Steve Benen (with the help of Rick Moran of all people) nails exactly what’s so scary about the Glenn Beck gasoline stunt video that John wrote about earlier:
But that’s not really the interesting part. Alex Koppelman added, “Unfortunately, not captured in the video is what happened next, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry came on and Beck asked, ‘Governor, you’re regretting being on this program at this point, are you not, sir?’ Perry responded, ‘Not at all, Glenn Beck. I’m proud to be with you.'”
And that, in a nutshell, helps explain what’s gone terribly wrong with conservative Republicans of late. Beck appears to be in desperate need of medication, and the chief executive of one of the nation’s largest states is “proud” to appear on the show, just moments after Beck pretended to set a colleague on fire.
Credible, serious public officials would ordinarily want to avoid making eye contact with a deranged figure, but Gov. Perry was delighted to chat with the Fox News lunatic. Maybe it’s because Perry actually finds Beck’s madness compelling; maybe it’s because Perry has a big Republican primary coming up and wants to curry favor with Beck’s followers.
Either way, it’s a problem for the party and the conservative movement. Conservative blogger Rick Moran said yesterday, “Beck worries me. Conservatives worry me. I worry about myself. I feel trapped in a huge ball of cotton, trying gamely to make my way out but don’t know which direction to start pushing. I am losing contact with those conservatives who find Beck anything more than a clown — and an irrational one at that.”
I never thought I’d say this, but, Rick, I feel your pain.
Update. Even LittleGreenFootballs is frightened by some of this stuff.
Just Some Fuckhead
Damn, saw the title and thought Stuck was back.
DougJ
It was supposed to be a wry reference to that awful scene from Reservoir Dogs.
amorphous
And that is why I want out of this state.
Just Some Fuckhead
@DougJ: Don’t think I ever saw that one. Hey good news, Bill Frist caught Glenn Beck’s show and gave him a clean bill of mental health.
MikeJ
I wonder if Fox will listen to my pitch for a TV with a crusty yet benign lead character?
sgwhiteinfla
DougJ
This is off topic but I thought you would get a kick out of Joe Klein coming off the top turnbuckle on Charles Krauthammer today.
http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/04/10/krauthammer-desperately-seeking-nail/
JK
Anyone who discusses Obama while running stock footage of Nazi soldiers is a sick, demented SOB.
Glenn Beck is not a clown, he’s a dangerous rabble-rousing demagogue.
cleek
no more internet until you do!
Zifnab
@amorphous: If Hutchenson can’t save us from the madness that has been the last 15 years under Bush/Perry, I’m afraid for the fate of our state. That’s right, I’m pinning all my hopes on a Republican slightly to the left of a Mitch McConnell – John Boehner love child.
Texas is approaching a critical mass of crazy and stupid. I can see us going out California style if this keeps up.
Steve V
Waiting for Church Lady to come along and tell us what assholes we’re being to good conservatives.
Dennis-SGMM
Scenes from a commitment hearing:
Judge: Mister Jones, is it true that you frequently crawl around your yard screaming incoherently and eating dog feces?"
Jones: "Yes, your honor."
Judge: "And have you, in fact, covered your home, your car and your dog with aluminum foil?"
Jones: "Yes, your honor."
Judge: "Can you offer the court any explanation for your behavior?"
Jones: "I’m a conservative, your honor."
Judge: "Case dismissed."
GSD
For some real undiluted wingnut, Beckian-Bircher ranting, listen to this fruit cake.
Jeebus, they are seriously mentally ill. Invest all your money in aluminum foil my friends.
-GSD
Martin
When LGF is laughing at your shit, you’re really out in the weeds:
(They need BOB to reveal the master plan regarding thermostats.)
sistermoon
Kossack justme said it better than anyone I’ve seen so far:
jake 4 that 1
Where’s the reciept? It’s time to return Texas to Mexico.
AkaDad
Clowns to the left of me and jokers to the right. Here I am…
John Cole
The problem with Rick Moran is that he is occasionally very right about things, as he is now. However, tomorrow, some low-ranking idiot member of the Congressional Black Caucus somewhere will say something stupid and most likely harmless, because what they want will never happen, and Rick will blow a damned gasket and go into full “The Democrats are worse” mode and link to the frothing fringe of the right wing blogosphere.
