Glenn Beck had us all fooled. - Page 3 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

pan6467 · 02-16-2010, 04:06 PM

I just want to know one thing, if Beck has such great ratings and is so popular and blah blah blah...... why does he do commercials for toenail fungus? I've never heard Limbaugh do them.

Does he actually have toenail fungus and believes in this doctor with lasers or is it he'll do anything for a buck?

And if that is the case then wouldn't his show be all about making money and not the product? If he believes in the product and is doing the commercial for that reason, why doesn't he just say, "Hi, if you are like me and suffer from toenail fungus....."

So which is it Beck do you do the commercial for the money or do you do the commercial because you use the product and believe in it? Your credibility rests with your answer and proof of the fungus and treatments you have received.

SecretMethod70 · 02-16-2010, 04:18 PM

One potential answer to your question, pan, is the fact that there has been on ongoing campaign to strip Beck of corporate sponsors. He's lost a lot of them in America, and even more in the UK. Recently, Glen Beck's show aired in the UK without commercials, because they didn't have anyone willing to buy commercial time during the show.

Rekna · 02-16-2010, 04:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kutulu

We are just asking questions. Did Glenn Beck rape and murder a girl in 1990?

Well I don't have enough knowledge of the subject to say he did but he hasn't denied it. It makes me wonder why he hasn't denied such an accusation, it would be easy for him to just come out and deny it. So why hasn't he done so??? It makes you wonder.

dksuddeth · 02-16-2010, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Does anyone know her poll numbers this week? dksuddeth?

I have not seen any recent 'official' poll numbers, but judging from the talk on local radio stations here, it's only enhanced her status.

even today on one of the shows, the host made Beck look like a complete hypocrite by playing an excerpt of a Sep 2009 interview he did with a truther group called 'jersey girls' and at the end of the interview, he said nearly the exact same words that Medina answered to him.

The_Dunedan · 02-16-2010, 05:25 PM

I've never liked Beck. As Will pointed out earlier, he sells himself as a libertarian while consistently upholding policies which are in direct, diametric opposition to the Non Aggression Principle. Additionaly, again as WR pointed out, he went out of his way to frame Ron Paul supporters as "domestic terrorists," even insinuating at one point that such people should be "handled" by the military: Neo-Con-speak for "Gitmo-ing" a person. However, his scattershot approach to most political issues (while it raises a lot of Birther-esque crap as well) has shone light into a lot of neglected (and VERY dirty) areas of the FedGov's operation. So, if for no other reason than that even a blind pig finds an acorn now and again, I think he should be left free to ask his questions. He should not be surprised, however, to occasionally find himself hoist on his own petard.

SecretMethod70 · 02-16-2010, 05:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

I have not seen any recent 'official' poll numbers, but judging from the talk on local radio stations here, it's only enhanced her status.

even today on one of the shows, the host made Beck look like a complete hypocrite by playing an excerpt of a Sep 2009 interview he did with a truther group called 'jersey girls' and at the end of the interview, he said nearly the exact same words that Medina answered to him.

That doesn't make Medina's answer a good one, it just makes Beck a hypocrite, which is not new knowledge. You ask me if I believe the government was involved in 9/11, you know what I'd say? "No, I have not seen any evidence that the government was involved in 9/11." Many questions are complicated; this is not one of them.

pan6467 · 02-16-2010, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

One potential answer to your question, pan, is the fact that there has been on ongoing campaign to strip Beck of corporate sponsors. He's lost a lot of them in America, and even more in the UK. Recently, Glen Beck's show aired in the UK without commercials, because they didn't have anyone willing to buy commercial time during the show.

Wow, I knew he was having problems but with Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin not seemingly having problems I didn't expect him to.

I remember being on here, wow, 6 years ago during the '04 campaign bitching about Beck and people said "WHO?" Funny how he's gotten so big. I remember when on Fridays he did football games and would call convenience stores in Monday night games and have them answer 5 questions. The one who guessed best would be predict to live in the winning city.

Beck back then was political first, BUT he had some good humor and skits that made him a bit easier to tolerate than Limbaugh.

What amazes me most I guess is that people say the Neo Con movement is dead and talk about how hated Bush is and yet, Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Levin, FAUX News and so on show ratings higher than they have ever had.

To me, that says something about the belief in the Dem party. "We hate the greedy NeoCons but the Dems scare us more." Is what seems to be the feeling out there among the masses.

SecretMethod70 · 02-16-2010, 06:46 PM

It's not that the Dems are scary, pan, it's that they're incompetent. I'd rather have incompetent people who have generally decent ideas than competent people who have terrible ideas though. That said, I understand why someone would be unenthused about either.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 05:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70

That doesn't make Medina's answer a good one, it just makes Beck a hypocrite, which is not new knowledge. You ask me if I believe the government was involved in 9/11, you know what I'd say? "No, I have not seen any evidence that the government was involved in 9/11." Many questions are complicated; this is not one of them.

why is that such a simple question and why is that the only answer?

Cimarron29414 · 02-17-2010, 07:28 AM

Rassmussen from Feb 2:

Perry 44%, Hutchison 29%, Medina 16%

Medina was 4% in November, 12% January, 16% Feb 2nd.

I place this here, so we can see what the numbers are next publication...

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 08:35 AM

lest it somehow goes missing in this thread that beck is a significant mouthpiece for the neo-poujadisme that's been taking shape on the far right.
and lest if somehow goes missin in this thread that this movement is not single, it is not real coherent---but i think it is dangerous.

Quote:

Tea Party Lights Fuse for Rebellion on Right
By DAVID BARSTOW

SANDPOINT, Idaho — Pam Stout has not always lived in fear of her government. She remembers her years working in federal housing programs, watching government lift struggling families with job training and education. She beams at the memory of helping a Vietnamese woman get into junior college.

But all that was before the Great Recession and the bank bailouts, before Barack Obama took the White House by promising sweeping change on multiple fronts, before her son lost his job and his house. Mrs. Stout said she awoke to see Washington as a threat, a place where crisis is manipulated — even manufactured — by both parties to grab power.

She was happily retired, and had never been active politically. But last April, she went to her first Tea Party rally, then to a meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party Patriots. She did not know a soul, yet when they began electing board members, she stood up, swallowed hard, and nominated herself for president. “I was like, ‘Did I really just do that?’ ” she recalled.

Then she went even further.

Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement.

When Friends for Liberty held its first public event, Mrs. Stout listened as Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff, brought 1,400 people to their feet with a speech about confronting a despotic federal government. Mrs. Stout said she felt as if she had been handed a road map to rebellion. Members of her family, she said, think she has disappeared down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories. But Mrs. Stout said she has never felt so engaged.

“I can’t go on being the shy, quiet me,” she said. “I need to stand up.”

The Tea Party movement has become a platform for conservative populist discontent, a force in Republican politics for revival, as it was in the Massachusetts Senate election, or for division. But it is also about the profound private transformation of people like Mrs. Stout, people who not long ago were not especially interested in politics, yet now say they are bracing for tyranny.

These people are part of a significant undercurrent within the Tea Party movement that has less in common with the Republican Party than with the Patriot movement, a brand of politics historically associated with libertarians, militia groups, anti-immigration advocates and those who argue for the abolition of the Federal Reserve.

Urged on by conservative commentators, waves of newly minted activists are turning to once-obscure books and Web sites and discovering a set of ideas long dismissed as the preserve of conspiracy theorists, interviews conducted across the country over several months show. In this view, Mr. Obama and many of his predecessors (including George W. Bush) have deliberately undermined the Constitution and free enterprise for the benefit of a shadowy international network of wealthy elites.

