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-   -   Glenn Beck had us all fooled. (https://thetfp.com/tfp/tilted-politics/153296-glenn-beck-had-us-all-fooled.html)

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 05:29 PM

Glenn Beck had us all fooled.
 
Where some people might have thought he was a extreme Libertarian in search of truth and freedom, exposed himself today as nothing more than a right wing hack in pursuit of keeping the entrenched neocon party in power.

His setup and hack job of TX gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina proved that today.

rahl 02-11-2010 05:36 PM

I never really thought that beck beleived all the idiocy that comes out of his mouth. I think he markets himself well to the extreme right

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 05:57 PM

dksuddeth: You are, perhaps, the only person surprised by this.

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 06:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70 (Post 2757778)
dksuddeth: You are, perhaps, the only person surprised by this.

maybe on this forum, but in my state, thousands of people were surprised.

dippin 02-11-2010 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth (Post 2757783)
maybe on this forum, but in my state, thousands of people were surprised.


The guy was an apolitical top-40 dj for 20 years, then Lou Dobbs light on CNN, and then total right wing conspira-nut on fox. You can smell the opportunism a mile away.

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 06:21 PM

I will say, he has a nice radio voice.

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 06:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dippin (Post 2757786)
The guy was an apolitical top-40 dj for 20 years, then Lou Dobbs light on CNN, and then total right wing conspira-nut on fox. You can smell the opportunism a mile away.

and now we smell the cronyism from even further

Willravel 02-11-2010 06:27 PM

Libertarians have a pretty simple non-aggression principle that's spelled out across the internet in simple Helvetica. Glenn Beck has repeatedly supported insane, neoconservative, chicken hawk war policy. He supports the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and is now pushing toward Iran and Yemen. I hate to pull a no true Scotsman, but it's antithetical to my understanding of libertarianism to engage in wars of aggression.

SImilarly, libertarians believe in limited government and strong civil liberties if I'm not mistaken. Glenn Beck supports still to this day the Patriot Act and its successors.

Libertarians believe strongly that the government has little to no business interfering with the free market, but Glenn Beck supported and supports the bailout.

BTW, Glenn Beck associated Ron Paul supporters with domestic terrorism. Repeatedly.

He's a neoconservative, Bush's policies on steroids.

Cynthetiq 02-11-2010 06:28 PM

He's Talent. After so many years in the industry, I'm not surprised aside from the fact that they are all good at keeping people entertained and tuned in.

Baraka_Guru 02-11-2010 06:29 PM


Seaver 02-11-2010 06:32 PM

Yeah... he exposed Medina for being a 9/11 Truther and for placing banner adds on the Neo-Nazi Stormfront website.

The first time in my life I thanked Beck.

Wes Mantooth 02-11-2010 06:34 PM

I never understood why people take Glenn Beck (or the rest of his infotainment ilk for that matter) seriously. He's in the entertainment business, he says and does what he needs to to get ratings. His show on Fox is a goldmine right now and the more he appeals to his audience the more the money will continue to roll in.

Honestly he'd probably be to the left of Nancy Pelosi if he thought he could get a bigger audience and more money.

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 06:47 PM

Now that I've listened to the interview, I've got to agree with Seaver.

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 07:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver (Post 2757804)
Yeah... he exposed Medina for being a 9/11 Truther and for placing banner adds on the Neo-Nazi Stormfront website.

The first time in my life I thanked Beck.

First time I saw you being a sucker. too bad.

---------- Post added at 09:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:09 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70 (Post 2757811)
Now that I've listened to the interview, I've got to agree with Seaver.

and you're in the same group with him.

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 07:13 PM

dksuddeth: aww come on, don't lie, it's not the first time you thought I was a sucker ;)

Anyway, what's hard to understand about this: he asked her what she believed about 9/11, and she hemmed and hawed with her answer and avoided flat out denying that she believes the government was involved. It was a classic politician answer, trying to deny she's a truther without lying.

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 07:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70 (Post 2757819)
dksuddeth: aww come on, don't lie, it's not the first time you thought I was a sucker ;)

maybe, maybe not.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70 (Post 2757819)
Anyway, what's hard to understand about this: he asked her what she believed about 9/11, and she hemmed and hawed with her answer and avoided flat out denying that she believes the government was involved. It was a classic politician answer, trying to deny she's a truther without lying.

so from this position, I can assume that ANYTIME Obama, Reid, or Pelosi hems and haws with an answer, we can automatically assume the negative, correct? Because my main issue is with This particular interview is that of the 6+ hours of airtime she's had on local radio stations, not one single time EVER has there been any intimation or rumor of her being a 'truther'. Not one single time..........so how did this 'coincidence' happen now?

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 07:29 PM

dksuddeth: Yes, when Obama, Reid, or Pelosi hems and haws in an answer, they're not giving the full answer either. Isn't that obvious?

dksuddeth 02-11-2010 07:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SecretMethod70 (Post 2757825)
dksuddeth: Yes, when Obama, Reid, or Pelosi hems and haws in an answer, they're not giving the full answer either. Isn't that obvious?

that is not what I asked or said.

What I asked was that, with your current position, if Obama, Reid, or Pelosi answer a question with some hemming and hawing, we can automatically assume that their answer is in the negative sense, not that they are not giving the whole answer. And then, when we assume that negativity, we won't have to worry about you being any sort of defender or apologist for the negative answer we assume, you'll just agree with us. do we have that right now?

telekinetic 02-11-2010 07:38 PM

Glen Beck admitted to "becoming" religious because his then-future wife wouldn't have sex with him before marriage, and wouldn't marry unless he was religious. His words, not mine.


