Rocker Ted Nugent, who is the subject of a Secret Service investigation into controversial comments he made about President Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats, appeared on Glenn Beck’s radio program on Wednesday where he denied that he had ever threatened anyone

Conservative commentator Glenn Beck recently declared that most people were “in bed with absolute evil” because America was becoming a more secular society and getting away from conservative principles taught by the Bible.

In a Thursday segment of the Christian television show Life Today, Beck and a group of panelists explained that many Americans had forgotten that the country’s Founders had created a Christian nation.

“One of the problems we have even as Christians is I’ll guarantee you most Christians cannot tell you the two parables Jesus taught about capital gains tax, nor can the tell you the four verses in the Bible that condemn the estate tax, nor can they tell you what Jesus said in Matthew 20 about minimum wage,” evangelical Christian minister David Martin, who is a former co-chair of the Texas Republican Party, explained. “We let the secular people tell us how economics is supposed to be run. God told us how to run economics.”

 

Keller, who in 2007 was in the national news after coining the phrase, ‘A vote for Romney is a vote for Satan,” said, “It is sad to see a man of God like Franklin Graham go into the nation media and state that he would vote for a cult member like Romney whose beliefs lead the eternal souls of men to hell. Osteen is a gutless coward, nothing more than a motivational speaker, who ignorantly lies to people by saying that a Mormon is a Christian, when Mormon doctrine is 100% inconsistent with Biblical Christianity. Starr, well known for his Christian views, made the political case why he could vote for a Mormon without once dealing with the spiritual implications of having a cult member as President.”

Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich had a tense head-to-head earlier this week. The two sparred on multiple topics, but the final straw for Beck was apparently when he asked Gingrich to name his favorite president. Gingrich answered Theodore Roosevelt, and as a result, Beck has decreed that Gingrich is a “progressive”.

On these grounds, Beck has declared that Gingrich is the only one of the current crop of Republican hopefuls for whom he could never vote. In an appearance on Fox Business Channel’s Freedom Watch with Andrew Napolitano, Judge Napolitano agrees with Beck, calling Teddy Roosevelt “the original Nanny State-r” and echoing Beck’s assessment of Gingrich as a stealth progressive.

 

Radio host Glenn Beck Wednesday joined a chorus of conservatives who are outraged that the new Ultimate Spider-Man is half black and half Latino.

But Beck went even further, speculating that the new superhero incarnation may be the fault of first lady Michele Obama.

“He looks just like President Obama,” Beck complained. “This one is half Hispanic and half black. Do I care if he’s half Hispanic, all Hispanic? No. Half black? I don’t care. I really don’t care. Half gay, all gay? I don’t really care! It’s a stupid comic book.”

 

This is the narrative that's gradually building on the Right as a counter-narrative to the obvious point that if Obama uses the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling, it will be because Republicans in Congress failed to act. No, instead, it will be because he is intent on seizing dictatorial powers.

And for that, they will then argue, he must be impeached.

Andrew Sullivan lays it out:

Here's the scenario. The House GOP pushes for completely unserious Boehner plan (including a balanced budget amendment) that they know will be vetoed; they then filibuster the Reid plan in the Senate, forcing Obama to invoke a 14th Amendment executive prerogative, which they will then turn around and impeach him for.

Far-fetched? I hope so. But every time you think you have reached the end of Republican extremism, they manage to move further out of the solar system.

 

Conservative radio host Glenn Beck said Monday that a Labour Party youth camp that was attack in Norway Friday “sounds a little like the Hitler Youth.”

“Saturday I was following the news of the shooting in Norway and the explosion in Norway, which happened what on Friday,” Beck recalled. “When we heard the explosion everybody was willing to say, it’s Muslim extremists, it’s Muslim extremists. I don’t think we made a comment on it because we didn’t know other than a bombing had happened, and as the thing started to unfold and there was a shooting a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler Youth or you know whatever. Who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing. But, anyway, so there’s this political camp and so crazy man goes and starts shooting kids.”

