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Jon Stewart Mocks Right-Wing Over Obama School Kids Song By: Steve - September 30, 2009 - 10:20am | Jon Stewart Nails Beck and his right-wing friends for their school children indoctrination nonsense. Glenn Beck's World Order Endangers The Right By: Steve - September 29, 2009 - 10:00am | Here is a great article on Glenn Beck by Rod Dreher at dallasnews.com: Beck is a white Jeremiah Wright, a crazy conspiracy theorist whose worldview is rooted in the paranoid teachings of a far-right Mormon political guru named W. Cleon Skousen. Before signing up as a recruit in Beck's army, conservative Becketeers had better think long and hard about where their affable leader is taking them. A few weeks back, the Fox News Channel phenom spent nine minutes on the air leading a seminar on public artwork in New York City. By the time he was finished, Beck had illuminated a propaganda conspiracy linking communists, fascists, the Soviet Union, the Rockefeller family and the United Nations. This is the sort of weirdo rant you expect to encounter on fringey Web sites. You don't expect to see it on national television. But that's a big part of Beck's shtick. He's always carrying on about sinister Obamaite conspiracies threatening to overthrow the constitutional order. On the Fox & Friends morning show, Beck declared: "The Manchurian Candidate couldn't destroy us faster than Barack Obama. If you were planning a sleeper to come in and become president of the United States, this is how he would do it." How is it that a man can call the American president a traitorous subversive and not be laughed, or booed, off the national stage? He's a happy-go-lucky Howard Beale. Paddy Chayefsky, you should have lived to see this moment. Beck's paranoia doesn't come from nowhere. His man Skousen was a fanatical Mormon reactionary so far to the right that the Latter-day Saints church finally felt compelled to distance itself from his teaching. Beck, an enthusiastic Mormon convert, pushes Skousen's 1981 book, The 5,000 Year Leap, a tendentious pseudo-history of the United States that interprets the founding in religious terms. Texas Gov. Rick Perry recommended it at the recent Values Voter Summit in Washington. And if the pious nationalism of that book were all you knew about Skousen, you would be hard-pressed to see what the big deal was. But Skousen wrote many less anodyne books about politics - and held views far darker than revealed in the hokey but harmless Leap. In a 1976 lecture, the audio of which is available on the pro-Skousen site AwakeAndArise.org, Skousen rails like an Old Testament prophet, quoting Mormon scriptures and detailing how Satan is working with "secret combinations" - a Mormon theological term - within political parties, churches, labor unions and the wealthy elite, especially the Rockefeller family, to bring about the "One World Order." Skousen, like his follower Beck, is obsessed with the idea that these secret combinations are conniving to overthrow the U.S. Constitution. Though it is not part of official LDS doctrine, some Mormons believe in an apocalyptic prophecy attributed to church founder Joseph Smith, who supposedly taught that the Constitution would one dark day be hanging by a thread and that Mormon elders would rescue it. The pudgy, sweet-natured Beck offers a more palatable form of this paranoia - but all his fruit and sugar can't hide the Skousenite firewater. How ironic that conservative Christians who unjustly dunned conventional Mitt Romney because of his LDS faith are uncritically backing the squirrelly Beck, who looks like he's casting himself as hero of a prophetic Mormon melodrama. There are conservatives who know perfectly well that Beck is an unhinged buffoon who traffics in crude, ridiculous ideas. But unlike the hapless GOP, he's popular and effective in the political war against Obama. So these conservative cynics adopt a "no enemies to the right" approach to Beck, even though he's mainstreaming the ooga-booga worldview of a crank prophet who believed, with the John Birch Society, that Eisenhower was a closet commie. This is foolish. Not every enemy of Obama is a friend to conservatism. In 1962, in a time when conservatives needed all the help they could get, William F. Buckley nevertheless published in National Review a lengthy denunciation of paranoid Bircher Robert Welch. How long, Buckley asked, can the right tolerate his malicious gibberish without losing credibility? National Review eventually sidelined the Birchers for good over their "psychosis of conspiracy," thus doing the right an enormous service by making conservatism more credible with the American mainstream. Today, poor Bill is in the grave, Glenn Beck's ratings are soaring, and most conservatives don't see what the problem is. One way or another, they will. City Council Distances Itself From Glenn Beck Day By: Steve - September 25, 2009 - 9:30am | On September 26, Bud Norris, the mayor of Mt. Vernon, WA, will award the ceremonial key to the city to Glenn Beck, who grew up there. Norris decision to declare "Glenn Beck Day" has led to demonstrations on the streets and in city council meetings over the conservative commentator's visit. This week, the city council voted unanimously to distance itself from honoring Beck. On Wednesday night, the City Council of this town of 32,000 distanced itself from Mayor Bud Norris, who plans to give the keys to the city to talk-show personality Glenn Beck on Saturday. The seven-member council unanimously passed a resolution proposed by member Dale Ragan that stated, "Mount Vernon City Council is in no way sponsoring the Mayor's event on September 26, 2009 and is not connected to the Glenn Beck event in any manner." The resolution came after people who had signed up for the public-comment part of the session spoke in often emotional language to oppose honoring the controversial talk-show host. No Journalism Emmy Awards For FOX News By: Steve - September 24, 2009 - 11:40am | The 30th Annual Emmy awards for News and Documentaries came out this week, and what a shocker, nobody at FOX News won an award. Beck did not win, Hannity did not win, and O'Reilly did not win, not one person at FOX won any kind of an award. Here is a partial list of who did win awards. PBS (6) FRONTLINE (2) Bill Moyers (1) CBS (5) 60 Minutes (3) CBS Evening News/Katie Couric (1) CBS News Sunday Morning (1) NBC (5) NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (3) Dateline NBC (1) NBC News – Decision 2008 (1) ABC (2) ABC News Nightline (1) ABC News Primetime (1) CNN (1) Maybe if Beck and FOX News would start doing some actual journalism they might win an award one day, but I doubt it. Beck Ignores Major Corruption To Obsess Over Acorn By: Steve - September 24, 2009 - 9:50am | Beck, Hannity obsess over ACORN while virtually ignoring major corruption scandals In light of the recent attention Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity have devoted to the corruption scandal involving ACORN, Media Matters for America reviewed the coverage each host has provided on their television programs to a selection of well-documented political scandals and instances of corruption by companies that have received thousands of times more money from the government than ACORN has in the past 15 years. Their findings show that both hosts have been obsessed with ACORN, devoting a massively disproportionate amount of attention to the story in comparison to their coverage of controversies involving military contractors that have received billions of dollars in federal contracts and instances of Republican corruption at the highest levels of the U.S. government. Furthermore, since Beck joined Fox News, the amount of attention he has devoted to ACORN has skyrocketed, while his interest in other corruption scandals has remained limited. Key findings Number of times Beck's program referenced ACORN, Abramoff, Blackwater, and Halliburton/KBR from May 8, 2006, to September 18, 2009 (NOTE: For the purposes of this study, a "reference" is defined as the specified topic having been mentioned by either a host or a guest on the program being studied.): * ACORN: 1,045 * Disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH): 7 * Blackwater/Xe: 2 * Halliburton/KBR: 19 Beck's program is 50 times more likely to reference ACORN than any of the military contractors and 149 times more likely to discuss ACORN than either Abramoff or Ney. Beck has basically ignored major scandals involving military contractors that have huge government contracts. Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater have received tens of billions of dollars in military contracts and have been connected to major scandals, some even resulting in death. Major controversies concerning work performed by Halliburton, Kellogg, Brown and Root (a Halliburton subsidiary), and Blackwater (now named Xe) broke between 2006 and 2009. Blackwater, Halliburton, and KBR have received a combined total of at least $25 billion dollars in federal contracts since 2001. By comparison, ACORN has received an estimated $53 million in federal funding over the past 15 years, which is an average of $3.5 million per year. A Few Conservatives Denounce Glenn Beck's Hatred By: Steve - September 23, 2009 - 9:30am | On September 22, 2009 conservative MSNBC host Joe Scarborough announced an "honor roll" for conservatives who are willing to denounce Glenn Beck's hatred, making specific reference to Beck's statement that President Obama is "a racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people." Several media conservatives in addition to Scarborough have denounced Beck's rhetoric as "harmful" and race-baiting. SCARBOROUGH: You cannot say that the president of the United States hates all white people. You cannot call the president of the United States a racist. You cannot wallow in conspiracy theories as he did for about a month, suggesting that FEMA might be setting up concentration camps and going on Fox & Friends and saying, "I can't disprove it," and then wait a month. You can't stir up that type of hatred -- calling the president a racist.Other conservatives to denounce Beck's actions: On September 21, conservative radio host Mark Levin attacked Beck for saying in an interview that "John McCain would have been worse for the country than Barack Obama." According to Levin, "To say McCain would be worse is mindless, incoherent, as a matter of fact." Levin later added: "I think there's enormous confusion and positioning and pandering. It may be entertaining, but from my perspective, it's not. It's pathetic." In a recent blog post titled "GOP Surrenders to Beck's Mob Rule," former Bush speechwriter David Frum stated: "When Glenn Beck made his Fox debut, some shrewd conservatives responded with a wink. Maybe the show was paranoid and hysterical. Maybe Beck was none too scrupulous about facts and truth. Those shrewd conservatives assumed Beck was working for them. Big mistake. Beck is working for himself -- and he chooses his targets according to his own scheme of priorities." Frum discussed Beck's smears against Obama administration official Cass Sunstein and stated: "Glenn Beck is not the first to make a living for himself by reckless defamation. We have seen his kind before and the good news is that their careers never last long. But the bad news is that while their careers do last, such people do terrible damage." On the Chris Matthews Show, after Matthews played clips of Beck calling Obama a racist and Rush Limbaugh claiming that "in Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering," conservative Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker stated: "What Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh did in those two clips is to empower racists and to legitimize them. That's the shame and horror of what they're doing." Also on The Chris Matthews Show, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks said, "What Rush and Glenn Beck are doing, that's just race-baiting -- 100 percent, that's race-baiting." On ABC's The View, conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck said of Beck's "racist" comment: "There's danger in what he said. That was a bit sensationalist to go and say something like this. And I think whenever you throw that word out at somebody, you better be able to back it up. And he's not able to." At an August town hall event, Republican Rep. Bob Inglis said to attendees who watch Glenn Beck: "Turn that television off." These comments are important to note because when Beck does his insane rants he claims that only liberals are opposed to what he says, but as you can see it's not only liberals who disagree with his racist garbage and his hate speech. Bush Speechwriter Says Beck Is Harmful To The Country By: Steve - September 22, 2009 - 12:20pm | Former Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner says "the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality" In a September 21 blog post Peter Wehner wrote this: Only recently have I watched portions of Glenn Beck's television program, as well as interviews with him, and heard parts of his radio program. And what I've seen should worry the conservative movement. I say that because he seems to be more of a populist and libertarian than a conservative, more of a Perotista than a Reaganite. His interest in conspiracy theories is disquieting, as is his admiration for Ron Paul and his charges of American "imperialism." (He is now talking about pulling troops out of Afghanistan, South Korea, Germany, and elsewhere.) Some of Beck's statements -- for example, that President Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people" -- are quite unfair and not good for the country. His argument that there is very little difference between the two parties is silly, and his contempt for parties in general is anti-Burkean (Burke himself was a great champion of political parties). And then there is his sometimes bizarre behavior, from tearing up to screaming at his callers. Beck seems to be a roiling mix of fear, resentment, and anger -- the antithesis of Ronald Reagan. I understand that a political movement is a mansion with many rooms; the people who occupy them are involved in intellectual and policy work, in politics, and in polemics. Different people take on different roles. And certainly some of the things Beck has done on his program are fine and appropriate. But the role Glenn Beck is playing is harmful in its totality. My hunch is that he is a comet blazing across the media sky right now -- and will soon flame out. Whether he does or not, he isn't the face or disposition that should represent modern-day conservatism. At a time when we should aim for intellectual depth, for tough-minded and reasoned arguments, for good cheer and calm purpose, rather than erratic behavior, he is not the kind of figure conservatives should embrace or cheer on. More Proof Glenn Beck Is A Lying Hypocrite By: Steve - September 22, 2009 - 9:20am | Beck claims he is not about left or right and that he also complained about Bush when he started the bailouts, but that is all lies, and here is the proof. Beck said this just yesterday: BECK: Obama will say that Bush started us down the path toward socialism, and he'd be right by that. Bush started the crazy spending. He would be right again. Bush started the bailouts. Yes, he did -- hated him for it.But here is what he said on Sept. 22, 2008: BECK: But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.So back in 2008 when Bush was the president Beck supported the bailouts, and even said the $700 Billion was not enough. Now that Obama is in the White House it's suddenly a different story, Beck now claims he hates the bailouts, and it's all a scam by Obama to bankrupt the country and put his communist/marxist agenda into place. Which shows just how much of a lying hypocrite Beck is, he supported it under Bush, and now opposes it under Obama, then he claims it's not about Obama, or left and right, when that's exacty what it's all about. Beck is attacking Obama for partisan reasons, to get publicity, fame, and wealth, and the suckers who watch him have fallen for it hook, line, and sinker. The Process Of A Right-Wing Lie By: Steve - September 20, 2009 - 10:20am | If you ever wondered how a right-wing lie gets started, then all the sudden every Republican in America is saying it, read this. I will use Glenn Beck in my example, but it could be any right-winger, O'Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc. Here is what Beck said last Friday. BECK: You have what came out today, the outright lies coming out of the White House. I hate to call anybody a liar. It's the cap and trade energy bill. We want to thank our friend Chris Horner at CEI for pointing this out to us. Chris, watchdog, thank you very much. This is a document behind me. This is something that the Department of the Treasury did for the White House and the government, so, you know, they could be informed. I want you to take a look at the date. It's March 9th, 2009.And now the truth: On Friday, Beck fanned himself with a giant $1,761 postage stamp, claiming he had uncovered "outright lies" by a spooky White House. According to Beck, "buried" Treasury documents reveal that President Obama's clean energy agenda "is going to cost a lot of money." He thanked his friend Chris Horner at CEI for revealing the facts about the cap and trade energy