Month: August 2011

Glenn Beck Losing A Million Dollars On Israeli Rally

Posted by on August 22, 2011 at 3:11 am. 7 Comments :

Glenn Beck’s plan to hold a rally in Israel with the theme of “Restoring Courage” was never a particularly good idea. His history of anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia made him an unpopular figure to both sides in the tense regional conflict.

Glenn Beck

Now Beck is whining that his motives have been called into question and that the event may end up costing him a bundle.

The American broadcaster especially objected to the charge that he was doing the events for his own financial gain. He revealed that he was losing “about a million dollars” on the rallies, which he called “wildly expensive,” and said he was open to donations to fray the costs.

As is the case with anything Beck says, there is no way of knowing whether or not it is true. However, it is certainly false to suggest that if the event is actually in the red that that is evidence that he wasn’t in it for the money to begin with. It may still have been a nakedly profit seeking venture that just failed to make a profit. It was previously reported that the event sold out some 1,700 seats. If Beck can’t turn a profit with a sell out, it must have been dreadfully mismanaged.

As the event nears, Beck has attracted more critical attention from both Israelis and Muslims whom he has offended. A boycott has been called to discourage members of the Knesset from participating in the rally. Sen Joe Lieberman backed out of his commitment to attend, as did representatives Eric Cantor and Joe Walsh who were advised that they could not make the trip as official congressional business. But Jon Voight showed up so…..

Last week Beck took to his radio pulpit to lament that his new Internet venture, GBTV, may be “running out of time,” in an appeal for listeners to become subscribers. Today he traveled thousands of miles to beg for donations to help “fray the costs” of this boondoggle. It seems that since Beck lost his Fox News platform he has been reduced to pleading for alms in the fashion of traveling salvation show evangelists. But is that really such a steep fall for a former radio shock-jock whose partner was a chimpanzee?

Help Beck Lose More Money: Here is a list of Beck’s radio affiliates. Find the one nearest you and let them know that you refuse to listen to the station or patronize their advertisers until Beck is off the air.

Herman Cain: Under ObamaCare I’d Be Dead

Posted by on August 19, 2011 at 4:35 pm. 13 Comments :

Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is a lucky man. Five years ago he was diagnosed with stage IV cancer in his liver and colon. Today he reports that he is cancer-free. Speaking on this subject, Cain asserted that his luck was due to the fact that he didn’t have to rely on ObamaCare for treatment. Fox Nation reported these remarks that were broadcast on CNN:

“If ObamaCare had been fully implemented when I caught cancer, I’d be dead, and here’s why. I was able to go to the doctors that I wanted to go to – as fast as they could do the tests. I didn’t have to wait six months like you do in other countries in order to get a Cat Scan. And sometimes people die before they get the Cat Scan because the cancer in my body was spreading so fast. But because I was able to get the treatment as soon as I could, and to get the quality care that I did, that’s what has me alive today. You ought to be able to make those choices if you get a serious illness, not some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.”

From his statement it is apparent that the real reason he was lucky was that he is a wealthy businessman and broadcaster. That’s the reason he was able to go to the doctors that he wanted. That’s the reason he was able to expedite his care. A middle class patient would have had to rely on the generosity of their insurance company and hope the insurer didn’t cancel their policy as a result of filing a claim. Even worse, a poor patient would have to depend on the minimum public services they could wrangle from insufficient and overburdened pre-ObamaCare government programs.

Cain is glad to be alive due to his ability to pay for any medical attention he requires. But he doesn’t care at all about people who aren’t multimillionaires like himself. His insinuation that ObamaCare would have required him to wait for treatment is a flat-out lie. There is nothing in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that would prohibit him from visiting the doctor of his choice. But it does give a choice to the rest of us who otherwise might be unable to visit a doctor at all.

Furthermore, his slap at government bureaucrats ignores the problem of insurance company bureaucrats. Frankly, I’d prefer to put my life in the hands of a government health care administrator who would base his decision on what is necessary and proper, as opposed to a corporate accountant whose decision is driven by profit.