Found the exact quote:
Quote:

“I apologize, but guys will understand this. My wife is, like, hot, and she wouldn’t have sex with me until we got married. And she wouldn’t marry me unless we had a religion.”
http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/b...t-mormon-wife/

SecretMethod70 02-11-2010 07:39 PM

Well first of all it depends on the question. This was a very simple question: either you believe the government may have been involved in 9/11 or you don't. If you're incapable of saying that you don't believe the government was involved in 9/11, it's pretty clear that you're a truther.

telekinetic 02-11-2010 07:45 PM

Onion article related:

ASU2003 02-11-2010 07:59 PM

He tells the audience what they want to hear. It's too bad that most of it is thinly supported meaningless information in the grand scheme of things.

Why does it matter if she is a 9/11 'truther'? There was a 10+ page discussion here and I'm not sure we came to any real conclusion except there weren't enough publically-available facts to prove either side.

I don't blame him for becoming religious for a hot girl. I'm sure there is a large percentage of men who that applies to. I know I would start going to church if it gets me laid on a regular basis.

Toaster126 02-11-2010 10:45 PM

I've never thought Glenn Beck believed everything he says...

He's a willing puppet, and laughing all the way to the bank.

Cimarron29414 02-12-2010 06:41 AM

dksuddeth: After the hubbub, I went back and listened to this interview. You have this completely twisted. She said EVERYTHING right in Beck's eyes until that question. He asked her "Do you believe the government played a role in bringing down the buildings on 9/11." He asked it TWICE. All she had to say - EITHER TIME - was "No" and she would have had his support. You have no one to blame but Medina. You should thank Beck for asking the question. Frankly, ALL of us should be thanking him for asking that question and giving her the chance to state her position...twice.

Do YOU believe that the federal government attempted to exterminate up to 30K of its people on 9/11?

fresnelly 02-12-2010 08:19 AM

I don't listen to Glenn Beck and know nothing of Texas politics, so I ask this purely out of curiosity: Does he normally go after 9/11 truthers on his show? Are they are regular target for his rants? Has he been fairly consistent in his dismissal of a 9/11 government conspiracy?

Cimarron29414 02-12-2010 08:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fresnelly (Post 2757988)
I don't listen to Glenn Beck and know nothing of Texas politics, so I ask this purely out of curiosity: Does he normally go after 9/11 truthers on his show? Are they are regular target for his rants? Has he been fairly consistent in his dismissal of a 9/11 government conspiracy?

From what I understand, he didn't "go after her". There were whispers around her campaign that she had surrounded herself with people who were all truthers. Since he knew no one else in the media would ask her if SHE was a truther, he did. He was as much putting the whole thing to rest as anything else, he didn't know what her answer would be.

The general position on truthers is this: If you sincerely believe that your government is capable of exterminating it's own citizens, then you need to quit paying your taxes and you need to pick up your pitchfork. I mean, imagine what it says of your government if that is true.

My understanding of Beck's position on truthers is this: It is a ridiculous conspiracy theory and does not warrant any consideration. I think he feels the exact same way about the birthers - it's a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

filtherton 02-12-2010 09:39 AM

Truther questions aside, anyone who doesn't think the american government is willing to accept and contribute to american casualties in exchange for the achievement of policy goals hasn't been paying attention to history.

Seaver 02-12-2010 10:08 AM

She never had a chance at Governor anyways, she was in a VERY distant 3rd.

For those unaware of Texas Politics. The governor has VERY few jobs. The position holds fewer responsibilities than most Representative positions within the State. The Lt. Governor actually holds the most power, the Governor position is simply a nice title and a coushy job. In the current race the 1st and 2nd place people are both Republicans, and the only reason he's running opposed is due to the Texas Republican party having issues with his executive orders.

For Example: The Senate and House of Reps in the state were both passing bills (running pretty much unopposed through both) that the HPV vaccine would be mandatory for all attending public schools. I dont know anyone who would oppose this measure, and had a 90% approval rating through the states (a few hardcore christians opposed as it'd increase sex in schools). Rick Perry then made an executive order calling for it. This isn't a big deal from the outside but VERY few executive orders have ever been made in the state, it was a grab for credit on his part and pissed off a lot of Reps who spent time writing and putting the bill through.

Thats why it's a split between Perry and Kay Baily Hutchinson. All others are considered Ron Paul's at this point, no one even knew Medina's name until Beck outed her as a 9/11 truther.

Pearl Trade 02-12-2010 03:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth (Post 2757783)
maybe on this forum, but in my state, thousands of people were surprised.

I live in Houston and I don't know anyone here who takes Beck literally. I like Beck, but he's an entertainer before anything.

dksuddeth 02-12-2010 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Seaver (Post 2758032)
She never had a chance at Governor anyways, she was in a VERY distant 3rd.

Thats why it's a split between Perry and Kay Baily Hutchinson. All others are considered Ron Paul's at this point, no one even knew Medina's name until Beck outed her as a 9/11 truther.

maybe you could explain her 20 point rise in the last few months? or how just 4 points behind KBH is a 'distant' 3rd?

matthew330 02-12-2010 06:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton (Post 2758014)
Truther questions aside, anyone who doesn't think the american government is willing to accept and contribute to american casualties in exchange for the achievement of policy goals hasn't been paying attention to history.

For the ignorant here who just don't pay attention to life as it passes them by, couldn't you give us a couple examples of the american goverment accepting (???) american casualties, and further contributing to american casualties for the achievement of specific policy goals.

The_Dunedan 02-13-2010 05:46 AM

Quote:

For the ignorant here who just don't pay attention to life as it passes them by, couldn't you give us a couple examples of the american goverment accepting (???) american casualties, and further contributing to american casualties for the achievement of specific policy goals.
The two most obvious are the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident and Pearl Harbor, the attack on which was allowed to proceed unchecked in order to 1: protect MK-ULTRA and the Anglo-American possession of Axis codes, and 2: ensure US entry into WWII -before- England was conquered. The Churchill Gov't made the same decision in th weeks leading up to the firebombing of the city of Coventry.

filtherton 02-13-2010 07:01 AM

Thanks, Dunedan. Also, war itself is a perfect example of the government accepting casualties to in the name of enacting policy.