bill. How did Glenn Beck end up waving a giant postage stamp, accusing the president of a cover-up. By following the same process that has been used to create other popular Glenn Beck conspiracy theories: that Carol Browner is a socialist, that millions of people marched in the Glenn Beck 9/12 rally, and that the EPA suppressed global warming skeptics. Step 1: Lie gets started by right-wing think tank. On September 15, the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Chris Horner begins shopping around two internal Treasury Department memos about cap-and-trade proposals, one written by the Bush administration in November 2008, one written in March 2009. CEI is a corporate-funded think tank that has opposed regulation of dioxin, cigarette smoking, global warming, prescription drugs, and alcohol. Step 2: Right-wing print journalists write breaking news story. Chris Horner feeds the documents to Amanda Carpenter at the right-wing Washington Times (The very same Amanda Carpenter who is/was the Internet Cop for the O'Reilly Factor) and libertarian blogger Declan McCullagh. McCullagh does a blog post that says this: "Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year." Step 3: The lie is picked up by Drudge, then the lie is repeated endlessly on right-wing blogs, Twitter, and talk radio. Last Wednesday, the Drudge Report promoted McCullagh's lie. The $1,761 figure is picked up by Politico's Ben Smith, Hot Air, Townhall.com, RedState, and hordes of right-wing Tweeters. Step 4: Republican politicians, right-wing think tanks, and polluter front groups release statements of shock and outrage. Despite the rapid response of the Treasury Department calling the story "flat out wrong" and "misrepresentations of the facts," the House Republican Conference, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK), the American Petroleum Institute, and the Heritage Foundation promote the lie. Step 5: On Fox News, Glenn Beck and other Republicans in the media and the Government call President Obama a liar/socialist/Marxist/communist/fascist. On Thursday afternoon, after discussing the story on his radio show in the afternoon, Beck rails for nearly ten minutes about President Obama's cover-up" and "outright lies." And now the facts: Last Thursday the Congressional Budget Office released a report that says the average household cost of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act would be 44 cents per day, or $160.00 a year per family. And that's not all, The revised analysis also determined that the least well off Americans would receive a greater net benefit than its previous projections. "CBO estimates that households in the lowest income quintile in 2020 would see an average gain of about $125 per household." By 2050, this net gain would increase to "$355 measured at 2010 income levels." A clean energy economy would enjoy massive growth, according the the CBO. The CBO projects that real (inflation-adjusted) GDP will be roughly two and a half times as large in 2050 as it is today. Glenn Beck and the other right-wing liars are spinning a paranoid fantasy in which Democratic members of Congress are either puppets of -- or conspirators with -- an out-of-control, spooky President. In the real world, the Congressional Budget Office has repeatedly found that a clean energy future can be ours for less than the cost of a postage stamp a day. And now you know how right-wing lies get put out, then repeated, and you also know the truth from the CBO, the truth they fail to mention, as they spin out their lies to make Obama look bad. Time To Cancel Time By: Steve - September 20, 2009 - 10:00am | If you subscribe to Time magazine, and you love your country, it's time to cancel your subscription. Time magazine put Glenn Beck on the cover and wrote a terrible article about him, Joseph A. Palermo wrote an op-ed with details about why the Time article is so bad. Time Magazine Gives Glenn Beck a Rave Review Time magazine's cover story on Glenn Beck by David Von Drehle is a clinic for journalism students who wish to learn about faux balance, false equivalencies, straw men, and omissions of important facts. Nowhere in this piece does Mr. Drehle mention the fact that 62 of Beck's sponsors have yanked their ad buys to distance their companies from Beck's recent charge that President Barack Obama has a "deep-seated hatred for white people." And although Drehle tells the story of Beck's successful effort at drumming out Van Jones from President Obama's green jobs team, nowhere does he bother to inform his readers that Jones had been a co-founder of ColorofChange.org, the group responsible for the advertiser boycott. These stories are all over the web so Drehle is either a terrible journalist or he purposefully omitted them. In the first paragraph, Drehle refers to crowd estimates of Beck's recent "9/12" rally in Washington, D. C.: "If you get your information from liberal sources, the crowd numbered about 70,000, many of them greedy racists." Drehle chooses not to include another Beck story that is also all over the web, of Beck speculating on FOX the morning after the rally that "the University of -- I don't remember" scientifically analyzed the gathering and estimated it to be "1.7 million" people. This lie was repeated by right-wing sources, including Michelle Malkin, throughout the news cycle that day only to be handily debunked. The statistician, Nate Silver, calculated the crowd to be about 70,000, and nowhere can be found any "liberal source" calling them "greedy racists." Drehle not only serves up a straw man in his opening paragraph but let's Beck off the hook for his wildly exaggerated claim of the size of his protest. Read more at: www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo.html New Gallup Poll Shows Town Halls Had No Effect By: Steve - September 18, 2009 - 11:40am | During the month of August when Congress was on vacation we saw the town hall meetings on tv, and we also saw the fake right-wing astroturf protesters, who were bused in by right-wing think tanks shouting people down and disrupting the meetings. Beck, O'Reilly and everyone at FOX News claimed it was making a difference, and that most people are now opposed to the Obama health care plan. They even cited a poll from IBD this week that said 62% oppose it, and 39% support it. But that poll has proven to be a fraud, and not scientific. Just scroll down my blog to read the details. And now the truth, Back in early August Gallup ran a poll on health care, that poll had 39% would direct their member of Congress to vote against it, and 37% to vote for it. And now a new September Gallup Poll finds that 39% say they would direct their member of Congress to vote against the healthcare bill, while 37% want their member to vote in favor. Showing the numbers have not changed at all, and that the town hall meetings had no effect. It was 39 to 37 in early August, and it's still 39 to 37 a month later. Proving that Beck, O'Reilly and his gang of right-wing stooges, were just making it up when they said the town halls were changing peoples minds about the Obama health care plan. It was all right-wing propaganda, from Beck and everyone at FOX News, none of it was true, they just made it all up. Kurtz Only CNN Anchor To Report Beck 9-12 Link By: Steve - September 17, 2009 - 3:50pm | While much of CNN's coverage of the September 12 protest in Washington has made clear that the event included accusations of Nazism and communism, unsavory references to Sen. Edward Kennedy's death, and what Campbell Brown described as "really ugly, vicious, racist imagery," CNN has largely ignored a central facet of the event -- the role Glenn Beck and Fox News played in organizing and promoting it. According to a review of the Nexis database, media critic Howard Kurtz is the only CNN figure to have noted that role, stating that the protest was "something that Glenn Beck practically conceived, promoted." KURTZ: Yesterday you mentioned -- you called them tea party protests -- there were these big conservative protests around the country, the 9-12 Project. That's something that Glenn Beck practically conceived and promoted. So what is Glenn Beck? Is he a talk show host, or is he the leader of a movement?CNN covered protests during at least 11 hours of its September 12 programming. On September 12 alone, CNN reported on the protests during the 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. hours of CNN Saturday Morning and the 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m., 3 p.m., 4 p.m., 5 p.m., 7 p.m., and 10 p.m. hours of CNN Newsroom. Beck, O'Reilly, Hannity, etc. pretend it was a protest done with no promotion from FOX News, or anyone who works there, while