GOP: Greed Obsessed Profiteers – How the Right Fleeces Donors To Enrich Themselves

Posted by Mark NC on January 8, 2013 at 10:40 am. 6 Comments :

The election of 2012 broke all records for spending on campaigns and collateral causes of political movers and shakers. The orgy of spending was triggered by the Citizen’s United decision allowing donors to make unlimited contributions anonymously. A by product of this landscape littered with special interest cash was a new industry driven by hucksters intent on sucking up substantial portions of the money flying around in the political ether.

One of those hucksters was the toe-sucking grifter, Dick Morris. Rachel Maddow recently reported on his scam that involved soliciting donations for a Super PAC that he claimed to have founded, and funneling those funds to his accomplices at the right wing blog Newsmax. Then NewsMax used some of that money to pay Morris for access to his email donors list so that they could solicit more donations. In effect, Morris was raising money to pay himself to raise more money.

Another example of this racket involved the Astroturf-roots, Tea Party operation, FreedomWorks. In the wake of scandalous revelations that their former chairman Dick Armey had staged an armed coup to wrest control of the group from his partners, it has been learned that the organization was taking the funds received from unsuspecting donors who opposed big government waste and depositing them in the bank accounts of wealthy broadcasters like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. These payouts were ostensibly intended to buy positive promotions of FreedomWorks on their programs in order to produce more donations that could also be paid out to the promoters. It was a blatantly circular self-enrichment scheme that was also described by Armey as “ineffective” and “a mistake.”

These incidents illustrate a congenital characteristic of the conservative mindset. It is a philosophy that explicitly lauds a dog-eat-dog flavor of wealth creation and celebrates the success of ruthless entrepreneurship and Greed-Obsessed Profiteers (i.e. GOP).

At the center of this con game is Fox News and the associated right-wing media machine. The unprecedented sums of money raised and spent in the last election cycle exceeded $5 billion dollars. Of that it is estimated that $3.4 was spent on advertising. In the world of Republican politics there is only one elephant in the room when it comes to media, and that is Fox News, the number one rated cable news network (for now) and the PR division of the GOP.

Fox was the first stop on every Republican’s campaign trip. It was where groups like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity dumped the bulk of their television ad dollars. It was the TV base for Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Scott Rasmussen, and the Breitbart-affiliated activists who were pretending to be movie producers.

Fox News was running the same scam as those described above. They would provide a platform for conservative politicians and organizations to solicit donations. The organizations would then pay Fox to run their ads with the money they raised from their appearances on Fox. And round and round it goes.

This is a tactic exploited so well by Rupert Murdoch himself in the last election cycle when he donated a million dollars to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who promptly returned it to Fox in the form of ad buys. In this way Murdoch actually made a 22% profit on his donation to the Chamber, and the Chamber got their ads broadcast at a 78% discount.

The maze of campaign finance laws makes it difficult to ascertain whether or not any laws were broken by these financial shenanigans. But the Federal Elections Commission is such an impotent agency that it would be surprising if they ever bothered to investigate or punish such lawbreakers.

However, what is even more surprising is that anybody would contribute to these organizations if they knew that their donations were not being used to advance the causes they support, but instead are lining the pockets of the executives and fundraisers. It is brazen betrayal of the folks who put their hard-earned dollars to work for their beliefs. But it is also precisely what conservatives are best known for: making themselves rich at the expense of the little people.

Hysterical Addendum] Dick Armey is now claiming that when he spoke with Media Matters and made his remarks about FreedomWorks, and their wasting money on Beck and Limbaugh, he actually thought he was talking to the uber-rightist Media Research Center. That explains his candor. He clearly believed that those comments would never be made public by MRC.

Glenn Beck Dunks American Flag (And Obama) In “Urine”

Posted by Mark NC on November 28, 2012 at 4:05 pm. 7 Comments :

This may be one of the most asinine stunts Glenn Beck has ever engaged in. Apparently he was mocking an art exhibit that featured a painting of President Obama with his arms outstretched and a wearing a crown of thorns. That’s not a particularly original concept as I did a similar work years ago featuring Beck:

When I did my artwork portraying Beck as a Messianic figure it was in response to Beck’s own behavior and his wailing about being the subject of attacks. He wept and hollered and whined that he was being persecuted. Obama has never done any of those things.

Beck’s lame attempt at satirizing Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was really just a big waste of time – which makes it no different than anything else Beck does. On this occasion he dropped a toy Obama doll into what he said was a jar of his own urine. Beck asserted that he was only defending the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of expression, but there was really nothing of substance that he had to say about either the artwork or the Constitution. He just seemed to be getting an excessive amount of personal pleasure from his childish prank that was really nothing more than a desperate attempt to get publicity.

The pretend artwork that Beck introduced in his pretend French accent was placed up for auction on eBay and generated bids in excess of $11,000 before eBay removed it. That says something about what his followers find valuable. What he seemed to have missed entirely, however, was that he was also submerging an American flag in the jar of pee. How patriotic of him.

And there was more craziness emanating from Beck yesterday. He delivered a sermon about his search for a plan to save the world. It was a disturbing display of a psychosis that should be troubling to anyone concerned about his mental health. In the course of the sermon he lamented that God was trying to tell him what he should do, but there was just so much that he was overwhelmed.