Herman Cain would not be dead if ObamaCare had been implemented when he “caught” cancer. He would still have been rich and free to see the doctor of his choice. Ironically, while Cain had that luxury, it appears that his doctor may not have been one that he freely chose. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported a couple of months ago that…

“When Mr. Cain found out that the doctor who operated on his cancerous colon was a Muslim, he was bothered by it, he admitted, because ‘based upon the little knowledge that I have of the Muslim religion, you know, they have an objective to convert all infidels or kill them.'”

So even with all his riches he still risked being murdered by a terrorist surgical oncologist. What a world. This is the same man who boasted that he would not appoint Muslims to his Cabinet. I guess the best you can say about Cain’s raging bigotry is that at least he admits that he has “little knowledge.” And isn’t that what Republicans want in a candidate?

Israelis Worried That Glenn Beck’s Rally Will Incite Violence

Posted by on August 18, 2011 at 9:12 pm. 5 Comments :

Glenn Beck Stay HomeNext week Glenn Beck will take his hate crusade to Israel, a nation that does not want him there and fears that his presence can only inflame tensions and create division. Beck is a proud enemy of peace with Palestine and rejects negotiated settlements with people he regards as heathens. As the date for Beck’s hatefest nears, more Israelis are speaking out against him:

“There are enough racists in Israel without importing them from the US,” Hadash MK Muhammad Barakei said. […] “There is a danger that the event will lead to people being harmed, and the police should have prevented it,” Barakei added.

MK Ahmed Tibi (UAL-Ta’al) called Beck “a bizarre, conservative, neo-fascist comedian who is motivated by a hatred of Islam.”

The danger that Beck may set off violence in Israel is not anecdotal. He has certainly set off violence in the United States. And the threat of violence was even acknowledged by Beck’s own security team when they advised him to change the original location of the rally due to security concerns. Ironic, isn’t it, that Beck should have to move his “Restoring Courage” rally because he’s afraid of violence.

Since then Beck has continued spewing rhetoric that can only incite more anger. The Christian Science Monitor reports that last week Beck insulted hundreds of thousands of Israelis who were protesting the lack of affordable housing. He implied that they were radical leftists and communists. In fact, polls show 87% of the population agreed with the protesters. This strident disrespect for the people of the nation he is visiting is not being well received. A well known conservative Israeli published an editorial criticizing both Beck and the local rightists who support him:

“[N]ow that Beck has spoken before the Knesset and is given the green light in the staging of his ‘Courage’ rally, he believes he has earned the right to pontificate about all matters Israeli. Specifically, he has called the current ‘tent city’ protests in Tel Aviv and other locations the doing of ‘communists,’ calling into question the financing of these protests and suggesting a sinister connection between the protesters in Israel and world socialism, framing the whole matter in the context of the sort of anarchists who protest G-8 meetings, and squeezing the square peg of what should be an internal Israeli matter into the round hole of his us-and-them, liberal-versus-conservative worldview. Whether he is right or not, let him go on back to where he came from and stick to things he might actually know a thing or two about, and let Jews and Israelis handle Jewish and Israeli matters.”

Finally, Beck’s event may not be getting much traction. Reports from the region suggest that he is being forced to take measures to prevent the whole affair from being a monumental embarrassment. Also from the CSMonitor:

“There are signs that Beck is struggling to promote his event. Writing on the left-leaning 972 blog, Mya Guarnieri notes an online ad seeking foreign citizens to act as ambassadors to ‘stand with Israel’ at the Aug. 24 event. She responded to an e-mail on the ad asking if participants would be paid for acting as ambassadors, and writes that a senior aide to Likud lawmaker Danny Danon responded, ‘depends where you are from.’ Mr. Danon is a Beck fan.”

Glenn Beck Messiah

Beck speaks so often of the risks he undertakes to spread his vile message that it would not be surprising to learn that he is hoping for trouble, and even encouraging it. He has literally alerted his audience to the prospect that he could be assassinated and enlisted them in an effort to make sure he is avenged. He has accused the Obama administration of plotting to kill him, and George Soros as well. His obsession with imagined assassins is pure Messianic delusion. He has had this to say about his Israeli Escapade:

“Will my event hurt foreign policy of the U.S.? I damn well hope so now.”
“If Israel falls the western way of life falls. That’s not hyperbole.”
“This may be it for our generation or for all mankind.”
“I will stand, I will speak, and in the end, if it be His will, I will die right alongside my brother.”

