Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The willow is too close to the house.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

He really is that stupid.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Second rate reporter says what?

This fight is for everything.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

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Reader Interactions

84Comments

  3. 3.

    A Mom Anon

    If by interesting you mean batshit fucking coocoo bananas,then yes I’d agree it’ll be interesting alright.

  7. 7.

    Ash Can

    DougJ, are you going to get in on the chat and ask him who he’s surrounded lately?

    ETA: Attaboy.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    When you say “interesting”, I assume you mean it in the sense of bystanders attracted to dramatic car crashes?

    -dms

  9. 9.

    Egilsson

    I love those “Doug from Rochester, NY” questions.

    What suggestions do you have? I don’t even know where to start with Beck.

    “Why are you crazy?” – that’s not likely to get picked.

    “If one of your fans shoots Obama, will you cry?” – maybe that one?

  10. 10.

    anonevent

    As anyone heard how Glenn’s comedy act did? Was it a success by Glenn’s standards? Was it a success by comedy standards? Did Glenn buy all the tickets so that it looked like a lot of people attended?

  11. 11.

    JGabriel

    Great. So Beck will do a chat at WaPo, say as many outrageous things as possible, then air the responses he provokes on his show to paint himself as the victim and and anyone who doesn’t share his brand of far right extremism as “incivil”.

    “Those darn libs, you just can’t talk to them!”

    Does anyone else think engaging Beck in that forum is a bad idea ?

    .

  16. 16.

    asiangrrlMN

    @JGabriel: Beck has the inherent edge, obviously because it’s on his terms. I am hoping that one or two of the lefties (cough, DougJ) can slip by his pinging radar system. Beck doesn’t strike me as terribly bright, so I bet DougJ could fashion a question that Beck will answer.

  18. 18.

    freelancer

    My ?:

    Glenn,
    You mentioned last week that you could possibly see more violence coming crazies who just want to be famous.
    What can we do, as a country to let others know that Conservatives’ free-speech will not be silenced by terrorism or backlash from the extremist left?

    I fear it’s not quite wingnutty enough.

  20. 20.

    bobbo

    Jeebus H. Christ. I knew the WaPo had gone to the dark side, but Glenn freaking Beck? Why not host the guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum?

  21. 21.

    matoko_chan

    Juggalos and Beckers (like all followers of insane clowns) speak juggalese, of course.

  23. 23.

    Matt

    Can we pause for a moment and consider Beck’s new book titled, I shit you not:

    Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Ouf-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine

    For. Fuck. Sake.

  25. 25.

    Matt

    Its no joke. I think a part of my soul was destroyed when I saw it. The idea that someone would publish a book with Glenn Beck and Thomas Paine in the titled, means this country is further down the crapper than I thought.

  28. 28.

    freelancer

    @Matt:

    See also “Just a Few Questions: How the Truth Out of the Mouths of Evil-Doers Saved Us All” by Dick Cheney, inspired by Torquemada.

  29. 29.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    Dear Glenn,

    What can we do to stop the Obama Administration and its handlers in the liberal media from using the violent assault at the Holocause Museum by a member of the Fascist Left as an excuse to take our guns away? At what point is force an appropriate measure to protect our Second Amendment rights?

  30. 30.

    Trollhattan

    Seems so unusual for the media-shy Beck to make such a daring move. I wonder whether he’ll be able to summon the courage to speak?

    What in bog’s name did we do to deserve him, anyway?

  31. 31.

    Tiparillo

    Not to mention putting “Common Sense” and “Glenn Beck” in the same sentence. Talk about an oxymoron.

  32. 32.

    eric

    @dslak: I used to use The Age of Reason when i lectured philosophy.

    Ultimately, i made the more radical point, following Descartes and the “Great Deceiver” and the tautological circle that was “clearly and distinctly,” that any reference to “self evident” truths was epistemologically troubling.

    You would be surprised (1) how well freshman got Descartes’ Great Deceiver point and (2) how well the got the tautology.

    Hence, much consternation at how difficult it is to tell truth from falsity.

    Then we turned to Nietzsche’s “Madman.”

    Ah good times.

    eric

  33. 33.

    dslak

    @eric: Beck could massage that problem however by saying that he’s reasonable, too (all the counter-evidence notwithstanding). Paine’s anti-Christian pathos is a bit harder to reconcile with the wingnut worldview. Not that that’s ever prevented them from attempting to co-opt Jefferson and Madison, mind you.

