Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let there be snark.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The revolution will be supervised.

Wake up. Grow up. Get in the fight.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

‘Museums aren’t America’s attic for its racist shit.’

The lights are all blinking red.

If a good thing happens for a bad reason, it’s still a good thing.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Quacks like a duck

Quacks like a duck

by | 172 Comments

This post is in: 

There’s an FM station in Rochester, 92.1, that converted to a winger talk radio format a year or two ago. When I check it out during the day, it’s Laura Ingraham or Fred Thompson, but at night it’s all kinds of health food/herbal remedy infomercial scams.

The other day I went to a diner where they had Fox News on the tv. The manager and one of the waitresses were talking about all the scam oils that are supposed to be good for joints.

Thus, the latest from Glenn Beck isn’t so surprising (digby via zandar):

Night before last I was laying in bed next to my wife and she put her hand on my back and she said to me, what are you doing? Honey, go to sleep. She said that to me at 3:00 in the morning. I had been reading a couple of books, as I’m so far behind in my reading. But I had closed one of these books, as I’m doing research and I’m trying to understand more. And I had closed one of these books about an hour before and I said, I just to myself I just can’t look at this anymore. Then I said a prayer, and as I was praying, I noticed that I wasn’t praying as hard for healing as I should, which led me to the first conversation I had with a neurologist who said to me, well, we don’t know what this is. He said, but we’re investigating here, here, and here. And I said, could this be brought on by stress? Could this be brought on because I’m just, you know and he said, no, not this. He said, you know, that’s not making it better. And I said, so should I maybe should I stop? And he said, no, you’re okay.

[….]

The last 24 hours as I’ve been thinking about the doctors saying we’re looking for toxins, we’re looking for poisons in your body, I know what they are. For four years I have tried to understand the mind of what I believe are monsters. It started with Walter Lippmann. The first book that I closed and said I can’t read this anymore was Walter Lippmann. And it was about how they can breed better people and how there are undesirables.

Glenn Beck claims to have been diagnosed with macular dystrophy and says that it may have been caused by toxins he was exposed from reading Walter Lippman. It seems pretty likely to me that he’s pulling a Bob Roberts: pretending to be going blind for a while, or better yet pretending to have gone blind and then getting healed by a faith healer, would be good for ratings. But who knows?

Anyway, there’s a pattern here: the line between conservativsim and medical quack scams is pretty thin.

Update. This sums it up pretty well:

I’ll take “Things pitched to suckers” for $1000, Alex.

And I, like many commenters, have always thought of the herbal remedy stuff as hippie-tinged. Little did I know.

Reader Interactions

172Comments

  1. 1.

    General Stuck

    Or, something along the lines of Rushbo a few years back going deaf from a reported auto immune disorder. Turned out it was a side effect from treating his oxycontin deficiency.

    Or maybe all that vicks vapo rub to bring the tears is backfiring on Mr Doomroom

  2. 2.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    Anyway, there’s a pattern here

    I’ll take “Things pitched to suckers” for $1000, Alex.

  3. 3.

    trollhattan

    Funny, I thought the DFHs had the whole “cleansing toxins” thing nailed down. The lost that to the wingers too? Sheesh.

    My pedantic side hates the misuse of toxin and toxic. e.g., toxic as a noun: “Say, do you still have that jar of toxics? Can I borrow some?” And toxin as a substitute for poison of any kind. “Yes Bob, the sludge breech has released hundreds of tons of toxins into the village and beyond, towards the Danube.”

    I kan haz tockzins?

    + some

  4. 4.

    Alwhite

    Its the magical thinking – you see it on the fringe of the left too. “THEY” do not want you to know the real truth. The same people that thought bleeding & mercury were valid treatments knew more than todays scientists. Blah, blah, blah.

  5. 5.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @trollhattan:

    I thought the DFHs had the whole “cleansing toxins” thing nailed down.

    That’s what I thought too.

    Wingers will eventually gain control of the anti-vax movement too.

  6. 6.

    WyldPirate

    That that bug-eyed, lying, sack of shit sonofabitch is allowed to draw another breath on this earth is proof that there is indeed no God.

  7. 7.

    Alwhite

    @General Stuck:

    Weird thing about the flaming gas bag & his deafness. The New York Whore Times did a story on it at the time & at the end of a very pedestrian discussion there was a couple of paragraphs about how painkiller abuse can cause deafness – totally unrelated to the rest of the story. I told my wife – “My God, Rush is addicted to painkillers!”. Why else would they have tossed that in there but why pretend it was an appendage instead of admitting it was the real story?