Loose alliances like Friends for Liberty are popping up in many cities, forming hybrid entities of Tea Parties and groups rooted in the Patriot ethos. These coalitions are not content with simply making the Republican Party more conservative. They have a larger goal — a political reordering that would drastically shrink the federal government and sweep away not just Mr. Obama, but much of the Republican establishment, starting with Senator John McCain.

In many regions, including here in the inland Northwest, tense struggles have erupted over whether the Republican apparatus will co-opt these new coalitions or vice versa. Tea Party supporters are already singling out Republican candidates who they claim have “aided and abetted” what they call the slide to tyranny: Mark Steven Kirk, a candidate for the Senate from Illinois, for supporting global warming legislation; Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, who is seeking a Senate seat, for supporting stimulus spending; and Meg Whitman, a candidate for governor in California, for saying she was a “big fan” of Van Jones, once Mr. Obama’s “green jobs czar.”

During a recent meeting with Congressional Republicans, Mr. Obama acknowledged the potency of these attacks when he complained that depicting him as a would-be despot was complicating efforts to find bipartisan solutions.

“The fact of the matter is that many of you, if you voted with the administration on something, are politically vulnerable in your own base, in your own party,” Mr. Obama said. “You’ve given yourselves very little room to work in a bipartisan fashion because what you’ve been telling your constituents is, ‘This guy’s doing all kinds of crazy stuff that is going to destroy America.’ ”

The ebbs and flows of the Tea Party ferment are hardly uniform. It is an amorphous, factionalized uprising with no clear leadership and no centralized structure. Not everyone flocking to the Tea Party movement is worried about dictatorship. Some have a basic aversion to big government, or Mr. Obama, or progressives in general. What’s more, some Tea Party groups are essentially appendages of the local Republican Party.

But most are not. They are frequently led by political neophytes who prize independence and tell strikingly similar stories of having been awakened by the recession. Their families upended by lost jobs, foreclosed homes and depleted retirement funds, they said they wanted to know why it happened and whom to blame.

That is often the point when Tea Party supporters say they began listening to Glenn Beck. With his guidance, they explored the Federalist Papers, exposés on the Federal Reserve, the work of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. Some went to constitutional seminars. Online, they discovered radical critiques of Washington on Web sites like ResistNet.com (“Home of the Patriotic Resistance”) and Infowars.com (“Because there is a war on for your mind.”).

Many describe emerging from their research as if reborn to a new reality. Some have gone so far as to stock up on ammunition, gold and survival food in anticipation of the worst. For others, though, transformation seems to amount to trying on a new ideological outfit — embracing the rhetoric and buying the books.

Tea Party leaders say they know their complaints about shredded constitutional principles and excessive spending ring hollow to some, given their relative passivity through the Bush years. In some ways, though, their main answer — strict adherence to the Constitution — would comfort every card-carrying A.C.L.U. member.

But their vision of the federal government is frequently at odds with the one that both parties have constructed. Tea Party gatherings are full of people who say they would do away with the Federal Reserve, the federal income tax and countless agencies, not to mention bailouts and stimulus packages. Nor is it unusual to hear calls to eliminate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. A remarkable number say this despite having recently lost jobs or health coverage. Some of the prescriptions they are debating — secession, tax boycotts, states “nullifying” federal laws, forming citizen militias — are outside the mainstream, too.

At a recent meeting of the Sandpoint Tea Party, Mrs. Stout presided with brisk efficiency until a member interrupted with urgent news. Because of the stimulus bill, he insisted, private medical records were being shipped to federal bureaucrats. A woman said her doctor had told her the same thing. There were gasps of rage. Everyone already viewed health reform as a ruse to control their medical choices and drive them into the grip of insurance conglomerates. Debate erupted. Could state medical authorities intervene? Should they call Congress?

As the meeting ended, Carolyn L. Whaley, 76, held up her copy of the Constitution. She carries it everywhere, she explained, and she was prepared to lay down her life to protect it from the likes of Mr. Obama.

“I would not hesitate,” she said, perfectly calm.

A Sprawling Rebellion

The Tea Party movement defies easy definition, largely because there is no single Tea Party.

At the grass-roots level, it consists of hundreds of autonomous Tea Party groups, widely varying in size and priorities, each influenced by the peculiarities of local history.

In the inland Northwest, the Tea Party movement has been shaped by the growing popularity in eastern Washington of Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas, and by a legacy of anti-government activism in northern Idaho. Outside Sandpoint, federal agents laid siege to Randy Weaver’s compound on Ruby Ridge in 1992, resulting in the deaths of a marshal and Mr. Weaver’s wife and son. To the south, Richard Butler, leader of the Aryan Nations, preached white separatism from a compound near Coeur d’Alene until he was shut down.

Local Tea Party groups are often loosely affiliated with one of several competing national Tea Party organizations. In the background, offering advice and organizational muscle, are an array of conservative lobbying groups, most notably FreedomWorks. Further complicating matters, Tea Party events have become a magnet for other groups and causes — including gun rights activists, anti-tax crusaders, libertarians, militia organizers, the “birthers” who doubt President Obama’s citizenship, Lyndon LaRouche supporters and proponents of the sovereign states movement.

It is a sprawling rebellion, but running through it is a narrative of impending tyranny. This narrative permeates Tea Party Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and YouTube videos. It is a prominent theme of their favored media outlets and commentators, and it connects the disparate issues that preoccupy many Tea Party supporters — from the concern that the community organization Acorn is stealing elections to the belief that Mr. Obama is trying to control the Internet and restrict gun ownership.

WorldNetDaily.com trumpets “exclusives” reporting that the Army is seeking “Internment/Resettlement” specialists. On ResistNet.com, bloggers warn that Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force. They call on “fellow Patriots” to “grab their guns.”

Mr. Beck frequently echoes Patriot rhetoric, discussing the possible arrival of a “New World Order” and arguing that Mr. Obama is using a strategy of manufactured crisis to destroy the economy and pave the way for dictatorship.

At recent Tea Party events around the country, these concerns surfaced repeatedly.

In New Mexico, Mary Johnson, recording secretary of the Las Cruces Tea Party steering committee, described why she fears the government. She pointed out how much easier it is since Sept. 11 for the government to tap telephones and scour e-mail, bank accounts and library records. “Twenty years ago that would have been a paranoid statement,” Ms. Johnson said. “It’s not anymore.”

In Texas, Toby Marie Walker, president of the Waco Tea Party, stood on a stage before several thousand people, ticking off the institutions she no longer trusts — the federal government, both the major political parties, Wall Street. “Many of us don’t believe they have our best interests at heart,” Ms. Walker said. She choked back tears, but the crowd urged her on with shouts of “Go, Toby!”

As it happened in the inland Northwest with Friends for Liberty, the fear of Washington and the disgust for both parties is producing new coalitions of Tea Party supporters and groups affiliated with the Patriot movement. In Indiana, for example, a group called the Defenders of Liberty is helping organize “meet-ups” with Tea Party groups and more than 50 Patriot organizations. The Ohio Freedom Alliance, meanwhile, is bringing together Tea Party supporters, Ohio sovereignty advocates and members of the Constitution and Libertarian Parties. The alliance is also helping to organize five “liberty conferences” in March, each featuring Richard Mack, the same speaker invited to address Friends for Liberty.

Politicians courting the Tea Party movement are also alluding to Patriot dogma. At a Tea Party protest in Las Vegas, Joe Heck, a Republican running for Congress, blamed both the Democratic and Republican Parties for moving the country toward “socialistic tyranny.” In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican seeking re-election, threw his support behind the state sovereignty movement. And in Indiana, Richard Behney, a Republican Senate candidate, told Tea Party supporters what he would do if the 2010 elections did not produce results to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.”