 

Fox News’ super sensitivity to 9/11 victims’ feelings has been thrown out the window now that there are allegations that another media arm of parent News Corp. may have illegally hacked into their phones. Instead of wondering whether or not that really happened and to whom, most of the Fox News Watch panel yesterday (7/16/11) was busy promoting their own victimhood and pre-emptively discrediting any federal investigation as a product of anti-Fox News bias in the Obama administration. Classy!

The discussion started with a news report of supposed proof that the White House has an anti-Fox agenda – and never mind that the report concluded with a quote from a Fox News executive saying that the acrimony was in the past. I suppose it would have been too much to ask for Fox’s media-critique show to consider whether there’s any bias against the White House by Fox.

 

Today on Glenn Beck, Beck continued teaching American history in ways modern Americans can understand. It was the second day in an ongoing series of his recently that coincides with the release of disturbing history test scores from our country’s youth as well as the release of his new book which is coincidentally about teaching American history in ways modern Americans can understand. This episode opened with him defending his old friend Sarah Palin from claims that she really screwed up the story of Paul Revere. Sure, that’s kind of an old story at this point, but Beck had an interesting spin on it; apparently all of our historians are lying to us for political reasons.

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck defended himself against claims from some that he was pointing at a picture of President Obama and urging his viewers to get a gun. Specifically, sinceMSNBC’s Ed Schultz claimed Beck went ‘way too far’ this time, Beck singled out this “piece of trash” as exemplifying what’s wrong with television and why he’s happy to be leaving it.

America's kids don't know jack about the Constitution, and according to a national Tea Party group, the only way to save them is to have school's teach the nation's founding document with materials provided by a controversial conservative group whose founder is one of Glenn Beck's favorite historians.

Tea Party Patriots, the Georgia-based organization that counts around 1,000 chapters nationwide, is asking its members to pressure schools to teach the Constitution during Constitution Week in September, as they are required to do by a 2004 law.

 

You’ve probably heard at this point that Glenn Beckis on a bit of an Israel kick. That’s involved spending as much time as possible explaining to his viewers why they should care about the plight of our friends in the Middle East. One of the main ways he’s done that is by comparing the much touted “Arab Spring” occurring in the region to the rise of Adolf Hitler in the 1930s. Of course, if the governments springing up in countries like Egypt are the Nazis, what does that make people like our President who is giving a speech supporting the “Spring” tomorrow morning? Well, Beck made his former insinuations clear by comparing President Obama and the Left to American Nazi appeasers of the last century.

On his radio show Monday, Glenn Beck announced that he'll be holding a "Restoring Courage" rally this August in Jerusalem, which he said would be a "life altering event" that the "very gates of hell" would try to prevent.

A post on his official site explains: "Taking a stand is not always easy, but now more than ever it is imperative that we live with conviction and do the right thing. It is time for us to courageously stand with Israel."

 

The ongoing feud between Fox hosts Glenn Beck and Mike Huckabee shows no signs of slowing down as Beck slammed the former Arkansas governor as unqualified to run for the President on Friday.

To recap the story so far: Earlier this week, Beck called Huckabee a "progressive" for supporting Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. In response, Huckabee issued a lengthy and hard-hitting condemnation of not only Beck's statement but his entire conspiracy-laden ouevre.

He's losing it.

It's only a matter of time before the men with the strait jacket show up. In Beckistan, not only is world controlled by Soros-funded liberals, but the GOP now wants to "politically assassinate" him and his fellow truth tellers, Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin.

On his radio show today, Glenn Beck claimed that the Republican Party is out to politically assassinate him, Sarah Palin, and Michele Bachmann. [..]

Only someone with a profoundly warped view of women could possibly make the statement Glenn Beck made this morning on his radio show. In a sickening rant, Beck actually mocked women who depend on Planned Parenthood for health services — and said they must be prostitutes.

There's always been an element of crazy in the United States, I think, and a lot of that crazy has come from the religious right. But I never would have guessed in a million years that electing a black man as President of the United States in the 21st Century would call forth the kind of crazy that we've seen over the last two and a half years. It's been pretty staggering watching the right in this country lose their collective mind over one election, one man.