Beck started the whole thing, and the right-wing think tanks ran it. And even the so-called liberal CNN hardly mentioned it. The Current Glenn Beck Sponsor List By: Steve - September 17, 2009 - 3:40pm | More than 60 advertisers have now dropped their ads from Glenn Beck's show since he called President Obama a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred of white people." Here are his September 16 sponsors, in the order they appeared: * The National Republican Trust PAC * News Corp. (The Wall Street Journal) * Merit Financial * Superior Gold Group * Loan Modification Help Line * Wholesale Direct Metals * Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. * LifeLock * Clarity Media Group (The Weekly Standard) * Citrix (GoToMeeting) * Scarguard * Publisher's Clearing House * Imperial Structured Settlements * Schiff Nutrition International, Inc. * Eggland's Best, Inc. * Roche Diagnostics (Accu-Chek Aviva) * Ad Council * IRSTaxAgreements.com * Carbonite * Rosland Capital * National Review * Liberty Medical Fake 9-12 Protest Photo Exposed By: Steve - September 15, 2009 - 2:20pm | Tea Party protesters trying to tout the size of their march on Washington last weekend have been passing around a photo of a packed National Mall. But the picture is years old. Politifact asked Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, if the rally was big enough to fill that space. Piringer said no -- and moreover, the picture can't be from 2009.  The photo shows the crowd going far beyond that to the Washington Monument, which is bordered by 15th and and 17th Streets. But there's a really big problem with the photograph: It doesn't include the National Museum of the American Indian, a building located at the corner of Fourth St. and Independence Ave. That opened on Sept. 14, 2004. That means the picture was taken before the museum opened five years ago. So clearly the photo is not from the 9-12-09 "tea party" protest. "I've seen bigger crowds at Montreal Expos games, but I still wouldn't fake a photo just to justify your predictions of millions descending on Washington," said one Democratic media strategist. "This is grade-A stupid and just plays into the argument that these were astroturf protests to begin with. They've always brought the noise, but the question that was supposed to be answered this weekend was, could they bring the numbers? In that respect this was an unmitigated disaster." The photo had been circulated on blogs and Twitter. A number of conservative blogs have since taken the photo down. Some have corrected their posts. However, many of them are still claiming that at least a million people attended the march. It isn't the first failed attempt by the protesters to inflate the size of the event. On Saturday, FreedomWorks own Matt Kibbe announced on stage that ABC News had estimated a crowd of 1 to 1.5 million. ABC News had reported no such thing. Beck said if they get 200,000 he would consider that a success, so then he claimed 500,000 to 1.7 million were there, when the unofficial official numbers from the D.C. fire department are 60 to 75 thousand, so by Beck's own standards the protest was a failure. What happened is all the Republicans like Beck and Malkin predicted 1 to 2 million would show up, when only 75,000 showed up they just said 1 to 2 million were there, it's called lying. On top of all that, Beck said that you can not trust anyone in the media that lies to you, then he is caught lying that it was 500,000 one day, and 1.7 million the next. So using Beck's own standards, he can not be trusted, or Michelle Malkin and the right-wing blogs that also lied about the numbers. Beck Claims 9-12 Protest Largest March On Washington Ever By: Steve - September 15, 2009 - 12:20pm | On his September 14 radio program, Glenn Beck said this: BECK: You know, no newspaper is willing to give numbers, I think, more than 50 or 60 thousand -- unless you go overseas, and then you read the papers in the U.K., and they're saying between 1 and 2 million people marched on Washington. Let's just say it was 500,000. I mean, I would have thought it would have been a success at, you know, 200,000.Neither the Telegraph nor the Daily Mail quoted "a source from the National Park Service, saying that it is the largest march on Washington ever." In fact, the Daily Mail article said that the size of the crowd was "by far the biggest protest since the president took office in January," but did not quote a park service official making that claim or stating that it was the "largest march on Washington ever." A Washington D.C. fire department official said "he thought it was between 60,000 and 75,000" Official: The crowd "only filled the Capitol grounds, maybe up to Third Street." PolitiFact.com investigated whether conservative bloggers were falsely attributing a picture of a large crowd on the National Mall to the 9/12 events and concluded that they were. From PolitiFact: We spoke with Pete Piringer, public affairs officer for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Department, who said that the local government no longer provides official crowd estimates because they can become politicized. That said, on the morning of Sept. 12, Piringer unofficially told one reporter that he thought between 60,000 and 75,000 people had shown up.Beck even said this to a caller to his radio show: So don't worry about what you see in the mainstream media. Start keeping track of who you can trust and who you can't.Then Beck said it was 1 million, then 500,000, and now today he said it was 1.7 million. So how can you trust him when he cant even keep his lies straight, especially when the unofficial number was 60 to 75 thousand. The 1 million crowd photo they used is from a 1997 rally, and that crowd went back to 15th street. The Saturday 9-12 crowd only went back to maybe 3rd street, yet Beck, Limbaugh, Malkin, etc. all said it was 500,000 to 2 million. Even O'Reilly said it was 75,000, showing that even he would not go along with their lies. But he also took the highest number of the estimate, he did not say 60 to 75 thousand, he said it was 75 thousand, as if it was a fact, when it was just an estimate. Here is the video of Beck saying it was 1.7 million from today. Citing a university he can't remember, Beck now claims 1.7 million attended 9-12 protests. Beck Ad Boycott Cost FOX 600K A Week By: Steve - September 14, 2009 - 6:20pm | According to a press release by ColorOfChange.org: The advertising boycott of Glenn Beck has cost the controversial host over half of his estimated advertising revenue since it was launched by ColorOfChange.org a month ago. This according to data analyzed from industry sources. Estimated advertising revenue [the total amount of advertising money being spent during a block of commercial time for a program] was collected on a week-by-week basis for a period of two months. According to the data collected, the amount of money spent by national advertisers on Beck's program per week was at its highest at approximately $1,060,000, for the week ending August 2, 2009. ColorOfChange.org launched their campaign at the end of that week and since then, 59 advertisers have distanced themselves from Beck. Data collected for the week ending September 6, 2009 shows Beck's estimated ad revenue at $492,000, equal to a loss of $568,000. ColorOfChange.org launched its campaign against Beck last month after the Fox News Channel host called President Obama a racist who has a deep-seated hatred for white people during an appearance on Fox & Friends, remarks that they say indicates a pattern of race-baiting and fear-mongering on Beck's part. ColorOfChange.org called on its members to sign a petition urging companies who advertise on Glenn Beck to cut off their advertising support of his work. To date, over 180,000 people have signed the petition and 59 companies have pledged to not run any additional advertisements during Glenn Beck's show. Michigan Chamber Of Commerce Invites Beck As Keynote Speaker By: Steve - September 12, 2009 - 10:30am | On his show this past Wednesday, right-wing extremist Glenn Beck claimed, "The uber-left is in business with big business." But next Tuesday, Beck is keynoting a U.S. Chamber of Commerce forum in Michigan sponsored by several major corporations, including AT&T, Comcast, and Dow Corning. Although Beck's race-baiting and McCarthyism have led to a massive advertiser boycott, the largest business lobby in the United States has chosen to embrace him as the "dinner keynote speaker" for the 2009 Future Forum at Michigan State University's Kellog Forum on September 15th. Beck has called President Obama a socialist, a Marxist, and a racist with a “deep-seated hatred of white people. So it's