  8. 8.

    mikefromArlington

    Those trying to pass as conservatives nowadays live in lala land.

    It’s a big fantasy land they’ve created in their brains. An unachievable make believe world where everyone does the right thing and are all humane.

    The reality is humans are greedy and if unchecked, that greed will take down everyone around them. Republicans would like to get rid of those checks.

  11. 11.

    Doug Kahn

    I’m going to try to find a video of this, but offhand, it sounds like he’s coming off an extended jag of some sort. What is his preferred drug, if anyone knows?

  12. 12.

    D-boy

    My uncle was a pretty strong wingnut, and he also hawked herbal remedies claiming they cured everything from gout to cancer. I think the common thread between the two was anti-elitism, which in his case for the virtues of herbal remedies manifest itself in full scale paranoia that the “medical establishment” was engaged in some type of massive conspiracy to suppress the evidence. The sad thing is he himself had a heart condition and resisted a lot of the treatment offered to him and ended up passing away way to young (RIP).

  13. 13.

    Warren Terra

    Walter Lippmann? Really? Is he going to be the next punching bag? Someone who has been dead since the Nixon administration and was hardly any sort of radical firebrand or progressive favorite in any case? This is going to be like (and, indeed, is connected to) the Beckites’ obsession with Woodrow Wilson, who they’re convinced is a major inspirational figure of the Left.

  15. 15.

    Mark S.

    After ten seconds of googling, I found that macular dystrophy is a genetic disease. I don’t think you can catch it reading Walter Lippmann.

  16. 16.

    Martin

    Hmm, maybe the fluoride in the water finally got to him. We’ve been dumping that shit in the water supply for half a century with no effect.

  20. 20.

    frosty

    @Martin:
    Ha! you think so, but you’re wrong again. Peace On Earth. Purity of Essence. They’ve been polluting our precious bodily fluids. You have been warned.

    Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Sarah Palin are proof of the effect of polluting our water supply with fluorides!

  21. 21.

    Josh

    Wait, you can get a neurological disorder from reading about eugenics? A lot of historians who cover that unfortunate movement are gonna get sued.

  22. 22.

    General Stuck

    @Martin:

    We’ve been dumping that shit in the water supply for half a century with no effect.

    But we got a black commie soshulist presnit from Kenya.

  23. 23.

    R. Johnston

    I, like many commenters, have always thought of the herbal remedy stuff as hippie-tinged.

    The herbal remedy stuff is idiot tinged, not hippie tinged. There are, of course, plenty of idiot hippies, but there are more idiot “conservatives.”

  24. 24.

    General Stuck

    I always get a case of the ass, when reading right wing blogs. Left wing ones too, but it is a milder form.

  26. 26.

    pjcamp

    Doesn’t have anything to do with conservatism.

    Bill Maher is pretty up on medical quackery as well.

  27. 27.

    Joseph Nobles

    Put me in the “Out with the old scam, in with the new” camp on Glenn Beck. I was concerned before, but after reading that nutty rant, it looks like the televangelist phase of Glenn Beck’s career is before us.

  29. 29.

    Mark S.

    More from Chairman Glenn:

    It almost feels like I’m wearing gloves at times because I was talking to my kids the other day about fingerprints and I couldn’t, I couldn’t feel my fingerprints and it was bizarre. And I thought if that was only true, man, I could be like a master thief. So it’s been very it’s been strange.

    Am I weird in that I’ve never been able to feel my fingerprints? I’m beginning to wonder if Glenn’s drug of choice is acid.

  30. 30.

    fucen tarmal

    glenn beck is going blind? oh noes!

    its like his show is taking its queues from the sweeps period special episodes of little house on the prarie. beck needs to boost the ratings so he goes blind just like the wilder sisters…i mean mormons still wear the same dresses as nellie olson, you can’t tell me its not related.

  34. 34.

    morzer

    If Glenn Beck is going blind, it strongly suggests that jerking off in public really is bad for you. Maybe he should have listened to Christine O’Donnell?

  35. 35.

    Keith

    So Beck’s new answer to everything is guns, gold, and God…and now goldenseal? Or is this a setup for some kind of Sarah Palin laying-on-of-the-hands ceremony where they hold a rally @ $500/ticket to watch the modern day Esther heal the modern day Lazarus.

  36. 36.

    CZHA

    And I, like many commenters, have always thought of the herbal remedy stuff as hippie-tinged. Little did I know.

