillian Michaels, a screaming trainer on NBC's "The Biggest Loser," now sells weight-loss programs and fitness videogames online.
"The political and pop culture personalities going directly to their public is definitely a phenomenon that is starting to break," said Michael Hirschorn, the former head of programming at VH1 who co-founded the entertainment company IconicTV, which is creating three channels for YouTube. But that notion of stars going straight to their fans online is still mostly uncharted. "We have yet to prove the business model out, but it feels inevitable" Mr. Hirschorn said.
Mr. Beck is intent on keeping his Fox fans while also capturing the younger Internet-surfing generation. "When the audience of 65 and over dies off," he said, "then TV is in trouble if they haven't found a new way to connect with the next vibrant and mobile generation."
In contrast to traditional TV, which depends on people buying big bundles of channels, GBTV is available as an individual channel and must be watched on Internet-connected devices,
Glenn Beck says his GBTV will become a 24/7 network.
."We are on the edge of something that is bigger than industrial revolution," Mr. Beck said of the industry changes. "How do you survive? What will people want?"
The transformation is also evident in the economics of the business. On Fox News, Mr. Beck averaged 2.2 million daily viewers and was paid $2.5 million a year. GBTV, which jumped on the scene in September, is expected to bring in at least $40 million in revenue this year, supported by advertising and more than 300,000 subscribers paying as much as $9.95 a month for full access to GBTV, according to a person close to the company. While it is significantly smaller than his audience at Fox News, it's still more than an established network like CNBC, which drew an average of 189,000 viewers over the course of the total day in February, according to Nielsen.
To turn that revenue into profit, Mr. Beck keeps costs low by using staff and equipment already in place for other parts of Mercury Radio Arts, Mr. Beck's multimedia mini-empire, which includes best-selling books, a syndicated radio show that draws some 10 million listeners a week, public events, and Blaze, a news and opinion website. As a result, Mr. Beck's initial investment in the network was paid off in the first two months, according to a person close to the company.
Some 120 people now work in the wider Beck kingdom, which is expected to bring in $80 million in revenue this year, according to the same person. The business is flush enough now to afford two sets—the one in New York and a second in Dallas, where the network's headquarters is being built—the capital of Glenn Beck Inc.
"It's scary to go out and not take someone else's money," said Mr. Beck, sitting now on a couch below pictures of the Founding Fathers. "But I wanted to be my own man, and say, 'Look at what we built.' "
Few people urged him on. "No one said, 'Hey, you should take the most successful show on TV at 5 o'clock and flush it down the toilet and then you should take a gigantic movement called Fox and kiss it goodbye.' Who does that?"
"To go off and start his own thing, that's a huge risk," said Rich Greenfield, an analyst at BTIG LLC. "But if people are willing to pay you, then you're cutting out the middleman."
The commentator, who sometimes calls himself a "rodeo clown," came out of morning radio, where he became known for his right-leaning rhetoric, before moving to cable news, first with CNN and then to Fox News.
On air, Mr. Beck positions himself as a kind of healer in a fallen world, driven in part by his fight with alcoholism. "One of the promises I made myself when I sobered up," said Mr. Beck, "is to be true to yourself."
In his 27-month stint at Fox News from 2009 into 2011 he predicted the fall of the U.S. economy, occasionally cried, and picked fights with the Obama administration, at one time accusing the president of "a deep-seated hatred for white people," a remark that caused advertisers to flee. (Fox News is owned by News Corp NWSA +0.85%., which owns The Wall Street Journal.)
After clashing with management, Mr. Beck and Fox split up. He considered joining another cable channel, but decided mainstream news was too restrictive with "too many filters." He also wanted more control over staff, content and air time.
"I like to do 20-30 minute monologues—sometimes, I like to skip a commercial break," he said. "Sometimes I like to completely ignore the news of the day."
At one point, he joked that the slogan for GBTV would be "Too Crazy For Fox? I'll Show You Too Crazy For Fox" but instead it became "The Truth Lives Here."
As for the future, if the world doesn't end, Mr. Beck concedes that he isn't sure where the network will go. "I have self-doubt every single day," he said, adding at another point, "come back to me in a year."
But asked if he would ever return to cable, Mr. Beck said he wouldn't rule out working with a network as a supplier—just not as an employee. "I am a content provider," he said. "I'll provide content to anybody.""
Write to Christopher S. Stewart at christopher.stewart@wsj.com
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/our-values-are-being-destroyed-beck-blasts-new-fed-farm-rule-plan/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/beck-progressive-mission-accomplished-now-on-to-phase-ii-communism/
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By Alex Seitz-Wald on Feb 24, 2012 at 10:30 am
Conservative (Beck) talker-endorsed precious metal retailer Goldline International agreed to a court order this week to repay defrauded customers $4.5 million and overhaul its business practices. The injunction, handed down by the Los Angeles County Superior Court, was obtained by the City Attorney of Santa Monica, California — where the company is based — who had filed 19 criminal counts of fraud and theft against the company last year. Those charges have now been dismissed.
Goldline’s entire business model was essentially a scam, the city attorney found. It was a bait-and-switch: Consumers wanted to buy gold bullion, but salespeople preyed on their fears — including falsely claiming that the government could seize bullion — and misled them into buying vastly overpriced gold coins instead. Consumers typically paid more than 55 percent above the actual value of the coins, which are much harder to sell down the road, instantly wiping out a large portion of their savings.
At the time, Goldline called the charges “preposterous” and vowed to fight them. But in addition to the $4.5 million, the court order requires Goldline to put $800,000 into a fund for future claims, and submit to a court-appointed monitor who will have full access to company’s operations, at Goldline’s expense. In addition, it will have to disclose its actual markups and stop misleading customers.
http://www.coinweek.com/Goldline%20Final%20Judgment.pdf
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http://www.goldline.com/goldline-international-charges-response
GOLDLINE RESPONDS TO CITY ATTORNEY'S
MISLEADING PRESS RELEASE
Santa Monica, CA – Following dismissal of all misdemeanor charges and a mutual settlement between Goldline International and the Santa Monica City Attorney, the City Attorney issued a press release replete with serious misstatements and inaccuracies concerning Goldline's business practices. Among the numerous facts which the City Attorney's Office omitted or misstated are the following:
The City Attorney did not obtain any contested judgment against Goldline nor was there any finding of liability or wrongdoing by Goldline. To the contrary, Goldline entered into a settlement with the City Attorney and the parties jointly agreed to certain conditions of that settlement which was submitted and approved by a court. The parties expressly agreed that "This Judgment is not to be construed as an admission of liability by any party or a finding of liability against any party. Goldline expressly denies all allegations set forth in the Complaint." (Emphasis added.)
Goldline's disclosures and transparency represented the best in the industry prior to the settlement with Santa Monica. Goldline offered among the most comprehensive written disclosures including complete information regarding Goldline's sales staff, the risks of investing in precious metals, and Goldline's pricing policies.
Throughout the period investigated by Santa Monica, Goldline's pricing was transparent to its customers. Every client reviewed and signed Goldline's Account and Storage Agreement as well as reviewed its large type risk disclosure booklet that clearly spelled out Goldline's pricing. The company also provided an easy to understand mathematical example to ensure the client understood both Goldline's selling price and its buyback price. Goldline explained its pricing again in a written trade confirmation that was sent to every client.
Every client identified in the settlement who is eligible for a refund in exchange for a return of their precious metals had read and signed Goldline's agreement and risk disclosure materials regarding pricing.
Goldline's commissioned sales staff were trained and monitored to follow Goldline's compliance program, a program designed by experienced consumer protection, telemarketing and precious metals professionals.
There was no award of damages as incorrectly suggested by the City Attorney's Office nor has there been any finding that any client was defrauded by the company. Goldline agreed to allow 43 clients, comprising a scant 1/10th of 1% of its clients for the relevant period, to return their precious metals for a refund. At this time, no one can say how many of these clients will choose to return their precious metals. If the clients ask for a refund, the company will receive in exchange the original precious metals which are valued in the millions of dollars.
The City Attorney's office mischaracterized its investigation. Initially, only the City Attorney and the Los Angeles District Attorney were involved in a civil investigation. However, the Los Angeles District Attorney's office declined to participate in any criminal or civil prosecution of Goldline.
The City Attorney falsely characterized Goldline's information regarding the 1933 Executive Order and the government ban on the private ownership of gold for 40 years. This topic, which is widely discussed in the precious metals industry and by the media, was truthfully presented and included clear disclosures to ensure Goldline customers understood the historic context of the government ban. The City Attorney's Office agreed that this truthful discussion is appropriate and that Goldline may continue to discuss the 1933 Executive Order and the 40 year ban on the private ownership of gold with its clients.
The City Attorney's claim that such discussions are now improper or prohibited is untrue and represents a serious attack upon constitutionally protected free speech. It is a protected and historically grounded opinion that the government can recall gold held by its citizens. The Executive Order of 1933 called for the immediate return of certain quantities of gold, including bullion, upon penalty of fine or imprisonment. The Order specifically carved out from its scope "gold coins having a recognized special value to collectors of rare and unusual coins"-a description that was applied by the Treasury Department to exempt a number of the popular coins which Goldline sells.
It is further truthful and constitutionally protected speech to state that the United States government retains the authority to recall gold from its citizens during times of war. This fact is part of the City Attorney's approved statement on this issue. Independent commentators, financial analysts, and public officials continue to offer opinions that government has the authority to recall gold to date. Any personal opinion held by the Santa Monica City Attorney as to the likelihood that the government will in the future once again act as it did in 1933 does not justify the issuance of a press release attacking Goldline based on facts that are unproven, unsupported, and false.
The City Attorney's assertion that Goldline sold "overpriced" coins or that it charged a mark-up of over 50% over the fair market value is patently false. It is equally false to say that the company improperly concealed the mark-up of its products.
The City Attorney improperly refers to claims from former employees without disclosing that that many of these employees work for direct competitors who offer none of the transparency, compliance or training provided by Goldline.
Goldline is proud of its role as the industry leader in customer service, compliance and transparency. This settlement only further demonstrates the company's commitment and challenges every competitor to meet these standards.
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A Monitor (I know him) has been appointed by the Court for three years to oversee nearly all aspects of Goldline's business. At $550+ an hour (I'm guessing) Goldline will pay thousands upon thousands of dollars for his time and staff time. And this Monitor is needed because??? :-o
Strict written work guidelines and customer disclosures have been agreed to by Goldline.
Goldline returned over $4.5 million dollars to customers at the order of the Injuction
Upon request of future customers, the Monitor is authorized to pay out an additional $800,000.
Goldline was fined $50,000 by the City.
But you say Goldline sounds like a fine firm. :-o I'll let you do business with them..... And if you like them so much, like Beck, please tell your friends to give Goldline their money.
Then again, I doubt if they will remain your friend for long.
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Besides innocent until ... what? where did I miss the point about Goldline being political? Does it taint Glen Beck's view on Israel or change the video he played exposing Obama's radical advisers? What is the point? If Beck were the politician then maybe it questions his judgment, but what is he running for?
Obama sat in the pew while Rev Wright assaulted our country, did Beck sit in the room while client money was wrongfully disbursed. And again, what is he running for? Did the poster in a crusade against corruption make a point previously about the commodities trading of HRC that I missed, or is this a cheap shot at a radio show that the host of the forum said that he liked?
If not for the opponent boycott campaigns against freedom of speech, Beck's sponsors might be GE, Chevrolet and Goldman Sachs. Oops I just named 3 more corrupt companies.
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Back in July 2011 GM asked, "How exactly is Goldline a scam?"
I'm just trying to answer his question. :-o
Doug said today: "If Beck were the politician then maybe it questions his judgment, but what is he running for?"
If a friend, much less a politician had recommended Goldline to me, I would "question their judgment". Further, when I found out that my so called "friend" had received direct compensation and had further extolled the virtues of Goldline and continued to receive compensation AFTER knowing that they were under investigation, I would question my friendship all together.
But as I said; if this is the kind of friend/advisor you want, transfer your money to Goldline. :-D
Or tell your friends to do so; then again, they might not be your friend for much longer... :-o
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Is Santa Monica going after Obama for Solyndra next?
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The point was, how is it political, what is Beck or Goldline running for, if it clouds his judgment on Israel, big government, liberty etc, how so? Not answered as usual. Welcome back.
If they are breaking laws they can face prosecution, pay fines, go to jail. If you are pointing out the system is working, then what is the political point of it? Some similarity to Geithner not paying his taxes? Really?
I don't like commercials but I like free radio. I'm sure the hosts would prefer not to do personal sponsorships. No comment (as usual) on how the anti-free speech radical extremists keep him from having mainstream sponsors. No comment on Hillary (shocking) and her commodity trading. The only thing that is not a prosecutable felony in her case is the statute of limitations. She is still in power and still contemplated for the Presidency. She helped make the last decision about going to war and HER judgment matters. This wasn't a sponsor of a pundit. Cat got your tongue or did I miss where you thoroughly trashed her for that?
Isn't there enough in Beck's opinions and analysis to discuss his views in a political context? The logic is discredit the view because of business practices of the sponsor? I don't think the point ever was that Beck is a great man, but that his articulated views on pertinent issues resonate with certain people here. How does Beck's sponsor cloud my judgment, or that of others here?
All rhetorical. Just venting my view of it. No reply is requested.
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So let's see, no criminal charges, no indictments, no arrests.
What you have is a shakedown of a private business by what I'd guess is a democrat political machine.
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And maybe there was some sleaze in its business practices-- coughing up over $4M is not a small thing-- but the larger point remains i.e. exactly what IS the point with regard to GB? :roll:
And what of "how the anti-free speech radical extremists keep him from having mainstream sponsors?" It is no accident that the first thing this vast left-wing conspiracy went after with Rush Limbaugh was his sponsors.
As Americans, I hope that all of us can unite upon this.
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And maybe there was some sleaze in its business practices-- coughing up over $4M is not a small thing-- but the larger point remains i.e. exactly what IS the point with regard to GB?
What were their legal expenses to defend themselves and the projected legal expenses?
And what of "how the anti-free speech radical extremists keep him from having mainstream sponsors?" It is no accident that the first thing this vast left-wing conspiracy went after with Rush Limbaugh was his sponsors.
George Soros' "Media Matters" targets those that advertise on conservative radio.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/education-madness-nyc-bans-words-like-halloween-dinosaurs-and-birthdays-from-tests/
The URL itself will give you an idea of the contents.
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And maybe there was some sleaze in its business practices-- coughing up over $4M is not a small thing-- but the larger point remains i.e. exactly what IS the point with regard to GB? :roll:
And what of "how the anti-free speech radical extremists keep him from having mainstream sponsors?" It is no accident that the first thing this vast left-wing conspiracy went after with Rush Limbaugh was his sponsors.
As Americans, I hope that all of us can unite upon this.
Crafty, you have a stellar reputation. I may not agree with you on all points, but I respect your opinion and you personally. Imagine if you were selling on your website, and receiving compensation, in good faith a product. Then imagine if the Santa Monica Attorney General's Office decided to open an investigation into that product. Further, other accusation were made about the honesty of the product. What would you do? If I had to guess, you would take the product off your website until the dust cleared; until the "truth" came out. And if, an injunction was issued, alleging wrongful action and the company paid out millions of dollars and were so suspect that they needed to have a Monitor paid for by themselves to monitor their future actions, what would you do? I bet you you would offer an apology - saying sorry, I didn't know. Frankly, at the first sniff of corruption or sleaze, at minimum, I bet you would have dropped the product from your line. Beck didn't; he continued to receive compensation. His political viewpoint, or HRC :? has absolutely nothing to do with my criticism. He should have dropped them like a hot potato and moved on doing what he does best; political commentary.
To answer GM's comment, Goldline is a scam. I said that almost a year ago. Now they paid out over $4million to avoid an indictment; settling for an injunction. And they will pay over 1Million more not to mention have a Monitor on premises for 2-3 years.
As a side not, I'm sure sure about this supposed "vast left wing conspiracy". I hear the phrase a lot on this forum. Frankly, I think it's hogwash. No more than a "right wing conspiracy". Should I be worried about the millions upon millions of dollars from Adelson given to Gingrich? Or the Kock brother's millions? No. While I don't agree with them, they are entitled to their opinion and they put their money where their mouth is. Soros does the same. No better; no worse. Why is Soros the devil incarnate? (Not that I care about Soros one way or another). As for "going after Rush" well boycotts and protests are the American Way. What's wrong with that? Freedom on choice and freedom, within the law to influence your choice.
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No criminal charges, no indictments, no arrests.
Sounds like a dem machine shakedown.
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a) the "left wing conspiracy" thing is a bit of a humorous riff mirroring Hillary Clinton's statement years ago
b) I get your point about Soros, but apart from the fact that he is wrong in his goals :lol: there is also the matter of how he goes about things. For example, Adelson does not create and fund a giant operation to take down/out political opponents--as Soros did with Beck. He does not meet with Fox News threatening economic consequences backed by billions of dollars and a vast network unless Beck is fired, as Soros did. He does not threaten to undermine the American Creed, as Soros does. I can't remember the details with great specificity this fine Wednesday morning a year or two later, but I do remember that they were there.
c) Question: Does FOX or does Beck make the determination about advertisers on the show? I would imagine FOX (but I could be wrong) in which case your whole argument is , , , wide of the mark.
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a) I missed the humor; I'll try harder to laugh next time. :-)
b) Actually I think the Koch brothers have done exactly that; try to take down and fund political opponents and causes; not that I am complaining. That is their right; it's the American way. I truly love our system of checks and balances and freedom of speech.
c) It has been said that "Beck and Fox parted ways because Beck had too much power and Fox couldn't control him". It was in many ways, Beck's show; Fox was merely the platform. I think Beck could easily of said, let's take a pass on Goldline until the dust cleared. Instead, he continued to vociferously endorse Goldline. A mistake IMHO.
Frankly, I like Beck. We need Beck. While I don't agree with him, he is articulate and delves into interesting new areas and presents "opposing" viewpoints. I do think, as I expressed, that he went overboard, as did others on this forum IMHO, calling the young lady a "slut" and worse, but he apologized for that. Good enough; that is all I ask. He should have done the same with Goldline.
GM inquired some time ago if Goldline is a "scam". Well.... I thought then and I do now, the answer is yes. You don't pay out $5million and agree to have an expensive Monitor literally on premises that Goldline will pay for to observe all business practices because you have been "shaken down by the dem machine". Rather, it's a hail mary to avoid an indictment, probably thereafter followed by bankruptcy. The coin business is fraught with fraud; I think you have lived here long enough in Southern California to remember McNall, the previous owner of the L.A. Kings.... I went to quite a few games with my best friend, who at the time, was the partner in charge at Coopers Lybrand of the Kings account (not, my friend points out, his coin business).....
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I thought it was Rush, not Beck, who called Fluke a slut?
Anyway, I suppose Beck could have done as you suggest, but I find it rather easy to see how he might have just assumed it was a Dem machine shakedown-- fomented by political opponents, yes?-- and carried on with his very busy life. Bottom line, I'm not really taking very seriously the effort to taint him with this.
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You are right; :oops: somehow I mixed up Rush and Beck; not much difference though. :-)
I agree, no reason to take this very seriously; I just wanted to follow up and point out, in answer to GM's comment/question of last year, that
it was a scam. Not a dem machine shakedown. This was more than a slap on the wrist.
Often on this forum and in the news in general, controversial incidents happen; they are reported, and arguments for and against are presented. For example Police are arrested, "innocents" are shot, etc. We hear the initial noise, but it's also nice to see the conclusion, whatever the outcome. Usually I like to think our system works. Somehow however, the conclusion is usually not in the news, perhaps it's not as sensational, yet I find that to be equally as important.
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We are in complete agreement on the importance of following up. Indeed much of the structure and content of this forum is about being able to do precisely that.
Without the ability to follow up and the ability to pull things out of the "memory hole" (attention unread folks-- this is a reference from Orwell's 1984) we become manipulated by the pravdas and their masters.
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"somehow I mixed up Rush and Beck; not much difference though."
Not much difference? Not if the attack is ad hominem.
If the ad hominem attack is against the person, we will need the Latin plural for the attacking all of them and their sponsors in one fell swoop.
That the accused agreed to pay out is the evidence of a crime not charged. We waste so much time and money even having a criminal justice system. Easier to just accuse and extort until we get the right amount of damages out of them.
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We waste so much time and money even having a criminal justice system. Easier to just accuse and extort until we get the right amount of damages out of them.
I bet 95%+ of all criminal matters are settled/plea bargained. That IS our criminal justice system.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/faqs/
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"criminal matters"
Sorry, where was the criminal charge in this case - at the link?
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"criminal matters"
Sorry, where was the criminal charge in this case - at the link?
Any other questions? :-D
On 11/3/11 Prosecutors filed criminal charges against Goldline International Inc., a Santa Monica company that is one of the nation’s largest gold dealers, for allegedly tricking customers into buying gold coins at inflated prices.
The Santa Monica city attorney’s office accused Goldline of running a “bait and switch” operation in which customers seeking to invest in gold bullion were instead sold gold coins that were marked up more than 50%
The company, which used radio talk show host Glenn Beck as a pitchman, has seen sales soar in recent years along with the price of gold. In one ad campaign, Beck said Goldline was “a top-notch organization” and in another said it was the “only gold company I recommend and use.”
Beck did not respond to an email seeking comment for this story.
The 19-count criminal complaint accused Goldline Chief Executive Scott Carter and five other current and former employees of promoting coins as a better investment than bullion without disclosing the markup.
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We waste so much time and money even having a criminal justice system. Easier to just accuse and extort until we get the right amount of damages out of them.
I bet 95%+ of all criminal matters are settled/plea bargained. That IS our criminal justice system.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/plea/faqs/
The vast majority of cases are plea bargained, the system would collapse if most elected to go to trial. Still, getting money and an appointed "monitor" is not something I've seen at my level. Sounds pretty "Holderish".
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/van-jones-somewhat-retracts-libertarian-bigots-statement-after-confronted-by-russia-today/
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" I’m tired … of a certain section of people acting like they have having a monopoly on patriotism. They don’t. … And so now I’m saying, ‘two can play that game if you want to.’”
Oh yes. Van Jones loves America. The second part is basically what him and friend Brock are doing - spinning all the criticisms of them back to the Republicans. Like for example when Brock is called radical he simply calls the right radical. Like when he is called a socialist he calls the right socialist or with a new twist, social darwinists.
The Prez has led us down a road of child like tit for tat.
I am not sure if any President has ever divided Americans into different groups the way this guy has.
Lincoln tried to keep us together not the other way around.
Limbaugh asks why he is such an angry Black man. He says his mother was white, his father was African (not a slave dependent). He himself has done quite wel with lots of help from whites. I think this is the wrong question. But it is obvious he has chosen this route. It is not just politics or contrived. He is angry. Always has been.
I don't think one can separate Jones from Brock. Once Brock is out of office hopefully Jones will fade.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/05/07/obama-ignores-occupy-domestic-terrorists/
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Wapo conveniently has shady Romney hit piece ready to go:
What are the odds that the Washington Post would have a full scale hit piece accusing Mitt Romney (as a teenager) of bullying gay classmates, ready for press the very same day President Obama declares he’s the Abe Lincoln for gays?
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Woof,
Why that's just crazy conspiracy talk! :lol:
P.C.
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I don't know it it's a conspiracy, that's kinda silly, but what happened 50 years ago in high school..... who cares...... Sorry. We all had our moments in high school.
Nor do I care about Obama's grades. Let's talk about the issues. The economy. Foreign Policy, lots of issues..... Both men have an adult track record.
I think most Democrats and Independents concede (maybe you don't agree) that Obama AND Romney are basically good people. They have good morals, they are good
family men, and they mean well, albeit they are both politicians. Therefore sometimes misdirected. Whether Obama got A's or B's, or Romney had a high school playground incident isn't really relevant.
I don't care.
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I think you miss part of the point concerning BO. It is that we knew next to nothing about a man about to become President of the US, who lived much of his life outside the US (to the point that a substantial percentage of the American people wonder(ed) if he is actually a native born citizen), and who had a substantial history of rubbing elbows with violent communists, subversive communists, racists, and anti-semites (the Rev. Wright's support of Louis Farrakhan). The man never held a job in the private sector, never ran a business, never served in the armed forces, never wrote a law review article, NOTHING. State legislator who voted present most of the time, and 18 months in the Senate (in a freak circumstances win) before running for President.
In such a context, to want to know something, ANYTHING, about his college record and much, much more seems more than a little reasonable to me.
The pravdas did not care and deliberately looked away, but now they work in concert with him to go after his opponent.
Contrast that to what we know about Romney.
Beck is right. It sure looks like WaPo, a.k.a. Pravda On The Potomac, is a pravda for Baraq. This is worth noting.
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Woof,
It's doubtful that you would find a video of the Media and the Democrats getting together andcoming up with a written mutal agreement as to what and how to make Repubs look bad, and at the same time protect Obama. However, there is no doubt in my mind that the Media is doing everything it can to make Repubs look bad and protect Obama. While at the same time the Left is feeding them everything they can to help in this effort. :-P
P.C.
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Helluva a coincidence that they had a major piece of the sort that takes a lot of time to put together ready to go with such politically perfect timing , , ,
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"Wapo conveniently has shady Romney hit piece ready to go:"
As if they knew...
Well looky here: https://store.barackobama.com/collections/lgbt-for-obama.html
"I'm Out for Obama" lgbt.barrackobama.com
This site, the official campaign site, has LGBT for Obama attire up and ready to go by Sat when the announcement was just this week. Who knew?
What was the announcement anyway in terms of policy changes?
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As Pravda on the Hudson struggles to understand (and impugn) I am reminded of an old Bob Dylan song, "The Ballad of the Thin Man" I think it was called which had the line "There's something going on here and you don't understand what it is, do you Mr. Jones?"
================
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/us/politics/tea-party-focus-turns-to-senate-and-shake-up.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120513
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Expose' of Baraq's fairy tales
http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/05/16/free-glenns-expose-on-barack-obama-and-his-fairytale-story/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/05/21/indoctrination-teacher-wont-let-students-critique-president-obama/
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Declaration of Rights & Responsibilities
As the American Declaration of Independence clearly states, when in the
course of human events it becomes necessary for people to band together
and collectively declare their rights and responsibilities to which the laws of
nature and nature’s God entitle and bind them, a decent respect to the
opinions of mankind requires that they should disclose the causes which
impel them to such.
Therefore let us declare that we still hold these truths to be self-evident that
all men are created equal and are endowed by our creator with certain
inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. But with those rights come responsibilities.
In order to continually experience life, liberty and happiness as promised,
nature’s God demands obedience to His law to protect those rights. This is
where we have fallen short and therefore, in order not to lose the blessings of
freedom, the people of the world must turn from the sole focus on rights, and
recognize the inherent and required responsibilities that we have.
Among the responsibilities to which we must adhere to maintain our God
given rights are honor, courage and vigilance.
Over time, we believe that these basic human responsibilities have been
trampled, and replaced with degradation, fear and apathy. But when a
long train of abuses of the people and conscience by the media
and by other segments of society, pursuing the same path of reducing them
to ridicule, scorn and even sub-human status, it is their right, it is their
DUTY, to peacefully, but vehemently take a stand.
Men want to be king, and the more we concentrate on our rights and the
more we are told not to worry about our responsibilities, the more we lose
our rights.
Just as physics show, for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
The time has come to declare that at least for the western world human
rights are generally accepted and moving in the right direction however a
new movement is required a movement of human responsibility.
The media, politicians and large institutions both academic and political
have been lying to us, and we must demand the truth be told.
With that demand, comes the responsibility that we tell the truth first, in
ourselves. Too many of us delegate our responsibility to the media…and too
many believe there is no personal responsibility at all.
Political correctness has polluted our language and clouds our every
discussion.
What was once accepted as good and right, is now considered bad and evil,
and that which was bad and evil is now presented to the world as good and
decent.
Opposing thoughts or opinions are referred to as crazy, insane, non-factual
and utterly without merit. Furthermore, we are told, they should not even be
heard.
Now, the time has come to take a stand by exhibiting the traits – honor,
courage and vigilance.
What is honor? It is being honest in all of our dealings. It is showing loyalty
and fairness, and being a beacon of integrity in all our beliefs and actions. It
is showing respect for others.
Ruth honored Naomi when she told her that she would not leave her. That
she would go wherever Naomi went, that she would live where Naomi lived
and die where Naomi died. Her God would be Naomi’s God.
Courage is the ability to face danger, criticism or scorn – not without fear,
but while overcoming fear to deal with that which comes our way.
When no one else in the Kingdom wanted to face the mighty giant, Goliath,
young David was willing. David must have felt fear at the sight of his foe,
but overcame it, and courageously vanquished his enemy.
Vigilance is being watchful for all forms of treachery and tyranny, lies and
deceit. The person in the watchtower, waiting all night, suddenly sounding
the alarm that the enemy is coming. The careful observer of the markets and
economies who proclaims to the world, all is not well, there is trouble ahead
and the outspoken critic of the powerful, going against societies’ grain,
warning that all is not as we’re being told. These are the vigilant.
We implore all people to stand with these characteristics – honor, courage
and vigilance.
To that end, we must restore honor in our own lives. Seek after the truth.
Declare right now, that no longer will we simply accept what is told us by
the media or anyone else.
The media has the responsibility to tell the truth, we have the responsibility
to learn it.
Stand with courage, even if it means the end of our jobs, the end of our
positions in life…or even the end of our very lives.
We must have the courage to be peaceful, while recognizing the courage to
defend and respond to threats and/or attacks when necessary.
Turn the other cheek when possible.
We must be vigilant. We must think the unthinkable. The holocaust occurred
because no one could imagine it, but evil never sleeps, and neither must we.
As Edmund Burke said, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good
men to do nothing.” We must DO something. Stand watch. Speak up.
Become involved.
Thus, we the people do hereby declare not only our rights, but do now
establish this bill of responsibilities.
1. Because I have the right to choose, I recognize that I am accountable
to God and have the responsibility to keep the 10 commandments in my
own life.
2. Because I have the right to worship as I choose, I have the
responsibility to honor the right of others to worship as they see fit.
3. Because I have freedom of speech, I have the responsibility to defend
the speech of others, even if I strongly disagree with what they’re
saying.
4. Because I have the right to pursue happiness, I have the responsibility
to show humility and express gratitude for all the blessings I enjoy and
the rights I’ve been given.
5. Because I have the right to honest and good government I will seek
out honest and just representatives when possible. If I cannot find one
then I accept the responsibility to take that place.
6. Because I have the God given right to liberty, I have the personal
responsibility to have the courage to defend others to be secure in their
persons, lives and property.
7. Because I have the right to equal justice, I will stand for those who
are wrongly accused or unjustly blamed.
8. Because I have the right to knowledge, I will be accountable for
myself and my children’s education…to live our lives in such a way that
insures the continuation of truth.
9. Because I have the right to pursue my dreams and keep the fruits of
my labor, I have the responsibility to feed, protect and shelter my
family, the less fortunate, the fatherless, the old and infirm.
10. Because I have a right to the truth, I will not bear false witness nor
will I stand idly by as others do.
Unconditionally, while maintaining my responsibility to compassionately
yet fiercely stand against those things that decay the natural rights of all
men. And for the support of this declaration, and with a firm reliance on the
protection of Divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our lives,
fortunes and sacred honor.
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June 10, 2012, 9:15 pm
Beck Renews His Radio Deal
By BRIAN STELTER
Glenn Beck, who departed Fox News last year and started his own Internet television network, is sticking with his radio network partner. His company, Mercury Radio Arts, will announce on Monday that it has renewed its contract with Premiere Networks, keeping “The Glenn Beck Program” in syndication for five more years.
Mr. Beck’s show entered national syndication via Premiere, a unit of Clear Channel, 10 years ago. Now carried by more than 400 stations, the show typically ranks No. 3 among all news-talk radio shows, behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, so the contract extension brings a measure of stability to local stations that carry it.