But we're seeing a weird convergence of craziness between the Tea Partiers, Evangelicals and a bizarre strain of Mormonism as spouted by Glenn Beck. In an article at AlterNet, Alexander Zaitchik lays out the beliefs of the National Center for Constitutional Studies, a Mormon backed organization that is enjoying a renaissance of sorts thanks to Beck's 9.12 Project and his advocacy of its tenets on his nightly program. It's a system of belief that seeks to rewrite history framed by a certain theological worldview, not historical fact, and it's appealing to a much wider audience outside of the Mormon faith, drawing in people from the religious right who would normally look at Mormonism as cultish, and Tea Partiers who believe in smaller government or libertarianism, but who might not necessarily be religious.

People! Beloveds! Glenn Beck is absolutely right.

There is indeed manifest glory all around! There is divine meaning, electric significance, cosmic text messaging blasting forth this very instant from all over the world, nay the universe, both negative and positive, radiant and dangerous, Shiva and Shakti, all whirling in a great cosmic dance, from parking space to porn star, Libyan uprising to nuclear meltdown, Wisconsin insult to Indian holi festival to the very first gasping, sputtering breath of Spring.

I am delighted to share this wisdom, this sacred thrust and thrum, with the infamous Glenn Beck! I had no idea the renowned right-wing fudgeball was, like me, also a burgeoning neo-pagan tantrika with a mystical, metaorgasmic, well-caffeinated alchemist edge, studying and practicing and soaking in the universal Spanda, the eternal vibrational wisdom of the ancients.

It's time for a change of lyrics in that kids' praise song, "J is for Jesus." According to Rev. Franklin Graham, J is not only for Jesus, it's for Japan as well.

The evangelical, son of Rev. Billy Graham and president and CEO of Christian charity Samaritan's Purse, appeared on Newsmax.tv to talk about his charity, how charming he thinks Glenn Beck is (very), and that the Bible tells us natural disasters are heavenly signs.

Glenn Beck was eager to encourage his viewers to "prepare so you'll survive" and to not be lazy and "do the hard work." What better way to drive his points home than through a dramatic retelling of "The Three Little Pigs." Complete with Mr. Rogers music and a sweater, Beck unveiled his own very unique version of the classic fairy tale.

After planting his foot firmly in his mouth with his recent birther dog whistle saying that Obama has a "troubling" "perspective" because he grew up in Kenya – and then offering the dubious "explanation" that he meant to say Obama grew up in Indonesia - Mike Huckabee went on The O'Reilly Factor last night (3/2/11) for a Fox News dose of Republican Rehab. I suspect O'Reilly was chosen as Rehabilitator because he has the top show and because he's not anything like the kind of Obama basher that Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck are. So when O'Reilly validated Huckabee's underlying theory that Obama is not quite as American as the rest of us – because he "grew up" in Indonesia - not Kenya, as Huckabee originally said – maybe Fox figured its viewers would not shrug it off as just another anti-Obama diatribe. But how did that anti-British "perspective" that Huckabee blamed on Obama's childhood in Kenya, fit into the "corrected" Indonesia childhood? Conveniently, O'Reilly never asked.

On Fareed Zakaria GPS, George Soros responded to the attacks being made against him by Glenn Beck and Fox News and he weighed in on the so-called "tea party" members being duped by the big monied interests pulling their strings. Sadly the network this aired on isn't far behind Fox with the propaganda and the promotion of this astroturf Republican rebranding effort called the tea party.

ZAKARIA: So, George, Glenn Beck has been on this kick that you are actually the mastermind who is trying to bring down the American government. How do you react when you see this kind of thing?

SOROS: Well, I would be amused if -- if people saw the joke in it, because what he is doing, he is projecting what FOX, what Rupert Murdoch is doing, because he has a -- a media empire that is telling the people some falsehoods and this -- and leading the government in the wrong direction.

Apparently not content with his original musings on the popular uprising in Egypt (" The entire Mediterranean is on fire.") Fox News host Glenn Beck has expanded the scope of his theories to include the sinister engineers at Google, about whom he says:
May I recommend if you're doing your own homework, don't do a Google search. It seems to me that Google is pretty deeply in bed with the government.