    Utah Senator Orrin Hatch (Big Red R) deserves most of the blame/credit for the mostly unregulated state of herbal remedies. As author and pusher of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), he wrestled “food supplements” from under FDA control.

    As long as they don’t make direct disease-related claims, herbal remedies, including homeopathic woo, are exempt from the rules other drugs must follow in order to be marketed (i.e. having to prove that they are safe and effective).

  37. 37.

    Gravenstone

    If Beck is going blind, and Limbaugh deaf – which wingtard will go mute to complete the trifecta?

  44. 44.

    Ross Hershberger

    Whatever his problem is, it wasn’t a spell from Christine O’Donnell, because she’s not a witch. Nor can she heal him with Witchcraft. That’s a witch thing and she’s not one.

  45. 45.

    asiangrrlMN

    I’m all Becked out, so I will just say one last time, with feeling, FTGDMFYWAVRPF!

    /pissed-off Twins fan, but mostly at the Twins.

    P.S. Not all herbal medicine is quackery, please remember, though the regulation of it is too lax.

  48. 48.

    Anne Laurie

    “I have told you before that I have been losing feeling in my hands and my feet and I have been feeling tingling in my hands and my feet, and it’s traveling up my arms and it’s just a very bizarre sensation.”

    Beck was raised Catholic (by a manic-depressive mother who eventually committed suicide). He’s developing stigmata, which will “prove” once and for all that he’s a Real American(tm) Martyr to us secularist DFHs from Hell ! ! ! …

    ‘Course, chickenshit that he is, he won’t go full-metal psychiatric sanctified and bore holes in his pasty flesh, but I predict some kind of pseudomedical scammery involving ‘inexplicable’ MRI patterns resembling wounds on his palms. Or possibly an outbreak of that “disease” where fibers “of a material not found anywhere else on earth” are supposed to appear under the victim’s skin.

  49. 49.

    Little Boots

    the weird truth is, there was probably no satanic date, no satanic altar. this is just some bullshit that swept through the evangelical community in the 80s and 90s. she probably just made up a completely silly story that has made her look even stupider than she already did.

  53. 53.

    GregB

    Walter Lippman shrunk my penis and gave me hemorrhoids.

    Bastard.

    In related news, Michael Weiner-Savage was a big wig in the alternative medicine world before he became a foppish fascist.

  55. 55.

    freelancer (itouch)

    No internal consistency at all amongst true believers. Jenny McCarthy is the most prominent anti-vaccination kook on the planet, and with no understanding of science at all, she rails about the ingredients in the doses, saying it’s really the “toxins” in vaccines that she is protesting against. “Green our vaccines” is the new slogan of people against ALL vaccines in any shape or form, no matter what the research and data show. (also, Pertussis outbreaks are killing infants this year. Fucking whooping cough)

    Jenny McCarthy simultaneously publically praises Botox. Fucking BoTOX. Irony committed suicide years back when Bush was Re-elected by making a Vietnam war hero’s history seem more dispicable than nepotistic draft-dodging.

  58. 58.

    MattR

    @Martin: It took me a bit to put the pieces together but i figured there had to be a rusty pitch fork in there.

    Changind topic, is anyone else creeped out by those AshleyMadison comercials? If I were married and thinking of cheating I would probably not go through a website that advertises on TV. I am betting more than half their members are people checking on their spouses.

  60. 60.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Little Boots: Can you explain it to me, then? I couldn’t read the article once I saw it was MM2.

    @MattR: You know me too well. I was at a bar and caught the last four innings (I wasn’t going to watch). Ugh. And, I don’t watch commercials, so I don’t know anything about the one you mentioned.

    Update Eleven-Billionty and One: Hm. I am getting predictable with my pitchfork stabbage. I shall have to switch it up a bit.

  61. 61.

    gocart mozart

    @Anne Laurie:

    Beck was raised Catholic (by a manic-depressive mother who eventually committed suicide).

    Actually no, his mom’s death was an accidental drowning according to all sources (police / coroner). The Beckster is lying about his mom’s death for added sympathy points I assume. [too lazy for link. Do your own damn work ;)]

  63. 63.

    Little Boots

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Apparently, Ms. Mcardle, or is it Mrs. Astroturf Teabagger, has some title other than Class Clown. She is the business and economics editor of a rapidly failing magazine, apparently.

  64. 64.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Feeling good! Just finished a tough week at work, so my weekend is just starting, and the big bonus is that I am also starting two weeks’ vacation. Yee-haw! Don’t go back until the 26th. (If then–I’m planning on winning the lottery and retiring.)