The show is broadcast from 9 a.m. until noon in most markets. Last week, another host in the time period, Neal Boortz, announced that he would retire in January. Herman Cain, the former Republican presidential candidate and businessman, will start hosting a show in Mr. Boortz’s place.
On Sunday another competitor was announced, as Cumulus Media said it would start distributing Geraldo Rivera’s New York and Los Angeles talk show to stations nationwide from 9 a.m. to noon, beginning in August.
But Mr. Beck’s show is the biggest by far in the mornings.
“There are a handful of superstar talents, and Glenn Beck is truly one of those,” said Julie Talbott, a president at Premiere, in a telephone interview.
Mr. Beck said in a statement about Premiere, “Over the past 10 years, they have proven to be a true partner in every sense of the word.” His last radio deal, in 2007, was valued at $10 million a year. Premiere and Mercury Radio Arts declined to comment on the value of the new one, but a person with direct knowledge of the deal said it would pay Mr. Beck $100 million over the course of the contract.
Chris Balfe, the president of Mr. Beck’s company, said that Premiere would continue to help sell advertising for some of Mr. Beck’s Web sites, including for GBTV, the Internet network that was introduced last fall.
The subscription network includes several shows, including a weekday afternoon one by Mr. Beck. “They’ve been partners for us in the new initiatives that Glenn’s wanted to launch,” Mr. Balfe said.
The radio show, which is free for listeners, is an important promotional vehicle for GBTV. It is, Ms. Talbott said, “vitally important in extending his brand.”
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Warren C. Bodeker is an 89 year old World War II Army Airborne combat veteran and war hero, living in Montana, who is being thrown off of his own land and thrown out of his own house, by Montana Federal Bankruptcy Trustee, Christy Brandon, with the approval of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Montana. And to make matters worse, Warren’s wife Lorna just died of cancer this past year, and is buried there on their land, right next to the house. Warren had planned to live there till he died and then be buried right next to his wife, there on their property at 11 Freedom Lane, in the town of Plains, Montana, but now, not only is he being forced off his land, he is being forced to exhume his wife’s body and take her with him.
This is the most disgusting, callous, brutal, and unjust treatment of a WWII veteran by the “justice” system we have ever heard of. Here is a man who stepped up and went to war at the age of 19 to fight against the Japanese in the Pacific. When we say he is a war hero, we are not exaggerating. Serving in Co. B, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 11th Airborne Division (see discharge papers below), Warren earned two bronze starts while making three combat jumps in the Philippine Islands in 1945.
One of those combat jumps was the daring rescue of prisoners of war at the Los Banos Internment Camp on the Island of Luzon, Philippines, February 23, 1945, where Warren and his brother paratroopers of Co. B, 511th Parachute Infantry Regiment parachuted in at dawn’s early light, 40 kilometers behind enemy lines, and rescued over 2,000 prisoners of war – men, women, and children – from their brutal Imperial Japanese guards, before those guards could slaughter them (as they had planned). Not one prisoner was killed in the raid (though many of the Japanese guards were). Private Warren Bodeker was there. He was one of those brave young paratroopers who the grateful prisoners truly considered heaven sent from above. As one of the prisoners, a missionary, described it in his diary:
“at 7:00 a.m. sharp, we heard and saw nine large transport planes flying low, and passing close to the camp; perhaps one mile to the east. Even as we all watched, we saw doors open and paratroopers came tumbling out. OH WHAT A SIGHT! With a tropical sunrise for a background, we saw about 150 parachutes open one after another and settle slowly earth-ward out of our sight behind the distant trees. We knew help had come.” From the book, Deliverance! It Has Come! By John S. Beaber.
(http://ithascome.bravehost.com/index.html)
The Los Banos Raid is of the most celebrated textbook examples of a perfect rescue operation in military history. Read about it here: http://www.rememberlosbanos1945.com/
and here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_at_Los_Ba%C3%B1os
and here: http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-liberating-los-banos-internment-camp.htm
Go here to watch some film footage of the camp and rescued prisoners:
http://www.criticalpast.com/video/65675040427_Los-Banos-Internment-Camp_internees_burning-barracks_internment-camps
Warren Bodeker and his surviving Airborne brothers came home to a grateful nation and settled down to a peaceful life. Warren lived happily as a law-abiding citizen on Freedom Lane in Montana, until he had to endure the great loss of his beloved wife Lorna this past year, after her five year battle against cancer, but Warren was still looking forward to being buried next to her on their property when he died, knowing that their land and home (which he and his wife built together) would be kept in the family.
But Warren had a pile of medical and credit card bills to deal with and filed for bankruptcy, and that is when his nightmare began. According to Warren and several witnesses, though Warren had utterly no intention of ever selling his land and home, and planned to die there and be buried next to his wife at 11 Freedom Lane, he was pressured and coerced into entering into a “stipulation” denying his bankruptcy discharge and waiving his homestead exemption, and thus coerced into selling his home, because he had failed to disclose some silver and gold he and his wife had set aside for their old age – which he considered a retirement fund that he did not have to disclose. Once that failure to disclose was discovered by the Trustee, Christy Brandon (a lawyer in Bigfork Montana who also works as a trustee for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court), Warren was pressured into signing the stipulation under threat of prosecution and under threat of having his home and land taken by means of adversarial proceedings with any left-over proceeds being consumed by lawyers fees and costs (with Christy Brandon serving as both the trustee for the estate and also as the lawyer for the estate, and also as the attorney for herself, as trustee). According to Warren and several witnesses, he was essentially told that the Trustee would take his land and home anyway, and if he resisted, he would wind up penniless. Unfortunately, his own lawyer at the time went along with the stipulation, and did not fight hard to keep Warren in his home. Watch the above video interview to learn the details.
Warren really did not understand what was going on in the complex legal world of bankruptcy, and did not understand his rights. In addition to the diminished mental capacity that so often occurs in someone nearly 90 years old, Warren is also hard of hearing and needs an assistant to help him keep track of what is being said during hearings. Much of the time, he just does not understand what is going on.
And even if Warren was wrong in not disclosing the silver and gold coins, the just and proper way to handle it would have been, at most, to deny him the discharge and require him to use the coins to pay off his creditors. The trustee didn’t have to pressure Warren into waiving his homestead exemption, by threatening to void it through an adversarial proceeding which would eat up the estate through legal fees and costs, and thus force him to sell his home and land. Forcing him off his land, and forcing him to exhume his wife’s body, in the last years of his life – kicking him homeless to the curb with his wife’s casket – is an egregious, unnecessary, gross act of tyranny and injustice, in our opinion.
This is a callous act of brutality, devoid of human compassion, devoid of all sense of proportionality, devoid of any sense of decency, charity, justice or well-deserved respect of an elder veteran – much more like something the brutal Imperial Japanese internment camp guards would have done to Warren if they could than what his own country should do to a winner of two Bronze Stars who risked all, in combat, for this nation.
Warren’s lawyer withdrew from his case last month, and he has been trying to find a new bankruptcy lawyer, but then Warren was hospitalized with what was thought to be kidney stones, but which has now been discovered to be advanced prostate cancer, which is spreading throughout his body. There was a hearing held this past Tuesday, June 12, 2012, on Trustee Christy Brandon’s motion to have Warren removed from his home. Warren had been flown to the VA Hospital in Helena, Montana last week and was still hospitalized on the 12th and could not attend the hearing. From his hospital bed, Warren sent in a pro se motion for a continuance, telling the court that he was hospitalized and could not attend the hearing. He asked the court to continue the hearing until after he was discharged from the hospital. Warren also informed the court that his friend Roxsanna Ryan (whom Warren gave power of attorney) had scheduled an appointment for him with a psychologist so a competency exam could be done, and that he intended to challenge the validity of the stipulation based on his a lack of capacity to understand what he was agreeing to.
But despite the well established fact that Mr. Bodeker was in the hospital, the trustee, Christy Brandon, opposed the motion to continue the hearing. And even after knowing that Warren Bodeker was in the hospital and that he was set to undergo a competency examination which could show that he lacked the capacity to enter into the stipulation, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge, the Honorable Ralph B. Kirscher, denied Warren’s motion to continue the hearing and granted the Trustee’s motion for an order for Warren to vacate the property. The trustee, Christy Brandon, then emailed Warren to tell him that she would be there at the home on Monday, June 18, 2012, accompanied by a Sheriff’s deputy, to kick him out of his home and have the locks changed.
This man risked his life in a daring combat jump from the low altitude of 500 feet (so low that reserve parachutes are useless, and a chute malfunction meant death) to rescue 2,000 innocent men, women, and children who faced certain death if he and his Airborne brothers had not made that jump that morning, February 23, 1945 (after the rescue, the Japanese returned to the area and massacred 1,500 local Filipino civilians, killing men, women, and children). And this is how the U.S. government thanks this man for his service?
We will post more details on this disgraceful travesty as they become known, but what is most important right now is that we have a duty to help this WWII hero in his time of need. Warren Bodeker needs:
1. LEGAL HELP. First of all, he needs a competent, tenacious bankruptcy lawyer to assist him in challenging the stipulation which waived his homestead exemption, and challenging the forced sale of his home and land. We are calling on any and all bankruptcy lawyers across the United States to step up and help this man. If you are an attorney who can help, please email us at: contact@oathkeepers.org and put “LAWYER” and “WWII vet” in the subject line. As noted above, Warren has an appointment scheduled with a psychologist who will conduct an assessment of his mental capacity to understand complex legal issues and his capacity and competency to enter into the stipulation which waived his homestead right. But he will need a real fighter of a bankruptcy lawyer who is willing to help him challenge the validity of that stipulation once the evaluation is done.
2. FINANCIAL HELP. Warren will need assistance to pay for that lawyer. There is a legal defense fund set up for him by close friends in Plains who are helping him (a truly wonderful family, Dan and Roxsanna Ryan, has stepped up to help him, including offering him a room in their home once he is kicked out of his home). They have set up a paypal account for him and a legal defense bank account. If you would like to donate directly to that legal defense fund, click here: www.oathkeepers.org
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78NQRDNlUsQ&feature=youtu.be
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Just the beginning of an excellent show yesterday:
www.marklevinshow.com/Article.asp?id=2484259&spid=32364
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/07/03/the-most-counter-culture-punk-rock-country-on-the-planet/
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The distraction with shiny objects concept is now everywhere. Our GM was an early adapter of the concept, but I would like to offer that to the best of my knowledge the one who spotted this Obama tactic first was Glenn Beck, who referencing his time as a boy/young man as a magician, frequently warned us to "What what the other hand is doing".
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What is the capital of Vermont? (We should all know this.) Montpelier is the capital of Vermont. Really?? How do we know that? What if we do know that but it hurts our relationship with New Hampshire to say that? Then what is the capital of Vermont?
(answer: It is still Montpelier.)
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/09/14/report-obama-administration-warned-about-attacks-did-nothing/
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http://www.theblaze.com/theproject/
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Criticize mine, fine, but if you are going to predict failure, put your benchmark out there.
That's fair.
Although I don't think it was the only or even the primary reason, Beck was "let go" when his ratings/viewers dropped nearly 50% to around 1.6million from 3million.
Everyone should do better next year; it's an election year. That's the nature of talk radio.
But being generous in my calculation, let's say that his ratings/viewers/paying customers drops even another 50% from his last days at Fox. Still, I will still call him a "success" and an influence to be reckoned with if his ratings/viewers/paying customer base is 800,000+.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2011/09/12/glenn-beck-is-about-to-become-a-100-million-man/
Glenn Beck Is About to Become a $100 Million Man
If it’s influence Glenn Beck values most, maybe he should have stayed at Fox News, where, even on a bad night, he drew more than 1 million viewers, and where just about everything he said or did seemed to make ripples. But if money is the goal, then Beck’s new venture, an online network called GBTV, is not only a much bolder and original bet, but also a much better one.
Photos: How Glenn Beck Makes His Money
Photos: America's Top-Earning Talking Heads GBTV’s centerpiece, a two-hour daily program called “Glenn Beck,” doesn’t even debut until this evening, but it already has more than 230,000 paying subscribers. That number has tripled since June, when the 80,000 people who were paying $9.95 a month for Beck’s preexisting premium web service, Insider Extreme, has their subscriptions automatically rolled over into GBTV accounts.
“Because Mr. Beck owns the show and the network, he could make substantially more than the $2.5 million salary he got each year at Fox,” reports the Wall Street Journal. That’s a major understatement. Analyst Rich Greenfield of BTIG Research estimates that GBTV is already generating revenues of $27 million a year from subscription fees by monetizing a mere 1 percent of the total audience for his Fox show, his radio show, his websites (glennbeck.com and theblaze.com) and other outlets. Greenfield envisions Beck increasing that conversion rate to 5 percent, yielding a subscriber base of over 1 million. In that scenario, extrapolating from Greenfield’s current run rate estimate of $27 million, GBTV would be generating $135 million in subscription revenues.
That is, to be sure, an optimistic scenario. Beck and his team aren’t making projections like that, publicly or privately. But when you consider that that $135 million actually excludes anything Beck makes from selling sponsorships against GBTV’s programming, as well as his earnings from radio, The Blaze, his book imprint with Simon & Schuster, his comedy shows and his merchandise — well, it’s probably safe to say that Beck, whose $40 million in earnings last year placed him No. 30 on the FORBES Celebrity 100, is on course to break the $100 million barrier sooner than later.
And that kind of money buys a lot of influence.
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:-D :-D :-D
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/07/glenn-we-are-going-to-double-down/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2012-11-07_177246&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_177246_177253
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Another point within the fiscal cliff options that the Republican House faces I will stick here. To the extent that elected Republicans vote for Obama Democrat policies in order to be more liked in Washington and in media, we will see more and more bitter challenges come within the Republican party. From that we will see more not-ready-for-prime-time candidates winning endorsement (Todd Aiken etc) screwing up their own race and others with it.
To the extent that elected Republicans merge their proven skills of getting elected with all that is good about tea party principles, from my point of view we have a strong chance to win the next off-year election in the House and perhaps many, many more.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323401904578159292998710054.html?mod=us_news_newsreel
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/12/06/where-does-glenn-stand-on-gay-marriage-he-sat-down-with-penn-jillette-to-discuss-the-role-of-libertarianism-in-the-future-of-the-country/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2012-12-07_183908&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_183908_183916
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/calif-student-sues-school-after-allegedly-being-suspended-for-his-politics-and-he-has-some-noteworthy-video-evidence/
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South Carolina's Scott to Succeed DeMint .
By VALERIE BAUERLEIN
Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican who is a favorite of the Tea Party, was named Monday to fill a U.S. Senate seat to be vacated by Sen. Jim DeMint.
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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said in a noon news conference that her choice was simple. Mr. Scott, a conservative stalwart who was a successful small businessman and most recently a representative from South Carolina in the U.S. House, shares the same philosophy as the man he will succeed, she said.
"I am strongly convinced that this is the right U.S. Senator for our state and our country," she said.
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Rep. Tim Scott
.Washington Wire
Meet Tim Scott, South Carolina's Newest Senator
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Mr. Scott's appointment is historic. He will become the first African-American senator from South Carolina since Reconstruction, and the only black in the Senate.
Mr. Scott said he was honored to succeed Mr. DeMint and will try to uphold his record of fiscal conservatism, especially in confronting the federal government's spending problem. "Our nation finds itself in a situation where we need some backbone," he said.
Mr. DeMint said Mr. Scott, who was raised by a single mother, has a story and record that are inspiring. "Our country needs those positive, optimistic voices to encourage people that there is a way out of this quagmire we're in in Washington," he said.
Ms. Haley made an oblique reference to the historic nature of the appointment, but said it was important to her as an Indian-American to say that she chose Mr. Scott, an African-American, for his merits. "Congressman Scott earned this seat for the person that he is," she said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham also praised Rep. Scott, but acknowledged the state's troubled racial history. "Yes, you did earn everything that comes your way, Tim, but this is a day that's been long in the making in South Carolina," Mr. Graham said. "I'm very proud to see it come."
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By JASON L. RILEY (who happens to be black BTW- Marc)
South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley named Charleston Rep. Tim Scott to replace Sen. Jim DeMint, who announced this month that he is retiring in January to head the Heritage Foundation, a think tank.
Mr. Scott, a Republican first elected to Congress in 2010, was the front-runner for the post, though the GOP governor reportedly also considered appointing herself or Jenny Sanford, the state's former first lady. "Scott will serve until a special election is held in 2014 for the final two years of DeMint's term," according to the State newspaper. "He is expected to run in that election. Haley said last week she planned to appoint a successor she believed could retain the seat."
Scott will become the Senate's lone black member and the first black senator from the South since Reconstruction. The GOP will no doubt enjoy having a high-profile black politician to assist in minority outreach. But it's also worth noting that Mr. Scott is a favorite of the tea party activists whom Democrats and liberals have tried to dismiss as bigots. Two years ago, the NAACP passed a resolution condemning "racist elements and activities" in the tea party. The civil rights group also issued a report that accused the movement of giving a "platform to anti-Semites, racists and bigots."
The popularity of other black tea party heroes like Herman Cain and Florida Congressman Allen West should have been enough to put this nonsense to rest. But now that this supposedly "racist" grass-roots movement is partly responsible for the Senate's only black member come January, be assured that the media will set about refuting these baseless accusations.
That was a joke.
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Tim Scott: Meet the New Senator From South Carolina Tim Scott, the newly appointed Republican, will give liberals fits. His first priority is working for tax reform
By STEPHEN MOORE
Washington
Republicans in need of encouraging signs for the new year need look no further than Tim Scott. He was appointed by Gov. Nikki Haley on Monday to succeed Jim DeMint as U.S. senator from South Carolina. Mr. Scott is a charismatic and principled economic and social conservative from the Deep South. He owes his rapid political rise in part to the tea party movement. Oh, and he is black.
In a few weeks, when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Scott, 47, will take his place as the first black senator from a former Confederate state since Reconstruction. This will make it exceedingly difficult for liberals to maintain their stereotype of the South as a land teeming with white racists. "If that were true," he says, "how could I have been elected to Congress in a district that is 70% white?" He adds: "I have campaigned all over the state of South Carolina. It is the friendliest state in the country. And truly here people judge you by the content of your character not the color of your skin."
Though he would clearly prefer to discuss substantive matters other than race—"I try to steer away from these issues," Mr. Scott says—he recognizes that he has been thrust into the spotlight as a groundbreaking black politician. With some prodding, he reluctantly addresses the subject.
He says that he is fully aware of the challenge that he presents to the GOP's traditional liberal critics. "I think one of the most threatening places to be in politics is a black conservative," Mr. Scott says, "because there are so many liberals who want to continue to reinforce a stereotype that doesn't exist about America." What stereotype is that? "That somehow, some way, if you're a Republican you're a racist and if you're black, there's no chance for you in society.
"We have serious challenges in this nation. Some are racial. But in my life, the vast majority of people that have really afforded me the opportunity to succeed were white folks. Is there a better way to say that?"
Mr. Scott's own story exemplifies the change in attitudes taking hold in the New South. When he first ran for office 18 years ago, for county council, even his friends were shocked. "People said, 'Son, you're running in the wrong party.' They had never even heard of a black Republican. I ran against a white guy, who was a very popular Democrat at the time. I won, not because I was black and a Republican. I won because they liked my values."
Mr. Scott is sitting down with me in the Cannon House Office Building a few days after his appointment. Chairs and desks are stacked in the halls, ready to be moved to the Senate.
Most conservatives and Republicans in South Carolina and around the country were delighted by Ms. Haley's choice. But the left wasted no time pouncing on the appointee. Adolph Reed, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, took to the op-ed page of the New York Times with an indignant piece entitled "The Puzzle of Black Republicans." Mr. Reed sneered that Mr. Scott holds positions "utterly at odds with the preferences of most black Americans" and that his rise fits "a morality play that dramatizes how far [blacks] have come. It obscures the fact that modern black Republicans have been more tokens than signs of progress."
To the left, Mr. Scott is dangerous because he has challenged liberal orthodoxy his whole career.
When he was Charleston County Council chairman in 1997, he decided to post the Ten Commandments outside the building—a move ruled unconstitutional in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU. Mr. Scott believes the free-enterprise system holds the most promise for allowing the poor to escape poverty. He blames liberals for an attitude instilled in minorities that they can't succeed in America because of racial barriers, "which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
He thinks racial-preference programs and racial quotas are "mostly unnecessary," because while he supports goals to promote minority hiring, "you can't force people into relationships." He adds: "It's the same as when I asked the same girl out 10 times, and she just didn't want to go."
Growing up in North Charleston, he attended a mostly white but desegregated high school and was elected president of the senior class. After graduating from Charleston Southern University in 1988, he went into the insurance business and shortly thereafter hung out his own shingle as Tim Scott Allstate, which grew to 3,000 customers. He was elected to state offices beginning in 1995, then in 2010—the year of the tea party—he ran for Congress and defeated Strom Thurmond's son. In the House, his first act was to sponsor a bill to overturn ObamaCare.
Despite his storybook rise—"I never even imagined being in the United States Senate, it was never part of the plan"—Mr. Scott has felt the personal sting of racism and has had doors shut on him. In high school and college he was bullied and "sometimes I got hate-filled notes with racial slurs attached to my locker."
It was made worse, he recalls, because "I was a kind of an oddball. Had three pair of pants and two pair of shoes. And you know, you rotate them and you got made fun of. I had buck teeth, they were going in two different directions. It was a challenging time." The barriers, he is convinced, "only made my will to succeed even stronger."
The two guiding influences of his life have been his mother, who always worked two jobs ("I'm living her American dream," he says proudly) and the man he calls "my mentor," John Moniz, a white Christian and one of the first franchise owners of Chick-fil-A restaurants. "He took me under his wing and for three or four years he was telling me that as a poor kid in North Charleston, that I could think my way out of poverty. I didn't have to play football. I didn't have to become an entertainer."
One of the people who got him interested in politics, surprisingly enough, was Jesse Jackson. Mr. Scott didn't necessarily agree with Rev. Jackson's politics but was struck that a black man could run for president—which back in the 1980s seemed a revolutionary concept.
Another influence was the late, legendary Sen. Strom Thurmond. "In 1992, I was the vice chairman of his last re-election," Mr. Scott says. Really? He worked for the formerly staunch segregationist? "He was a complicated man," Mr. Scott says, "but people change their minds. They embrace truth. In the end he received around 30% of the black vote. I'd like to get there. If Strom Thurmond could get 30% of the black vote, any Republican can."
Mr. Scott has also been active in the tea party, and he bristles at the suggestion that its influence is waning. "No. I think almost every American is a part philosophically with the tea party." How so? Because of what the tea party stands for, he says: "Limited government, free markets, entrepreneurship, capitalism, and making the government smaller, less intrusive and keeping it out of your pockets." Those are enduring American principles, he says. As for charges that the tea party is racist, he laughs. "I was warmly embraced by the tea party. They openly seek more minorities."
If conservative ideas work better, how does he explain the re-election of Barack Obama, the most liberal president in a century? "People like Barack Obama. He's a warm person." By contrast, Republicans have failed miserably to get their message across. "Most of our problems this year," Mr. Scott says, come down to violating his first rule of politics: "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," reciting an old line from the late Jack Kemp, another Republican he admired.
Then he tells a story: "I put together a group of mostly black pastors and thinkers in the new part of my district, near Hilton Head. I told them, 'I don't expect you to vote for me in November. I don't know that you will vote for me ever. But we're going to start a relationship today. And it's not about the election. It's about life. It's about changing the course of history for kids who are coming behind us.' " He notes that one of the pastors in the meeting called him after his appointment to the Senate to celebrate the news.
Mr. Scott seems to have a talent for reaching out to voters who might be expected to be skeptical of a Republican. The first step, he says, is simply to convey your interest. When he recently addressed a gathering of Mexican residents of Charleston, he did his best to read his speech in Spanish. "Think about the fact that I flunked Spanish in high school. I am not bilingual, I'm bi-ignorant. But they were chuckling. It broke the ice."
He says he is frustrated that Republicans seem to be no better at communicating during the fiscal-cliff negotiations than they were during the campaign season. Somehow, the GOP has allowed the focus of the talks to center on taxes for the rich: "We need a spending conversation, but you cannot have that in the middle of a revenue argument, so we can't win. The American people want less spending and less debt, but we aren't talking about that."
Once he has taken up his place in the Senate, he says, he will try to spur more conversation about spending, but he will also address tax reform. He will introduce the "Rising Tide Tax Reform Act," which would lower corporate taxes to 23% and allow for permanent repatriation of foreign earnings back into the U.S. "On the personal tax code," he says, "I like the plan of lowering the tax rate so that we can increase the revenue."
A major influence on his thinking about tax matters is economist Arthur Laffer—"one of my closest advisers." Raising tax rates, especially on capital gains, Mr. Scott says, will result in less revenue.
If he succeeds in his mission on tax reform, he predicts: "Once we get to lower tax rates, and we execute more revenue coming in, our economy will start growing at a faster pace, and we're going to like the results."
In the Senate the man he most wants to emulate is Marco Rubio of Florida because "he has the warmth and communication skills that I like." Can he fill the shoes of Jim DeMint, who is leaving to become the president of the Heritage Foundation? "I doubt it because there is only one Jim DeMint, not two. But I have a desire to make sure that his consistent conservatism continues."
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/us/politics/tea-party-its-clout-diminished-turns-to-fringe-issues.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20121226
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/11/07/glenn-we-are-going-to-double-down/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2012-12-26_188428&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_188428_188441
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/01/07/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/03/20/cnn%E2%80%99s-erin-burnett-destroys-her-last-shred-of-credibility-with-blatant-smear-of-glenn-beck/
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It’s a well known fact around the Mercury offices that Glenn has pretty intense ADD. “Let’s do a fiction book!”"Let’s do an outdoor stage show with fireworks and special effects!”"Time to start a network!”"Green energy!”"Let’s cancel that fiction book and do a book on gun control”"3D Printers!”"Bigger 3D Printers!”. Seriously, it’s a problem. So when Glenn, who notoriously has trouble focusing on anything for more than five minutes, says there are stories and issues that he needs to stop and focus on, it’s time to listen up. After all, he often sees the big picture better than anyone in the mainstream media will admit. So what are the stories that Glenn thinks are going to be very important in the months ahead?
“We have been covering an awful lot of things and if you have been listening since I got into talk radio you have probably seen a change in me,” Glenn said.
“A lot of the people get into the talk radio because they want to be like Rush Limbaugh. I don’t. And I never really wanted to talk about the things that we talk about I’m much more of a creative guy, entertainment guy. I’m just different. And but I always wanted to be true to myself. Because I spent most of my career lying to myself.”
“I didn’t know what I believed. When I got a phone call from a listener on September 12th, it wasn’t the 11th. Somebody called and said what’s happening. And I said ‘I don’t know but I promise you I will find out.’ That was a life changing phone call.”
“This audience has changed me many, many times.”
“I don’t know anybody else on the radio that will admit to being wrong and being shaped by the audience, they’ve called me and said things that stuck with me.”
“We have a relationship that goes back for a long time and I told you two years ago that I sensed a change coming and I needed to be down here in Texas. Wasn’t really sure why, still not really sure why. We’re building a network. I’m not really sure why. I honestly — everything in me we have less time than it will take to build this network. So why am I wasting my time and my money on doing that?”
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“And then at the same time I’m compelled to do things like the ‘Man in the Moon’. Are you kidding me. Why is that? But believe it or not That Independence Week and the thing that we do like that, to me, make more sense than even building this network. Because we have to capture the hearts and minds of people. And nobody on our side is doing that.”
“But I have sensed since the election, and it is growing stronger, and I said to the boys this morning I don’t know how to verbalize it yet. I don’t know exactly what it is. But I think we have to focus, really focus, something that doesn’t usually happen with me, really focus on a few things. Because the time is coming to where you can’t be spread out so thin. We can’t hit all of these things. And I don’t mean this as a company. I mean this as a country.”
“And I wrote down the things that I think are going to be really important. That are going to be the stories of tomorrow. One is religious persecution. Most people are not covering this. We are working on some pretty shocking things that have not been covered on religious persecution. There’s a story up on TheBlaze about Egyptians torturing in mosques, torturing Coptic Christians. Horrible, horrible stuff is happening under the Muslim Brotherhood.”
“We’ve told you before the rise of the anti-semitism is rising at record levels not seen since the 1930s. But also religious persecution in some areas it will come where some people will persecute Muslims because they will deem them the enemy. And we have to stand up for people and their right to worship God as they choose and act on those beliefs, as long as it is not ‘submit or I kill you’. That’s not a belief that you can act on. And that’s not a belief that we should be standing up to protect. But, I believe these things will make us stronger,” Glenn said.
“Religious persecution is a big story we must follow.”
“Second one, and they’re in no particular order: education.The right and the necessity to preserve history. Your textbooks are a thing of the past. They are all going digital. They can be changed at a moment’s notice. The right and the responsibility to preserve true history. The right to teach our own children the way we choose to teach our own children. The right to protect, defend and not distort religion in our educational system.”
“And under education state sovereignty, local sovereignty and paramount parental sovereignty,” Glenn said.
“The next one is defense. You have a right to defend yourself. You have a right to have and carry arms. You have that right, and it shall not be infringed. Meaning it shall not be undermined and it shall not be altered in any way.
“We have a right to not only defend ourselves but we have a right to gather in groups, and gather and speak. Gather to tell the truth as we understand it. That means gathering in groups and speaking doesn’t mean anymore just getting together on the street corner. It means you have a right to gather in groups without government harassment on the Internet.”
“And while we’re at the Internet. We have a right to privacy. They cannot monitor you, track you, classify you without a warrant and a trial by a jury.”
“And last one is money and property. It’s more than money. It’s property. I have a right to do on my land what I choose to do on my land. I have a right to do with my money what I choose to do with my money. If I decide to hoard it all, and put it in mattresses I have a right to do that. If I choose to give it all away to charity I have a right to do that.”
“It is my money. It is the sweat of my brow. What is in my bank is mine. Not yours, not the state’s. If I’ve made an agreement, and I’m putting that in safekeeping you are to protect from the bank itself and from the government. What I have, what I have earned, my talent, my time – it’s mine.”
“It’s time that we really focus. It’s time that we really pick something that is near and dear to your heart. And I believe the line in the sand – as I was putting this list together here and I’m trying to figure out things, and I realize it comes down to 1791. It all comes down to the Constitution with the Bill of Rights, not just the Constitution. Remember, they wouldn’t sign it with just the Constitution. They demanded a Bill of Rights. The things that the government promises they will never ever violate. Ever. And they put them there for a reason, and we are now seeing the equal and opposite reaction to the violation of those rights. And the line in the sand is the Bill of Rights and we need to stand together and link arms.”
“Liberals and conservatives. People who worship God deeply profoundly and atheists. People who believe that the earth is all going to be incinerated because of my SUV and people who think that’s hogwash. And we fight it out on the battlefield of ideas.”
“But that ring, that battlefield, the rules are set up by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”
“Where we cannot mix is big government progressives – and they will have you believe in the G.O.P. thatthat problem is a liberal problem. No, it’s a progressive problem. And the person who started the progressive party is Theodore Roosevelt and he was a Republican.”
“Progressivism is what needs to be rooted out because progressivism was designed to thwart and dismantle piece by piece the Constitution of the United States of America. It really comes down to the Bill of Rights. And those things that are in it.”
“Why are drones wrong? Bill of Rights. Why is bailing out the banks wrong? The Bill of Rights. Why is what’s happening in the Cyprus, and it will come here? The Bill of Rights. Why is it I can’t put a tracking device on your car? Bill of Rights. Why can’t I tell your church to marry gays Bill of Rights. Why can’t I tell your church you can’t marry gays? Bill of Rights. All of it, Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights. Bill of Rights.”
“The line is being drawn in the sand. Don’t cross it. See where it is. Protect and defend it. This is the Alamo.”