Let’s just hope that he doesn’t try to carry out his demented prophecy in a manner that harms the innocent.

Fox Nation Uses Deceptive Editing To Smear Media Matters

Posted by on August 18, 2011 at 4:19 pm. 3 Comments :

For more than a month now, Fox News has been engaging in a smear campaign directed at Media Matters. The obvious takeaway from their obsession is that Media Matters Has Fox News Scared And Desperate. Why else would they devote so much air time and web space to falsely disparaging them?

Fox Nation vs. Media Matters

The latest episode involves a posting on Fox Nation with the headline: Media Matters’ Salaries Exposed. The post links to an article on Mediaite which references data from the Poynter Institute. Both of those sources used the headline: What it pays to monitor the media. The data includes salary information of five principles at Media Matters. However, it also includes salary information of five principles at the conservative Media Research Center.

The Fox Nationalists copied the text from the Mediaite article verbatim except that they skipped over the Media Research Center data completely and posted only the Media Matters data. Since their purpose was to cast Media Matters in a negative light, they were only concerned with revealing what they imply is inordinately high compensation. Here is the Media Matters data:

David Brock; chairman/CEO; $286,804
Eric Burns; president; $240,579
Tate Williams; chief of staff; $162,812
Eric Boehlert; senior fellow; $115,000
Ari Rabin-Havt; VP-communications and strategy; $134,484

What they left out was the data from the Media Research Center. So in the spirit of fairness and balance, here is that data:

Brent Bozell; president/director; $422,804
Brent Baker; vice president; $126,300
David Martin; executive vp/asst. treasurer; $215,000
Dan Gainor; Business & Media Institute vice president; $122,400
Terry Jeffrey; CNSNews.com editor-in-chief; $122,400

As you can see, the folks at Media Research Center earn significantly more than their Media Matters counterparts. Brent Bozell earns about 47% more than David Brock. The average for all five at Media Matters is about $188,000, while the average for all five Media Research Center execs is over $200,000.

What’s more, the Media Research Center, with an annual budget of $11 million, receives far more funding, mostly from from radical right-wing sources affiliated with the John Birch Society, the Koch brothers, and the Scaife family foundations. Media Matters has a more modest budget of $2.7 million and funding from reputable patrons like cable executive, Leo Hindery and Esprit founder, Susie Tompkins Buell. In addition, they just received their first donation from the conservative’s favorite bogeyman, George Soros, despite claims from Beckian conspiracy theorists that Soros has been pulling the strings from the beginning.

This is another example of Fox distorting the information they present because the truth would only make them look bad. It’s a pathetic exercise that reveals just how unethical and dishonest they are. Sadly, their audience just keeps getting misinformed, which means they just keep getting dumber. It makes it difficult to maintain a democracy when a major so-called news enterprise simply doesn’t care about the truth.

Glenn Beck’s New Internet Venture Is Running Out Of Time

Posted by on August 17, 2011 at 6:16 pm. 5 Comments :

Glenn Beck BrokeThings must be getting pretty bad over at Glenn Beck’s place since he lost his Fox News pulpit. On his radio program today, Beck had to resort to begging his listeners to stave off his demise. It adds a whole new meaning to the title of his recent book: Broke. Beck begins his appeal by declaring that he opposes common free market methods of financing business:

Beck: I do not want outside investors. We have talked about it. We have had outside investors come to us. We have had hedge funds come to us. People want to invest in my business because we are creating jobs and creating wealth. I do not want outside investors because I do not want to have to answer to anyone else.

If he is creating so much wealth, then why is he forced to pass the plate to his radio disciples in order to stay afloat? And is he so inept that he can’t form a business relationship that preserves creative control of his programming? And if outside money is so repugnant to him, why does accept it in the form of advertising on GlennBeck.com and TheBlaze (although there are very few ads on either one)? Has he abandoned his control and principles on those sites by taking outside money. Apparently things are pretty dire, indeed.