A defiant Glenn Beck, recently found a new mantra, which really amounts to the same old conspiratorial mantra--with an Egyptian twist.
Regarding the increased upheaval in Egypt after President Mubarak gave a patronizing speech to the Egyptian people, when he talked of transferring power to the vice-president, but refused to resign—Beck had this to say on his show Thursday night:
"You are watching the beginning of a new world order. Call me crazy?...(sigh)…go to hell!"

Neoconservative columnist Bill Kristol called out conservatives, and in particular, Glenn Beck, for fear-mongering about the unrest in Egypt, saying that "when Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate taking over the Middle East from Morocco to the Philippines, and lists (invents?) the connections between caliphate-promoters and the American left," he's "marginalizing himself."

As MediaMatters has documented, Glenn Beck has been on a conspiracy theory rampage since the protests broke out, characterizing them as a plot by everyone from the "Socialist Communists," to the "Marxist Communists," the "uber-left," "the Anarchists," "the radicals," and, of course, the Muslim Brotherhood.

Rachel Maddow and The Nation's Chris Hayes discuss whether Fox's misinformation campaign and spreading of outlandish conspiracy theories, led by Glenn Beck, is damaging our discourse on American political and foreign policy.

Beck is so far off the rails this week I don't know how anyone who isn't mentally unstable could take anything he says seriously.

In an interview with Kelly, Democratic strategist Richard Socarides pointed out that Cohen wasn't the only one to invoke Nazis.

"If we want to get into who is heating this and overheating this, I mean every night on the very network we're on right now, the leading commentators on this network use this kind of language," he explained.

"That's not true, Richard," Kelly shot back. "I don't know if you sit and watch our programming every night, but I watch it every day, and you're wrong."

"Megyn, I watch it every day, too," Stewart noted. "12 long years. I think he might be right."

The Fox News Channel announced today that it would mark Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech by airing an opposing view.

"For years, 'I Have a Dream' has been synonymous with the legacy of Martin Luther King," said the official Fox statement. "We can think of no better way to honor that legacy than by offering a strongly-worded rebuttal."

Calls for a reduction in violent political rhetoric have plunged the Fox News Channel into chaos, with a Fox spokesperson warning today that such a move "would leave us with 24 hours to fill."

"Let's not underestimate the giant hole this would create," said spokesperson Carol Foyler. "Fox without violent rhetoric would be like The Weather Channel without maps."

Ms. Foyler said Fox was preparing for a "worst-case scenario" in which it was pressured to air responsible statements in place of its current programming: "If it comes to that, God forbid, we'll just air 24 hours of 24."

upert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and Fox TV is to the media business what Ray Kroc, McDonalds founder, was to the restaurant biz: A purveyor of mental junk food. We in the news business fail, much as the restaurant business did for years, because we chase quick profit and fail to show you the nutritious news to feed your mind and preserve our freedom.

Murdoch and his lap dog, the political pit bull Roger Ailes, president over at Fox News, win largely because we who publish in the rest of the media lose, are lost, economically, intellectually, and socially adrift.

For those who traffic in political absurdity, there's never a shortage of material. Regardless of who's in power, our elected officials are forever saying and doing outrageous, offensive and just plain moronic things, and every year brings its quota of hideous behavior. Still, it seems that the hate-spewing hordes of 2010 - with their hysteria about the non-Ground Zero non-mosque, their virulent anti-immigrationism, and their unbridled racism - have presented us with far more than the usual amount of arrogant ignorance, bald-faced bigotry, and brazen hypocrisy, all of it paraded before us with a ridiculous patina of oblivious pride.

The tea party lost the food fight. Despite opposition from conservative activists, including the professional lobbyists at FreedomWorks, the Senate passed a landmark food safety bill 73 to 25 on Tuesday that would give the federal government broad new powers to police the food system. The vote, a rare display of bipartisanship, virtually assures that President Obama will be able to sign the bill before Americans carve up their Christmas goose.

Great, so now, just in time for the holidays, Glenn Beck tries to co-opt one of the few unifying rituals of this season, one of the remaining events that we on all sides of the political and religious spectrum can sit down and truly enjoy together. Yes, Beck is now trying to steal the great 1946 Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life and turn it into a rallying cry for the conservative anti-government Christian right.

