Conservatives Struck By Epidemic Of Sequester Pychosis Syndrome

As the deadline approaches for congress to take action on the indiscriminate budget cuts they themselves voted for, the wailing on the part of conservative politicians and pundits is reaching ear-shattering decibel levels. While there are credible arguments on both sides of this issue that could be put forward, it seems the right-wing Tea-publican faction has chosen instead to offer only the most deranged excuses for their negligence and absolution.

Fox Nation

The conservative blame game is frantically pointing fingers at the Obama administration for the sequestration ordeal. But what they, and their accomplices in the press, are deliberately obscuring is the fact that majorities of Republicans voted for the bill in both chambers of congress. And even more significant is the context under which the plan was agreed to. It was intended to be something so severe that neither side could stomach the notion of its implementation and would be motivated to draft an alternative – any alternative – to avoid it. So the authorship of the original idea is entirely irrelevant because it was not proposed as something that anyone would support. To say that it was the President’s idea as something he advocated is simply a lie. It was gimmick to get a bunch of lazy, gutless politicians to do their damn jobs. And it didn’t even work.

So now Republicans who voted for the gimmick are pitifully trying to run away from the monster they helped to create. In the process they are trampling all over themselves and their own messages.

First of all, the GOP is supposed to be the party of small government and identifies strongly with budget cutting and deficit reduction. So it goes against the grain when they now bitch about the cuts that will be made due to sequestration. Logic tells us that they cannot argue for budget cutting and against sequestration simultaneously, but that is exactly what they are doing. Only in a mind ravaged by disease could that occur.

Secondly, Republicans are scrambling to shift blame from themselves to the President. They want any negative repercussions of the sequester to fall solely on his back. But since they believe that deficit reduction through shrinking federal budgets is a good thing, then shouldn’t the benefits they have been insisting would transpire be credited to Obama?

Republicans have decided that it is no longer necessary for them to make any sense. They say they want profound budget cuts, but at the same time they say it would be disastrous and all the fault of Obama. They say that sequestration is good because it will reduce the deficit, but at the same time they say Obama should be excoriated for daring to propose it.

How they can maintain their balance while their heads are spinning so furiously is a mystery. But the saddest part is that media has been so negligent in reporting the most basic facts about this situation, what led up to it, and where the GOP is trying to take it now that they got what they insist they have wanted for decades. Yet somehow, when Republicans get what they want, and it has a bad outcome, they blame Obama for giving it to them. And they do so in the most repugnant manner.

Fox’s Andrew Napolitano has suggested that Obama could be impeached for implementing the budget cuts mandated by congress. Even worse, in an op-ed in today’s “Moonie” Washington Times (republished by Fox Nation), Charles Hurt makes numerous references to the President as a terrorist. He said that Obama “began shooting hostages,” when the Department of Homeland Security announced some of the measures they would be forced to take if sequestration is implemented. Then, with regard to potentially delayed Social Security payments, he said that last year, in a “drunken stupor” “Mr. Obama threatened to start shooting seniors.”

This is the hostile (and infantile) level to which the right has sunk in their battle to absolve themselves of any responsibility for the bill they overwhelmingly backed. Their obsession with tarring the President by blaming him for their own mistakes has resulted in an acute case of mental decay. And unfortunately, the media could administer a remedy by simply reporting truthfully what is going on, but they appear to be as sickened by Sequester Psychosis as the GOP regulars.

Glenn Beck Wants To Make YOU Pay For His Conspiracy Broadcast Network

“They can take my job and they can take my wealth but that’s okay… I will use American ingenuity and my ingenuity to pull myself up, and I will find another way to get my message out on a platform that will be a thousand times more powerful!”

Those are the words Glenn Beck used to console himself when he came under attack while still hosting his old program on Fox News. As a consequence of calling the President a racist (and numerous other delusional ravings), Beck saw his advertisers and audience fleeing in droves. Yet he was adamant that if he were to lose the soapbox given to him by Fox he would rise on the third day and ascend to ever greater glory.

Glenn Beck

After nearly two years in the hinterlands of the InterTubes, Beck has changed his mind about television and the imaginary “thousand times more powerful” platform he espoused. He is now begging to be readmitted to the television tabernacle. He realizes that his public profile has receded, effectively making him a non-entity on the political landscape. To be sure, he’s making plenty of money by charging his flock to watch his sermons, but that isn’t enough for someone with Beck’s pathological egocentrism.

Beck has launched a campaign to recruit his disciples into a lobbying force aimed at pressuring cable providers to add his webcast to their channel lineup. But if cable operators were to succumb to this effort it would be an unprecedented breach of trust that would force every cable customer to subsidize Beck’s right-wing conspiracy mongering. Depending on the terms of the agreement, content providers providers are generally paid a per-subscriber fee by the cable operator for the rights to their programming. That fee is due whether or not anyone watches the channel. Therefore, if your cable company carries Beck’s webcast, they pay him royalties derived from your cable bill even if you never watch him.

In his appeal to his followers Beck makes the weak argument that extracting such involuntary financial support is comparable to what is currently being done with MSNBC. However, no matter what one thinks of MSNBC’s leanings, they are a bona fide news enterprise and there are massive differences between that and Beck’s Acute Paranoia Revue and Holy Huckster Sideshow. Despite Beck’s assertion that “Adding TheBlaze will ensure that you and your family have a source of news and analysis that you can trust and that doesn’t betray your values,” the obvious truth is that his programming will only contribute to the garbage heap of fear peddling that permeates rightist media. And this statement in his own promotional piece exposes the dishonesty of his intentions:

“If we succeed then we change the media. If we change the media, we control the debate. If we control the debate, we change politics. And if we change politics, we change the country.”

That is not the sort of mission statement issued by a credible news organization. Beck is forthrightly declaring his intention to proselytize his Tea-vangelism, and that makes his “channel” an inappropriate selection for a cable operator who would pass on the costs to unwilling subscribers. We should not be forced to make up for his business failures.

Amongst Beck’s defenders there will be those who will deny that Beck is having any problem generating revenue with his webcast. But here’s financial breakdown: He is presently charging between five and ten dollars per month to subscribe to his programs online. If he does secure cable carriage that programming will be available for free to all of the current cable subscribers on the system. Consequently, they would no longer need to pay for the Internet access. If the Internet subscription model was working for him, Beck wouldn’t risk cannibalizing his online customers by offering them the same content for free on cable. But he doesn’t care about his web audience because he knows that with cable penetration comparable to what MSNBC has, Beck could triple his earnings.

The bottom line for Beck is that he is upset because no one is paying any attention to him. So he wants to wedge himself back into the TV community and make you pay the bill. This would be a good time to say “NO!” And you may as well use his own web site to do so. Beck has thoughtfully compiled a directory of the Facebook pages for the cable providers he is soliciting. There is no reason why you couldn’t use those same links to let them know that if they add Beck to their lineup you will cancel the service, because you don’t want to line the pockets of someone who is so brazenly dishonest, divisive, and hateful. We successfully exiled Beck to his current island in the Internet ocean once before. Let’s not allow him to sneak back in at our expense.