Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

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

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

This blog will pay for itself.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

He really is that stupid.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Let there be snark.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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This appears to be real.

beck

I’m speechless.

(h/t commenter JK)

Update. Check this out too — “EXTREME INEQUALITY: Learn about the burdens of the Ultra-Rich” (one of the recommended links for people interested in this book).

It’s over, people. We had a lot of good years. I hope my wireless reaches to the make-shift bomb shelter I built this evening.

Reader Interactions

196Comments

  2. 2.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Hmmm, this reminds me of a lyric by Joe Jackson.

    Sure they’re all straight – straight as a line
    All the gays are macho
    Can’t you see their leather shine?
    You don’t want to sound dumb – don’t want to offend.
    So don’t call me a faggot
    Not unless you are a friend.
    Then if you’re tall and handsome and strong
    You can wear the uniform and I could play along

  5. 5.

    gnomedad

    This appears to be real.

    Glenn Beck is really an East German communist?

    Seriously, you didn’t think the Pantload could hold the Stoopidest Book Cover Ever! trophy forever, did you?

  7. 7.

    The next-to-last samurai

    It’s his new “book.” my elderly parents watch Fox religiously, & this masterpiece is being relentlessly promoted.

  9. 9.

    PurpleGirl

    According to something on the book’s Amazon page he’s claiming you use facts to argue your points… Facts? He wouldn’t know a fact if it bit him in the face.

  11. 11.

    General Winfield Stuck

    Glenn Beck is really an East German communist?

    I’d say more like the Doorman at the Ritz-Hilton.

  16. 16.

    asiangrrlMN

    I would break my pacifist stance if I ever met Beck just so I could punch him in the neck a la John Cole and shout, “This one’s for the Gipper!” just to confuse the hell out of him. Then, I would add, “Wolverines, bitchez!” before kneeing him in the crotch.

  17. 17.

    Wile E. Quixote

    So is the title of this post a cool Elton John homage or am I reading too much into it?

    Also does the fact that James K. Glassman is being appointed as the head of the George W. Bush library and that Beck’s book is advertised with the claim that:

    Idiots can’t be identified through voting records, they can be found only by looking for people who hide behind stereotypes, embrace partisanship, and believe that bumper sticker slogans are a substitute for common sense. If you know someone who fits the bill, then Arguing with Idiots will help you silence them once and for all with the ultimate weapon: the truth.”

    mean that irony is dead? I mean I know it wasn’t doing well when Larry Craig was busted wearing a flag pin while he was busted for trying to suck a cop’s dick in an airport men’s room and things have just gotten worse.

  21. 21.

    tomjones

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    “they can be found only by looking for people who hide behind stereotypes,”

    Like people that accuse a black President of hating white people.

    “embrace partisanship,”

    Like people that sit quietly during the 8 years of the Bush administration’s profligate spending and erosion of civil liberties, but then discover during a Democratic administration that they hate those things.

    “and believe that bumper sticker slogans are a substitute for common sense.”

    9/12! 9/12!! 9/12!!!!

  22. 22.

    JGabriel

    Glenn Beck graces the cover of his latest book with a Mussolini impersonation?

    That’s it. Beck is doing performance art. He wants to see how fascist he can behave and still be embraced by the right. There is no other explanation.

    .

  24. 24.

    Guster

    Is there some purpose to the odd mismatch of his eyes? Is he supposed to look like asiangrrlMN already punched him in the eye? What _is_ that?

  25. 25.

    RSA

    The tags are quite amusing:

    keeping america stupid (45)
    idiot (44)
    racist (36)
    moron (34)
    pig vomit (31)
    crybaby (21)
    brilliant (17)
    keeping america informed (17)
    true patriot (17)
    common sense (13)
    retarded (13)
    politics (6)
    doughy (2)
    lolwut (2)
    paranoid (2)
    soft pink and oily (2)
    springtime for hitler (2)
    anti-fascist (1)
    anti-national socialist (1)
    anti-racist (1)
    autobiograghy (1)
    badly written (1)
    bane of progressive pigs (1)
    dreck (1)
    enemy to america s enemies (1)
    horrible book (1)
    reich wing (1)
    self-help (1)
    strong (1)
    stupid (1)
    whiny (1)
    you stay classy (1)

  30. 30.

    JK

    This book cover looks like it could have been dreamed up by the writers for Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart. If Beck gets any crazier, Stewart and Colbert won’t be able to parody him anymore.

  31. 31.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @JGabriel

    Glenn Beck graces the cover of his latest book with a Mussolini impersonation?
    That’s it. Beck is doing performance art. He wants to see how fascist he can behave and still be embraced by the right. There is no other explanation.

    Yeah, too bad Pat Buchanan topped him with that whole “ya know, if everyone had just given Hitler everything he asked for World War II never would have happened” column. Tarting yourself up in a vaguely East German looking military uniform (and they cropped everything but his head out of the photo because if they hadn’t you’d see that his outfit consists of his the hat, the jacket, the shirt, the tie and a pair of assless leather chaps, sans pants*, you know the same picture he used in his personal ad in Mandate) just can’t compare to blaming World War II on Poland and the Allies.

    *You don’t want to know where he’s wearing his 99 cent made in communist China flag pin. Really, you don’t.

  32. 32.

    SpotWeld

    Countdown until someone photoshops this to be titled “Everything I Know about WWII I Learned While Watching Hogan’s Heroes”

  34. 34.

    grep

    Has anyone noticed the “Tags Customers Associate with This Product” section a little ways down the page? Priceless:

    keeping america stupid (46)
    idiot (45)
    racist (37)
    moron (35)
    pig vomit (32)
    crybaby (22)
    brilliant (17)
    keeping america informed (17)
    true patriot (17)
    retarded (14)
    common sense (13)

  36. 36.

    IndieTarheel

    Wow. Just absolutely un-fucking-believable. I guess he lived just long enough to become that which he hated.

  37. 37.

    SpotWeld

    The more I think about it.. the more it sinks in.
    He dressed up as a Nazi…

    Somehow, in his mind this makes his point.. he dressed up as a Nazi.

    This is an angry 5 year-old;s game of making an ugly face and saying “Well, this is *you*…”

    This man is supposed to be an adult, and this is what he is dragging discourse down to.

    Admittedly Franken played that game with his book titles.. but Glenn Beck dressed up like a friggin Nazi!!! WWII vets are just gonnna looooooove this guy.

  39. 39.

    SpotWeld

    Maybe it supposed to be a Soviet uniform.. that would explain the Cyrillic “R”

    But.. still.

    Gah

    RedSate is going to squee with joy though, I just know it

  40. 40.

    Sloth

    This book is going to be a best seller. And will probably be pimped by Senators, Governors, people in the highest echelons of power.

    Greatest country on earth, no doubt about it.

  43. 43.

    DougJ

    So is the title of this post a cool Elton John homage or am I reading too much into it?

    It’s sort of an Elton John homage, sort of a failure to think of anything that would do the subject justice.

  44. 44.

    Political Pragmatist

    “The mayor of Mount Vernon, Washington has made it official. Mayor Bud Norris says he will give the key to his city to conservative talk show host Glenn Beck on Sept. 26.”

    Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me, fuck me.

  45. 45.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    We interrupt your regular programming for the following comment “FLEAS, FLEAS, ARRRRRRGHHHHHHH!” and I have no carpets, can you imagine what the situation would be like if I had carpets? Argggghhhhhh!.