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/03/28/sos-stand-against-%E2%80%98most-important%E2%80%99-piece-of-fundamental-transformation/
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http://live.wsj.com/video/wsj-live-presents-sen-ted-cruz-interviewed/F6CEFCDC-B21F-4A0B-83A0-C4B86888E64E.html#!F6CEFCDC-B21F-4A0B-83A0-C4B86888E64E
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DC, You Have a Problem
#DCintervention
WHAT: Go to your Senator’s office with a sign or a flag (or both) and hold a sign waving protest outside the office, then deliver a letter inside.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 16, 2013.
TIME: Noon, local time.
WHY? Because they’re drunk on power.
News Item #1: Speaker of the House John Boehner – leader of the Republican Party – said that the House will definitely act in some way on gun control legislation, and that he doesn’t need a GOP majority – his own party – to pass legislation.
News Item #2: The Senate voted to move forward on a gun-control bill before the bill had been released! Senator Pat Toomey, elected in the tea party wave of 2010 with grassroots tea party support, co-sponsored this direct attack on our 2nd Amendment rights. In doing so, he has given momentum to the forces that promise to “come back the very next day” to push for more control. There is a much higher chance now that the bill will pass. Read more from Gun Owners of America. Oh, and the reason for the “bipartisanship” on this bill? Boozin’ it up on Senator Manchin’s yacht.
News Item #3: Another Senator supported by the tea party and elected in 2010, Marco Rubio, is also breaking his promises and his oath. Rubio is the star spokesman of the Senate group working on an illegal immigration bill – completely behind closed doors, refusing to let the American people see the language. They won’t even let their colleagues in the Senate see the bill! The bill already comes to around 1500 pages and they are planning on holding only ONE hearing, and will allow zero amendments! They are altering the entire immigration system, something that will have far reaching consequences on everything – security, education, taxes, spending, welfare, culture, jobs, crime, etc., and they’re only allowing one hearing on it. Oh, and they are already admitting it won’t be “budget neutral,” meaning they plan on increasing spending to get this done.
THEY HAVE A PROBLEM AND THEIR ADDICTION IS FAILING US ALL.
• They break their promises and betray their oaths of office.
• They write thousand-page bills behind closed doors.
• They won’t hold public hearings or meetings about bills.
• They vote for bills before they’ve been released; before they’ve read them.
• They behave like rulers instead of public servants.
• They put politics over principle.
Please make every effort you can to come out on Tuesday the 16th to your Senator’s office at noon, local time, and tell everyone you know! Bring as many people as you can!
Check our website, www.teapartypatriots.org for updates and a tool kit that includes a letter to deliver to your Senator and sign ideas, a place to RSVP and locations you can go.
It’s time for an intervention. Will you join us?
Share this on Facebook and Twitter and GET THE WORD OUT.
WHAT: Go to your Senator’s office with a sign or a flag (or both) and hold a sign waving protest outside the office, then deliver a letter inside.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 16, 2013.
TIME: Noon, local time.
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Tuesday’s Protests – DC, You Have a Problem
Late last week we announced our #DCIntervention protests at Senators’ local offices across the country that will take place at noon local time tomorrow, April 16, 2013. We are still moving forward with these protests. While we understand that there are many who have loved ones who were impacted by the horrific events in Boston today, we encourage them to take care of their friends and family first. However, there are many other patriots who can continue to carry the torch to protect our constitution and the rule of law.
The message tomorrow is simple, follow the Constitutional process. We must move ahead with that message so that it does not get lost in the media storm that is sure to follow today’s events in Boston. While the authorities address the explosions, we the people must address the problems that will not go away just because the media’s attention is elsewhere.
However, it is more important than ever that our messaging be focused and united around our major points as we outlined yesterday:
• Stop writing legislation behind closed doors with a small group of people.
• Stop voting yes on bills that haven’t been read or haven’t even been released.
• Stop rushing through massive pieces of legislation before Congress and the American people understand the consequences and how we will all be affected.
• Let the sunshine in! We aren’t asking for a lot – just to be represented rather than ruled over.
Congress railroaded the American people with Obamacare, they did it with the Continuing Resolutions (i.e. spending bills), and they’re doing it right now. If we don’t call attention to it and tell them it’s unacceptable, they will continue to do it until we have no rights left.
AGAIN – please stay on message while at the protests. The media may be looking to stick a microphone in your face and get you on tape saying something about the bombings in Boston that they can twist. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Boston, and our beef with our Senators is about the lack of transparency and their disregard for the Constitution. They are completely separate issues; don’t let a reporter make you tie them together. And remember, you can always walk away from a reporter. You don’t have to answer their questions.
Don’t forget to access our Toolkit that has:
• A checklist so that you don’t forget anything!
• Petitions that we will deliver to the Senators in DC if you fax them back to us.
• Printable posters and suggested sign slogans.
• Letters to deliver to your Senators while you are there.
• Sample letters to the editor for your local newspapers.
• Talking points and resources with links to more information.
• Sample Facebook posts and Tweets for social media.
• A list of which Senators voted correctly last week.
Our hashtag on Twitter for tomorrow’s protests is #DCintervention. Please use it when you tweet!
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PODZaaMTwfg
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/22/beck-breaks-exclusive-information-on-saudi-national-allegedly-connected-to-boston-bombings/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/22/dhs-official-provides-new-details-maintains-innocence-of-saudi-national-once-considered-a-person-of-interest-in-boston-bombings/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/04/23/napolitano-admits-saudi-was-put-on-watch-list/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-04-23_215217&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_215217_215224
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My fluckin head is spinning right now!!!!
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/24/armed-and-dangerous-becks-latest-revelations-on-saudi-national-once-considered-person-of-interest-in-boston-bombings/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/04/24/armed-and-dangerous-becks-latest-revelations-on-saudi-national-once-considered-person-of-interest-in-boston-bombings/
Where is professional journalist Martha Radditz on this?
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/04/26/watch-oreilly-reacts-to-story-on-saudi-national/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-04-26_216349&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_216349_216357
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http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2013/05/05/achtung-baby-are-people-being-encouraged-to-rat-on-antigovernment-neighbors-n1587321/page/full
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http://townhall.com/columnists/douggiles/2013/05/05/achtung-baby-are-people-being-encouraged-to-rat-on-antigovernment-neighbors-n1587321/page/full
“We want people to call us if the guy down the street says he hates the government, hates the mayor and he’s gonna shoot him,” Bradshaw said. “What does it hurt to have somebody knock on a door and ask, ‘Hey, is everything OK?’ ”
Palm Beach County was home for Mohamed Atta and other 911 hijackers briefly, but the example they give to watch for is the right wing kook.
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/encounters-with-911-hijackers-still-haunt-palm-bea/nLxgP/
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/04/
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/05/05/
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Glenn Beck Keynote (NRA Convention, Houston 2013)
Monday, May 6, 2013 at 7:32 AM PDT
Hello Texas! Thank you. It is a real honor to be here tonight.
We’re living in interesting times. I want to start with something I don’t think anybody else at the NRA has ever started with before: a picture of a naked hippie.
That’s actually going to play a role in the talk tonight, but I’ll come back to it in a minute.
The first time I spoke at the NRA, it was in Louisville, Kentucky. They gave me this gun. It was such an amazing honor for me, but it was also one of the most terrifying times in my life.
They were doing a retrospective of Charlton Heston because he had just died. And so this is the Charlton Heston gun. They had a gigantic 25 foot image of him behind me with him holding the gun just like this: “Out of my cold dead hands!”
Then they froze the image behind me and said: “This year we would like to award this rifle to Glenn Beck.”
Wayne leaned in and said: “Glenn, say something!”
So as I walked to the podium, I just thought “Don’t say ‘I hope you didn’t take it out of his cold dead hands, did you?’ Just don’t say that!”
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I have no idea what I said, but I know I didn’t say that!
Charlton Heston’s words were meant to wake people up.
He needed to shock us into realizing who our opponent really was: an out of control growing government under Jimmy Carter.
Today we are in a different place than we were in 1976.
The problem is worse today. It wasn’t just Jimmy Carter, just as it isn’t just this president. It’s not just the Democrats either—it’s the republicans too.
The problem is everywhere.
It’s in our media, churches, educational systems, in our own homes. It is the Progressive ideology, which is antithetical to our Constitutional Republic. They want to fundamentally transform the country.
We used to ask how did this happen? If we’re here to tell the truth then we must accept much of the blame as well, since even our families are imploding.
Our Constitution, our rights, our way of life is at stake.
The Freedom of all mankind is at stake. And because of that, so are our souls.
As I have prepared my remarks over the past few weeks, I wondered what your reaction would be tonight as well as the reaction of the rest of the country.
I am going to take a different approach from what many might expect. Parts of it will be a bit tough, but they have to be said.
I grew up in the small farming town of Mt. Vernon Washington. I have also lived in midtown Manhattan. I have picked raspberries and hunted pheasants on my grandfather’s farm. I have been in the boardrooms of the powerful on Wall Street.
In the end here is what I know: I am blessed to have grown up in America.
I cherish my country and the way I was raised, but I also know we are all unique, and I respect the way you grew up as well.
I understand that many can’t understand me or the what I believe, and I’m okay with that. I don’t understand many in New York, but I appreciate the difference. Until recently, it seemed, we were all okay with our differences and we tended to get along.
We have a tough journey ahead.
This weekend, I believe, is one of the most important moments in history for America and certainly the NRA
It is right for this convention to happen in TX. Because this is where the Alamo happened. It’s where “Draw a line in the sand” came from.
General William Travis knew he had to stand on one side of the line, because it was right for him. He did not hold contempt for others who chose differently. He just said: “Best be goin’…”
If we are going to stand and fight we must love those who choose a different path.
We must also know 4 things:
-What we fight
-Who we fight
-Why we fight and most importantly,
-How we fight.
The media would have you believe that we’re silly, selfish, and think our gun rights and our guns are more important than our own children.
But we believe they are important because of our children.
Where the real rub begins is that the progressive elite believes it can make choices better than we can.
Choices on what we eat, what we drive, what we believe is moral and immoral, how to raise our children, and even if— and how— we can worship our God.
They think we’re wrong so they must regulate us until we comply.
I will not comply.
We, on the other hand, believe that it is they who are in error.
And we are once again ready to live as Americans always have: we agree to disagree. We appreciate our freedoms—or as they would say ‘celebrate the diversity!’—and return to focus on those things that unite us rather than divide us.
There are those who believe in the philosophies of man, whether it’s Marx and Engle or Saul Alinsky’s rules of divide and conquer.
We not only believe those ideas are wrong, we also believe them to be dangerous and evil.
We stand against those who want to close our hearts by absolving us of our own personal responsibilities and duties to each other. Who want to force us to accept a faceless bureaucracy and call it charity. Charity is not something a government forces you to do; charity is something that our belief in God compels us to do.
There are Americans who really think they know better than everyone else. They truly believe they should be put in charge of making choices because their choice will be better than ours.
We think they are arrogant and wrong. America has been calling out for someone to take responsibility. The culture of ‘pass the buck’ is so prevalent that our ‘bucks’ no longer have any value.
Tonight, that era of shame ends now.
And it begins with us. Here we are, millions of Americans and NRA members. And millions more who are home who aren’t NRA members, who aren’t Democrats or Republicans but are willing to stand and declare the ‘buck stops here’
I not only will take responsibility but will cry out for my God given right to own, not only my choices, but my consequences. This is our biggest difference. Not rights, but responsibilities.
A righteous cause must be cemented in the truths of the past, but because the world is dynamic we must build on those truths. Patrick Henry once said, “give me liberty or give me death!” But may I clarify and deepen its meaning?
It is time to say, “Give me responsibility or give me death” for there is no real liberty, no real freedom if one is not allowed to make his/her own choices and then fully accept the responsibility of those choices.
We fight against those who stand against what our founders called nature’s laws. They believe they are qualified to make decisions for the collective.
May I humbly remind them that God himself does not make decisions for the collective? God himself sent His son to help individuals. God himself saves the individual, thus saving the collective.
While we have a responsibility to love, help, and care for one another, in the end, it is each of us taking responsibility as it is the only way to progress as individuals and as a people.
We fight against those who deny the Creator, His power and then have the audacity to grant to themselves the collective power which even God denies himself.
Please hear me clearly: this is not presidents or parties. We wrestle against those powers and principalities, against the rulers of the darkness of this world. We stand against spiritual wickedness in high places. And we fight them with the eternal truths that man once felt were so obvious that they were declared self-evident.
I believe we were all born at this time for a reason. We were born here at this time with a profound responsibility to ensure that the flame of liberty is not snuffed out.
It will be up to the people in this room, and anywhere upon the face of the earth, who carry the understanding and can verbally defend nature’s God and nature’s law.
It is in the hands of those in this room and all with eyes and ears to protect man’s liberties and set this ship right to once again begin the long march toward true freedom.
I find myself in a strange position; I’m the owner of a growing media company. I’m not beholden to any special interest groups or parties. I can’t tell you that I’m afraid to speak the truth, and I will speak the truth.
A couple months ago, I instructed my editors at The Blaze to report on stories where people who used a gun saved the day. We hear all the other stories. About three months ago, right after the Sandy Hook shootings I wanted to find the stories of everyday people who had saved lives with guns. And with very rare exceptions, we’ve had a new story on the front page every day for the last 100 days.
My partner on the radio Pat said to me: “Glenn, have you been looking at The Blaze? Every day there’s a new story about someone who’s stopped a rape or a robbery with a gun! It’s like a new epidemic of good with guns!”
I said, “Pat, there’s no epidemic. I’ve just made a policy that we do actual honest journalism.”
Let me give you a couple of the stories:
On April 4, just one month ago, in Portland Oregon, a woman was attacked around 10pm after she had gotten out of her car.
A man approached her from behind and dragged her backwards by her ponytail.
We know what would have happened next. But this woman had a gun. She pointed it at the man. He fled.
A week earlier, in Youngstown, Ohio, an elderly woman strapped to an oxygen tank was at home, and she saw the shadow of a man lurking outside her window. Then her front door rattled. Then glass broke.
The man was inside her home.
She retrieved her revolver and she called out: “Leave me alone!” “Get out of here!”
But the guy kept coming at her. So she shot him and held him at gun point in her kitchen until police arrived.
Then a few weeks before that, in Dickinson, Texas, there’s a home invasion, and the attackers were sexually assaulting a woman and her daughter. An unspeakable horror.
The woman’s young son was tied up, but broke from his restraints and grabbed the family handgun. Upon seeing the gun, the two men fled from the home.
It happens every day. And the Blaze is the only major media outlet in the country with the guts to report it.
Guns save lives. Guns protect homes and businesses. Guns protect our children.
And only in very rare occasions are they used by madmen to kill our children.
The truth is that guns on so many occasions are the only difference between your mom or sister getting raped and them walking home unmolested. It happens all the time. And it can happen to anyone.
The other side knows this and have counted on a compliant and willing partner in the mainstream media to overlook these stories. They are counting on you not to be able to find these stories.
But what they haven’t counted on are broadcast entities like mine and bloggers like Michelle Malkin, Dana Loesch, Ben Shapiro, and others.
What they didn’t count on or see coming……is you. Your willingness to share these stories To Tweet, Facebook, or even email them to friends.
They are counting on organizations like the NRA and people who have committed to stand to fold out of fear. They’re counting on us to be quiet. They’re counting on our soldiers to come home, sit down and be quiet, to not to have the courage like so many soldiers who come home and tell the truth like Marcus Luttrell and Chris Kyle—nor his sweet wife who will now power-on and pick up the torch.
You see, they don’t know us.
They didn’t foresee the Colorado sheriffs who stood up to Obama’s gun-grabbing measures or the officers who were told “it was in their best interest” to be at the Denver police academy to stand behind the president’s anti-gun measures. Because they answer to a higher power and because they know the truth, they refused to betray the idea of freedom of conscience and the Bill of Rights.
Let me tell you something that the sheriffs knew: it’s never in our “best interests”… to sit down, shut up, and be quiet.
It is always right to stand, always right to speak, and always right to defend the truth.
No matter how high the price, we know that there is a difference between right and wrong, and it is far past time for us to begin declaring it. Never give up. Never give in.
Since when in America is standing up against your own beliefs “your best interests?”
Some of our friends who don’t understand why we make such a big deal out of what is happening don’t understand. They think it’s not about guns. It’s not.
It’s about the right of conscience and the responsibility to keep them secure for future generations.
Progressives want the Second Amendment to be overlooked… but we’re making it clearer: “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed!”
A man goes out and commits an unspeakable act of horror with a gun. Don’t blame the gun. Don’t blame my gun or your gun or the NRA.
It is not the gun that commits unspeakable acts, it’s the individual.
A gun’s power— for good or for evil— is merely a reflection of the hands that holds it.
I have been looking for gunst hat tell the story and teach the story of the 2nd Amendment.
I want to start with this:
Barbary Powers Rifle
This is a gun that was used the first time we fought Islamic Extremists. Most people don’t even realize that’s what the Barbary Pirates were. It was on the shores of Tripoli.
Why were our marines called leather necks? ‘Leather’ implied you couldn’t be beheaded by the Muslim extremists.
Most people don’t even realize. Thomas Jefferson wrote in his version of the Koran printed by the U.S. government—the Koran in which he warned us about Islam—he didn’t want to have a foreign war, but we were paying 75% of everything that we had over in bribes to the Barbary pirates, so he sent the marines over. This gun was used against the marines.
But this is not a Barbary pirate gun, although it is decorated as one. This was first used in the American Revolution by a British soldier against us. That soldier was killed. The gun was then picked up and used by an American soldier against the British. Then that American died fighting on the shores of Tripoli and was picked up by the Muslim extremists.
So which is this gun? Is it good or is it evil. It is nothing but a gun. A gun is only a reflection of the people that use it.
It is the man, not the gun. People are different but the gun remains the same. When you get past the politics, when you get past the media, and you get to have a conversation with people of any party, any class or when you get to have an honest conversation, people will agree: this is crazy what’s going on…
How do we even protect our kids? Our families? I’m worried that our children aren’t going to have the opportunities that I had.
I’m worried about the kind of country that they are growing up in, which brings us to why we fight.
We have to have that conversation tonight: ‘how do I protect myself and my children and my loved ones? How do they protect themselves?’
We fight because we actually want to fix things.
Our families and our society are sick.
We have become a nation that is numb to the horrors of death unless it serves a political purpose.
Our ambassador is butchered in Benghazi, our military is told to look the other way and leave men to die on the battlefield, and the media fails to report it.
Our media does not report that it is too often safer to walk down the streets of Baghdad than Chicago, and yet the elites call the NRA and its members killers.
We would never discuss the fact that an abortion doctor in Philadelphia literally had jars of baby feet on his desk.
As we look away from the slaughter house and the fact that 41% of all pregnancies in NY end in abortion, our president becomes a champion for the over the counter abortion pill for 15 year olds.
Our society is sick. But while we are struggling on how to fix these things, we also have to beat back the power grabbers and their lies.
We know that the only thing that can stop someone from committing murder or from threatening our life is a law-abiding citizen who has a gun and knows how to use it.
If we’re really interested in solutions. That’s one. Because gun-free zones will do nothing but prevent the good guys from bringing a gun to school.
In the People’s Republic of Cambridge, they actually have a nuclear-free zone. I love that. No nuclear weapons in Cambridge! I feel so much better.
It’s a hate-free zone, too. No HATE!
What could possibly happen? Besides the fact that two of their own citizens plotted mass murder right there in nuclear-free, Kumbaya Cambridge. And you know what, they did it with a weapon of mass destruction.
Yes, believe it or not, that’s what they’ve labeled my grandmother’s summer pastime. This pressure cooker is a weapon of mass destruction.
Have we gone insane? Have we gone insane!
Yes we have.
After the Sandy Hook massacre, the government went in, seized the opportunity, exploited these families, and pushed for more control over our lives. It’s immoral.
Meanwhile they left our communities with “gun-free zones”
And for criminals, all that means is: “zero-opposition zone.”
The American People have the facts on their side. But the American people don’t know the facts.
We have the Constitution on our side. But we don’t know the Constitution anymore.
We have the truth on our side. But how many people can even recognize the truth?
The only way you can control a free people is to lie. The bigger the lie, and the longer you deny reality, the more apt people are to believe it.
Yet, someone will always stand up, and those who seek to control must make an example of them—smear them, isolate them, mock them, destroy them so the truth is no longer relevant. And nobody wants to talk about it any more.
“OK, 2+2 = 5!”
They call us rednecks, right-wing, anti-government and Christians. And people believe them, especially those who never grew up around guns, who are legitimately confused about the NRA and the right to bear arms. These are the people we need to reach out to because they really think the gun is evil. They really believe that we are the ones responsible for killing all those children at Sandy Hook, Aurora, Columbine, and the rest. They have accepted the media lie that the NRA is malicious.
And I don’t blame them. When your kids are being carted out of a classroom with a paper gun, with enough indoctrination, you would too.
It takes a lot of work to get around all of the lies of an out of control government and a media in collusion. And there’s another reason why people believe it. When a society is this sick and you are on overload as a parent, if someone gives you an easy answer, you snap at it because it’s convenient.
It’s easy, and it doesn’t require us to examine our lives or our role as a citizen or parent. Now, only 35% own a gun and that number is decreasing.
So let’s be clear:
Let’s talk about facts. Let’s talk about history. I don’t want you to take my word for any of this—look it up yourself. Do your own homework.
Let’s start by making something abundantly clear, over and over again.
Guns have lifted people out of poverty and over ands over have allowed the oppressed to rise up against tyranny.
Those who seek control ask: “How could you defend the use of guns…how irresponsible…”
“The gun is the most dangerous thing on the planet.”
They say no other country in the world has the problem America has with gun massacres.
“We need to be more like England where the police use batons. The only way to save the lives of our children is to ban assault-weapons and control the people’s right to own a gun.”
Our president said: “If there’s even one thing we can do, one life we can save—don’t we have an obligation to try?”
Let’s start here, Mr. President. I’m gonna explain why that’s wrong. using your logic: Mr. President, you authorized the killings of more than 176 innocent children in Pakistan. These children didn’t do anything. I have to say, these children were just as innocent as the ones who died at Sandy Hook.
Adam Lanza killed 20 children. Your use of drones killed 176 children. I’d say you’re the priority if we use your logic.
Mr. President, “if we want to save innocent children” we need to start by taking that button out of your hand.
It’s not about the drones. It is not about the war. It is not about the guns.
Let me clarify for those in the media: I am not acusing the president of killing children even though the President has accused Wayne La Pierre and the NRA of killing children.
We will not use the tools of Saul Alinsky.
We have read the Rules for Radicals, which starts with “a tip of the hat—to the first radical Lucifer.”
We will not tip our hat to Satan. We will bend our knee to God and let us honestly seek the truth.
We must remain calm and rational. We must hold on to logic.
Because in the heat of battle, people make mistakes out of fear. In the moment of battle, you make irrational decisions b/c you just want it to stop.
If you look at the countries that have banned guns, it’s always because of an emergency.
So let’s fix reason and logic firmly in her seat, question with boldness, and accept the answers that science and facts give us whether they hurt us or help us.
Let’s look at the countries that have rapidly undergone efforts to ban guns:
In every single place that all guns or handguns are banned,
the murder rates go up.
Compared to all other developed nations, the highest murder rates are not in America but in those countries which have the strictest gun control laws.
Should we ban guns and be more like England? Gun-related crimes doubled in England within a decade of guns being banned.
And 4 years after guns are banned, the English Bobby began to carry guns for the first time.
Ban guns, gun deaths double.
Mass killings are becoming an epidemic? No they’re extraordinarily rare.
513 people have been killed in mass killings since 1983.
That’s far too many. But 3,696 people have been killed by lightning in the same 30 years.
There are 30,000 firearms related deaths per year they say.
But what they won’t tell you is that 65% of those, including the one 2 days ago, are suicides.
Most of the remaining 35 % are for self-protection.
Or they are cops in the line of duty.
Once you factor suicide, cops, and protection that murder rate gets cut by over half.
The murder rates are less than half of what they were during the Great Depression. That seems to imply that the more people out of work, the more murders occur. I would bet that the same would be true for suicides—The Blaze verified that the man who shot himself at the Airport Thursday had just been fired.
So maybe you don’t need to ban guns.
If you want to save lives, Mr. President, fix the economy. Create jobs. If you want to reduce violence don’t close gun stores, or increase regulation or buy up all the bullets, remove the tax burden and clear the path for small businesses so that they can create jobs.
Facts matter. They say we have one of the highest murder rates in the world. But if you take out the gun-related deaths in cities like Chicago, Detroit, D.C., or New Orleans—where gun laws are the strictest—America would have one of the lowest murder rates in the world.
When you take out these progressive cities, America goes from the country with the third highest rate to one of the bottom ten.
When someone argues for gun-control, they are either living in self-imposed ignorance or they’re not arguing about guns. Simply control.
For us, tonight and every day forward, we must be about educating ourselves and our families and dedicating our lives to man’s liberty. It must become about the responsibility we keep for ourselves as citizens. And to make sure we give no more of our power to those in government at any level.
But we also understand many of our fellow citizens don’t want to accept more responsibility. That is why New York City has Mayor Bloomberg.
In fact, I’ve come up with a slogan…and this one, New York and Mayor Bloomberg, you will love!
You WILL LOVE NY!
Progressives like Mike Bloomberg know better than you but he also claims he doesn’t have to live under those rules. For instance, he said because of global warming, New York needed a law so you couldn’t leave your car idling—but of course he doesn’t like to get into a hot car so he lets his car idle.
When he got caught he said: “OK what’s fair is fair,” and he instead got an air conditioner that most of use in their apartment in NY, built a special contraption, and put it in his car.
He wants to control every aspect of your life, he wants to control what you drink, what you eat, how you eat, how much you eat.
He even talked recently he doesn’t think he could force everyone in NYC to exercise. Excuse me? You don’t think?
Progressives think they’re different They’re special.
They are the ranchers and we are the cattle.
There are members in congress who are absolutely pro-gun control but think it’s an outrage that YOU should have a gun.
But they carry a gun because they’re different.
Michael Moore is as anti-gun as it gets. His security guards have been arrested twice at an airport for carrying an illegal weapon in New Jersey. You shouldn’t have a gun—but Michael Moore needs one.
Even the first Progressive president, Theodore Roosevelt, had a gun. So don’t tell me the disease of Progressivism doesn’t affect both sides, because the man who started the Progressive movement was a Republican.
Teddy Roosevelt had the ultimate security system.
He had the secret service. He had them at his door, his entry way, all the way to his bedroom, but God forbid someone get past them, he wanted the chance to shoot the attacker before they shot him.
Theodore Roosevelt’s Nightstand Pistol
He had his own gun in the nightstand. Why would this president need a gun?
He’s different, “Because he has people who want to hurt him!” He doesn’t need a wallet, a driver’s license, he doesn’t need to drive because secret service does it. So why would he need to keep a gun?
Hollywood stars have Protective details. Not everyone can afford armed security, Jim Carrey, but everyone should be afforded a chance to survive.
I am sorry to say I don’t trust someone else with my family’s safety. How could anyone believe that the government is best at protecting us when they failed to notice three out of the four Boston bombing suspects overstayed their visas and one of them was deported on national security grounds by one arm of DHS only to be granted reentry by another three weeks later.
But it is more than incompetence. The Second Amendment was written because of our natural rights. And we have the responsibility to throw off the chains of tyranny.
But that sounds old fashioned, doesn’t it? That’s what progressives will tell you, they’ll use that old fashioned thing. They will always tell you: “You know, the founders only had flintlocks and couldn’t see the AR- 15.”
Maybe they couldn’t see the AR-15.
But whether or not they could isn’t what’s important. Why they wrote the words they did is what matters.
And if you don’t like the Constitution, use the constitutional process to change it. The Founders made that possible.
But there is only one way to do it. It’s simple, but not easy. It’s called an Amendment.
The founders were not anti-progress, they were anti-control. They not only expected change, they embraced it but change through the rule of law and the constitution, not around it with an executive order.
The founders, they may not have seen the AR-15.
However, President Obama, Mr. Bloomberg, and Joe Manchin –and Pat Toomey…they were sure the hell smart enough to see you coming.
The founders warned of the “monopoly of violence.”
Because they knew that governments could turn against their people.
And if the government had a monopoly of violence, tyranny would go undefeated. If you don’t believe me… ask the Japanese-Americans who spent the war in internment camps.
If you don’t think our government can do terrible things to its citizens? Explain this:
The Lakota Indians were asleep by the river when the US troops arrived on a freezing December morning. For everyone’s protection, the troops began to enter the tents of the sleeping Indians and confiscate their guns.
One boy, a deaf boy, tried to hold onto his gun. Trying to explain that he had paid a lot for it. In the struggle to hang onto it, the gun discharged.
The US Soldiers stepped back and unloaded on the group of around 300 men, women, and children. 150 were killed, another 51 wounded. Others tried to run to the creek, only to be caught and killed by the soldiers. Without any defense.
The Creek was called “Wounded Knee.” The year was 1890. To emphasize to the press the urgency and necessity of disarming those savage Indians, twenty medals of honor were awarded to the American Soldiers. That’s more than awarded for
D-Day…only four.
Battle of the Bulge…seventeen.
Pearl Harbor…fifteen.
Rifle from Massacre at Wounded Knee
This gun belonged to a member of that tribe.
If you wish to excuse the internment camps or Wounded Knee, ask what gun control meant to the Average African-American of the South in 1850. Or even after they were freed in 1880s.
After the emancipation proclamation, slavery was over, but not really, as we all know it. It’s why Martin Luther King marched. It didn’t end. Why?
The proslavery Democrats in the South tried disarming blacks because it was the last thing that they could do to prevent them truly witnessing freedom. Even after they were declared free and were reading, educating themselves, trying to lift themselves up out of poverty, up from slavery, as Booker T. Washington would say.
The very last attempt to keep them in check was gun control.
If they weren’t allowed to protect themselves, it wouldn’t matter how much knowledge they had. It would all be meaningless in the face of a gun or a midnight raid or a torch or a sword.
You have a right to life. The Democrats were not happy about this at all, and they had the power in the South and they weren’t going to change—war or no war.
The Democrats had the terrorist organization called the “Ku Klux Klan,” which was killing blacks, but not only blacks, any white who supported the integration into the Union as full citizens of any black man or woman. So, the Klan would kill anybody, but they loved to kill blacks, and they really loved to kill who they called “RADICAL REPUBLICANS.” Those were the Republicans who supported racial integration and equality for all.
Our history is so screwed up that they try to make all white people racists.
Both Republicans and blacks ended up on the KKK kill list, and so the Klan went around burning and lynching families, killing them, whites, blacks, just out of sheer hatred. 25% of all the lynchings in America were of white people who had committed to stand and fight for the liberties of all men.
A lot of times, people couldn’t do anything about it because they didn’t have a gun, because their gun was taken away.
Now, if you don’t have a gun, and the Klan comes knocking at your door, how is that freedom, exactly?
You could protect yourself if you have a right to use a gun, have a gun, keep it on you. The left will ask “why do you need more than a couple of bullets or what are you going to hunt with more than 6 rounds?”
If the Klan or the Crips or any of the gangs coming across the border unimpeded come to my neighborhood, I may require more than 6 bullets.
Unfortunately the people who need this more than anything is Americans will not see or hear it. They are those Americans who are trapped in the violence, death, and despair of our inner cities; It’s the death and despair by progressive governments and a collective whose failing schools were designed not to teach about personal responsibility and freedoms.
Teach them their own history so they may join us in the understanding that universal access to firearms is indistinguishable from emancipation.
I ask you: please, do not to take my word for it. Do your own homework.
It’s not about safety, it is about control. At a time in our country’s history when the average twelve year old could go out and buy a gun.
At a time in the 1950s where over 60% of Americans had a gun in their home, some Americans still struggled to feel the true impact of God given rights.
In Alabama in 1956 you needed a permit to carry a gun.
A black preacher who knew his rights and, more importantly, knew history, took his job as a father and his duty to protect his family seriously, and as things heated up he did the right thing—as a law abiding citizen he went to his police station and applied for a permit to carry a gun.
