Day: 2/3/2010

The Anatomy Of A Glenn Beck Lie

Posted by on February 3, 2010 at 7:02 pm. 16 Comments :

Glenn Beck Rodeo ClownGlenn Beck’s glassy-eyed followers are irredeemably mesmerized by him and would sooner hack off a limb then concede that he was less than honest about anything. They wail plaintively that he is unwaveringly truthful and that no one has ever proven that he has lied. For the record, I have proven it many times.

On today’s program Beck was generous enough to provide another example of his compulsive dishonesty. And it was packaged in a familiar form for Beck: the old out-of-context video clip gambit. On this occasion Beck presented this segment of President Obama discussing health care:

Obama: [W]e said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

After playing the clip, Beck went into outrage overdrive, complaining first about the sentence fragment “…consistent in saying to people…” implying that Obama was only “saying” these things and that he didn’t mean them. Only an idiot would interpret these extemporaneous remarks in context that way. And that, of course, is Beck’s built-in excuse.

But the larger corruption of the truth was Beck’s reaction to the news that some provisions were “snuck” into the bill that violated the pledge that no one would get between you and your doctor. Beck was aghast that the President would tolerate such legislative misbehavior. He castigated the President for not immediately putting a halt to Congress’s covert attempt to countermand his promise and tarnish his honor. Beck went on to declare that if the President had spoken up about this, that he (Beck) would heartily approve:

Beck: Well let me tell you something. Not only would that be the right thing for any president to do, his approval ratings would go through the roof. People would actually say “Well OK now, wait a minute. If he’s gonna do that I might actually listen to him.”

Apparently Beck wasn’t listening because Obama did precisely what Beck was accusing him of not doing. Obama expressly stated that he had caught the errant provisions and set about eliminating them. And this information was in the very segment that Beck had just played on the air. Except that Beck cut out the parts where Obama talked about scrubbing the problem provisions. Here’s the quote again in full. Note that the bold section in the middle is the only part that Beck played:

Obama: If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example…

…we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.

And so we are in the process of scrubbing them and making sure that it’s tight.

The complete clip shows unequivocally that Obama is keeping his pledge regarding the doctor/patient relationship. In fact, he was merely giving an example of incidents where institutional kinks can waylay legislation and demonstrating that he wasn’t falling for it. But Beck’s audience won’t know that because Beck unscrupulously edited it out. Then he portrayed the President as negligent for not doing something that in reality he did. And he even went so far as to admit that the American people would reward the President for doing the things that Beck left on the cutting room floor. And, of course, that’s reason Beck did it.

Beck certainly knew the content of the whole speech. So it is inescapable that he deliberately misrepresented it to advance his deceit. He purposefully truncated it to prevent his audience from seeing anything about Obama that they might regard as positive. And in the process he hammered Obama for not doing what he actually did do.

It’s too bad that most of Beck’s disciples will never hear about this fraud. Although many are so thoroughly bewitched that they might not even grasp it if they did hear about it. But it is important to continue to document it. Open minded people who haven’t formed opinions about Beck need to have this kind of information to keep from being duped by him.

The NeoCon Plan To Save Obama’s Presidency: Bomb Iran

Posted by on February 3, 2010 at 12:30 pm. 3 Comments :

If you weren’t already repulsed by the rampant cynicism and callousness of the uber-right in America, then an article just published in the National Review should do the trick.

Notorious NeoCon, Daniel Pipes, penned a column that purports to be offering President Obama advice on how to improve his favorability ratings: Bomb Iran!

The notion that any president should order military engagement for the purpose of shoring up polling numbers can only be acceptable to far-right vultures like Pipes. But Pipes is serious about this. The article is not titled “How to eliminate the Iranian Nuclear Threat.” It is titled “How to Save the Obama Presidency.” He even cited as an example the polling bump George W. Bush got after 9/11:

“Just as 9/11 caused voters to forget George W. Bush’s meandering early months, a strike on Iranian facilities would dispatch Obama’s feckless first year down the memory hole and transform the domestic political scene.”

This advice from Pipes could not be more wrong, both morally and strategically. On the moral scale, Pipes is suggesting that the President put the lives of American troops at risk for political gain. He argues that this would be “a dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him.” Why Pipes thinks that that is an appropriate justification for war, he never adequately explains.