    We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

  46. 46.

    Comrade Darkness

    This is perhaps his answer to the question: Glenn Beck, sociopath or street performer.

    At least, at first glance I thought it was the answer. The spoofers win. We should just hand them the intertubes and go back to reading overdue library books by candlelight.

  47. 47.

    kth

    @SpotWeld: Your read is probably the best possible attempt to make heads or tails of what that picture is trying to say. But I’m not convinced. It really doesn’t make any sense at all.

    I mean, he could have gone sort of right-wing subversive by being photographed in blackface with Obama ears. That would at least make sense, taking him down a peg. Or put Obama in the military uniform. But dressing up as the strongman he claims Obama is? The picture quite obviously fails if that’s the intention.

    To take the Al Franken example: it would be like if Franken appeared on the cover of his Limbaugh book dressed as some Elmer Gantry-type of Pentecostal preacher. Or as a patent medicine salesman from the 1800s. You can’t deflate something that you inflated in the first place (you can, but it’s totally futile and self-referential).

    I think Glenn Beck is on Ecstasy. That would account for the weeping, the loopy free-associations, and being convinced that that cover picture is just fucking brilliant.

  48. 48.

    Calouste

    So picking up something that was mentioned on the open thread:

    The next time your Idiot Friends tell you how gun control prevents gun violence, you’ll tell them all about England’s handgun ban

    And Beck’s point is? There is very little gun violence in England (knife crimes are somewhat of a problem though). Even the police usually doesn’t carry firearms, although they don’t have a problem calling in armed responce teams and snipers whenever there is someone with a gun about.

  50. 50.

    Keith G

    Beck? Bah!

    It is Labor Day weekend! I have at least 10 wks of college footbball ahead of me followed by almost 4 months of college basketball.

    For the next 48 hours, I will not care about nutters.

    Happy Laborious Day to all.

  51. 51.

    ericblair

    @Mike G: The Onion can close down now. Parody is now officially redundant.

    The Onion was never parody, silly person. It’s the United States eighteen months in the future, and always was. Sleep well.

  52. 52.

    Fencedude

    @Calouste:

    The knife crime bit is most likely what he’s going on about.

    That being said, if given the choice, I’d rather be confronted by a crazy guy with a knife than a crazy guy with a gun.

    And if nothing else, knives require you to be upfront and personal about your murdering.

  54. 54.

    Mark S.

    I had to look up what 9/12 meant. While I find it rich that a partisan asshole like Beck is bemoaning the lack of unity in the country, I wonder if Beck and his followers ever appreciate the irony that it is almost always a horrible tragedy like 9/11 that brings a country together. Maybe it would dawn on them that the hatred that they usually direct at liberals was temporarily deflected toward terrorists, and it didn’t take long for them to go back to hating liberals once a war based on false pretenses emerged.

  55. 55.

    BFR

    The Onion was never parody, silly person. It’s the United States eighteen months in the future, and always was. Sleep well.

    Ruh roh – can’t sleep, Minataur’s gonna eat me.

  56. 56.

    Sloth

    While I find it rich that a partisan asshole like Beck is bemoaning the lack of unity in the country, I wonder if Beck and his followers ever appreciate the irony that it is almost always a horrible tragedy like 9/11 that brings a country together. Maybe it would dawn on them that the hatred that they usually direct at liberals was temporarily deflected toward terrorists, and it didn’t take long for them to go back to hating liberals once a war based on false pretenses emerged.

    Liberals are not *part* of their country. Literally.

    We don’t come from real amerika.

    etc.

    Not kidding.

  58. 58.

    debit

    The first thing I thought of when saw that picture was this poem by e.e. cummings.

    the boys i mean are not refined
    they go with girls who buck and bite
    they do not give a fuck for luck
    they hump them thirteen times a night

    one hangs a hat upon her tit
    one carves a cross on her behind
    they do not give a shit for wit
    the boys i mean are not refined

    they come with girls who bite and buck
    who cannot read and cannot write
    who laugh like they would fall apart
    and masturbate with dynamite

    the boys i mean are not refined
    they cannot chat of that and this
    they do not give a fart for art
    they kill like you would take a piss

    they speak whatever’s on their mind
    they do whatever’s in their pants
    the boys i mean are not refined
    they shake the mountains when they dance

  59. 59.

    cmohrnc

    Anyone notice that Glenn Beck is so far over the top he’s driven most mention or even slight attention to Rush Limbaugh by progressives or the mainstream media over the past 3 months or so? So much so that I suspect that even if every last commercial sponsor deserts Beck (or Fox if their advertisements appear on Beck’s show)…there IS someone who might just gladly continue bankrolling Beck…Rush Limbaugh!

    Because Limbaugh almost seems like a mere curmudgeon by comparison to Beck’s childish inanity and insanity. With Limbaugh’s profile (for the moment) flying low enough to mostly be seen lately only among like-minded wingers, he’s biding his time, riding out Obama’s early-day success in maneuvering Limbaugh into painting himself and the GOP into a corner as a bunch of angry, shallow older middle-aged Archie Bunker caucasian males.

    Beck might have been set up to become the unwitting clown who winds up absorbing the blame for the collective sins of the GOP, allowing most of the party to hopefully escape surprisingly unscathed from their badly unhinged first six months of the Obama era.

  60. 60.

    Sly

    …and believe that bumper sticker slogans are a substitute for common sense.

    The bumper sticker isn’t a substitute for common sense. It is emblematic of common sense. Particularism is what people embrace when they’re too ignorant or, more likely, too lazy to want to know any better.

  61. 61.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    The title of Beck’s book should be So Easy An Idiot Can Do It: How to be the Pied Piper of Stoopid in on easy step!

    I had my day ruined by a wingnut customer dropping by a couple of laptops his sis gave him that he wants me to check out. The guy had his son with him (fresh from a month visiting his Aunt in Georgia), who prodded his dad to tell me the latest great joke they were laughing at. I won’t bother with the specifics but it involved Obama as a child, his Mother, some party and sex with a dog. All I did was shake my head back and forth and said “Nope, doesn’t do a thing for me” and that I don’t find that kind of “stuff” humorous. He laughed at that and told me that the same joke pissed an Obama supporter friend of his sister’s off.

    Wait until he gets my future bills on his work. I am adding a “Stupid Wingnut Fee” to my rates for every fucking wingnut customer who thinks this shit is funny.

    The local parts guy has been screwing up my parts orders, even ordering the wrong type of remote oil lines three times now! Maybe if he spent less time decorating his store with anti-Obama/pro-Teabagger shit which includes a large jar of teabags that have the word BLACK on them using the largest font on that could fit while the other words on the packages are much smaller fonts, printed out racist internet jokes handy for the waiting customer to read, entrance mats that say “Patriots Welcome”, phony ‘handbills’ with caricatures of Obama, Pelosi and the usual evil liebrul mugs, a note which states that “Some villiage in Kenya is missing its idiot” plus much more. I would like to think that I would get better service if he paid attention to his customers. Here is another example of shitty wingnut service.

    Our wingnut vet (now ex-vet) is too busy bitching to me about Obama to notice that one of our cats has a horrible dental problem (nice exam!) and sends us home with expired FortiFlora as the fix. He likes to post teabagger screeds on his business sign next to the highway.