no surprise that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, with its right-wing agenda of blocking health care reform, clean energy legislation, and workers rights, is embracing Glenn Beck's hate and fearmongering. Today, Beck is broadcasting live on Fox News from Washington D.C. to promote the 9/12 Project, Beck's tearful mobilization against socialism. The 9/12 march is bankrolled by right wing organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, FreedomWorks, the National Taxpayers Union, and GrassFire.org. These front groups are themselves backed by ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, HealthFirst, and other corporate titans who aim to maintain their windfall profits under the status quo. The top sponsors of the Michigan event are Comcast, AT&T, and Consumers Energy. AT&T is on the board of the Chamber of Commerce but has pulled its ads from Glenn Beck's show. Other Chamber members who have stopped advertising on Beck -- but are giving him a platform in Michigan -- include Aegon, CVS, State Farm Insurance, and UPS. Glenn Beck Is The New Joe McCarthy By: Steve - September 11, 2009 - 7:30am | From mediamatters.org: Glenn Beck has revived one of the most shameful chapters in American political history. Sen. Joseph McCarthy spent years ruining the lives of patriotic Americans serving in the United States government and beyond. He did it through fearmongering and baseless, unproven accusations. He combed the past statements and associations of loyal U.S. citizens and then shamefully accused them of being traitors bent on the destruction of the American way of life. At a time when conservatives are unable to find new leadership or present new ideas to address the challenges facing our nation, it is perhaps fitting that their media leaders and spokespeople -- individuals like Glenn Beck -- have fallen back on a 60-year-old slander: communist. Beck's forum consists of his radio program, his nightly show on Fox News, and his books. The witnesses he calls at his hearings form the endless parade of political demagogues he hosts as guests. Beck's fixation on a sinister communist threat undermining America's capitalist democracy would be entirely laughable were it not revealing of something more fundamental. Beck and the Right have consistently portrayed Obama as a Manchurian candidate bearing Trojan Horse policies. Thus, the president isn't a uniter but a secret divider. He doesn't love the America we have, hoping to improve it. Rather, he seeks to destroy it. He doesn't represent a triumph on America's path toward genuine racial equality. Rather, he seeks little more than obtaining reparations and the radical redistribution of wealth and power on a racial basis. Such a philosophy plays to the most distrustful -- and often, dangerous -- elements of our society. Beck will not stop with Van Jones. Yesterday he dedicated much of his show to Cass Sunstein, Obama's regulatory czar, whom he portrayed as a crazed animal rights activist who believes that rats matter more than people. As was the case with McCarthy, his distortions will continue unabated until the public recognizes his campaign for what it is: a witch hunt. As journalist Edward R. Murrow said of McCarthy in 1954, "We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men." Such words could, and should, be spoken, too, of Beck. Free Speech Bites Back At Glenn Beck By: Steve - September 10, 2009 - 1:30pm | Every day Glenn Beck talks about free speech and his right to say anything he wants to, that people should speak up because they have free speech. He spends an hour every day spewing out lies and propaganda about Obama and the Democrats, then he says he has the right to say it because this is America, and he has free speech rights. Beck claims to be Mr. Free speech, and Mr. Constitution, except when the tables are turned on him. When someone says something about him he does not like, he runs to his attorney and files a bogus lawsuit. Glenn Beck to Take Legal Action Against Domain Name Owner (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Radio and television host Glenn Beck has been the subject of an unfortunately named domain, glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com, which the site operator said is a parody of Beck's insinuation tactics. Beck, who's been known to accuse President Barack Obama of being a racist, and asking why doesn't he deny these allegations, however hasn't taken this joke lightly, according to an Ars Technica report, which goes into great detail examining the motivations of both parties as well as the possible legal turmoil that could arise. According to Examiner.com, however, Beck is not claiming defamation or libel, but rather a trademark violation. The rumor that Glenn Beck had raped and murdered a young girl in 1990 started on Fark.com forums and quickly spread to dozens of blogs before a Fark reader took the meme to a new level, registering the accusatory domain and launching the satirical website, which challenges Beck to deny the allegations. "We're not accusing Glenn Beck of raping and murdering a young girl in 1990 - in fact, we think he didn't!", writes the anonymous site owner. "But we can't help but wonder, since he has failed to deny these horrible allegations. Why won't he deny that he raped and killed a young girl in 1990?" ----------- There you go Beck, that's a taste of your own medicine, and you dont like it, well too bad, it's protected under the 1st amendment Mr. Constitution. And btw, if we use Beck's own argument since he has not denied it he is guilty, because that's what he said about Obama. Beck claimed that because the Obama administration does not deny what he says about them it must be true, which is ridiculous and insane. So that means if Beck does not deny he raped and killed a girl in 1990, it must be true. And I am not saying he did, in fact, I am saying he did not rape or kill anyone. I am just saying if you use Beck logic it's true, because he has not denied it. Which is the very same argument he uses about the Obama administration not disputing what he says. And how can you claim to support free speech and the Constitution when as soon as someone reports a rumor about you, the FOX attorney is called in to sue them. Here are two words for you Beck, suck it. Arianna Huffington Thanks Glenn Beck By: Steve - September 9, 2009 - 9:30am | Arianna writes this at the Huffington post: Thank you, Glenn Beck. By helping force the resignation of Van Jones, you have done a great service to your country. But in the exact opposite way than what you intended.And btw, yesterday on his show Beck admitted Van Jones was more dangerous out of the Government than in it. So he basically agrees with Arianna. Beck also went on the O'Reilly Factor last night and said the same thing. O'Reilly told Beck he did a good job in getting Van Jones to resign, and Beck said not really, because he thinks Jones is now more dangerous than ever. But O'Reilly also said he did not report on Van Jones because he is a nobody, a nothing, and a little guy not worth bothering with. So the great O'Reilly was glad Beck got Jones to resign, but he did not think he was important enough to report on. Of course Beck disagreed and went into his communist marxist crap again, and O'Reilly cut him off to say he already knows all that and dont care. I think Arianna and O'Reilly are both right, Van Jones can do more out of Government, and he was pretty much a nobody, until Beck started reporting on him. Now he is a lot more famous, out of Government, and he can do a lot more good for the country. So Beck actually helped him, because he will do a lot of good things now, and probably make a lot more money than when he was in that Government job. The Obama Speech To School Children By: Steve - September 7, 2009 - 11:50am | Following news that president Obama will speak directly to students next week in a special "back to school" address, media conservatives went absolutely apoplectic, calling Obama's forthcoming speech "indoctrination," as Glenn Beck put it. But Beck's comments were only the tip of the iceberg. Other right-wing idiots compared it to "brainwashing," communist China, and the Hitler Youth. Some went as far as encouraging parents to keep their children home from school. On Lou Dobbs radio program, guest host Chris Stigall said that he just didn't want Obama to talk to his kid alone. Then there was Michael Savage, the third most listened to right-wing radio host in America, who put it this way: "Hitler had the Hitler Youth, and Obama would like to have the Obama Youth." Laura Ingraham (the factor fill in host) called it indoctrination, as did her guest, Andrea Tantaros, saying of the president's