Unfortunately, because he was considered a challenge to the people who were in control of the system the Alabama police told Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King:
We’d like to have someone like you have a gun, but for your own safety, Sir, we just don’t think you should have one.
He was denied his right to carry a gun for his own safety.
Is there anybody within the sound of my voice that believes he was denied a concealed carry because it was in his best interest?
If we’re really concerned and serious about getting guns out of the hands of people who have proven themselves irresponsible and dangerous with guns,
Then we need to tell the truth:
Racists like James Earl Ray killed one.
Disturbed kids like Adam Lanza kill 26,
but our own history shows that
governments kill millions.
Let me come back to the picture of a naked hippie. And just so members of the press don’t get confused….
Early morning in California when a resident called the police to say that he saw a ‘naked hippie’ shooting birds. The California authorities responded by taking his gun away.
Charles Manson Shotgun
It was this gun.
Why am I telling you this story? Because it’s not the gun because the naked hippie went away without his gun but returned as helter skelter, a man known as one of the most brutal mass murders on record: Charles Manson.
He didn’t use a gun, he and his followers used knives.
It’s the intent and the person. It is the individual, not the weapon.
We must admit two things; that weapons will always find their way into the hands of bad people, but guns remain in the hands of good people. This is the beginning of the path to our solution: good people who are willing to stand.
9/11- Walter Reaver’s Revolver
September 11th, 2001. A moment in history that will define this generation. While victims were running away, men, were running into those buildings. Amazing men like young Walter Weaver, a member of the NYPD and an NRA life member. He was last seen in the world trade center trying to rescue people. He was in the lobby trying to free people trapped in an elevator. A servant fighting for the individual’s freedom until the very end.
After the towers fell and the nation mourned, we sifted through the rubble, this is all that was left as a reminder of Walter Weaver. A silent token of liberty.
Walter Weaver, I’m sure wouldn’t want to be called a hero.
He was simply an American.
He was an example of what we all should be—men, who just do the right thing when time calls our name.
When there is an emergency or trouble we are the ones that should run to help. We must be the action on the other end of the 911 call.
I don’t know, but I believe Walter Weaver would tell you that he wasn’t trained to be hero by the police academy.
But he was raised in a culture that taught him about self-sacrifice and to always do the right thing, even when no one else is watching. He had those things long before he wore a uniform.
How many of us can say that.
Good cops, bad cop, it doesn’t mean you take all the badges. It’s the people, not the badge.
As good as the policemen in our country are. When you are in trouble the average Police response rate is 8 minutes; most crimes take less than one.
If a responsible citizen with a gun had been in that movie theater in Colorado, or if members in the audience in that theater were allowed to bring their gun into the theater and not leave them locked in their cars, how many lives would have been saved?
How many of the mourning, children would instead have been able to spend time over breakfast with their mom or dad this morning if someone good was allowed to have a gun?
While our politicians from the local to the federal level have spent us into oblivion, and our public services are being obliterated and our police force is being cut.
I will no longer accept the media falsehood nor reinforce it by calling our brave men and women in blue on our cities and streets first responders. It’s time for America to recognize WE are the first responders.
They are the 2nd responders, we are the first responders.
When there is trouble let us be the first on the scene to help.
Let us be the first responder when someone is sick or hungry or frightened.
Let us be the first to share our bread with the hungry; Let us be the first to open our hearts to the homeless poor; Let us be the first to remove the yoke of injustice.
I don’t know what America will choose. But for me and my family, I choose to stand with courage. I choose to stand with selflessness. I chose to stand with God with Malice toward none and charity to all.
That’s who we are.
Forget what the media says, I know that’s who we are.
Our freedom is under attack. Our liberty and way of life is being legislated out of existence. Our rights are being diminished by a ruling power…an elite class is growing out of control.
We are in a really a precarious position, America. We have a government that is run by radicals actively working against us.
And there are politicians in the Democratic and Republican Parties who don’t fully understand that you’re dealing with a different enemy who is playing for the entire world.
They aren’t just tinkering around the edges anymore.
They are going after America at her very core.
Because they know: if you lose the 2nd Amendment
You lose the 1st, the 4th , the 5th, the 10,th the 14th, the 19th, then all you’ll be left with is the 16th Amendment, the income tax one.
And maybe if you’re lucky…you might still have that one about quartering soldiers.
Charlton Heston already stood in 1976
He drew that line in the sand. I will not give up my weapon. I will not comply. I will stand and fight.
But we must now define what it means to fight and it must allow us to remain true to who we are. Tonight begins a new chapter in the fight for liberty.
One that is about more than just our cold dead hands…it’s about the hearts of good people and the active minds of a free people, the actions of a righteous people.
It’s about who we are. As Americans, proud Americans with a cause greater than ourselves.
I believe it is time not to run from labels – instead embrace those things that will be the only life preserver of any value. Let us declare without shame: Yes- I will cling to my God and my guns.
He is my rock, and they are central to our foundation.
In the coming days I will announce an effort with major partners who know the time of our day.
I hope the NRA will join me on this.
We must begin to teach the American people how to stand for civil rights, with the same vigor and discipline that was taught to Alveda King and those around her by her Uncle Martin. We must learn what it means to passively resist.
Let us resist in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
This is the underground railroad and the lunch counters, and Tiananmen Square. Most God-fearing Americans have always associated things like ‘peace’ activists, sit-ins and resistance with pot smoking, naked hippies. By doing so, we have dismissed their power and their roots.
Because the cultural icon of that decade was the naked hippie we missed the truth, which truly moved us forward.
That free love had nothing to do with freedom and worse, love love should not be confused with sex.
The true and powerful message of the 1960s was that God demands equal justice and equal rights for all of his children. That was the center of MLK movement. And so we must pick up that truth again.
We must not respond in kind by getting angry, by playing dirty,
by calling the Progressives names and striking out .
Because we know who they are, we chose not be like them. Let’s not give them that satisfaction nor the media the story they’ve already written. We are better than that. We are the law abiding, god fearing members of the NRA.
We are Americans. We will be clear, and we will stand, we will march if we have to, but we will not be moved.
Our right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. We will follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ, Frederick Douglass, Winston Churchill, Thomas Paine, Dietrich Bonheoffer, Ben-Gurion, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, and MLK.
Hear me now: “We Shall Overcome!”
Let us not talk about cold dead hands, but rather the people who have a cause to use them. It is not the gun, the knife or, as Cain discovered with Able, a rock but the cold heart filled with error and darkness that must be corrected.
So we will use these hands and our warm hearts to lift up, learn, teach, help and heal. We will work together side by side, white, black, Hispanic or native-American. It doesn’t matter because we don’t see those divisions.
WE will work together as Americans not only to preserve our rights, but the rights of our children to be safe, our wives and daughters to not be held at knife or gunpoint by a rapist and our most precious and vulnerable little ones to have the right to survive a simple walk down a city street or, God forbid, survive a day of public education.
It is not our cold dead hands that will win this but as always when it comes to American victories, it is our strong backs, our strong will, and the ability to adapt and learn and our warm hearts filled with love for all mankind that will compel us to defend all men’s right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Churchill said, we shall not falter, we shall not fail. I will tell you if America falls, the entire world falls into darkness, so I will add: we cannot falter, we cannot fail.
We will not be the generations that historians look back to and question. We will not be the generation which loses mankind’s freedom
They will look back to us instead and with awe and inspiration that in our darkest times with the greatest reason for doubt or fear, we rose above it, pushed the darkness back, and held the torch of liberty high once again for all men of the world to see and aspire to.
I am not moving. Because I have the power of the ultimate truth:
Because I am on the side of nature’s law and nature’s god.
Jesus was a man of love, peace, and forgiveness. But make no mistake he was also immovable.
The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. We will fight by strapping on the full armor of God. We will stand firm with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the spirit.
We will fight your tactics of fear, we will fight your darkness.
We will fight your lies and we will counter them with love peace and equal justice for all mankind.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/10/shock-irs-formally-apologizes-for-inappropriately-flagging-conservative-group-in-the-2012-election/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/10/shock-irs-formally-apologizes-for-inappropriately-flagging-conservative-group-in-the-2012-election/
There should be criminal investigations regarding this conduct. Didn't Nixon do this?
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At the moment they are blaming it on low level flunkies , , ,
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At the moment they are blaming it on low level flunkies , , ,
Were they plumbers? :roll:
Yeah, mega federal bureaucracies where you can't scratch your ass without filling a dozen forms and getting approval from Washington suddenly just happen to have a sudden rash of rogue low level employees who just happen to target Buraq's enemy list. Funny how that works.
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348013/irs-inquisition-update
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/348013/irs-inquisition-update
Enemies list.
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/11/tea-party-targeted-senior-irs-bosses-knew-conserva/
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Posting this here for my future reference; have not watched it yet:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/05/28/were-looking-at-it-wrong-bestselling-author-explains-how-culture-really-changes/
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http://www.mediaite.com/tv/beck-fires-back-at-maddow-questions-her-intellectual-integrity-ive-never-been-called-a-conspiracy-theorist/
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The merits of these policies can be debated on privacy and security threads, but the political reality is a big split within the conservative movement. It also divides the left as these are now Obama policies exposed by the NSA leak, opposed by the ACLU and civil libertarians.
What a fatal, terrorist empowering shame it is that with the IRS abuse and other scandals that we don't trust our national security apparatus to sniff out and hunt down terrorists.
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The WSJ quite descriptively calls it "A Tea Party Blindspot"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578527312872991902.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
"... both the Constitution and laws of war make no distinction between an American and foreign terrorist. Anyone who takes up arms as a declared enemy of the United States, fails to wear a uniform and targets civilians is an illegal enemy combatant, regardless of passport. The Supreme Court affirmed this principle in 1942 in a case involving Nazi saboteurs, including a U.S. citizen, who were caught on the U.S. East Coast and tried and executed by a military court.
Where a terrorist is captured is also immaterial. By offering special protections to those already on U.S. soil, Mr. Goodlatte and his ACLU allies would provide al Qaeda and other terror networks with a perverse incentive to recruit in America. Contrary to Kentucky Senator Rand Paul's assertions, terrorists certainly consider the U.S. to be part of the global terror battlefield. Ask any New Yorker."
...
"In practice the President has detained an American on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant only twice in 12 years."
...
"when the U.S. treated al Qaeda as a law enforcement problem and made itself more vulnerable to attack. The tea party-ACLU condominium is threatening to blur the laws of war with the rules of civilian justice in a way that could jeopardize U.S. security. Let's hope they fail."
Full coverage: https://subscribe.wsj.com/
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A few days ago I heard (on the Hannity show) an interview with a Tea Party activist.
He explained that as soon as their problems with the IRS became known, their
membership numbers imploded. Members and potential donors were scared off.
This may be the answer to the question as to what happened to the Tea Party before
last year's elections. They were an important presence in 2010, but 2 years later
they were hardly heard from (answer - people, generally, do not like the IRS
climbing up their pants).
Actually, I find it curious that - with all those billions spent on super computers
and high tech spying - what may have had by far the greatest impact, possibly of
historic significance - was plain old lack of integrity - and corruption - of
individuals working for the IRS.
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http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/we-will-no-longer-accept-the-lies-becks-prepared-remarks-for-washington-d-c-rally/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/03/politico-looks-at-becks-growing-empire/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/08/12/glenn-better-days-are-right-around-the-corner/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-08-12_243594&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_243594_243604
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323446404579009201942413702.html?mod=trending_now_1
With clipboard in hand and "don't tread on me" rattlesnake earrings dangling, Jenny Beth Martin, the woman sometimes described as the tea party's den mother, stood guard over the microphone at a Capitol Hill protest of the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups.
Lawmakers sweltered in a long line waiting to take the stage earlier this summer before a crowd of roughly 10,000 and a live Web audience. It was up to Mrs. Martin to decide who would get a turn.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a tea-party favorite, got two minutes. Louisiana Rep. John Fleming, after shedding his dark suit jacket and waiting half an hour, told Mrs. Martin he needed to vote on the House floor soon. "I'm doing the best I can," she replied. Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas showed up without an invitation—and didn't make the cut.
After a tough 2012 election season, the tea-party movement is on the rebound. Mrs. Martin, head of the Tea Party Patriots, is riding a revival of interest sparked by controversy over the IRS's much-publicized targeting of conservative groups. She says the Patriots, the tea party's largest umbrella group, suffered because of the IRS's refusal to grant it tax-exempt status but now is benefiting from the backlash. Her group's monthly donations, she says, have tripled recently, and its staff has doubled.
The uproar has revived media attention and renewed the intensity of many tea-party supporters. Just last week, Mrs. Martin says, the Patriots received a new letter from the IRS asking for additional information about the group's activities, including copies of all direct-mail solicitations and telemarketing scripts before the 2012 election and any advertising materials in 2013. "This is beyond anger and frustration," she says.
Public-opinion polls suggest the controversy has helped the movement's image. In a June 15 Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51% of Republicans said they had a positive view of the tea party, up from 42% in January, but still below the 63% recorded in December 2010. Among all adults, 26% had a positive view, up from 23% in January.
Mrs. Martin is trying to harness that energy to make tea-party voices heard when lawmakers are back home during the congressional recess this month. At the Atlanta airport recently at the start of a nine-day swing through seven states, she reviewed a map on the Patriots website of the weekend's scheduled appearances by lawmakers in their home districts and typed a message to her legions of Facebook and Twitter followers. She urged them to show up at those events and "remember the heated town halls of 2009," a reference to confrontations four years ago between conservative voters and lawmakers that put the tea party on the map.
That summer was when the movement took shape amid protests over President Barack Obama's proposed health-care overhaul. Today, health care has returned to the forefront as activists urge lawmakers to strip funds needed to implement the new health law, while also protesting a proposed overhaul of the immigration system.
"Jenny Beth personifies the conservative movement, re-energized by the administration's scandals this summer," says Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who is pushing to defund the health overhaul, even if that risks prompting a government shutdown. "She plays a leading role with the grass roots getting our message out to the mainstream" during the August recess and beyond.
Political operatives on both sides of the aisle acknowledge that the IRS scandal has reinvigorated the tea party. What remains open to debate, however, is whether the movement can sustain the momentum, and what it will mean for the Republican Party heading in to the 2014 midterm elections.
The tea-party faction already is gearing up for primary challenges against at least two Republican heavyweights, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, conservative activists say.
"Many traditional conservatives want the tea-party label—again—to distance themselves from the establishment," notes John Feehery, who advised several Republicans when they held leadership positions in Congress. He predicts the movement "will impact some Republican primaries in the midterm elections."
Brad Woodhouse, president of the liberal Americans United for Change and former communications director at the Democratic National Committee, says the tea party's renewed fervor won't translate to broader gains for the Republican Party. "The Republicans are already losing August, because they are fighting with each other…whipsawed between establishment and extreme factions," he says.
The Patriots aim to do two things for the movement: advise and train local groups, and support lawmakers and legislation consistent with its goal of "constitutionally limited, fiscally responsible government where free markets thrive."
At the dawn of the movement, Mrs. Martin was a suburban mother of twins who blogged about clipping coupons and planning meals after giving up her technology job at a national retailer to stay home outside Atlanta. She and her husband, Lee, filed for bankruptcy and lost their home when his business failed. Mrs. Martin says she cleaned neighbors' houses, refusing to apply for government assistance.
Like many conservatives, Mrs. Martin was caught up in a wave of populist anger over federal spending and the health-care overhaul. She was one of about 20 people who took part in an early conference call, convened via Twitter, that launched grass-roots gatherings that blossomed into the tea-party movement.
She and two others launched Tea Party Patriots. Her blogging, technology and local-advocacy skills suited her well for the work. She began traveling the country providing hands-on training for activists on expanding their local groups, speaking to the media and pressuring elected officials.
Tea-party activists helped the GOP gain control of the House of Representatives and install more conservative senators in the 2010 election. Mrs. Martin was named one of Time magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" that year, joining such luminaries as Bill Clinton and Taylor Swift. In her first-ever trip to New York City for the gala, she recalls telling the Time advertisers seated at her table, "I'm sorry you got stuck with me."
Patriots board member Ernest Istook, a former Republican congressman from Oklahoma, says Mrs. Martin's national visibility and 400,000-person donor base impressed the board, which made her the group's sole leader. "Jenny Beth understood that even a grass-roots movement needed organizational structure," Mr. Istook says. She took control of a $24 million budget, and earns nearly $250,000 a year.
At the behest of a wealthy donor, Mrs. Martin undertook a personal makeover, losing 70 pounds, changing her hairstyle and overhauling her wardrobe. She began traveling with an assistant.
One problem dogged the group: The Patriots didn't have tax-exempt status, a disincentive to some potential donors. The group had applied for such status in late 2010 but says it had heard nothing from the IRS during all of 2011.
To qualify for tax-exempt status, organizations are supposed to conduct "social welfare" activities, and can't be primarily engaged in partisan politics or electioneering.
Other tea-party groups were experiencing similar problems. Their leaders have said that they received letters demanding additional information, including names of donors, books read, every contact ever made with any politician and all materials ever distributed. "It was harassment, pure and simple, to weaken us going into the 2012 election," Mrs. Martin says.
Mrs. Martin says many local groups couldn't afford legal fees, so her lawyers and accountants answered questions for them. She also urged members to complain to congressional representatives. Members of some small tea-party groups, including their leaders, simply dropped out, says Darcy Kahrhoff, former president of the Katy Tea Party, in Texas.
"I kept telling everyone—including the big donors who wouldn't give to us without our nonprofit status—that the IRS appeared to be targeting tea-party groups," Mrs. Martin says. "But no one believed us."
An IRS spokesman says federal law "prohibits the IRS from discussing specific taxpayers or situations." Documents released in June confirmed that the IRS flagged liberal as well as conservative groups, but left unclear whether left-leaning groups were subject to the same lengthy delays and intrusive questioning.
By the 2012 election, the tea-party movement was in decline. Its members failed to show up to the polls in sufficient numbers, and many Senate challengers with tea-party backing were defeated. Rep. Michele Bachmann, chairwoman of the House Tea Party Caucus, barely retained her seat.
When Mrs. Martin toured chapters in California earlier this year, they told her they wanted to drop "tea party" from their names because its brand was tarnished. Mrs. Martin was presiding over a national office full of empty desks and dwindling volunteers and donations—a period she refers to as "frightening" and "disheartening."
Everything changed in May, she says, when the IRS disclosed that it indeed had been giving extra scrutiny to conservative groups' requests for tax-exempt status, focusing in particular on those with such words as "tea party" and "patriots" in their names.
Mr. Obama denounced the practice, and the resulting controversy eventually led to the resignation of the acting head of the IRS. (In August, the agency said it had taken "decisive action to eliminate the use of inappropriate political labels" in screening.)
"From that moment, the tea party has roared back to life," says Mrs. Martin, who says she has been getting by on as little as three hours of sleep a night. "It's been nonstop interest from the media, politicians and our grass roots."
On the weekend after the news hit, Mrs. Martin appeared on four television networks and released an urgent email fundraising appeal titled: "Project Phoenix: It's time to rise again."
Mrs. Bachmann called Mrs. Martin at home to brainstorm about holding a news conference on Capitol Hill later that week. Mrs. Martin wound up speaking alongside Mrs. Bachmann and other lawmakers calling for an investigation.
When Republican representatives scheduled hearings, Mrs. Martin located what she said were a dozen tea-party victims, prepped them and delivered them within 48 hours to congressional investigators, paying their airfares and hotels, according to several people involved in the process.
It came in handy that Mrs. Martin is on a first-name and cellphone basis with nearly all lawmakers with tea-party credentials. Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) says he and Mrs. Martin "text, email and talk" regularly. One evening this summer, Mrs. Martin changed into jeans and went out for Mexican food with Rep. Steve King (R., Iowa), who showed up in shorts and flip-flops. After hearing her at a meeting of conservatives on Capitol Hill, Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) asked her to come by his office to discuss strategy.
Recently, she has organized protests at IRS offices around the country. The Patriots funded a $20,000 event in Cincinnati, featuring Sen. Rob Portman (R., Ohio) and fried chicken. She fired up the several hundred attendees by reciting the First Amendment and detailing what she said were IRS intimidation tactics. "Are you next?" she asked.
The focus now is on the town-hall meetings that lawmakers hold in their home districts. The Patriots distributed an "August Tool Kit" to members with instructions for attending, including suggested themes of "the IRS scandal, immigration reform, or Obamacare." At a recent news conference, Mrs. Martin said the group is "targeting both parties to hold them accountable."
Some lawmakers aren't scheduling town halls, or are announcing them at the last minute, to avoid large or unruly turnouts. Mrs. Martin has volunteers in the suburban Atlanta office monitoring social media and Google and using other tools to find lawmakers' events, which are then mapped on the Patriots' website.
Mrs. Martin says her group plans to spend $750,000 on the town-hall effort, and $1 million on TV and radio spots in districts where lawmakers haven't agreed to fight the health law. Together with several other conservative groups, it is planning a Sept. 10 rally on Capitol Hill to "welcome back" Congress and call for it to delay implementation of the new health-care law by refusing to spend money on it.
"We're not high-powered. We don't have bucket loads of money," she says. But the political establishment is "scared to death of us."
Write to Monica Langley at monica.langley@wsj.com
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/08/28/was-obama-able-to-draw-a-bigger-crowd-to-the-washington-mall-than-glenn-beck/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-08-29+NL_252129&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_252129_252144
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Glenn Beck Wants to Know: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?
By AMY CHOZICK
NYT
Published: September 6, 2013
You left Fox News and started The Blaze, a TV station, Web site and subscription service. How is that working out?
Check back with me in 10 years. I think we’re just now entering the fields that I was hoping we would enter.
You’ve said The Blaze could put traditional TV news out of business. That’s a bold prediction.
I learned that when Barbara Walters came and did an interview with me. They had about 50 people in our studio for two days — more people in my offices than we had employees. All for an eight-minute segment.
But do you really think that will happen?
The nightly news is doing a fine job of putting itself out of business. Who watches it? I mean really, besides my grandparents, who are both dead, who is watching the nightly news? I think we’ll be ready to put them out of business in the next three to five years.
Is it true that you expressed interest in buying Current TV?
Yes. I didn’t speak to him, but I was told that Al Gore didn’t want to sell to me.
When you heard Al Jazeera was buying it, what did you think?
I thought that Al Gore saw me more as an enemy of America than Al Jazeera, which I found fascinating coming from the former vice president. Or maybe he doesn’t believe a word he says. He sold for twice the amount of what it was worth.
How did your fans respond to your support of gay marriage?
I don’t care. The point is that government shouldn’t be involved in marriage.
Did you hear any reaction?
Can we stop dividing ourselves? Do racists exist? Yes. Do bigots exist? Yes. But most of us are not. Most Americans just want to get along. Why can’t we do that? What has happened to us?
I think there’s a misperception that your show is more political than it actually is.
Unfortunately, because of the news of the day, we have spent most of our time on politics. What people don’t ever understand is this: I’m the guy who lives in Dallas who did not get an invitation to the George Bush Presidential Library opening. He didn’t like me. I had called for his impeachment. I didn’t call for Obama’s impeachment. People think I just hate this president. No, I hate power and those who do everything they can to hold onto it.
But you said you were going to hunt down progressives like an Israeli Nazi hunter.
Oh, I will. I think these guys are the biggest danger in the world. It’s the people like Mao, people that believe that big government is the answer, it always leads to millions dead — always.
Sometimes when you give a speech, you hold up a napkin stained with Hitler’s blood. Why?
It could be Hitler’s, I don’t know. It was from somebody present during the July assassination attempt. The point of it is: pay attention when the trouble is small. If you don’t pay attention to people who want to regulate every aspect of your life, it spirals out of control.
What was it like for you to live in New York?
Sad, because I think New York is one of the greatest towns in the world. I love New York. I wanted to live in New York my whole life, and I find it so unbelievably closed-minded.
You must feel more comfortable living in Dallas.
Yeah, but there are people that hate me all over the world. I went to South Africa, and people hate me there.
Why did you start your jeans company, 1791 Denim?
I wore Levi’s my whole life. I think they’re great. They’re making them in China now. Fine, whatever. But when they branded themselves the uniform for the progressive movement, instead of complaining, I started my own company. I don’t care if you’re a liberal and you want to wear them. I hope they’re comfortable. If they’re not, return them to me.
Are you still in touch with Sarah Palin?
No. In fairness, I don’t really stay in touch with really anybody. I’m a little busy.
INTERVIEW HAS BEEN CONDENSED AND EDITED.
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Why the Health Care Law Scares the G.O.P.
By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: October 1, 2013
This spring, the Missouri Chamber of Commerce urged the state Legislature to accept the federal government’s plan to expand Medicaid for the poor and disabled.
The business lobbying group had not suddenly gone rogue. Here is how Daniel P. Mehan, its president, summarized his feelings about President Obama’s health care law: “We don’t like it.”
But the Chamber was cognizant of the plea of its members directly affected by the issue: dozens of Missouri hospitals stood to lose $4.2 billion over six years in federal support for uncompensated care if the state refused to increase the income ceiling for Medicaid eligibility. Pragmatism suggested accepting the expansion. Washington would pay the extra cost entirely for three years and pick up 90 percent of the bill thereafter. And it would expand health coverage in the state’s poor, predominantly white rural counties, which voted consistently to put Republican lawmakers into office.
Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature — heavy with Tea Party stalwarts — rejected Medicaid’s expansion in the state anyway.
After their vote, a frustrated editorial in the faithfully conservative Missourian asked of the state’s elected Republicans: “Who Do They Represent?”
Today, the same forces that blocked the expansion of Medicaid in Missouri are going all out in Washington in a bid to undo all of the Affordable Care Act. Bowing to the vehemence of its Tea Party faction, the House G.O.P. forced a government shutdown when Senate Democrats refused to delay or defund the president’s health overhaul.
House Republicans are threatening even further damage if they don’t get their way, possibly unleashing financial chaos if they manage to force the United States into its first default ever on the government’s debt.
Republicans’ efforts raise the same perplexing question posed by the Missourian: What drives Tea Party Republicans and their financial backers? What calculation persuades them that repealing the health care law is worth the risk? Indeed, whose interests do they represent?
Nearly 6 in 10 Americans disapprove of trying to stop the law by cutting its financing. Even among those who don’t like the law, less than half want their representatives in Congress to try to make it fail.
It is tempting to discard the Tea Party activists driving the Republican Party as crazy — as some commentators have — motivated by fear and willing to believe that default won’t cause much harm and might even act as a purgative to free the economy of a bloated government.
“They listen to nobody but themselves,” the Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol told me. “They are convinced of their rectitude and convinced that they alone are qualified to save America from the dire threat of Obama and his polices. They have worked themselves into a dangerous place.”
Their relationship with reality can take peculiar turns. Reflexive opponents of “government,” they can exhibit little sense of what the government actually does.
And yet the argument that half the Republican Party has simply lost its mind has to be an unsatisfactory answer, especially considering the sophistication of some of the deep-pocketed backers of the Tea Party insurgency.
There is a plausible alternative to irrationality. Flawed though it may turn out to be, Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act is popularly known, could fundamentally change the relationship between working Americans and their government. This could pose an existential threat to the small-government credo that has defined the G.O.P. for four decades.
The law is imperfect. It has dozens of complicated, interlocking parts. Half of Americans say they don’t understand how it will affect them and their family. Still, the law has many provisions that are likely to improve life for millions of Americans, including a big portion of what we know as the working middle class.
Almost two-thirds of uninsured Americans have a full-time job, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. A further 16 percent are employed part time.
The Department of Health and Human Services recently estimated that nearly six in 10 uninsured Americans could qualify for health coverage in the insurance market for less than $100 per person per month.
According to an analysis by the Urban Institute, 28 million Americans would gain health insurance under Obamacare. Of these, eight million earn more than twice the poverty level of $47,100 for a family of four. A majority of those would get a subsidy to buy a plan.
As it turns out, the core Tea Party demographic — working white men between the ages of 45 and 64 — would do fairly well under the law.
Take Missouri. It has about 800,000 uninsured. Almost half of them would have been eligible for expanded Medicaid benefits, had the Legislature not rejected them. Many of the rest — including families of four making up to $94,000 — will be eligible to get subsidized health insurance.
In St. Louis, for instance, a family of four making $50,000 a year will be able to buy a middle-of-the-road “silver” health plan for $282 a month and a bottom-end “bronze” plan for $32. Even Medicare recipients will get a benefit worth a few hundred dollars a year.
This could justify conservative Republicans’ greatest fears.
In 1994, when President Bill Clinton took an earlier stab at a health care overhaul, the conservative thinker William Kristol published a manifesto about why Republicans had to stop it.
“Passage of the Clinton health plan in any form would be disastrous,” Mr. Kristol wrote, italicizing for emphasis. “It would guarantee an unprecedented federal intrusion into the American economy. Its success would signal the rebirth of centralized welfare-state policy at the moment that such policy is being perceived as a failure in other areas.”
Two decades after Mr. Clinton’s ultimately failed attempt, Obamacare poses the same sort of threat.
Even Americans who say they dislike the law actually like many of its components. Nearly three-quarters approve of giving financial help to poor and moderate-income Americans to buy health insurance. Two-thirds approve of barring insurance companies from denying coverage because of somebody’s medical history. Three-quarters favor letting children stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26.
Until now, social welfare programs in the United States have exhibited a “big hole,” Professor Skocpol said, consisting of nonpoor working-age Americans and their children. Obamacare closes a big chunk of it.
“The main beneficiaries tend to have lower wages, employed in smaller businesses that are not providing health insurance,” she said. “They are not elderly. They are also not the poorest.”
And they might be grateful to Democrats for the benefit.
To conservative Republicans, losing a large slice of the middle class to the ranks of the Democratic Party could justify extreme measures.
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http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/10/truckers-for-the-constitution-plans-to-shutdown-d-c-beltway-october-11th/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/09/glenn-beck-reveals-a-story-he-hasnt-been-able-to-share-for-over-a-year/
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http://americanmilitarynews.com/2013/10/breaking-photos-vets-march-dc-memorials-white-house-met-riot-police/
Free the forest!
http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=9285277
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42628_Right_Wing_Protesters_Bring_Confederate_Flags_to_the_White_House#rss
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http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/42628_Right_Wing_Protesters_Bring_Confederate_Flags_to_the_White_House#rss
Don't discount that this was planted by a leftist operative.
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http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2013/10/14/
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Dear Patriot,
The Republican establishment just sold us out. Mitch McConnell received his $3 billion of silver to betray the base and the grassroots, via an amendment authored by Lamar Alexander. They're such sluts for a good porking, and their explanation strains credulity: we had to spend $3 billion on a dam to make sure the taxpayers didn't lose $160 million. That's Washington math at its finest.
President Obama made one concession: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius will certify that income verification measures are in place to verify eligibility for Obamacare subsidies. That certification will consist of a letter to Congress, and it will be followed by GAO reports that reveal how much of a liar Kathleen Sibelius is. And yes, that's right: those income verification measures weren't already in place.
It takes $2.9 billion to put Mitch McConnell on his knees before President Obama, whoring himself out and betraying his Kentucky constituents. There's no relief for the good people of Kentucky or their families, who will see their premiums go up and their available providers go down. Their senator didn't bother to insist that President Obama face the music for his unconstitutional and illegal delay of the employer mandate, or the out of pocket limits, until 2015. There's good money to be made betting on another delay in 2015.
This is war. We're not going to stand by as the whores in Washington betray us and their constituents to send money to their crony sugar daddies, including the pharmaceutical companies who stand to make an estimated $35 billion in profits from Obamacare. We're not going to stand by while insurance companies charge their policyholders huge premium increases for out of pocket limits that won't be in place until 2015. We're going to burn Mitch McConnell and his parliament of whores at the stake in 2014 and 2016. That's right, we're coming in multiple election cycles for revenge.