  34. 34.

    bayville

    Glenn Beck – author of 5 Books – must have editors who work 24/7 on editing his manuscript.

    Here is his first post from the Washington Post chat:

    Glenn Beck: Yeah, I said on Sept. 11 that we should fear no outside force, the only that would destroy America is us, from the inside. I look at what’s happening in Iran, and they are arquing on who is going to be a better leader in their theocracy. Both candidates were picked buy the mullahs, neither candidate can do anything without the mullahs telling them it’s okay.
    I think we’re in the same situation here. Bill Mahr said this weekend that Barack Obama was George Bush Lite. What are we fighting over? What is the difference between these two parties? There are reasons to speak out, but tearing ourselves apart over these scraps of freedom is odd. We’ve stopped melting together. Our strength was that we were a melting pot.

  35. 35.

    Montysano

    Shorter Beck on the economy: “I have no clue what to do, and have no clue what I’m talking about”.

  36. 36.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    Dear Glenn,

    Why do the liberals insist on conflating neo-Nazi gunmen with conservatives? Don’t they realize that Hitler was a leftist? How can we effectively confront their lies about history, given their stranglehold on most media outlets?

  37. 37.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Matt: I give up. If this is the kind of crap being published, then I give up trying to get published. I’ve reached my personal tipping point of sheer idiocy and venality. I’m a little surprised as I thought that point would happen at the hands of Limbaugh.

    @freelancer: The sad thing is, I couldn’t tell for a moment if you were kidding or not.

  38. 38.

    dslak

    @eric: I have to say, I don’t remember much of the details of books I and II, outside of something about the existence of certain rights being self-evident (as you’ve noted). What I had in mind in my previous comments however was the anti-Christian vitriol of book III.

  40. 40.

    Matt

    Bucks Co., PA: If you were the President right now, how would you handle the financial crisis inherited from the previous administration?

    Glenn Beck: I would first start going to the average person and asking them to support the big corporate entities. Common sense tells you that it’s unreasonable for the little guy to carry the big guy.

    I think he’s actually talking about a little person carrying a big person. Could it be that the problem with Glenn Beck is that he doesn’t understand figurative language? I

    Also, how awesome is it that he actually wrote “Common sense tells us”?

    Developing . . . . . .

  41. 41.

    bayville

    Who could argue with this logic?

    Glenn Beck: I would first start going to the average person and asking them to support the big corporate entities. Common sense tells you that it’s unreasonable for the little guy to carry the big guy. That’s the road to serfdom. If they failed, they failed.

    I guess I picked the wrong morning to quit sniffing airplane glue.

  44. 44.

    freelancer

    Paraphrasing my own second question:

    Glenn,
    One of your more infamous soundbytes played often by your detractors, and it may be out of context is “Believe in something, even if it’s wrong! Believe in it!”
    Would you care to put this sentiment back in its context or elaborate on it?

  45. 45.

    NonWonderDog

    @dslak:

    No. Glenn Beck doesn’t know anything about Thomas Paine, but he really likes the youtube douchebag who dresses up in a powdered wig, calls himself Thomas Paine, and talks about taking the country back for the forces of godliness.

  46. 46.

    eric

    @dslak: You are right.

    the larger point i would make is to take the self-satisfaction of the Rationalists following Paine’s support of Deist Reason (we also read Jefferson’s Bible, goooooood times) and undermine it, so that late-20th century students could understand the intellectual birth of existentialism, and its enemy “authoritarian nihilism” at the beginning of the 20th century.

    Guys like Beck and his ilk, never see the difficulties in human history because they re-write it to take out the complexities.

    Just like the “greatest generation” pablum which lauds the landing on Normandy, while ignoring our own role in turning back jews to europe, not to mention the “greatest generation’s” still wholesale acceptance of segratation, for example.

    Paine died a poor and broken man because “christians” made it so, despite his role as the greatest pamphletere and rhetorician of the Revolution.

  47. 47.

    jharp

    Question: Isn’t regulation really a common sense approach to containing human greed?

    Glenn Beck: No. Self-regulation is the common sense approach to regulating greed.
    __________________________________________________________
    Just keeps getting better

  48. 48.

    jharp

    Question: Isn’t regulation really a common sense approach to containing human greed?

    Glenn Beck: No. Self-regulation is the common sense approach to regulating greed… …No government is going to be able to regulate us, unless it’s an oppressive government. We must regulate ourselves.
    __________________________________________________________
    Just keeps getting better

  49. 49.

    bayville

    And each answer is more surreal … or in Beckese, “sirreal”… than the next.