    I’ve got lots of life-changing, philosophical stock-taking things planned for the time off, but right now I’m just kicking back and enjoying–you guessed it–a celebratory bottle of champagne. And I seem to have absentmindedly eaten eight ounces of pistachios in the last couple of hours.

    In honor of how I feel . . .

  65. 65.

    morzer

    Speaking of craziness, apparently Rick Warren is now being denounced as a liberal who endorses Islam…

    http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/gimme-that-oc-religion/far-right-journalists-accuse-r/

    “Rick Warren did not attempt to evangelize those who attended his speech at ISNA,” Farah seethes. “Instead, he affirmed their faith in Islam; he made them feel comfortable worshipping a false god – something, obviously, Jesus would never do. It was not an opportunity for Rick Warren and the gospel when he spoke to ISNA. It was an opportunity for an evil, anti-American anti-Christian organization to wrap itself in the respectability of one considered a mainstream Christian leader.”

    Some day the right-wing dingbats are going to realize Jesus was neither American nor Christian. And on that day there shall be howling and wailing and exploding of heads.

  66. 66.

    asiangrrlMN

    @MattR: I hate you now. What has been seen can never be unseen. FAMWADRFPF. That’s just…ugh. I think I’d rather read MM2.

    Um. Forget that last statement. I tried. Now, I’m gonna pitchfork out my own brains.

    @Little Boots: Oh, THAT title. I knew that. I thought you were asking about the title of the post. Ugh. Moar brain bleach.

    @Steeplejack: Woooot! Glad you have a vaca coming up, and nothing wrong with ‘stachios and champers. However, the vid has a commercial for Bachmann in the beginning. That’s all I seem to be getting these days. Ugh. Actual song is cool, though. And, you’re going to the Colbert/Stewart rally, aren’t you? I haz a jelus.

  67. 67.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:
    McArdle’s picture at the top of all her columns is accompanied by this blurb:

    Megan McArdle is the business and economics editor for The Atlantic. She has worked at three start-ups, a consulting firm, an investment bank, a disaster recovery firm at Ground Zero, and The Economist.

  68. 68.

    Little Boots

    Doug, I apologize unreservedly.

    Or rather, bitterly and resentfully.

    But still, I forgive you for your McArdlish title.

  69. 69.

    Mark S.

    @Steeplejack:

    For Megan, the real scandal is that courts require banks to prove that they are entitled to the property they are trying to foreclose on. Can’t they just take their word on it?

  70. 70.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: Yes. I know. I wuz confuzzled, much like MM2 herself.

    @morzer: So, question for you. Vikes v. Jets on Monday. For whom do you root?

    @MattR: For Halloween, I assume? And is this a female friend? Inquiring minds want to know (OK, I want to know, damn it). The more details I have, the more creative I can be. I am going as a foul-mouthed fifties housewife with a double martini/smoldering cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Vicodin in the other. Oh, and a blonde pageboy wig. And high heels. Which means I will be a foul-mouthed fifties housewife with a broken ankle by the end of the night.

  71. 71.

    MattR

    @asiangrrlMN: Any help with a poster slogan and/or costume would be appreciated. Right now, my friend and I are thinking of going as robot bears.

    (EDIT: I have not done enough research but I assume/hope it is one joint rally and that I wont actually have to decide which one to attend and which speakers to see)

  73. 73.

    morzer

    @asiangrrlMN:

    When dealing with two loathsome teams, I favour the underdog. Thus, the Vikings.

    Anyway, now the Steelers have brought back the latest member of the NFL Backroom Pervert Fraternity, I can say that Favre is no longer the most repulsive QB in the league.

  75. 75.

    Ross Hershberger

    Jenny McCarthy simultaneously publically praises Botox.

    Seriously? I did not know this. Prank of the week: point out that this means BOtulism TOxin. Duck exploding head shrapnel.
    I’m so glad I gave up on TV.

  77. 77.

    MattR

    @Little Boots: Trust her. She wouldn’t lie to you.

    @asiangrrlMN: Heh. No, for the Stewart/Colbert rally and it is a male friend I have known since 7th grade. (EDIT: I may have mentioned it here, but I think I want to somehow twist FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” to match colbert’s call to keep fear alive but I don’t have the right wording yet so any help would be great. people? bueller?)

  78. 78.

    asiangrrlMN

    @MattR: Oh! You’re going to the rally/rallies! You lucky bastard. I will think of something clever for you, and not just Fuck Glenn Beck in his anal reconstruction with a rusty pitchfork.