Washington might not be helping you, or working families, but it's damn sure taking care of its own. Take recently deceased Senator Frank Lautenberg's widow, whose worth is $56 million: the Senate made sure she got another $174,000 of your money as a final payout. They did this while you're struggling to make ends meet, because what's another $174,000 of somebody else's money among millionaire politicians and their families?
These 81 whores curbstomped liberty and defecated on the Constitution yet again tonight. We aren't going to forget. We're coming in 2014, and they will hear us coming. They will remember this day and rue it, and we will pour forth the fires of your wrath upon their heads. We're not running away, and we are not beaten. This is but one battle, and we are turning tonight's defeat into a historic triumph.
Every dollar you contribute to us is a bullet aimed at the heart of the status quo in Washington, a bullet aimed at the parliament of whores and traitors who sold you out tonight. While the Senate did not respect our will tonight, they will fear our will in the primaries and they will know our resolve in the general election. We are coming, and we are never going to stop until we take down every last one of these 81 whores.
You aren't funding a political campaign. You're funding a revolution. Your donations are history-making ammunition to execute those who spat in your faces tonight with their vote. It's time to take these whores and traitors out. Donate today, and know that your dollars will rain down like mortars on those who betrayed us tonight in 2014. A season of vengeance is upon us, and it is time for the establishment to reap what it has sown.
Donate today, and destroy those who are destroying our country from within with increased debt and crony deals.
Donate here today
Thank You,
Dustin Stockton
Co-Founder
Donate via PayPal
You can also mail your contributions to:
Western Representation PAC
PO Box 50655
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second post
Henninger: Obama Romneyizes the Republicans
The president is doing the same thing to Ted Cruz and the tea party that he did to the 1%.
By
DANIEL HENNINGER
One of the more compelling finds in the opinion-polling swamps is that most people would like to see the entire Congress replaced. A more modest proposal: Let's replace all the Republicans in Congress with their children or grandchildren. Bring in the 15-year-olds. How could it get worse?
From the House to the Senate, the Republicans look dazed and confused. Three weeks ago, Ted Cruz stood in the Senate chamber for nearly a day, looking like a hero. Today, with the GOP brand in a vertical dive, he looks like a Bozo balloon.
What do children know that the Republicans in Congress don't know? The kids know, because it is the mother's milk of their battery-powered lives, that if you don't recognize shifts in the mighty flows of information, you will be swept aside, abandoned. You will be BlackBerry BB.T -0.48% .
For all the changes in information delivery, not much ever changes for the GOP's messaging skills.
Wind back to the 2012 presidential election. Recall how after it was over, the GOP promised that it would duplicate the incredible modern messaging machine the Obama team created across every available new-information platform. That delivery system was why across four years Barack Obama kept hammering "the 1%" and "the wealthiest." He was feeding the machine that was emailing, texting and tweeting this propaganda to targeted audiences.
Now suddenly comes a marketing ploy from the GOP's backbenches: "Defund ObamaCare." This idea was supposed to rally the nation against the Affordable Care Act. So if you were to ask students in marketing at the local community college what they thought of "Defund ObamaCare," what do you guess they might say? They'd say, absent the product, it sounds like a niche strategy with a low sales ceiling. Defund ObamaCare is now the Republicans' New Coke.
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Chad Crowe
Want a look at how a pro is spinning the Washington mess? Punch into Twitter.com and type "Barack Obama" into the search window. Click on "Barack Obama," next to the "End This Now" logo. The Obama tweets the past week have been fairly amazing. As in the presidential campaign against Mitt Romney, the Twitter feeds going out in the name of the president of the United States are virtually wall-to-wall propaganda.
Barack Obama: "If the debt ceiling isn't raised by Thursday, America could face an economic shutdown." This from the man who accuses the GOP of "manufacturing crises."
Everyone recalls the 2012 campaign's carpet bombing of "the wealthiest," even after they'd been shelled with a tax increase. Barack Obama has found—actually, it was handed to him—a scapegoat analogous to "the wealthiest" and "the banks" for his campaign to suppress votes for GOP candidates in the 2014 elections. It's "tea party Republicans."
Barack Obama: "Tea Party Republicans are threatening an economic shutdown. Tell them to #EndThisNow."
Barack Obama: "The #TeaPartyShutdown is harming small businesses. Say you've had #EnoughAlready."
Wednesday's first Obama tweet: "Day 16 of the #TeaPartyShutdown. This can't continue—Congress needs to #EndThisNow."
This isn't routine partisan noise. The Obama Twitter account lists 38,258,000 followers. Unless some of these are fake, that's nearly 30% of the total popular vote in 2012. All through the week, this number rose as the site poured forth boiling oil.
Virtually every Obama tweet demonizes the tea party. Last week, within minutes of the collapse of the Obama-Boehner talks, the tweeting robot called "Barack Obama" had hung the collapse on the "tea party."
Wednesday morning (with even the New York Post cover depicting Uncle Sam going over Niagara Falls on the "Brink of Disaster"), the machinery that runs @BarackObama rolled into view. It's the former Obama re-election apparatus, which has shape-shifted into a 501(c)(4) group called Organizing for Action.
From the Barack Obama Twitter feed at 10 a.m.: "Be a part of @OFA'S Twitter takeover and tell Congress to #EndThisNow."
Republicans complain constantly that the media "lets him get away with it." The media is floating down the electric river. No, they—the message-impoverished Republicans—let him get away with it. The Washington GOP is now a political Gulliver, tied down by tweets and twerps.
A month ago, before the congressional Republicans' General Custer Caucus used "Defund ObamaCare" to vote themselves into their current, bullet-riddled fort, the Obama characterization of the entire GOP as "tea party Republicans" would have been a pathetic stretch. He was the one being laughed at by the whole world for his vanishing red lines in Syria and a foreign policy that even his own defense secretary described as "swinging from vine to vine."
Not anymore. Barack Obama is Romneyizing the Republicans. He's doing to Ted Cruz and the House Republicans what he did to Mitt Romney and the 1%. It may be voter brainwashing, but in the expanded media age in which we all marinate, it works.
Someone in the tea party outside the Beltway had better wake up and smell the smoke. The great nemesis has done it again: He's turning them into political toast.
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Karl Rove also has a piece in the WSJ today attacking the failed tea party strategy. In the case of Henninger it is easy to tell the only people standing up to do more. In the case of all who say they oppose Obamacare but attack the tea party strategy, please tell us the other way of stopping this before it is too entrenched to ever be dismantled. They don't have an answer.
Ted Cruz and the tea party had this right. They didn't have the support of their colleagues at the start, or at the end, but at least they gave them the opportunity to take one last stand.
In a short time the majority of Hispanics will rely on Obamacare and its subsidies, just to single out one key demographic group. And just like SSI, SNAP, Section 8, etc, Americans on the first and second rungs of the ladder will need to keep their income and work efforts permanently low in order to maintain their subsidy. We will soon be arguing over who can tax, borrow and spend the most to win over all these votes. For what? To repeal Obamacare?
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/10/17/yale-researcher-realizes-the-tea-party-is-a-lot-smarter-than-he-thought/?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2013-10-17_267381&utm_content=5054942&utm_term=_267381_267391
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http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/17/tea-party-determined-not-chastened-after-loss/
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Do we want a retreating action or a guerilla war? Which is it?
As Mark Levin would describe the Tea Party now,
"we are a resistance movement".
Like the French resistance.
Instead of a simple rear guard defensive retreat like establishment Republicans I prefer a guerilla resistance like the Tea Party. Hit the enemy where one can. As hard as possible. Fight back. Not as Hannity described simply, "manage defeat".
Reading on Lenin and Stalin they were essentially the same thing - against Tsarist Russia. They both fought their whole lives to gain power. I don't admire their use of terror and lies, and murder, and robbery. But I admire their persistence, their single minded agenda.
Neither was about money. It was all political. Though the politburo members did later become more about money and power for power's sake. Though they had to pretend they were not like evil capatilists. :-P
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http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mark-finkelstein/2013/10/19/congressman-steve-cohen-tea-party-republicans-are-domestic-enemies#ixzz2iBopVHlh
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This is a pretty good analogy. Only the tea party jumped out. The establishment Republicans, moderate Dems, majority of women, young voters, Hispanics, and many other groups are still basking in the increasing temperatures.
(http://www.realclearpolitics.com/newsletters/the_daily_debate/2013/10/17/
The right is like the frog in that famous experiment who lets himself get cooked to death so long as the temperature of the water rises so gradually that no one change is big enough to cause him to jump out of the pot. My hypothesis is that ObamaCare cranked up the temperature in the pot too fast, and the frog realized the water was boiling and jumped out.
The important part of this theory is that it explains why the Tea Party base of the right has become so radicalized. They're not reacting to this year's increase in the size of government, or even the past five years. They're reacting to decades' worth of increasing government, all at once.
Others are making similar observations. Brit Hume explains what the Tea Party got out of the shutdown.
"In conventional terms, it seems inexplicable, but Senator Cruz and his adherents do not view things in conventional terms. They look back over the past half-century, including the supposedly golden era of Ronald Reagan, and see the uninterrupted forward march of the American left. Entitlement spending never stopped growing. The regulatory state continued to expand. The national debt grew and grew and finally in the Obama years, exploded.
"They see an American population becoming unrecognizable from the free and self-reliant people they thought they knew. And they see the Republican Party as having utterly failed to stop the drift toward an unfree nation supervised by an overweening and bloated bureaucracy.
"They are not interested in Republican policies that merely slow the growth of this leviathan. They want to stop it and reverse it. And they want to show their supporters they'll try anything to bring that about. And if some of those things turn out to be reckless and doomed, well, so be it."
Rush Limbaugh's reaction to the shutdown validates this observation.
"I want to go back to the lady on the phone who says this doesn't feel right. What's happening here to the country just doesn't feel right. You know what's happened here? You know what this feels like, folks? I'll tell you exactly what it feels like to me. You tell me if this isn't close. It feels like we've lost a war to a communist country. It's almost like there's been a coup. There's been a peaceful coup. The media has led this coup, and the Democrats have taken over with popular support. We're getting policies and implementations and things that were never, ever part of this country's design and founding."
So happy predictions on the left that "the Republican fever has broken" are likely to be disappointed.
The other reason why ending the shutdown standoff is a victory for Republicans is that it allows them to shift attention to a development they didn't anticipate when they began the shutdown: the implosion of ObamaCare. Perhaps it is fitting that an administration whose ideal woman is a welfare-state-dependent web designer should see its signature initiative fail because of incompetent website design.
William Kristol declares, probably correctly, that this is the real news of October, which will be remembered long after the shutdown has faded from memory. And the consequences of ObamaCare's problems will reverberate for much longer.
Michael Barone runs down the consequences:
"You need the exchanges to enroll enough young healthy people to subsidize those who are sick and old, which is one of the central features of Obamacare.
"Otherwise premiums shoot up and up, pushing others out of the system—a death spiral that can continue year after year.
"'At what point,' [Megan McArdle] asks, 'do we admit that the system just isn't working well enough, roll it back and delay the whole thing for a year?' She suggests that if the system can't enroll 50 percent of its users by November 1, such a hugely drastic step would be in order."
Well, the initial numbers are in, and only a fraction of those eligible for ObamaCare have been able to enroll. So there is a good chance that the administration will have to delay ObamaCare after all, giving the radical House Republicans exactly what they wanted from the shutdown. The Republicans might just win after all.
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Shutdown-meaning 17 percent of the federal gov't temporary closed.
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Shutdown-meaning 17 percent of the federal gov't temporary closed.
Paid vacation.
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Shutdown-meaning 17 percent of the federal gov't temporary closed.
Paid vacation.
What a nightmare ! Amazing we survived as a nation.
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What a nightmare ! Amazing we survived as a nation.
Did you know that during the 'shutdown', no one was weeding Michelle's garden?
http://thehill.com/capital-living/329179-first-ladys-garden-being-weeded
"Michelle Obama's garden is back to being weeded and cared for now that the government has reopened."
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How do they get away with calling these functions of government non-essential? She could have lost a whole season of Halloween pumpkins. As required in Article 8?
I will never forget where I was the day the government shut down.
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A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
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Tea Party problems: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/jules-manson-obama_n_1161044.html
From the article:
"Assassinate the f----- n----- and his monkey children," Manson commented on his own post, according to a screen shot uploaded by Facebook group "Americans Against the Tea Party" and relayed by Your Black Politics blog.
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Of course no Party needs this.
The Tea Party should expel him for life.
The Tea Party and Republican parties have to move the topic beyond race; the agenda is all Americans.
BTW BD, the guy once ran as a Democrat and now calls himself a libertarian.
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A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
The dems have used racial hatred since they founded the KKK. Nothing has changed.
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Tea Party problems: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/jules-manson-obama_n_1161044.html
From the article:
"Assassinate the f----- n----- and his monkey children," Manson commented on his own post, according to a screen shot uploaded by Facebook group "Americans Against the Tea Party" and relayed by Your Black Politics blog.
Quoting huffpo is always a mistake.
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A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
The dems have used racial hatred since they founded the KKK. Nothing has changed.
Except of course the party realignment.
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Tea Party problems: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/20/jules-manson-obama_n_1161044.html
From the article:
"Assassinate the f----- n----- and his monkey children," Manson commented on his own post, according to a screen shot uploaded by Facebook group "Americans Against the Tea Party" and relayed by Your Black Politics blog.
Quoting huffpo is always a mistake.
Always? Really? Is it because they use quotes you don't like?
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Of course no Party needs this.
The Tea Party should expel him for life.
The Tea Party and Republican parties have to move the topic beyond race; the agenda is all Americans.
BTW BD, the guy once ran as a Democrat and now calls himself a libertarian.
"BTW BD, the guy once ran as a Democrat and now calls himself a libertarian."
I don't follow you here. The Tea Party is supposed to be the libertarian wing of the GOP, is it not? He says he is a follower of Ron Paul, who ran as a Republican. Strom Thurmond ran as a Democrat too....
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Please see my post on American Creed thread.
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BD,
"I don't follow you here. The Tea Party is supposed to be the libertarian wing of the GOP, is it not?
CCP,
I don't see the Tea Party as the wing of another party. It is a separate party and I don't see it as the Libertarian wing though it is closer to that in ideology.
My point is that the jerk who made this statement runs for three different parties. If he could get elected he would be just fine being a Democrat. And we would not have heard it from the Huffington Post.
In any case the Tea Party does indeed need to vet its candidates better. No disagreement about that.
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This is a wet dream for liberals and obviously for the media. They have been dying to find a poster boy for right extremism. I wonder how many assassination statements are discovered everyday - for any President. This one is exciting because of the opportunity to say tea party with it, though of course there is no Tea Party and 'they' never endorsed or elected him. He had a measly 4% of the vote for city office in a city we never heard of. He took back his bad words and, unlike some other kooks, didn't actually shoot anyone. What were the political views of John Hinckley? Who held other anti-Reaganites accountable for that lone gunman? Same for Kathleen Soliah, Bill Ayers, etc. The view of the kook doesn't add anything to the discussion of the issues.
Meanwhile, real issues linger unpursued and unresolved. I will patiently await Huffington Post coverage of the peer reviewed Burkhauser study, June 2013, refuting everything on income inequality ever published on their pages. http://www.nber.org/papers/w19110 That would be as easy to find as this, "a screen shot uploaded by Facebook group "Americans Against the Tea Party" and relayed by Your Black Politics blog".
BTW, I'm glad it was posted; look at the reaction it stirred. And Huff Post does have serious stories from time to time. Good to know what others are reading.
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A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
The dems have used racial hatred since they founded the KKK. Nothing has changed.
Except of course the party realignment.
You trying to fall back on that myth the dems push to hide their shameful past and present?
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My thought is that there are racist element across the political spectrum. This includes the Tea Party.
There is now a coordinated campaign to sink the Tea Party as a socially acceptable position by a) making shit up and b) finding occasional outliers like the bigoted idiot under discussion here this morning.
What to do?
My thoughts:
a) Identify racism as across the spectrum. This means we must have some sound bite examples of racism on the left. Anyone?
b) Point out the respect and leadership positions held by TP voices such as
*Zo
*Herbert Cain
*Thomas Sowell
*Dr. Ben Carson
*Allen West
*Clarence Thomas (you'll have to be ready to counter the condescension)
*Larry Elder
*Walter Williams
*add you own examples.
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BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY
NOTE: All answers are "b." - For details visit: www.NBRA.info
1. What Party was founded as the anti-slavery Party and fought to free blacks from slavery?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
2. What is the Party of Abraham Lincoln who signed the emancipation proclamation that resulted in the Juneteenth celebrations that occur in black communities today?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
3. What Party passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
4. What Party passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting blacks protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, and the Party of most blacks prior to the 1960’s, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
5. What is the Party of the founding fathers of the NAACP?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
6. What is the Party of President Dwight Eisenhower who signed the 1957 Civil Rights Act, sent U.S. troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools, established the Civil Rights Commission in 1958, and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
7. What Party, by the greatest percentage, passed the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950’s and 1960’s?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
8. What is the Party of President Richard Nixon who instituted the first Affirmative Action program in 1969 with the Philadelphia Plan that established goals and timetables, a plan crafted by black Republican Art Fletcher?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
9. What is the Party of President George W. Bush who appointed more blacks to high-level positions than any president in history and who spent record money on education, job training and health care to help black Americans prosper?
[ ] a. Democratic Party [ ] b. Republican Party
10. What Party fought to keep blacks in slavery and was the Party of the Ku Klux Klan?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
11. What Party from 1870 to 1930 used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks civil rights?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
12. What is the Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry Truman who rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
13. What is the Party of President Lyndon Johnson, who called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “that [N-word] preacher” because he opposed the Viet Nam War; and President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator, then as president opposed Dr. King’s 1963 March on Washington and had Dr. King investigated by the FBI on suspicion of being a communist?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
14. What is the Party of the late Senators Robert Byrd who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, former Governor Ernest “Fritz” Hollings who hoisted the Confederate flag over the state capitol in South Carolina , and the late Senator Ted Kennedy who called black judicial “Neanderthals” while blocking their appointments?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
15. What is the Party of President Bill Clinton who refused to send troops to Rwanda to save 800,000 blacks from being killed in 1994, vetoed the welfare reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies stop discriminating against blacks and develop an Affirmative Action Plan?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
16. What Party is against school choice opportunity scholarships that would help poor blacks get out of failing schools and takes the black vote for granted without ever acknowledging their racist past or apologizing for trying to expand slavery, lynching blacks and passing the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that caused great harm to blacks?
[ ] a. Republican Party [ ] b. Democratic Party
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http://pjmedia.com/blog/stephen-glass-redux-thinkprogress-org-publishes-completely-fraudulent-video-labeling-tea-partiers-racists/?singlepage=true
Stephen Glass, Redux? ThinkProgress.org Publishes Completely Fraudulent Video Labeling Tea Partiers Racists
It needs to be seen to be believed. Fraud like this should result in firings if Think Progress wishes to retain any modicum of credibility, even amongst its supporters.
by
Bob Owens
Bio
July 16, 2010 - 8:44 am
We tell lies when we are afraid … afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. – Tad Williams
Oh, my dear progressive friends … will you ever learn?
Think Progress is an unofficial auxiliary of the Democratic Party, apparently run with the singular purpose of generating reams of dubious (and sometimes shockingly bad) propaganda. One of their more recent abortive efforts was to fabricate a video that they they would like to use as evidence supporting the popular left-wing meme that the growing tea party movement is chock-full of racists. Here it is.
How bad is it?
Put it this way: Think Progress made the following statement yesterday afternoon in their original article:
Think Progress has produced a short video demonstrating the vile racism that has been exhibited at some Tea Party events:
DENNIS: The Tea Party does not focus on the pigment of people’s skin.
[...]
TEA PARTY ACTIVIST 1: He’s too black to be President.
TEA PARTY ACTIVIST 2: I’m a proud racist, I’m white.
TEA PARTY ACTIVIST 3: Afro-Leninism! Coming to you on a silver platter, Barack Hussein Obama!
TEA PARTY ACTIVIST 4: Go home wetbacks!
There are four men quoted in the original 53-second video.
Activist 1 is being smeared as a racist by Think Progress, even though he was attending a tea party event with his black wife and bi-racial son. It takes a lot of nerve to edit a video so dishonestly that what remains is the opposite of what the speaker intended. Here is what Activist 1 actually said in the full video recording:
Barack Obama’s just a bad guy. That’s all I can say. He’s … he’s too black to be president. And you look at the color of my wife, it’s not the color of his skin that troubles me, it’s not the blackness of his skin that troubles me.
It’s the blackness inside … his heart. He’s a bad guy.
Think Progress takes an obviously not racist man and edits him into a villain.
Reprehensible.
Activist 2 is a favorite of Think Progress, and no wonder: he says exactly what they hoped to hear a tea partier say, exclaiming: “I’m a proud racist, I’m white.” Think Progress liked this clip so much they played it not once, but twice.
The problem is, Activist 2 isn’t a tea party protester. He is a tea party crasher.
Think Progress is well aware of this, as they pulled the few seconds of video from a nearly six-minute video of actual tea party protesters singling him out for scorn and chasing him away!
Nice outfit, don’t you think? The man is in fact likely a progressive plant, possibly from that day’s failed “Crash the Tea Party” movement. Note that his Nazi shirt is just out of the package, wrinkled and heavily creased across the fold from shipping. This man was isolated by real tea party protesters, holding signs like the one above, from the moment he showed up.
Think Progress pulled the video of him claiming “I’m racist, I’m white” from the 53-second mark of a nearly six-minute video from conservative blog SharpElbows.Net. The video is entitled: “Proof that the Tea Party is not racist.” It consists of real tea party protesters chasing the man away, and provides a link to where the man bought some of his Nazi gear online.
There is literally no way that Think Progress staffers, using a nearly six-minute video of tea party protesters berating a mail order Nazi and likely progressive plant, could watch this video and come to any conclusion other than that tea party protesters revile racism.
Activist 3 is a little more perplexing. I’m not sure what he means by “Afro-Leninism.” Possibly, it is a reference to the 20 years Barack Obama spent as an eager congregant at Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s church, which preaches a racist Marxist liberation theology. But I don’t know, and objectively, neither does Think Progress. No intellectually honest person could make the claim that Activist 3 is a racist from his video.
Activist 4?
He is the reason the original 53-second Think Progress video has shrunk down to an even more anemic 50 seconds.
His brief — inarguably racist — shout of “Go home wetbacks!” is provably a video from 2006.
Years before the tea party existed.
To their credit, Think Progress eventually took down Activist 4’s information.
The remainder of the Think Progress video included several still photos that are intended to provide weak evidence of racism. But once again, the pictures include progressives captured (poorly) masquerading as tea party protesters. These pictures are undeniably of participants of the farcical “Crash the Tea Party” attempt on Boston Common.
Think Progress has committed blatant — and easily falsifiable — fraud. They’ve misrepresented the views of good and decent people.
Painting the father of a multi-racial family as a bigot by twisting his words? Despicable.
Presenting liberal agent provocateurs as real and reprehensible members of a group they intend to undermine by any means necessary? Using video they undoubtedly know proves their contentions false when viewed in its entirety?
Revolting.
Reality would not provide them with the propaganda they sought to exploit for their own political gain. So they invented it.
Real journalists would be fired on the spot for this behavior. The willful perversion of the SharpElbows.net video should end careers.
According to Think Progress’ “About Us” page, Faiz Shakir is vice president at the Center for American Progress and serves as editor-in-chief of ThinkProgress.org. He sets the standards for this group.
Lee Fang, the Think Progress “researcher” that bylines this video, has interned with a similar propaganda site named Media Matters.
In just 53 seconds, they’ve created propaganda so blatantly dishonest as to make their termination mandatory. They’ve abused their readers, and their opponents.
But perhaps that is what they are paid to do.
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Gotcha. Thanks for the reply.
BD,
"I don't follow you here. The Tea Party is supposed to be the libertarian wing of the GOP, is it not?
CCP,
I don't see the Tea Party as the wing of another party. It is a separate party and I don't see it as the Libertarian wing though it is closer to that in ideology.
My point is that the jerk who made this statement runs for three different parties. If he could get elected he would be just fine being a Democrat. And we would not have heard it from the Huffington Post.
In any case the Tea Party does indeed need to vet its candidates better. No disagreement about that.
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There is no myth, GM. You know better than that.
A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
The dems have used racial hatred since they founded the KKK. Nothing has changed.
Except of course the party realignment.
You trying to fall back on that myth the dems push to hide their shameful past and present?
-
http://pjmedia.com/blog/whos-behind-the-crash-the-tea-party-website/?singlepage=true
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There is no myth, GM. You know better than that.
A major effort is going on to smear the TP with the racism label. Here is one example-- what is the best way to respond to this sort of attack?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/24/tea-party-racist_n_4158262.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=825792b=facebook
The dems have used racial hatred since they founded the KKK. Nothing has changed.
Except of course the party realignment.
You trying to fall back on that myth the dems push to hide their shameful past and present?
You still trying to push that lie?
-
http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.928/article_detail.asp
The Myth of the Racist Republicans
By Gerard Alexander
Posted March 20, 2004
This article appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Click here to send a comment.
Books Discussed in this Essay:
The Southern Strategy Revisited: Republican Top-Down Advancement in the South, by Joseph A. Aistrup.
The Rise of Southern Republicans, by Earl Black and Merle Black.
From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994, by Dan T. Carter.
A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, by David L. Chappell.
The Emerging Republican Majority, by Kevin Phillips.
A myth about conservatism is circulating in academia and journalism and has spread to the 2004 presidential campaign. It goes something like this: the Republican Party assembled a national majority by winning over Southern white voters; Southern white voters are racist; therefore, the GOP is racist. Sometimes the conclusion is softened, and Republicans are convicted merely of base opportunism: the GOP is the party that became willing to pander to racists. Either way, today's Republican Party—and by extension the conservative movement at its heart—supposedly has revealed something terrible about itself.
This myth is not the only viewpoint in scholarly debates on the subject. But it is testimony to its growing influence that it is taken aboard by writers like Dan Carter, a prize-winning biographer of George Wallace, and to a lesser extent by the respected students of the South, Earl and Merle Black. It is so pervasive in mass media reporting on racial issues that an NBC news anchor can casually speak of "a new era for the Republican Party, one in which racial intolerance really won't be tolerated." It has become a staple of Democratic politicians like Howard Dean, who accuses Republicans of "dividing Americans against each other, stirring up racial prejudices and bringing out the worst in people" through the use of so-called racist "codewords." All this matters because people use such putative connections to form judgments, and "racist" is as toxic a reputation as one can have in U.S. politics. Certainly the 2000 Bush campaign went to a lot of trouble to combat the GOP's reputation as racially exclusionary. I even know young Republicans who fear that behind their party's victories lies a dirty, not-so-little Southern secret.
Now to be sure, the GOP had a Southern strategy. Willing to work with, rather than against, the grain of Southern opinion, local Republicans ran some segregationist candidates in the 1960s. And from the 1950s on, virtually all national and local GOP candidates tried to craft policies and messages that could compete for the votes of some pretty unsavory characters. This record is incontestable. It is also not much of a story—that a party acted expediently in an often nasty political context.
The new myth is much bolder than this. It insists that these events should decisively shape our understanding of conservatism and the modern Republican Party. Dan Carter writes that today's conservatism must be traced directly back to the "politics of rage" that George Wallace blended from "racial fear, anticommunism, cultural nostalgia, and traditional right-wing economics." Another scholar, Joseph Aistrup, claims that Reagan's 1980 Southern coalition was "the reincarnation of the Wallace movement of 1968." For the Black brothers, the GOP had once been the "party of Abraham Lincoln," but it became the "party of Barry Goldwater," opposed to civil rights and black interests. It is only a short step to the Democrats' insinuation that the GOP is the latest exploiter of the tragic, race-based thread of U.S. history. In short, the GOP did not merely seek votes expediently; it made a pact with America's devil.
The mythmakers typically draw on two types of evidence. First, they argue that the GOP deliberately crafted its core messages to accommodate Southern racists. Second, they find proof in the electoral pudding: the GOP captured the core of the Southern white backlash vote. But neither type of evidence is very persuasive. It is not at all clear that the GOP's policy positions are sugar-coated racist appeals. And election results show that the GOP became the South's dominant party in the least racist phase of the region's history, and got—and stays—that way as the party of the upwardly mobile, more socially conservative, openly patriotic middle-class, not of white solidarity.
Let's start with policies. Like many others, Carter and the Black brothers argue that the GOP appealed to Southern racism not explicitly but through "coded" racial appeals. Carter is representative of many when he says that Wallace's racialism can be seen, varying in style but not substance, in "Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, in Richard Nixon's subtle manipulation of the busing issue, in Ronald Reagan's genial demolition of affirmative action, in George Bush's use of the Willie Horton ads, and in Newt Gingrich's demonization of welfare mothers."
The problem here is that Wallace's segregationism was obviously racist, but these other positions are not obviously racist. This creates an analytic challenge that these authors do not meet. If an illegitimate viewpoint (racism) is hidden inside another viewpoint, that second view—to be a useful hiding place—must be one that can be held for entirely legitimate (non-racist) reasons. Conservative intellectuals might not always linger long enough on the fact that opposition to busing and affirmative action can be disguised racism. On the other hand, these are also positions that principled non-racists can hold. To be persuasive, claims of coding must establish how to tell which is which. Racial coding is often said to occur when voters are highly prone to understanding a non-racist message as a proxy for something else that is racist. This may have happened in 1964, when Goldwater, who neither supported segregation nor called for it, employed the term "states' rights," which to many whites in the Deep South implied the continuation of Jim Crow.
The problem comes when we try to extend this forward. Black and Black try to do this by showing that Nixon and Reagan crafted positions on busing, affirmative action, and welfare reform in a political climate in which many white voters doubted the virtues of preferential hiring, valued individual responsibility, and opposed busing as intrusive. To be condemned as racist "code," the GOP's positions would have to come across as proxies for these views -and in turn these views would have to be racist. The problem is that these views are not self-evidently racist. Many scholars simply treat them as if they were. Adding insult to injury, usually they don't even pause to identify when views like opposition to affirmative action would not be racist.
In effect, these critics want to have it both ways: they acknowledge that these views could in principle be non-racist (otherwise they wouldn't be a "code" for racism) but suggest they never are in practice (and so can be reliably treated as proxies for racism). The result is that their claims are non-falsifiable because they are tautological: these views are deemed racist because they are defined as racist. This amounts to saying that opposition to the policies favored by today's civil rights establishment is a valid indicator of racism. One suspects these theorists would, quite correctly, insist that people can disagree with the Israeli government without being in any way anti-Semitic. But they do not extend the same distinction to this issue. This is partisanship posturing as social science.
The Southern Strategy
This bias is evident also in how differently they treat the long Democratic dominance of the South. Carter and the Black brothers suggest that the accommodation of white racism penetrates to the very soul of modern conservatism. But earlier generations of openly segregationist Southerners voted overwhelmingly for Woodrow Wilson's and Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic Party, which relaxed its civil rights stances accordingly. This coalition passed much of the New Deal legislation that remains the basis of modern liberalism. So what does the segregationist presence imply for the character of liberalism at its electoral and legislative apogee? These scholars sidestep the question by simply not discussing it. This silence implies that racism and liberalism were simply strange political bedfellows, without any common values.
But the commonality, the philosophical link, is swiftly identified once the Democrats leave the stage. In study after study, authors say that "racial and economic conservatism" married white Southerners to the GOP after 1964. So whereas historically accidental events must have led racists to vote for good men like FDR, after 1964 racists voted their conscience. How convenient. And how easy it would be for, say, a libertarian conservative like Walter Williams to generate a counter-narrative that exposes statism as the philosophical link between segregation and liberalism's economic populism.
Yet liberal commentators commit a further, even more obvious, analytic error. They assume that if many former Wallace voters ended up voting Republican in the 1970s and beyond, it had to be because Republicans went to the segregationist mountain, rather than the mountain coming to them. There are two reasons to question this assumption. The first is the logic of electoral competition. Extremist voters usually have little choice but to vote for a major party which they consider at best the lesser of two evils, one that offers them little of what they truly desire. Segregationists were in this position after 1968, when Wallace won less than 9% of the electoral college and Nixon became president anyway, without their votes. Segregationists simply had very limited national bargaining power. In the end, not the Deep South but the GOP was the mountain.