    I wish these fuckers would go Galt already. I am sick and tired of these whiny assed clueless racist religious fuckwits and their High Fructose Corn Syrup laden fat-assed butterball kids who parrot the shit they feed them and look to them for a cracker.

  62. 62.

    Zzyzx

    @Political Pragmatist:

    So last weekend, the wife and I went for a hike near North Cascades National Park. It was a beautiful morning in the Pacific Northwest, sunny and in the low 70s…

    …except for when we drove through Mt. Vernon. There was a fog bank right over the town lowering the temp to the upper 40s. It felt like there were dementors there or something. It turns out it was Glen Beck…

  63. 63.

    Dee Loralei

    @arguingwithsignposts: yea, my beloved Sooners lost. Dammitalltohell. I’m consoling myself with the knowledge that it is the first damned game of the season AND we lost to a top 20 team. But FU&#it! We lost, waaaahh! And we were out effing Coached AGAIN!! Stoops, for the love of all that is good and holy and Soonerlicious, play to f&^%ing win, STOP playing not to lose! We seriously need a daring offense coach and we need to quit playing zone derense, I effing HATE zone defense.

  64. 64.

    Comrade Darkness

    Okay, I swore I wouldn’t but silly reload on balloon juice and here I am contemplating it. WTF is with that costume? Forget what it actually says to a reasonable viewer, what does HE think it says. I can’t even suss that out.

    1. compile limited-scope factual anecdotes about whatever I think will piss off the people who piss me off
    2. dress up as a fascist
    3. ?
    4. ?

  65. 65.

    Mike in NC

    Glenn Beck, sociopath or street performer.

    Today I went to see “Inglorious Basterds” for the 2nd time and really enjoyed Glenn Beck’s uncredited performance as a Gestapo officer. Bravo!

  67. 67.

    Rommie

    Told ya they’d get to the Wingnut Mirror Universe – up is down, left is right, and the “good guys” dress up like the Axis Minors.

  70. 70.

    Delia

    Well, Glennie is coming out, you know, in his own special way. He can’t really hold it inside any longer that he just lurves a man in a big fancy authoritarian uniform, especially if he evokes brainwaves of terror and destruction.

    I wonder if he’s going to start dressing up on his show.

  71. 71.

    Political Pragmatist

    @Zzyzx: Should I ever drive up to Seattle, I will avoid any contact with Mt. Vernon.

    One would think there would be a Glenn Beck parade here down Las Vegas Blvd, but the glibtards here seem to pretty much hate everybody.

  72. 72.

    Ed Marshall

    @Comrade Darkness:

    I think it’s supposed to be a communist getup. I was in my late teens back when there was a USSR but I don’t remember the red baiting being so thick even back when communists had nuclear weapons and existed outside little groups that could have meetings inside phone booths.

    He’s battling the red menace that wants to give you health care in a way a bit more insurance industry friendly than Richard Nixon who was motivated by a desire to head off a sane, single payer system.

  74. 74.

    Tom G

    You guys know that he recently came out with a “book” entitled Common Sense? as in, he thinks he’s as good as Tom Paine? I’m gonna be sick too. I mean, you all make fun of Ron Paul, but even he hasn’t gotten this crazy.

  75. 75.

    Comrade Darkness

    @Ed Marshall: All good, except one tiny detail. Shouldn’t he be wearing a minuteman getup (or even a confederate getup) and be about to punch in the neck some guy wearing THIS outfit?

  78. 78.

    Fern

    @Comrade Darkness:

    Precisely – it’s one thing to use all the symbolism (nauseating, but understandable from a marketing perspective) – but to be in that uniform himself??!

    Makes no sense whatever.

    Irony at that level could rip the fabric of the time-space continuum.

  79. 79.

    Nick

    “Liberal Fascism” didn’t get Goldberg laughed into hiding, so there will be no consequences for Beck (other than a fat royalties check from the patrons of wingnut welfare).

  82. 82.

    Comrade Darkness

    @Fern: Throw in the added dimension of that pout and you can fold the universe through that rip. “I will beat you with my silly reality riding crop and then go in a corner and cry!”

    I’m a bit surprised at the publisher. The expected reader is going to catch this, um, subtle play on whatever?

    Treated as a billboard, which it basically is. The 7 second message is: Glenn Beck is a petulant iron curtain wannabe. (Which is possibly true, but, imagining this as a fit of honesty is frankly harder than figuring out some twisted way it could possibly make sense.)

  84. 84.

    Chad N Freude

    @Fern: I am mystified. In an age where getting out the message is the driver for marketing a product, what message is he trying to send with that photograph? This isn’t just happenstance or a randomly selected comical photo. It’s a component of a campaign to sell the book. Why do the author and his publisher think that this picture will help?

  85. 85.

    burnspbesq

    @Dee Loralei:

    No no no, m’dear. You just need to stop caring about football.

    Didn’t you get the memo? OU is a basketball school now. It’s the Jeff and Sherri Show.

  86. 86.

    Ed Marshall

    @BR:

    There is a market where agents sift through medical histories and try and arbitrage the cases where they think the life insurance formulas are wrong and they contact people and basically buy the right to take a policy out on them. It’s resulted in murder before.

  87. 87.

    Hunter Gathers

    Glenn Beck is one of two things:

    A-the world’s most brilliant satirist

    B-the world’s most deranged schizophrenic

    How much longer until civilization collapses? It’s the waiting that I can’t stand.

  89. 89.

    Comrade Darkness

    @BR: Ha ha! and in true Wall Street style, they’ve managed to rig the whole thing so that it only turns a profit if people die earlier than expected. Oh *nothing* could go wrong with that.

    (They are securitizing not the insurance policies themselves, but the “life settlements” they’ve used to bribe oldsters to sell their eventual payout. The reverse mortgage people apparently needed to play the same suckers twice over rather than finding new ones.)

  90. 90.

    jl

    Beck’s general weaselly dodge when some one call him on his garbage is that he is just a comedian. He has trailers in the movies for his upcoming ‘comedy act’, which seems timed with is 9/12 movement, whatever that turns out to be.

    I have heard him call himself a comedian, which is a dodge he probably got from Limbaugh, who says the same thing.

    So, he will play this both ways. More incoherent authoritarian fascist style thinking for his dupes, advertised as just impertinent and brave comedy when called on it.

    note: I can argue in detail why ‘fascist’ is the correct term and not just name-calling.

    I called Bush a lot of things, after the first few months of his term when I had hoped his campaign shtick was sincere and we would be a less learned conservative Clinton. Well, whether Bush was sincere or not, he was nothing at all like Clintion, except for a few months after 9/11 perhaps. I never called Bush a fascist. Neither did I call the incompetent authoritarian Cheney fascist. Cheney is either dishonest or stupid, or deeply sick and deluded, or maybe all four, but I would never throw the F-word at him.

    But with Beck and his school, you gotta call it as you see it. He is a fascist.

  91. 91.

    Comrade Darkness

    @Ed Marshall: Exactly. Those sting cases where the fbi hires a hit man out of Soldier of Fortune. It’s like $5k or so for the “job”. Definitely worth the “investment.”

    We need some new public services messages. Rather than “Talk to your kids about drugs before someone else does.” We need “Talk to your parents about the dangers of “life settlements” before some used car salesman flunky gets to them first.”