His problem is he has never shown any ability to recognize that in the Democratic party, the nuts are marginalized and, far too often, turn out to be 100% right, but in the Republican party, the nuts are running the show and always wrong and have real power. And not only has he never been able to make that distinction, he votes accordingly and then wonders out loud why Rick Perry is on the Glenn Beck show.
On the tombstone for this nation when we finally kill it will read the phrase:
“Killed by false equivalence.”
A Mom Anon
Has anyone checked on Beck’s wife and kids? I’m being serious. If I acted like this in public,I’d like to think someone would intervene,or at least make sure my family was ok.
Svensker
@John Cole:
Dear John, this is why I read BJ.
Yours sincerely,
Svensker
Dr. Loveless
Glenn Beck is the GG Allin of right-wing punditry.
dslak
@John Cole: I just saw a similar phenomenon on the comments at LGF regarding the John Bircher’s tea party rant. They were going on and on about how the right has now been infiltrated by whackos, the way that Code Pink and Michael Moore infiltrated the left.
If pressed, I expect their attempts to link those two to any mainstream figure in the Democratic Party would sound just as conspiratorial as those of the John Bircher they’re all so desperate to disown.
Bill Teefy
Rick Moran actually a thoughtful read. I was surprised to read a righty review which seemed to focus on the content of Glenn’s method and delivery. But then you start looking at his commentors and you see that mostly they, along with Rick Perry, are on Glenn’s side.
Best of the comments were the ones comparing Keith Olbermann with Beck and Beck being claimed to be the sane one. Know, I’ll own up to Keith being a bit pompous and foolish at times but it took almost eight years of full-on GWBush-nuts to get him moving in that direction. Nothing Obama has done in the last two months even compares to the crap Bush pulled.
I mean there is dissent and disagreement and I don’t like that policy but really…when you can defend warrantless wire taps for four or five years and then go apoplectic because Obama read something instead of speaking off the cuff.
Anyway. It was nice to read at least one righty that thinks Glenn Beck is more like Ward Churchill.
The Moar You Know
@Martin: This is demonstrably true. The rest of it is…well, I need a stronger word than "insane".
The Moar You Know
@A Mom Anon: They’re in the basement.
Rick Taylor
Just to add to this, the head of the RNC should not be sending out letters to Republicans telling them that Democrats and Acorn are working disenfranchise them. It’s scaring me how the thinking of what I used to think of as fringe conservatives is becoming a part of Republicans who are in officially leaders of the party.
MikeJ
Moran got one thing wrong. He claims "the left" has stopped trying to make Limbaugh the face of the Republican party because Limbaugh isn’t that radical.
Limbaugh is as radical and insane as he’s ever been, it’s just that he has more competition now.
Dennis-SGMM
@Rick Taylor:
Oh noes! How can they vote against their own interests if they’re disenfranchised?
sgwhiteinfla
The real take away from the Moran piece is the comments section. Its like he is trying to lead his side away from the cliff and they are like "fuck that, we are jumping!". That goes to show that people ARE taking Beck seriously no matter how much of a clown the rest of us rational folks (rightly) see him as. And thats what indeed makes him dangerous because since he looks like a blithering idiot the MSM just can’t convince themselves tht people are actually taking him seriously and might therefore end up hurting someone. Its the same reason they glossed over his connection to the cop killer in Pittsburgh.
guster
@John Cole: "the Democratic party, the nuts are marginalized and, far too often, turn out to be 100% right."
That is the single worst thing about my leftie friends. Some of them are like stereotypes–completely annoying in oh so many ways. And yet they end up right and my centrist ass ends up completely wrong, time and again.
Me: "I’m conflicted about invading Iraq. I mean, we _know_ Saddam has WMD …"
‘I’m conflicted.’ That’s going on _my_ tombstone. Idiot.
AnotherBruce
The digital cable boxes must be brainwashing machines. Before, when my brain was all dirty, I got a lousy signal. Now that my brain has been washed by my cable box until it’s shiny clean, I get a nice picture on my TV. And I was able to get rid of that cheap aluminum foil hat.
demkat620
The truly sad part is the ratings Beck is getting. Sad and scary.
Jay B.
It’s pretty clear that digital cable and the Internet are brainwashing scores of Americans. I mean, Glenn Beck is on both of them. What the fuck is he doing if not that?