Beck: But I will tell you that I believe we are running out of time. The truth has to be told. My model is to go directly to you and ask you for GBTV – if you would sign up for GBTV.com. I’m not asking you for charity. This isn’t PBS. I’m not gonna take it from you. If we have provided $5.00 of information to you a month, Would you please consider supporting us.

Beck’s remarks about not being PBS because his venture is not charity and he isn’t “gonna take it from you,” stretch the bounds of reason. First of all, PBS doesn’t take anything from anyone. It IS a charity and you are free to donate or not. And if you decline to donate you can still watch. GBTV, on the other hand, demands payment from you and prohibits viewing if you fail to comply.

One thing Beck gets right is that his GBTV is certainly not PBS. I have yet to see rodeo clowns telling fart jokes and deliberately lying to viewers on PBS. The PBS NewsHour has never speculated on an Arab Islamic/American Leftist coalition to bring about a global Caliphate. Frontline does not broadcast documentaries comparing the President to Hitler. And Masterpiece Theater hasn’t booked Ted Nugent as an economics analyst.

I don’t know if Beck is running out of time or not. Either he’s telling the truth and his business is floundering, or he’s lying and this is just a scam to fleece his followers. Either way he’s a slime ball. Some things never change.

[Flashback] Whining about protesters who were organizing a successful campaign to persuade advertisers to withhold their ads from Beck’s Fox News program, Beck boasted that no matter what happened he would rise like a phoenix – or the Messiah – or whatever:

“They can take my job and they can take my wealth but that’s okay – even if the powers to be, right now, succeed in making me poor, drum me out, and I’m just a worthless loser – which I’m just about that much above that now – I will only be stronger for it. 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!”

A thousand times? But you still have to beg for money and cry that time is running out?

Fox Nation Exists Solely To Bash Obama

Posted by on August 17, 2011 at 3:36 pm. 13 Comments :

Fox Nation, the Internet community of Fox News, has completed its transition into a nearly 100% Obama Bashing Internet destination. Visit the site at any random time and you are likely to see something like this:

Fox Nation Obama Bashing

That’s 19 separate articles, all from just this morning, disparaging the President. They consume nearly all of the space on the site’s home page. Despite the fact that the Fox Nationalists assert that they aspire to fairness and balance, it is clear that they are engaged in non-stop propaganda to effect the political outcome they desire. It makes a mockery of their claim that…

“The Fox Nation is committed to the core principles of tolerance, open debate, civil discourse, and fair and balanced coverage of the news.”

How brain damaged does one need to be to believe that BS? And if your stomach is strong enough to venture into the community comments, you will be repulsed by a collection of racists and advocates of violence and even assassination.

Obviously the folks at Fox are escalating their campaign of hate. With the election season heating up they are redoubling their efforts to malign the President and every other Democrat. Perhaps their desperation is due to the pathetic field of candidates they are saddled with promoting. They are in the embarrassing position of having to support Tea Bagger Bachmann, Perp Walk Perry, and Corporate Mate Mitt.

What’s more, the conservative/Tea Party wing of the GOP is suffering a dizzying decline in popularity.

“[T]he Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like ‘atheists’ and ‘Muslims.'”

No wonder Fox Nation is ramping up their war effort. They have a steep hill to climb and they are convinced that their only prayer for victory is to smear the enemy and to do so harshly and repeatedly. Steady your nerves – there is going to be much more of this to come. It will include accusations of socialism and treason, as well as naked fear mongering. It will probably backlash against them completely, but it will still be an ugly spectacle.

The Superiority Of The Super Committee: Women And Minorities Snubbed

Posted by on August 17, 2011 at 11:39 am. NO Comments :

The brand new Congressional Super Committee that is charged with pulling America’s butt out of a fiscal fire is sorely underrepresented by major groups of the American people. In addition to the disturbing associations that members of the committee have with wealthy campaign contributors, they are also notably homogenous in terms of race and gender.