  94. 94.

    jl

    @Hunter Gathers: It’s also possible he is basically a con-man. In that case he is playing fascist-style thinking for money.

    Beck’s flip-flop on healthcare suggest he may be a con-man. Remember when he felt he did not get good care for anal cyst or hemorrhoid surgery (or whatever it was, maybe a brain-hernia, I don’t know). Then he did a short expose on the quality of health care when he was on CNN.

    Now he is at Fox and US healthcare is The Best In The World In All Ways. It is not only light-years ahead of the rest of the world in quality, but it dispenses distributive justice with the perfect precision of perfectly just deity (that is where the insurance companies come in).

    Similar again to Limbaugh’s approach.

    Anyway, the flip-flop suggest to me that Beck is just con-man.

  104. 104.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @Comrade Darkness:

    Well, supposedly a rapture would give us a thousand years or so of tribulations. With the moran teabaggers gone off to Planet Wingnut or wherever, how bad can it be? My money’s on Jubilations instead.

  105. 105.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Rosali:

    South Oregon coast, right before the Calif border. The guy with the kid is a prison guard at Pelican Bay. He really likes his job and loves to try to regale me with his inmate handling skills (or lack thereof). The town is mostly retirees but there are a surprising number of transplants from the south (the guard is from Georgia, parents moved here when he was ten), with one asshat who flies his confederate flag on the highest pole in his yard.

    I’m the resident DFH, the guard was trying to get my goat but I didn’t let him. One of these days I am going to unload (verbally) on him but I am going to do it my way. Probably lose a customer but the freedom from bullshit would be worth it.

    It was tempting to unload today but I am letting him say his shit so when I do unload I can tell him to shut the fuck up and listen. :)

    Plus I am going to squeeze his ass for some cash before I do. That’s capitalism!

    One of my customers is married to an invalid racist from ‘weeziana’, a good ol’ white bayou boy who can’t shut his racist trap. She is obviously enjoying the fact that he is an invalid because she left his ass out on the floor one night when he was sexually harassing the day nurse and he tried to pull the pity card when his wife told him off (crawling out of bed and pleading for assistance to the bathroom). The nurse (a friend of ours) said she arrived at work the next day and the lady told her that the “old goat” was on the floor and needed help up. The nurse knew it was a payback when the lady winked at her when she was saying she left him there because she was afraid of hurting her hip lifting him.

    The lady also voted for Obama because it pissed her husband off. I had to laugh at that.

  106. 106.

    Chad N Freude

    @Comrade Darkness: I really find this upsetting. The implications of this are more real-life threatening than anything in Soylent Green or Logan’s Runthe or the works of Aldous Huxley or Philip K. Dick.

  107. 107.

    jl

    @Comrade Darkness: Oh boy, unregulated securitization of life-insurance. Thanks for the heads up on that.

    Yes, nothing could go wrong with that. On the first page of the story, the reporter mentions the possibility of premium death spiral if there if life-expectancies fall below forecasts (note that for many lower middle class and lower income people, of all races, in the US, that is exactly what is happening now).

    Too many people popping off before the actuaries forecasts, premiums may have to go up for the payouts, which may reduce purchases, or reduce renewals of term policies, or unexpectedly high cash out rates for other types of policies.

    That is the kind of death spiral that that occurred in early life insurance policies in early 19th century US and England. For awhile, life insurance had the reputation of a shady Ponzi-scheme, though that term is an anachronism for that era. It took decades and several near wipe outs of the industry, and the loss of many people’s life savings, before society discovered the correct method of regulating that kind of insurance.

    But what the hey, some sharks engaged in legal cons can make a few short term bucks, and it is Free Market Magic, so it must be all good.

    I thought Krugman was kidding when he used the term ‘Dark Ages’ for what has been happening in economics. But he might be correct.

    Another wonky side note, One argument against comprehensive healthcare insurance policies is that ‘everyone gets sick’ so the whole concept of comprehensive healthcare insurance is mistaken. This ignores the value of insurance in consumption smoothing for individuals over time, as well as for individuals over large populations. So, by this logic, if life insurance cannot survive without meddlesome government regulation, maybe we should get rid of that too.

    Get ready, For Profit Free Market Magic may do for life insurance what it has done for mortgages and healthcare, and the GOP and the industry will tell us we are all the better for it, and to be thankful.

  108. 108.

    Comrade Darkness

    @Ed Marshall: Because Wall Street never got perp walked into orange jumpsuits like they deserved? Or was that a hypothetical.

    Funny, there was someone bent on doing that, wonder what happened to that guy? Spits or something his name was… oh yeah, Spitzer.

  110. 110.

    Hunter Gathers

    @jl: I’m leaning towards performance artist, but with a real dash of racial anxiety. That’s what give his performances such zeal. He channels his racials fears, allowing him to reach full on wingnut. And like most people in the entertainment industry (Fox News is entertainment, nothing else) he is also very insecure. Mix insecurity and racial anxiety and you get the work of Glenn Beck – The Scared Middle Aged White Guy. And it is selling very well right now, even with the sponsors leaving, he is very well compensated. But even he knows that this act won’t go on for long, so he’s got to keep the crazy dialed up to eleven and cash in while he still can.

  111. 111.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    @Ed Marshall:

    I would but he is one of two suppliers and the second (NAPA) doesn’t hand out Vaseline when you get to the register. At least the wingnut parts guy gives me stuff at cost but I am pretty much getting to my limit (as I was telling the wife yesterday). I patronize a business for whatever I need, and I don’t go looking for political opinions when I am looking for car parts or getting our cats taken care of.

    This ‘in your face’ shit of theirs is going to backfire on them, big time. If I decide to quit buying from him I will go in and tell him to his face why. I have known the guy for over twenty years and I had no idea he was like this until just this year. He is a quiet, polite, clean cut guy but looking at his shop lately you would think he was a totally insane wingnut asshole.

    Ok, he is. But the change is mind boggling to adjust to.

  113. 113.

    Ed Marshall

    Yeah, what the hell is going at the SEC? I know Obama has a shitload on his plate, but if this is going on in the shadow economy this needs some priority. That guy that made the shitty call buying someones life insurance policy is already a shady bastard. Historically, they are really not above shoving a pillow in someone’s face to keep their job if someone screws up their stats and looks like they are going to live to long.

  114. 114.

    Chad N Freude

    @Hunter Gathers:

    But even he knows that this act won’t go on for long, so he’s got to keep the crazy dialed up to eleven and cash in while he still can.

    I’m not so sure. I think he believes what he spews.

  115. 115.

    trollhattan

    This is good news for Beck’s former advertisers, who will be flocking back to bask in the glow of his Kommissarish visage. BOB hisself would have been here to make the point, but he’s a little worried about his Nevada equity at present.

  116. 116.

    jl

    @Hunter Gathers: (Warning, this is an un-PC vent) I am a middle aged white guy. I find scared middle age white guys to be a disgrace to my race. Most of them have issues due to their frustrations with their own inability to achieve success in accordance with their youthful expectations and the myth of the 100% self made man.

    Most of the the Rush, Beck and ORiley fans in my family and their like-minded friends are, to be honest, complete and abject failures, usually (but not always) due to their own lack of self-discipline or diligence or common sense.