DanF
Wow. that was the sanest LGF thread I’ve ever read… I didn’t know they had it in them. To be fair, I only made it about 100 messages in. The crazy could have come later.
joe from Lowell
I feel guster’s pain.
Atrios wrote, back in 2002, that his first reaction to hearing about the plan to invade Iraq was "That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life."
Not me. "Ooh, this is a tough call. Both sides have some really good points." Hell, if the Republicans hadn’t decided to impersonate feces-throwing howler monkeys throughout that debate, but had put forward their case like civilized people, I might have gone along with it.
Maybe people like us don’t go with our guts enough.
Punchy
What’s with all the righty Glenn’s having 2 n’s in their name? WTF else does this shizzle? Is that some sort of wingnut code?
El Cid
Maybe a big part of what’s wrong with all this is that for the last century mainstream U.S. politics and culture have treated any real leftism and especially leftist radicalism as a horrific, frightening, evil phenomenon, while right wingers can mainstream as much craziness as they want, right up to the edge of white supremacy and occasionally crossing over.
So, you get a bunch of raving militia nuts on mainstream TV programs, but you don’t get communist revolutionaries. You get raving culture warriors like Pat Buchannan on a daily show, but you don’t get someone who believes in some decentralized anarcho-socialist state.
If far leftist and leftist ‘extremists’ had as much access to the U.S. mainstream as the right wing, the whole nation would be unable to avoid the smell of right wing America shitting its pants.
chuck
@Moar:
Beckian
Comrade Kevin
That cable TV thing is straight out of an episode of the X Files. Did that guy think it was a documentary or something?
NonyNony
@John Cole:
To be fair, the "nuts" in the Democratic Party often turn out to be right because the Overton Window has moved to the point where to be considered a "nut" on the left all you have to do is advocate for things that people in Europe have had running smoothly for decades, or point out that an obvious consequence of war and occupation is a lot of chaos and a metric fuckton of wasted money. You know, point out things that have been historically true and that have a lot of empirical evidence that backs up your claim, but runs counter to the status quo and doesn’t fit into a Reagan-esque narrative of how the country is supposed to work.
Conversely, to be considered a "nut" on the right you have to almost go as far as breaking out a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and recite it into a camera. And even then you might still be able to get your own cable show.
lee
I don’t ever click on LGF links so I’ll have to take your word that there is a smidgen of sanity on that site.
MikeJ
That rant quoted by LGF? All I could think of was:
You know what, Stuart, I LIKE YOU. You’re not like the other
people, here, in the trailer park.
Oh, don’t go get me wrong. They’re fine people, they’re
good Americans. But they’re content to sit back, maybe
watch a little Mork and Mindy on channel 57, maybe kick
back a cool, Coors 16-ouncer. They’re good, fine people,
Stuart. But they don’t know … what the queers are doing
to the soil!
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=5834894
sgwhiteinfla
DanF
The crazy isn’t in the LGF thread, its over at Atlas Shrugged where Pam "with the big tits" Gellar decided to slime the hell out of the guy running LGF because he had the audacity to speak ill of Glenn Beck. There is a serious flame war going on in wingnuttia right now over that LGF post including charges of LGF being a front for neonazis and being FOR jihad. Its really quite entertaining to watch them cannibalize each other.
El Cid
@NonyNony: This is it. I’m so god-damned tired of being right about basic stuff but having been told for most of my life that I’m just too far out or fringe for the Democratic Party, ’cause, you know, um, George McGovern! or whatever.
dslak
@sgwhiteinfla: There really is a Santa Claus!
recusancy
@lee:
I just went to LGF for the first time ever. Reading through the posts from the last couple of days they seem incredibly sane. Like they actually care about regaining power sometime in the next generation or two and not losing their party to the nut jobs.
After watching that kook rant about DTV boxes brainwashing people it gives me some relief to know that they aren’t all like that.
ricky
Jake 4 that 1
You suckers took us without one. I think the only thing that was paid for was Gadsen.
Rick Taylor
It was obvious war with Iraq was a bad idea, and it’s stunning how the administration together with the media convinced the population it was anything but insane.
(1) War should always be a last resort. A civilized country will never start a war. It was deeply depressing to me that this principal that should be a mainstay of any civilized country was discarded. Iraq did not attack us. Iraq was not about to attack us. Iraq did not want war. When we attacked, Iraq was dismantling its long range missiles at the behest of the United Nations in an attempt to avoid war.