    @Steeplejack: JUST LIKE OBAMA! That’s a guilty pleasure song of mine, that is.

    @morzer: No, but he is the most personally annoying one (to me).

  84. 84.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    However, the vid has a commercial for Bachmann in the beginning.

    No fuckin’ way. You’ve got something wrong with your machine, I think. On my machine, in multiple browsers–I just checked–there’s nothing but the song video. Weird.

    And, yes, I am going to the Stewart/Colbert thing, and I have been evangelizing friends, family and complete strangers to go as well. My latest scheme is to get a Tunch T-shirt and fly it like a Kurosawa samurai banner at the event to inspire all Juicers in attendance and awe/terrify the crowd in general.

  86. 86.

    Little Boots

    @MattR:

    see, that’s just it. i understand she DOES lie, and not even in song.

    I still blame Doug, but I think Megan bears part of the blame.

  87. 87.

    Tattoosydney

    @asiangrrlMN:

    amazing

    You haven’t tasted it! The fluffy custard forms a skin on top which protects the rest of the custard from the heat, so it just bubbles away in its own little shortcrusty chamber getting creamier and thicker. YUM.

  88. 88.

    MattR

    @Steeplejack: That makes me think of the end of Role Models. I will definintely keep an eye out for any BJ merchandise though I don’t have any of my own to bring. (I am not wearing the Tunch “Feed” bowl as a hat. It’s heavy.) Have we decided upon the proper code words? Or do I just scream TUUUUNNNNNCCCCHHHHHIIIIIIIEEEEEE at the top of my lungs?

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @MattR:

    [. . .] I want to somehow twist FDR’s “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” to match Colbert’s call [. . .].

    “The only thing we have is fear.”

    Gold, Jerry. Pure gold.

  92. 92.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: Every. Single. Fucking. Song. I play on YouTube these days starts. With. The. Same. Damned. Bachmann. Commercial. I. am in my own. Personal Hell. (Which, apparently, includes a plethora of periods in perturbing positions).

    @Tattoosydney: I don’t think I would survive the experience. I have a very, ah, licentious response to well-made pastries.

  96. 96.

    Steeplejack

    @MattR:

    Have we decided upon the proper code words? Or do I just scream TUUUUNNNNNCCCCHHHHHIIIIIIIEEEEEE at the top of my lungs?

    Pretty much that.

  99. 99.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Little Boots: Heh. That is my acronym. I hope it catches on.

    @MattR: What, you don’t want to just go around muttering, “Are you a Juicer?” or, “Are you Juiced?” Or, even, “Are you Juicy?” Then, I would go for, “the fat man mops nekkid” instead.

    @Steeplejack: I wish. It’s Ads by Google, and since I’m from MN, I get the fucking Bachmann ads. I’m not a subscriber to YouTube, so that’s probably why I get the ads.

  100. 100.

    MattR

    @Steeplejack: I am still waiting for the day that I run into somebody I know wearing some BJ swag. I have run into one person I know on dKos but no one that I currently keep in touch with.

    @asiangrrlMN:

    “the fat man mops nekkid”

    I haven’t figured out if that works better as the proper acknowledgment for whatever the initial query is OR as something I would stealthily slide up and whisper in the ear of someone I see wearing BJ swag. Either way, I like it.

  105. 105.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I don’t think I’m a YouTube subscriber. At least I don’t remember signing up for anything. And you didn’t use to get ads before the videos, right? I suspect foul play.

  108. 108.

    MattR

    @morzer: “The only thing we have to fear is whatever Stephen tells us” if I want to be a suck up :)

    @asiangrrlMN: As I listen to my fourth Ashley Madison commercial I have decided that “the fat man mops nekkid” is definitely the proper introduction and I think the response should be “the feline overlord demands tribute”.

  111. 111.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: If you really have thighs like that, then a little bit of cold shouldn’t stop you!

    @MattR: Perfect! Tunchie has to be involved in the code somehow. Or, how about, ‘the fat cat does his action shot’? And, why are you watching the commercials? Why not mute them? That’s what I do.

  113. 113.

    Mnemosyne

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I am going as a foul-mouthed fifties housewife with a double martini/smoldering cigarette in one hand and a bottle of Vicodin in the other.

    The pedant in me is required to say I think you mean valium, not Vicodin. Valium is what the Rolling Stones were referring to in “Mother’s Little Helper,” and it was the oxycontin of the 1950s and 1960s.

    /pedant

  117. 117.