Turning Points

Fear of co-option — a perpetual topic in the Tea Party movement — lay behind the formation of Friends for Liberty.

The new grass-roots leaders of the inland Northwest had grown weary of fending off what they jokingly called “hijack attempts” by the state and county Republican Parties. Whether the issue was picking speakers or scheduling events, they suspected party leaders of trying to choke off their revolution with Chamber of Commerce incrementalism.

“We had to stand our ground, I’ll be blunt,” said Dann Selle, president of the Official Tea Party of Spokane.

In October, Mr. Selle, Mrs. Stout and about 20 others from across the region met in Liberty Lake, Wash., a small town on the Idaho border, to discuss how to achieve broad political change without sacrificing independence. The local Republican Party was excluded.

Most of the people there had paid only passing attention to national politics in years past. “I voted twice and I failed political science twice,” said Darin Stevens, leader of the Spokane 9/12 Project.

Until the recession, Mr. Stevens, 33, had poured his energies into his family and his business installing wireless networks. He had to lay off employees, and he struggled to pay credit cards, a home equity loan, even his taxes. “It hits you physically when you start getting the calls,” he said.

He discovered Glenn Beck, and began to think of Washington as a conspiracy to fleece the little guy. “I had no clue that my country was being taken from me,” Mr. Stevens explained. He could not understand why his progressive friends did not see what he saw.

He felt compelled to do something, so he decided to start a chapter of Mr. Beck’s 9/12 Project. He reserved a room at a pizza parlor for a Glenn Beck viewing party and posted the event on Craigslist. “We had 110 people there,” Mr. Stevens said. He recalled looking around the room and thinking, “All these people — they agree with me.”

Leah Southwell’s turning point came when she stumbled on Mr. Paul’s speeches on YouTube. (“He blew me away.”) Until recently, Mrs. Southwell was in the top 1 percent of all Mary Kay sales representatives, with a company car and a frenetic corporate life. “I knew zero about the Constitution,” Mrs. Southwell confessed. Today, when asked about her commitment to the uprising, she recites a line from the Declaration of Independence, a Tea Party favorite: “We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Mr. Paul led Mrs. Southwell to Patriot ideology, which holds that governments and economies are controlled by networks of elites who wield power through exclusive entities like the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations.

This idea has a long history, with variations found at both ends of the political spectrum. But to Mrs. Southwell, the government’s culpability for the recession — the serial failures of regulation, the Federal Reserve’s epic blunders, the cozy bailouts for big banks — made it resonate all the more, especially as she witnessed the impact on family and friends.

“The more you know, the madder you are,” she said. “I mean when you finally learn what the Federal Reserve is!”

Last spring, Mrs. Southwell quit her job and became a national development officer for the John Birch Society, recruiting and raising money across the West, often at Tea Party events. She has been stunned by the number of Tea Party supporters gravitating toward Patriot ideology. “Most of these people are just waking up,” she said.

Converging Paths

At Liberty Lake, the participants settled on a “big tent” strategy, with each group supporting the others in the coalition they called Friends for Liberty.

One local group represented at Liberty Lake was Arm in Arm, which aims to organize neighborhoods for possible civil strife by stockpiling food and survival gear, and forming armed neighborhood groups.

Also represented was Oath Keepers, whose members call themselves “guardians of the Republic.” Oath Keepers recruits military and law enforcement officials who are asked to disobey orders the group deems unconstitutional. These include orders to conduct warrantless searches, arrest Americans as unlawful enemy combatants or force civilians into “any form of detention camps.”

Oath Keepers, which has been recruiting at Tea Party events around the country and forging informal ties with militia groups, has an enthusiastic following in Friends for Liberty. “A lot of my people are Oath Keepers,” Mr. Stevens said. “I’m an honorary Oath Keeper myself.”

Mrs. Stout became an honorary Oath Keeper, too, and sent an e-mail message urging her members to sign up. “They may be very important for our future,” she wrote.

By inviting Richard Mack to speak at their first event, leaders of Friends for Liberty were trying to attract militia support. They knew Mr. Mack had many militia fans, and not simply because he had helped Randy Weaver write a book about Ruby Ridge. As a sheriff in Arizona, Mr. Mack had sued the Clinton administration over the Brady gun control law, which resulted in a Supreme Court ruling that the law violated state sovereignty by requiring local officials to conduct background checks on gun buyers.

Mr. Mack was selling Cadillacs in Arizona, his political career seemingly over, when Mr. Obama was elected. Disheartened by the results, he wrote a 50-page booklet branding the federal government “the greatest threat we face.” The booklet argued that only local sheriffs supported by citizen militias could save the nation from “utter despotism.” He titled his booklet “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope,” offered it for sale on his Web site and returned to selling cars.

But last February he was invited to appear on “Infowars,” the Internet radio program hosted by Alex Jones, a well-known figure in the Patriot movement. Then Mr. Mack went on “The Power Hour,” another Internet radio program popular in the Patriot movement.

After those appearances, Mr. Mack said, he was inundated with invitations to speak to Tea Parties and Patriot groups. Demand was so great, he said, that he quit selling cars. Then Andrew P. Napolitano, a Fox News legal analyst, invited him to New York to appear on his podcast.

“It’s taken over my life,” Mr. Mack said in an interview.

He said he has found audiences everywhere struggling to make sense of why they were wiped out last year. These audiences, he said, are far more receptive to critiques once dismissed as paranoia. It is no longer considered all that radical, he said, to portray the Federal Reserve as a plaything of the big banks — a point the Birch Society, among others, has argued for decades.

People are more willing, he said, to imagine a government that would lock up political opponents, or ration health care with “death panels,” or fake global warming. And if global warming is a fraud, is it so crazy to wonder about a president’s birth certificate?

“People just do not trust any of this,” Mr. Mack said. “It’s not just the fringe people anymore. These are just ordinary people — teachers, bankers, housewives.”

The dog track opened at 5:45 p.m. for Mr. Mack’s speech, and the parking lot quickly filled. Inside, each Friends for Liberty sponsor had its own recruiting table. Several sheriffs and state legislators worked the crowd. “I came out to talk with folks and listen to Sheriff Mack,” Ozzie Knezovich, the sheriff of Spokane County, Wash., explained.

Gazing out at his overwhelmingly white audience, Mr. Mack felt the need to say, “This meeting is not racist.” Nor, he said, was it a call to insurrection. What is needed, he said, is “a whole army of sheriffs” marching on Washington to deliver an unambiguous warning: “Any violation of the Constitution we will consider a criminal offense.”

The crowd roared.

Mr. Mack shared his vision of the ideal sheriff. The setting was Montgomery, Ala., on the day Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger. Imagine the local sheriff, he said, rather than arresting Ms. Parks, escorting her home, stopping to buy her a meal at an all-white diner.

“Edmund Burke said the essence of tyranny is the enforcement of stupid laws,” he said. Likewise, Mr. Mack argued, sheriffs should have ignored “stupid laws” and protected the Branch Davidians at Waco, Tex., and the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge.

Legacy

A popular T-shirt at Tea Party rallies reads, “Proud Right-Wing Extremist.”

It is a defiant and mocking rejoinder to last April’s intelligence assessment from the Department of Homeland Security warning that recession and the election of the nation’s first black president “present unique drivers for right wing radicalization.”

“Historically,” the assessment said, “domestic right wing extremists have feared, predicted and anticipated a cataclysmic economic collapse in the United States.” Those predictions, it noted, are typically rooted in “antigovernment conspiracy theories” featuring impending martial law. The assessment said extremist groups were already preparing for this scenario by stockpiling weapons and food and by resuming paramilitary exercises.