Republicans appointed an entirely white male panel of members. At least the Democrats included one woman, one African-American, and one Hispanic. Still, that ratio is a long way from proportional representation.

When large groups of citizens are excluded from participating in the democratic process, the result is bad policy, uneven playing fields, and a disheartened and/or outraged electorate. Take for example the representation of women in American political life (or rather, lack thereof) that has produced a legislative War on Women:

War on Women

These inequities are generally unaddressed by the media. Unless that changes there will be continued division and a failure to resolve the most pressing issues of our time. We need to include everyone in the effort to right the nation’s course. And we must not be afraid to embrace the fight for progressivism, civil rights, feminism, and liberty and justice for all.

Rick Perry’s Pay-to-Play Scam

Posted by on August 15, 2011 at 2:29 pm. 16 Comments :

The media is all atwitter today after Texas governor Rick Perry threw his cowboy hat into the ring and announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for president. However, if there were any integrity in the press, Perry’s campaign wouldn’t last a week.

Rick Perry is an ill-informed, incompetent, political extremist, who barely graduated from Texas A&M University (with a D average) and has suggested that Texas should secede from the union. He supports discrimination against gays and lesbians. He doesn’t believe in either evolution or global warming. He admits that he has no solutions for the nation’s problems other than prayer. And just today he reiterated his position that Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

But the the big problem for Perry is his brazen corruption as governor of Texas. The Dallas Morning News conducted an investigation last year that revealed Perry’s conversion of the state house into a pay-to-play scheme that filled his campaign coffers, and the pockets of his contributors, with cash.

Rick Perry - Pay-to-Play
Click here to view larger

Apparently, the way to get Texas taxpayers to finance your business venture is to payoff the governor. Then the state whines about not having funds for education, health care, and other social services. The Wall Street Journal called this scheme “Rick Perry’s Crony Capitalism.” When the conservative Wall Street Journal finds your shady dealings repugnant, you have crossed line that most people didn’t even know existed. This is the sort of scandal that would torpedo a campaign that wasn’t propped up by Tea Party fanatics and Fox News.

As Perry rolls out his campaign he is already asserting that he can bring to Washington the same sort of “success” that he brought to Texas. That should frighten most Americans. Upon closer examination, the alleged miracle of the Texas economy is a myth based on false premises and peculiarities exclusive to Texas. Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times illustrates just how little the nation can learn, or benefit from, Texas’ program of “depressing wages and dismantling regulation.”

“What Texas shows is that a state offering cheap labor and, less important, weak regulation can attract jobs from other states. I believe that the appropriate response to this insight is ‘Well, duh.’ The point is that arguing from this experience that depressing wages and dismantling regulation in America as a whole would create more jobs — which is, whatever Mr. Perry may say, what Perrynomics amounts to in practice — involves a fallacy of composition: every state can’t lure jobs away from every other state.”

What’s more, Texas is now facing a projected 2012 budget deficit of 31.5% of its general fund. That makes it the third worst state deficit in the country. Even California is doing better. [Note: Texas trails only Nevada and New Jersey, both of which have Republican governors]

It is also worth noting that a recent poll showed President Obama beating Perry IN TEXAS!

“…the poll shows Perry trailing President Obama in heavily Republican Texas, which last voted Democratic for president in 1976, when Jimmy Carter was the South’s favorite son. Obama leads 47%-45%, even though Obama’s net approval rating is underwater at 42%-55%.”

So the question is: Why is anyone taking seriously the campaign of a governor who has driven his state into ruin; who has one of the the highest percentages of minimum wage jobs; who has one of the lowest rates of health care coverage; and who is demonstrably corrupt? How long will it take for the press to catch on that Perry is an evangelical huckster with no substantive record of achievement? He’s Elmer Gantry with a government job and gets his snake oil straight from the well.

10 Things You Need To Know About Rick Perry

Posted by on August 14, 2011 at 9:37 am. 6 Comments :

Texas governor Rick Perry is officially in the race for president. The question now for America is: Do we want a president who may be even more ignorant than George W. Bush?

