The Glenn Beck Report

Glenn Beck has followers who hang on his every word and swear he’s the only one in media who is telling the truth. He hates to disappoint, but quite honestly, he’s not interested in politics unless there’s money involved.

An article penned by Lacey Rose to appear in the April 26 Forbes magazine states what should be obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention. Of course, Beck’s faithful are not paying attention, so they aren’t going to like this one bit. Glenn says “I could give a flying crap about the political process.” In fact, the only thing he appears to give a crap about is turning everything he touches into gold at the expense of gullible people who believe that he’s just some ordinary populist guy who got mad as hell and can’t take it any more.

According to the article, Beck’s business concerns took in $32 million (yes, 32) in the year ending March 1 2010. His primary stock in trade is paranoid delusional conspiracy theories, character assassination, outright lies, and fighting buzz words designed to put the deranged on the street with loaded weapons. Anyone reading this from a foreign nation may be surprised that Americans would spend this kind of money on this kind of bullshit. But you have to remember our history.

During the last half century we have undergone a massive upheaval of so-called “traditional values”. Those values still have a lot of support among certain groups, for example, Glenn Beck’s Mormon “church”. Racism and sexism are coded into their religion. Black people are cursed by God, and women know their place… or else. The Anglo population is predicted to become a minority during the first half of this new century, which is frightening to White America who identify this nation’s institutions, history, Founders, and so on as being lily-white as the driven snow. Just as America believes in American exceptionalism, white America believes in white exceptionalism.

Glenn Beck has figured out how to tap into this fear and loathing of change. Electing a half-black President couldn’t have come along at a more perfect time for Beck. Think of what he was doing just 2 short years ago at CNN. Sucking wind, for one thing. Now he’s such a darling for Fox that Rupert Murdoch is financing his show out of his own pocket.

All of this is transparent to the Beckerhead consumer. They don’t care about anything other than Beck offers an explanation for their misery and keeps stoking their fear. We like violence in this country. Don’t be surprised if there’s violence on the streets of Washington DC on April 19, the day that Beck’s TeaBaggers are going into the streets armed to celebrate the anniversary of Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing.

Anyone killed or injured in this process is just collateral damage. As long as it brings in more money, it’s good. All good.

David Frum is a well-known figure in the conservative political world. His last big gig was speechwriter for George W. Bush. Here is his reaction to those who approached health care reform by lying about it, reviling it, inserting outrageous amendments into it, and never, ever, EVER intending to cast a vote for it (or support it in any way). You might have seen some of these people at your town halls this summer, or Glenn Beck’s 1000 man march, or on the evening news with guns and holsters strapped to their legs, holding signs depicting Obama as Hitler or The Joker, yelling racial epithets, and claiming the the Democrats won’t be happy until there are Death Panels to kill you, your grandparents, and your children.

Here’s what David Frum says to YOU… (Listen up, Glennie-boy, he’s talking about YOU).

“No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Hmmm. “The most radical voices in the party and the movement.” I wonder WTF he could be talking about.

Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Mike Weiner Savage, Laura Ingram, John Boehner, Michelle Bachmann, Steve King, Eric Cantor, Virginia Foxx, Gretchen Carlson, Bill O’Reilly… the list is seemingly endless.

Frum is exactly right. The intellectual, moderate conservative movement has been shoved out the door by radical politicians and talk show hosts and the radical political entrepreneurs who host them on the airwaves. Rupert Murdoch and Gold Bond powder.

You tried everything you could to kill health care. You made up lies about it. You hired slick PR firms to come up with half a billion dollars worth of negative TV about it. You chatted it up endlessly as socialism, communism, baby-killing, anti-American, un-Constitutional, unnecessary, invasion of privacy, and so on. You lied. Oh, the lies were grand, the conspiracy theories were exquisite, and the whole lot of it did no good for you at all.

FAIL.

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To be continued….

I just learned today via The Progress Report that Glenn Beck has lost every single sponsor for his UK version of the show. The digest email that I get refers back to an article at Think Progress by Amanda Terkel, who quotes two of my cultural heroes. Those would be Color of Change and StopBeck.com. Please give them a click; they have been instrumental in the effort to boycott sponsors of Glenn Beck’s show and force him off the air. I consider myself a mere dabbler in comparison to these true warriors for justice.

IN OTHER NEWS….

Glenn went totally ape-shit over an Obama speech about job creation and the stimulus bill. The clip is amazing; insanity, personified.