    Mnemosyne

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I just want to make sure your Halloween costume is historically accurate. :-)

    I think the word “pedant” is making you think of pie.

  119. 119.

    Little Boots

    okay, maybe more fun than cool. but enjoying the numa numa is part of what makes us all human.

  124. 124.

    freelancer (itouch)

    I love you guys. Also, I’m considering becoming an investor in popcorn and beef stew futures.

    Hey, where’s mclaren at?

    ETA: “I’m on a BIKE!” should be the Gnu “”I’m on a BOAT!”

  125. 125.

    MattR

    @asiangrrlMN:

    And, why are you watching the commercials? Why not mute them? That’s what I do.

    Turning off the TV and going to sleep is probably the better idea. Gotta bunch of errands to run before football tmrw.

    Good night all.

  129. 129.

    Little Boots

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I am having fun. I admit it. I shout it from the rooftops. Actually I don’t.

    (Oh, god, I’m so ashamed, but I love the Numa, Numa.)

  130. 130.

    Mnemosyne

    @freelancer (itouch):

    Geez, dude, just stand in front of a mirror and say “Bloody Mary” three times if you really want something to come screeching at you.

    (Edited into something completely different. So sue me.)

  134. 134.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Steeplejack: Huh. I suppose I actually have to watch it, then. Be right back.

    Holy shit. It’s like he did the literal version of the video, but without intending it to be ironic. That’s just…awful. And funny as hell. Flames! Everything in flames! Up in flames! Broken vision! Our love is drowned! I don’t think I can listen to the song again.

    @Little Boots: Hey, we all have our very guilty pleasures. Mine is this song. YEEE-HAAAAW!

  135. 135.

    Steeplejack

    @asiangrrlMN:

    I suppose I actually have to watch it, then.

    WTF?! You’re tossing videos into the volatile Balloon Juice ecosphere without vetting them first?! For shame, madam, for shame.

  140. 140.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN:

    Mine is this song. YEEE-HAAAAW!

    Yep. I’ll take responsibility for planting that particular earworm. Fell free to flog me for it, although I figure after the vid I posted last night swarthy Jake Owen shouldn’t get me into too much trouble.

    @Tattoosydney: Nom. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a decent culinary orgasm.

  142. 142.

    asiangrrlMN

    @Yutsano: You talking about the Marine dancing? You do seem to have a predilection for the dirty dancin’ Dawgs.

    And, yay! Good to see ya. How you be?

    @Steeplejack: I know. It’s one of my many tricks. Good thing I didn’t have to bring out the big guns.

  143. 143.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: I am home at my parents’ place. My parents aren’t, but that’s another story altogether. It’s just been me and my brothers and my SIL so far, and I’m thinking that’s about all I’ll have the energy for. I may or may not turn in early tonight, I’m not sure just yet.

  146. 146.

    Yutsano

    @asiangrrlMN: Yes. You. Do. I can imagine that would be right up your alley. And the Major…well…she is def teh hawt!

    @Steeplejack: I’m three hours behind you, so its not on for me just yet. Should beFull Metal Alchemist.

  147. 147.

    Steeplejack

    @Yutsano:

    Oh, well, then, carry on. Although Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop are both very good tonight (multiple episodes each).

  148. 148.

    Steeplejack

    Hmm, last of the champagne. I might be out of here myself pretty soon. Got to rest up so I can start my vacation!.

  149. 149.

    Yutsano

    @Steeplejack: I have gotten into very long and deep philosophical discussions with an adorable Filipino gay actor friend about both GitS and FMA. In fact he even got the caduceus from FMA as a tattoo on his left arm. I blame the Air Force for sending him to Iraq and screwing with his brain for that one.

    @asiangrrlMN: Waaah! I want two weeks to goof off! Of course if I got them now I’d be camping out on FH #1’s couch and indulging in candied peach tart. Nom.

  151. 151.

    Steeplejack

    Okay, Steepman fading out. Feeling the effects of post-traumatic late-shift syndrome setting in. Mañana!

  152. 152.

    Kat

    @trollhattan: I thought the DFHs had the whole “cleansing toxins” thing nailed down.

    @DougJ: That’s what I thought too. Wingers will eventually gain control of the anti-vax movement too.