speech: "They do this type of thing in North Korea and the former Soviet Union, very cultish." Ingraham also said the speech is "just another slick attempt to brand Barack Obama" as the savior of our school children." Her guest Monica Crowley said, "Just when you think this administration can't get any more Orwellian, here he comes to indoctrinate our children," and, "This is what Chairman Mao did." Fox & Friends even hosted a parent who plans to "keep kids home" from Obama's "indoctrination" speech, while the network's right-wing website FoxNation asked visitors "Will You Keep Your Kids Home the Day Obama Speaks to Schools?" Notice there is nothing political in it, all he does is tell the kids to do your homework, get good grades, and read books. Proving that the Republican idiots who called it brainwashing and indoctrination are partisan liars who should never be believed again. Here is the text of the Obama speech he will give to the nations school children. Here is a small part of the speech: That's why today, I'm calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education - and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a book. Maybe you'll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in your community. Maybe you'll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you'll decide to take better care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don't feel well, so we can keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.Full Speech Here: www.whitehouse.gov/PreparedSchoolRemarks/ Obama Special Advisor Van Jones Resigns By: Steve - September 6, 2009 - 10:40am | The AP reports that after weeks of constant attacks by the right wing, Van Jones has resigned as Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the Council on Environmental Quality. Below is the letter he sent to chair Nancy Sutley: I am resigning my post at the Council on Environmental Quality, effective today.On July 23rd, Glenn Beck began his crusade against Van Jones, calling him a communist-anarchist radical. He went on to rail against Jones approximately 20 times on Fox News in the past couple of months. Last Friday, Beck cited former black nationalist, avowed communist Van Jones as an example of the true danger of Obama's czars. Prior to joining the administration, Jones had co-founded Color of Change, an organization that successfully convinced 59 advertisers to drop Beck's program in just a matter of weeks after Beck called Obama a racist. And while the smear campaign did get Van Jones to resign, it will not change anything. Because Obama will just replace him with another liberal who will do the same job. All it did was make Obama and the liberals mad, and they will probably do something to get revenge. Then Beck and the smear job artists on the right will regret what they did. Glenn Beck Gets The Facts Wrong (Again) By: Steve - September 5, 2009 - 8:50pm | For a guy who claims to have the facts, he sure gets them wrong a lot. Yesterday Beck featured one of his patented spooky-music video packages, fearmongering about the Obama administration's so-called czars. "He has 37 czars to oversee and advise him directly," said Beck. "Never before have there been so many executive posts that were not confirmed by Congress and who answered only to the president." There is one small problem, Beck is lying. Here is a small list of the facts he had wrong: * In Beck's photo gallery of czars, he includes Elizabeth Warren, who is not even an Obama czar, in her position as chair of a Congressional oversight panel, works for Congress, not the White House.For people who dont know, when Beck uses the word czar, he is saying that man, or woman, was not confirmed by the Senate. Then he claimed all the Obama advisors are czars, which is just not true. Fox News has even admitted, the practice of presidents naming high-ranking advisers goes back as far as FDR. In fact, the debate over the role of unconfirmed Presidential advisers goes back to 1832, with critics accusing President Andrew Jackson of running a "Kitchen Cabinet" in place of the official one. President Bush was also a fan of czars, although Beck never complained about them back then. In fact, the Sudan czar is actually the U.S. Special Envoy to Sudan, and Bush appointed several people to hold that position. Bush had so many czars, in 2007 comedian Andy Borowitz suggested the White House needed a "lying czar" to oversee all the distortions and misrepresentations. With no complaints from Beck then. The sad part of this whole issue is that many of these same czar positions were there under George W. Bush. It is not unconstitutional, and Beck had no problem with any of them, until Obama the liberal was elected. It's partisan political bias, and nothing more. Not to mention Beck does not even have the facts right. The Greatest Video You Will Ever See Part Two By: Steve - September 3, 2009 - 9:50am | Everyone must watch this video, and part one. Glenn Beck is a lunatic, and these videos prove it. He claims that 70 years ago John D. Rockefeller had some art done with hidden communist messages meant to brainwash American citizens. Then he said he never even noticed it, and had a cameraman on his show say he had walked by them for 29 years and never even noticed it. Okay, if nobody notices it, how can it brainwash them? Beck also claimed that Rockefeller was not a capitalist, when the man was a businessman who founded Standard Oil, if that's not a capitalist I dont know what is. In every article on John D. Rockefeller he is always called a wealthy capitalist, or just a capitalist. Not to mention, Beck does not tell you that one of the art projects was seen as communist at the time, so Rockefeller had it taken down and destroyed. Then he claims to report the facts, when it's mostly lies. The Greatest Video You Will Ever See By: Steve - September 3, 2009 - 10:55pm | I nominate Keith Olbermann for an Emmy, because this was one of the greatest things I have ever seen on TV. This one video alone, proves that Glenn Beck is actually insane, and believe me he is not just pretending, he is truly insane. Conservatives Accuse Obama of Indoctrinating Kids By: Steve - September 3, 2009 - 10:55am | Numerous conservative media figures have baselessly accused President Obama of trying to "indoctrinate" America's children with his back-to-school speech encouraging students to succeed and persist in their studies. Sean Hannity claimed that "it seems very close to indoctrination," while Monica Crowley said "just when you think this administration can't get any more surreal and Orwellian, here they come to indoctrinate our kids"; similarly, Michelle Malkin claimed that "the left has always used kids in public schools as guinea pigs and as junior lobbyists for their social liberal agenda." In her September 2 Creators Syndicate column, Malkin claimed that Obama's speech amounts to recruiting "junior lobbyists." She also wrote that "parents have every right to worry about their children being used as Political Guinea Pigs for Change." During an interview with Malkin, Sean Hannity said on his show that the president's speech "seems very close to indoctrination." On The O'Reilly Factor, host Laura Ingraham said the speech is "just another slick attempt to brand Barack Obama" and that "it's a message being sent out by the Department of Education with these questions that without a doubt lead to the further branding of Barack Obama as a savior of our school children." Also during the segment, Crowley said, "Just when you think that this administration can't get any more surreal and Orwellian, here he comes to indoctrinate our children," and, "This is what Chairman Mao did, Laura. Discussing an art relief supposedly representing Mussolini, Beck said: "Gee, who is having indoctrination next week? Oh, yeah, that's right, the president, completely unrelated. This represents, at the time this was made, Mussolini. This was Mussolini. By the way, the artist that made this -- his son, ironically and tragically died fighting the army of Mussolini years after this was made." On September 3, the Fox Nation highlighted Obama's speech, asking whether he was "going after school children." The FoxNews.com article the Fox Nation linked to includes the headline, "Critics Decry Obama's 'Indoctrination' Plan for Students." And now the facts: In an August 26 letter to principals, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan described Obama's September 8 speech as being about "the importance of education" and "persisting and succeeding in school." Duncan also offered K-12 "classroom activities" to "engage students and stimulate discussion on the importance of education in their lives." In a post on his