A nice gent who goes by the name of Kevinge3 on YouTube posted this clip:

UPDATE!! This video can’t be embedded by the request of the poster, but the link below still works to take you to the YouTube video. I respect Kevinge3′s right to disable embedding, so when you go over to YouTube, please do 2 things: First, show Kevinge3 some love for editing this 30 seconds or so out and making a nice video, and second, don’t forget to come back!

Alpo, anyone? Everyone send Glenn Beck a can of Alpo, please.

I have been over to the 912 Project site (guilty pleasure, kind of like staring at an impending train wreck).

They had a link to an article about the “true” meaning of Thanksgiving… and it’s not what you might expect. The story is that the TRUE meaning of Thanksgiving is celebrating the Pilgrims’ freedom to practice… wait for it… capitalism after escaping European socialism!

I can’t find the link to the story and it’s not showing up in Google, but I swear I saw it with my own two eyes. If anyone finds a link to it, please email it to me… wexler@glennbeckreport.com.

OK, it’s Thanksgiving and my wife and I just prepared and ate a very nice dinner which we made with our own 4 socialist/secular humanist hands. I’ve done some thinking about that friggin’ article that was even too WHACKED for the 912 Project. Here’s my response to the notion that the Pilgrims came here to escape socialism.

You’re ignorant LIARS. The Pilgrims came here so that they could practice their own religion, not to practice capitalism. But they DID practice capitalism, and how! And if you want to know how American capitalism works, the indigenous people that sat with the Pilgrims during the first Thanksgiving dinner provide us with a PERFECT illustration. American capitalism works by using power and deception to take whatever you want from those who don’t have the means to defend it, and if they get in the way just go ahead and wipe ‘em out.

To whoever wrote that dumbass article, and also to whatever racist fool at the 912 Project website thought that it was a good idea to link to it because it had the word “socialism” in it:

Who do you think was living here BEFORE Europeans came and established American capitalism? Where did they end up, how did they benefit from capitalism? They were wiped out in a savage and shameful series of genocidal wars, exploitation of military power, even germ warfare. This is the DISGRACE of capitalism, it shows what it does to the people at the bottom.

Happy Thanksgiving, warpigs. Are you happy yet? Not quite, I suppose, there are still a few of us in the middle class hanging on.

http://www.firstpeople.us/photographs/Children-of-Quanah-Parker-Comanche-1892.html

In an amazing but not surprising turn of events, Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch has been caught on videotape PURPOSELY saying that Obama is a racist. And then he’s not a racist, OK?

If this seems familiar to you, it should. Glenn Beck started the controversy that has led to 84 advertisers boycotting his radio and television shows by calling Obama a “racist” and then immediately saying “I didn’t say he was a racist” when it’s obvious that 1) Glenn DID say it, and 2) Glenn IS a racist.

Here’s Rupert Murdoch doing the same racist dance.  This ought to ignite another round of outrage that spreads the boycott from just Beck’s absurd daily hate speech to the entire hate-filled Fox network.

Here’s a FYI: this clip from MediaMatters does not include the backstep dance that each of them made after the “racist” charge was leveled. Also, to be clear, Murdoch never did identify what specific remark he was claiming that Obama made which he considered to be racist.

I have been trying to do my due diligence to keep current with Glenn Beck’s smears, lies, antics, simplistic lunatic fringe gobbledy-gook like the “9 principles”. I could be busier with this, admittedly, but I’ve got another two websites to maintain not to mention trying to maintain my own sanity while wading through the Bizarro-World of Glenn Beck and his copious mouth. He churns out material faster than a pasture full of horses with diarrhea shoots out a substance with similar properties.

But I have waded into the 9/12 Project website armed with a posting account that seems like I need to get a new password every time I try to post there, and also the sense that there may be a few dozen folks lingering in the weeds who could use some mental health help. A lot of the people that go there are like me, more or less in the same category as rubberneckers who can’t rip back control of their eyeballs from the train wreck that’s happening before them. Judging by the posters, quite a few visitors are living the parodies of liberals’ mocking imagination; hate-blind, redneck, racist American Exceptionalism true believers who don’t quite get it yet that the power structure they’re working for is working against them. But some are genuine conservative thinkers, whose opinions are thoughtfully constructed even though their frame of reference is from another dimension.