Perry graduated from Texas A&M with a 1.9 GPA or D average. He received mostly C’s and D’s in his courses, including a C in U.S. History, a D in Principles of Economics, and even a C in gym. And he is an advocate for the sort of education that would bring everyone else down to his level.

“I am a firm believer in intelligent design as a matter of faith and intellect, and I believe it should be presented in schools alongside the theories of evolution.”

But that’s just for openers. Here are some things that voters will need to know as Perry’s revival show gears up for a national tour:

Rick Perry

We definitely have the makings of a political/evangelical uprising that could finish off the economic and cultural decline that Bush started. For his campaign announcement speech, Perry was introduced by Erick Erickson, the editor of the uber-conservative RedState, and a CNN contributor, who is notable for calling a Supreme Court Justice a “goat-fucking child molester.” And in his speech Perry reiterated the four principles he intends to pursue if elected:

“We need balanced budgets. We need lower taxes. We need less regulation. And we need civil justice reform.”

Sound familiar? That’s the standard GOP recipe for national disaster that got us where we are today. But perhaps the most frightening part of Perry’s platform is his devotion to a radical religious crusade as the means to resolve the country’s problems:

“Fellow Americans, right now, America is in crisis. We have been besieged by financial debt. Some problems are beyond our power to solve. We will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country. There is hope for America. We will find it on our knees.”

That’s all America needs now. A president who would have us all kneel and pray away our problems. Calamity Perry does not have solutions to the serious dilemmas we face. He only has platitudes and scripture and a firm belief that he has been called by God to save America.

[Addendum] Perry has also been implicated in a slush fund scheme to benefit his campaign contributors. Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal called it Rick Perry’s Crony Capitalism. That conclusion was based on an in-depth investigation by the Dallas Morning News that uncovered Perry’s Tech Fund Aided Firms With Ties To His Donors. Under Perry, taxpayers may not have access to frivolities like health care, education, or food, but they do get to funnel cash into the pockets of Perry’s political patrons. This scandal alone should sink Perry’s aborning campaign. That is, if the national media has the integrity to give it the attention it deserves.

What We Learned About Michele Bachmann This Week

Posted by on August 14, 2011 at 3:43 am. NO Comments :

The winner of the Ames, Iowa Republican Straw Poll (by a mere 152 votes over Ron Paul), Michele Bachmann revealed much of herself to the electorate this week.

Michele Bachmann

First, in the Fox News debate on Thursday, Bachmann was asked about her recent confession that, despite not wanting to pursue tax law in college, she did so anyway at the behest of her husband because…

“…the Lord said, ‘Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.'”

When she was asked at the debate whether she would be submissive to her husband were she elected president, she responded by attempting to redefine the term:

“…it means respect. I respect my husband. He’s a wonderful, godly man, and a great father. And he respects me as his wife. That’s how we operate our marriage. We respect each other.”

The problem with that answer is that no dictionary, and nowhere in the Bible, is submission defined as respect. What’s more, the Bible doesn’t say that husbands should be submissive to their wives. So even if submission did mean respect, it is not reciprocal, as Bachmann implies. Ultimately, her answer to the question was that, since submission equals respect, and respect is demonstrated by capitulating to your husband’s demands, Bachmann would indeed be submissive to her husband as president.

The second thing we learned was that, until recently, Bachmann lacked faith in America. In her presentation prior to the straw poll, she told Iowans that…

“As we’ve been all over the state, what we have seen is a restoration of that dream and you have restored in me my faith in America.”

I wonder if all the right-wing, pseudo-patriots who became faint upon hearing that Michelle Obama’s national pride was restored during her husband’s campaign for president in 2008, will be equally as appalled at Bachmann’s confession? Furthermore, what will they make of her disparagement of the whole of the nation other than Iowa?

“I see on television destruction all across the country, but not in Iowa. It doesn’t matter what city I’m in, I see happy, confident, optimistic people.”

So Iowa is the island of euphoria in a nation beset by turmoil and despair. Apparently she sees depressed, reticent, pessimists from Maine to California. It would be interesting to see how she would campaign in the other 49 states if she wins the nomination, which, of course, she won’t, but that’s another story.