The right is still maintaining the fiction that Iraq was not cooperating with the inspectors when we invaded. Candidates for the presidency and President Bush said that Saddam wouldn’t allow UN inspectors in, which is Orwellian. In fact, Iraq was frantically doing everything it could to avoid war, and it’s worst sin was a lack of record keeping. This was a war of aggression on our part; an unprovoked invasion done under false pretenses. It is amazing so many people thought this would be a good idea.
(2) Saddam was a tyrant. But his government represented an ethnic group that would be unhappy to be removed from power. When we overthrew their government, it was unlikely they would throw up their hands and say, "oh well," and cooperate with a government controlled by the Shiite majority. Presumably they would start an armed resistance. Duh! How stupid did you have to be not to see that coming? Evidently most of the right wing was, as they went around preening after the invasion was a success, and saying "in your face!" to the left, as though anyone intelligent thought the overthrow of the government was going to be difficult, and the hard part wasn’t going to be what came after. The intelligent people who supported the war and knew something about the area added always added the caveat that of course the relation between Shiite and Sunni was extremely delicate and tricky, and would have to be managed with great skill to avoid disaster. Anyone who expected "great skill" from the Bush administration was a fool.
(3) Iraq had no nukes and no prospect of developing any. There was not a single expert on the area who took the idea of Iraq developing nuclear weapons seriously.
(4) Iraq had not fully accounted for it’s chemical weapons, and there was a general consensus they might have stashed some away. Of course such weapons would have aged and have been of doubtful efficacy. It was possible that they’d developed new weapons since then, though there was no evidence ever presented for that. In any event, chemical weapons designed for the battlefield would not have been effective terrorist weapons. When we started beating the war drums for war with Iraq, my assumption was Iraq probably did have some chemical weapons stashed away somewhere, but that was hardly a justification for war. By the time we invaded, and after we’d sent the weapons inspectors on goose chases finding nothing, it seemed very likely there were no weapons at all, which turned out to be the case.
(5) The administration was being transparently dishonest. We can’t weight for the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud. We made up ridiculous stories about mobile chemical weapons labs and drone planes. Rumsfeld said we know where the weapons of mass destruction are. The administration was obviously dying to go to war. If they’d known where the weapons were, they would have told the inspectors and they would have found them.
(6) Iraq was not a third world country like Afghanistan. And it was full of weaponry. Unless we handled the diplomacy and the creation of a new government flawlessly (and maybe even if), it was going to be a bloody mess.
(7) The people most strongly supporting the war were arguing that putting a democratic government in Iraq would cause a shockwave of democracy to hit the area, disheartening tyrants and in the long run helping to bring peace to the middle east. This was so obviously nuts it’s a mystery to me why major publications would even print these people’s articles.
DanSmoot'sGhost
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, if I can, I go to a rehab facility and play hamster, getting on the wheel and running my four little legs off under the supervision of fiends with instruments of torture. All good fun, etc.
The tvs are on in this place like they are in most workout rooms .. and today I got about an hour dose of Glenn Beck’s show.
Even knowing what he is, and how full of sh*t he is, and how crazy his ideas are … gotta tell you, I was slackjawed. Just the nuttiest and most disturbing crap I have ever seen on tv, and that is saying something (I saw Limbaugh’s old tv show, and he was Howdy Doody compared to Beck. I saw the real Dan Smoot. I went to the same elementary school as Barry Goldwater, okay? No, not at the same time, stop your snickering).
Beck is a really dangerous guy, mainly because he fires up the really dangerous idiots out there. A guy next to me was going on today about how the US Government (i.e., Obama) is the reason why those pirates could take over "our" ship (dutch owned, I think) since the crew "isn’t allowed to carry guns." I kid you not.
I pointed out to this gentleman that it’s more likely that if the crew can’t carry guns, it’s the maritime insurance company that won’t allow it under the terms of its agreement with Maersk. Chances are, the insurer, who operates on actuarial realities and numbers, and not ideology, calculates that it costs more to pay claims for accidents involving guns, or liabilities from gun use, than it costs to pay for the occasional pirate attack and resulting loss. Insurance is all about real risk, not about political messages.