The 9/12 Project website suffers from a lack of focus. First, it’s the home of the “9 Principles and and 12 Values”. If only Glenn had included “Truth” and “Reason” as values (or should those have been together in the First Principle?) We, The People”, its banner menacingly challenges, “Demand Answers.” Being Glenn Beck’s trans-Bectarded apologist site for the nationwide movement of teabaggers who showed up in Washington by the hundreds waving their guns and hate signs about our black President (or showed up by the millions in Michelle Malkin’s photoshopped mind) it has to include a certain amount of empty threats. Ho hum. Like the teabaggers are going to get into a shootout with the US government on our own soil. Maybe they ought to Google “Ruby Ridge” or “Waco” for some background info on how that works out.

But the 9/12 website is also a perfect demonstration of what happened when Americans and the media that disservice us got it through their heads that there was “liberal media bias” which needed to be corrected by “fair and balanced” news. The way this fallacious notion altered news reporting is both interesting and tragic. The interesting part is how so-called “hard news” journalists try to include opposing facts or opinions masquerading as facts in every news story. The rationale is that if the writer does this, they are giving themselves more authority by proving that they do not have an axe to grind. The problem with this is that most news does not have counterbalancing facts, it only has facts. When you are reporting on opinions, there are plenty of those on both sides, but facts are facts and they don’t have a liberal or conservative value. That’s the tragic part; Americans have now accepted reporting on opinion in an adversarial fashion to be “news”. Some people call this “infotainment”. There are better names for it. The best one is propaganda.

A quick survey down the index page of the912project.com will illustrate exactly what I mean. In the news… a link to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by lobbyist Joel Jankowski defending lobbyists against Obama’s policy controlling lobbyist access to the White House. Poor lobbyists, can’t get a break. Another link to a WSJ story about how “Organized labor appears to be gaining the upper hand in the skies and on rails, as labor and business battle for influence under the Obama administration.” A link to a web-published American Thinker article by Randy Fardal (who is clearly out of his ever-loving mind) who suggests that smart power meters could be used by “the bribable (sic) government” to turn off power to those who those who don’t support them. Next, a link to a Washington Examiner opinion piece apparently mistakenly put in the “news” column. This is the second piece (at least) that 9/12 has put up about the NEA funding “Obama’s agenda” and making a load of nefarious and meaningless connections between minor players in “ACORN-style groups” and the “President’s agenda”. I guess that rules out any paintings of black people, poor people, unions, or the words “Change”, “Hope”, and any combination of the above.

Continuing down the “News” column I founds something that truly shocked me. A link to an article on HuffPo by “Freddy Krueger” (played in several Nightmare on Elm Street movies by actor/activist Robert Englund). Englund’s article on HuffPo listed his “5 worst fears” and the top one was the lack of reality-based discussion on health care reform. This, he says, is because of fearmongering by teabaggers and other righties with their “pull the plug on grannie” lies. This story was linked in order to steer teabaggers to HuffPo to trash the comments section. Good luck. They’re moderating comments.

Next up, a link to a chunk of The Master himself, from the Glenn Beck Show where he crows about driving the Republican candidate for New York Congressional District 23 out of the race. Glenn says that this is proof that what he’s doing is working, and I hope he’s right. The more moderates they drive away from the GOP the sooner it will collapse. The very next incongruous link is to a GOP list of “new bureaucracies” that the “House Republican Conference claims are created in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care reform bill”. Of course, the Speaker doesn’t really have a bill, but that doesn’t stop them from listing 111 imaginary offices that they claim are part of some bill, with references to the bill. But a quick survey shows that they are double dipping to try to make something out of nothing. An example of this is listing an office and then listing each of its functions as a separate office. GOP dishonesty doesn’t seem to bother Glenn Beck except when he’s trying to bash them out of office.

Next we have a report entitled “First Coast Tea Party Hosts ‘D.C. Dirty Tricks’ Town Hall”. This reads like something a 5th grader would have written if the 5th grader knew nothing about American government. There are shocking revelations to be had within the aura of Glenn Beck. That’s because whack job Mormon millenialists see all kinds of things that regular people can’t see, kind of like cats. Here we have photos of the meeting. One of them shows a woman wearing a t-shirt proclaiming that just because she disagrees with Obama that she’s not a racist. Another shows the hall with approximately 400 white people in it and… how many black people? See if you can count them.