The report does not mention the Tea Party movement, but among Tea Party activists it is viewed with open scorn, evidence of a larger campaign by liberals to marginalize them as “racist wingnuts.”

But Tony Stewart, a leading civil rights activist in the inland Northwest, took careful note of the report. Almost 30 years ago, Mr. Stewart cofounded the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations in Coeur d’Alene. The task force has campaigned relentlessly to rid north Idaho of its reputation as a haven for anti-government extremists. The task force tactics brought many successes, including a $6.3 million civil judgment that effectively bankrupted Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations.

When the Tea Party uprising gathered force last spring, Mr. Stewart saw painfully familiar cultural and rhetorical overtones. Mr. Stewart viewed the questions about Mr. Obama’s birthplace as a proxy for racism, and he was bothered by the “common message of intolerance for the opposition.”

“It’s either you’re with us or you’re the enemy,” he said.

Mr. Stewart heard similar concerns from other civil rights activists around the country. They could not help but wonder why the explosion of conservative anger coincided with a series of violent acts by right wing extremists. In the Inland Northwest there had been a puzzling return of racist rhetoric and violence.

Mr. Stewart said it would be unfair to attribute any of these incidents to the Tea Party movement. “We don’t have any evidence they are connected,” he said.

Still, he sees troubling parallels. Branding Mr. Obama a tyrant, Mr. Stewart said, constructs a logic that could be used to rationalize violence. “When people start wearing guns to rallies, what’s the next thing that happens?” Mr. Stewart asked.

Rachel Dolezal, curator of the Human Rights Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, has also watched the Tea Party movement with trepidation. Though raised in a conservative family, Ms. Dolezal, who is multiracial, said she could not imagine showing her face at a Tea Party event. To her, what stands out are the all-white crowds, the crude depictions of Mr. Obama as an African witch doctor and the signs labeling him a terrorist. “It would make me nervous to be there unless I went with a big group,” she said.

The Future

Pam Stout wakes each morning, turns on Fox News, grabs coffee and an Atkins bar, and hits the computer. She is the hub of a rapidly expanding and highly viral political network, keeping a running correspondence with her 400 members in Sandpoint, state and national Tea Party leaders and other conservative activists.

Mrs. Stout forwards along petitions to impeach Mr. Obama; petitions to audit the Federal Reserve; petitions to support Sarah Palin; appeals urging defiance of any federal law requiring health insurance; and on and on.

Meanwhile, she and her husband are studying the Constitution line by line. She has the Congressional switchboard programmed into her cellphone. “I just signed up for a Twitter class,” said Mrs. Stout, 66, laughing at the improbability of it all.

Yet for all her efforts, Mrs. Stout is gripped by a sense that it may be too little too late. Yes, there have been victories — including polls showing support for the Tea Party movement — but in her view none of it has diminished the fundamental threat of tyranny, a point underscored by Mr. Obama’s drive to pass a health care overhaul.

She and her members are becoming convinced that rallies alone will not save the Republic. They are searching for some larger answer, she said. They are also waiting for a leader, someone capable of uniting their rebellion, someone like Ms. Palin, who made Sandpoint one of the final stops on her book tour and who has announced plans to attend a series of high-profile Tea Party events in the next few months.

“We need to really decide where we’re going to go,” Mrs. Stout said.

These questions of strategy, direction and leadership were clearly on the minds of Mrs. Stout’s members at a recent monthly meeting.

Their task seemed endless, almost overwhelming, especially with only $517 in their Tea Party bank account. There were rallies against illegal immigration to attend. There was a coming lecture about the hoax of global warming. There were shooting classes to schedule, and tips to share about the right survival food.

The group struggled fitfully for direction. Maybe they should start vetting candidates. Someone mentioned boycotting ABC, CBS, NBC and MSNBC. Maybe they should do more recruiting.

“How do you keep on fighting?” Mrs. Stout asked in exasperation.

Lenore Generaux, a local wildlife artist, had an idea: They should raise money for Freedom Force, a group that says it wants to “reclaim America via the Patriot movement.” The group is trying to unite the Tea Parties and other groups to form a powerful “Patriot lobby.” One goal is to build a “Patriot war chest” big enough to take control of the Republican Party.

Not long ago, Mrs. Stout sent an e-mail message to her members under the subject line: “Revolution.” It linked to an article by Greg Evensen, a leader in the militia movement, titled “The Anatomy of an American Revolution,” that listed “grievances” he said “would justify a declaration of war against any criminal enterprise including that which is killing our nation from Washington, D.C.”

Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent.

“I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said.

She paused, considering her next words.

“Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”

Baraka_Guru · 02-17-2010, 08:45 AM

roachboy, that's surreal. And a bit frightening, but only if it is indeed as widespread as is implied.

The recession needed a scapegoat, and so it is the government.

There had to be a casualty, and it was reason.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 08:53 AM

so the blossoming movement that is tired of mainstream politics from both sides of the aisle is now the new neo-group to be feared and ridiculed? They've lost all reason?

Baraka_Guru · 02-17-2010, 08:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

so the blossoming movement that is tired of mainstream politics from both sides of the aisle is now the new neo-group to be feared and ridiculed? They've lost all reason?

Being tired of mainstream politics of all stripes in and of itself need not be feared (though no indication of ridicule). And such a stance need not suffer from the throes of emotional responses to current events.

With these particular people, however, it just might be the case. This doesn't necessarily apply to all within the Tea Party movement, but it appears there is a certain contingent that is a bit worrisome.

This is the kind of person that hangs on the words of Glenn Beck.

Cimarron29414 · 02-17-2010, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

Being tired of mainstream politics of all stripes in and of itself need not be feared (though no indication of ridicule). And such a stance need not suffer from the throes of emotional responses to current events.

With these particular people, however, it just might be the case. This doesn't necessarily apply to all within the Tea Party movement, but it appears there is a certain contingent that is a bit worrisome.

Every movement has a contingent which is worrisome. They represent, perhaps 5% of the movement. They insert themselves to have a platform for their voice, they speak, their ideas are rejected, and they go away. This happened in every movement in our history. It happened in the 60's quite a bit, in what were "left-wing" movements. Of course there is one big difference:

Might I point out that not a single act of violence has occurred at a tea party event. Oh, except when the anti-tea party protestors beat up two guys in (I think it was) Ft. Lauderdale. It's just exceedingly difficult to accept this boogeyman fearmongering when, in the 100s of events that have occurred around the nation, not one car has been overturned, window broken, tear gas canister dispensed, etc.

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 09:11 AM

dk--let's not be disengenuous. it is not the case that all movements which work in opposition to the existing order are the same simply because they're in opposition. and you don't believe it yourself--were this a movement from the left, you'd be jumping up and down about it and buying more canned goods for your bunker.

conditions are now such that it's hard to even have a discussion about this. it's like there are separate planets and folk who support this teapartiers live on one and other folk live on another. things which are axiomatic on the teaparty planet--like the gubment is evil by definition--are surreal in their simplemindedness on the other planet--but there's no common ground to have a discussion. this erosion of the basis for a debate seems to me to be the result of a long effort on the part of the populist right to carve out for itself a space of self-confirming short bromides which shape what passes for a coherent politics amongst the demographics which find such stuff to be appealing.

it's the self-confirming nature of the statements that indicates the problem.
then you start adding to that the particular political orientations of segments of this coalition. the militia movement. who the fuck wants the militia movement getting itself into power? the xenophobia set. the social reactionaries. the only thing holding this movement together is some incoherent sense of having been fucked over that's been channeled by folk like beck into some strange political movement.

so yeah, i think it's dangerous.
i think neo-fascism is always dangerous.