    Such As. Stone cold idiotic business decisions, like no friggen’ liability insurance at all for a new venture. Or they just had to have the biggest brightest most expensive truck, even though the payments were outta sight. Or, they think they can get through work or owning a business half-beered up most of the time.

    To be honest, most of these people are just losers looking to blame some one for their problems. Not much different from their conception of minority welfare kings and queens (which do exist, but not nearly to the extent these losers suppose).

    From my observation these scared middle age white men losers turn into either angry old extremely immature white guys, always looking for a fight, but too old to hit or be hit, or prissy hysterical old men (ie, like Broder). Both of which I find to be pathetic examples of the species, crawling in some kind of deep existential misery towards a sad and squalid death.

    Now, I have never told these people what I really think. I try reasoning with them, since my conception is admittedly a generalization. You can never know what is going on in a person’s head, and there is always hope that a person can change. I have read testimonies about ex Dixiecrats and even Nazi’s who became mature and thoughtful moderates, or even sensible progressives.

    But, over half of these people, to be honest, I think that they are dimwitted, self-righteous losers. And not much can be done with them other than to beat them at election time.

  117. 117.

    PartyLikeIts1990

    Yeah I get it. You’re trying to bait me out with this post.

    Well you know what? It worked. I have to ask — has anyone read this book yet, to find out whether he finally has the courage to address the growing awareness that Glenn Beck may have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990?

  118. 118.

    Uncle Glenny

    Hmmm. I was going to make a comment on whether he wore his magic underwear under that uniform, but I looked in wiki first. It sez he was originally Roman Catholic, then later roomed with a Mormon missionary.

    Now, maybe it’s just stereotyping on my part, but that sounds highly suspicious to me. (When was the last time someone made a gay porn movie involving Jehovah’s Witnesses?)

  119. 119.

    DBake

    The crazy was offensive at first, and it stayed offensive for a long time. But now it’s just confusing.

  121. 121.

    Hunter Gathers

    @jl: Not a damn thing I could disagree with in your un-PC rant. Hopefully when I reach middle-age (not that far off), I will be able to keep my sanity and not blame all of my problems on ‘them’.

    Then again, I don’t harbor a secret hatred of my wife or bother keeping up with the Joneses.

  122. 122.

    SiubhanDuinne

    O/T and sorry I cannot link from the BlackBerry, but the White House has just announced that Van Jones has resigned as Obama’s green jobs advisor. I saw it as breaking over on Huffington Post (www.huffpo.com).

    If he was/is a 9/11 truther, it’s good for him to go and it was the right decision. But it’s going to make Glenn Beck much too happy and smug.

    (I guess not so O/T after all.)

  124. 124.

    Apsaras

    Fucking hell.

    Keep on capitulating, Obama! I’m sure you’ll win them over as long as you keep doing exactly what you want them to do!

  126. 126.

    Uloborus

    I am kind of in the ‘performance art’ camp. Having been forced to watch Beck’s show a few times at my brief news job, and stumbled across it a few times since, I can’t help but notice that he seems to be making fun of his audience. Sometimes quite literally – I watched him pull a crazy audience member up on stage and make fun of him for not being crazy enough.

    Beck has discovered that there is simply no level of lunacy these people won’t suck up gleefully, and he keeps testing the boundaries. Surely THAT explains this cover. It doesn’t say anything, because he knows that all his fans care about is that it’s irrational and freakish.

  128. 128.

    Hunter Gathers

    @Apsaras: White guy spouts crazy shit, he gets his own TV show or seat in Congress.
    Black guy calls Republicans assholes, he has to resign.
    That truther shit? Turns out the truthers do what they always do, they lie. The people who signed that petition were bullshitted by the truthers.
    Same shit, different day.

  129. 129.

    Midnight Marauder

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I know this was discussed at length in another thread, but I honestly don’t think (from what I’ve read and researched) that the guy is a truther. And quite frankly, I think it’s a goddamn shame that he is resigning in the face of this onslaught of inanity. The guy was an incredible asset to the Obama Administration, and moreover, the motherfucking country at large. The fact that these imbeciles get another W in their column disgusts me.

  130. 130.

    General Winfield Stuck

    @srv:

    Sick wingnuts. Every day a new one. Democrat presnit talks to kids, it’s indoctination, whilst the family values crowd buggers them. It’s a goddamn disease, with no cure.

  131. 131.

    jl

    @Hunter Gathers:
    That sucks about Jones. I wish the administration would just tell the wingnuts and their media lackies to stuff it.

    but, Obama has to be careful on how he responds to these things. I believe that deep and unrepentant, or rock solid but self-denied, simple dang racism is at the core of the wingnut movement among ordinary people. If Obama sits there and does nothing he will be an ‘inadequate black man’, if he fights he will be an ‘angry black man’ gettin’ ready to come for our wimmin-folk.

    Their masters are cynically using this dynamite to further a scorched-earth political strategy, just as they did to some success in limiting Clinton and the previous Democratic Congress’ influence.

    So, because of the racism, there are limits to what he can do.

    But, that means it is all the more important to do to the utmost what he can do. Like very strongly stand and fight for sound policies based on evidence and rational argument that have the support of the majority of people (like for example, bank regulation and healthcare refoem) But he hasn’t done that. He has cut deals with people who will betray him as soon as they can do so and make a few more dollars.

    And it means that it is all the more important that he send out people who can get rough, like fighten’ and gaffen Ol’ Joe Biden to crack some heads. One thing about Biden, is even though he has his clownish side, he is very well informed and very self-confident, and he can shut down BS and shut-up the BSers real quick. And there are others who can do that kind of service. It is even the done thing in Presidentin’ circles to send out the pikeman to do some ‘bad war’ on opponents asses (But, Obama hasn’t done that).

    I hope this spring and summer has been a rope-a-dope strategy. The wingnuts and their masters have spewed enough lies and BS and nonsense this summer for that to work. They have given themselves more than enough rope.

    But that is just a faint hope at this point. Probably best to not pay much mind to the current gang of losers who lead us, both Democratic and Republican.

    If progressive forces have their **** together, they will target some vulnerable jackasses, make it very public, and take a few down in favor of better people in congress. That will get their attention.

    If that happens, we can forget about Beck and Limbaugh and their pathetic dupes.

  132. 132.

    General Winfield Stuck

    The gloves have to come off, they just do. That goes for Obama and his supporters which be us. Fuck these whiny ass seditious cocksuckers all to hell.

  136. 136.

    Midnight Marauder

    @General Winfield Stuck:

    The gloves have to come off, they just do. That goes for Obama and his supporters which be us. Fuck these whiny ass seditious cocksuckers all to hell.

    Exactly. Fuck a line in the sand. I want a line in granite.

  137. 137.

    Yutsano

    @Midnight Marauder: I hate to make a prediction that might be glaringly obvious to others, but the next target is Valerie Jarrett. I’m even willing to bet an alcoholic beverage on it at this point. And that will hit Obama personally, but they will circle even tighter now that the chum is in the water.

  138. 138.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Midnight Marauder

    I haven’t followed the story and background that closely. Agree with you that he was definitely doing good work.

    It’s just so discouraging that the guanomaniacs (I do love that word) get away with their outrageous egregious seditious racist inflammatory crap all the time, but Dems aren’t ever given the benefit of the doubt, let alone a second chance if they did, in fact, use poor judgment about something. I’m now officially depressed and am going to sleep.