ABCNews.com blog, ABC senior White House correspondent Jake Tapper wrote: "The goal of the speech and the lesson plan is to challenge students to work hard in school, to not drop out and to meet short-term goals like behaving in class, doing their homework and goals that parents and teachers alike can agree are noble," a White House spokesman tells ABC News, "This isn't a policy speech. This is a speech designed to encourage kids to stay in school." In the same blog post, Tapper rebutted accusations from Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer that students will be "forced" to watch the speech. Tapper wrote: "Schools districts across the country have the option to choose if they show the President's address to their students." Videos That prove Glenn Beck is a Crazy Lying Fool By: Steve - September 3, 2009 - 10:20am | Beck shares "Worst Persons" silver for endorsement of parents keeping children home from school on day of Obama's address: Beck links Mussolini, completely unrelated Obama indoctrination next week: 11 More Sponsors Drop Beck By: Steve - September 3, 2009 - 10:00am | Eleven new companies whose ads were recently seen during Glenn Beck's program -- Binder & Binder, Capital One, The Dannon Company, Discover, HSBC, ICAN Benefit Group Insurance, Infiniti, Jelmar (manufacturer of CLR All-Purpose Cleaner), Jordan McKenna Debt Counseling Network, Mercedes-Benz and Simplex Healthcare (creator of the Diabetes Care Club) -- have pledged to ColorOfChange.org to take steps to ensure that their ads don't run on Beck's show. Fifty-nine companies have now committed not to support Beck's show since ColorOfChange.org launched its campaign four weeks ago. "We applaud those companies that have recently pulled their support from Beck," said James Rucker, executive director of ColorOfChange.org. "There are at least 59 companies who will not tolerate Beck's race-baiting comments and we will continue to reach out to those who are still supporting him." Glenn Beck Is Ignoring All the Good News By: Steve - September 2, 2009 - 10:20am | On the Glenn Beck show it's nothing but bad news, doom and gloom, the sky is falling, Obama is working with communists to destroy the country, etc. etc. etc. Day after day Glenn Beck is spinning out nothing but bad news about Obama and what he is doing to the country. Beck even claims he is just speaking the truth, and asking reasonable questions, as he ignores all the good news about what Obama is doing to fix the economy, and get our good name back in the world. Yesterday Beck said Obama is trying to destroy the economy on purpose, so he can put some liberal world domination plan in place, I kid you not, he actually said that. And now for some reality, to everyone reading this, go to www.google.com and type in "economy improving" and "home sales are up" then click news. Here are some of the headlines you will see. Bloomberg - US Economy: Factory Growth Signals End of Recession Chicago Tribune - Big employers growing confidence in economy Detroit Free Press - Auto sales hit 15-month high Reuters - US Spending Rebounds in August, Rising 3.5 Percent Gallup - Economic Weekly: Confidence Hits 20-Month High Richmond Times Dispatch - Economy improving Bizjournals.com - Study: August sees fewer job cuts announced Daily Finance - Reports indicate jobs cuts lessening as economy brightens AP - Consumer sentiment improves more than expected LA Times - Pending US home sales hit two-year high in July AP - Gain in consumer confidence sends stocks higher It goes on and on, nothing but good news. And yet we hear nothing but bad news from the Republicans like Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, all the Republicans in Congress, etc. etc. etc. It's all doom and gloom in their world, while out in the real world the economy is improving, the Dow is over 9,000, home sales are up, job losses are slowing, the Obama stimulus is working, and the recession is ending. And speaking of the Obama stimulus, Beck, O'Reilly, Ingraham, etc. all claim the Obama stimulus has been a total failure. They do nothing but trash it, and claim it's not working. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), has repeatedly claimed that the stimulus is "failing." O'Reilly said Obama does not know what he is doing, and his economic recovery plan is going to bankrupt the country. Ingraham said the stimulus has been a total failure, and predicted Obama would be a 1 term president. Beck claims that Obama is bankrupting the country on purpose so he can do some kind of liberal/communist takeover and turn America into France. It goes on and on, they are all saying the same thing, that Obama is a failure, and his economic stimulus is failing. Proving they are nothing but patisan right-wing liars, who are flat out lying to you. Because even the conservative Wall Street Journal admits the Obama stimulus is working, and that in the next 4 months to a year it will work even better when most of the money is spent. Just read this, then ask yourself who is telling the truth, Beck, O'Reilly, and Ingraham, or AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, and The Wall Street Journal, etc. WSJ - U.S. Economy Gets Lift From Stimulus 9-2-09 -- WASHINGTON -- Government efforts to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy appear to be helping the U.S. climb out of the worst recession in decades. The U.S. economy is beginning to show signs of improvement, with many economists asserting the worst is past and data pointing to stronger-than-expected growth. On Tuesday, data showed manufacturing grew in August for the first time in more than a year. "There's a method to the madness. We're getting out of this," said Brian Bethune, chief U.S. financial economist at IHS Global Insight. Much of the stimulus spending is just beginning to trickle through the economy, with spending expected to peak sometime later this year or in early 2010. The government has funneled about $60 billion of the $288 billion in promised tax cuts to U.S. households, while about $84 billion of the $499 billion in spending has been paid. About $200 billion has been promised to certain projects, such as infrastructure and energy projects. For the third quarter, economists at Goldman Sachs & Co. predict the U.S. economy will grow by 3.3%. "Without that extra stimulus, we would be somewhere around zero," said Jan Hatzius, chief U.S. economist for Goldman. ------------------- Now after reading all that think about what O'Reilly, Beck, and Ingraham are doing. Every night they do nothing but trash Obama and everything he does, claiming it's all a failure. While all the news headlines are positive, and they all say things are improving. Yet we hear nothing but doom and gloom from O'Reilly, Beck, and Ingraham, proving they are biased partisan right-wing hacks who will never report good news, because it makes Obama look good, and gives you a true measure of the state of the country. This is why you should not listen to what they report, it's all right-wing spin and propaganda. If you want the truth, turn them off and get your news from google news, or another news source. All the shows on FOX have an agenda, to make Obama look bad, even when things are improving, and the stimulus is working. Van Jones: Myth vs Reality By: Steve - September 1, 2009 - 2:40pm | As you know Glenn Beck has been smearing the Obama green jobs advisor Van Jones for a week or more. Beck claims he is a communist, marxist, revolutionist, anti-capitalist, who went to prison and was arrested for protesting the Rodney King beating. Pretty much all of it is a lie, and Glenn (the facts) Beck has almost no facts, and left out a lot of the facts. Eva Paterson, the President and Founder of the Equal Justice Society proves that Beck is a liar, she wrote an op-ed with the facts about Van Jones. Here are some quotes from her op-ed, compare that to what Beck has said and you will see what a complete liar Glenn Beck is. -------------- After smearing White House special advisor Van Jones for days on his show, Glenn Beck said on August 27, 2009: "I want to point out the silence; no one has challenged these facts -- they just attack me personally." Well, the White House is wise to stay above the fray but someone has to set the record straight. And as the person who first hired Van Jones, initially as a legal intern and later as a legal fellow, I am in a unique position to know the truth. And the truth is: Beck is fabricating his facts. For instance: several times on his show, Beck has said or implied that Van went to prison for taking part in the Rodney King riots. Van Jones has never served time in any prison. He has never been convicted of any crime. And just to be clear: Van was