Showing posts with label Glenn Beck. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Glenn Beck. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Monday, November 1, 2010
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 30, 2010
At Least 250,000 Attend Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity
Image via Wikipedia
"A CTV story estimated the crowd size at 250,000, “In an impassioned 15-minute speech, Stewart told a crowd estimated to number at least 250,000, that their presence has restored his sanity.” Even the AP conservatively offered an estimate that the crowd size rivaled Beck’s, “Screens showed a variety of pundits and politicians from the left and right, engaged in divisive rhetoric. Prominently shown: Glenn Beck, whose conservative Restoring Honor rally in Washington in August was part of the motivation for the Stewart and Colbert event, called the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. It appeared to rival Beck’s rally in attendance.”
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Monday, October 25, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
Four Million Attend One Nation Working Together Rally???
Four Million Attend One Nation Working Together Rally! | NEWS JUNKIE POST
Well, conflicting reports abound. The Associated Press says Beck's was by far the bigger, and it seems to be in keeping with the facts. But just in case....
Well, conflicting reports abound. The Associated Press says Beck's was by far the bigger, and it seems to be in keeping with the facts. But just in case....
Friday, September 3, 2010
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Beck's Scam
Image via WikipediaFrom Firedog Lake's Glenn W. Smith: Glenn Beck's Sheep
Glenn Beck’s various endeavors are so superficial and insincere it’s difficult to understand those who fall for his scams. America, of course, has a long tradition of hucksterism. We are a credulous folk, ready to believe in any old snake oil despite the fact that they always fail.
One Millennial fool after another has promised that the end is nigh, but the world goes on. Never mind that. Just a detail.
Beck’s claim that he and his are responsible for the Civil Rights Movement is, of course, so ridiculous that if he uttered such a thing on Jeopardy he’d be laughed out of the studio. But, at his FoxNews home, it’s just the tea party ticket.
Even more troublesome are the anti-democratic billionaires and neo-medieval lords David and Charles Koch, Rupert Murdoch and others. They finance an extremist agenda that would eliminate Social Security and virtually all government regulatory oversight, slash their taxes and leave the middle class and the poor to finance and fight their necessary wars for oil.
Until last week, when the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer shined the light on the Kochs, the media has let them have their way with the nation’s political psyche.
But Beck’s (and the Kochs’) unsuspecting followers might be even more troublesome still, not least because they appear sincere in their willing conformity to the whims of their masters (all in the name of individualism). Reading the quotes from those in the crowd at Beck’s Lincoln Memorial celebration of historical heresy, I’m struck by a certain authenticity. They are true believers.
Leaps of logic and outright falsifications are common among all unquestioning believers. Consider this from Beck rally attendee Becky Benson:
The Beatitudes aside, I’m not certain what Jesus would do if he became Treasury Secretary or got a job at the Fed. If the Gospels are any indication, he’d probably smash some tables and invite the poor into dinner.Jesus, she said, would not have agreed with what she called the redistribution of wealth in the form of the economic stimulus package, bank bailouts and welfare. “You cannot sit and expect someone to hand out to you,” she said. “You don’t spend your way out of debt.”
Anyway, it doesn’t get us very far to simply ridicule Beck’s sheep or point out their foolishness. We could do much the same to every follower of every true believer movement in history. I hesitated to refer to them as sheep, but sheep they are.
They present just the sort of danger the Framers tried to guard against. Of course, they probably think the same thing about me. But I’ve got the facts of history on my side. Religious fanaticism, which seemed much in view at Saturday’s D.C. Beckoning, is undemocratic by nature. Fanatics demand conformity. The democratic spirit is essentially non-conformist and pluralistic.
I am sorry for the sheep, but I condemn the Beckian herders who lead them over cliffs for pennies. It’s a dangerous gambit. It threatens the social fabric as it seeks to undo democratic institutions and values.
While speech must remain protected, our national political conversation has to be informed by the insight that some views have no legitimate place within a democracy. We can’t outlaw such speech by law, but we can contest it, smartly, emotionally, effectively. Demanding conformity to one particular religious tradition is one such view.
So, of course, is racism, and racism is unquestionably playing a part in the emotion frenzy we know as the tea party. Mainstream journalists are reluctant to face this obvious fact. They want to make it more legitimate by saying the tea partiers are motivated by economic uncertainty or other more acceptable causes.
The extremes of bigotry and religious fanaticism have been legitimized as mainstream. That is the great crime of today’s media. There are important exceptions, of course. But for the most part the media hasn’t met the right wing nut it won’t showcase.
As for Beck’s sincere followers, I can only hope they see the edge of the cliff before they fall off of it. Meanwhile, we have to speak our own values with great clarity and volume. We have to quit leaving voids in the conversation that can be filled by self-promoting rascals like Beck and billionaire thugs like the Kochs.
We have to insist upon reason and law, but we also have to recognize that humans are wired for emotional responses as well. Reason, believe it or not, is not always right. By that I mean it is not, cold and alone, enough to turn the mind of a true believer. If it was, there would be no true believers.
From Digital Meeting Center: Glenn Beck DC Rally
Image via Wikipedia
From Digital Meeting Center:Glenn Beck & the Tea Party are in full throttle now after the 8/28 “restoring honor” rally captained by Glenn Beck, and most political pundits are calling the event a “message to the democrats” about having to run a tighter ship if they want to stay in power after November.
However, according to some in the Tea Party movement, Glenn Beck surprisingly is diametrically opposed to their core beliefs on several critical issues that most Tea Party supporters may not realize.
Glenn Beck Belief # 1: The Banker Bailout was a necessary thing and in fact, we should have even given them more money and power as a result of the financial crisis (that some say they caused).
The Tea Party movement is opposed to the government intervention in business and believes in truly free markets (not big business and big government working together). They believe strongly in “Main Street” and NOT Wall Street as a means to develop a sound local business that supports the community and everyone in it.
Glenn Beck Belief # 2: Preemptive, illegal wars are necessary and should be implemented whenever we see fit (AKA “the Bush doctrine”).
The Tea Party movement believes in strong national defense at our borders while at the same time having a responsible fiscal policy which means we simply cannot afford to meddle in the Middle East or other countries throughout the world in an attempt to promote our empire and way of life internationally. The Tea Party believes by developing a strong national defense at our borders that they can create a “utopia” of sorts inside the borders of the USA politically and economically.
Glenn Beck Belief # 3: We should not only pay the bankers through the bailout, we should also pay them a “VAT tax” that is applied across the board in all stages of production from start to finish in the USA so as to support them even further.
Tea Party supporters actually believe in the end of government created debt through the nationalization/elimination of the FED, which would effectively dissolve any need to pay interest on money we can issue ourselves debt free. While this concept may seem confusing to some, it has a long history in our government and now at this critical time with such mounting debt, it is becoming more of a political hot potato given the situation.
Recently Tea Party folks promoted this film regarding the national debt on their wikipedia page:
Because Glenn Beck opposes the true grass roots party on these issues, many have accused him of trying to “co opt” the movement for the Republican party. At yesterday’s 8/28 rally, Tea Party supporter Geoff Green said “Glenn Beck is like venom- 95% of him is fine but 5% of what he says is poisonous and deadly.”
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