Anyway, the guy looks at me like I’m from Mars, and turns up the volume on Beck.
Heh. Okay, maybe I am from Mars, but I am closer to the truth about the lack of guns on the Maersk Alabama than he is, I bet. If there is a lack of guns on the ship, which has not yet been determined to my knowledge.
sgwhiteinfla
Must see video of tea baggers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwdOwgD5OsY&feature=player_embedded
Courtesy of Oliver Wills
DanSmoot'sGhost
And … wow, Rick Moran! Talk about the most aptly named guy who ever appeared on these pages!
A blast from the past.
Cordially,
Dan
SGEW
@MikeJ: Now that’s going to be stuck in my head all day. Look at the soil around Des Moines!
MikeJ
sgwhite, that’s the same thing LGF was mocking.
Rick Taylor
I thought it was the Republicans and the conservatives who were supposed to be the grown ups, the responsible ones. it was the lefties who put on protests with giant puppets with no clue about how to make practical change. What the hell happened?
sgwhiteinfla
MikeJ
Ooops. My bad I thought the thread in question was the one mocking Glenn Beck.
Svensker
@joe from Lowell:
Fixed that for ya.
Svensker
@recusancy:
No, no, no. People at LGF are NOT sane. It’s just that the other Repubs are so completely far out there that moderately insane comes across as not so bad. Repeat, LGFers are not sane. Please don’t go there.
Dennis-SGMM
@Svensker:
Seconded. LGF was one of the first successful RW fringe sites. That they find themselves outflanked by the nutcases says more about the "conservative movement" than it does about the reasonableness of LGF.
MikeJ
Completely agreed. I read through those comments, and the ones at Rick Moran’s place. The paste eaters are complaining about the asbestos eaters.
geg6
I’ll never understand ’til the day I die how anyone could have been torn about the decision to invade Iraq. Never. I didn’t start reading Atrois until 2005 but I have witnesses who will testify that my reaction was identical to his. And they thought it was just sour grapes. And if there are lots of typos in this post? Fucking Blackberry.
slag
Now I have that song in my head. Trying to decide whether that’s good or bad.
And the fact that Beck’s ratings are high is really the deeply disturbing part. The nuts are running the nuthouse.
asiangrrlMN
I was one of the people saying there were no WMDs back in the day. I even wrote an essay about it. Actually, I wrote a few. My best friend was another of these people. So, does that make us leftwingnuts? If so, I can accept that. I also wrote a piece after it was discovered that, oops, Saddam did not have WMDs that said it wasn’t my fault this time. See, someone, a liberal, I believe, wrote a letter to the local paper saying we were at fault for the war because we believed that there were WMDs. Now, while I am Queen of Assuming Fault, this time, I put my foot down. I NEVER thought there were WMDs. I always believed the invasion was under false pretenses.
It’s mad-making when you hold a belief that is entirely different than that of the mainstream. I honestly didn’t know if I was losing my mind because I didn’t believe there were WMDs. In fact, it’s how I felt when I was Christian. Well, when I was a kid in a Christian household. I never believed, and I felt like I was losing my mind because I couldn’t believe.
As for Glenn Beck, he disgusts me. I think it’s an act, and I think he needs to be called on his shit. Or, he needs to stop claiming to be a news person. Even for FOX, he’s pretty vile.
Leelee for Obama
@NonyNony: Nony, I think I am in love. At least with your comment. Every word was true and I wish, wish, wish I had written it. Good on ya!
geg6
AsiangrrlMN, I feel your pain. I spent the night of the invasion so furious I couldn’t stop crying. And then spent the next 4 or 5 years wondering if I was the insane one. It was the worst period of my entire 50 years. For real.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Zifnab:
I am going to register Republican for the sole purpose of voting for Kay in the primary. I would prefer we had a viable D candidate, but that’s just not going to happen for at least another couple of terms.