How can one guy with a video blog reform politics, culture, the economy, education, family, media, and the faith of a nation? Beck looked into the camera and lamented that he had no idea of how to do all of this – yet. But he was getting close to figuring it out. And he had diagrammed his draft of the solution on a giant chalkboard. But it looked like the scribblings of someone in the midst of a schizophrenic seizure, or peaking on LSD, or both.

Seriously, this dude needs help. It’s really too bad that the people in his life are too dependent on his cash generation to intervene and get him into therapy. When he goes off it is going to be messy.

Glenn Beck’s Agenda 21 Conspiracy Extravaganza And Acute Paranoia Revue

Posted by Mark NC on November 25, 2012 at 12:48 pm. 3 Comments :

Thom Hartmann had an enlightening segment last week (video below) that delved into the delusional Psycho-Chicken Littles who are convinced that the United Nations is plotting to take over the world and make slaves of us all. The alleged UN conspiracy centers around an environmental and economic sustainability program called Agenda 21. It is an entirely voluntary set of proposals that member nations can reference for solutions to ongoing problems in their own countries. It imposes nothing on anyone, and the solutions are well researched approaches to serious issues that face our planet.

Agenda 21 is also the title of a new book published by Glenn Beck (although there is some controversy over whether he stole credit for it). But it is so much more than just another literary divergence. It is both a book and an action plan to combat the plot to impose what Beck describes as “centralized control over all of human life on planet earth.” The book is presented as a “thriller” but it incorporates the very same paranoid ravings that Beck and other whack jobs are spewing. The obsessive fear of a UN led one-world government goes back decades with roots in the neo-fascist John Birch Society’s anti-communist campaigns. The Birchers, along with conspiracy kingpin Alex Jones, appear to be where Beck lifted this issue. And, not surprisingly, Beck also injects George Soros into the affair as its clandestine financier.

Beck’s fictionalized version of Agenda 21 describes a future America where “There is no president, no congress, no freedom. There is only Agenda 21.” Of course, Beck takes these horror stories seriously and extends them to new extremes with accusations that many local municipalities are already secretly putting the dastardly Agenda 21 principles into effect. He constructs a delusionally apocryphal scenario wherein Agenda 21 is the road map to tyranny. He is even mounting an effort to fight back by deputizing his glassy-eyed disciples to report back to him any evidence of the plot’s advance. There is a link and instructions for how to communicate with his own central command center, which he calls the Agenda 21 National Registry…

“Agenda 21 relies heavily on local governments. The problem is that there is currently no way to track on a national level just how prevalent Agenda 21-related efforts have become. But you can help. Check your town’s council minutes and agendas (and those of committees as well) or, if possible, attend a meeting. If any Agenda 21-related efforts have been discussed or implemented, please let us know!”

Beck helpfully includes a list of “keywords” that his faithful can use to recognize Agenda 21’s covert implementation. Among the frightening words that Beck warns are proof that the invasion has commenced: communities, quality, justice, sustainable, education, development. If you encounter any of these frightful buzzwords being used by your city government, then get the hell out of town, buy farmland, gold and guns, and be prepared to defend God and country from your cornfield bunker. For more of these incriminating words, refer to this actual word cloud from Beck’s web site:

By recruiting his spellbound followers, Beck hopes to build an army of informers who will populate his registry with ghastly evidence that global environmentalists and economists are well on their way to shackling Earth’s inhabitants via the oppression of economic equality, social justice, and {gasp} clean air and water.

It simply doesn’t get any crazier than this. What’s sad is that there are actually people who regard Beck as a righteous visionary struggling to save mankind. It’s going to be a tragic day when Beck leads his followers to Guyana and offers them all some tasty Kool-Aid. That will likely come after some valiant Beckian has attempted to cleanse the country of some the progressives that Beck has called a “cancer on America.” Hopefully these dire predictions will not come to pass, but Beck is playing with hellfire by inciting his audience of dimwits whose behavior cannot be accurately forecast.

Thom Hartmann on Beck and Agenda 21:

Right-Wing Blames God For Romney Loss And America’s Descent Into Socialism

Posted by Mark NC on November 23, 2012 at 2:48 pm. 7 Comments :

The Republican Party has been suffering debilitating and very public seizures produced by the results of the election a couple of weeks ago. They are desperately attempting to find explanations for how they could have lost on such a grand scale an election they presumed was in the bag. After spending unprecedented amounts of money, Republicans still had to wake up Wednesday morning with Obama returning to the White House for another four years, two more Democrats in the senate, and nine more in the House. Even with the propaganda power of Fox News, the top rated cable news network, and its frothing companion web site Fox Nation, conservative fanatics were unable deceive enough citizens to vote against their own best interests.

At first the excuses focused on typically lame dodges involving the weaknesses of their candidates. Then they shifted to assertions that it was a failure from not being sufficiently conservative. Eventually they trotted out accusations directed at the allegedly negative, Chicago-style campaigning of the Democrats. And sprinkled in amidst all of this were hysterical wails of imaginary corruption and voter fraud.

Now that some time has passed, the forlorn right-wingers have been able to reflect on these events and discovered the true source of their despair: GOD!