    Self-regulation is the common sense approach to regulating greed. What our founders called indispensable, the application of the laws of nature’s God. And we have totally abandoned those things. Corporations need to know that by screwing the other guy, be it the janitor or another guy, is bad long-term for the company. Polluting the rivers and skies to make a tire cheaper is ultimately bad for the company.
    I started my company 7 years ago, and we’re highly successful, and I built it by paying every dollar of health care for my employees, by paying them more than anyone else would, and by working hard and playing hard together. When employers treat their employees with respect, they win.
    And there’s been an increase in regulators the last 10 years. When you look at the banking industry, the problem wasn’t a lack of regulators, it was a lack of regulators doing their job.
    The government either dropped the ball, like the SEC and Bernie Madoff, or encouraged bad behavior, like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd with Freddie and Fannie.
    No government is going to be able to regulate us, unless it’s an oppressive government. We must regulate ourselves.

  50. 50.

    freelancer

    Jharp, you beat me to it, that is some inanity, Gordon Gecko just needs to self-regulate. OMG, it’s so easy!

    “The only ones responsible are the ones who pick up a gun or a torch and act in an inhuman sort of way. “

    Somebody bookmark this, so next time Rockstar North comes out with a new iteration of Grand Theft Auto or Manhunt, we can pull a Friedman and be like Suck. On. This.

    UPDATE:
    “I don’t understand why so many on the left who believe in Darwinism don’t let it apply to a business standpoint. Let the banks’ lose their tails, they need to. It’s harsh and painful, but I don’t think any animal lover would be walking around trying to staple tails back on monkeys as they became humans. ”
    SCIENCEFAIL!

  53. 53.

    Radon Chong

    And he saves the best for last:

    It’s harsh and painful, but I don’t think any animal lover would be walking around trying to staple tails back on monkeys as they became humans.

    FTW!

  55. 55.

    Montysano

    Let me make sure I’ve got this straight: free, self-regulated markets cannot fail, they can only be failed?

  56. 56.

    asiangrrlMN

    Good god. Make the crazy man go away, Mommy. Please! He didn’t seriously say this, did he?:

    I would first start going to the average person and asking them to support the big corporate entities. Common sense tells you that it’s unreasonable for the little guy to carry the big guy.

    I now need a high ledge from which to jump. Thanks for listening/reading so I don’t have to sully my eyes/ears/brains.

  57. 57.

    slip

    Glenn Beck: No. During the Iraq War, for anyone who cares to know the truth, I was on the air chastising people that were saying that Hollywood should shut up or that if you have a different opinion you should shut up.

    Oh yeah?

  58. 58.

    4tehlulz

    @Radon Chong: Do I want to know the context of this, or would that knowledge spoil the awe and wonder at the utter WTF of that statement?

  59. 59.

    Matt

    Glenn Beck: Anybody who thinks that I’m pushing fringe groups to violence should read my e-mail. The fringe groups hate my guts. The fringe groups think I’m a government stooge.

    I’d like to see that email, Asshole.

  60. 60.

    eric

    @Matt: Well, that might prove the point of the DHS report now wouldn’t it. If Beck is not crazy enough…..

  61. 61.

    Comrade Stuck

    Beck will get his when the MUP makes the DOOM ROOM his personal UnIcorn Lair.

  66. 66.

    Comrade Stuck

    @asiangrrlMN:

    A John Cole creation, meaning Magical Unity Pony during the primary and intended (I would say) as light sarcasm from Obama’s unifier talk.

    I should say I think it was Cole’s creation.

  67. 67.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    @Brick Oven Bill:

    Glenn Beck rocks.

    He certainly does. Homosexuals, adulterers, AND blasphemers. In his America, we’d rock them all to death. Only we’d call it stoning. Oh, we’d probably stone stoners, too. The poetic irony of justice!

  68. 68.

    Tiparillo

    Well that was boooooring and he responded to so few quesitons. What a waste. Why did WaPo even bother?

  69. 69.

    Hob

    @dslak: If Christian wingnuts can get along with Ayn Rand, they should have no problem with Thomas Paine. Paine’s writing for American independence was neutral on religion, and when he attacked organized religion he was still writing as a Deist; Rand was an atheist who held all forms of religion and spiritual philosophy in total contempt, and said over and over again that exclusive materialism was central to her political ideas– not to mention that the Golden Rule was the exact opposite of her notion of ethics. Yet plenty of nominally Christian or Jewish reactionaries see no problem with giving Rand a shout-out for her important “principles.”