Library Grape
I wonder if Daniel Larison had Beck’s Gasolina stunt in mind when he wrote this sharp quote earlier today, in which he takes the GOP bloviators to task for whinging on incessantly about Obama’s so-called "apology tour":
"Reading some of the complaints, such as Krauthammer’s, one might think the critics were five years old. They seem to think that the hard work of rebuilding America’s reputation in the world, a reputation that the very same critics and their confreres spent years dousing in gasoline and setting on fire, yields instant gratification, as if repairing frayed relations and coordinating international policies could have overnight results. The same people who grew weepy at the thought of History vindicating Bush decades or centuries hence are prepared to declare his successor a failure after less than three months. The people who contributed directly to pushing the good name of our country into the muck are now crying that Obama has not yet, in his first set of meetings, successfully cleaned up their mess. They and their arguments deserve little more than scorn. "
Litlebritdifrnt
OT (and I apologize) but I wanted to thank everyone for the kind comments last night. As it turns out it wasn’t Max but one of my little girls Misty (I blogged about her here at the weekend http://crittersbybritty.blogstream.com/) Last night I was so upset when DH brought the body in I just saw grey tabby and no collar and assumed it was Max. This morning Max came in for breakfast and Misty didn’t so I went and checked the body (DH will bury her tomorrow) and her collar had been tucked under her chin so I never saw it (through the tears in my eyes). I just wanted to clear up the confusion in case I mentioned Max in the future and everyone went huh? I am just glad I took Misty’s photo on Saturday and she had fun with the tulips. Today DH was leaving the house to meet me for lunch and a truck went speeding down the street barely missing another cat. He was so mad he went chasing after the SOB to try and catch him but to no avail. In any event, I just wanted to thank you all again for your kind words last night.
asiangrrlMN
@geg6: I hear you, geg6. I watched the lead up to the invasion thinking, "Someone’s going to say something, right? Someone is going to point out the emperor has no clothes? Someone in the media–hey, where are you guys going?"
Then, years later, when the NY Times apologized for their lapse, I completely lost faith in the news. I mean, if they couldn’t see what I could clearly see (and I think it was more a matter of didn’t want to see), then why should I trust them with anything?
Granted, I do read Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristof, but that’s it for me and the Times.
Like you, I wandered around in a daze after the invasion. I’ve never had any great trust in my government, and I will be upfront and say I loathed W. from the moment I heard him speak, but the invasion of Iraq was the proverbial last straw for me and W.
bago
Burn all the books!
bago
@asiangrrlMN: Today is my brothers 27th birthday. He is alive despite the cocks who sent him to Iraq. I am thankful for his life. Not so thankful for the cocks who sent him there.
asiangrrlMN
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Litlebritdifrnt, again, I am so sorry for your loss. Misty was a beautiful girl. May she run freely now to the other side.
P.S. I love Tilly. I am very partial to black cats.
asiangrrlMN
@bago: bago, is he still over there? Happy birthday to your brother, and I thank him for serving his country with honor.
Laura W
@asiangrrlMN:
I gots one you can haz.
(You might go to the main blog home page and scan the photos on the front page. She’s a camera whore, to say the least. And a character and a half.)
slag
@asiangrrlMN: Here’s a small but significant difference: You were worried about unnecessarily invading a country and wrote an essay about it; Glenn Beck is worried about moving the tax rate for rich people up 3% and is fake-setting people on fire. I’m a liberal and, therefore, am a fan of nuance, but I’m pretty sure that little difference indicates that you’re relatively sane and Beck’s relatively not.
Surabaya Stew
As an occasional commentator on Rick Moran’s site, I wondered what exactly makes reading him so interesting and frustrating at the same time. John puts in words what I couldn’t quite figure out:
Very nicely said! I still plan on enjoying his site though; Rick is often an enjoyable read, even when he’s wrong. Even when he’s isn’t having a good day with his posts, the comments on Right Wing Nut House usually make up for it. Speaking of which, what is with the large number of sane commentators on LGF? I had given up on them years ago…
WB Reeves
Once football was the republican metaphor for politics. These days it’s "pro"-wrestling.
Moran’s commentators ought to leave him deeply depressed. I suppose that’s why he spends his time snarling at the handful of lefty hecklers who show up to rub salt in his wounds.
Rick’s in a tough spot though. The "movement" that he’s devoted a large percentage of his time and energy to and upon which he depends for his income, turns out to be populated by beaucoup freaks and loons rather than "high minded" Buckleyites. He can’t quite face up to the harsh reality of it.
I think it was Upton Sinclair that said it was extremely difficult to convince a man of the facts when his paycheck depends on denying them.
asiangrrlMN
@Laura W: Aw, Annie is gorgeous! She’s a ham, for sure. Your other cats are quite fetching as well.