That’s right. The Heavenly Father on whom they had entrusted so much of their hopes had betrayed them. It has become impossible to ignore that God clearly preferred Obama and other Democrats to the roster of GOP loonies that pretended to speak in His name.

Prior to the election, folks like Pat Robertson had confidently declared that God had personally assured them of a Republican victory. Now Robertson has had to backtrack saying that “I thought I heard from God, I thought I had heard clearly from God, what happened?” What happened was that you were unable to distinguish the voice of God from the hallucinatory voices rattling around in your senile head.

And speaking of hallucinatory, Glenn Beck had his own divine prophesies mangled when he spoke of an inner certainty that the Lord was preparing the path for righteous Republicans to prevail:

“I am to the point to where I think that God is trying to make this so clear to us that if it happens, it’s his finger. Because, boy, nothing looks good. And yet, everybody I know who I consider a spiritual giant feels good.”

The day after the election Beck was singing a different hymn when he said “Man, sometimes God really sucks.” But what else can he say when the day before he declared “If [voters are] so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed.”

That’s typical of the sanctimonious zealots who believe that they are the only ones with a direct line to God. They exalt themselves and their imagined favor with a deity that their principles mock. They blithely ignore biblical instructions to “judge not, lest ye be judged,” and openly denigrate the faith of others – particularly President Obama, who is wrongly believed to be a Muslim by about one-third of Republicans.

Right-wingers on the Fox News community web site Fox Nation even go so far as to explicitly state that Obama is “God-Less.” This article linked to the execrable conspiracy obsessed Breitbart News.

The spiritual consternation of the right is thoroughly understandable. They had just run a campaign that fervently tried to paint Democrats as socialists bent on imposing a secular, atheist dictatorship on America. They condemned their policies as big-government takeovers that would throw freedom-loving patriots into bondage. They cast Democrats as leaning far too extremely to the left to be acceptable to voters. Yet people voted for them anyway. That could be interpreted in some circles as a mandate for the sort of socialism that the GOP was running against.

What the right missed was that all of the left-leaning agenda of the Democratic Party had far more in common with God’s agenda than the rank selfishness and greed of the GOP. Democrats advocated for health care (healing the sick), immigration (brotherhood), financial assistance (caring for the least among us), income equality and separation of church and state (giving Caesar his due), and deescalation of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan (blessed be the peacemakers). What’s surprising is that Republicans could oppose all of these things and still think they were doing God’s work.

The funny thing is that they had plenty of signs. The religious right is fond of ascribing meaning to significant events such as natural disasters. Many of them told their disciples that Katrina was God’s wrath on the sinfulness of New Orleans. Why, then, did they not see that God was sending them a warning when Hurricane Isaac slammed down on Tampa, scuttling day one of the GOP convention? Why didn’t they hear God’s message when Sandy battered the New England states just days before the election, giving Obama an opportunity to look presidential?

Now that we know whose side God was really on, Republicans are expressing their bitterness and disappointment with the Lord. That doesn’t seem like a particularly good way to get back in His good graces. But then the GOP was never very good at humility or admitting their mistakes. So what we see now is an escalation of apocalyptic doomsday scenarios that thrust the weak-minded into fearful panics. Leading the way is Fox News who broadcast this cheerful special on Thanksgiving Eve: “Countdown to Doomsday.”

They might make out better if they take some time to study the teachings of their Savior and seek to integrate them into their political philosophy. But then that would just make them liberals, wouldn’t it?

FLASHBACK: Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party

Posted by Mark NC on November 10, 2012 at 3:15 pm. 5 Comments :

With the 2012 presidential election behind us, there has been a flurry of post-election analysis by observers from all across the political spectrum. One theme that I have seen coming from both the left and right is the notion that Fox News has not been particularly helpful to the Republican Party, despite that being their primary mission. This criticism reminded me of an article I published three years ago titled “Fox News Is Killing The Republican Party.” So I went back and read it, and to my surprise, it seems just as relevant to today’s political landscape as it did then. In fact, it’s rather frightening (and disappointing) that so little has changed. That is, unless your a Democrat, because the harm that Fox is causing to the GOP is a gift to the Democrats.

So on this lazy Saturday afternoon I thought I would reprise this article for your enjoyment. I reprint it here without a single modification.

[Purchase FreakShow stickers at Crass Commerce]

The case was made long ago that Fox News is a blight on the media map. It is bad for journalism. It is bad for Democracy. It is bad for America. A so-called “news” network that repeatedly misinforms, even deliberately disinforms, its audience is failing any test of public service embodied by an ethical press.

I, personally, have made the case for an embargo of Fox News by Democrats and progressives (see Starve the Beast: Part I, Part II, Part III), documenting via studied analysis that there is no affirmative value to appearing on Fox News – a network that has established itself as overtly hostile to the Democratic message and its messengers.

However, there is another side to this that has not been addressed previously. Republicans might be well advised to avoid Fox News as well. There is a case to be made that Fox News is demonstrably harmful to the Republican Party. In fact, it may be the worst thing to happen to Republicans in decades. That may seem counter-intuitive when discussing Fox News, the acknowledged public relations division of the Republican Party. Fox has populated its air with right-wing mouthpieces and brazenly partisan advocates for a conservative Republican agenda. They read GOP press releases on the air verbatim as if they were the product of original research. They provide a forum where Republican politicians and pundits can peddle their views unchallenged. So how is this harmful to Republicans?