All it takes is for a person in power to accept the notion that it is kosher for them to knowingly send his/her own people to their death in the name of achieving his/her goals. These deaths are justified as being the price one pays to bring about the greater good.

I would expect my government to kill its own people in any situation where there is moderately plausible support for the notion that the greater good could be served by an upfront investment of spilled american blood. Please note that expectation is not the same as agreement or endorsement.

Clearly, the Bush admin had pretty questionable judgment about appropriate ways to invest spilled american blood. I'm not saying that 9/11 was an inside job, just that I wouldn't put it past a bunch of chickenhawk neocons to do the calculations in their head and decide that one teensy-weensy terrorist attack would make a great slide in their "Why we should engage in nation building in the Middle East" powerpoint presentation.

ratbastid 02-13-2010 07:25 AM

This is off topic; not being in Texas and not watching Beck, I have little to say about this.

However:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2757959)
Do YOU believe that the federal government attempted to exterminate up to 30K of its people on 9/11?

I hope that was a typo. Around 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, not 30,000.

To put that in perspective, around 1840 people died due to Hurricane Katrina, around 230,000 in the Christmas 2004 tsunamis. We don't have a death toll in Haiti yet, but it's been estimated that 100,000 were dead within 60 seconds after the earthquake started.

Meanwhile, smoking kills around 430,000 americans a year, and something like 45,000 a year die in car accidents. Wouldn't it be something if we spent even 0.1% of the defense budget on car safety and helping people quit smoking? I wonder why Congre$$ ha$n't thought of doing $omething about that!

Seaver 02-13-2010 08:44 AM

Quote:

The two most obvious are the Gulf Of Tonkin Incident and Pearl Harbor, the attack on which was allowed to proceed unchecked in order to 1: protect MK-ULTRA and the Anglo-American possession of Axis codes, and 2: ensure US entry into WWII -before- England was conquered. The Churchill Gov't made the same decision in th weeks leading up to the firebombing of the city of Coventry.
I'm sorry but the belief that the US knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed ahead of time is complete BS. It actually started by Dewy when he was running against FDR during the war. It was BS, he knew it, and quickly redacted it during the campaign. The codes weren't MK-ULTRA, and the codes which they had weren't military codes but diplomatic. You see, we were in diplomatic talks with the Japanese. We also assumed that if they were to attack us it would be Guam or the Philipeans , we never assumed they could take a full armada accross the Pacific without us knowing. We were caught off guard, end of story.

Churchill deciding not to abandon the fire-bombed cities was accurate, they wanted to protect their knowledge of the codes. Tough choice.

MK-ULTRA wasn't codes, it was the LSD/Marijuana tests.

ASU2003 02-13-2010 09:30 AM

I don't know what happened in the days following Pearl Harbor, but I wonder why Japan didn't stay on the offensive and attack other places or send in ground troops to take over Hawaii?

Unless FDR sent the message to the Emperor to attack us, I doubt it was an inside job. Japan probably had people on the ground that radioed back that a lot of ships were in the harbor. But their tactics weren't the best in the early days considering what happened in the years following in the Pacific.

Sun Tzu 02-13-2010 09:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton (Post 2758014)
Truther questions aside, anyone who doesn't think the american government is willing to accept and contribute to american casualties in exchange for the achievement of policy goals hasn't been paying attention to history.


Stated well.

Pearl Trade 02-13-2010 03:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ASU2003 (Post 2758328)
I don't know what happened in the days following Pearl Harbor, but I wonder why Japan didn't stay on the offensive and attack other places or send in ground troops to take over Hawaii?

Unless FDR sent the message to the Emperor to attack us, I doubt it was an inside job. Japan probably had people on the ground that radioed back that a lot of ships were in the harbor. But their tactics weren't the best in the early days considering what happened in the years following in the Pacific.

The Japanese did attack parts of America. Alaska's Aleutian islands, California, Oregon, British Columbia. The Japanese also launched thousands of explosive balloons from the Japanese islands, some of which made it to the USA, causing little damage and only 6 deaths. The Japanese didn't intend to go to war with us, they just wanted to make a single strike that would knock us out of any war. Their intention was to destroy our Pacific fleet so we couldn't strike back. They didn't invade because they didn't have any islands close enough to do so. Their army wasn't strong enough or large enough to invade as well.

Basically, they had no intentions of fighting us at all. They just wanted to score a quick knock out blow on us.

Toaster126 02-13-2010 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by filtherton (Post 2758014)
Truther questions aside, anyone who doesn't think the american government is willing to accept and contribute to american casualties in exchange for the achievement of policy goals hasn't been paying attention to history.

Not only that, they are forgetting a LOT of people made A FUCKTON of money.

Derwood 02-13-2010 05:54 PM

if you have ever been fooled by Glen Beck, it's time self-evaluate

Cimarron29414 02-15-2010 06:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2758297)
This is off topic; not being in Texas and not watching Beck, I have little to say about this.

However:



I hope that was a typo. Around 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, not 30,000.

To put that in perspective, around 1840 people died due to Hurricane Katrina, around 230,000 in the Christmas 2004 tsunamis. We don't have a death toll in Haiti yet, but it's been estimated that 100,000 were dead within 60 seconds after the earthquake started.

Meanwhile, smoking kills around 430,000 americans a year, and something like 45,000 a year die in car accidents. Wouldn't it be something if we spent even 0.1% of the defense budget on car safety and helping people quit smoking? I wonder why Congre$$ ha$n't thought of doing $omething about that!


Not a typo. It's about who COULD have been in the buildings, not who were. The WTC towers easily held 20K on a normal day - then you think of the Pentagon and the Capital (which would have been hit, had it not been for those on the plane.)

ratbastid 02-15-2010 07:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2758895)
Not a typo. It's about who COULD have been in the buildings, not who were. The WTC towers easily held 20K on a normal day - then you think of the Pentagon and the Capital (which would have been hit, had it not been for those on the plane.)

