Month: October 2010

Poisoned By Liberalism

by digby

Holy moly:

GLENN: Today I want to talk to you about something. I want to talk to you about a portion of my life that I want to share with you because I think it’s going to lead me in different places. I don’t necessarily mean physical, but mentally I think this is going to be a spiritual journey. It is going to be a physical journey. It is going to be a mental journey. And I would like to, I’d like to be able to share it with you and the things that I have learned, and you’ll be able also to see why I’m going the places that I am and what I am doing.

Next week on Monday and Tuesday, I am going to take time off. I’m going out West to have some testing done. I have told you before that I have been losing feeling in my hands and my feet and I have been feeling tingling in my hands and my feet, and it’s traveling up my arms and it’s just a very bizarre sensation. It almost feels like I’m wearing gloves at times because I was talking to my kids the other day about fingerprints and I couldn’t, I couldn’t feel my fingerprints and it was bizarre. And I thought if that was only true, man, I could be like a master thief. So it’s been very it’s been strange. I’ve told you also that I have been diagnosed with macular dystrophy, which means that I love this diagnosis I could be totally fine with eyesight for the rest of my life, or I could be blind within a year. The macular dystrophy has not progressed at all in the two months since it’s been diagnosed, but there’s something else that has also been going on. And if you’re a long time listener, you might be even be able to tell it I can just by listening to my voice now. There is something wrong with my voice, and we’re not sure what it is. I went in and had some testing done and there’s nothing like sticking scopes through your nose and then having doctors look through the scopes in your nose. And they’re passing the scope back and forth going, look at this, doctor, what do you think this is? And I’m like, what do you guys see? What are you looking at? What do you see? Show it to me. And I’ll tell you more about this next week. But there’s just some things that are happening, and we don’t know what they are yet. And they’re doing all kinds of testing. They’re going to be doing CAT scans and MREs or MRIs and PET scans and they’re going to be doing blood work like crazy. And the thing that they said to me, I’ve seen five different doctors and I’ve got an incredible group of doctors who are, I think only one of them really hates me, and I have the other four watching that one. But they’re looking one of them said to me the other night, we have to do all of these blood tests because we have to look for toxins and poisons, and that word stuck out to me. And it’s not poison like you know, it’s like lead paint. And I’m like, no, I haven’t been eating lead chips. And that word stuck out to me.

Night before last I was laying in bed next to my wife and she put her hand on my back and she said to me, what are you doing? Honey, go to sleep. She said that to me at 3:00 in the morning. I had been reading a couple of books, as I’m so far behind in my reading. But I had closed one of these books, as I’m doing research and I’m trying to understand more. And I had closed one of these books about an hour before and I said, I just to myself I just can’t look at this anymore. Then I said a prayer, and as I was praying, I noticed that I wasn’t praying as hard for healing as I should, which led me to the first conversation I had with a neurologist who said to me, well, we don’t know what this is. He said, but we’re investigating here, here, and here. And I said, could this be brought on by stress? Could this be brought on because I’m just, you know and he said, no, not this. He said, you know, that’s not making it better. And I said, so should I maybe should I stop? And he said, no, you’re okay. I was disappointed. And the other day I thought about it and I thought, I can’t even pray and cry out to the Lord. I have cried out to the Lord a lot in the last four years. I couldn’t cry out to him for that. That got me to thinking. A house divided against itself cannot stand. People will say about me, they have written about me. In fact, the New York Times just did their big piece and they said, I don’t think Glenn Beck even knows who he is. In some ways that is true. I know who I am. I am just like you. A son of a father in heaven that loves me, and I try to serve him. But that is, that is something that I have never even come close to mastering and worked my whole life. I am a guy who’s trying to be better every day. I know who I am. But when they wrote that, it is so true because I don’t know where I’m supposed to end up. I don’t know how to do this.

The last 24 hours as I’ve been thinking about the doctors saying we’re looking for toxins, we’re looking for poisons in your body, I know what they are. For four years I have tried to understand the mind of what I believe are monsters. It started with Walter Lippmann. The first book that I closed and said I can’t read this anymore was Walter Lippmann. And it was about how they can breed better people and how there are undesirables. I never finished the book. That was the first one. And for four years I have been trying to understand the minds of people that I think are so misled, and they are the exact opposite of what I have tried to be, what I want to be, what I strive for. But I have done it because I have to, I have to understand it, I have to see what’s try to understand to explain what’s coming, what’s happening. And not for you but for my children.

I believe we can be better people. I believe in the American experiment. But I also believe there are very misguided people, and I have been drinking that poison, which others may not find poison, but I do because it is exact opposite of me. And I have been “That which you gaze upon, you become.”

I don’t know what to make of this, but it’s creepy. If I had to guess, we’re seeing Beck on the verge of a Koresh-style religious anointment. Or a full blown breakdown. The problem is that I don’t know if his followers would be able to tell the difference.

Update: Speaking of Beck’s followers, this should be interesting:

This past summer, as the SF Chronicle reported at the time, a convicted felon named Byron Williams “loaded up his mother’s Toyota Tundra with guns, strapped on his body armor and headed to San Francisco…with one thing in mind: to kill workers” at the ACLU and the Tides Foundation, hoping to “start a revolution.”

On Monday, the progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America will release an interview it conducted with Williams in which he explains that Glenn Beck’s Fox News show “blew his mind.” From the interview:

MEDIA MATTERS: When you talk about how conservative values have been lost in this country you were talking before about the liberal media. You were saying maybe Fox was the exception. You think Fox is worthwhile?