If all we were witnessing was the emergence of a mainstream conservative network that aspired to advance Republican themes and policies, there would not be much of note here. Most of the conventional media was already center-right before there was a Fox News. But Fox has corralled a stable of the most disreputable, unqualified, extremist, lunatics ever assembled, and is presenting them as experts, analysts, and leaders. These third-rate icons of idiocy are marketed by Fox like any other gag gift (i.e. pet rocks, plastic vomit, Sarah Palin, etc.). So while most Americans have never heard of actual Republican party bosses like House Minority Leader John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, posers like Joe the Plumber and Carrie Prejean have become household names.

Fox News has descended into depths heretofore reserved for fringe characters. They are openly promoting the wackos who believe that President Obama is ineligible to hold office because he isn’t a U.S. citizen. They feature commentaries by secessionists and even those calling for an overthrow of the government and the Constitution. This explains how folks like Ralph Peters, a retired military officer who said that the Taliban captors of a U.S. Soldier would be saving us a lot of trouble and expense if they would just kill him, earn airtime on Fox. Peters previously told Fox News that he favors military strikes against media targets. This explains how Glenn Beck can agree with a guest that it would be a good thing if America were attacked again by Osama bin Laden. And don’t even get me started on Victoria Jackson, who has joined an ever-lengthening line of psycho-Chicken Littles who compare the President to Hitler.

Good Advice:
“If crazy ideologues have infiltrated the news business, we need to know about it.”
~ Bill O’Reilly, 7/16/09

The list of loonies extends to politicians like Michele Bachmann, entertainers like Ted Nugent, and of course, the talk show pundits like Rush Limbaugh, whose maniacal rantings are elevated by Fox into their version of political dialogue. It’s a dialogue that is consumed with ACORN conspiracies and Manchurian presidents. The problem is that by elevating bona fide nutcases, they are debasing honest and informed discourse. The mental cases are crowding out any reasonable voices that might exist amongst the more moderate Republicans (if there are any left). Fox appears to have made a tactical decision to permit the inmates full run of the asylum.

As a result, the Fox News audience is being dumbed down by a parade of paranoid know-nothings. This strategy appears to be successful for Fox in that it has attracted a loyal viewership that is eager to have their twisted preconceptions affirmed. The conflict-infused fare in which Fox specializes is a ratings juggernaut – just like any good fiction. However, this perceived popularity is having an inordinate impact on the GOP platform. By doubling down on crazy, Fox is driving the center of the Republican Party further down the rabid hole. They are reshaping the party into a more radicalized community of conspiracy nuts. So even as this helps Rupert Murdoch’s bottom line, it is making celebrities of political bottom-feeders. That can’t be good for the long-term prospects of the Republican Party.

With the Fox network unabashedly promoting the most ridiculous rumors, myths, and nightmares of the rightist fringe, moderate and independent Americans will grow ever more suspicious of the Fox/GOP agenda. Most Americans do not believe that Sonia Sotomayor is a racist; or that FEMA is constructing concentration camps; or that we are on a march toward socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever the right is peddling this week. Most Americans do not believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim, a reptilian alien, or the anti-Christ. In short, most Americans think that the loopy yarns spun by Fox News are fables told by madmen – and believed by even madder men and women who wallow in their doomsday utopia.

Fox News is fond of boasting about their ratings dominance. It is a daily occurrence and the structural core of their argument that they reflect the mood of America. The GOP has bought this argument in its entirety. So it is important to note here that success in the Nielsen ratings has no correlation to public opinion polling. The ratings only measure the program choices of Nielsen’s survey participants. That is a subset of the population at large, and not a particularly representative one. It is a sample focused on consumers, not voters. And its respondents are just those willing to have their TV viewing monitored 24 hours a day, which skews the sample in favor of people who aren’t creeped out by that. What’s more, viewing choices are not necessarily an endorsement of the opinions presented in the program. There are many reasons people choose to watch TV shows, the most frequent being its entertainment value. So any attempt to tie ratings to partisan politics is a foolish exercise that demonstrates a grievous misunderstanding of the business of television.

As for what constitutes success in the television marketplace, due to the broad diversification of available programming, it doesn’t take much to be heralded as a hit. A mere 3 share (3% of people watching TV) will land you in the top 10. For cable news the bar is set even lower. In fact, the top rated show on the top rated cable news network (The O’Reilly Factor) only gets about 3 million viewers. That’s less than 1% of the American population. It’s also less than World Wrestling Entertainment, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the CBS Evening News (the lowest rated broadcast network news program). By contrast, America’s Got Talent is seen by 12 million viewers – four times O’Reilly’s audience.

Numbers this low ought not to inspire much excitement from political operatives. Nevertheless, Republicans are riding the coattails of Fox News as if it were representative of a booming conservative mandate in the electorate. They are embracing Fox’s most delusional eccentrics. This is leading to the promotion of similar eccentrics within the party. Which brings us the absurd spectacle of the network’s nuts interviewing the party’s pinheads.