I haz two black cats (brothers) of my own. Maybe some day when I will actually upload their pics onto Flickr.
To slag: Whew! Thanks, slag, it’s a load off my mind. I was just saying I’m a leftwingnut in the context of the other commenters who said that anyone who believed there were no WMDs before the invasion were nutters.
If I ever get Glenn Beck crazy, you all have my permission to do an intervention and lock my ass up in a psych ward for the good of the country.
GSD
Move over Larry Craig and Mark Foley.
Is the GOP big top big enough for a gay elephant?
-GSD
geg6
Yeah, I knew I wasn’t really crazy, too. I just couldn’t believe the world around me. I liken it to being Alice through the looking glass. Completely disorienting and furiously frustrating. It was so clear to me. Even the 2000 debacle didn’t prepare me for that and I’d thought I’d seen it all with that.
JL
No problem! Murdoch is only concerned about the bottom line when it comes to Fox Tv and Beck is a money winner. I’m sure that they have insurance when he destroys the studio.
asiangrrlMN
@GSD: I am an evil woman, but that made me laugh like crazy. Thank you for linking to that. I await word from Limbaugh, Hannity, et al.
All kidding aside, it does bother me that Beck is such a ratings magnet. WTF is up with that?
Johnny Pez
I sure will be glad when we reach Peak Wingnut and conservatives start becoming sane again. That’s going to happen soon, right?
P.S. Blogwhore alert: Carnival of the Liberals comes to the Johnny Pez blog. Send me your links!
JL
@asiangrrlMN: He’s inciting the other whackos. There is no such thing as personal responsibility among the repubs.
sprinklecoveredturd
beck’s completely out of control. i don’t know why anyone would be on his show if they want to be taken seriously. just like michael steele:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqA2wECRniU
Little Dreamer
Of COURSE you are from Mars, any ship named the Alabama has to be a military ship owned by the US, silly! ;)
Ummm, you go to Cardio to lower your risk of heart attacks and then you watch Fox News? Are you NUTS? I thought you were staying on the MSNBC side (at least that’s what you told me).
NO more Fox News! I demand it, sorry! You’re supposed to stay alive, remember?
DanSmoot'sGhost
@Little Dreamer:
I can’t help it … they surrounded me!
Seriously. The wingnuts have the remote controls down there.
DanSmoot'sGhost
( Lewis Black scowl and voice )
STOPPED CLOCKS!
Mike in NC
Who’s got the marshmallows? Once read somewhere that LGF was one of those web sites that became completely unhinged after 9/11 and began crusading 24/7 for the extermination of those pesky Mooslims…
Little Dreamer
So what you’re saying is the crazy wingtards went over to the MSNBC side and changed the channel?
Are there more morans attending cardio than previous to November, I wonder?
DanSmoot'sGhost
@Little Dreamer:
I think they are just more agitated.
The Obama thing is driving them bonkers. They see his popularity, and his center-left politics, and the big spending, and they just freak out.
I feel sorry for them, really. And a little anxious, because I have seen Tim McVeigh, and I never thought that he was all that unique.
And, you know, government buildings, and everything. Heh.
wasabi gasp
Beck is a plant, amirite? A preposterous infiltrator, spoof assassin, mission: destroy, his gag is for you to choke on. Who knows who sent him or what his target is, but envision the day when his skullcap cranks open revealing Marvin the Martian holding one ACME Disintegrator hastily hydrating as many Instant Martians that can be had from the dumball machines and you just had a blast from the past.
Comrade Michael "That'll be Two Bucks, Sailor" Brown
From the gasoline stunt transcript:
Wow, Glenn, you know, actually, I do. And since I always like to fit in with a guy’s fantasies (guess it’s just the cheap street whore in my soul), let me just see if I can, like, help you out with your swell idea there….
stickler
Glenn Beck is making Rupert Murdoch even richer. That’s all FOX cares about. So he’ll stay on the air, getting crazier and crazier, until some whackaloon pulls a David Koresh or Timothy McVeigh. Then the country will be outraged, Beck will tone it down a little — for about two weeks — and then it’ll be back to business as usual.
Remember how Rush and G. Gordon Liddy lost their radio shows after McVeigh blew up a Federal building? No?
Oh. Right.