Running quickly down the column, we have a piece accusing Biden of “featherbedding” stimulus job numbers. Another piece about Van Jones accusing him of being tied to anti-Beck-Limbaugh-Fox group (so?) A scare piece by Robert J. Samuelson “Could America Go Broke?” in the WaPo. Another link to an opinion column by Norma White, who wants to sound like Andy Rooney espousing her opinion that the “change” that America voted for last November is a laundry list of righty populist ideas heavily loaded with anti-immigrant phraseology. Then another fear piece about swine flu and frightened patients, this included to stoke the fires for the necessity for everyone to pack heat, even in the doctors office. Last (thankfully) in the column, another article from American Thinker, this one by Clarice Feldman who claims that the American paradigm has been changed and the one that is being forced on us is collectivist. This is nothing but red-scare-baiting BS straight from the trickle-down economic sector of the GOP top 1%.

That’s just the “news” column. In the “video” column, a boatload of Faux News propaganda. While I was writing this, they put up the clip from the lying snake of a GOP Congresswoman from North Carolina Virginia Fox, who says that health care reform is a bigger threat to America than terrorists. (They updated the “news” column, too, but I can’t keep up with these lying SOBs, they can lie faster than I can type.) Next: 10,000 attend Tea Party in Houston. (yeah, right.) A propaganda piece by GOP Congressman Mike Pence invoking Reagan against health care reform as “government takeover” of health care. He says “Pelosi plan” half a dozen times and she has none. Pence is noted for gibberish. A piece by self-proclaimed grass roots organization named “Grassfire.net” which also lists Resistnet.com, two anti-Obama websites, details their attempts to crash the Senate Office Building with anti-health-care-reform petitions.

Next is the notorious Michelle Bachmann clip from her appearance on the Sean Hannity program where she states that she wants people to show up in Washington DC where they can “see the whites of their eyes”. Bachmann has previously suggested that teabaggers should show up for her “armed and dangerous”. Why do they have to see the whites of their congressperson’s eyes? So they can pull out their guns and blaze away, I suppose.

I expect that any website run by Glenn Beck or his minions would have a certain degree of insanity to it, and it doesn’t disappoint. As I am documenting on this site, the 9/12 Project itself is an attempt to manipulate people who are insane from fear into becoming tools for a particularly cruel and demented political/religious agenda. Feed their fears. Stoke them with conspiracy theories. Revive red-baiting, gay-baiting, race-baiting, the whole phantasmal convergence of right wing/Mormon nutjob perversion of human decency. Anything that doesn’t fit exactly into their weird, narrow worldview is labeled with some kind of a “communist” label. That includes people, especially black people.

There hasn’t been an external communist threat to America since the end of the Cold War and even back then it was the threat of accidental mutual annihilation. But that never kept Glenn Beck’s hero Cleon Skousen from seeing a red behind every tree and bush in America. And as Reagan would have said, “There you go again”. Reagan would have gotten a good chuckle out of the confusing interchangeability (to the 9/12vers) of the words “communist”, “socialist”, “black nationalist”, “fascist”, “Nazi”, and “progressive”. l find Beck’s harping on “progressives” to be completely amusing. Glenn, the opposite of “progressive” is “regressive”, which fits you to a TEE. The opposite of “social” is “anti-social”, which also fits Glenn nicely. I’ll bet when he was a kid he didn’t play well with others.

Enough of this already. I’m calling the 9/12 Project what it is. It’s dishonest and it’s full of disaffected GOP hacks masquerading as Libertarians. It is a flock of pathetic cowards trying to bully its way into power by showing up to public meetings waving guns and threatening signs. (Are you listening, “I Am The MOB” freaks?) It is infested with liars scheming to undermine the the earnest efforts of those of us who are frantically manning the pumps to keep us from sinking after 8 years of George W. Bush. And worst of all, the people I actually feel sorry for, are the whack jobs that have gotten sucked into the fear, spin, and lies machine fueled by Rupert Murdoch’s disdain for American culture even while he profits from destroying it. The whack jobs who believe that the only way to save America is to destroy it, the people who want to “take our country back” because there’s no way a black man could be President, the people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their children, all lost to the churning machine fueled by the top 1%’s greed and manipulation.

They seem kind of dangerous and sad, don’t they?

OK, I have had it called to my attention that Glenn Beck has repeatedly claimed that his wild-ass conspiracy theories and outright lies have never been disproved.

HOGWASH.

You may check back often to my page Glenn Beck Lies, where I will debunk his statements with the plain truth, an element that is completely lacking from his radio and TV shows, his books, his claims of being a religiously-changed person, and most of all, his character.

He is a liar, proven here and elsewhere. You are welcome to join me in this project by providing links to his phony statements, conspiracy theories, crackpot accusations, and lies. You can take credit or remain anonymous, all of your input is WELCOME.