The inevitable result of this system of rewarding those farthest from reality is the creation of a constituency of crackpots. It is an endorsement of the philosophy brewed by the Tea Baggers that espouses racism, tyranny, and armed revolt. It is enabling a frightening corps of openly militant adversaries of democracy, free speech, and Constitutional rule. It is the sort of environment that produced the murders of Dr. George Tiller and Holocaust Museum guard Stephen Johns.

This is a textbook example of how the extreme rises to the top. It is also fundamentally contrary to the interests of the Republican Party. The more the population at large associates Republican ideology with the agenda of Fox News, and the fringe operators residing there, the more the party will be perceived as out of touch, or even out of their minds. It seems like such a waste after all of the effort and expense that Fox put into building a pseudo-journalistic enterprise with the goal of confounding viewers with false news-like theatrics.

Make no mistake, Fox News is still managed by hard core party patrons. And I’m not referring just to opinion-driven commentators like Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity, although they are bad enough. No, I am talking about executives and editors like CEO, Roger Ailes, former Nixon and Bush media consultant. I’m talking about Washington Managing Editor and VP, Bill Sammon, an avid right-wing alum of the Washington “Moonie” Times. I’m talking about Business News Chief and VP, Neil Cavuto, antagonistic interrupter extraordinaire. And let us not forget the head hype-master, Rupert Murdoch, whose UK operations were just discovered to have been unlawfully wiretapping celebrities, politicians, and even members of the Royal Family. Augmenting that executive roster are the GOP regulars who are straight out of the just retired Republican White House: Karl Rove, Dana Perino, John Bolton, Dan Senor, and Linda Chavez. And then there are the Fox News clowns…er…“contributors” like Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Bernie Goldberg, Michele Malkin, and on and on. If nothing else, Fox is a full-employment program for rightist weasels (and they also operate the Conservative Book Promotion Club).

The mission of Fox News from its inception was to be more than just a voice of opposition to Democrats. It was to utterly crush the left end of the political spectrum leaving only a teetering right wing with no counter balance. Yet, despite the torrid embrace between Republicans and Fox News, it is apparent that Fox is the source of a sort of friendly fire that is decimating the GOP by exalting its most outlandish and unpopular players. And since Republicans have not been particularly popular anyway lately, the anchor being thrown to them by Fox can’t be all that helpful – – – Except to Democrats.

The more things change, the more they get even crazier than they were before.

Romney, Nugent, Trump, Et Al: A News Corpse Retrospective Of The 2012 Campaign In Words And Pictures

Posted by Mark NC on November 7, 2012 at 3:39 pm. 2 Comments :

I can’t remember an election season that I was ever so glad was over. The magnitude of malice and mentally defective diatribes was monumental. And that was just from Donald Trump.

In case you missed it, Trump was so apoplectic after the election was called for President Obama, he vented on vehemently on Twitter. The coward has since deleted those but the evidence remains:

Trump: “He lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!”

Except that President Obama won the popular vote by two million votes, as well as an electoral vote landslide (303-206. 332 if Florida goes to Obama where he is presently leading) But it isn’t bad enough that Trump’s facts are wrong, his inciting a revolution because he doesn’t like the results of a democratic election is disgusting, and anti-American. What’s more, he doesn’t grasp that if there were a revolution, it is likely that he would be among the first against the wall.

Then there’s Ted Nugent, the Motor City Douchebag, who went on a Twitter-spree that affirms the shaky nature of his psychological condition. He’s “crying tears of blood” for an America filled with “subhuman varmints” that “just voted for economic & spiritual suicide.”

Nugent: Pimps whores & welfare brats & their soulless supporters hav a president to destroy America

Nugent has boarded the Histrionic Express, which already boasts Trump, Glenn Beck, Clint Eastwood, John Sununu, and other like-mindless zombies as passengers. They are hurtling toward an obliviousness that is nurtured by the Fox News bubble-sphere that only reports what they think their politically comatose audience can withstand.

It’s a methodology that results in the Republican Party bowing to its Tea Party masters so that seats once regarded as certain are lost. In 2010, the GOP lost an opportunity to take over the senate, but for weak tea candidates like Christine O’Donnell (DE), Joe Miller (AK), Ken Buck (CO), Linda McMahon (CT), Carly Fiorina (CA), Sharron Angle (NV), and Carl Paladino (NY). This year the same thing occurred with losers in races the GOP could have won: Richard Mourdock (IN), Todd Akin (MO), Linda McMahon (CT), Scott Brown (MA), and Josh Mandel (OH). And the House saw its share of defeats as well: David Rivera (FL), Joe Walsh (IL), Chip Cravaack (MN), Frank Guinta (NH), Denny Rehberg (MT), and my personal favorite loser, Allen West (FL). Michele Bachmann held on by a slivery 500 votes.

What follows are a few of my favorite political graphics of the season. I hope you enjoyed this adventure and my accompanying illustrations. It isn’t over. There is still much to done and the rightist media led by Fox News will certainly be redoubling their efforts to deceive the nation’s voters. So we must stay alert and engaged – starting now.