    What Beck’s really on about is the ‘urgent need’ to revoke *the.government.take-over.of.healthcare!* As in, ‘You don’t need no stinkin’ health insurance — because you don’t need no stinkin’ doctors — ‘scientism doctors’ who would just waste your time and money by ineffectively looking all over the place for *the.wrong.kind.of.toxins!* — when all you really need is to pray hard for the Lord to heal whatever ails you, a few ole-time remedies for the little things, and *your.trillions.of.tax-dollars.back!*

    Conservatives want things back like they used to be — because they’re still pissed about all the money-making opportunities they lost when the damn librul commies ruined our perfectly good healthcare, food, and drug system way back in 1906.

    And btw, DougJ, this idea that modern medicine is just gussied-up ‘folk wisdom’ imposed on us by ‘a tyranny of experts’ was recently touted by someone a lot closer to ‘home’ than Glenn Beck.

    @Doug Kahn: …offhand, it sounds like he’s coming off an extended jag of some sort. What is his preferred drug, if anyone knows?

    He used to be addicted to alcohol and cocaine. Now he’s addicted to money and power.
    .

  154. 154.

    Dennis SGMM

    “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration , Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids… “

    – General Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

  156. 156.

    Sly

    Within the context of Glenn Beck’s revulsion toward Lippman, Lippman is famous for two things:

    1) Arguing that societies were becoming too complex for a single citizen to comprehend all of its facets. He blamed this largely on human capacity, but also believed that (then) modern journalism was also at fault. He saw that journalists were merely reinforcing the public’s reliance on stereotypes (Lippman actually coined the word), which were, at best, based on half-truths.

    He flirted with a kind of quasi-Straussian notion that the public (which he saw more as a natural force than anything remotely deliberative) should be governed by a group of “specialists” in various fields, the exact nature of which was laid out in his 1925 book The Phantom Public.

    He gradually moved away from this idea in the ensuing decades, largely because he’d come to see the so-called specialists not be all that effective either, largely because they were still subject to “public opinion,” a phenomenon that Lippman saw more as an uncompromising force (“It does not reason, investigate, invent, persuade, bargain or settle”) than a deliberative one. Public opinion, in Lippman’s view, existed to check the arbitrary use of force by the elite, not as a governing sensibility in its own right.

    2) Completely dismantling the concept of intellectual determinism, particularly IQ tests, in the 1920s. During WWI, the Army started using IQ tests to assign different duties to soldiers and, in the course of six articles for TNR, Lippman skewered the practice and the underlying eugenicist notions that gave it its scientific credibility. In his last article, he summed it up rather nicely:

    The claim that we have learned how to measure hereditary intelligence has no scientific foundation. We cannot measure intelligence when we have never defined it, and we cannot speak of its hereditary basis after it has been indistinguishably fused with a thousand educational and environmental influences from the time of conception to the school age. The claim that Mr. Terman or anyone else is measuring hereditary intelligence has no more scientific foundation than a hundred other fads, vitamins and glands and amateur psychoanalysis and correspondence courses in will power, and it will pass them into that limbo where phrenology and palmistry and characterology and the other Babu sciences are to be found.

    Only one of these two points applies to Glenn Beck’s revulsion at Lippman: The first. He read part of the Phantom Public, the book where Lippman discusses the problems with very large and diverse democratic societies, and immediately believes that Lippman is arguing that the majority of people in the world are (a) unfit for self-government, which is a concept Lippman doesn’t really address at all as he talks about “public governance,” and (b) are unfit because they are biologically inferior to the elite. He then comes to the conclusion that Lippman is a…

    wait for it…

    Eugenicist.

  157. 157.

    Sly

    Walter Lippman caused me to write a somewhat long comment on the underlying misunderstanding Glenn Beck has in relation to Walter Lippman’s work. Then Walter Lippman caused that comment to fail the WordPress moderation filter.

    Clearly, Walter Lippman’s evil knows no limit.

  158. 158.

    Southern Beale

    Yeah, well those scams advertise on liberal talk radio too. For years I’ve heard Randi Rhodes, Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann and the rest promote gold. It’s not Goldline but another gold financial vehicle, can’t remember it off the top of my head. Ditto the herbal stuff, here’s Thom Hartmann’s voice talking about some herbal tonic that’s great for you. Ed Schultz does the same.

    So I’m always a little uncomfortable when liberals slam Glenn Beck for his Goldline scam and whatever herbal snake oil he’s selling when we do the same thing.

  159. 159.

    different church-lady

    From Wikipedia: It was Lippmann who first identified the tendency of journalists to generalize about other people based on fixed ideas.[citation needed] He argued that people—including journalists—are more apt to believe “the pictures in their heads” than come to judgment by critical thinking. Humans condense ideas into symbols, he wrote, and journalism, a force quickly becoming the mass media, is an ineffective method of educating the public. Even if journalists did better jobs of informing the public about important issues, Lippmann believed “the mass of the reading public is not interested in learning and assimilating the results of accurate investigation.” Citizens, he wrote, were too self-centered to care about public policy except as pertaining to pressing local issues.