But Pipes is also wrong from a strategic standpoint. He asserts that such an attack “would require few ‘boots on the ground’ and entail relatively few casualties.” This shallow assessment ignores the obvious lessons of past military debacles in the region. It is particularly surprising given that Pipes himself admitted that he had misread the risks associated with the war in Iraq. In his article in April of 2003, he belittled admonitions from regional experts that the invasion of Iraq would exacerbate tensions, escalate terrorism, and aid the recruiting efforts of Al Qaeda. He dismissed those warnings saying, “Actually, the precise opposite is more likely to happen.”

Pipes predicted few casualties in Iraq as well. He also bought in to the myth that the war would be short, would reduce terrorism, would produce stability, and that the Iraqis would greet us with candy and flowers. We all know now that the experts were right and Pipes was grievously wrong, as he himself admitted three years later in an update to his original article.

Will we have to wait another three years for Pipes to confess that his fatally flawed judgment failed him again? It certainly hasn’t stopped him from making a similarly erroneous assessment with regard to Iran. And this time he wraps it in a grotesquely political cloak to conceal his true intentions.

Pipes freely admits that he has no interest in seeing Obama’s popularity rise. So the suggestion to bomb Iran is not really a gesture of support for the Commander in Chief. It is more likely an expression of Pipes’ own obsession with hostility, and his thirst for blood. It is evidence of his antipathy for the people of the Middle East. And it is affirmation of his inability to form unbiased conclusions on serious matters like war.

For this he would sacrifice American and Iranian lives; he would promote the cause of jihadists; he would destroy the nascent democracy movement in Iran; and he would commit our nation to a third battlefront in a part of the world that is already unstable and distrustful of our motives. He is advising nothing less than a Crusade. And we know what happened the last time we had one of those.

Glenn Beck’s American Revival: It’s Gonna Blow Your Mind

Posted by on February 3, 2010 at 10:36 am. 13 Comments :

Pope Glenn BeckBack in November of 2009, Glenn Beck announced what he called his “100 Year Plan,” a series of sermons in which he would indoctrinate his disciples with his unique misunderstanding of “ethics, history, finance, community organizing and everything American’s need to know about how the government works.”

He said that his TV show would change as of the first of this year, but there’s been no evidence of that. In fact, he’s still replaying the same tired old out-of-context video clips of President Obama, Van Jones, etc., that he plastered his air with last year. But Yesterday he finally revealed that tickets for the first of his sermons will go on sale next week. The themes seem to have evolved from what Americans need to know about government to “Faith, Hope, and Charity.” In other words, he is fully embracing the mantle of the television evangelist that he clearly aspires to be. He is even calling the event “The American Revival,” and he promises that it will “blow your mind.”

Beck’s transformation from Morning Zoo DJ to Messianic Prophet is nearly complete. He isn’t even bothering to mask his ambitions anymore. Are you ready for Brother Beck’s Traveling Salvation Show?

“I want facts out there that you’ve never heard before, you’ve never learned. That you’ll sit in the audience and you’ll go ‘Oh my gosh. How did I not know that?’“

This should be easy for Beck. Since he makes up his own “facts” anyway, his parishioners won’t have heard any of them before.

“I’ve only done work on the first third so far and it will take your breath away…and make a case that is just dirt strong.”

One thing he is not lacking is ego. He is obviously convinced of his own inherent awesomeness and his ability to wow his audience, as if that takes much effort (keep a shiny object handy). And he has supreme confidence that he can make his case. But I’m not sure how strong dirt is.

“It comes with a workbook…It’s basically a survival guide, an American survival guide…You’re gonna be an American evangelist.”

Uh oh. This may be where he loses them. It may not be a good idea to start handing out homework assignments. Also, he’s mixing his metaphors. If you have an American survival guide it doesn’t make you an American evangelist. I makes you an American survivalist.

The survivalist model makes much more sense based on Beck’s history of predicting doom for the country. He is fixated on Armageddon. He routinely beseeches his flock to adopt his 3G’s: God, gold, and guns. And his rhetoric is dripping with nightmare scenarios of ruin and woe:

“If you’re here every night I don’t need to convince you that there are people intentionally destroying our country. Both on the right and the left. The rain is coming. I think you feel it in your gut. It is time to build an Ark. It is time to prepare yourself for some tough times.”

“You’re gonna see a black and white world, man, that is nothing but destruction and ugly. I don’t know why no one else will tell you the truth about these things. I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“I know what our country is headed towards. I know the struggles that are ahead in my life and I know the struggles that are ahead in your life. It’s not going to be pretty.”

The end times are upon us. Prepare yourself for a mighty fall. Then cower in your shelter and await the Rapture. But don’t forget to come out for the big Revival Show. Tickets go on sale next week. Be There!