Glenn Beck: If America Votes To Reelect Obama Then “We Have To Be Destroyed”

Posted by Mark NC on November 6, 2012 at 2:01 pm. 11 Comments :

This has been an interminably long, divisive, and vitriolic campaign. Romney’s camp complains that he was accused of murdering the wife of a former employee of a company that Bain Capital drove into bankruptcy. President Obama has been charged with intentionally allowing an ambassador to be murdered as he watched. Romney’s campaign co-chair, John Sununu, declared that “This country can’t be saved unless we get rid of this president.” Ted Nugent came just shy of threatening to assassinate Obama, earning a visit from the Secret Service. And Americans across the country had to suffer through Meat Loaf butchering the national anthem.

Yes, it’s been a brutally difficult time for the country, but leave it to Glenn Beck to put the poisoned cherry on top of a stomach-churning sundae:

Transcript:

If you look at history through a biblical world view, the last step before a nation is completely destroyed is they drive the righteous from among them. If this isn’t a sign of a group of people that will drive the righteous from among them, and that’s the last step before God’s wrath comes, I fear for our country and it is – it cannot be overstated, it cannot be called paranoid … If you are a God?fearing person, hear me. Last call, America. Last call. Because the righteous will be driven from among them.

They are nasty, divisive and, I’m sorry, but there is no way to describe that quote from Valerie Jarrett other than evil. Warning: Saul Alinsky is just the beginning of these people.

But I believe in the American people. I believe that we are not too far gone. I believe that people can watch and see the difference. They can feel the difference. When you watch Barack Obama, you can just see he is angry. When you watch Mitt Romney, you can see he is not. We are not an angry nation. We don’t listen to demagogues like that. It doesn’t work. No matter how much power he has amassed, no matter how many friends in the media he has, Americans know. And if they reject it this time, if they’re so dead inside – that’s a possibility – if they’re so dead inside that they can no longer see the difference between good and evil, we have to be destroyed because we will be a remarkable evil on this planet.

Beck’s trademarked dementia has once again proven to be a show-stopper. His assertion that an Obama victory somehow translates into “drive[ing] the righteous from among” us, makes no sense whatsoever. Why wouldn’t the “righteous” stick around and continue to advocate for their agenda? Where does Beck think they are being driven to? Canada? Israel?

If God’s wrath is coming, what form will it take? Perhaps a hurricane in our most populous region? Oh wait, that already happened even before the election and many right-wingers claim that it helped Obama. Was that God’s intention? Could Beck’s God have deliberately assisted Obama? Remember, Beck’s God is also Romney’s god – Mormon. Does Romney share this Apocalyptic view?

Beck insists that he cannot be called paranoid, even as he sounds the alarm that it is “last call” for America. No, that’s not paranoid. And it isn’t as if he has signaled the end times before. Oh yeah, he has done that – repeatedly heralding the arrival of the “Perfect Storm.”

Beck disingenuously says that he “believes in the American people,” while leaving open the possibility that we are “dead inside” and “can no longer see the difference between good and evil.” It is that inner death that would define us as “a remarkable evil on this planet,” and condemn us to destruction.

There is one thing for which we can all be grateful on this election day: Glenn Beck cannot be elected to any divine post from which he could carry out his dementia.

UPDATE: Obama Wins! So it’s official. We are dead inside and have to be destroyed. Can it wait until after breakfast? And perhaps we should start with Beck and his followers. They are probably in more of a hurry to get to Heaven anyway (although they may be woefully disappointed when they reach their destination).

UPDATE II: Beck is now advising his disciples to buy farmland and guns. Next he’ll be leading them to a commune in Guyana (Becktown?) and making them Kool-Aid.

This Video Of Mitt Romney Praising Glenn Beck As A Statesman Should Disqualify Him For Office

Posted by Mark NC on October 11, 2012 at 3:55 pm. NO Comments :

David Corn at Mother Jones has uncovered another video that should have serious repercussions for Mitt Romney. It shows Romney giving an introduction to his “friend” Glenn Beck at a fundraising event for a dubious college.

Romney begins his introduction of Beck by describing it as a “special treat” and “an honor.” He then describes Beck, who was eventually driven off the air due to his racist and deranged conspiracy rants, as one of the most popular hosts on TV with a “fresh” approach. And, finally, Romney gushes that Beck, a notoriously hyperbolic and divisive hate monger, is a “statesman.”

If Romney regards Beck as a statesman, it shines a light (or should I say casts a pall) on the sort of appointments he would make to the state department were he president. Perhaps he’d nominate John Bolton for Secretary of State, or Ted Nugent for arms control negotiator.

David Corn goes into some detail about the fringe university that is the beneficiary of the fundraiser. It was founded by followers of a Mormon author and professor, W. Cleon Skousen. After demonstrating that he was a fanatic who lacked any credibility (and a Nazi sympathizer), even the Mormon Church rejected him. But that didn’t stop Beck, also a Mormon, from incessantly hyping his book, “The 5,000 Year Leap,” which Beck effusively praised saying, “I beg you to read this book filled with words of wisdom which I can only describe as divinely inspired.”

Unlike the videos that the right splashes around the InterTubes proclaiming falsely that they contain bombshell revelations about Obama, this video of Romney is not a twenty year old relic that has no relevance to the current campaign. Romney made this video during the current campaign in 2009, while sucking up to right-wing demagogues in pursuit of the GOP nomination. And it is precisely because of the absurd allegiances he has that he is unfit for the presidency of the United States.