This week on his radio show, he announced he was going to do his show from the town of Wilmington, Ohio on December 15. Of the countless towns across the country hard hit by the recession, Wilmington, which has only about 12,000 people, may be one of the worst. After the international shipping firm DHL restructured and pulled up stakes in 2008, approximately 9,000 people from the area lost their jobs.

Beck claims the town "is fighting to be Bedford Falls, not Pottersville."

In an interview with an Australian newspaper, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch harshly criticized Bill O'Reilly for an interview he conducted with Hillary Clinton, while praising Glenn Beck lavishly.

Rachel Maddow takes us on a tour of right-wing world where everything that is on the Internet is true and Obama sent 34 warships off of the coast of Mumbai and spent $200 million a day on his trip to India. The right is having themselves a nice little freakout over this malarkey today and as Paul Krugman wrote, The Fake Scandals Begin.

Fox News takes pride in its ability to destroy the lives of people it opposes politically. They had a hand in the assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, whom they labeled "the baby killer." And several "lone wolf" nuts tied to Fox broadcasters have been thwarted prior to executing their plans to murder "enemies" of the Fox Nation.

The latest target of demonization by the Smear Squad at Fox News is billionaire investor, George Soros. Actually, they have been on Soros' trail for months, but they have lately escalated the rhetoric and its overtly hostile tone.

The host of The O'Reilly Factor warned Monday that there could be mass suicides on the air at MSNBC if Democrats sustained major losses in Tuesday's midterms.

"I'm going to issue a viewer warning right now for children not to watch MSNBC because some people may commit suicide, alright. They may set themselves on fire over there and it would be gruesome to watch that," O'Reilly said.

In April, a Washington man named Charles Alan Wilson was arrested for threatening Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) for her vote to pass health care reform. He left a series of threatening messages on her voicemail, saying "It only takes one piece of lead. Kill the (expletive) senator! … Now that you've passed your health-care bill, let the violence begin" and "I do believe that every one of you (expletive) socialist democratic progressive (expletive) need to be taken out." Wilson was arrested after a federal agent called him pretending to be from a group backed by Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing organization responsible for funding some of the "grassroots" opposition to health care reform. Wilson told the agent, who he thought was a fellow opponent to health care reform, that "I will not blink" when it comes to shooting the Senator. "It's not a threat, it's a guarantee," he said.

If you ever find yourself in a post-nuclear holocaust environment and come across people eating beef stroganoff, odds are they'll be Glenn Beck fans.

You may have heard about Beck's relationship with Goldline International, which urges people to buy gold and stay safe from the supposed inevitable devaluing of the dollar. Now meet Food Insurance, which sells survival kits of freeze-dried food and other items to help people live from two weeks to 12 months, depending on the plan purchased (and post-apocalyptic conditions). Beck has promoted the company's products, is featured prominently on the company's website, and a banner ad for the company, bearing Beck's image, was spotted on his website Monday.

Less than two years after Barack Obama ran a free masters class in political communications, too many Democrats act like it never happened. Too many are back to parsing polls, searching for what they should say to connect with voters. A little less about the economy? A little more? Better check a poll!

You know what connects with voters? The sense that you're saying what you actually believe.

In June, ThinkProgress published an exclusive investigation into the Cornwall Alliance — a corporate front designed to deceive evangelicals into doubting the science underpinning climate change. Today, Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck brought on a representative from the group to tout Cornwall's new DVD, "Resisting the Green Dragon," which claims the climate change movement is a "false religion," and a nefarious conspiracy to empower eugenicists and create a "global government." The DVD, which Cornwall is distributing to evangelical churches around the country, seems to be designed perfectly for Beck's world view, and unsurprisingly, the Cornwall guest and Beck exchanged bizarre conspiracy theories.

NY magazine is featuring an unusually insightful article about the Foxification of our politics and makes a number of observations that add up to something quite frightening. Here's just one piece of it:

The game may be destroying American politics—but it's the only game in town, and CNN, thus far, is out of it. "Being a passionate centrist is always a bit harder than a raving lunatic on each side," Eliot Spitzer told me. "They do not recognize a reality that Fox and MSNBC recognize," says a former senior CNN staffer. "You have to be real showmen and hook into America, which is blue collar and angry. The CNN culture is still very strange. You walk into that building, you think you're the Jesuits and you're protecting a certain legacy. They still look at Fox as a carnival—not Fox as a brilliant marketing entity. It's weird. They're decades into it, and they'll protect it to the end."