Second, this was borne out in how little the GOP had to "offer," so to speak, segregationists for their support after 1968, even according to the myth's own terms. Segregationists wanted policies that privileged whites. In the GOP, they had to settle for relatively race-neutral policies: opposition to forced busing and reluctant coexistence with affirmative action. The reason these policies aren't plausible codes for real racism is that they aren't the equivalents of discrimination, much less of segregation.
Why did segregationists settle for these policies rather than continue to vote Democratic? The GOP's appeal was mightily aided by none other than the Democratic Party itself, which was lurching leftward in the 1970s, becoming, as the contemporary phrase had it, the party of "acid, amnesty, and abortion." Among other things, the Democrats absorbed a civil rights movement that was itself expanding, and thus diluting, its agenda to include economic redistributionism, opposition to the Vietnam War, and Black Power. The many enthusiasms of the new Democratic Party drove away suburban middle-class voters almost everywhere in the country, not least the South.
Given that trend, the GOP did not need to become the party of white solidarity in order to attract more voters. The fact that many former Wallace supporters ended up voting Republican says a lot less about the GOP than it does about segregationists' collapsing political alternatives. Kevin Phillips was hardly coy about this in his Emerging Republican Majority. He wrote in 1969 that Nixon did not "have to bid much ideologically" to get Wallace's electorate, given its limited power, and that moderation was far more promising for the GOP than anything even approaching a racialist strategy. While "the Republican Party cannot go to the Deep South"—meaning the GOP simply would not offer the policies that whites there seemed to desire most—"the Deep South must soon go to the national GOP," regardless.
Electoral Patterns
In all these ways, the gop appears as the national party of the middle-class, not of white solidarity. And it is this interpretation, and not the myth, that is supported by the voting results. The myth's proponents highlight, and distort, a few key electoral facts: Southern white backlash was most heated in the 1960s, especially in the Deep South. It was then and there that the GOP finally broke through in the South, on the strength of Goldwater's appeals to states' rights. Democrats never again won the votes of most Southern whites. So Goldwater is said to have provided the electoral model for the GOP.
But hidden within these aggregate results are patterns that make no sense if white solidarity really was the basis for the GOP's advance. These patterns concern which Southern votes the GOP attracted, and when. How did the GOP's Southern advance actually unfold? We can distinguish between two sub-regions. The Peripheral South—Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, and Arkansas—contained many growing, urbanizing "New South" areas and much smaller black populations. Race loomed less large in its politics. In the more rural, and poorer, Deep South—Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana —black communities were much larger, and racial conflict was much more acute in the 1950s and '60s. Tellingly, the presidential campaigns of Strom Thurmond, Goldwater, and Wallace all won a majority of white votes in the Deep South but lost the white vote in the Peripheral South.
The myth that links the GOP with racism leads us to expect that the GOP should have advanced first and most strongly where and when the politics of white solidarity were most intense. The GOP should have entrenched itself first among Deep South whites and only later in the Periphery. The GOP should have appealed at least as much, if not more, therefore, to the less educated, working-class whites who were not its natural voters elsewhere in the country but who were George Wallace's base. The GOP should have received more support from native white Southerners raised on the region's traditional racism than from white immigrants to the region from the Midwest and elsewhere. And as the Southern electorate aged over the ensuing decades, older voters should have identified as Republicans at higher rates than younger ones raised in a less racist era.
Each prediction is wrong. The evidence suggests that the GOP advanced in the South because it attracted much the same upwardly mobile (and non-union) economic and religious conservatives that it did elsewhere in the country.
Take presidential voting. Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting. From 1952 to the Clinton years, Virginia reverted to the Democrats only once, Florida and Tennessee twice, and Texas—except when native-son LBJ was on the ballot—only twice, narrowly. Additionally, since 1952, North Carolina has consistently either gone Republican or come within a few percentage points of doing so.
In other words, states representing over half the South's electoral votes at the time have been consistently in play from 1952 on—since before Brown v. Board of Education, before Goldwater, before busing, and when the Republicans were the mainstay of civil rights bills. It was this which dramatically changed the GOP's presidential prospects. The GOP's breakthrough came in the least racially polarized part of the South. And its strongest supporters most years were "New South" urban and suburban middle- and upper-income voters. In 1964, as we've seen, Goldwater did the opposite: winning in the Deep South but losing the Peripheral South. But the pre-Goldwater pattern re-emerged soon afterward. When given the option in 1968, Deep South whites strongly preferred Wallace, and Nixon became president by winning most of the Peripheral South instead. From 1972 on, GOP presidential candidates won white voters at roughly even rates in the two sub-regions, sometimes slightly more in the Deep South, sometimes not. But by then, the Deep South had only about one-third of the South's total electoral votes; so it has been the Periphery, throughout, that provided the bulk of the GOP's Southern presidential support.
* * *
The GOP's congressional gains followed the same pattern. Of course, it was harder for Republicans to win in Deep South states where Democratic-leaning black electorates were larger. But even when we account for that, the GOP became the dominant party of white voters much earlier in the Periphery than it did in the Deep South. Before Goldwater, the GOP's few Southern House seats were almost all in the Periphery (as was its sole Senator—John Tower of Texas). Several Deep South House members were elected with Goldwater but proved ephemeral, as Black and Black note: "Republicans lost ground and stalled in the Deep South for the rest of the decade," while in the Periphery they "continued to make incremental gains." In the 1960s and '70s, nearly three-quarters of GOP House victories were in the Peripheral rather than the Deep South, with the GOP winning twice as often in urban as rural districts. And six of the eight different Southern Republican Senators elected from 1961 to 1980 were from the Peripheral South. GOP candidates tended consistently to draw their strongest support from the more educated, middle- and upper-income white voters in small cities and suburbs. In fact, Goldwater in 1964—at least his Deep South performance, which is all that was controversial in this regard—was an aberration, not a model for the GOP.
Writers who vilify the GOP's Southern strategy might be surprised to find that all of this was evident, at least in broad brush-strokes, to the strategy's early proponents. In his well-known book, Kevin Phillips drew the lesson that a strong appeal in the Deep South, on the model of 1964, had already entailed and would entail defeat for the GOP everywhere else, including in what he termed the Outer South. He therefore rejected such an approach. He emphasized that Ike and Nixon did far better in the Peripheral South. He saw huge opportunities in the "youthful middle-class" of Texas, Florida, and other rapidly growing and changing Sun Belt states, where what he called "acutely Negrophobe politics" was weakest, not strongest. He thus endorsed "evolutionary success in the Outer South" as the basis of the GOP's "principal party strategy" for the region, concluding that this would bring the Deep South along in time, but emphatically on the national GOP's terms, not the segregationists'.
The tension between the myth and voting data escalates if we consider change across time. Starting in the 1950s, the South attracted millions of Midwesterners, Northeasterners, and other transplants. These "immigrants" identified themselves as Republicans at higher rates than native whites. In the 1980s, up to a quarter of self-declared Republicans in Texas appear to have been such immigrants. Furthermore, research consistently shows that identification with the GOP is stronger among the South's younger rather than older white voters, and that each cohort has also became more Republican with time. Do we really believe immigrants (like George H.W. Bush, who moved with his family to Texas) were more racist than native Southerners, and that younger Southerners identified more with white solidarity than did their elders, and that all cohorts did so more by the 1980s and '90s than they had earlier?
In sum, the GOP's Southern electorate was not rural, nativist, less educated, afraid of change, or concentrated in the most stagnant parts of the Deep South. It was disproportionately suburban, middle-class, educated, younger, non-native-Southern, and concentrated in the growth-points that were, so to speak, the least "Southern" parts of the South. This is a very strange way to reincarnate George Wallace's movement.
The Decline of Racism
Timing may provide the greatest gap between the myth and the actual unfolding of events. Only in the 1980s did more white Southerners self-identify as Republicans than as Democrats, and only in the mid-1990s did Republicans win most Southern House seats and become competitive in most state legislatures. So if the GOP's strength in the South only recently reached its zenith, and if its appeal were primarily racial in nature, then the white Southern electorate (or at least most of it) would have to be as racist as ever. But surely one of the most important events in Southern political history is the long-term decline of racism among whites. The fact that these (and many other) books suggest otherwise shows that the myth is ultimately based on a demonization not of the GOP but of Southerners, who are indeed assumed to have Confederate flags in their hearts if not on their pickups. This view lends The Rise of Southern Republicans a schizophrenic nature: it charts numerous changes in the South, but its organizing categories are predicated on the unsustainable assumption that racial views remain intact.
What's more, the trend away from confident beliefs in white supremacy may have begun earlier than we often think. David Chappell, a historian of religion, argues that during the height of the civil rights struggle, segregationists were denied the crucial prop of religious legitimacy. Large numbers of pastors of diverse denominations concluded that there was no Biblical foundation for either segregation or white superiority. Although many pastors remained segregationist anyway, the official shift was startling: "Before the Supreme Court's [Brown v. Board] decision of 1954, the southern Presbyterians. . . and, shortly after the decision, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) overwhelmingly passed resolutions supporting desegregation and calling on all to comply with it peacefully. . . . By 1958 all SBC seminaries accepted black applicants." With considerable understatement, Chappell notes that "people—even historians—are surprised to hear this." Billy Graham, the most prominent Southern preacher, was openly integrationist.
The point of all this is not to deny that Richard Nixon may have invited some nasty fellows into his political bed. The point is that the GOP finally became the region's dominant party in the least racist phase of the South's entire history, and it got that way by attracting most of its votes from the region's growing and confident communities—not its declining and fearful ones. The myth's shrillest proponents are as reluctant to admit this as they are to concede that most Republicans genuinely believe that a color-blind society lies down the road of individual choice and dynamic change, not down the road of state regulation and unequal treatment before the law. The truly tenacious prejudices here are the mythmakers'.
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I'm a little confused here, GM. I said that you ignore party realignment. You say I propagate a myth, and then, in an effort to prove me wrong, include as evidence an article that explicitly says that there was a shift in party alignments between the creation of the KKK and the present?
"Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting."
"Of course, it was harder for Republicans to win in Deep South states where Democratic-leaning black electorates were larger. But even when we account for that, the GOP became the dominant party of white voters much earlier in the Periphery than it did in the Deep South."
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My thought is that there are racist element across the political spectrum. This includes the Tea Party.
There is now a coordinated campaign to sink the Tea Party as a socially acceptable position by a) making shit up and b) finding occasional outliers like the bigoted idiot under discussion here this morning.
What to do?
My thoughts:
a) Identify racism as across the spectrum. This means we must have some sound bite examples of racism on the left. Anyone?
b) Point out the respect and leadership positions held by TP voices such as
*Zo
*Herbert Cain
*Thomas Sowell
*Dr. Ben Carson
*Allen West
*Clarence Thomas (you'll have to be ready to counter the condescension)
*Larry Elder
*Walter Williams
*add you own examples.
I despise group politics but that is the battlefield we play on. I agree with the points above. First I would ignore race and move beyond race, as we mostly have. Secondly and simultaneously I would go in and go after all the pet Dem groups, refute their failed messages and chip away at their support. The Obama/liberal agenda has been horrible for the economics and families of blacks, Hispanics, gays, young people, women. Not more freebies, but live and raise your kids in a better, more prosperous society with lower unemployment and expanded opportunities. Get a message, and go to their media, their neighborhoods, etc. and make the case. Marketers know who they are how to reach them. A 4% switch of allegiance is an 8% shift in the vote, enough to swing back even a so-called landslide election. That is attainable; look at the persuasive capability just within the list above. With gains in these groups comes improvement with independents and moderates who don't want to be seen as siding with racists and extremists. The Obama campaign called it competing in all 50 states. In order to win 51%, we need to compete in every venue for every vote.
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I'm a little confused here, GM. I said that you ignore party realignment. You say I propagate a myth, and then, in an effort to prove me wrong, include as evidence an article that explicitly says that there was a shift in party alignments between the creation of the KKK and the present?
"Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting."
"Of course, it was harder for Republicans to win in Deep South states where Democratic-leaning black electorates were larger. But even when we account for that, the GOP became the dominant party of white voters much earlier in the Periphery than it did in the Deep South."
The lie is that today's republicans are yesterdays racebaiting democrats. The dems use race hatred today just as they've always done. The republicans have always been anti-slavery, once it was plantations, now it's big government feeding on captive voting blocs.
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I'm a little confused here, GM. I said that you ignore party realignment. You say I propagate a myth, and then, in an effort to prove me wrong, include as evidence an article that explicitly says that there was a shift in party alignments between the creation of the KKK and the present?
"Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting."
"Of course, it was harder for Republicans to win in Deep South states where Democratic-leaning black electorates were larger. But even when we account for that, the GOP became the dominant party of white voters much earlier in the Periphery than it did in the Deep South."
The lie is that today's republicans are yesterdays racebaiting democrats. The dems use race hatred today just as they've always done. The republicans have always been anti-slavery, once it was plantations, now it's big government feeding on captive voting blocs.
That's not what you seemed to say earlier. And now it is a lie, not a myth? I thought you said words have meaning?
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They both apply. Dems still using the klan to try to scare minorities into submission hasn't changed, the new spin is the Rev. Wright/Farrakhan/NBPP hatred our president was shaped by. The hatred fueling violence in our country today that our professional media won't cover.
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But you do recognize that the party realignment happened, yes?
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No. Republicans have always been anti-slavery from the start and helped shape America for the better. The civil rights legislation the republicans pushed through despite the efforts of dems made this a better nation.
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Republicans like LBJ?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVWn89vGJys[/youtube]
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No. Republicans have always been anti-slavery from the start and helped shape America for the better. The civil rights legislation the republicans pushed through despite the efforts of dems made this a better nation.
So, you posted an article as evidence that noted that there was a realignment, but don't believe it yourself?
You are genuinely amazing, GM.
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Join Tea Party Patriots’ Rapid Response Team
________________________________________
Patriots,
Tomorrow is yet another day for Congress to decide whether they are going to stand with the American people or whether they are going to live above the law that they forced onto the American people. Will they live under Obamacare - the law they passed against the will of the American people - or do they claim the exemption granted unilaterally by President Obama?
Politico is reporting that members of Congress have the option of deeming their employees as "official" or not "official" to determine whether or not they are forced to enter the exchanges.1 Rep. Darrell Issa says he can just deem all of his staff as not "official" to avoid his staff from being forced to live under the law like anyone else. However, even those that will be forced into the exchanges can still receive a taxpayer subsidy that section 1512 of the "Affordable Care Act" outlaws for other Americans enrolled in the exchanges.2
All Senators and Representatives must decide tomorrow, by 5PM eastern. This is just another case of the ruling elite creating loop-holes for themselves so that they can live above the laws that they force on the American people. We have repeatedly said Obamacare must be repealed and we stand by that. Sure, we can make phone calls to urge them not to create special exemptions for themselves and to instead move to repeal, defund, or delay the entire law, but will they listen? Most of them likely won't.
This is why it is important for us to now turn our focus on what we can do that will have a meaningful impact on reining in the elitism and corruption in DC.
Over the next several months and as we move into the 2014 cycle, Tea Party Patriots will have several volunteer opportunities that will build up to having a meaningful impact. These activities include everything from going door to door to engaging in our cause online. We are calling this team the "Rapid Response Team" and we want to know how you would like to be a part of this team. This team of activists is going to lay the ground work for saving our country.
JOIN THE RAPID RESPONSE TEAM NOW
This team goes beyond Congressional exemptions and bad policy; it is a mobilization of patriots across the country for all things Tea Party. Joining the Rapid Response Team will enable you to receive action alerts on the things that matter most to you.
We have already shown Washington D.C. time and time again that government serves We The People, not the other way around. The Tea Party has been successful enough to drive attacks from the Mainstream Media, Senators, Representatives, and our own President. If they didn't fear us, they wouldn't even talk about us. But we still have more work to do.
You can be part of the Tea Party’s response team and help us make history once again. Join the Rapid Response Team today!
In liberty,
Tea Party Patriots National Support Team
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No. Republicans have always been anti-slavery from the start and helped shape America for the better. The civil rights legislation the republicans pushed through despite the efforts of dems made this a better nation.
So, you posted an article as evidence that noted that there was a realignment, but don't believe it yourself?
You are genuinely amazing, GM.
I guess your academic indoctrination is disrupting your ability to read. You can't seem to grasp that the geneational cohort and demographics shift occurred and not the leftist lie that the racist democrats became republicans.
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http://www.humanevents.com/2006/07/05/racist-democrats-vs-colorblind-republicans/
Racist Democrats vs. Colorblind Republicans
By: jhawkins
7/5/2006 09:28 AM
Sadly, Democrats have managed to trick a lot of black Americans into believing that the GOP is a racist party. But, in truth, the Democratic Party was, is, and will likely continue to be the home of far more racists than the GOP. Let me explain why I say that.
To begin with, the Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery activists, in contrast to the pro-slavery Democratic Party. It was Abe Lincoln, a Republican President, who led the North to victory in the Civil War and freed the slaves while the Democrats did everything in their power to keep black Americans down.
Fast forward to 1898 in Wilmington, N.C., where Democrats murdered black Republicans so they could stage, “the nation’s only recorded coup d’etat.” Then, in 1922, Democrats in the Senate filibustered a Republican attempt to make lynching a federal crime. A little later on, FDR nominated former Klansman Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Contrast that to Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, who actually “sent troops” to ensure that schools in Little Rock, Ark., were desegregated and ordered the “complete desegregation of the Armed Forces.” Noticing any trends?
But, that was such a long time ago, right? Things really changed in the ’60s, didn’t they? Yes, Americans — particularly black Americans — really owe Democratic President Lyndon Johnson a debt of gratitude for destroying American families and causing the number of illegitimate births to skyrocket — by pushing entitlement programs that made it much easier to have children out of wedlock.
Remember George “segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” Wallace standing in the door of an Alabama schoolhouse to keep black children from being able to go to school with whites? George Wallace was a Democrat. Remember Bull Connor turning water hoses and dogs on civil rights protestors? Bull Connor was a Democrat.
But, what about the revolutionary Civil Rights Act of 1964? That’s where the Democrats showed their mettle and Republicans were proven to be racists. Right? Wrong. 82% of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 versus only 64% of Democrats. Furthermore, a few years later, it was Republican Richard Nixon who first put teeth behind affirmative action.
But, what about today? You’d think that with Democrats receiving upwards of 90% of the black vote in some cases, that there would be few, if any, prominent black Republicans while black Americans would be amongst the biggest power players in the Democratic Party. However, the opposite has often turned out to be true. Once you look past the gerrymandered districts that have to remain in place because so many liberal whites simply won’t vote for black candidates (There are only five black Democrats in the House representing majority white districts), you’ll see that the Republican Party has surpassed the Democrats in many areas.
Who’s the only black American currently on the Supreme Court? Clarence Thomas. The first black Secretary of State? Colin Powell. The first black woman ever to be a Secretary of State? Condi Rice.
Who’s one of the fill-ins for the most popular conservative radio host on earth, Rush Limbaugh? Walter Williams. The most desired 2008 nominee as selected by the right side of the blogosphere in 2006? Condi Rice. Who did those same bloggers select as the most desired nominee to replace Sandra Day O’Connor when she retired? Janice Rogers Brown tied for first place.
Meanwhile, what do we see from Democrats? We see Oreo cookies being thrown at Maryland’s black U.S. Senate candidate Michael Steele and black Republicans being called “Uncle Toms” and compared to “Aunt Jemima.”
Moreover, let’s take a look at a couple of studies that actually set out to compare how racist Republicans and Democrats actually are. First off, a professor from Yale looked at voting patterns and she found that:
“…(W)hite Republicans nationally are 25 percentage points more likely on average to vote for the Democratic senatorial candidate when the GOP hopeful is black. …In House races, white Democrats are 38 percentage points less likely to vote Democratic if their candidate is black.”
It would have been interesting for them to poll black Republicans and Democrats as well, for comparison’s sake, but however you slice it, there are a lot more white Democrats than white Republicans willing to defect to the other side rather than vote for a black candidate.
Then there is another study, this time from a professor at Stanford — of how much government largesse Democrats and Republicans believe people deserved to be given after Katrina — and, surprise, surprise: Democrats behaved in a racist fashion while Republicans didn’t:
“But for Democrats, race mattered — and in a disturbing way. Overall, Democrats were willing to give whites about $1,500 more than they chose to give to a black or other minority….” Republicans are likely to be more stringent, both in terms of money and time, Iyengar said. “However, their position is ‘principled’ in the sense that it stems from a strong belief in individualism (as opposed to handouts). Thus their responses to the assistance questions are relatively invariant across the different media conditions. Independents and Democrats, on the other hand, are more likely to be affected by racial cues.”
Here’s the reality: there are racists in both parties. But, there are a lot more of them in the Democratic Party and there always have been. But ironically, Democrats have managed to use the GOP’s belief in a colorblind America against us. Because so many Democrats have no problem with using racial discrimination for political purposes, they’ll support policies like reparations, Affirmative Action, and racial quotas that Republicans simply won’t. Then they deftly distort and exploit incidents like the Katrina rescue efforts and Bill Bennett’s condemnation of the idea that black babies could be aborted to reduce the crime rate to convince black Americans that the GOP hates black Americans.
This is all despite the fact that for a large number of black Americans, the GOP is a much better fit than the Democratic Party. The GOP is the party that’s friendly to religion, anti-abortion, against gay marriage, tough on crime, and for low taxes and school vouchers. Yet, so many black Americans have been deceived into sticking with the Democrats even though the Dems do so many things that are harmful to our country as a whole and to black Americans in particular.
That’s why if you’re a black American who thinks the GOP better represents your views than the Democratic Party, then it’s time to join the Republican Party. Don’t let the Democrats lie to you and tell you that the GOP is full of racists, especially when there are so many distinguished black Americans out there who can tell you otherwise. Look to Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Rod Paige, Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, J.C. Watts, Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell, Lynn Swann — and you’ll see that the GOP judges people not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
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This is an interesting subject, but it not really likely to be found by looking on this thread down the road. Perhaps in The Way Forward or the Discrimination threads?
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No. Republicans have always been anti-slavery from the start and helped shape America for the better. The civil rights legislation the republicans pushed through despite the efforts of dems made this a better nation.
So, you posted an article as evidence that noted that there was a realignment, but don't believe it yourself?
You are genuinely amazing, GM.
I guess your academic indoctrination is disrupting your ability to read. You can't seem to grasp that the geneational cohort and demographics shift occurred and not the leftist lie that the racist democrats became republicans.
Man, you are so fing right. Except for the part where the article you submit as evidence fing says that there was a fing realignment.
"Under FDR, the Democrats successfully assembled a daunting, cross-regional coalition of presidential voters. To compete, the GOP had to develop a broader national outreach of its own, which meant adding a Southern strategy to its arsenal. In 1952, Dwight Eisenhower took his campaign as national hero southward. He, like Nixon in 1960, polled badly among Deep South whites. But Ike won four states in the Peripheral South. This marked their lasting realignment in presidential voting."
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And then you post articles which ignore that:
A) the first black Supreme Court nominee was a Democrat
B) and was nominated by a Democrat
C) and that the presidential candidate that phoned Coretta Scott King to support her jailed husband was a Democrat
D) that the first black Secretary of State left the Republican party, after his aide pointed out that the GOP is "full of racists": http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election-2012/powell-aide-gop-full-racists-article-1.1193673
E) that suggesting that the vast majority of blacks could be so easily "fooled" Democratic party is demeaning to people's intelligence, and is itself racist
F) suggests no actual knowledge about other components of history and politics, such as the incentive to stay with party, even after a realignment, due to seniority norms and benefits in Congress
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The Tea Party Battles to Come
Three unrepentant veterans of the shutdown brawl say they're eager for primary election fights with a goal of remaking the GOP.
By Stephen Moore
Nov. 1, 2013 6:57 p.m. ET
Only three weeks have passed since the end of the tea party-inspired government shutdown, yet already the group's citizen activists find themselves in the eye of another political storm. Republican-oriented business groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Retail Federation are now threatening to challenge tea party-favored primary candidates, especially if they appear to be in the Ted Cruz scorched-earth political mold.
These business interests and a growing number of GOP insiders are fed up with tea party tactics that they believe have become a negative political force for a Republican Party that is now suffering record-low approval ratings. One business leader recently compared its influence to the Occupy Wall Street crowd taking control of the Democratic Party.
The tea party's answer to the GOP establishment threats: Bring it on—we aren't backing down. That's the message I gleaned from recent interviews with three of the movement's most prominent leaders: Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, Amy Kremer of Tea Party Express and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots.
After 20 years working behind the scenes in Washington, Mr. Kibbe is well-seasoned in political warfare. Ms. Martin, a former computer programmer and Home Depot manager, and Ms. Kremer, a former Delta flight attendant, are relatively new to such conflict. The two women are both mothers living in Georgia—one of the states where the tea party first took root four years ago—and they reflect the group's typical profile: white, middle class, well educated, sick of politics as usual and driven by a conviction that America must be rescued from impending ruin caused by Washington's profligacy.
These three don't always agree on tactics, and they often compete for money and media attention. But they share an overall assessment of what is wrong with Washington and what needs to be done. Like many local tea party activists I have spoken with, they generally view the government shutdown not as a tactical blunder but as an example of weak-kneed Republicans muffing an opportunity to roll back ObamaCare.
"I don't have any regrets," says Ms. Kremer, who attended the original meeting in August when Sen. Mike Lee of Utah unveiled the plan to defund ObamaCare. Mr. Kibbe is similarly unrepentant. Asked what went wrong, he replies: "We just didn't anticipate the Republican circular firing squad in the Senate or the vicious attacks directed at Mike Lee and Ted Cruz." He still thinks the GOP could have won.
Ms. Martin expresses sheer frustration with the final outcome: "What would you expect? This was the ruling elite"—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid —"negotiating with the ruling elite"—Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Neither she nor Mr. Kibbe nor Ms. Martin acknowledges even the possibility that the government shutdown was a doomed strategy from the start. The tea party's public-approval rating in the immediate aftermath of the government shutdown has plummeted to 14% in some polls, but these leaders seem unfazed.
Were their members demoralized by the GOP cave-in? No, Mr. Kibbe says, they're "energized." He says FreedomWorks' fundraising has soared in recent weeks, and he expects that the group will raise up to $20 million this year. Other tea party organizations report similar surges in contributions.
Ms. Martin says her troops are also fired up. "I have never seen our members so angry at the elected Republicans—especially Sens. McConnell and [John] McCain. " There is more than a hint in these interviews that tea party groups will redouble their efforts to unseat Republicans who they think waved a white flag during the shutdown. "Taking on incumbent Republicans is part of our job," Ms. Martin says.
Critics say the tea party seems to think that the other part of its job is replacing incumbents with candidates who are hapless neophytes—not-ready-for-primetime candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana. Republicans blame their defeats for preventing a GOP takeover of the Senate in 2010 and 2012. Don't tell that to the tea party. Its members are adamant that they aren't an appendage of the Republican Party. "How do these critics think Republicans won their landslide election in 2010?" Mr. Kibbe says. "It was because of us."
He believes it is a "false choice to say that Republicans can't win a governing majority by picking principled free-market candidates." And he shows me an election spread sheet purporting to show that in 2012, tea party candidates fared better than those handpicked by the Republican establishment. "Almost all our tea party candidates won in 2010," he says, while the big losers in 2012 were uninspiring moderate Republicans in states like North Dakota, Montana and New Mexico.
But Mr. Kibbe does admit: "OK, Indiana and Richard Mourdock"—who defeated longtime GOP incumbent Richard Lugar and then lost in the general election—"you can blame on us."
Ms. Kremer says, "It doesn't do us any good to have more Republicans if they don't stand for our principles. Our goal isn't to just elect more, but better Republicans."
She points to the election to the Senate in recent years of Rand Paul, Pat Toomey, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, all of whom were aided by tea party backing. She adds that when George W. Bush was president and Republicans controlled Congress, Washington's big-spending ways never changed. Just electing politicians with an "R" next to their name, she says, won't bring the kind of seismic change that's needed.
But it wasn't until the Obama administration took over, with an unprecedented spending spree—including the $830 billion "stimulus" and plans for a fantastically expensive health-care overhaul—that millions of Americans were galvanized to take political action.
Many on the left and right hoped that the tea party movement would fizzle, but its influence, especially inside the GOP, seems to have increased. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledges that the defund ObamaCare and government-shutdown power play simply wouldn't have happened without the organizing efforts of activists across the country. Tea Party Express, Tea Party Patriots and FreedomWorks led this mobilization. They have combined annual budgets of more than $30 million and claim between six million and 12 million active members.
What's next on their agenda? Beyond still vowing to roll back ObamaCare—how, precisely, isn't clear— Ms. Kreme says "one of our immediate priorities is to enforce the budget caps and sequester." Even the defense cuts, which many military hawks think could endanger national defense? "With a $17 trillion debt," she says, "everything has to be cut."
Unlike Reagan-era conservatives, who supported rising budgets for the Pentagon to ensure military superiority in the Cold War, the tea party sees the federal debt itself as the main threat to national security.
Mr. Kibbe identifies balancing the budget as the paramount goal for his members. Are they so obsessed with eliminating deficits that they would accept tax increases to get there? No way: "There's a definite supply-side strain within the tea party," he says, smiling. "They want revenues, yes, but through growth and tax reform."
It's a mistake, though, to assume that the tea party is a single-issue movement. The focus on federal spending reflects a general distrust of almost everything that happens in Washington. A theme that emerges in talking with tea party leaders and activists is that under President Obama the federal government has increasingly intruded on basic constitutional rights. It's easy to discount this as black-helicopter paranoia, but Ms. Martin pointedly notes that Tea Party Patriots and allied groups were the subject of IRS targeting and audits.
One typical and unfair criticism of the tea party, as expressed once by Nancy Pelosi, is that this is an "astro-turf," manufactured movement, not a genuine localized grass roots uprising. Nonsense. All one has to do is attend a tea party rally to see that the activists are bus drivers, construction workers, home makers, small business owners and grandparents who have a patriotic concern about the consequences of trillion-dollar deficits and bailout nation. As one activist told me, "All we want from our government is less of it."
Now that the activists are facing friendly fire from mainstream Republicans, the temptation to start a third party might seem tempting, but Mr. Kibbe quickly dismisses the idea. "Third parties are a political disaster," he says, citing the Bull Moose Party a century ago, which split the GOP and helped put the liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson in the White House. More recently, Ross Perot took votes from George H.W. Bush and helped to elect Bill Clinton.
Mr. Kibbe says the tea party's goal is to "move the center of gravity of the Republican party toward an agenda of freedom and limited government." He cites as a model the modern-day progressive left's takeover of the Democratic Party, gaining enough liberal influence to make Nancy Pelosi the House Speaker and using a grass-roots strategy to nominate Barack Obama over the establishment favorite, Hillary Clinton.
The animus from the business wing of the GOP doesn't scare the tea party leaders. Ms. Martin scoffs: "We're not surprised big businesses are opposing us. These are mostly crony capitalists who want something from government."
Mr. Kibbe is similarly disdainful: "I used to work at the Chamber of Commerce. The chamber supported the original version of HillaryCare back in 1993 and the precursor to ObamaCare. They supported the bank bailouts and the Obama stimulus. We are not for any of that." As for the prospect of business backing candidates specifically to challenge tea party choices, Ms. Kremer says: "If it's business money versus tea party grass-roots activists, I like our chances."
This us-against-the-world mentality turns off many people regarding the tea party and may prevent it from gaining enough traction with a big tent of voters to realize its goals. Conservative pollster Whit Ayres says of the tea party, "I wish they would remember the Reagan rule, if someone is with me 70% of the time in politics, they are my friend."