UNHINGED: The Crackpot Conspiracy Theories Of Clueless Conservatives

Posted by Mark NC on October 9, 2012 at 4:01 am. 3 Comments :

This article was also published on Alternet.

Conservatives and professional Obama haters have been nurturing an animosity for Obama that far exceeds anything directed at previous presidents. The lengths that they will go to bury Obama in mud often resemble D-Movie spy plots that set new standards for implausibility. The all too familiar birther conspiracies that allege that President Obama is a Manchurian socialist bent on transforming America into an Islamic Caliphate are mere fairy tales when compared to some of the horror stories that shiver the spines of the delusional right.

The frequency and outlandishness of their conspiratorial imaginations grows in sync with their desperation. With Obama leading in most polls and the election season drawing to a close, it seems like a good time to recap some of the more ludicrous conspiracies hatched by our conservative fear mongers. So with our tin-foil hats securely strapped on, let’s venture down the primrose path of hair-raising hypothesis.

Cooking the Unemployment Rate
The most recent crackpottery of the right was revealed last week as new unemployment numbers were released. The new data put the unemployment rate at 7.8%, the lowest it has been since the Bush administration cratered the economy on their way out of town. Almost immediately, right-wingers declared that the numbers were manufactured by Obama’s henchmen in the Labor Department. Never mind the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is an independent body that currently has no Obama appointees serving. That didn’t stop conspiracists like Jack Welch from alleging that they are “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.” That unsubstantiated charge was adopted by Rep. Allen West, Fox News’ Stuart Varney, and much of the rest of the right-wing media circus.

The Media is Skewing the Polls
For several weeks now, Obama has maintained a steady lead in election polling. That fact has been difficult for conservatives to square with their conviction that Obama is the most hated man in America. Consequently, they must conclude that all of the polls have been tampered with by scheming liberals. However, for their conspiracy to be credible, they would have to include Fox News and Rasmussen amongst the conniving lefties because their polling also puts Obama in the lead. One way they have found to workaround that inconvenient fact is to ignore the polls that challenge their thesis. Therefore, Fox News simply neglects to report on polls that show the President leading – even their own Fox News polls.

Politicizing the Stock Market
In a year when the economy is such an integral part of the news cycle, conservatives have found it necessary to glom onto any factoid that they can use to bash the President. That manifests into a frenzy of spin that casts any decline in the stock market as the fault of Obama, and any increase as investor speculation that Obama is on the way out. Last week, many of the right-dominated business networks feebly described a positive day for the Dow as a Romney rally, simply because it occurred on the day after the presidential debate. There is a long history of the right making idiotic assessments of the stock market. In May of 2009, Fox News anchor Brenda Buttner gushed, “Call it a tea party rally. Wall Street’s sure partying, up six weeks in a row.” In September of 2011, Fox Nation reported “Stocks Tumble Worldwide After Obama Speech.” Then in June of 2012, they fantasized that “Stock Market Drops After Obamacare Upheld.” Fox’s Neil Cavuto hosted a discussion of what he called the “Bush recovery” nine months into Obama’s term. What they commonly miss is that markets traditionally perform better under Democratic administrations than Republicans.

Obama is Coming for Your Guns
This conspiracy theory takes a considerable measure of willful suspension of disbelief. The National Rifle Association has alerted its members that a second Obama term will result in the repeal of the second amendment and a wholesale confiscation of guns. Their evidence of this is that Obama has done nothing at all to roll back gun rights during his first term. That, they surmise, is a devious trick to lull gun rights advocates into a false sense of security. Then, when Obama is no longer facing a reelection campaign, he will be free to curtail all of our precious liberties.

The Social Security Administration’s Arms Cache
When it was discovered that the Social Security Administration had purchased 174,000 bullets, the right-wing sirens went off and presumed that they were preparing for massive civil unrest and intended to use the ammo on Americans. “‘Why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest?’ Maj. Gen. Jerry Curry wrote on the conservative website The Daily Caller.” That would be a good question if it weren’t rooted in utter dementia. In fact, the actual reason for the purchase was a routine acquisition to arm conventional security personnel at the agency’s offices across the country.

The Muslim Mole in the Secretary of State’s Office
A longtime aide to Hillary Rodham Clinton was accused by conservatives of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Huma Abedin has worked with Clinton for many years as a trusted and effective public servant. No evidence was given for the repugnant allegations that cast her as a traitorous double agent. She is also married to former Rep. Anthony Weiner, who is Jewish and unlikely to be affiliated with Muslim extremists. But that didn’t stop Rep. Michele Bachmann who said, “it appears that there are individuals who are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood who have positions, very sensitive positions” in our government. She was joined by other prominent conservatives like Newt Gingrich and Frank Gaffney. This conspiracy dove-tails nicely with those alleging that Obama is a Muslim plant as well.

Fact-Checkers Are A Liberal Plot
Creative and shameless conservatives are establishing a new and unique front in the political war zone. Not satisfied with bashing everything about the media (despite the fact that talk radio and their own Fox News are a huge part of it), the wackoids on the right have declared war against – get this – Fact-checkers! This may seem wildly deranged, but upon reflection it makes perfect sense. If your entire movement is built on a foundation of lies, then fact-checkers are your mortal enemy. This became clear a few weeks ago when Neil Newhouse, a Mitt Romney adviser, publicly declared that “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Since then they have disputed or ignored every challenge of their truthfulness. The result is a record setting collection of dishonorable mentions from PolitiFact and other media lie detectors.