Really Big Coloring Books has published the most political children's book of the year--The Tea Party Coloring Book for Kids!.

The 32-page book retails for $3.59, introducing children to the growing political movement championed by bestselling authors like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin. It includes puzzles, mazes, connect the dots, word search, and many other pages to color.

The debate about whether Ann Coulter is pro- or anti-gay was not settled Saturday night after her highly-anticipated appearance Saturday at Homocon 2010, the first annual convention of gay conservatives sponsored by gay GOP group GOProud.
Coulter had received heat from social conservatives for her decision to speak at the New York City event.
The conservative celebrity was called a "deserter" by the Christian conservative group American Family Association (AFA).

The Internet is a terrifying place filled with information, some of it incompatible with the Bible. Fortunately, SeekFind.org, a conservative Christian search engine, promises to protect right-wing believers from knowledge that clashes with their bizarre, anachronistic worldviews.

The site, highlighted in an NPR story about the growth of religious online portals, offers users only "God-honoring, Biblically-based, and theologically-sound Christian information in a highly accurate and well-organized format," according to their mission statement.

Yesterday, Andrew Breitbart spoke at the Tea Party's Washington DC annual rally. His message? That he's not to be trusted.
The D.C. Tea Party rally turnout seems to have been disappointing even to conservatives, with Glenn Beck stealing the thunder two weeks ago and other smaller rallies across the country competing for the limelight. Freedomworks estimated 100,000 people at the D.C. rally, so you can be assured there was far less. Even the blogger who posted the video linked below said tens of thousands. Still, D.C. managed to misspell some signs and scare with others.

In news that broke during Rachel's broadcast we now know that Glenn Beck's spokesperson is claiming that Beck will donate the proceeds of this event that "stabs hearts" of 9-11 families to the Special Operations Warrior Foundation. (Which is the same organization Beck used to scam those who donated to his "Restoring Honor" rally. Personally I would be very interested to learn just how much this organization EVER receives from Glenn Beck.)

Glenn Beck is a charlatan. A clown. A buffoon. He belongs on a second tier stage in Vegas, and he very well may end up there, some day. He is not dangerous, but his ability to exploit the legitimately angry dispossessed reveals something that is dangerous. Decades of right wing economic policies have undermined unions, the middle class, the social safety net, and the sense that we are all in this together, moving into a better future. Few believe their children or grandchildren will inherit a better world. People are afraid, and they don't understand why they are afraid.

Pity the poor National Organization for Marriage. Their national bus tour for marriage over the summer was a colossal flop… attracting only tens of supporters at each of their twenty-three stops. They drew far more protesters, something the Human Rights Campaign surmised was the real purpose of the tour anyway:

What they're really trying to do is attract counter-protesters, in hopes that those counter-protesters—fair-minded people who stand up for equality—will create scenes and be disruptive. They're doing this so they can pepper ongoing lawsuits challenging public disclosure laws with made-up stories of harassment.

You may recall it was Rep. Bart Stupak (Mi-D) who held up the vote on the Health Care bill in the House of Representatives. He objected to the wording that might have led to federal funding being used to obtain an abortion. Of course, that was a republican narrative that was completely awash with problems since there were already federal laws that prevented that from happening. None the less the wording was changed, and Stupak signed on.

The teabaagers ... were beside themselves.

Conservative Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck doesn't have much sympathy for the long-term unemployed who have exhausted their unemployment benefits, calling them "socialist" and "anti-capitalist."

On his show Monday, after watching video of a rally by the 99ers in New York City, Beck said:
"Don't spend your remaining money on travel to get to a protest," he said. "Go out and get a job. You may not want the job. Work at McDonald's. Work two jobs. There has been plenty of times in my life I've done jobs I hated, but I had no choice. Two years is plenty of time to have lived off your neighbor's wallet."

Oh, Glenn Beck.