    See y’all on John’s CBS Sunday Morning open thread in a few hours.

  139. 139.

    jl

    @Midnight Marauder: Primary slugs like Baucus and Ross and beat them or scare the living political life out of them. Give that two-faced Senatorial liar Grassley a real race, which should be possible in Iowa. That is the way to do it.

    You could run a good primary race against the corporate crook Baucus using his own 2008 healthcare reform platform, which was better and more progressive than anything Obama is likely to propose now.

    I am now cynical enough to believe that Baucus’ old healthcare reform proposal was just a corporate shakedown. The skeavey grifter floated it to give the insurance and healthcare industry a general notion about what his price would be. That’s all it was, the Senator from K Street’s one man corporate shakedown. I guess he got his price and collected in cash.

  140. 140.

    jl

    @Midnight Marauder: I read that there are a number of people who signed a truther petition for a better investigation, and the truther’s added a bunch of conspiracy garbage to it.

    One approach, and sensible one, would be to use the smear job as an opportunity to go after some of the more cynical and ruthless truthers. But noooooooo, they can’t do that.

    It is sort of like the racket the McCain campaign pulled on some economists. The circulated a petition with five points that were basic moderate conservative economics, then they added a bunch of voodoo economics nonsense. Some of the celebrity economists signers wanted their names off after they found out, but that was after the crooked petition was ‘out there’ in the news cycle long enough to have the desired effect.

  141. 141.

    Midnight Marauder

    @Yutsano:

    And that will hit Obama personally

    Quite frankly, I say good. That might be the only thing that shakes him up enough to finally fight back against these Obstructionist Assholes.

  142. 142.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    I view this ‘convulsion’ of revulsion (they of Obama and us of them) as a painfully necessary evil if we are to confront this once and for all. People find it too easy too look aside as they walk on past racism, however it is (or is not) ‘shaded’. Right now it is flat out impossible to deny the virulent racism that is prevalent in far too many of the wingnuts, deathers, pumas and the other assorted animal crackers in the box of crazy they have built. Our so-called media have elevated these crazies up as if they are people whose opinions are worthy of consideration, the so-called ‘other side of the story’, which is nothing more than a dangerous false equivalence that lends an air of legitimacy to these cranks that allows them to hide behind a veneer of respectability. We all know it when we see and hear it but the media is pretending not to.

    The media is feeding this frenzy and they are showing no inclination of wanting to stop the show any time soon. It is like a room where each nut comes in, utters whatever profane pronouncements they have worked up and then they toss a loaded gun on the table as they leave the room. After almost eight months, the guns are falling off and piling up around the table.

    People are going to pick up those guns and use them, that is the intent. The crazies can disavow any involvement and the media will be there to ‘report’ about it.

    It’s what they do.

  143. 143.

    Midnight Marauder

    @jl:

    I am now cynical enough to believe that Baucus’ old healthcare reform proposal was just a corporate shakedown. The skeavey grifter floated it to give the insurance and healthcare industry a general notion about what his price would be. That’s all it was, the Senator from K Street’s one man corporate shakedown. I guess he got his price and collected in cash.

    I think it was TPM where I read that, basically, the only reason Baucus had the constructive reform proposal a while back is because he was jockeying with Kennedy for leadership of Senate negotiations when it got down to the point. When Kennedy was knocked out of commission with the tumor, Baucus suddenly had no threat to his power and his surprising leftward-lurch was no longer necessary. Thus, the corporate ball-tickling you see today.

    The Aristocrats. Also.

  148. 148.

    jl

    @Midnight Marauder: thanks for the info. That explains more of it. But it supports my thesis: a critical mass of our leader are avaricious, conscienceless slime who do things for money and power, nothing else. Grab for their avaricious little bal… well, threaten their money and power, and that will buy some temporary good behavior from them. Baucus should get primaried every election from now on.

  149. 149.

    Midnight Marauder

    @jl:

    Agreed. I think the heat needs to be turned up on all of those assholes. And people like Lieberman should be tarred and feathered straight out of the party. Because, for all intents and purposes, he’s been a Republican/Obstructionist Asshole for years now.

  154. 154.

    grep

    @jenniebee: People have told me I’m easily amused. I don’t disagree.

    “Lists & Guides Tagged pig vomit
    No one has created a list or guide tagged “pig vomit” yet. Be the first!”

    “pig vomit Images
    Do you have any images related to pig vomit?”

    “Products Tagged pig vomit Are Also Tagged
    book recommendations boring christianity conservatism conservative evil garbage gay get over it you lost keeping america stupid lies politics propaganda religion science stupid trash truth waste of a good tree wingnut welfare”

    Formatting fail, but it is teh funny!

  155. 155.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @JK

    @Wile E. Quixote:
    WOW. A brilliant job marshalling the evidence to make your case. A closing argument that ranks right alongside Jack McCoy’s best closing arguments.

    Thank you, thank you. Do you think that I’m ready for a gig on Fox and a publishing contract with Regnery yet? I can’t wait for the day when I can sashay down a long flight of stairs wearing a satin gown (and flag pin) and say “I’m ready for my close-up Mr. Murdoch.”.

  156. 156.

    JGabriel

    DougJ @ Top:

    It’s over, people. We had a lot of good years. I hope my wireless reaches to the make-shift bomb shelter I built this evening.

    Maybe I’m naive.

    Tonight I was at a friend’s apartment for dinner. He and his wife are both European diplomats.

    Anyway, as the dinner conversation progresses, he’s going on about how 1) people are protesting against Obama’s speech to schoolchildren, 2) how bad health care / insurance is in this country, 3) how, if Obama doesn’t pass a robust health care plan, he’s toast, 4) how stupid and weak it is for Obama to be backing away from a public option, 5) how this country is a goner, due to the depth, breadth, craziness, and violence of the right wing in this country, and 6) how he’s afraid that the Republicans are fomenting an atmosphere that will lead to Obama’s assassination.

    To the extent that I actually asked, “Have you been reading blogs? You sound like… me.”

    And yet, despite his pessimism – and he’s NOT a naturally pessimistic person – and Doug’s pessimism, and the similar pessimism I see expressed all over the blogosphere these days, I still have hope. God knows, I could write a 300 page essay/memoir on why I shouldn’t, but I do.

    Despite all of that, Obama was elected. Despite all of that, and despite having the middle name of Hussein, and despite being the first black candidate from a major party, Obama won. Despite all of that, he won AND the Democrats won a majority in the House AND a supermajority in the Senate.

    Despite the volume of the crazies and the conservatives, Obama still appears to have the majority of the country behind him and not the Republicans.

    I can’t say I’m thrilled by the apparent lack of leadership Obama is showing on the health care/insurance bill. But I have to recognize that it might be the smart play – until Congress is in session. String it along until it’s clear to the meanest intelligence that the Republicans are not bargaining in good faith, then push through a good bill without them.

    I don’t know if that’s the strategy.

    But I do know that Obama is hella smart. I know that he hasn’t passed, or even negotiated his first budget yet. I know that he’s only been in office 8 months, and that the only significant impact he’s had time to legislate on the mess Bush left behind is the stimulus bill.

    I know that it’s about 2-3 months too early for us to be giving up.

    Talk to me in December or January, and I might be singing a different tune. But it’s way too fucking early for us to be giving up. Let’s wait till after the autumn session is over before saying it’s done, before saying we’re done.