    Well, no wonder Beck closed the book.

    Or, is he lying and he studied it all too well….

  160. 160.

    Karen

    And I, like many commenters, have always thought of the herbal remedy stuff as hippie-tinged. Little did I know.

    The fringes of the right and left always converge at colon cleansing.

  161. 161.

    WereBear (itouch)

    @CZHA: As long as they don’t make direct disease-related claims, herbal remedies, including homeopathic woo, are exempt from the rules other drugs must follow in order to be marketed (i.e. having to prove that they are safe and effective).

    There are such rules, huh? I was confused because the pharmacuetical companies don’t seem to care. Another weight loss drug, this time Meridia, got yanked off the market recently.

  162. 162.

    terraformer

    For a minute there, I thought he was going to go all Russian on us – that he has some ‘poison’ that the doctors can’t discern, he would soon get very sick and perhaps die, inculcating in the minds of his followers that liberals poisoned him because of his principled truth-telling.

    Whew.

  163. 163.

    Allan

    There’s another, simpler explanation for the onset of Beck’s debilitating symptoms.

    Imprecatory prayer works.

    Now excuse me, I have to get back to work praying.

  167. 167.

    evinfuilt

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:
    The biggest proponent I know of for magical thinking = magical cures is a Wingnut. Sadly his wife, is the lefts version of the magical thinking. I think its what brings them together, being politically I’ve never met two people so different.

    In the other realm of magical thinking, I know of many a right-winger who looks at Pasteurization as pure government evil. They can’t wait to bring back poisoned milk and other goods. When it was pointed out that in china where they don’t have as good regulation of milk they end up with tons of “products” in their milk (stuff to make it look and feel milkish), they say of course thats just China. You then show them how it all happened here 100 years ago and they just plug their ears and go la-la-la… “Anyways, I’ll get milk from my own cow, its you city folks who don’t have cows who have a problem, not us real Americans.” I wish I was making that up, sometimes though I think the person I know personally like this is just trying to be a real life Poe, he can’t be real, please, he can’t be.

  168. 168.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    @Southern Beale:

    Do you have links for that? I’m happy to trash them too, I don’t like talk radio in general.

  169. 169.

    EconWatcher

    KG:

    Your mentioning of C-sections is a bad example. I don’t think the US medical profession is a scam. But on whether to have a C-section or natural birth, US doctors have a strong conflict of interest because (1) they get paid more for C-sections; (2) they can schedule and handle the birth, rather than letting go to whoever is on duty when you would naturally show up to the hospital: and (3) their potential liability for birth defects may be lower.

    My wife and I had to work hard to find a doc who wouldn’t push her hard to have a C-section. There are too many C-sections in this country.

  170. 170.

    We Need a New Govt

    Just a FYI:
    AM 1600 WWRL, the premier liberal station in NYC & which features Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton & the ever-fantastic Thom Hartmann, fills the airwaves w/these irritatingly ‘full of it’ infomercials from 12 midnight thru 11 am every week-day – & this crap constitutes most of the week-end programming as well.

  171. 171.

    John Bird

    Then I said a prayer, and as I was praying, I noticed that I wasn’t praying as hard for healing as I should, which led me to the first conversation I had with a neurologist

    What a weird man.

  172. 172.

    brantl

    @freelancer (itouch): Actually, a whole bunch of people are against thimerasol in vaccines, which is a mercury salt. I’m one. It is only in the vaccine to retard bacterial growth, so that you can jab a needle into the bottle repeatedly, and minimize container expense. If kids were to get their full battery of vaccines at 2 years or 18 months, or whatever the hell it is, they get much more mercury in a day, than they are ever supposed to get in a day. For something as important as a vaccine, we can’t do single doses? In order to not ingest mercury? Bullshit!

    A study was done by the CDC, and hushed up, linking thimerasol to ADD and ADD related conditions. RFK, Jr., found it under FOIA constraints. It may not be the only thing causing it, but because of the breadth of the study, it is extrermely likely to be one of the causes. Coincidence doesn’t work on that large a scale. Look it up.

    Now, they are “voluntarily” taking it out of vaccines for humans. Funny thing, they were forced to take it out of animal vaccines 20 years ago, now. Why would that be?

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