Baraka_Guru · 02-17-2010, 09:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

Every movement has a contingent which is worrisome. They represent, perhaps 5% of the movement. They insert themselves to have a platform for their voice, they speak, their ideas are rejected, and they go away. This happened in every movement in our history. It happened in the 60's quite a bit, in what were "left-wing" movements.

This isn't universally true. At the risk of being accusing of Godwining, Hitler's ideas represented only 2% of his party's ideas, and the party rolled with them before changing their name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. I'm not suggesting this contingent in the Tea Party movement is a pre-Nazi movement, but I'm illustrating that minority voices throughout history have often come to the mainstream. Hitler's case is the simplest illustration of that.

Quote:

Might I point out that not a single act of violence has occurred at a tea party event. Oh, except when the anti-tea party protestors beat up two guys in (I think it was) Ft. Lauderdale. It's just exceedingly difficult to accept this boogeyman fearmongering when, in the 100s of events that have occurred around the nation, not one car has been overturned, window broken, tear gas canister dispensed, etc.

What about the threat of violence, say, armed revolution? What becomes of that?

Cimarron29414 · 02-17-2010, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

This isn't universally true. At the risk of being accusing of Godwining, Hitler's ideas represented only 2% of his party's ideas, and the party rolled with them before changing their name to the National Socialist German Workers' Party. I'm not suggesting this contingent in the Tea Party movement is a pre-Nazi movement, but I'm illustrating that minority voices throughout history have often come to the mainstream. Hitler's case is the simplest illustration of that.

What about the threat of violence, say, armed revolution? What becomes of that?

That is true. However, I have heard people say some ridiculous things at TEA party events, and they are met with crickets or were booed.

I have been to several TEA party events. I have never once heard a call to arms. It is emphasized that the solutions lie at the ballot box.

Could it be that those in the media who fear the power the TEA party now holds target the extremists in their interviews to further their pre-determined point (which is to marginalize the movement as extremist)? Did you READ the 11 page NYT article on the TEA party?!? It was 11 pages of, "These people are going to burn the C@p!t@l to the ground and r@pe the 0b@m@ d@ughters." It was so ridiculously slanted.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 09:39 AM

The media is the propaganda tool of the mainstream political power. of course we're going to be painted as white racists and neo nazis or fascists. But lets not let anything get in the way of maintaining the status quo, so long as people keep getting their government money

Baraka_Guru · 02-17-2010, 09:46 AM

The Canadian media has no stake in American political power. I get the impression from it that the Tea Party movement is at once amorphous and sometimes risking being yet another political party a la Republican, if it doesn't get folded into simply being Republican voters. Bottom line: it is volatile.

Are you denying that there is a contingent of Teapartiers who don't fit the bill? Can you speak directly to the article above? Is Pam Stout, Richard Mack, and their ilk a figment of our imagination? Is this not a threat to the Tea Party movement?

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 10:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru

The Canadian media has no stake in American political power. I get the impression from it that the Tea Party movement is at once amorphous and sometimes risking being yet another political party a la Republican, if it doesn't get folded into simply being Republican voters. Bottom line: it is volatile.

Are you denying that there is a contingent of Teapartiers who don't fit the bill? Can you speak directly to the article above? Is Pam Stout, Richard Mack, and their ilk a figment of our imagination? Is this not a threat to the Tea Party movement?

there's always a small amount of radicals in every group or movement and the TEA partiers are no exception. Are alot of them potentially hostile? hell yes. And they should be. But like was said earlier, we are pushing for change at the ballot box. We just also happen to be putting the feds (and some states) on notice that it's time to listen to the people and do OUR will, not theirs.

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 10:11 AM

notice that there's no attempt to present or defend arguments, only complaints about "media portrayals" when the fact is that thanks to faux news and people like glenn beck this incoherent far right "movement" has managed more television exposure than left political organizations have been able to get from the same media outlets at any point since the rise of television. and the teabaggers owe everything to this coverage. it's the reason there is a "movement"---because it appears that there is one, now there is one. doesn't matter that it's incoherent. doesn't matter that groups right libertarians with milita movement people--you know like those fine fellows from stormfront---with "promise keepers" (rebrand) with isolationists (so 30s) with xenophobes (so republican) with petit bourgeois types who have watched capitalism reorganize itself away from providing for anything remotely like what they expected for themselves and who know that something is really really wrong but haven't got the political tools to be able to articulate what that might be except that something Bad has happened and ideological mercenaries on the order of roger ailes and the faux news combine are more than happy to tell these people what it is that they're afraid of and in the process to help shift the republican brand away from its own record of disaster, positioning them as some kind of independent movement.

but that's how neo-fascism works as a tactic. these groups are always right there to tell you what it is that you are afraid of. it cant be capitalism. it cant be privatization. it cant be class stratification. it cant be the american preference for diverting massive resources into technological systems that kill others in great number. it cant be the unhinging of stock performance from anything remotely like a socio-economic well being for most people (hell EVERYONE is a holder of capital, right?)

so it has to be the state. wait no. it has to be illegal immigrants. wait no. it has to be terrorism. wait no. it has to be taxes because that is taking my shit and giving it to someone else. probably a parasite. no wait. it has to be some Outside Force that Persecutes the Salt of the Earth and Doesn't Respect Nations or Flags or other symbols of the outmoded good ole days. it has to be change. anything that seems out of control.

so we're gonna mobilize and say: we're pissed and afraid.
and we're going to say these things from some old-school nativist isolationist reactionary position even though no-one can quite say what it is.

neo-fascism kids.
like it or not.

so clearly the thing to do is to deny that it's neo-fascism. because what matters is appearance, not reality. o yeah, and stop showing the people who are part of the tea party thing. stop letting them talk. they make the rest of us look bad.

whatever They say we are, we aren't.

sheesh.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 10:25 AM

your entire opinion is completely discredited when your entire outlook is based upon slander.

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 10:37 AM

whatever They say we are, we aren't.

compare the tea party movement to others which are not locked into the tiny spectrum of american politics. things get ugly. the teapartiers are somewhere to the right of organizations like the front national.
the strictest parallel is poujadisme.

Pierre Poujade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

but with television coverage.

like i say, dk, it doesn't matter if you don't like the name that it's reasonable to attach to the tea party movement as a whole.
and it isn't to say that every person who finds that movement compelling is necessarily a neo-fascist. alot, seemingly like yourself, probably don't know what the word means.
but that changes very little about the nature of the movement. and nothing about what it amounts to.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 10:46 AM

again, your condescension and disdain for anything right of absurdly left leaves your opinions wanting credibility it cannot possibly find. not that it matters much. I've known your position for quite some time and know that you're never going to change it.

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 11:06 AM

dk...like i said, i find it curious that no-one who's sympathetic with the teapartiers accepts the way in which they characterize themselves, accepts the responsibility for what holds the movement together to the extent that anything does. they disavow people like glenn beck, who are among the biggest cheerleaders for the movement, such as it is, and who is responsible for giving it ALOT of (conservative) television exposure.

it's not my problem that as the teapartiers surface more publicly in recent weeks that embarrassment seems to mount along with them. i think it's funny.
but i do think it's past time that the teabaggers stop playing the game of political 3-card monty they have been playing---and that you (and to a lesser extent cimmaron) are playing in this thread.

dksuddeth · 02-17-2010, 11:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

dk...like i said, i find it curious that no-one who's sympathetic with the teapartiers accepts the way in which they characterize themselves, accepts the responsibility for what holds the movement together to the extent that anything does. they disavow people like glenn beck, who are among the biggest cheerleaders for the movement, such as it is, and who is responsible for giving it ALOT of (conservative) television exposure.