    Until then, out rhetoric should be the rhetoric of fight and hope, not despair.

    .

  157. 157.

    JK

    @Wile E. Quixote:

    You can go toe to toe with Hannity, O’Reilly, or Beck any day of the week.

    @JGabriel:

    I want to believe you, but it’s very difficult right now. I really don’t know if a majority of the public supports Obama anymore. There are millions of Americans that have deliberately set their critical thinking faculties to the off position. They’re content to let Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity do their thinking for them. These people are, for all intents and purposes brain dead. I’m all for fighting against the wingnut liars, but conservatives clearly seem to be much more unified and cohesive than liberals do at this time.

  159. 159.

    JGabriel

    @JK:

    I want to believe you, but it’s very difficult right now.

    Jeepers, JK. I’m not asking for a lifetime commitment here. I’m saying Obama has had enough time for us to judge his effectiveness yet. Yeah, fight for what we believe in, but don’t get demoralized until we actually lose. We’ll know in 3 months where we stand.

    It just seems pretty damned premature for us to be giving up not only before the votes are taken, but before the session in which they’ll be taken has even begun.

    .

  160. 160.

    JGabriel

    Err, that should be:

    I’m saying Obama has NOT had enough time for us to judge his effectiveness yet.

    I pray for the return of editin.

    g.

    .

  161. 161.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @JK

    @Wile E. Quixote:
    You can go toe to toe with Hannity, O’Reilly, or Beck any day of the week.

    So when you say “toe to toe” you literally mean “toe to toe” and not some kinky Republican sex thing like “having a wide stance” or “hiking the Appalachian trail”. Just checking, I mean you never know when you’re dealing with the likes of Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly or Glenn “I want to fuck my sister” Beck.

  162. 162.

    DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)

    Shortly after that asshat guard and his kid told me that racist Obama “joke” yesterday, I commented to them that in my opinion our country is fucked because one third of it is terminally stupid (I think they missed the point of this being mentioned first), one-third is apathetic and the last third actually gives a shit but can’t do anything because the other two thirds prevent it.

    They agreed with me. Proudly pig ignorant to the bitter end but they wouldn’t have it any other way.

  163. 163.

    Xenos

    Beck is the political version of professional wrestling. Every week has to be more outrageous, more cartoon-like. Part of the fun, as is were, is that for non-followers it is impossible to know what real and what is faked.

    He makes it fun for people with that same cultural mentality – ‘fuck the ‘elites’, this is our dialogue. We say what is real, and we like it that way. And the more outrageous and bizarre it is – well that shows that you don’t get it. And we hate that n*gger, and we are going to have fun doing it.;’

    Using reason won’t get you any where with this schtick. and having advertisers boycot him won’t help. Fox wants a loss leader to bring more eyeballs to the network, and will do anything for it. The whole network needs to be brought down.

  164. 164.

    HeartlandLiberal

    From the book and movie “Red Octoberr”, with Sean Connery, the single most poignant and telling line in the whole damned movie is when the Captain’s first mate, Vasili (Sam Neil at his finest), has been shot and lies dying in Ramius’ arms:

    “I would like to have seen Montana.”

    Earlier in the film he said this, which explains the reference:

    “I will live in Montana. And I will marry a round American woman and raise rabbits, and she will cook them for me. And I will have a pickup truck… maybe even a “recreational vehicle.” And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?”

    Honestly, having spent some time in western Montana in the Tobacco Roots, I often of late threaten that when I retire in a year or so that we are going to pull up stakes and move to a remote cabin in the foothills of the mountains in western Montana. There will be no paved road to the house.

  166. 166.

    A Mom Anon

    The question remains,how do we fight back successfully?

    When they started in bitching and whining about Obama telling kids to stay in school,there SHOULD have been a swift response on our side to call districts and encourage them to show the address to the kids. Instead,the shrieking freakmonkeys made the calls and districts caved because they thought every parent would raise hell. I know,no one thought they’d really go there,but I have have to ask why the hell not?

    These are the same freaks who spied on a little kid’s family to see what their countertops were made of for fuck’s sake. They will do anything,say anything,hate anything.

    I’m a survivor of domestic violence. In my case,the only thing that stopped it was me fighting back,with a fucking hammer. I tried everything else first,including giving in to every demand. Know what happened? I got the living hell beat out of me,worse than ever.

    I’m sick of these fucking nitwits and their hate being in charge of the things that matter. Fuck being nice and polite.

  167. 167.

    Comrade Jake

    I’m pretty depressed about the Van Jones stuff. Not because I knew or necessarily liked him, but because it was so goddamn predictable. I just want to see one iota of spine from Obama for this kind of nonsense.

    Sometimes I feel like he learned the wrong lessons from the whole Wright nonsense.

  168. 168.

    mai naem

    The Van Jones situation is just one more thing that makes me think the Obama people have absolutely no backbone and fold if the conservatives just blow some hot air into their faces. This happened to the woman(Sunstein’s wife,her name escapes me right now) during the campaign. I can kind of understand Rev. Wright because that video was viral and played 24/7. But Van Jones? C’mon. This is the reason people think Dems are wussies. This is the reason the Repubs will look for more scalps. Hell, Lieberman was not penalized at all for supporting McCain and then one wonders why Lieberman says he’s going to vote against the public option? I don’t know if this is Obama or Emanuel but I am sick of it. It reminds me of Clinton and the AG nominees who got thrown under the bus. Gawd, if I knew Obama was going to be a faint copy of the Bill Clinton admin, I wouldn’t have bothered working to get him elected.

  169. 169.

    Sloth

    I’m pretty depressed about the Van Jones stuff. Not because I knew or necessarily liked him, but because it was so goddamn predictable. I just want to see one iota of spine from Obama for this kind of nonsense.

    If Van Jones signed that petition, he needed to go. He can say whatever he wants as a private citizen, not so much as a member of the administration.

    The question remains,how do we fight back successfully?

    How do you fight against the crazy? Not with facts, that for sure. With the same tactics? That’s descending to their level. Maybe with humor and mockery? A lot depends on the rest of the country. If they are *reasonably* sane, these boneheads will be seen as what they are.

    But if the center sees these guys as credible? Damn near not a thing you can say.

  170. 170.

    linda

    the constant efforts at accommodation is depressing to see; how could they not understand how it undermines obama to see him cave every time. i’m just hoping it’s some jujitsu scheme to reveal to the public the true assholery of the republicans/blue dogs and how the obama administration was forced to abandon all efforts at bipartisanship in order to get legislation passed.

    but i’m not counting on it.

    in other news, this is a rather remarkable photo of a crying glacier in norway:

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/6127552/Icecap-photo-shows-mother-nature-in-tears.html

  171. 171.

    WereBear

    I always felt that President McCain, Vice President Palin was a good enough reason to support the other side.

    The right wing has been screwing up the country, systematically and deliberately, since 1964. It will take a while to correct that. But the tools are in our hands. Newspapers are dying, television ratings are dropping; all because there are other outlets for both amusement and information.

    We rightly complain that the Villagers drive the discourse into a ditch; so I don’t read them. I don’t give them any credit. And the wall that used to keep them safe from criticism is dropping because they either have comment sections; or they show they are afraid of comment sections.