Earlier this month at a Mormon symposium in Salt Lake City, I spoke on a panel about how Mormons should respond to Glenn Beck. My take: don't underestimate him, but try not to get so worked up about him. Beck wins every time we send more chatter, more attention, or more internet "hits" his way. He's not making any converts, he's running out of material (witness his July foray against 1960s black theology—1960s??!!), and the spin cycle on his pronouncements and provocations keeps getting shorter and shorter.

Unsatisfied with being belligerent at town hall meetings and creating racist signs, Tea Party activists are swarming on Williamsburg, Virginia this summer to ruin educational family vacations by yelling and asking costumed reenactors how to overthrow the government. Ugh.

There's always a guy on a guided tour who's wearing a fanny pack and knee high socks, asking really stupid questions and embarrassing the rest of his family, right? Now add some loud, uninformed right wing zealotry, and you've got Colonial Williamsburg Summer 2010! The Washington Post went to Williamsburg and described the scene there these days, as Tea Party activists take in the sights and look to meet the Founding Fathers in person:

On his Monday radio show, Glenn Beck highlighted claims that before he started targeting a little-known, left-leaning organization called the Tides Foundation on his Fox News TV show, "nobody knew" what the nonprofit was.

Indeed, for more than a year Beck has been portraying the progressive organization as a central player in a larger, nefarious cabal of Marxist/socialist/Nazi Obama-loving outlets determined to destroy democracy in America. Beck has routinely smeared the low-profile entity for being staffed by "thugs" and "bullies" and involved in "the nasty of the nastiest," like indoctrinating schoolchildren and creating a "mass organization to seize power."

Obama, like Cameron, is a politician of the liberal centre. He has tried again and again to reach 'across the aisle'. Talking of his deficit reduction and economic stimulus plans, in their joint press conference, he said 'my hope is that we are going to get a bipartisan solution to this thing'. He would die for the kind of solid parliamentary majority that a bipartisan coalition (of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats) gives the British prime minister.

Despite many compromises, Obama's health care bill received no Republican votes in the House of Representatives. His financial oversight bill picked up just three Republican votes in the Senate; this week's extension of unemployment benefit got two. On television, radio and the internet, Americans are bombarded by a polarised, adversarial two-party politics that makes the shouting match of prime minister's questions in the House of Commons seem like a genteel tea party. And here, even 'tea party' now stands for a populist political movement of the Sarah Palin kind.

The tea party movement is not just a political juggernaut -- it's also become a big business. That quickly became clear following last September's unexpectedly enormous rally in Washington organized by Dick Armey's FreedomWorks, the event that helped put the movement on the map. With crowd estimates ranging from 75,000 to 2 million, the rally was such a hit that conservative activists are planning a sequel this year. A bunch of them actually. And these competing events have led to confusion and infighting among the tea party faithful. The conflict has reached such a pitch that Glenn Beck weighed in with a plea for unity on his radio show Thursday. "I don't care who started it," he lectured. "We must come together."

Andrew Breitbart, the blogger who helped destroy ACORN with heavily edited, racially tinged videos (the unedited versions of which have still not been released), just scored another victory over reverse racism, proving once and for all that it's just like old-fashioned, regular racism: when it occurs, it's always a black person who suffers.
If you need to search for culprits in the railroading of USDA worker Shirley Sherrod, Breitbart is the obvious heel, but hardly the only one. (Tip to kids who live in Ag Sec Tom Vilsack's neighborhood: this Halloween, dress up like Glenn Beck, and the Vilsack household won't just give you all the candy you want, they'll shoot the family dog and cook it up for you.)

The real creeps are anyone in the media who excuses or erases the role played by Breitbart, Fox News, and the Tea Party blogosphere in smearing Sherrod as a racist.

When conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck warned churchgoers to "run as fast as you can" if their pastors preach about "social justice," was he also encouraging them to run from the Bible?

That's what some progressive Christian leaders are arguing as battle lines are drawn for the 2010 mid-term elections. They say Beck and his Tea Party followers are, in a word, unbiblical.

Not so fast, say Tea Party activists, who claim biblical grounds for a libertarian-minded Jesus. He didn't like tax-based welfare programs, they say, and encouraged his followers to donate from the heart.