I wish I could say I find it curious that you haven't been paying closer attention to details about this. I'm not surprised that you gathered an opinion 8 months ago, jumped on the 'tea bagger' bandwagon, and have stuck with it through thick and thin.

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

it's not my problem that as the teapartiers surface more publicly in recent weeks that embarrassment seems to mount along with them. i think it's funny.
but i do think it's past time that the teabaggers stop playing the game of political 3-card monty they have been playing---and that you (and to a lesser extent cimmaron) are playing in this thread.

as I was saying right above, you're unable to look past your nose to see the changes that are happening in this movement, still stuck on believing that the 'baggers' are just that, full of hot headed, uneducated, ignorant, right wing hack racists who fawn at the feet of sarah palin and glenn beck. you should probably take a closer look at the words uneducated, ignorant, and hack racists. they could be in your reflection

roachboy · 02-17-2010, 11:22 AM

Quote:

you should probably take a closer look at the words uneducated, ignorant, and hack racists. they could be in your reflection

thanks for the laugh, dk.
enjoy your thread.

dlish · 02-17-2010, 07:13 PM

-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+-
gents, we've all been here long enough to realise that name calling isnt acceptable here, regardless of how vague or veiled it is. Please keep this on track. Its the perfect way to derail a thread.

dippin · 02-17-2010, 07:26 PM

I'm sorry, but this whole "the tea party are not what the media portray them to be" is a bit silly, no? I mean, they are promoted and/or sponsored by Fox News and pajamas media (home of joe the plumber). As is this "they are fed up with both parties" claim. Their keynote speaker at the convention was Sarah Palin. The biggest sponsors for the convention are:
- the judicial watch (founded by former republican senate candidate Larry Klayman, funded mostly by Richard Melon Scaife, and which has a list of "top 10 corrupt" politicians that includes 9 democrats),
- the leadership institute (founded and presided by Morton Blackwell, member of the executive committee of the RNC),
- Vision America (hosts of the "war on Christians conference" about how the "gay agenda" and the "secularists" are driving Christ out of public life, and presided by Rick Scarborough, who, by his own accounts, is Tom Delay's "closest friend"),
- the Young Americans for Freedom (creators of the 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day' contest, 'Koran Desecration' contest, and responsible for posting "gays spread aids" fliers all over the michigan state campus)
- The voices of America (created by two members of Beck's 9-12 project)

Then, in the actual convention itself we had:
- Tom Tancredo, republican, as the opening speaker, where he lamented that the outlawing of literacy and English tests to vote, and that that allowed Obama to get elected
- Joseph Farah, "birther" and editor of World Net Daily, who used his speech at the convention to denounce Obama as an illegal alien
- Andrew Brietbart, creator of the documentary "Generation Zero," which argues that the recent financial crisis was engineered by 1960s radicals intent on destroying capitalism. Oh, and also the boss of that guy that was just arrested trying to wiretap Landrieu's phones.

Of course, you may argue that the convention is not representative of the entire movement.

But when we look at the states' tea parties, the majority are sponsored by Dick Armey's freedomworks. And the majority actually endorses the republican candidates quite consistently, from David Vitter in La., to Scott Brown in MA, to Michelle Bachmann.

Now, those may be extremists that are a minority in the tea party movement. But when this minority actually includes both the leadership and the sponsors of the movement, its hard to argue that they are not representative of the movement. At some other point in time the tea party might have been grassroots and not partisan. Not now.

Cimarron29414 · 02-18-2010, 07:00 AM

Anyone seen Medina's poll numbers yet? Has it even mattered that she said what she said?

Baraka_Guru · 02-18-2010, 07:31 AM

According to this Fox blog, there haven't been any poll numbers since her comments in and about the interview.

Cimarron29414 · 02-18-2010, 08:07 AM

My gut says that her numbers will rise. Her post-interview response/explanation was pretty good. Also, this exposure certainly increased people's interest and if people see her overall message they will most likely move away from Perry and Hutchinson. In a crazy way, Beck might have just handed her the primary.

Baraka_Guru · 02-18-2010, 08:18 AM

I could totally see people giving her the sympathy vote because of Beck. Or would that be the hate/angry vote because of Beck?

Cimarron29414 · 02-18-2010, 08:41 AM

Heh, I was riding to a job site with a co-worker just now and he had Beck on the radio:

What a difference a week will do. Medina just did an interview on a Dallas talk radio station and said "all the right things" about truthers. As an aside, Beck asked her that question because he was being inundated with calls from people saying "I can't believe you would do what you did to Van Jones and then have the nerve to have a 9/11 truther on your show as a candidate!!!" As you may recall, Beck exposed Van Jones as a truther and he resigned (in part) because of it.

The point is that public sentiment against truthers seems to be a powerful force. Having the label would definitely be a negative in the campaign. He didn't know anything about her position on the issue and thought that by asking the question, it would settle the issue that she was not a truther. Again, if she'd have just said "No" last week - she could have spent this week focusing on why she is a better candidate rather than re-refining her answer to a seemingly simple question.

Regardless, she will probably still rise in the polls.

ottopilot · 02-18-2010, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin

I'm sorry, but this whole "the tea party are not what the media portray them to be" is a bit silly, no? I mean, they are promoted and/or sponsored by Fox News and pajamas media (home of joe the plumber). As is this "they are fed up with both parties" claim. Their keynote speaker at the convention was Sarah Palin. The biggest sponsors for the convention are:
- the judicial watch (founded by former republican senate candidate Larry Klayman, funded mostly by Richard Melon Scaife, and which has a list of "top 10 corrupt" politicians that includes 9 democrats),
- the leadership institute (founded and presided by Morton Blackwell, member of the executive committee of the RNC),
- Vision America (hosts of the "war on Christians conference" about how the "gay agenda" and the "secularists" are driving Christ out of public life, and presided by Rick Scarborough, who, by his own accounts, is Tom Delay's "closest friend"),
- the Young Americans for Freedom (creators of the 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day' contest, 'Koran Desecration' contest, and responsible for posting "gays spread aids" fliers all over the michigan state campus)
- The voices of America (created by two members of Beck's 9-12 project)

Then, in the actual convention itself we had:
- Tom Tancredo, republican, as the opening speaker, where he lamented that the outlawing of literacy and English tests to vote, and that that allowed Obama to get elected
- Joseph Farah, "birther" and editor of World Net Daily, who used his speech at the convention to denounce Obama as an illegal alien
- Andrew Brietbart, creator of the documentary "Generation Zero," which argues that the recent financial crisis was engineered by 1960s radicals intent on destroying capitalism. Oh, and also the boss of that guy that was just arrested trying to wiretap Landrieu's phones.

Of course, you may argue that the convention is not representative of the entire movement.

But when we look at the states' tea parties, the majority are sponsored by Dick Armey's freedomworks. And the majority actually endorses the republican candidates quite consistently, from David Vitter in La., to Scott Brown in MA, to Michelle Bachmann.

Now, those may be extremists that are a minority in the tea party movement. But when this minority actually includes both the leadership and the sponsors of the movement, its hard to argue that they are not representative of the movement. At some other point in time the tea party might have been grassroots and not partisan. Not now.

A well-founded and insightful summary. A true voice of reason.

dksuddeth · 02-19-2010, 02:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414

My gut says that her numbers will rise. Her post-interview response/explanation was pretty good. Also, this exposure certainly increased people's interest and if people see her overall message they will most likely move away from Perry and Hutchinson. In a crazy way, Beck might have just handed her the primary.

judging by the local radio shows and the people in and around north texas, people are either going from Medina to Perry or from KBH to Medina, so it looks like she may have pushed KBH out of the race.......still too early to tell though

I do know that some of the local shows here in Dallas are calling Beck out for his outright lies on his tv and radio shows as he tried to defend himself. There are alot of Texans very angry at Beck right now.

ottopilot · 02-19-2010, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

I do know that some of the local shows here in Dallas are calling Beck out for his outright lies on his tv and radio shows as he tried to defend himself. There are alot of Texans very angry at Beck right now.