    The tide has turned, but it leaves a lot of rotting things up there by the waterline.

  172. 172.

    JK

    @WereBear:

    Your first sentence nails it. Obama at his absolute worst is infinitely preferable to John “Bomb Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran” McCain and Sarah Airhead Palin.

  173. 173.

    Ash Can

    On the subject of Glenn Beck, someone at the GOS has posted a veritable anthology of toxic shit he’s spewed. Van Jones can be forced to resign over signing an unsavory petition under questionable circumstances, but Glenn Beck is rewarded with a secure, cushy job for…well, look for yourself.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that in the big picture of the national socio-political dialogue, there’s liberal, centrist, conservative, and just plain written-off, can’t-communicate-with-them FUBAR.

  174. 174.

    4tehlulz

    Obviously, Obama’s failure to expend every bit of political capital for a 9/11 troofer just shows that he’s no better than McCain.

  175. 175.

    cia

    Yesterday Doug J had a list of questions to ferret out right wingers. While this is not a question, it is a way to identify immoderate GOPers: the use of Democrat instead of Democratic to describe the party or people in it. Yesterday Michelle Bachman was claiming that democrats want her out of her seat because they want a ‘democrat woman’ to be the first female president. I wonder, do the Republicans that use the noun instead of the adjective realize that this petty form of speech makes them sound like an imbecile?

    Whenever I’m feeling really depressed about the state of our national political discourse, I am encouraged by the people who comment here who are hopeful about our country’s ability to right the many wrongs of the last 40 years.

  177. 177.

    Leelee for Obama

    @Ash Can: The difference here is who these two people work for. Glenn Beck works for Rupert Murdoch, who makes teh money off of every single POS thing Beck does. Van Jones worked for the President, who needs all his advisors to be Caesar’s Wife. Not because it’s fair, it’s not. It sucks, but them’s are the facts, more’s the pity. It is not about spine here, it’s about credibilitly.

  179. 179.

    El Cid

    Wow, the Republicans will truly respect and honor the White House now that they know that the administration will ditch anyone whom right wing nut squads whine about.

    The nation’s conservatives and independents most admire weakness in their Democrats.

  181. 181.

    JK

    Hopefully, there’ll be a special place in Hell reserved for Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Wankertarians Megan McArdle, Glenn Instadouchebag Reynolds and his dingbat wife Helen Smith aka Dr Helen, and Rupert Muroch and Roger Ailes.

    @Leelee for Obama

    Dennis Potter thought Murdoch was so bad for journalism that he named his cancerous tumor Rupert.

  182. 182.

    Keith G

    @Leelee for Obama: I agree. But one needs to acknowledge the irony that Van Jones did not tell a Senator to go “Fuck yourself” or claim that those critical of his boss were siding with those attacking America.

  183. 183.

    Leelee for Obama

    @JK:

    Dennis Potter thought Murdoch was so bad for journalism that he named his cancerous tumor Rupert.

    This makes me think there should be a Rupert Murdoch Brain Cancer Title, because, truthfully, I think the shit on Fox and other Murdoch media is a virus that causes a kind of intellectual cancer in the brains of the people who believe it.

  185. 185.

    Leelee for Obama

    @Keith G: No, he didn’t. Like I said, it isn’t fair, it’s just what is. The question is, how can we bypass this kind of stuff messing up a good public servant. I listened to something last week during Teddy’s coverage; supposedly he told Obama to go for the Presidency earlier than the plans called for originally (10-15 years!). That way, they could beat the constant harping on Senate votes he would make. Maybe the lesson here is think what you want, and keep your public pronouncements benign.
    Makes you wonder if the references made to Dune are all that off, doesn’t it? Brought to power before the planned time, left with a steaming pile of crap to work through, able, eventually, to be reach victory.

    It gives me pause, and dare I say, a bit of hope.

  186. 186.

    bellatrys

    The backwards-R is because he forgot it at first, like when he forgot the C in “oligarchy.”

    Then he stuck it in, but couldn’t remember which way it went.

    Second-grade teachers see this on homework assignments all the time.

  187. 187.

    Tom Degan

    Not since Joe McCarthy shuffled off this mortal coil in 1957 has anyone made a career by accusing people of being communists. Glenn Beck has resurrected the practice. Not only has he found a cabal of secret communists, he has uncovered an entire communist corporation chock full of commies. The name of this company, you may ask?

    THE NATIONAL BROADCASTING COMPANY!

    You heard me right, boys and girls. The network that gave us Uncle Miltie and Ma Perkins has apparently been secretly sending subliminal messages endorsing Marxist doctrine since it was formed in 1926. This would make perfect sense to me. Every time I watched the Rockford Files I had an unexplainable desire to read Das Kapital.

    But seriously, folks. Twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union, red baiting not only seems silly, it’s also kind of nuts. It’s not-at-all surprising that an organization would give this idiot a forum (after all, he’s on FOX Noise). What’s really stunning is the fact that his ratings are relatively high and that so many Americans take his word as gospel.

    All kidding aside, half-witted ideologues are a dime a dozen. What separates Glenn Beck from his peers is the fact that he is doing some serious damage to the country he professes to love so much. For all of the comparisons to the Nazis he likes to make with regard to Liberals, Beck’s program has much in common with Adolf Hitler’s 1923 screed, Mein Kampf. Eighty-six years ago, Hitler attempted to arouse the anger of his fellow Germans by spouting half truths and utter nonsense – exactly what Glenn Beck is doing in 2009. So much of the insane dialogue that has been spewed forth at these Town Hall meetings across the country in recent weeks might have been lifted straight from a transcript of any of Beck’s programs.

    Beck and his twisted ilk have done the seemingly impossible. They have deflected the blame for America’s current economic distress toward Barack Obama. An incredible feat when you take into consideration the fact that the President is one of the few people in government today whose guilt in the matter is almost nil. They have also let loose with a vengeance the very worst angels of the American nature. Opening this Pandora’s box was relatively easy. Closing it might prove to be a bit of a problem.

    Deep in their hearts
    They do believe
    That they shall undermine someday….

    http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com

    Tom Degan
    Goshen, NY

  189. 189.

    bago

    Oh, and having grown up in Mount Vernon, I can tell you that the place literally reeks of shit in the morning due to the farmers fertilizing their fields.

    Or perhaps I can put it this way: I used Yelp on a Sunday night in Mount Vernon to try and find a restaurant to eat at. The first response was McDonalds. The nearest non-fast food entity was 30 miles away in Everett.

    When I was walking in a park near Van Gogh’s house in Amsterdam my first thought was “I fly half-way around the world, avoid getting shot, and where do I wind up? In the other fucking tulip town.”

    However the Lincoln cinema in downtown is cool and has indie cred.

  194. 194.

    zoe kentucky in pittsburgh

    I don’t get it. Beck is dressing up like a commie/Mussolini/USSR soldier because…

    Seriously, it just doesn’t make any sense, even as a concept. Does anyone else understand what he’s trying to actually say here?

    Unless he’s just trying to offend people and spark controversy and get lots of free publicity. (Very high probability.)

    As someone pointed out upthread, “Liberal Fascism” just got bumped from the #1 stupidest book title/cover ever.

  195. 195.

    Nutella

    The cutesy pout combined with that outfit make it look like a publicity shot for Beck’s new movie: Ilsa He-Wolf of the SS.

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