The Secret Behind The Gulf Oil Spill
When millions of barrels of oil were pouring into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, most Americans were disturbed by the devastating environmental damage and the negligence of the company operating the drilling platform. But conservatives led by Rush Limbaugh saw through the scheme and revealed that the massive malfunction was actually a deliberate act of sabotage devised to create a justification for eliminating all off-shore drilling. Limbaugh told his audience that “I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig … What better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig?” You can’t argue with logic like that, because it’s the logic of a mad man who thinks the President would murder twelve workers and foul an environmentally sensitive region in order to achieve a political goal.

Obamacare’s Death Panels
No list of conspiracy theories would be complete without a mention of Sarah Palin’s “death panels.” These nefarious groups were said to have the power to decide whether your grandmother would live or die based on her level of productivity to society as determined by a team of government bureaucrats. In reality the section of the Affordable Care Act to which Palin referred actually provided for coverage to pay for end-of-life counseling. These were voluntary sessions to help patients determine and document what sort of life-saving measures they preferred in the event that they were incapacitated and unable to communicate their wishes to their doctors. When that proved to be an embarrassing misinterpretation of the law, conservatives switched to another section of the bill, the Independent Payment Advisory Board, and called that the death panel. However, the IPAB was simply a board that assessed the best practices in medicine and made non-binding recommendations in order to prevent excessive billing and unnecessary procedures. Palin was awarded the “Lie of the Year” award from PolitiFact for her imaginary panel.

The Green Plot to Enslave the World
Conservatives have never taken to science. So it should come as no surprise that many of them regard global warming as a hoax whose purpose is to enrich Al Gore and a few socialist wind farmers. But there is another faction of the anti-environment movement that has uncovered something even more dastardly lurking behind the effort to maintain a clean, sustainable planet. Agenda 21, a little known and non-binding resolution adopted by the United Nations is viewed by some on the right as an attempt to control the lives of people throughout the world by regulating everything they do. Amongst their paranoid fears is that Agenda 21 will cede U.S. sovereignty to the U.N. and a one-world government. The truth is that Agenda 21 is a set of principles to guide the development of practices to preserve a sustainable environment for future generations. It is entirely voluntary and was agreed to by the U.N. in 1992 and signed by President George H.W. Bush. But to hear doomsayers like Glenn Beck put it, it will “suck all the blood out of [our communities], and we will not be able to survive.”

These are but a few of the tales woven by angst-ridden right-wingers in the dark moments when their thoughts wander from rational reality. However, the science that they scorn may have an explanation for their fantastical imaginings. Ryota Kanai, at the University College London Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, examined how liberals and conservatives brains differ. Among the findings were that the brains of liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex which has been shown to produce thought proceses that are more flexible and reliant on data, proof, and analytic reasoning. Conservatives are more likely to have an enlarged amygdala which is associated with greater inflexibility, emotion, and fear response.

This could account for conservatives having a greater susceptibility to conspiracy models of thinking. Whatever the explanation, it is clear that their senses are working overtime and the results produce some pretty wild visions of nightmarish liberals threatening America’s very existence. They seem to have taken very seriously the warning from the Reagan-era horror film, The Fly: Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Obama’s Lead Is Driving The Right (Even More) Crazy

Posted by Mark NC on October 1, 2012 at 6:52 pm. 5 Comments :

When you start out with delusional notions that President Barack Obama is a socialist Muslim from Kenya who hates America, it doesn’t leave very much of a preserve of sanity to fall back on.

However, the recent crop of polls showing that Obama is ahead, and widening his lead, is testing the limits of the Batshit Crazy faction of the GOP, which these days seems to be most of it. With the help of Fox News, the right is feverishly scrubbing from their consciousness any polls delivering what they regard as bad news. Most recently, the GOP polling firm Rasmussen Reports published their latest daily tracking poll showing Obama ahead by three points. For some reason, that poll was not reported by Fox News who regularly post Rasmussen’s results when Romney is in the lead.

In addition to exhibiting acute denial when it comes to polling, the right’s patron paranoid schizophrenic, Glenn Beck, has come up with a unique explanation for why Romney is running behind:

Beck: I am to the point to where I think that God is trying to make this so clear to us that if it happens, it’s his finger. Because, boy, nothing looks good. And yet, everybody I know who I consider a spiritual giant feels good. And it bothers me that I feel good because, I’m like, there’s no reason that I should feel good on this.

See? God is responsible for Romney’s dismal polling. But He’s doing it so that his eventual victory will be an unmistakable miracle. And Beck is backed up by all the “spiritual giants” he knows. It sort of makes you wonder what it will mean if Romney ends up losing.

As for Beck’s reference to God’s finger, that is something he has discussed before. Last year he told his disciples that “I believe I have seen the finger of God. I believe that in the coming days you will see the entire of arm of God.”

As I said last year, “Somehow I think it’s more likely that God is going to reveal his foot to Beck’s ass. However, I do believe that God has given Beck the finger.” And the preponderance of the evidence is that God is mightily pissed at Beck as revealed in Scripture.

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