I'm trying to picture a conspiracy theorist believing all the crazy-ass shit they'd have to believe to conclude that 9/11 was an inside job, but NOT believing that the conspirators could tell time.

Cimarron29414 02-15-2010 08:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2758926)
I'm trying to picture a conspiracy theorist believing all the crazy-ass shit they'd have to believe to conclude that 9/11 was an inside job, but NOT believing that the conspirators could tell time.

The number of uncontrollable factors that lead to that death toll could not have been anticipated or managed to ensure a low death toll - meaning, if one only wanted to make an impression but not actually kill a lot of people...why not just do the attack in the middle of the night, or at 6:00 am?

Hence, one must assume they went on general population of the buildings and hoped to kill as many as possible.

Which goes to Beck's point: if you truly question whether your government would attempt to exterminate 30K of their own people - that is the ONLY thing you should be focusing on. Anyone who is "unsure" whether the government played a role, as Medina stated, shouldn't worry about property taxes and such - they should worry about the government murdering its people.

Beck, of course, does not believe in any government involvement.

The_Dunedan 02-15-2010 12:09 PM

Quote:

I'm sorry but the belief that the US knew Pearl Harbor was going to be bombed ahead of time is complete BS. It actually started by Dewy when he was running against FDR during the war. It was BS, he knew it, and quickly redacted it during the campaign. The codes weren't MK-ULTRA, and the codes which they had weren't military codes but diplomatic. You see, we were in diplomatic talks with the Japanese. We also assumed that if they were to attack us it would be Guam or the Philipeans , we never assumed they could take a full armada accross the Pacific without us knowing. We were caught off guard, end of story.

Churchill deciding not to abandon the fire-bombed cities was accurate, they wanted to protect their knowledge of the codes. Tough choice.

MK-ULTRA wasn't codes, it was the LSD/Marijuana tests.
Thanks for the correction on ULTRA vs MK-ULTRA, I had the two confused.

Now, as for FDR and Pearl Harbor...sorry, not BS. The contention that FDR, probably the Sec. of War, and almost certainly the Sec. State were at least aware of an impending attack on US Pacific assets is widely accepted as a valid (if unproven) hypothesis within professional historical circles. These was considerable disagreement on the location of the attack: Pearl Harbor was considered too far for the IJN to sail without being detected, but attacks on US interests/bases in the Phillipines, or perhaps on Wake Island, were considered at least equally likely. It's telling to note that neither the Phillipine garrisons -nor- Wake Island had their defenses strengthened or upgraded*, despite the fact that War Dept. "White Papers" were circulating as early as 1938 and as late as Dec. of 1940 suggesting that such an attack was in the works. Of course, one must remember that this is the same War Dept. which so vigorously overlooked both Lt. Col. Mitchell's groundbreaking experiments with anti-ship airpower and the Battle Of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War, so a certain measure of institutional idiocy is also doubtless to blame.

Additionally, such does little to account for the fact that repeated radar warnings were ignored or "spiked" by command on the ground at Pearl**, that the Japanese attempt (very old-school of them) to give 3hrs warning before the attack was likewise ignored, or that warnings of midget submarines entering Pearl Harbor were not only ignored but discounted for years, even after the USS Ward accurately reported engaging and sinking one such vessel.

As regard the possession of Enigma codes; yes, most of the Japanese codes which were currently readable were Diplomatic. However, they were encoded and decoded using the same 3-rotor commercial Enigma machines used by the IJN and by much of the German military prior to 1940. This is the kind of intel you want to play -very- close to the vest. When the Abwehr added a fourth rotor in mid 1944, the intelligence loss it caused was so great that it allowed the planning and build-up for the Ardennes Offensive (Battle Of The Bulge) to take place in almost total secrecy. FDR and Churchill both knew, as to a lesser degree did De Gaulle and Stalin, that the preservation of this kind of intelligence was of absolutely paramount importance, and both men made horrible Solomonic decisions (as you acknowledge with Coventry) to protect it.

As for FDR's second motivation for ensuring US entry into the war, it was very simple. He (and everyone else) knew that once the UK was conquered and occupied, the Atlantic would be wide open and the eastern US left vulnerable to attacks by the Kreigsmarine. At this point the Atom Bomb was only a theory, but the possibility of atomic attack may very well have entered into the discussion. Most importantly, FDR and Churchill both knew that, once the UK fell and British colonial interests in Africa and the Far East fell in German/Japanese hands, Germany would have both the materiel and the manpower to challenge the industrial capacities of the US and USSR. This would have been -especially- true if Albert Speer or someone similarly capable was at the helm. With such capacity, the US would not only be vulnerable to significant assault itself, but the USSR (already on shaky ground thanks to the Yezhovschina Purges, and with Stalin playing the weather-vane to Hitler's wind) would probably have been taken out of the fight by either military or economic/diplomatic means. In order to prevent the conquest of the UK and the loss of the Soviet Union, it was important for the US to enter the war quickly. It was equally important that such entry not be initiated against Germany. An American analogue to the NAZI party, complete with swastikas and brown shirts, was already enjoying rapid growth, and Fascist-esque penetration of the US popular media was already well advanced. FDR risked the real possibility of both losing England and losing his job if America was seen to be initiating conflict with the Nazis, especially since many Americans at the time regarded the Nazis as a disagreeable but needed bulwark against Bolshevism. It was therefore important that the declarations of war follow as they did: Japan attacks, US declares war on Japan, Germany declares war on US.

As for Mr. Dewey retracting his statements, I have no doubt that he did. I also have no doubt that he had plenty of "help" from J. Edgar Hoover and his crowd of leg-breakers and blackmail specialists. We today have considerably more evidence that Dewey did, and much of it IMO points to at very least the passive compliance of the Rooseveldt administration for the above-outlined specific policy motives.