    It all makes perfect sense as long as you remember to reduce the principles to two or three words. Paine: “Liberty is good.” Rand: “Be an asshole.”

  70. 70.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Perhaps we would run out of missiles too Scruffy McSnufflepuss.

    Boom.

    Fight to win.

    Come home.

  72. 72.

    JGabriel

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Ok, what is MUP?

    MUP = Magical Unity Pony = Obama’s supporters / political movement for change, coined by John Cole during the primaries. Occasionally used metonymously for Obama himself, though that’s discouraged as comparing the first black president to a young pack animal seems a little, er, undignified.

    .

  73. 73.

    Comrade Stuck

    @JGabriel:

    comparing the first black president to a young pack animal seems a little, er, undignified.

    Not if it has a shiny horn and glitters hope.

  74. 74.

    Uloborus

    Hmmm. I’m not actually watching this. I have trouble watching him at all, since I revolt at his Conspiracy Theorist brand of reasoning, where proof is defined as loosely connecting a bunch of facts.

    However, I think I actually detect a faint hint of real logic in there? Maybe he’s saying that regulation doesn’t work, and when you try it you stop guys like these Wall Street yahoos from crashing and burning themselves and thus fixing the problem automatically?

    I’m not saying I AGREE with that line of reasoning. I can think of any number of convincing counterarguments. I’m just wondering if, for once, he’s put together an argument that’s just badly phrased, not totally inconsistent.

  75. 75.

    Svensker

    Glenn Beck, besides having the brain power of a deranged prune, looks so squishy. Ewwwwww, just gave myself the squinks.

  76. 76.

    Zuzu's Petals

    Slightly off-topic, but NPR Talk of the Nation is having a call-in show on “extremism” extremist rhetoric, etc. right now (11:30 Pacific Time). Kathleen Parker and Somebody Kirchik (sp?) of the New Republic are the guests. The NR guy comes off like a complete tool mouthing wingnut talking points; interestingly, Parker seems like the voice of reason. At least from what I’ve heard so far.

    They’re having someone else for the next segment, but I encourage folks to tune in, and call in if you have anything to add.

  77. 77.

    Zifnab

    @Matt: The nice thing about crazy stupid people is that they say crazy stupid things. Surround yourself with enough of them and all you have to do to distance yourself at a later date is point at the last shit-flinging bum fight you got wrapped up in.

    Who continues to watch this guy? Seriously! Why does this man continue to get ratings? I would rather rub my eyeballs against a cheese grater.

  78. 78.

    oh really

    Beware, all you coulrophobes!

    Should be interesting

    Possibly the biggest exaggeration I’ve ever seen on the Intertubes.

    But then, I neither fear clowns, nor do I find them interesting.

  80. 80.

    Matt

    Glenn Beck’s a moron I got that, but the reason that he is watched and listened by millions of people is because what he says has the veneer of truth, or its feel good nonsense. Should government regulate the financial sector? No, we should regulate ourselves instead of having people tell us what to do. See this sounds good, no matter how fucking stupid it is in terms of a solution to the banking crisis. The way I understand it, Rush is all about paranoia, no issue, no occurrence is too small not to prove how liberals are destroying this country. Hannity is all about repetition, he will repeat the same line over and over and over until his callers start repeating it back to him. Beck is all about emotion, and how he feels. Strip away the nuttiness and Beck is very touchy feely, you know you are listening to someone who has read those spiritual self-help books while trying to quit drinking. My two cents

    Does anyone else find it the least bit funny that he’s discussing Thomas Paine’s Common Sense like its Chicken Soup for the Soul? Its as if he is using the phrase “Common Sense” in terms of your mother telling you not to go out in the rain without an umbrella, but that’s not the way Paine uses it. Secondly, I get so fucking tired of people legitimating their idiotic ideas by trying to link themselves to a founding father.

  82. 82.

    JK

    Glenn Beck is a malignant media carcinogen who is incapable of ever telling the truth about anything.

  83. 83.

    Chuck Butcher

    Once you get to the point of watching Fox News as news and possibly buying into “Fair and Balanced” you can bet on a Beck being taken seriously on that network.

    Oh well…

  84. 84.

    HyperIon

    well, maybe it should have been interesting.

    but it turned out just like all the other WaPo chats, meaningless BS from beginning to end.

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