One hundred thousand faithful Americans are telling Glenn Beck that enough is enough. This summer as Beck travels the United States solo and with Bill O'Reilly, Faithful America--a multi-faith justice organization--has rallied its members to push back against Beck's anti-Christian-social-justice message. When Beck makes stops in South Carolina, New York, New Jersey, and Washington D.C., the group's provocative new ad will follow his trail and challenge his words as "piecemeal gospel" on local Christian radio stations.

In the last year and a half, militias and the larger antigovernment "Patriot" movement have exploded, accompanied by the rapid expansion of other sectors of the radical right. This spectacular growth (see timeline) is the result of several factors, including anger over major political, demographic and economic changes in America, along with the popularization of radical ideas and conspiracy theories by ostensibly mainstream politicians and media commentators.

Although the resurgence of the so-called Patriots — people who generally believe that the federal government is an evil entity that is engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose martial law, herd those who resist into concentration camps, and force the United States into a socialistic "New World Order" — also has been propelled by people who were key players in the first wave of the Patriot movement in the mid–1990s, there are also a large number of new players

How Democrats can impeach President Obama in one easy step

Step #1. Do NOT vote in 2010

That is all it will take!

If you want a Republican majority in Congress, be certain to not vote in the elections this November, because that is what you will be likely to get.

And that Republican majority in Congress will not stop until they have dragged the Presidency of Barack Obama into the dirt. They will not care one bit about the harm it will do to America. A Republican majority in Congress will do nothing but work towards "Obama's Waterloo", and the people who do not vote for Democrats in 2010 will be just as responsible for it as the people who vote for Republicans.

In May this year, a prominent commentator on Fox News called for the repeal of the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that bans discrimination in places of public accommodation. "Private businesses ought to discriminate... it should be their right to be racist," he said.
Fox News has a longstanding policy of giving race-baiters a soapbox, but the fascinating thing about this particular bit of vile nonsense is that even other figureheads at the channel like Bill O'Reilly, Charles Krauthammer and Steve Brown -- each known for their own ignorant worldviews -- voiced disgust at the suggestion that racial discrimination ought to be a right granted to businesses.

excerpt: ''This just in. Joseph Wurzelbacher, the Ohio fellow who became oddly famous during the 2008 campaign as "Joe the Plumber," is joining the "Take Our Country Back Tour," the conservative political calvacade that has featured Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and right-leaning country singers. These rallies, according to organizers, are intended to encourage Americans to vote for candidates who believe "in the right of the American people—and only the American people—to determine the course and destiny of the United States of America." The next of these conservative shindigs is scheduled for June 26 in Oklahoma CIty. Beck and Karl Rove are headlining the gig.''

Apparently emulating Malia Obama on his show today, Limbaugh asked, using a high pitched falsetto voice: "Daddy, daddy, did you shake down BP yet daddy? Are you going to make 'em pay, daddy? Are you going to make BP pay? Did you plug the hole yet daddy? Daddy, did you plug the hole? Daddy, who's in charge of the Gulf oil spill? Daddy, daddy, what's your golf handicap today daddy? How's your golf game daddy?"

So here goes. Beginning with this post, I intend to expose Glenn Beck as a fraud. A dangerous faker who deliberately manipulates his audience by appealing to their basest instincts. As a man who only embraces conservatism and the tea party movement as a means to furthering his significant personal wealth and career as a successful TV goon.

My theory is as follows. Glenn Beck is engaged in a carefully orchestrated performance that, if taken to its logical end, can only end up in tragedy -- a tragedy, not in the name of some great political or social or religious cause, as too many of his viewers might believe, but rather in the name of pure careerism and greed. A tragedy in the name of Glenn Beck's personal drive for fame and fortune, not to mention the similar motivations of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch.

With this morning's release of the Congressional Budget Office's reconciliation package score, the House appears ready to vote on health care reform this Sunday. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) — speaking with Fox News host Glenn Beck on his radio show this morning — said the timing of the vote is unholy. He warned that Democrats intend to "take away the liberty that we have right from God" on "the Sabbath, during Lent." Beck agreed, calling the Sunday vote an "affront to God," and something "our founders would have never" done "[o]ut of respect for God":