Not the tea party. If you're 30% not with them, that can be a deal breaker. "I would hope the business groups would understand that money alone doesn't buy elections," Ms. Martin says. "The business groups need to work with the tea party, not against it."
If these three activists are any guide, and I think they are, then the GOP is headed for an internal brawl in 2014, and perhaps beyond. In the recent debt-ceiling wrangle, the tea party seems not to have realized where that fight would lead. Before letting the clash with establishment Republicans escalate into all-out war, the tea party should step back and consider an uncomfortable fact. In the end, only one person will win that war. Her name is Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Moore is a member of the Journal's editorial board.
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Sowell: Tea Party at the Crossroads
By Thomas Sowell November 12, 2013 6:55 am
Third parties have had an unbroken record of failure in American presidential politics. So it was refreshing to see in the Tea Party an insurgent movement, mainly of people who were not professional politicians, but who nevertheless had the good sense to see that their only chance of getting their ideals enacted into public policies was within one of the two major parties.
More important, the Tea Party was an insurgent movement that was not trying to impose some untried Utopia, but to restore the lost heritage of America that had been eroded, undermined or just plain sold out by professional politicians.
What the Tea Party was attempting was conservative, but it was also insurgent -- if not radical -- in the sense of opposing the root assumptions behind the dominant political trends of our times. Since those trends have included the erosion, if not the dismantling, of the Constitutional safeguards of American freedom, what the Tea Party was attempting was long overdue.
ObamaCare epitomized those trends, since its fundamental premise was that the federal government had the right to order individual Americans to buy what the government wanted them to buy, whether they wanted to or not, based on the assumption that Washington elites know what is good for us better than we know ourselves.
The Tea Party's principles were clear. But their tactics can only be judged by the consequences.
Since the Tea Party sees itself as the conservative wing of the Republican Party, its supporters might want to consider what was said by an iconic conservative figure of the past, Edmund Burke: "Preserving my principles unshaken, I reserve my activity for rational endeavours."
Fundamentally, "rational" means the ability to make a ratio -- that is, to weigh one thing against another. Burke makes a key distinction between believing in a principle and weighing the likely consequences of taking a particular action to advance that principle.
There is no question that the principles of anyone who believes in the freedom of American citizens from arbitrary government dictates like ObamaCare -- unauthorized by anything in the Constitution and forbidden by the 10th Amendment -- must oppose this quantum leap forward in the expansion of the power of government.
There is nothing ambiguous about the principle. The only question is about the tactics, the Tea Party's attempt to defund ObamaCare. The principle would justify repealing ObamaCare. So the only reason for the Tea Partyers' limiting themselves to trying to defund this year was a recognition that repealing it was not within their power.
The only question then is: was defunding ObamaCare within their power? Most people outside the Tea Party recognized that defunding ObamaCare was also beyond their power -- and events confirmed that.
It was virtually inconceivable from the outset that the Tea Party could force the Democrats who controlled the Senate to pass the defunding bill, even if the Tea Party had the complete support of all Republican Senators -- much less pass it with a majority large enough to override President Obama's certain veto.
Therefore was the Tea Party-led attempt to defund ObamaCare something that met Burke's standard of a "rational endeavour"?
With the chances of making a dent in ObamaCare by trying to defund it being virtually zero, and the Republican Party's chances of gaining power in either the 2014 or 2016 elections being reduced by the public's backlash against that futile attempt, there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.
However difficult it might be to repeal ObamaCare after it gets up and running, the odds against repeal, after the 2014 and 2016 elections, are certainly no worse than the odds against defunding it in 2013. Winning those elections would improve the odds.
If the Tea Party made a tactical mistake, that is not necessarily fatal in politics. People can even learn from their mistakes -- but only if they admit to themselves that they were mistaken. Whether the Tea Party can do that may determine not only its fate but the fate of an America that still needs the principles that brought Tea Party members together in the first place.
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Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com. To find out more about Thomas Sowell and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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Crafty posted the first part above in the thread, the link to part 2 follows my comment.
Words I have never before written, Thomas Sowell, I think you have this wrong. The concept is right. Choosing our battles, policies, tactics and candidates to support and oppose are all crucial to tea party success. The de-fund strategy was judged a failure. However, it did NOT cause the shutdown, the opponents did that by refusing to negotiate with the House - on ObamaCare. The rest was all funded by the House. The 'shutdown' was a 16 day, 17%, non-essential services, paid vacation. Other than giving ammunition to an already hateful mainstream media, almost no one can point to real damage done. On the plus side, it was made abundantly clear to everyone (again) that the Republicans oppose this train wreck and have at least a part of a backbone, and that Democrats were exposed as forcing their rule at all costs, on record refusing to negotiate and willing to close it all to get their prize possession. Now they own it. Immediate reactions are one thing, the tea party lost in the polls, but in one month following the generic party vote in one poll has swung back 11 points, from -8 to +3 R. That doesn't happen when people blame both parties. The so-called tea party took a stand, failed, and America lost out as a consequence. Now we at least we know where everyone stands.
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2013/11/13/tea-party-at-the-crossroads-part-ii-n1744536
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After the Obama administration bragged of the traffic the new and improved website is handling, Glenn Beck pointed out that The Blaze has more visitors in that period of time than healthcare.gov.
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For the record, I have received various over-the-top hyperventilating fund raising appeals from various Tea Party groups fulminating at the Ryan-Murray deal. Credibility diminished I think.
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Just when you thought government waste was bad enough, we learn that the government spent $400,000 to study the intelligence of ... Tea Party members. According to Fox News' Greta Van Susteren, however, the results weren't what the researcher was looking for: "Tea Party members have a better scientific comprehension than non-Tea Party members." The professor who conducted the "study" found the results "puzzling" -- because he clearly expected Tea Party members to be dumber than average. Former congressman Allen West put it this way: "I would find it unconscionable that people on the Left would believe that just because you believe in our founding documents, the ability to understand and comprehend the Federalist Papers, that for some odd reason you're going to be ... a dummy or not have the right type of cognitive abilities. ... I think you will find that most Tea Party members are very astute." But by golly, the government needed $400,000 of your money to figure that out.
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http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-beck-duck-dynasty-white-santa-2013-12; http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/20/glenn-beck-chris-christie-is-a-fat-nightmare/
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/21/watch-glenn-becks-takedown-of-ny-gov-cuomo-plus-he-tells-megyn-kelly-his-biggest-regret-from-his-time-at-fox-news/
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Henry Waxman, 20-Term Democrat, Leaving House
Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, a diminutive Democratic giant whose 40 years in the House produced some of the most important legislation of the era, will announce on Thursday that he is retiring at the end of the year.
Mr. Waxman, 74, joins the growing list of House members who are calling it quits, many in disappointment over the partisanship and ineffectiveness of a Congress that may end up as the least productive in history.
“It’s been frustrating because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview on Wednesday. “Nothing seems to be happening.”
READ MORE »
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/31/us/politics/henry-a-waxman-a-house-democratic-fixture-will-retire.html?emc=edit_na_20140130
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"“It’s been frustrating because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans,” Mr. Waxman said in an interview on Wednesday."
Yes. A scumbag to the very end. His beloved Democrat party. Good riddance. But as Levin says, there is no end to those right behind him ready to fill in and reclose ranks as the Socialist movement "marches forward".
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Reliability of source unknown
http://www.usaprepares.com/government-corruption-2/tsa-harasses-shane-harger-constitutional-chief-of-police-usaprpepares-com-instructor-chief-and-entire-olice-department-wrongfully-fired
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/01/30/the-powerful-coalition-three-major-conservative-personalities-are-building-likely-has-the-establishment-terrified/
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Crafty what is your take on the Beck mea culpa on Megan Kelly recently? Someone asked me this and I said I have no idea.
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I love Glenn, but find his site(s) a PITA to use, full of cookie crap, and often inefficient with my time. In short, I did not follow it closely :lol: But FWIW what I got out of it was Glenn looking to honestly examine himself to see how it can do a better job of contributing to a better America. In this case, I suspect he may have overdone the self0-examination a bit in the spirit of setting an example, but he's Glenn and he does that.
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The person who asked me thought something was pressuring Beck. Like the IRS, he was caught with a hooker, smoking something, I dunno.
I guess he was suspicious that the left was had something on him. It really is remarkable how we keep seeing those who go after Obama being targeted.
The pattern is obvious.
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/02/02/they-are-afraid-glenn-rails-against-republicans-at-gop-fundraiser/
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/02/04/glenn-turns-tv-show-into-a-1920s-noir-movie-in-myra-takedown/
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Tea Party Turns Five
Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of CNBC's Rick Santelli reporting from the Chicago stock exchange floor and calling for a new "Tea Party." He was specifically opposed to Barack Obama's "stimulus," bailouts and other massive spending growth. "A lot of people have been credited with starting the modern-day tea party but make no mistake, it was Rick Santelli," said Glenn Beck. "His off the cuff monologue spoke the words that millions of Americans felt but could not nor dare not speak." The Tea Party remains a force in the GOP, and is the reason the party swept to victory in the House in 2010. We hope the movement can regain that momentum this fall, retake the Senate, and restore some fiscal sanity to Washington.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/25/what-two-google-execs-said-about-glenn-beck-before-the-studio-cameras-started-rolling/
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[tabl]"We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.[e][/table]"We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.[
“It was powerful”: Kathie Lee Gifford described an unexpected dinner with Glenn Beck and friends
Tuesday, Feb 25, 2014 at 6:22 PM EST
Over the weekend, Glenn had a fun dinner with some prominent NYC figures including Today Show‘s Kathie Lee Gifford, Tribeca Film Festival founder Craig Hatkoff, and famed fashion designer Norma Kamali. Gifford opened up about her dinner on The Today Show, praising the way that people of different ideological viewpoints could come together and discuss real solutions to the country’s problems.
“A rare thing for me to come back into the city on a Friday night and have a dinner but Craig Hatkoff, is married to Jane Rosenthal, Tribeca Film Festival and everything invited me and maybe about 20 people to come to a dinner at the Lambs Club here in NY, which is a beautiful beautiful room, in honor of Glenn Beck, who is a controversial gentleman but I have befriended him for the past few years and have great affection for him. And apparently so does Craig,” she said.
At the dinner, several people shared ideas about what the problems were and how people could come together to work towards the solutions by engaging in an honest and open dialogue with people of different viewpoints.
“It was so fascinating to be in a room with so many people coming from a completely different ideological place, all coming together to say ‘Wait a minute our country is in trouble. Where is our common ground? Because that is where our sacred ground is.’,” she continued.
“Everybody contributed, everybody was respectful. It was powerful because of it. It was powerful! So I am grateful that he invited us to come,” Gifford said.
On his radio show Monday, Glenn saw the meeting as a sign that people were starting to wake up, see the problems, and come together to work on solutions. Even better, he saw it as a way for the people who have recognized the growing issues in America, including Tea Party members and 9/12 Project members, to finally see some of their concerns being accepted by a larger, and at times unexpected, number of people.
“You have made such an impact by gathering together and being fans of this show and other shows and other things like this. You’re not dismissed anymore. We used to be a bunch of crazies. We’re not a bunch of crazies. We are a very powerful force and only getting stronger,” Glenn said.
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One Tea Party slogan is "take back our country". This needs to be changed. While I understand the point and agree it has the unfortunate inadvertent message of exclusion.
Nativism. Throughout our history there has been dislike of new immigrant groups. Irish, Italians, Jews, Chinese etc. This message gives the inadvertent subliminal message that fits right in to that impression. Perhaps the slogan should be something akin to "preserve the greatness of our freedoms for everyone now and for all our children and welcomed immigrants of the future:
http://wallstcheatsheet.com/politics/did-the-tea-party-brew-their-cup-too-strong-to-survive-2014.html/?ref=YF
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The Soul Of The GOP
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on March 11, 2014
Establishment Republicans always remind us of how the Tea Party cost the GOP crucial seats in 2010 and 2012, which might have delivered control of the Senate to the Republican Party. And, they have a point. If Tea Party candidates had not won primaries in Delaware, Nevada, Colorado, Indiana and Missouri, these states might now be sending more Republicans to the Senate.
But, consider the alternative. Had Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) not won their primaries, imagine how lifeless the Republican minority in the Senate would be. The party's current intellectual and ideological cutting edge has come from Tea Party primary victories.
Would we rather have Charlie Crist, now running as a Democrat, in the Senate from Florida, or Marco Rubio?
Would we prefer mute Bob Bennett as the Republican senator from Utah, or the outspoken Mike Lee?
In Kentucky, would Trey Grayson, unknown and undistinguished, have been a better spokesman for our party than Rand Paul?
Would the go-along, get-along Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have been anything close to the dashing, charismatic figure cut by Ted Cruz in Texas?
And in Wisconsin, one can only wonder if anyone other than Ron Johnson could have upended Russ Feingold to take the Senate seat in that liberal state.
Day in and day out, it is these firebrand Tea Party senators who are dominating the conservative benches in Washington. Add to their ilk the likes of Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and David Vitter (R-La.), and you have accounted for the most active, ideologically confrontational and politically effective members of the Republican Senate minority.
On the state level, has there been a governorship that better embodied the potential of Republican change than that of Scott Walker in Wisconsin? He has shown us all how to win the education issue for the GOP and has let us all see how curbing public-sector unions can return government to the people.
The fact is, like it or not, the Tea Party is the soul of the Republican Party.
There is no better example of the need to have the Tea Party continue its cleansing of the U.S. Senate than the looming primary in Mississippi. Thad Cochran (R-Miss), 76, has been the leading pork dispenser on the Republican side of the aisle for decades. He once vied for the honor with Alaska's Ted Stevens; now he has it all to himself. Silent on major national issues, rarely heard from in the Senate, he stands as an apostle of the old ways, pursuing increased government spending with all the vigor of a Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) or Scoop Jackson (D-Wash.) of a bygone era. Without a scorecard, you couldn't tell which of these old-fashioned senators is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative.
We will not return to national power by electing faceless, nameless Republican senators who do not stand up and never fight hard.
The passivity of the Republican minority in the Senate is the stuff of legend. But the Tea Party members have changed all that and deserve our thanks and commendation.
Sometimes, the amateurs of the Tea Party lead us astray. No one can deny that Missouri, Indiana and Delaware would be represented by Republicans had the Tea Party not nominated candidates who made themselves unelectable. And it is probable that we would have won seats in Nevada and Colorado as well but for Tea Party primary victories.
But a lifeless, soulless GOP would be no inspiration to anyone.
Rubio, Cruz, Paul, Johnson, Lee: These names light up our sky and animate our party. Where would we be without their star power?
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The GOP's Fratricidal Threat to Liberty
Violating Reagan's Eleventh Commandment
March 12, 2014
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately." --Benjamin Franklin (1776)
The Tea Party movement is now five years old. With the 2014-midterm elections on the horizon, we should take account of who we were, where we are, and how to restore our lost momentum moving forward.
In the "wave" midterm election of 2010, the Tea Party revolt not only handed the GOP a historic turnover in the House of Representatives, it also led to the election of conservatives in state executive and legislative branches across the nation. After the smoke cleared, Republicans found themselves winners of 63 House seats, 6 Senate seats, 6 governorships and a whopping 680 state legislative seats, giving Republicans control of more state legislatures than at any time since 1928.
But the Tea Party landslide in 2010 did not extend to wins in 2012.
Why?
Because in 2010, the movement stood for a unified set of principles under the umbrella of Essential Liberty, advocating the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and the promotion of free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. (If those principles sound familiar, it's because they've been the essential ingredients of The Patriot Post's mission statement since our inception -- long before there was a Tea Party.)
Unfortunately, in 2012 and now again in 2014, the movement is defined more by whom it opposes rather than what it supports.
How did that happen?
As I wrote ahead of the 2010 election in "The Second Tea Party Revolt," "The greatest strength of the Tea Party movement is the lack of any central organization -- it's a genuine grassroots movement. We derive great strength in forming a unified front uniformly devoted to Liberty."
I wrote further, "However, inevitably, self-appointed Tea Party leaders will arise, as will organizations claiming ownership of the movement, and that will undermine the power and constrain the future potential of its grassroots momentum. ... We must refuse to waste our precious political capital on fratricidal infighting based on ideological purity, and must instead, frame every debate around First Principles and Rule of Law, defining what we support, not just who we are oppose."
Indeed, "leaders" and organizations claiming ownership of the Tea Party did arise, and have undermined our cause, turning it into a contest for party power rather than Liberty.
That contest was on display last week at the American Conservative Union's annual confab, CPAC 2014, which attracted a record crowd this year, primarily younger conservatives from colleges and universities. While some of the lineup at the CPAC podium devoted their time to the common cause of Liberty, others did what they do best -- focus on who they are against rather than what they support.
A soft case in point would be Sarah Palin's warning to the "Beltway Boys" in reference to the 2010 election results: "You didn't build that. The Tea Party did." Great line, but she uttered not a word about the 2012 election results, when both GOP conservatives and moderates had become more consumed with deconstruction than building.
The internecine warfare in the GOP may be good for cornering constituents and emptying their wallets, but it is most assuredly and demonstrably NOT good for advancing Liberty.
My favorite former radical leftist, David Horowitz, asks, "Can the marriage between the Tea Party and the GOP survive?" His answer, "It better."
Horowitz writes, "How do we make this marriage survive? First of all, by recognizing that the basic difference between the Tea Party and the Republican Party is a matter of tactics and temperament, not policy and ideology. ... I am a huge fan of what the Tea Party represents, though not always what it does. I believe the emergence of the Tea Party is the most important political development in conservatism in the last 25 years, and is possibly the last best hope for our country."
But he notes, because there is so much internal strife within the GOP, we "fail to take the fight to the enemy camp."
And the Democrats are laughing all the way to the ballot box.
Fortunately, the principled alliance of the original grassroots Tea Party has not been fully co-opted by those individuals and organizations forming "Tea v. GOP" circular firing squads. There is an emerging consensus from the frontlines that we need to reunite under that umbrella of what we are for -- Liberty -- and not who we are against.
For generations, the Democrat Party has bet its political fortunes on the tried-and-true politics of disunity, dividing Americans by gender, race, creed, ethnicity and income.
But in the last two election cycles, the GOP has perfected a strategy to divide-and-conquer itself by way of intra-party fratricide. In the inimitable words of Walt Kelly's lead swamp comic strip character Pogo Possum, "We have met the enemy and he is us."
On that note, let's revisit the political model for success adopted by Ronald Reagan -- the "Eleventh Commandment."
In his 1990 autobiography, "An American Life," President Reagan noted how this powerful political maxim came about during his first campaign for the California governorship: "The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It's a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since."
Reagan had witnessed the unrelenting attacks against fellow conservative Barry Goldwater by "establishment Republicans" of that era, who claimed Goldwater was too conservative. In effect, they divided the Republican Party, which led to his defeat in the 1964 presidential election.
In his 1966 gubernatorial campaign, Reagan's primary opponent, George Christopher, was leveling the same charges against him. Parkinson's order to stop the intra-party fighting prevailed, however, and Reagan went on to win the primary and the general election, serving two terms as California governor (1967–1975) on his way to becoming the greatest president of the 20th century.
The lesson here is that we should continue to field conservative opposition to moderate Republicans, but in doing so, we should focus on what we support, tenfold, over whom we oppose.
Notably, the current manifestation of infighting between conservatives and moderates in the GOP is not limited to vigorous principled debates in primaries. The internal strife has created ideological division within the party as a whole, which was clearly detrimental in the 2012 presidential and congressional elections -- and will be even more detrimental moving forward.
Now, I certainly don't want to leave the impression that the blame for this division belongs to fratricidal Tea Partiers alone. When Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says of Tea Party primary candidates, "I think we are going to crush them everywhere. I don't think they are going to have a single nominee anywhere in the country," it generates a lot of ill will. And when Speaker of the House John Boehner refers to Tea Party conservatives as "knuckle-draggers," it does the same. And understandably so.
What Republicans of all stripes need to do is adopt Reagan's model for restoration, or look at what we accomplished in Tennessee over the last decade by emphasizing party-building rather than division.
The fact is, most Republicans in the House and Senate score above 80% in the ACU's congressional ratings. We ought to be able to build on our strategic common ground rather than divide on our tactical -- and fractional -- differences.
As Benjamin Franklin said famously when signing the Declaration of Independence, "We must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately." Franklin's words should be the motto of the modern GOP -- and a rallying cry for the restoration of Essential Liberty.
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Interesting 14 minute clip on page at
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/03/25/is-this-glenn-becks-most-alarming-prediction-yet/
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I heard this on Michael Savage. Interesting how political operatives from both sides of the political spectrum use the same "agents":
******Glenn Beck’s Agent is Liberal Operative Matt Hiltzik
Posted on Oct 28, 2009 in Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck and his agent, Matthew Hiltzik, seem put ideological differences aside for the money…
Hiltzik is a Democratic PR operative that works for Beck, but also worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign, Eliot Spitzer’s 1998 attorney general campaign, and for studio head Harvey Weinstein. He also represents Katie Couric, Alec Baldwin, Annie Leibovitz and Don Imus. Matthew’s father, George Hiltzik, brokered the radio gigs of blogger Matt Drudge and Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.
The close friendship and lucrative business relationship that has developed between the 45-year-old conservative firebrand and the 37-year-old former Democratic operative shows how partisan media personalities get discovered, promoted and catapulted into the political stratosphere, even when the talent and the talent broker have opposing ideologies. But for Hiltzik’s former Democratic allies, the alliance is still mostly shocking.
It was also interesting that Matt Hiltzik considers “Democratic activist and public relations powerbroker” Ken Sunshine a mentor. Sunshine advises Color of Change and Green for All, two groups founded by Van Jones, who was repeatedly attacked by Beck.
And it’s not just Sunshine’s clients who are subject to Beck’s drubbings, it’s also his onetime mentor. The current secretary of state, for example, did not respond to calls about Hiltzik and his top client’s tirades against the Obama administration. Asked if he thought Hillary Clinton approved of his current promotion of Beck, who has called her, among other things, “the antichrist,” Hiltzik said, “She has a lot more important things to worry about.”
“Matt Hiltzik is a top professional who can’t save Glenn Beck from his vulgar, hateful ignorance,” said Robert Zimmerman, a public relations executive in New York, Democratic National Committee member and close friend of Hiltzik’s. “But he can get him extensive publicity while he goes down in flames.”*********
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It appears that there are going to be more cases like this-- it does not seem to rise to the level of "Armed Resistance?"
http://www.americasfreedomfighters.com/2014/04/12/feds-seize-familys-ranch-property-owners-fight-government-land-grab/
I'm not sure in which thread this, or others like it that may come, belong but for now I am going to try the notion of "Tea Party" for these cases and ask that they be posted here.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/04/11/ripples-of-nevada-range-showdown-spreading-in-west/
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I support this site:
Patriots' Day
The Roots of the First American Revolution
By Mark Alexander • April 16, 2014
"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!" --Samuel Adams (1776)
Each year on April 19th, we honor the anniversary of Patriots' Day with its inherent defense of Liberty, which is our inspiration to this day. In doing so, we mark the opening salvo of the first American Revolution in 1775, and the first step toward the establishment of an eternal declaration of human Liberty, subordinating the rule of men to Creator-inspired Rule of Law.
A quick search of Barack Hussein Obama's White House website reveals not a single reference to this most notable date in the history of our nation. Undoubtedly the statist regime currently occupying the Executive Branch prefers to ignore this formative event, as the historic call to arms ultimately turned back a growing tide of tyranny.
I invite you to share this brief treatise on the roots of the First American Revolution.
On December 16th, 1773, "rebels" from Boston, members of a secret organization of American Patriots called the Sons of Liberty, boarded three East India Company ships and threw 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. This iconic event, in protest of oppressive taxation and tyrannical rule, is immortalized as "The Boston Tea Party."
Resistance to the British Crown had been mounting over enforcement of the 1764 Sugar Act, 1765 Stamp Act and 1767 Townshend Act, which led to the Boston Massacre and gave rise to the slogan, "No taxation without representation."
But it was the 1773 Tea Act, under which the Crown collected a three pence tax on each pound of tea imported to the Colonies, which instigated the first Tea Party protest and seeded the American Revolution. Indeed, as James Madison noted in an 1823 reflection, "The people of the U.S. owe their Independence and their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent."
The Tea Party uprising galvanized the Colonial movement opposing British parliamentary acts, as such acts were a violation of the natural, charter and constitutional rights of the British colonists.
In response to the Colonial rebellion, the British enacted additional punitive measures, labeled the "Intolerable Acts," in hopes of suppressing the burgeoning insurrection. Far from accomplishing their desired outcome, however, the Crown's countermeasures led colonists to convene the First Continental Congress on September 5th, 1774, in Philadelphia.
By the spring of 1775, civil discontent was at a tipping point, and American Patriots in Massachusetts and other colonies prepared to cast off their masters.
On the eve of April 18th, 1775, General Thomas Gage, Royal military governor of Massachusetts, dispatched a force of 700 British Army regulars, under Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, with secret orders to capture and destroy arms and supplies stored by the Massachusetts militia in the town of Concord. Indeed, the first shots of the eight-year struggle for American independence were in response to the government's attempt to disarm the people.
Patriot militiamen under leadership of the Sons of Liberty anticipated this raid, and the confrontation between militia and British regulars en route to Concord ignited the fuse of the American Revolution.
Near midnight on April 18th, Paul Revere, who arranged for advance warning of British movements, departed Charlestown (near Boston) for Lexington and Concord in order to warn John Hancock, Samuel Adams and other Sons of Liberty that the British Army was marching to arrest them and to seize their weapons caches. After meeting with Hancock and Adams in Lexington, Revere was captured, but his Patriot ally Samuel Prescott continued to Concord and warned militiamen along the way.
In the early dawn of April 19th, the first Patriots' Day, 77 militiamen under the command of Captain John Parker assembled on the town green at Lexington, where they soon faced Smith's overwhelming force of British regulars. Parker did not expect shots to be exchanged, but his orders were: "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here." A few links away from the militia column, the British Major John Pitcairn swung his sword and said, "Lay down your arms, you damned rebels!"
Not willing to sacrifice his small band of Patriots on the Green, as Parker later wrote in sworn deposition, "I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse, and not to fire." But the Patriots did not lay down their arms as ordered, and as Parker noted, "Immediately said Troops made their appearance and rushed furiously, fired upon, and killed eight of our Party without receiving any Provocation therefor from us."
The British continued to Concord, where they divided and searched for armament stores. Later in the day, the second confrontation between regulars and militiamen occurred as British light infantry companies faced rapidly growing ranks of militia and Minutemen at Concord's Old North Bridge. From depositions on both sides, the British fired first on the militia, killing two and wounding four.
This time, however, the militia commander, Major John Buttrick, yelled the order, "Fire, for God's sake, fellow soldiers, fire!" Fire they did, commencing with "the shot heard round the world," as immortalized by poet Ralph Waldo Emerson. With that shot, farmers and laborers, landowners and statesmen alike, were bringing upon themselves the sentence of death for treason. In the ensuing firefight, the British took heavy casualties and in discord retreated to Concord village for reinforcements, and then retreated back toward Lexington.
In retreat to Lexington, British regulars took additional casualties, including those suffered in an ambush by the reassembled ranks of John Parker's militia – "Parker's Revenge" as it became known. The English were reinforced with 1,000 troops in Lexington, but the King's men were no match for the militiamen, who inflicted heavy casualties upon the Redcoats along their 20-mile tactical retreat to Boston.
Thus began the great campaign to reject tyranny and embrace the difficult toils of securing individual Liberty. "[T]he People alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government and to reform, alter, or totally change the same when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it," wrote Samuel Adams.
Why would the first generation of American Patriots forgo, in the inimitable words of Sam Adams, "the tranquility of servitude" for "the animating contest of freedom"?
The answer to that question -- Liberty or Death -- defined the spirit of American Patriotism then, as it defines the spirit of American Patriots today. The ideological descendants of those who once pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor "today pledge to support and defend" Liberty as enshrined in our United States Constitution.
In 1776, George Washington wrote in his General Orders, "The time is now near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die."
Of that resolve, President Ronald Reagan said, "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation..."
Indeed, the time is always at hand when American Patriots must reaffirm whether we are to be freemen or slaves. This November's midterm elections may seem trivial in comparison to the challenges faced by our Founders, but the results are critical to the future of Liberty.
Fellow Patriots, keep the torch of Liberty shining bright with your support for our 2014 Patriots' Day Campaign. The Patriot Post is a touchstone for the growing ranks of American Patriots across our nation, and an effective recruiting tool for new Patriots of all ages. Please consider supporting The Patriot Post with a donation however large or small online, or print and mail our donor form.
Pro Deo et Constitutione -- Libertas aut Mors
Semper Fortis Vigilate Paratus et Fidelis
www.patriotpost.com
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http://www.theminorityreportblog.com/2014/04/19/montana-state-senator-shoots-down-drone-in-new-video/
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i don't have the time right now for a proper conversation, but I note that this is going to be used as confirmation by many that the Tea Party is racist. Let's use the Tea Party thread to discuss.
Government over-reach does not mean that the victim is someone with whom we share values or want as a political partner.
I heard part of Glenn Beck radio yesterday. Bundy mistreated Beck's Blaze reporter, apologized, then mis-treated another Blaze reporter the next day. Before the racial rant, this was not a person who we want leading anything much less a call to arms. Federal over-reach belongs in federal court. We change administrations through the electoral process and we change the federal courts even more slowly, but through the same electoral representative process. Fighting the government with arms, as with the revolutionary war, is not the first recourse.
Regarding race, one might observe that among what is wrong in America, blacks are disproportionately affected. The tea party reaction to that from my view is color blind and forward looking. We want people to be entrepreneurs, work freely in a profession of their choice, get educated, be productive, be self-sufficient, support families, to make their own positive choices freely.
Bundy's ponderings don't reflect any of that.
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Very well said.
It must also be said that some of us, including me at various moments as my postings in the Unarmed and Armed Resistance thread show, were swayed more than we should have been by the imagery which this man used. Some of us were willing to show up with guns to defend a man whose completely unsound legal theories had been trounced in court for over 20 years from having his cattle seized by the State to collect the judgement to which it was entitled. Yes the State acted wrongly, scarily, and militaristicly in the name of collecting a money judgment, and I am glad to have seen them backed off, but this whole affair is going to ramp up the liberal fascists in their determination to take our guns and give them ammo in making their case.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vu_YKgGRFZ8&feature=youtu.be
Also, in a similar vein is this http://patdollard.com/2014/04/shock-hoax-exposed-full-clip-of-cliven-bundys-non-racist-pro-black-anti-government-remarks-vs-media-matters-deceptively-edited-hoax-version-see-that-cliven-bundy-is-actually-an-advocat/
For the record, I have not had a chance to look at the latter more than briefly yet.
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The media distorts information to the point of social division. This is a photo of myself and the resilient, often charismatic, and maybe not so tactful Cliven Bundy. He's a cowboy and a helluva family man, not an orator. One thing he definitely isn't - a racist. I found his comments to not only be NOT racist, but his own view of his experiences. Who the heck are we to determine another man's perspective on the world around him?! Just because Picasso's view of the world was abstract, does it negate the fact that his art was genuine? Furthermore, if you take the time to do your own research, you'll find that his statements about some black Americans actually hold weight. He posed a hypothetical question. He said, "I wonder IF" ... Hell, I'm black and I often wonder about the same about the decline of the black family. Bottom line is that we are all slaves in this waning republic, no matter our skin color. Mr. Bundy could have used any racial demographic as an example: Native Americans on reservations, whites in trailer parks, etc. He noticed the crippling effects of receiving government "assistance" and the long term result of accepting handouts. It's not progress at all. I challenge Sean Hannity, Rand Paul, and others to read my comment and reconsider their position in this matter. Individual liberties are at stake here, yours and mine. THAT is the issue. Don't let the liberal media and ignoramuses like Glenn Beck and that weasel Harry Reid make you lose sight of the real issue here: The federal government is a burgeoning behemoth and a bully on a once constitutional playground.