Dang...More lies? When is that hater Glenn Beck going learn not to try and fool us like that? So which outright lies did ol' Nazi Glenn tell this time? I don't really have enough time to tune in to watch or listen to what he actually says, but it appeals to my social perameters to exercise unsubstantiated righteous indignatation with such enthusiasm! double-dang!

samcol · 02-21-2010, 09:55 PM

Sorry couldn't help myself I think this is great.

YouTube - Mark Dice-Mailing Glenn Beck my garbage

WinchesterAA · 03-23-2010, 06:35 PM

Glenn Beck is the answer to FOX's question of, "How do we, in this ripe time for journalism, steal Alex Jone's message and internet traffic without suffering the wrath of "teh internets"?"

Really, what the answer turned out to be, was a dude who was slightly lamer than Alex, with slightly better resources, and a far more retarded audience.

This created a balance between Glenn and Alex, because FOX's viewers, and Alex's viewers, could coexist at this point, thereby keeping everyone happy and in business feeding bullshit to uneducated sheep all over the country, without any of the sheep individually conflicting with one another on the same media-driven issues (thereby starting flame wars which may reduce total number of viewers). It worked well enough, anyhow.

02-16-2010, 04:06 PM	#81 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	I just want to know one thing, if Beck has such great ratings and is so popular and blah blah blah...... why does he do commercials for toenail fungus? I've never heard Limbaugh do them. Does he actually have toenail fungus and believes in this doctor with lasers or is it he'll do anything for a buck? And if that is the case then wouldn't his show be all about making money and not the product? If he believes in the product and is doing the commercial for that reason, why doesn't he just say, "Hi, if you are like me and suffer from toenail fungus....." So which is it Beck do you do the commercial for the money or do you do the commercial because you use the product and believe in it? Your credibility rests with your answer and proof of the fungus and treatments you have received. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

02-16-2010, 04:18 PM	#82 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	One potential answer to your question, pan, is the fact that there has been on ongoing campaign to strip Beck of corporate sponsors. He's lost a lot of them in America, and even more in the UK. Recently, Glen Beck's show aired in the UK without commercials, because they didn't have anyone willing to buy commercial time during the show. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

02-16-2010, 06:46 PM	#88 (permalink)
SecretMethod70 Human Administrator Location: Chicago	It's not that the Dems are scary, pan, it's that they're incompetent. I'd rather have incompetent people who have generally decent ideas than competent people who have terrible ideas though. That said, I understand why someone would be unenthused about either. __________________ Le temps détruit tout "Musicians are the carriers and communicators of spirit in the most immediate sense." - Kurt Elling

02-17-2010, 07:28 AM	#90 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Rassmussen from Feb 2: Perry 44%, Hutchison 29%, Medina 16% Medina was 4% in November, 12% January, 16% Feb 2nd. I place this here, so we can see what the numbers are next publication... __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly." Last edited by Cimarron29414; 02-18-2010 at 07:04 AM..

02-17-2010, 08:45 AM	#92 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	roachboy, that's surreal. And a bit frightening, but only if it is indeed as widespread as is implied. The recession needed a scapegoat, and so it is the government. There had to be a casualty, and it was reason. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

02-16-2010, 05:25 PM	#85 (permalink)
The_Dunedan Junkie	I've never liked Beck. As Will pointed out earlier, he sells himself as a libertarian while consistently upholding policies which are in direct, diametric opposition to the Non Aggression Principle. Additionaly, again as WR pointed out, he went out of his way to frame Ron Paul supporters as "domestic terrorists," even insinuating at one point that such people should be "handled" by the military: Neo-Con-speak for "Gitmo-ing" a person. However, his scattershot approach to most political issues (while it raises a lot of Birther-esque crap as well) has shone light into a lot of neglected (and VERY dirty) areas of the FedGov's operation. So, if for no other reason than that even a blind pig finds an acorn now and again, I think he should be left free to ask his questions. He should not be surprised, however, to occasionally find himself hoist on his own petard.

02-17-2010, 08:53 AM	#93 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	so the blossoming movement that is tired of mainstream politics from both sides of the aisle is now the new neo-group to be feared and ridiculed? They've lost all reason? __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

02-17-2010, 09:11 AM	#96 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	dk--let's not be disengenuous. it is not the case that all movements which work in opposition to the existing order are the same simply because they're in opposition. and you don't believe it yourself--were this a movement from the left, you'd be jumping up and down about it and buying more canned goods for your bunker. conditions are now such that it's hard to even have a discussion about this. it's like there are separate planets and folk who support this teapartiers live on one and other folk live on another. things which are axiomatic on the teaparty planet--like the gubment is evil by definition--are surreal in their simplemindedness on the other planet--but there's no common ground to have a discussion. this erosion of the basis for a debate seems to me to be the result of a long effort on the part of the populist right to carve out for itself a space of self-confirming short bromides which shape what passes for a coherent politics amongst the demographics which find such stuff to be appealing. it's the self-confirming nature of the statements that indicates the problem. then you start adding to that the particular political orientations of segments of this coalition. the militia movement. who the fuck wants the militia movement getting itself into power? the xenophobia set. the social reactionaries. the only thing holding this movement together is some incoherent sense of having been fucked over that's been channeled by folk like beck into some strange political movement. so yeah, i think it's dangerous. i think neo-fascism is always dangerous. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-17-2010, 09:39 AM	#99 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	The media is the propaganda tool of the mainstream political power. of course we're going to be painted as white racists and neo nazis or fascists. But lets not let anything get in the way of maintaining the status quo, so long as people keep getting their government money __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

02-17-2010, 09:46 AM	#100 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	The Canadian media has no stake in American political power. I get the impression from it that the Tea Party movement is at once amorphous and sometimes risking being yet another political party a la Republican, if it doesn't get folded into simply being Republican voters. Bottom line: it is volatile. Are you denying that there is a contingent of Teapartiers who don't fit the bill? Can you speak directly to the article above? Is Pam Stout, Richard Mack, and their ilk a figment of our imagination? Is this not a threat to the Tea Party movement? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot Last edited by Baraka_Guru; 02-17-2010 at 09:55 AM..

02-17-2010, 10:11 AM	#102 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	notice that there's no attempt to present or defend arguments, only complaints about "media portrayals" when the fact is that thanks to faux news and people like glenn beck this incoherent far right "movement" has managed more television exposure than left political organizations have been able to get from the same media outlets at any point since the rise of television. and the teabaggers owe everything to this coverage. it's the reason there is a "movement"---because it appears that there is one, now there is one. doesn't matter that it's incoherent. doesn't matter that groups right libertarians with milita movement people--you know like those fine fellows from stormfront---with "promise keepers" (rebrand) with isolationists (so 30s) with xenophobes (so republican) with petit bourgeois types who have watched capitalism reorganize itself away from providing for anything remotely like what they expected for themselves and who know that something is really really wrong but haven't got the political tools to be able to articulate what that might be except that something Bad has happened and ideological mercenaries on the order of roger ailes and the faux news combine are more than happy to tell these people what it is that they're afraid of and in the process to help shift the republican brand away from its own record of disaster, positioning them as some kind of independent movement. but that's how neo-fascism works as a tactic. these groups are always right there to tell you what it is that you are afraid of. it cant be capitalism. it cant be privatization. it cant be class stratification. it cant be the american preference for diverting massive resources into technological systems that kill others in great number. it cant be the unhinging of stock performance from anything remotely like a socio-economic well being for most people (hell EVERYONE is a holder of capital, right?) so it has to be the state. wait no. it has to be illegal immigrants. wait no. it has to be terrorism. wait no. it has to be taxes because that is taking my shit and giving it to someone else. probably a parasite. no wait. it has to be some Outside Force that Persecutes the Salt of the Earth and Doesn't Respect Nations or Flags or other symbols of the outmoded good ole days. it has to be change. anything that seems out of control. so we're gonna mobilize and say: we're pissed and afraid. and we're going to say these things from some old-school nativist isolationist reactionary position even though no-one can quite say what it is. neo-fascism kids. like it or not. so clearly the thing to do is to deny that it's neo-fascism. because what matters is appearance, not reality. o yeah, and stop showing the people who are part of the tea party thing. stop letting them talk. they make the rest of us look bad. whatever They say we are, we aren't. sheesh. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 02-17-2010 at 10:16 AM..