not even in Los Angeles during those tumultuous days. I know because he was working for me -- in San Francisco -- when the four Los Angeles police officers were acquitted in the beating of Rodney King. I was the Executive Director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area when Van was an intern. The verdicts came down on April 29, 1992. I remember Van (who was then a legal intern working with me from Yale Law School) coming into my office in San Francisco. Many of us, including Van, sat there together, listening to the news and weeping. The next day, when a peaceful march in downtown San Francisco devolved into chaos, Van left the area in tears. He was not involved in any destructive activity. He even penned an essay despairing of the violence and the state of the country. This is what really happened. On May 8, 1992, the week AFTER the Rodney King disturbances, I sent a staff attorney and Van out to be legal monitors at a peaceful march in San Francisco. The local police, perhaps understandably nervous, stopped the march and arrested hundreds of people -- including all the legal monitors. The matter was quickly sorted out; Van and my staff attorney were released within a few hours. All charges against them were dropped. Van was part of a successful class action lawsuit later; the City of San Francisco ultimately compensated him financially for his unjust arrest (a rare outcome). So the unwarranted arrest at a peaceful march -- for which the charges were dropped and for which Van was financially compensated -- is the sole basis for the smear that he is some kind of dangerous criminal. To imply that he was somehow a rioter who went to prison is absurd. Beck also bizarrely claims that Van was arrested in the Seattle WTO protests. That is just a flat-out falsehood. You don't have to take my word for it. Arrests and convictions are all a matter of public record. Beck is relying on Internet rumors or just inventing claims to boost his ratings. Beck is no more accurate with present facts than he is with past ones. Beck has said repeatedly that Van is some kind of a mysterious "czar," accountable to no one but the President. A simple Internet search shows that this claim is false. A March 10, 2009, press release announced that Van was hired by the Chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality - to work on her staff as a "special advisor." In other words, Van is within the normal White House chain of command, reporting to an office confirmed by the United States Senate, just like most White House staffers. Media outlets sometimes use the "czar" shorthand. But the facts show that Van has no mysterious role or extra-constitutional powers. Beck has implied on two occasions that Van Jones and other Obama appointees were not vetted by the FBI. False. I was interviewed in my own office by an FBI agent, dutifully vetting Van. Yet another fabrication on the part of Mr. Beck. Beck also claims that Van has somehow gained control over $500 million in Green Jobs Act funding and can hand out millions of dollars at his whim. Again, that is patently ridiculous. The law is clear that the Department of Labor has authority over the program, with normal rules governing the funds. Anybody who thinks that a lone government official can pass out money, arbitrarily and without oversight, knows nothing about our legal system. Perhaps more importantly: final authority at the Department of Labor lies with the Secretary of Labor. Anyone who thinks that a Senate-confirmed, Cabinet-level Secretary would cede control of a $500 million program to some mid-level White House staffer knows nothing about our political system. It is ridiculous. But I have to take on the worst one: Beck repeatedly and mistakenly asserts that Van is presently a communist. Once again, this charge is easily refuted - most obviously by the pro-business, market-based ideas Van has promoted for years, including in his best-selling book, The Green Collar Economy. Van's book is a veritable song of praise to capitalism, especially the socially responsible and eco-friendly kind. Over the past several years, Van has emerged as the perhaps the nation's chief proponent of using business-based solutions to create jobs and clean up the environment. In his book and his speeches, he highlights the key role of entrepreneurship in solving our nation's problems. Van believes in government clearing the way for private-sector innovation. In a YouTube clip, he said recently that progressives and conservatives should work together to find common ground and create a clean energy economy. Van said: "We are not promoting welfare. We are promoting work. ... We are not expanding entitlements. We are expanding enterprise and investment. ... We are not trying to redistribute existing wealth. We are trying to reinvent an existing sector, so that we can create NEW wealth - by unleashing innovation and entrepreneurship. This should be common ground." He has been preaching that gospel, in various forms, for years and years. Van Jones is the nation's "Green" Jack Kemp -- using business-based solutions to attack poverty. I found it interesting that Bill O'Reilly in his interview repeatedly asked Glenn Beck whether Van Jones' youthful views had changed over time. Beck never answers those inquiries and instead keeps insisting that Van has championed these ideas recently. Again, that is simply not true. Upon investigation, it turns out that Beck is quoting (out of context) an article that in fact makes the OPPOSITE point. The 2005 profile that Beck is flogging actually makes it crystal clear -- even in the headline -- that Jones has "renounced" his earlier views, matured and moved on. Van's transformation is the entire point of the piece, and it is impossible that Beck does not know this. Beck's unfounded attacks are misleading and false. All of us who know Van are very proud of him and the work he is doing to improve the lives of ALL Americans. He has touched and improved thousands of lives in the course of his career. Now he is in a position to help millions. He has dedicated his life to trying to make it better -- especially trying to uplift the poor, the left-out and the left-behind. In his book, Van draws a distinction between "cheap patriotism" and "deep patriotism." I highly recommend that chapter to Mr. Beck. The Glenn Beck Oligarhy Facts By: Steve - September 1, 2009 - 12:30pm | Last week Beck was doing one of his 5th grade style chalkboard presentations and he wrote this on the board. Oligarh Next to that he had some other words, the first letter of the words spelled out oligarh. Obama, Left Internationalist, Graft, Acorn, Revolutionaries, and Hidden Agendas. That spells OLIGARH. Then Beck said there is ONE letter missing, note that, he said there is ONE letter missing. Then he added a big Y to the end of Oligarh. So he then had this on the board. Oligarhy Ok, there is a problem, it's spelled Oligarchy. So when liberal bloggers pointed out what an idiot he is for spelling it wrong, Beck pulled an O'Reilly and went into the super spin zone. The next day Beck said the liberal bloggers were the idiots, because he claimed he left the C out on purpose. He claims he left the letter C out on purpose because it stood for Czars. Which is pure insanity, because on the show he said there is only ONE letter missing, then he added the Y. And if you believe that contact me right now, because I have some land to sell you. This is a classic Bill O'Reilly tactic, never admit you are wrong about anything. Even when you are, just spin it to claim the people who caught you are the idiots, not you. Instead of just admitting he is a moron who had a spelling error, Beck digs it deeper by spinning out some fairy tale that he left the letter C out because it stood for Czar. And why would he not want to use the word Czar, he has used it a million times before, so that excuse makes less sense than saying he left it on purpose. Beck is like all these right-wing talking heads on radio and tv, they spew out all this garbage and hope there are some idiots out there to believe it. And I bet every one of Beck's viewers believed him when he said he did it on purpose. Here is a message for those people, you are stupid, you are the people they talk about when someone says there are a lot of stupid people in America. Anyone who watches Glenn Beck and believes any of the spin and propaganda he puts out is a dope, a moron, an idiot, and just plain stupid. Not one thing he says can be proven to be true, it's all opinion, speculation, and propaganda. There are no facts, as Beck claims, it's all the biased spin of Glenn Beck and his all Republican guests. |
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