*The poor Marines on Wake were still using '03A3 Springfield rifles and Brewster Buffalo fighters at the time of the Battle Of Wake Island!
**And no, there is no way that hundreds of fighters approaching from the WEST were mistaken for five B-17 heavy bombers which were supposed to approach from the EAST.

ratbastid 02-15-2010 01:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2758931)
The number of uncontrollable factors that lead to that death toll could not have been anticipated or managed to ensure a low death toll - meaning, if one only wanted to make an impression but not actually kill a lot of people...why not just do the attack in the middle of the night, or at 6:00 am?

Hence, one must assume they went on general population of the buildings and hoped to kill as many as possible.

I disagree with your conclusion-drawing, there.

I know this may be heresy for some of you, but I think the attack was VERY carefully timed for two objectives: maximum media impact, and as little human casualty as possible. Doing it when most of the country is asleep would lose the primary objective of any mass terrorist attack, and that is a CRAPLOAD of attention RIGHT NOW. Doing it at around 9:00am ensures the media folks are awake and at work, and there ARE victims in the buildings, but the buildings are, at that time, about 1/10th full, as you point out.

I've always assumed that the hijackers weren't actually interested in killing more people than they needed to, and my evidence for that has been the relatively early-in-the-day timing of the attack. If I were timing such an attack and wanted to keep my body count as low as I could, I'd pick some time between 8:00 and 9:00am (the first building was hit at about 8:45, the second at like 9:03). Otherwise, why not sleep in a little and do it in the early afternoon when the buildings are full?

Derwood 02-15-2010 02:18 PM

Right. If they were going for body count, they would have crashed the plane into a college football stadium or something

Cimarron29414 02-15-2010 02:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood (Post 2759078)
Right. If they were going for body count, they would have crashed the plane into a college football stadium or something

I'm having a difficult time following you guys. Are either of you saying that you believe the government was involved?

ratbastid 02-15-2010 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2759084)
I'm having a difficult time following you guys. Are either of you saying that you believe the government was involved?

I'm certainly not. I'll let Derwood speak for himself.

All I'm saying is, I think the timing of the thing lends a certain view to the attackers that has been overlooked, either deliberately or not, and that is that they picked a relatively low-victim-count time of day for their attack. I think it's clear they were out to do the thing with maximum visual shock-and-awe as a first objective, and as FEW human casualties as they could as a second objective.

Pearl Trade 02-15-2010 02:47 PM

Why would they care how many people they killed? They obviously place no value on life, so I don't see why they wouldn't kill as many infidel as possible. If it's possible that they could have killed more, then maybe it's just a coincidence that they didn't.

Cimarron29414 02-15-2010 02:53 PM

I tend to agree with Pearl Trade. These people don't value life. I believe they truly wish there were more people in the building and that they killed many, many more of us. I don't think anyone who possessing enough hatred for a people to concoct, plan and execute such an act would give a second's consideration on mitigating death toll. I don't think we can begin to understand the hatred needed to justify such an act. We simply grew up in a place which values life and we want to project that value on others.

The_Dunedan 02-15-2010 02:58 PM

I think it's a pretty long stretch to argue that the 9/11 hijackers deliberately avoided civilian casualties. If they wanted to minimise loss of life, they would have called in warnings to Gov't agencies and media outlets, several of them, as the IRA did before several of its' more impressive fireworks shows. If they had wanted to minimise loss of life, they could simply have crashed the planes into open fields, or taken them out over the ocean. Instead, they selected as their primary targets two very large buildings with a HUGE head-count capacity. I doubt very seriously that they considered how many people would be there at which time: they just looked for the biggest box that can hold the most stuff and shot for that. And if they -had- been in such a mood....duh. NYC never sleeps, airports included. They could have done their little dance in the middle of the night, when the buildings would be as close to empty as anything in NYC ever is. They still would have had their "shock and awe;" two 100-story skyscrapers on fire in the middle of the night would have been a HUGE piece of S&A. But they didn't.

ratbastid 02-15-2010 03:35 PM

Perl Trade and Cimmaron's responses are textbook righty rhetoric, with absolutely zero thinking done from the perspective of the attackers. "They hate people and don't value life" is too shallow a level of thinking (if you can even call it that) to engage with, so I'm not going to bother.

As usual though, Dunedan makes interesting points. I can see "minimize casualties" isn't really quite what I meant to say. I guess I'm saying, it's not that they wanted ZERO casualties. I think they saw mass death as critical to making their point. But there's a difference between 3k and 30k victims.

The question you're answering is "why 9am instead of 2 in the morning?", but that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking, "why 9am instead of 2 in the afternoon?" Given the attack could have been a WHOLE lot worse in terms of lost life, and assuming the hijackers and/or their planners are no dummies, why DIDN'T they pick the time that would give them the most devastating body-count? "We were lucky" isn't a satisfying answer to this question, for me.

You could get a team onto a quartet of planes out of Logan and JFK literally any hour of the day or night, if you don't care where they're going or what airline they are. Getting on planes at that hour meant, even back then, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn to check in and go through what was then known as security. It's not like it was a convenient hour for them. So why'd they pick it? They could have picked any time. Why 9am?

I know that attributing to the 9/11 hijackers and planners any sort of thought for their victims completely short-circuits the synapses of many Americans. But I have to think they picked that time because they felt there would be enough casualties at that hour, and didn't feel the need to cause any more than enough.

Plan9 02-15-2010 03:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2759114)
I know that attributing to the 9/11 hijackers and planners any sort of thought for their victims completely short-circuits the synapses of many Americans. But I have to think they picked that time because they felt there would be enough casualties at that hour, and didn't feel the need to cause any more than enough.

Say what? The symbolic targets were the goal, the body count was just an added bonus. Their schedule was fucked up anyway, 9/11 wasn't the original go date, they didn't have a whole lotta control over the weapons (time frames / locations of the aircraft), some of their operatives had been busted, etc. Granted, this is all coming from various State Department lectures and the 9/11 Commission report and I'm a complete dumbass. I figure the attacks of 9/11 are a product of both blind luck and incredible failures on the United States' part to share info amongst hide-the-ball rival LE / intel agencies. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and we got rocked in the chin pretty good. It's easy to see the failures afterward and play up both sides of the conflict.