Wexler

I’ve seen a lot of wakko stuff coming from the First Spokesbaby of the Mormon Waahbernacle. But this has got to be the lamest bad attempt at spin I’ve ever heard, even from Glenn Beck, which is saying a lot.

We need a bit of history on “net neutrality”. In a nutshell, what that means is when you request a packet of information or send a packet of information over the internet, it has an equal chance to pass through the system as every other packet sent or received. There are no preferences given to “paying customers” of the system because we ALL pay for it through our ISP charges, webhosting fees, and whatever other incidental costs to us as taxpayer/citizens.

The right wing business lobby has been licking their chops trying to change this “my packets are equal to your packets” system into a “pay for access” system where those who have money to spend (like corporations, for example) can pay off the internet services to give THEIR packets or packets of their choice PRIORITY over your packets. What this would result in is a multi-tiered system where popups, ads, and other commercial and business web traffic will go at high speed, your personal traffic will be down in the dumpster.

That’s the 10,000 foot overview. Into the discussion wades Glenn Beck, armed with an agenda but no real information, and RWNJ think-tank Americans for Prosperity toady Phil Kerpen, who is obviously no expert on anything except blowing smoke up the colon of America. Watch the clip:

OMG. Did I just hear Glenn say at 1:13 that net neutrality is analogous to “I don’t remember anybody saying in the 1930s that everybody had a right to radio and we gave away free radios through the government, and I don’t remember anybody saying in the 1950s that everybody had the right to free television but that’s where we’re headed now.” Oh, Glenn, you are such a FAIL. Your analogy is a total failure. It’s not even close to what net neutrality is about. First off, your straw man argument is phony because it’s based on the falsehood that there is a proposal to give away free televisions. Where did you hear that one, Glenn? LOL it must have been the voices that got through your tinfoil hat.

Further, your analogy FAILS because your dumbass attempt to confuse the medium with the hardware crumbles under the weight of its own stupidity. Broadcast media is one-way communications that is paid for by commercials or taxpayer funds. Internet traffic is two-way communication that allows people to send and receive content from their own hardware through the public internet system. What you’re proposing to do is to make it a PRIVATE system where members of the general public will have to pay $$ to private companies if they want to have equal access to the system. In other words, you are doing what you ALWAYS do, which is tout the AMERICAN CASTE SYSTEM.

What you ramble into at 2:50 is paranoid anti-government ranting (well, ALL of your ranting is paranoid and most of it is anti-government so this is stating the obvious) about how the FCC wants to take over television so it’s “all like the BBC”. FAIL. There is NOBODY in the FCC who has ever thought that, Glenn. You are a moron for saying it and your moron righty astroturfer Phil Kerpen is an asshat for agreeing with you. Laughable!

Glenn says you have to wait until tomorrow to find out whose behind the “conspiracy” to take over the internet. I don’t make you wait, you can see it all in the video and widget below. No waiting required.

Just in case you have any doubts about net neutrality, and why it’s really the only way to go, please watch the following video. It will take about 5 minutes.

Also, you might enjoy this widget, which interactively allows you to see the groups who are actively trying to make you pay extra for your bandwidth. You know the commercial where the brown-haired woman gets pissed off about a few cents tax on soda and then leaves the trunk open? If the people in this widget get their way, you’ll WISH it was just a few cents. Enjoy.

Glenn couldn’t let go of the tongue-lashing that Fox News got from Anita Dunn without a GOPER-style slimefest. Of course, if anyone says anything bad about him, there must be something WRONG WITH THEM. So he sent his minions out to see if there was anything they could find on MS Dunn. He told them to dig deep, drive their Lexus to the Nexis!

The minions came up with a video where MS Dunn is speaking to a group of high school students. In the speech, she states that she is an admirer of Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa. That’s it! That’s all the proof Glenn needs to PROVE WITHOUT A DOUBT that Anita Dunn is just another one of Obama’s socialists! She says it in the video, no kidding! She says she admires and turns to Mao… but… why? How did Anita Dunn become an admirer of Mao?

If you think you can find out from Glenn Beck, you’re wrong. He won’t show you where she takes the line of thought, he only plays the clip long enough to make it seem that all she does all day (when she’s not watching his show like a TV lizard) is read Mao, Stalin, Hitler, and who else? Glenn has TWO stacks of books he says came from his office and he claims to have read them all! More on that in a minute.