This kind of rabble-rousing is profitable, so it will continue until it is regulated for the common good.
bago
@asiangrrlMN: He’s out, and working for shell. Strangely appropriate. It wasn’t pretty and he has an episode of the History Channel about his time there, so it’s a bit weird.
Hyperion
@WB Reeves:
yeah, it’s tough when all people who have been telling him how fabulous he is turn around and denounce him. he deserves the ire of his minions. a coward, he closes down the comments when they get too critical.
He always accuses commenters of not reading what he wrote but, as his pieces average a thousand words, not everyone can hang on til the end. when i read the block comment in this post, i thought it was from the recent RWNH post. "wow, this is good stuff. how could i have missed this part? probably he buried it in the middle". then i saw that it was Benen being quoted. Now that guy can write. Moran, not so much.
Also his habit of commenting on your comment IN your comment (basically a personal atttack) is rude. He cannot brook real criticism.
Oh and let’s not forget this classic of conservative paranoia
Hyperion
@GSD:
i gotta say that a gay elephant would be a very big top.
Medicine Man
Hopefully insured by AIG.
SFMichaelX
Hi everyone. I feel like such an interloper, but I’ve been reading Balloon Juice for months now, including the comments. I never felt comfortable to leave a comment; it felt like intruding on what I can tell is an amazing community.
But I just wanted some confirmation that there’s been a shift lately. Things are suddenly feeling much better than they were. The zeitgeist seems to have changed recently. It really is happening, isn’t it? It’s slow, but more perceptible now. The right wing is collapsing into absolute farce. We’re either living in a Dali painting, or a Kafka novel. We’re watching the opposition party turn into theatre of the absurd.
And it’s not just me, is it? You can feel it too; haven’t the right wing turned a corner on insanity? Was it Iowa? Unanimous Republican justices in the heartland? Perhaps Vermont, the people’s representatives over-riding a governor’s veto? Was it the freaking teabagging? You can see the cream of the crop (as it were, like David Frum, Sully, etc.), rising to the top, and dissociating themselves as much as possible from the lunatics. There are many parallels, in other countries and other time periods as to what might happen, but really nothing like this. But the mere possibility, and honestly, just the hope, of something amazing is worth all the short-term anxiety.
Watching the disintegration of Nixon’s Southern Strategy and the utter failure not only of 30 years of Reaganism, but totally unregulated cowboy capitalism, I have never felt so much better about the future than I do now. Obama is playing chess; he’s playing for the long term. Let’s be honest, a brother like him (or half-brother, as the case may be), he ain’t going to get as far as he has, and f*ck it up. He knows what’s he’s doing; I have to keep reminding myself of that when I start to get panicky. But this week has been amazing. It’s been like destructo-porn watching them implode.
Anyway, thanks for allowing me to be in interloper in your community. I love reading John and Doug’s posts, and everyone’s comments. It increases my knowledge of so many different things, and enriches my life, and always makes me think.
A pip pip to you all.
anna missed
Apparently Rick has failed to notice the chocolate covering the cotton.
bago
@SFMichaelX: When uttering the sentence "Conservatives are going to teabag the whitehouse for a 3% top end marginal tax increase" became a reality. Well. Yeah. Seriously. Beyond Parody. TELEPROMPTERZ!!!!
bago
Nevermind the wire-tapping, torture, and sending my family out to die in the desert for a photo-op. It’s the family values tea-bagging led by a viagra popping draft dodger lecturing us about patriotism. You can’t make this stuff up.
Fledermaus
@John Cole: no, the epitaph of the US will read "the dirty fucking hippies were right"
canuckistani
Excellent reference.
Scott
THIS ARTICLE IS ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS. Anyone reading this article who didn’t watch that episode of Glen Beck might actually believe this horse shit of an article. The "gasoline stunt" was made to prove a point about our economy…and the gasoline bottle had a sign that said "WATER" on it…IT WAS A JOKE! Way to turn a JOKE into something about conservatives.
Whatever douche wrote this article is trying to turn something into something it isn’t. What a ridiculous piece of propaganda. Shame on whoever wrote this. Shame on you..
Matthew Hooper
Ah, yes. "It’s a joke". I always hear that one coming off of the bully’s lips when they get caught.
And the bullies always look so shocked when they get caught by the adults. Funny, that, too.