And consider my synapses fried... I just spent the last couple years studying terrorism at cawl-edge and the goal of the greater global jihadist movement has always been to kill as many of whitey as possible in his own home. Suicide bombers are promoted. Nuclear weapons are on the table. There is no "enough." You don't think that the GJM would green light operations that killed as many adult (Muslim PR issues with killing kids) whities as possible?

How did you arrive at the conclusion that those who slammed planes into the WTC and Pentagon were looking to reduce their bodycount? Because of the time the planes impacted? Because that side of the Pentagon was largely uninhabited due to renovation? Please explain, I'm totally lost here.

You can't call me a "textbook righty."

...

Also: Glenn Beck's a blubbering talking-head pussy like every other muppet on FOX/MSNBC/CNN.

Derwood 02-15-2010 04:06 PM

first, no....I don't believe the US Government had anything to do with the attack

second, I don't believe the goal of the terrorists was to minimize the death toll OR to kill as many people as possible. It's goal was to destroy three symbolic buildings; the WTC (commerce), the Pentagon (military) and the White House (political). The third was "sabotaged" by the passengers on board.

in other words, the death toll (large or small) wasn't the first consideration in the orchestration of the attacks

ratbastid 02-15-2010 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plan9 (Post 2759116)
How did you arrive at the conclusion that those who slammed planes into the WTC and Pentagon were looking to reduce their bodycount? Because of the time the planes impacted? Because that side of the Pentagon was largely uninhabited due to renovation? Please explain, I'm totally lost here.

Pretty much, yeah. I mean, not reduce their body count, but rather that their body count was nowhere near as important to them as the symbolic and shock value of their targets.

Now: you tell me that the time of day of the attacks had some other explanation, I'm all ears. I'm just trying to think from where THEY might have been thinking from choosing that time. If you say they didn't have all that much choice in the matter, well I'm listening.

I also think that "terrorism" (or guerilla war, as it used to be called) has changed a lot since 9/11 and our hamfisted reaction to it, and it might well be about body count these days.

To be clear--I've never really articulated this, even for myself, before this thread. So I'm thinking this through myself. I don't have a real strong attachment to the conclusion I'm coming to at all, I just think we'd do well to think like those who attack us.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plan9
You can't call me a "textbook righty."

No indeedy. It wasn't the disagreement that prompted me to namecalling. I'm actually interested in other opinions about this. It was the lack of thinking.

---------- Post added at 07:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:16 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood (Post 2759130)
second, I don't believe the goal of the terrorists was to minimize the death toll OR to kill as many people as possible. It's goal was to destroy three symbolic buildings; the WTC (commerce), the Pentagon (military) and the White House (political). The third was "sabotaged" by the passengers on board.

in other words, the death toll (large or small) wasn't the first consideration in the orchestration of the attacks

Yes, now add to that the fact that they chose a daytime hour when relatively few people would be in the building. Doesn't that add up to, they went for the shock and symbol impact, and did so in a way that would kill the LEAST people?

As I said above, "We got off light, we were lucky, it was a coincidence"... these just don't satisfy me as answers to this question.

I mean, they had to pick a time, didn't they? Why did they pick that one? The conclusion I can come to is, they didn't want (from their point of view) unnecessarily large loss of life.

Plan9 02-15-2010 04:20 PM

Let's do this US Army NCO style:

Task:
Take out symbolic targets in the US.

Conditions:
Global Jihadist agenda, devoted martyrs, splintered US LE / intel agencies / lax airline security, gigundo airplanes, targets, 24/7 global news media.

Standard:
Buildings destroyed, media circus, crazy redneck Americans rash call for blood from dem foreigners.

Purpose:
Further Global Jihadist movement by striking fear into Great Whitey.

Direction:
(itty bitty logistical details, time and date don't really matter as long as targets are destroyed, high body count is bonus)

Motivation:
99 virgins.

Baraka_Guru 02-15-2010 04:26 PM



-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+-
Please, for the sake of the thread, keep this somehow tied into Glenn Beck, whether or not he's a libertarian, whether he set-up and smeared Debra Medina, and whether Medina was her own undoing. The 9/11 Truth movement might have something to do with it, but the legitimacy of the 9/11 Truth movement should not be the focus here. Save that for another thread.

ratbastid 02-15-2010 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plan9 (Post 2759137)
Direction:
(itty bitty logistical details, time and date don't really matter as long as targets are destroyed, high body count is bonus)

I get your assertion that they think more bodies is better, I really do. I'm just not sure how you explain, then, they chose a low-population time in the buildings they attacked. Are they just stupid?

---------- Post added at 07:29 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:28 PM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru (Post 2759141)
Please, for the sake of the thread, keep this somehow tied into Glenn Beck, whether or not he's a libertarian, whether he set-up and smeared Debra Medina, and whether Medina was her own undoing. The 9/11 Truth movement might have something to do with it, but the legitimacy of the 9/11 Truth movement should not be the focus here. Save that for another thread.

(That's not at all what we're talking about anymore, but your point is still entirely valid.)

Glenn Beck Glenn Beck Baba Booey Baba Booey!

Plan9 02-15-2010 04:36 PM

Well, this link explains all we need to know about our homeboy Glenn Beck.

...

And a 0900 attack maximizes the amount of media coverage the average couch potato will watch that day before turning in at night.

...

The title of this thread is hilarious because it only applies to those who would actually believe anything that came out of his tooth-filled faceanus.

Pearl Trade 02-15-2010 06:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2759114)
Perl Trade and Cimmaron's responses are textbook righty rhetoric, with absolutely zero thinking done from the perspective of the attackers. "They hate people and don't value life" is too shallow a level of thinking (if you can even call it that) to engage with, so I'm not going to bother.