Anita Dunn was making a point about how to choose your decisions carefully. Glenn wouldn’t understand the point, because he can’t. He’s not wired for it. He’s not wired for honesty, either. He takes Dunn out of context (obviously) and then starts cramming words, er, books into her head! In the second stack of books Glenn brought in “from his office” he has the Bible, books about American icons like Washington, Adams, and so on. But… he does NOT mention the Book of Mormon. OK, I really don’t care about the religion, it’s all pretty much crap to me. But why does Glenn Beck bring in the Bible but not the Book of Mormon, the book that changed his life? Because he’s a LIAR, that’s why. The Book of Mormon only pops up when Glenn is raking in cash from the faithful.

Glenn goes way off the leash here with a wild claim that he is responsible for the announcement that Anita Dunn will be leaving the White House staff. Oooh, they’re scared of you Glenn! They’re going to let her go because YOU called her a Maoist Marxist Socialist Communist Fascist! They are so scared that they won’t call the Red Phone!! Head for the hills, Anita, Glenn Beck is after you!

Sigh. If only it were true, you’d be such a hero, at least in your own mind. But Glenn, if you weren’t so busy daydreaming about the Mormon afterlife, you could have just used the Google to find out that she is interim White House Communications Director and will be leaving at the end of the year.

Pffffffffffft. That’s the air escaping from the blow-up clown doll that is Glenn Beck.

Update 10/19/09

Media Matters is undoubtedly one of the finest sources of news media fact-checking. If you have perused this site, you will have noticed that some of the video links are from their site. Bless ‘em.

Their Research Department came up with the full quote from which Glenn Beck dishonestly put together the video that made it appear that Mao is Anita Dunn’s go-to guy. As I reported above, Beck used a portion of the video to make it seem that she is an acolyte of Mao and then started a rant about what books she reads when he has no way of knowing that and his assumption is based on a false premise that he knowingly created.

But once again Glenn Beck is busted by the inconvenient truth. This time Media Matters came up with the whole video, which is something I was planning to do Monday but I got busy with students. So here’s the real quote:

A lot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together, and that answers the “Why not?” question. There’s usually not a good reason.

And then the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you’re going to make choices. You’re going to challenge. You’re going to say, “Why not?” You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here’s the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else’s.

In 1947, when Mao Zedong was being challenged within his own party on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side. And people said, “How can you win? How can you do this? How can you do this against all of the odds against you?” And Mao Zedong said, you know, “You fight your war, and I’ll fight mine.” And think about that for a second.

You know, you don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices and paths, OK? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what’s right for you. You don’t let external definition define how good you are internally. You fight your war. You let them fight theirs. Everybody has their own path.

And then Mother Teresa, who, upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person who asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta, responded very simply: “Go find your own Calcutta.” OK? Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you, the challenge that is actually yours, not somebody else’s challenge.

The reason I knew that Anita Dunn had said that she was talking about making the point about choices was that Beck himself aired a longer portion of that cliop on his October 15 show. I got the link to the original report from Twitter, from @Moms4GlennBeck (watch them block me). Beck went on to clip the video for his shocking “special report” and then start his character assassination attempt against Anita Dunn, who was the first from the White House to point out that Fox in general is NOT a news organization.

There has been some news show chat with talking heads wondering why the White House would take on the yucky task of cleaning Fox News off of their shoes. I suspect this was a shot fired across Rupert Murdoch’s nose to let him know that Fox stands to lose their press credentials (meaning they would not be allowed on Air Force 1 or in press briefings) if they don’t clean up their act. Time will tell.

It’s Not Really About America or Socialists After All

In a somewhat less-than-shocking expose of Man-Baby Glenn Beck’s phony crying bit, it turns out that it’s less about loving America and more about Vicks Vapo-Rub.

At the beginning of this photo shoot, which was inexplicably done to capture portraits of Glenn Beck weeping (WTF?) photographer Jill Greenberg walks into the picture and applies Vapo-Rub under both of Glenn Beck’s eyes to make them water.

Glenn then apes for the camera, striking poses to depict a wide palette of waterworks-producing emotions from sorrow through anger and tears of joy to cursing God (how’s that Mormon thing working for ya, Glenn?) The God-smacking Beck pose can be seen at 2:22 in the video.

I realize that since I started this website a couple of weeks ago, the garbage is piling up. I think I may have been mistaken; he’s not anything that needs to be debunked, he’s a mindless buffoon who does nothing but fool a few other buffoons and occasionally provoke an indignant response from anyone who can think.