I sincerely hope you real patriots out there can see through the smoke.
Semper Fidelis
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Third post of the day:
http://www.alternet.org/22-crazy-right-wing-delusions-about-absurd-cliven-bundy-stand
Welfare queen in a cowboy hat?
http://aattp.org/cnn-asks-cliven-bundy-how-are-you-not-a-welfare-queen-in-a-cowboy-hat-video/
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This sort of thing gets associated with the Tea Party in the minds of many , , ,
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/South-Texas-Senate-hopeful-slammed-for-racial-slur-5255976.php
:x :cry:
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This sort of stuff is really damaging to us.
http://www.liberalamerica.org/2014/04/25/listen-to-stephen-colbert-sing-the-ballad-of-cliven-bundy-video/
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This sort of thing gets associated with the Tea Party in the minds of many , , ,
http://www.mysanantonio.com/default/article/South-Texas-Senate-hopeful-slammed-for-racial-slur-5255976.php
:x :cry:
Yes. Distance ourselves from stupidity and go back on offence. Their governance has failed and these morons have nothing to do with our desired coalition or agenda.
The battle between the Karl Rove (establishment) types and tea party types is largely an illusion. Rove et al want us to stop nominating unvetted candidates that will implode in a general election, lose and hurt other candidate's chances across the nation. So do I. The choice between taking the RINO and the one who will publicly justify rape or bigotry is a false choice. We can find high high quality, articulate, competent, common sense conservatives all across the fruited plain. There are many, many, many great candidates out there.
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/04/27/black-former-un-ambassador-bundys-remarks-not-racist-leftists-exhibit-true-racism/
Triva: Alan Keyes was the Rep. candidate for US Senate from Illinois who lost, and lost badly, to Baraq Hussein Obama. In fairness it should be noted that he was brought in at the last moment because the intended Rep candidate was a "values" candidate whose wife, as part of their divorce proceedings, accused him of going to titty bars.
Compare Bundy's comments with this:
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2014/04/26/
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Paul Krugman in POTH
It is, in a way, too bad that Cliven Bundy — the rancher who became a right-wing hero after refusing to pay fees for grazing his animals on federal land, and bringing in armed men to support his defiance — has turned out to be a crude racist. Why? Because his ranting has given conservatives an easy out, a way to dissociate themselves from his actions without facing up to the terrible wrong turn their movement has taken.
For at the heart of the standoff was a perversion of the concept of freedom, which for too much of the right has come to mean the freedom of the wealthy to do whatever they want, without regard to the consequences for others.
Start with the narrow issue of land use. For historical reasons, the federal government owns a lot of land in the West; some of that land is open to ranching, mining and so on. Like any landowner, the Bureau of Land Management charges fees for the use of its property. The only difference from private ownership is that by all accounts the government charges too little — that is, it doesn’t collect as much money as it could, and in many cases doesn’t even charge enough to cover the costs that these private activities impose. In effect, the government is using its ownership of land to subsidize ranchers and mining companies at taxpayers’ expense.
It’s true that some of the people profiting from implicit taxpayer subsidies manage, all the same, to convince themselves and others that they are rugged individualists. But they’re actually welfare queens of the purple sage.
And this in turn means that treating Mr. Bundy as some kind of libertarian hero is, not to put too fine a point on it, crazy. Suppose he had been grazing his cattle on land belonging to one of his neighbors, and had refused to pay for the privilege. That would clearly have been theft — and brandishing guns when someone tried to stop the theft would have turned it into armed robbery. The fact that in this case the public owns the land shouldn’t make any difference.
So what were people like Sean Hannity of Fox News, who went all in on Mr. Bundy’s behalf, thinking? Partly, no doubt, it was the general demonization of government — if someone looks as if he is defying Washington, he’s a hero, never mind the details. Partly, one suspects, it was also about race — not Mr. Bundy’s blatant racism, but the general notion that government takes money from hard-working Americans and gives it to Those People. White people who wear cowboy hats while profiting from government subsidies just don’t fit the stereotype.
Most of all, however — or at least that’s how it seems to me — the Bundy fiasco was a byproduct of the dumbing down that seems ever more central to the way America’s right operates.
American conservatism used to have room for fairly sophisticated views about the role of government. Its economic patron saint used to be Milton Friedman, who advocated aggressive money-printing, if necessary, to avoid depressions. It used to include environmentalists who took pollution seriously but advocated market-based solutions like cap-and-trade or emissions taxes rather than rigid rules.
But today’s conservative leaders were raised on Ayn Rand’s novels and Ronald Reagan’s speeches (as opposed to his actual governance, which was a lot more flexible than the legend). They insist that the rights of private property are absolute, and that government is always the problem, never the solution.
The trouble is that such beliefs are fundamentally indefensible in the modern world, which is rife with what economists call externalities — costs that private actions impose on others, but which people have no financial incentive to avoid. You might want, for example, to declare that what a farmer does on his own land is entirely his own business; but what if he uses pesticides that contaminate the water supply, or antibiotics that speed the evolution of drug-resistant microbes? You might want to declare that government intervention never helps; but who else can deal with such problems?
Well, one answer is denial — insistence that such problems aren’t real, that they’re invented by elitists who want to take away our freedom. And along with this anti-intellectualism goes a general dumbing-down, an exaltation of supposedly ordinary folks who don’t hold with this kind of stuff. Think of it as the right’s duck-dynastic moment.
You can see how Mr. Bundy, who came across as a straight-talking Marlboro Man, fit right into that mind-set. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a bit more straight-talking than expected.
I’d like to think that the whole Bundy affair will cause at least some of the people who backed him to engage in self-reflection, and ask how they ended up lending support, even briefly, to someone like that. But I don’t expect it to happen.
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Paul Krugman in POTH
Krugman has it backwards. Bundy wasn't a right wing hero. BLM was a fascist villain. They own 80% of the land and act like jack-booted thugs. Some rose to oppose them.
Not mentioned by or questioned of this liberal icon is when he decided to end his alliance with the greedy, law-breaking, crony-governmentists at Enron. (He stopped consulting for them when they stopped paying him.) And no mention of the other story, that the Clippers owner, a billionaire, who asks his African-American mistress not to post pictures of herself with blacks on Instagram - is a 'liberal' Democrat. It just doesn't fit the mold.
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LEt's take the Clippers story to the Race thread on SCH forum.
Krugman and his hypocrisies are not the point here. The point of posting his article is to respond well to it. Bundy WAS and for some IS a hero to many on the right. If all we have in comeback to his arguments is "Fascist villain" and "Jack-booted thugs!" we are fuct.
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Naturally I am on a bunch of Tea Party lists and get solicited for money all the time, but I could never figure out what they do with it , , ,so I just give directly to the candidates I like.
http://www.daybydaycartoon.com/2014/05/03/
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http://www.tpnn.com/2014/05/09/mlks-son-shocks-msnbcs-toure-important-for-blacks-to-be-engaged-with-the-tea-party/
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It probably did not help our cause that the TP candidate was making speeches at cockfights and defended dog fighting , , ,
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Republican Party leaders Tuesday made significant strides in their effort to defang—or at least co-opt—the tea party as an insurgent political force, as GOP voters rejected a number of antiestablishment candidates in primary elections.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a pillar of the party establishment who had come under fire from the right, triumphed easily over his primary challenger in Kentucky. Candidates backed by party officials and business groups advanced in Georgia, Idaho and elsewhere. Taken together, the results could help GOP leaders reassert their dominance over conservative insurgents who have been roiling the party for the past five years.
Voters will decide in six states, Tuesday, as to who will represent their party in the midterm elections. Establishment Republicans hope voters will deliver a knockout blow to the more conservative Tea Party candidates who many in the mainstream section of the GOP see as unelectable.
But that doesn't point to any shift to the political center among Republicans on Capitol Hill, or a return to a pre-tea-party era, when compromise with Democrats wasn't viewed with such deep suspicion.
Mr. McConnell, who led Louisville businessman Matt Bevin by a 60%-to-36% margin with nearly all precincts reporting, will need to keep an eye on his right flank in the coming months and to corral Bevin supporters in order to beat his Democratic opponent.
"The tough race is behind us; it's time to unite," Mr. McConnell said Tuesday night, referring to the primary.
House Speaker John Boehner, who himself easily defeated a tea-party primary challenge in his Ohio district in early May, saw some of his trusted allies triumph Tuesday, including Rep. Mike Simpson in Idaho, who faced a stiff challenge from the right. Nonetheless, the speaker's room to maneuver legislatively is limited because House Republicans' most-conservative faction has a voice in whether he continues as speaker in the next Congress.
Mr. Boehner, asked Tuesday whether he believed the tea party's influence was waning, didn't seem tempted to gloat. Instead, he argued that the conflict between the tea party and GOP leaders had been overblown. "The tea party has brought great energy to our political process," he said. There isn't "that big a difference between what you all call the tea party and your average conservative Republican: We're against Obamacare; we think taxes are too high; we think the government's too big."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell votes Tuesday in Kentucky's Republican Senate primary in Louisville. He easily trounced his challenger. Getty Images
Indeed, Capitol Hill is littered with legislative standoffs that bear the hallmarks of tea-party influence. Mr. Boehner is considered unlikely to advance an immigration overhaul, opposed by tea-party-backed lawmakers, this year. A reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank, which is backed by business groups, is in jeopardy in Congress in the face of stiff conservative opposition.
To be sure, there are a few signs of a loosening grip by the tea party on Capitol Hill. The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a big water-projects bill over the opposition of Heritage Action, a conservative group that grades lawmakers' voting records to help conservatives decide whom to support or oppose. And congressional Republicans for months have been steering clear of the tea-party-style brinkmanship that led to last fall's government shutdown.
"Republican primary voters are speaking out and making clear that they don't want professional tea-party groups hijacking primaries and picking their candidates," said Brian Walsh, a former aide to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. "Those days are over."
But Rep. Tom Cole (R., Okla.), a senior House member close to Mr. Boehner, said he was glad to see in the primary results a kind of "rapprochement" between the party establishment and tea-party voters.
"There's a sense of satisfaction, more than relief, that we've learned some lessons," he said. "My party is knitting itself back together."
The results from Georgia were among those pointing to the power of party leaders and their business allies at the voting booth. Their favored candidates, businessman David Perdue and Rep. Jack Kingston (R., Ga.), advanced to a runoff election for the GOP nomination for an open Senate seat.
National GOP leaders and their allies had feared that two other candidates known for courting the most conservative voters, Reps. Paul Broun and Phil Gingrey, would advance to the runoff. The winner of the July 22 runoff will face Michelle Nunn, who sailed to the Democratic nomination on Tuesday.
In Oregon, GOP leaders also cheered the Senate primary victory of Monica Wehby, a physician thought to have broader appeal in the Democratic-dominated state than her more-conservative opponents.
Still, Adam Brandon, a spokesman for FreedomWorks, a conservative group, said the tea-party movement is having a long-term impact on the agenda of the GOP as incumbents embrace their priorities of cutting government spending and rolling back the health-care overhaul.
"We sometimes lose battles, but we are winning the war," Mr. Brandon said. "They are all running on our issues."
This year's GOP primaries mark an important chapter in the evolving saga of the tea party in American politics. From its origins in 2009 as a grass-roots movement that opposed bank bailouts and President Barack Obama's health-care overhaul, tea-party activism helped the GOP win control of the House in 2010. Its take-no-prisoners tactics inspired a major legislative confrontation with Mr. Obama that produced a landmark 2011 budget deal imposing durable spending limits across the federal government.
From those triumphs over Democrats, however, the tea party morphed into a force for change within the GOP—with a more mixed outcome.
Some of its Senate primary-election victories in 2010 and 2012 turned into party losses in the general election, which most observers believe cost the GOP control of the Senate. Conservatives' taste for playing legislative chicken led to last fall's 16-day government shutdown, which most considered politically harmful for the party. GOP leaders have since shunned those tactics, while working to block tea-party candidates they considered too weak to win in the fall—especially in the crucial fight for control of the Senate.
Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Democrats' main Senate campaign arm, said GOP leaders may be celebrating prematurely.
"In order to avoid losing to the tea party, Washington Republicans have embraced their candidates and policies," said Mr. Barasky. "It's a good strategy in the primaries, but one that forecasts defeat for Republicans in the general election this fall."
And the victories over the tea party have come at a price to the party—literally, in campaign spending by senior Republicans, who might otherwise have been able to put their money toward defeating Democratic general-election opponents. Mr. McConnell has already spent more than $2.4 million on television ads before the primary, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
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Tea Party Agonistes
The real reasons that GOP insurgents are losing in the primaries.
Updated May 21, 2014 7:49 p.m. ET
The media's latest political line is that the Republican establishment has finally crushed the tea party. The truth, as usual, is more interesting. The tea party has already changed the GOP on policy, and mostly for the better, but it is suffering this year because the candidates and operatives acting in its name have been motivated more by personal than policy agendas. That's a shame because the GOP needs the tea party to prevent it from lapsing back into the do-little caucus of the George W. Bush-Tom DeLay years.
Marco Rubio (Fla.), Ron Johnson (Wis.) and Pat Toomey (Pa.)—those are three Senators elected with tea party support in 2010. Yet they are now part of the Senate GOP mainstream, tugging the conference in a more reform direction. So is Rand Paul on domestic policy. And don't forget New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, who breaks with Mr. Paul on foreign policy but is making her mark as one of the Senate's smarter young conservatives.
Enlarge Image
Former Kentucky senatorial challenger Matt Bevin Reuters
These Senators won with the help of the tea party wave in 2010, but they also won because they were men and women of accomplishment. The tea party rode these candidates as much as they rode the tea party.
Now consider Matt Bevin, Greg Brannon and Steve Stockman. They are among the tea party champions this year who have lost by large margins in GOP Senate primaries. They didn't lose because the GOP primary electorate has suddenly been captured by "moderates," or some mythical establishment in the Burning Tree locker room.
They lost because they were inferior candidates who differed little from their GOP opponents on policy but seemed less capable of winning in November. GOP voters sensibly opted for the conservatives with the better chance to retake the Senate from Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.
Far more than 2010, the tea party this year has also been hijacked by Washington-based groups that have personal axes to grind. That's especially true in Kentucky, where a cabal of former aides to former Senator Jim DeMint force-fed Mr. Bevin's challenge to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
This wasn't about policy business; it was strictly personal revenge to oust Mr. McConnell as leader and establish the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, RedState and certain talking radio heads as the main GOP power brokers. Mr. Bevin was a weak candidate who attacked Mr. McConnell for supporting the 2008 bank rescue only to have supported it himself while he was in private business. On Tuesday he got about 36% of the vote.
These same Beltway groups also hurt tea party candidates by pushing last year's government shutdown strategy. The shutdown, which had no chance to succeed, marked the low point in recent GOP polling. But far from mobilizing populist outrage against incumbents, the failed strategy seems to have educated Republican voters about the futility of kamikaze gestures and the candidates who endorse them. Voters are seeing through the self-interest.
The shame is that this tea party detour will hurt the very cause of reform its supporters claim to champion. Mr. McConnell was brilliant in uniting his conference against ObamaCare in 2010, but he can also be an overcautious leader who fails to articulate a united GOP message or strategy. Long-time incumbents Mr. McConnell and Thad Cochran (Miss.) are too enamored of spending and need the prod of the tea party to stay on a reform path.
The broader point is that the GOP establishment, to the extent it exists, and the tea party need each other to accomplish their political goals. And at the local level they are often now one and the same. The candidates who win Senate primaries will need grass-roots enthusiasm to prevail in November. And the tea party needs the mainstream GOP incumbents who can win among independents and in states like Illinois, New Hampshire and Maine to have any chance of building a majority large enough to replace ObamaCare.
Democrats and their media allies are pushing the establishment vs. tea party narrative in large part because they want the GOP to be divided in November. The only way to retake the Senate is to disappoint them.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/16/glenn-beck-was-relentlessly-mocked-for-warning-of-an-islamic-caliphate-whats-he-saying-now-that-its-being-seriously-discussed-on-cnn/
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Republican Sen. Thad Cochran's runoff victory Tuesday exposed the limits of tea-party power at the polls, but conservative activists retain considerable influence in Congress as they fight the Export-Import Bank, an immigration law overhaul and higher taxes to repair bridges and roads.
Mr. Cochran's narrow win over a tea-party-backed challenger, coming after the defeat of conservative activists in other primary elections this year, offered further proof that GOP leaders and their business allies have built a successful strategy to nominate candidates they believe give them the best odds to win in November.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said immigration reform still has a shot despite long odds, speaking at a Wall Street Journal breakfast. Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) agreed that Congress shouldn't give up on immigration reform - both for the good of the country and the GOP.
But the disconnect between tea-party election losses and the movement's continued power in Washington underscores deep divisions inside the GOP that show no sign of abating after a busy spring in which so-called establishment candidates won far more intraparty contests than they lost.
The GOP leadership, for example, benefited from millions of dollars in campaign spending by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to promote leadership-backed candidates in nearly a dozen primaries, part of a broad effort to stem tea party momentum. And yet three of the Chamber's top legislative priorities—an overhaul of immigration law, a replenished Highway Trust Fund and reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank—are in jeopardy because of conservative resistance in Congress.
For Congress, Three Shoes Still to Drop: Highway Bill, Ex-Im Bank Charter, Government Funding
Justices Protect Cellphone Privacy
Supreme Court Rules Aereo Violates Broadcasters' Copyrights
Blacks Turned the Tide for Cochran
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Video: Schumer and McCain on Keeping Ex-Im Alive
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The Chamber spent $1.2 million to support Mr. Cochran in Mississippi in his victory over state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who was supported by local and national tea-party groups.
Also Tuesday, national conservative groups fell short in Oklahoma, as their favored candidate lost a competitive GOP Senate primary. Both results follow similar outcomes earlier this year in Kentucky and North Carolina in which the candidates backed by tea-party activists failed to win the nomination.
GOP officials said the results didn't mark an end to the clout of tea-party activists in and out of Washington. "I'm not sure the tea party has peaked…They're still extremely viable" at a time when anger at Washington is high, said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) at a breakfast Wednesday sponsored by The Wall Street Journal.
Chamber officials say their goal is to elect candidates "who want to come to Washington to solve problems" not just shut down the government. "Governing is the theme we have inserted into this cycle," said Scott Reed, who advises the Chamber on strategy. "It all starts with quality candidates."
Among the evidence of tea party power: Newly elevated House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.), facing the prospect that another Republican would challenge him after the November midterms, recently said he would allow the charter of the Export-Import Bank—which provides financing for the export of American goods and services—to expire, adopting a policy position championed by a more conservative potential rival, House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas).
Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) said to "do nothing" in Iraq could lead to collapse, and called for airstrikes, while criticizing President Obama's leadership on foreign affairs. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said he remain very wary of nation building in Iraq.
Congressional conservatives also are at the center of a battle over legislation to replenish the Highway Trust Fund, which funnels federal gas-tax revenue to states to help pay for road and bridge maintenance. With a shortfall looming, House Republicans won't accept Democratic proposals to boost revenue, in an acrimonious standoff that could force states to abandon transportation projects and lay off workers.
Mississippi represented the conservative insurgents' best shot at knocking off an incumbent Republican senator. Their favored candidate, Mr. McDaniel, outpolled Mr. Cochran in the initial round of voting on June 3, though he didn't top the 50% vote needed to avoid a runoff.
And unlike in earlier primary fights, conservative groups heavily outspent Mr. Cochran's outside allies, pouring more than $7.3 million into the state on behalf of Mr. McDaniel, compared with the $4.3 million spent by Cochran backers, according to numbers tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics.
That changed down the stretch, however. In the week leading up to the runoff, Mr. Cochran and his outside allies spent three times more on television and radio ads than did Mr. McDaniel and his outside backers, according to the center's tally. The Chamber spent $455,910 in the last week to benefit Mr. Cochran, compared with the $77,029 spent by Mr. McDaniel's biggest backer among national groups, the political arm of the Club for Growth, which promotes small-government policies.
The Club's political arm put more than $3.1 million into the race, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, far more than it spent on any other primary this year. Other groups that spent heavily to oust Mr. Cochran include FreedomWorks for America, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.
Club president Chris Chocola, a former GOP congressman from Indiana, said he hoped Mr. Cochran would gain "a new appreciation of voter frustration about the threats to economic freedom and national solvency." The group is leading the opposition to the Export-Import Bank, which it sees as providing a form of corporate welfare for big companies, particularly Boeing, and intervening inappropriately in the economy by picking winners and losers.
The Cochran win comes just a few weeks after conservative activists scored an upset by ousting former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in his GOP primary in Virginia, a shocking result that scrambled the prevailing narrative that Republican leaders and their business allies were reclaiming control of their party.
But tea-party activists in Virginia were quick to point out that most outside groups didn't spend money against Mr. Cantor.
Conservative activists hoped that wins in Mississippi and Oklahoma would put an exclamation point on Mr. Cantor loss, reanimating the movement.
Tea-party allies moved to build on the apparent momentum. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for example, endorsed former state House Speaker T.W. Shannon in Oklahoma in an ad sponsored by the Senate Conservatives Fund. Mr. Shannon lost.
The Cochran win should prevent Democrats from putting an otherwise-safe Republican seat in play, improving the GOP's odds of recapturing the Senate in November. Democratic officials said Mr. Cochran's victory make the state harder to win.
Top officials at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party's main Senate election arm, put their reputation on the line by throwing their support behind Mr. Cochran, savaging his primary opponent and sending staff to Mississippi. And when NRSC officials saw conservative groups easing up, they steered another $200,000 to voter turnout efforts, an official said.
NRSC officials entered the election cycle eager to avoid a replay of 2010 and 2012, when they felt they had squandered winnable seats because primary voters nominated candidates who didn't go on to win in November. This year, they made their preferences clear in primary contests in some states and have worked to ensure the candidates they backed won crowded primaries in Iowa, North Carolina and Oregon. They also worked to prevent two outspoken candidates in Georgia from securing a spot in the July runoff.
"Results matter," said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for the Senate campaign committee. "Our mission is simple—to build a Republican majority, and that means keeping Democratic opportunities to a minimum."
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The WSJ, away from its Editorial Page, is often no better than POTH and the rest of the MSM:
Chamber officials say their goal is to elect candidates "who want to come to Washington to solve problems" not just shut down the government. "Governing is the theme we have inserted into this cycle," said Scott Reed, who advises the Chamber on strategy. "It all starts with quality candidates."
They are quoting a "Chamber official", but the quote marks stop and start around the shut down the government libel/smear and go unanswered in the piece. Who shut the government, other than Obamacare, down? I think that was the Dem Senate and President. Funding bills start in the House and the House fully funded everything other than ObamaCare. It turns out the rules of Obamacare they were pressured to fully fund violated federal law. Small details for agenda based advocacy and reporting.
Who supports putting a federal government focus on governing more than the tea party? Instead we focus the federal government focus on usurping the powers and freedoms of the states and the people, and smear those who object.
It is quite easy, and meaningless, to win arguments against straw men.
Akin, Mourdock, Ken Buck and O'Donnell and whoever else that failed the Republican Party from the so-called tea party, of which there is none, did not fail in their elections because they advanced tea party principles. They failed because they were unqualified or undisciplined and lost their focus on advancing those principles.
There is something quite eery about 'business-Republicans', crony-governmentist-Republicans and big-government-conservative-oxyMORONS spending millions of dollars in campaign money to stop the advancement of limited government principles after failing to elect their own candidates nationally in the last two Presidential contests, in one against a complete rookie and the other against a totally failed incumbent.
How about we debate the issues and contrast the candidates instead of smearing our own with lies, deceit, race baiting in the case of Mississippi, and ad hominem attacks?
The Republican Party wins when it merges the interest of running qualified, focused, disciplined candidates with adhering to individual freedom and limited government principles. Examples from 2010: Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul. Lost since 2010 were "establishment" candidates like Denny Rehberg, Heather Wilson, Rick Berg, Josh Mandel, George Allen, Tommy Thompson, Carly Fiorina, and Dino Rossi *. (*http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/05/20/todd_akin_was_not_a_tea_partyer_and_the_tea_party_is_not_costing_republicans.html)
Case in point, Pres. Obama won Florida in 2008 by 200,000 votes and in 2012 by 70,000. In 2010, Marco Rubio won Florida by a million votes, and not by sounding like a Democrat or promising to fund bad programs.
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I'm not remembering Beck on the illegal issue the way this piece is, but for the record here it is:
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2014/08/25/Glenn-Beck-Ripped-Conservatives-While-Trying-to-Get-CNN-Deal?utm_source=e_breitbart_com&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+August+26%2C+2014&utm_campaign=20140826_m121871265_Breitbart+News+Roundup%2C+August+26%2C+2014&utm_term=More
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Do we have a Reagan thread?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXBswFfh6AY
Government was smaller then and the private economy was stronger then than now. Right? Is this any less relevant today?
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More on same topic:
Reagan Biographer Stephen Hayward, Extremism and Moderation
http://www.claremontinstitute.org/article/extremism-and-moderation/#.VAdfqVOJW-J
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See especially the part with Beck and Feiler discussing Moses and our Founding Fathers:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/2010/03/31/glenn-beck-beck-book-club/
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second post of the day
https://archive.org/.../FOXNEWS_20100225_220000_Glenn... You will need to click on the clip in question which gives one minute. Then to get to the next minute, you click on the next clip, etc.
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/02/16/glenn-becks-chilling-warning-world-war-iii-is-coming-and-nobody-will-recognize-it-yet/
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Sovereign rights groups tend to be nut cases and may properly on the govt's radar screen, but conflating them with Islamo Fascism as a threat to the US is horseexcrement.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/19/politics/terror-threat-homeland-security/index.html
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2015/06/03/unbelievable-vladimir-putin-targets-theblaze/
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http://freakoutnation.com/2015/08/arizona-patriot-militia-members-busted-plotting-to-steal-drugs-and-murder-for-hire/
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A courageous man, to be sure. He deserves our support:
http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/24/home-in-north-carolina-mark-meadows-reflects-on-move-to-oust-john-boehner-with-no-regrets/
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http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/426555/kentuckys-new-gop-lt-gov-black-tea-party-activist-john-fund
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/04/this-is-going-to-be-a-fight-over-oil-glenn-beck-predicts-how-the-proxy-war-in-the-middle-east-will-progress/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Firewire%20Morning%20Edition%20Recurring%20v2%202016-01-05&utm_term=Firewire_Morning_Test
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/02/03/daily-beast-glenn-beck-purchased-luxury-cars-private-jet-while-laying-off-dozens/
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He no longer has any credibility in my mind. Still driving a new Maybach I read while laying off employees:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/05/tucker-carlson-glenn-beck-223423
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http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/08/03/glenn-was-right-about-benghazi-will-people-listen-to-his-prediction-about-putin/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160804GlennBeckDaily_B&utm_term=Glenn%20Beck
http://www.glennbeck.com/2016/08/03/here-are-the-four-political-stories-worth-knowing-right-now/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20160804GlennBeckDaily_B&utm_term=Glenn%20Beck
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http://hotair.com/archives/2016/09/26/glenn-beck-grilling-ted-cruz-endorsed-marco-rubio/
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Glenn Beck went bat-s**t crazy right after Trump won the Republican nomination. The man is mentally unstable, in my opinion.
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"The man is mentally unstable, in my opinion.
Remember how this guy with the financially struggling media company sucked up to Zuckerberg?
Maybe he hopes the Clinton mafia will bail him out? I dunno what to say about him anymore.
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Yes - sadly, I think Beck is essentially a con man, quite possibly with a serious psychiatric disorder. I say this having attended his "Restoring Honor Rally" in Washington, D.C. at the Lincoln Memorial in 2010. At that point I thought he was genuine.
His actions and statements since then have proven otherwise.
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The way I look at it is that for year or two he was deep in the zone, operating at a level way beyond his inherent natural ability. Now he flounders, rather badly.
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This passage is from the Wikipedia entry for Glenn Beck. I maintain that he is a (possibly brilliant - or alternatively extremely talented, if you prefer) con man. He'd give P.T. Barnum a run for his money:
On November 10, 2014, Beck announced on TheBlaze that he had been suffering from a severe neurological disorder for at least the last five years.[44] He described many strong and debilitating symptoms which made it difficult to work,[45] and that he had "a string of health issues that quite honestly made me look crazy, and quite honestly, I have felt crazy because of them."[46] Beck related that a chiropractor who specializes in "chiropractic neurology", Frederick Carrick, had "diagnosed [him] with several health issues, including an autoimmune disorder, which he didn’t name, and adrenal fatigue." Over a period of ten months he had received a series of treatments and felt better.[47] A number of medical experts have expressed doubt about the legitimacy of Beck's diagnosis, treatment,[48] and the credentials of the chiropractor,[49] with Yale University neurologist Steven Novella dismissing chiropractic neurology as "pseudoscience": "Chiropractic neurology does not appear to be based on any body of research, or any accumulated scientific knowledge,....[and] appears to me to be the very definition of pseudoscience."[50]
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Trump University should feature a class on that!
This passage is from the Wikipedia entry for Glenn Beck. I maintain that he is a (possibly brilliant - or alternatively extremely talented, if you prefer) con man. He'd give P.T. Barnum a run for his money:
On November 10, 2014, Beck announced on TheBlaze that he had been suffering from a severe neurological disorder for at least the last five years.[44] He described many strong and debilitating symptoms which made it difficult to work,[45] and that he had "a string of health issues that quite honestly made me look crazy, and quite honestly, I have felt crazy because of them."[46] Beck related that a chiropractor who specializes in "chiropractic neurology", Frederick Carrick, had "diagnosed [him] with several health issues, including an autoimmune disorder, which he didn’t name, and adrenal fatigue." Over a period of ten months he had received a series of treatments and felt better.[47] A number of medical experts have expressed doubt about the legitimacy of Beck's diagnosis, treatment,[48] and the credentials of the chiropractor,[49] with Yale University neurologist Steven Novella dismissing chiropractic neurology as "pseudoscience": "Chiropractic neurology does not appear to be based on any body of research, or any accumulated scientific knowledge,....[and] appears to me to be the very definition of pseudoscience."[50]
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Sorry I don't think Beck should be lumped with Tea Party or related matters anymore. He really sounds like a lost soul:
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/11/07/glenn-beck-says-obama-has-made-him-a-better-man/
Come to think of it he has become so bizarre that I wonder if someone or some people have some sort of dirt on him.........he is just so strange although I always though there was something funny about him.
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Sorry I don't think Beck should be lumped with Tea Party or related matters anymore. He really sounds like a lost soul:
http://www.theblaze.com/news/2016/11/07/glenn-beck-says-obama-has-made-him-a-better-man/
Come to think of it he has become so bizarre that I wonder if someone or some people have some sort of dirt on him.........he is just so strange although I always though there was something funny about him.
What is he dying of this week ?
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http://reverbpress.com/politics/glenn-beck-confesses-much-used-believe-sham/
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These latest stories seem small and partly out of context. I listen some and he hasn't changed much IMHO. He and some others have to answer for not making a simple choice in this binary election.
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My vote in NJ didn't win it for him. :-o
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hmmm , , ,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/opinion/sunday/why-blue-states-are-the-real-tea-party.html?emc=edit_th_20161204&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
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hmmm , , ,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/opinion/sunday/why-blue-states-are-the-real-tea-party.html?emc=edit_th_20161204&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=49641193
The coasts should try flexing their muscles. They can get really hungry and really cold real quick. No food or energy shipped in from the flyover states can clarify things. Perhaps we should just give it a try.
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https://www.theblaze.com/news/glenn-beck-returns-to-fox-news-and-admits-trump-proved-him-wrong-with-his-these-actions?utm_content=buffer6bd56&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=glennbeck&fbclid=IwAR2OgQAHy46dID0t-XW2OEYafJiKRLF_7-VE8U6i15ZXWv3sjjlx4UKK3EU
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Well, apologizing and admitting he is wrong for the second time is better then declaring bankruptcy for sure.
I never liked him much and like him even less now.
I see the Blaze is with Mark Levin now. :|