Wrong, these extremist's fucking HATE Americans. They HATE me, and you, and every single Western country. Why else would they attack us? They have even said before they want to kill all of us. In the Mid-East, whenever they see someone collaborating with American forces, they kill them. Proof that they don't care about human life is the killing of civilians and other inncoent people. The terrorists follow a strict view of the Koran, which in their mind gives them permission to kill the "infidel." To them, an infidel is anyone who doesn't believe in Allah, pretty much all western societies. Before the attacks, Bin Laden was quoted as saying "it is the duty of every Muslim to kill Americans anywhere." He also said, "You are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind: You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator." By no means am I saying all Muslims believe this, I'm only talking about extreme, terroristic "Muslims."

Like it's been said before, more bodies the better, but its just a bonus to the main goal. The main goal was to send a knife through our hearts. Some even believe that the main goal was to increase American presence in the Mid-East, leading to a general Islamic hatred of us.

Derwood 02-15-2010 07:52 PM

You really believe the extremists believe all of that? I'm of the opinion that the Taliban/Al Qaeda/whomever use the hardcore religious angle to keep the followers in line, but all they really want is power

Plan9 02-15-2010 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Derwood (Post 2759225)
You really believe the extremists believe all of that? I'm of the opinion that the Taliban/Al Qaeda/whomever use the hardcore religious angle to keep the followers in line, but all they really want is power

Turns out the bullet doesn't ask if the gun really meant it. I could use a colorful corporate analogy, but that'd be pretty lame.

What does it matter who really believes what if it results in jumbo jets crashing into skyscrapers in the name of defeating the Infidel?

What do you think motivated the 9/11 hijackers, Derwood? Something tells me it wasn't the dental benefits. Who gives a shit about what their bosses really believe if they can get grown men to crash planes into buildings. Of course it's all bullshit. Don't be silly. I don't think Al Qaeda ("Fragmented Core") believes their own drivel, no, but I don't believe that the US Army is an Army of One either. Slogans shouldn't be taken seriously, but crazed individuals who take them seriously enough to kill should. The terrorist mastermind is only dangerous because he makes his henchmen dangerous.

It's all about putting on a good show to achieve power/control. Kinda like Glenn Beck. I'd imagine he's inspired some of his followers to do bad things. Maybe FOX News has Al Qaeda on the payroll to provide the sensational conflict content they need for old Beckyboo to stay on the air.

Derwood 02-15-2010 07:59 PM

of course they should be taken seriously. my point was that the whole "turrists hate our freedom" line of thinking is bullshit. 9/11 wasn't about murder.

okay, I'm done....sorry for the continued threadjack

Plan9 02-15-2010 08:09 PM

Well, to suggest that 9/11 wasn't about murder is to suggest that WW2 wasn't about murder.

It was just a little side effect, really.

...

Sometimes I think I might I wanna punch Glenn Beck in his fatty jowls with Keith Olberman's head.

ratbastid 02-15-2010 08:19 PM

You're still not thinking, Pearl Trade, but it's great how you're trying to. Here's a hint. Actual thinking results in new thoughts. I had a new thought a page or so up on this thread, and we batted it around a while. I'm not convinced about it, but one of the effects of thinking is that you can hold a thought lightly in mind and not get hung up on the truth or untruth of it.

You asked a great question. Why WOULD they attack us? If you set down all the answers you already know ("already knowing" is absolutely antithetical to what I'm calling "thinking") and start just sort of wondering about that question, why before long buddy, you'll be THINKING!

Actual thinking is very rare among humans and other great apes. Bertrand Russel: "Most people would rather die than think, and most of them do."

Arguably, you could say that the moderators have stepped in and put a stop to any thinking on this thread--at least down the lines we're now discussing. So... We may need to take this elsewhere.

Cimarron29414 02-16-2010 06:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2759235)
You're still not thinking, Pearl Trade, but it's great how you're trying to. Here's a hint. Actual thinking results in new thoughts. I had a new thought a page or so up on this thread, and we batted it around a while. I'm not convinced about it, but one of the effects of thinking is that you can hold a thought lightly in mind and not get hung up on the truth or untruth of it.

You asked a great question. Why WOULD they attack us? If you set down all the answers you already know ("already knowing" is absolutely antithetical to what I'm calling "thinking") and start just sort of wondering about that question, why before long buddy, you'll be THINKING!

Actual thinking is very rare among humans and other great apes. Bertrand Russel: "Most people would rather die than think, and most of them do."

Arguably, you could say that the moderators have stepped in and put a stop to any thinking on this thread--at least down the lines we're now discussing. So... We may need to take this elsewhere.

You are acting like an arrogant ass. The fact that I have drawn my conclusions prior to your liking does not mean they are not thought out. The fact that I have drawn conclusions similar to others who you disagree with does not mean they are not thought out. I did my research years ago and I did it for years. I have read dozens of books on the subject, from both sides of the issue. I need not justify my conclusions to someone who believes they were derived by "not thinking".

What other human emotion motivates a person to slash the throats of women serving Coke to children, hack up pilots, and fly a 747 into a building filled with thousands of people, men, women and children? Find me the complex intellectual thought behind that motivation. The fact that I summarize it to a single word does not mean that I wasn't thinking.

...and perhaps, since we all get to witness your thinking outloud now, perhaps, just perhaps, the 8:00 hour was the only time in the day where four large passenger planes were leaving at roughly the same time and had the required fuel amounts for the mission - a load large enough to take the plane across country. There, since you are "thinking about it for the first time now"....eight years later, perhaps you should add that to your algorithm. Now, if someone wanted to minimize...er, as you put it...not maximize casualties...why not just hijack some puddle jumpers from the Atlanta to Charlotte run and use them? Don't answer that, the smoke from your thinking is stinking up the place.

ratbastid 02-16-2010 07:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ratbastid (Post 2759235)
Arguably, you could say that the moderators have stepped in and put a stop to any thinking on this thread--at least down the lines we're now discussing. So... We may need to take this elsewhere.