02-17-2010, 10:25 AM	#103 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	your entire opinion is completely discredited when your entire outlook is based upon slander. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

02-17-2010, 10:37 AM	#104 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	whatever They say we are, we aren't. compare the tea party movement to others which are not locked into the tiny spectrum of american politics. things get ugly. the teapartiers are somewhere to the right of organizations like the front national. the strictest parallel is poujadisme. Pierre Poujade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but with television coverage. like i say, dk, it doesn't matter if you don't like the name that it's reasonable to attach to the tea party movement as a whole. and it isn't to say that every person who finds that movement compelling is necessarily a neo-fascist. alot, seemingly like yourself, probably don't know what the word means. but that changes very little about the nature of the movement. and nothing about what it amounts to. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-17-2010, 10:46 AM	#105 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	again, your condescension and disdain for anything right of absurdly left leaves your opinions wanting credibility it cannot possibly find. not that it matters much. I've known your position for quite some time and know that you're never going to change it. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

02-17-2010, 11:06 AM	#106 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	dk...like i said, i find it curious that no-one who's sympathetic with the teapartiers accepts the way in which they characterize themselves, accepts the responsibility for what holds the movement together to the extent that anything does. they disavow people like glenn beck, who are among the biggest cheerleaders for the movement, such as it is, and who is responsible for giving it ALOT of (conservative) television exposure. it's not my problem that as the teapartiers surface more publicly in recent weeks that embarrassment seems to mount along with them. i think it's funny. but i do think it's past time that the teabaggers stop playing the game of political 3-card monty they have been playing---and that you (and to a lesser extent cimmaron) are playing in this thread. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

02-17-2010, 07:26 PM	#110 (permalink)
dippin Crazy, indeed Location: the ether	I'm sorry, but this whole "the tea party are not what the media portray them to be" is a bit silly, no? I mean, they are promoted and/or sponsored by Fox News and pajamas media (home of joe the plumber). As is this "they are fed up with both parties" claim. Their keynote speaker at the convention was Sarah Palin. The biggest sponsors for the convention are: - the judicial watch (founded by former republican senate candidate Larry Klayman, funded mostly by Richard Melon Scaife, and which has a list of "top 10 corrupt" politicians that includes 9 democrats), - the leadership institute (founded and presided by Morton Blackwell, member of the executive committee of the RNC), - Vision America (hosts of the "war on Christians conference" about how the "gay agenda" and the "secularists" are driving Christ out of public life, and presided by Rick Scarborough, who, by his own accounts, is Tom Delay's "closest friend"), - the Young Americans for Freedom (creators of the 'Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day' contest, 'Koran Desecration' contest, and responsible for posting "gays spread aids" fliers all over the michigan state campus) - The voices of America (created by two members of Beck's 9-12 project) Then, in the actual convention itself we had: - Tom Tancredo, republican, as the opening speaker, where he lamented that the outlawing of literacy and English tests to vote, and that that allowed Obama to get elected - Joseph Farah, "birther" and editor of World Net Daily, who used his speech at the convention to denounce Obama as an illegal alien - Andrew Brietbart, creator of the documentary "Generation Zero," which argues that the recent financial crisis was engineered by 1960s radicals intent on destroying capitalism. Oh, and also the boss of that guy that was just arrested trying to wiretap Landrieu's phones. Of course, you may argue that the convention is not representative of the entire movement. But when we look at the states' tea parties, the majority are sponsored by Dick Armey's freedomworks. And the majority actually endorses the republican candidates quite consistently, from David Vitter in La., to Scott Brown in MA, to Michelle Bachmann. Now, those may be extremists that are a minority in the tea party movement. But when this minority actually includes both the leadership and the sponsors of the movement, its hard to argue that they are not representative of the movement. At some other point in time the tea party might have been grassroots and not partisan. Not now. Last edited by dippin; 02-17-2010 at 11:02 PM..

02-18-2010, 07:00 AM	#111 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Anyone seen Medina's poll numbers yet? Has it even mattered that she said what she said? __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly." Last edited by Cimarron29414; 02-18-2010 at 07:04 AM..

02-18-2010, 07:31 AM	#112 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	According to this Fox blog, there haven't been any poll numbers since her comments in and about the interview. __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

02-18-2010, 08:07 AM	#113 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	My gut says that her numbers will rise. Her post-interview response/explanation was pretty good. Also, this exposure certainly increased people's interest and if people see her overall message they will most likely move away from Perry and Hutchinson. In a crazy way, Beck might have just handed her the primary. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

02-18-2010, 08:18 AM	#114 (permalink)
Baraka_Guru warrior bodhisattva Super Moderator Location: East-central Canada	I could totally see people giving her the sympathy vote because of Beck. Or would that be the hate/angry vote because of Beck? __________________ Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing? —Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön Humankind cannot bear very much reality. —From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

02-18-2010, 08:41 AM	#115 (permalink)
Cimarron29414 Still Free Location: comfortably perched at the top of the bell curve!	Heh, I was riding to a job site with a co-worker just now and he had Beck on the radio: What a difference a week will do. Medina just did an interview on a Dallas talk radio station and said "all the right things" about truthers. As an aside, Beck asked her that question because he was being inundated with calls from people saying "I can't believe you would do what you did to Van Jones and then have the nerve to have a 9/11 truther on your show as a candidate!!!" As you may recall, Beck exposed Van Jones as a truther and he resigned (in part) because of it. The point is that public sentiment against truthers seems to be a powerful force. Having the label would definitely be a negative in the campaign. He didn't know anything about her position on the issue and thought that by asking the question, it would settle the issue that she was not a truther. Again, if she'd have just said "No" last week - she could have spent this week focusing on why she is a better candidate rather than re-refining her answer to a seemingly simple question. Regardless, she will probably still rise in the polls. __________________ Gives a man a halo, does mead. "Here lies The_Jazz: Killed by an ambitious, sparkly, pink butterfly."

03-23-2010, 06:35 PM	#120 (permalink)
WinchesterAA Tilted	Glenn Beck is the answer to FOX's question of, "How do we, in this ripe time for journalism, steal Alex Jone's message and internet traffic without suffering the wrath of "teh internets"?" Really, what the answer turned out to be, was a dude who was slightly lamer than Alex, with slightly better resources, and a far more retarded audience. This created a balance between Glenn and Alex, because FOX's viewers, and Alex's viewers, could coexist at this point, thereby keeping everyone happy and in business feeding bullshit to uneducated sheep all over the country, without any of the sheep individually conflicting with one another on the same media-driven issues (thereby starting flame wars which may reduce total number of viewers). It worked well enough, anyhow.