I just want to quote myself here to acknowledge that my disappointment with the moderation action earlier on is in the background here, lending un-needed snark to my postings. I'm sorting that out with the moderators via PM as we speak. I apologize for anything you are left with out of my communicating so passive-aggressively about it.

I love our moderators, they do amazing work, and everyone makes mistakes including most DEFINITELY me.

Rekna 02-16-2010 07:49 AM

If they wanted to minimize casualties they could have done it on a holiday. This would likely have also increased the media attention as everyone would be glued to their TV's instead of at work. Also they could have picked high profile/low death targets (washington monument, statue of liberty, etc). The terrorists wanted to kill a lot of people. The early AM flight could have been due to a couple of reasons. 1) That is when a bunch of long distance flights in the largest airplanes took off at the same time, 2) where they could get the tickets they wanted, 3) just because, 4) wanted to catch everyone in their cars and bring new york to a stand still, etc

Cynthetiq 02-16-2010 07:51 AM



-+-{Important TFP Staff Message}-+-
last warning: keep the discussion on Glen Beck, we're trying to see if we can prune this discussion into another thread, but for the meantime, please get back on to Glen Beck discussion.

If not the thread will be locked until we can figure it out.

Plan9 02-16-2010 07:58 AM

Here's a question from an outsider:

How is Glenn Beck any different than Rush the Slush or O'Reilly? Why would he have "fooled" anybody anymore than those guys?

Cynthetiq 02-16-2010 08:01 AM

Nothing. All of them are entertainers via Opinion Editorial pages, but moving and talking heads.

Plan9 02-16-2010 08:06 AM

How do they develop particular slices of followers? It's all the same gospel, right? I'm confused.

What separates the Big 3?

Cimarron29414 02-16-2010 08:11 AM

Does anyone know her poll numbers this week? dksuddeth?

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 AM ----------

Quote:

Originally Posted by Plan9 (Post 2759417)
How do they develop particular slices of followers? It's all the same gospel, right? I'm confused.

What separates the Big 3?

While this line of questioning implies that those who answer it or are knowledgable are clearly blind followers, I will take a crack.

Limbaugh - only radio
Hannity - radio and TV
Beck - radio and TV

Limbaugh and Hannity - 100% GOP all the way
Beck - both parties are bad, vote for people who have integrity and share your values

Limbaugh and Hannity - GOP wins in November and the country keeps chugging along
Beck - path is unsustainable, build a bunker, fill it with food and water. Doesn't matter who is in power - they are both the same.

Plan9 02-16-2010 08:15 AM

Honestly, I'm not trying to be a dick. We're all followers of one type of gospel or another to a large extent.

I just wanted the perspective of someone who had enough experience with this side to explain it.

Your summary, however accurate it may be, probably saved me about 3 hours on Google. I appreciate it.

dippin 02-16-2010 08:57 AM

Beck is as much a GOP shill as the other two. It's just a slightly different type of GOP he shills for. Limbaugh and Hannity are 100% GOP all the way, indeed. Beck is fringe conspiracy GOP, but still GOP. Heck, in the radio show that started this thread the guy ends up endorsing Rick Perry.

The difference between Beck and Limbaugh and Hannity is the fringe conspiracy part. And I'm not talking "Obama is a secret Muslim" type of conspiracy, but the "there is a conspiracy for a one world government going on and that can be traced back to communist Rockefeller" type of conspiracy.

kutulu 02-16-2010 09:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cimarron29414 (Post 2759418)
Does anyone know her poll numbers this week? dksuddeth?

---------- Post added at 11:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 AM ----------



While this line of questioning implies that those who answer it or are knowledgable are clearly blind followers, I will take a crack.

Limbaugh - only radio
Hannity - radio and TV
Beck - radio and TV

Limbaugh and Hannity - 100% GOP all the way
Beck - both parties are bad, vote for people who have integrity and share your values

Limbaugh and Hannity - GOP wins in November and the country keeps chugging along
Beck - path is unsustainable, build a bunker, fill it with food and water. Doesn't matter who is in power - they are both the same.

No, Beck is "Both parties are bad... so vote Republican"

Jinn 02-16-2010 09:07 AM

I'm confused. I thought everyone knew Glenn Beck was a shill for the GOP/teabaggers?

I think the real news is about whether or not he raped two girls in 1990..


DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com: Home Page

pan6467 02-16-2010 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jinn (Post 2759456)
I'm confused. I thought everyone knew Glenn Beck was a shill for the GOP/teabaggers?

I think the real news is about whether or not he raped two girls in 1990..


DidGlennBeckRapeAndMurderAYoungGirlIn1990.com: Home Page

Quote:

Notice: This site is parody/satire. We assume Glenn Beck did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990, although we haven't yet seen proof that he didn't. But we think Glenn Beck definitely uses tactics like this to spread lies and misinformation.

Read the last sentence again. That's the point. Read it a third time and ignore the name of the site itself, because anyone who believes that we're trying to actually get people to believe Glenn Beck raped and/or murdered is *whoosh* missing the entire point. So don't be dumb like a lot of people are. I greatly expanded this text because so many people *read* it, and *still* didn't understand.
From your quoted site. The site is good and has great points, however, if you were serious about thinking Beck raped and murdered a woman in 1990, you missed the whole point of the site.

The site itself kind of uses the tactics Beck does and throws them right back at him.

The_Jazz 02-16-2010 09:43 AM

Pan, look over there. That thing zooming by? That's the point. I think you missed it.

kutulu 02-16-2010 10:34 AM

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

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 (Post 2759475)
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 (Post 2759418)
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 (Post 2759631)
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 (Post 2759601)
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 (Post 2759647)
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 (Post 2759790)
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 (Post 2759793)
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 (Post 2759794)
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 (Post 2759797)
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?


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