BYRON WILLIAMS: Well, I’m not gonna say anyone is worthwhile. But [unintelligible] I would’ve never started watching Fox if it wasn’t for the fact that Beck was on there. And it was the things that he did, it was the things he exposed that blew my mind. I said, well, nobody does this.

.

Running For Cover

by digby

I think we all knew that the Shirley Sherrod episode was an example of really poor judgment, but the emails obtained by the LA Times prove something many of us have suspected for quite some time, namely that the administration is pathologically worried about being perceived as “liberal”, in this case, manifesting itself as being too solicitous toward African Americans:

The e-mails, some of which were redacted by the Agriculture Department, do not show whether the White House ordered the dismissal, long a point of speculation. Sherrod has said that when department Deputy Undersecretary Cheryl Cook called and asked her to resign, Cook told her the White House wanted her out, but USDA and White House officials have said the decision was made within the agency.

However, the e-mails suggest the White House was watching with interest. “Just wanted you to know that this dismissal came up at our morning senior staff meeting today,” Christopher Lu, who serves as Obama’s liaison to the Cabinet, wrote to top Agriculture officials early July 20, the morning after Sherrod was ousted. “Everyone complimented USDA on how quickly you took this action,” he wrote, adding that it would stop an “unpleasant story” from getting “traction.” “Thanks for the great efforts.”

Within the USDA, the messages show, government officials had moved at breakneck pace to try to beat the news cycle, leaving little time to ask questions, seek legal advice or consider Sherrod’s side of the story.

The first sign of trouble arrived about 2 p.m. on July 19, in an e-mail from USDA communications staffer Wayne Maloney.

Maloney informed Chris Mather, the department’s director of communications, that a video had popped up online and that a conservative website soon would publicize it.

“It speaks for itself and you need to watch it right away,” Maloney writes.

Mather’s response was blunt. “THIS IS HORRIBLE,” she wrote as she sent notice — subject line “Super Urgent” — up the chain of command to Karen Ross, Vilsack’s chief of staff, and her deputy, Carole Jett.

It took just an hour and a half to get a directive from Vilsack. “The S [Secretary Vilsack] is absolutely sick and mad over the S Sherrod issue. He wants her immediately on adm leave,” wrote Krysta Harden, assistant secretary of congressional relations.

Cook responded simply, “Done.”

Five minutes later, Cook reached Sherrod on a cellphone. Sherrod gave her side of the story, according to a timeline assembled by Cook.

Cook and Dallas Tonsager, undersecretary of rural development, said in an e-mail sent to Vilsack a few minutes later that the subject of the speech was blacks and whites working together.

“She said there is a copy of the entire speech, and Cheryl asked her to provide it as quickly as possible,” the e-mails said.

But Vilsack did not wait. An hour later, Cook called Sherrod, who was driving in Georgia, to ask her to resign. Another hour later, Cook called Sherrod again to ask her to resign by the end of the day.

“I called her a fourth time at 6:35 to ask whether she’d be willing to pull over to the side of the road and submit a resignation by email,” Cook writes in the account.

Sherrod agreed, and her job working with poor farmers in rural Georgia was finished.

The fact that this “unpleasant” story was being pimped by a professional character assassin with serious issues with African Americans wasn’t relevant. Neither, apparently, was the fact that she told them there was more to the story. It clearly scared them to death that they could be accused of reverse racism, as if that’s even a real issue in this country.

Of course, it’s not just the administration. It’s the Democrats in congress too, who ran over each others’ backs to be the first in line to stick it to ACORN. The White House got burned with Sherrod, and maybe they learned a lesson. But the impulse is revealing — and pathetic.

.

Bright Shiny Object

by digby

Yesterday I had a chance encounter with a wingnut who insisted to me that the stimulus money had all gone to dead people. I had no idea what he was talking about until I read this nonsense. Apparently, some of the 250.00 stimulus checks were mailed to dead people and people in prison thus proving once more that government is inept and should be disbanded except for police and military. (What does that look like do you think?)

Here’s the truth of the the matter, from Joshua Holland at Alternet:

Here’s the deal. The one-time stimulus payments — $250 a pop — were sent to 52 million people. Of that number, 72,000 had died relatively recently. That works out to .0014 of the payments sent, meaning 99.86 percent reached a living soul.

That’s not evidence of incompetence; it proves what common sense should suggest is obvious: any large instituion, public or private, sending mail to 52 million people will always send a small fraction — a 10th of one percent in this case — to the recently deceased. (8/10 of 1 percent of Americans died last year.)

The AP notes that half of those checks were returned. This is how things work when someone dies — checks, and bills, continue to arrive until the estate gets settled.

The prisoners had only been incarcerated during the past 3 months. They were in fact eligible for the checks because they’d been on the Social Security rolls until they were locked up.

Meanwhile, the entire mortgage industry, which includes most of the largest banking and financial firms in the world, has just been revealed to have performed with epic incompetence and massive corruption resulting in the crashing of the economy and ongoing pain and hardship for millions of Americans. But there’s nothing to see there at all — it’s the efficient free market in action providing goods and services to people at a fraction of the cost of any government service. Except it’s not. But hey, the Galts get richer and the idiot parasites keep coming back and asking for more, so I guess we all get what we deserve.

.

Is He You?

by digby

Do you remember the days when “the left” was excoriated because of a couple of Hitler images in a video that was briefly entered in a Move-On contest? Those were the days …

Today we have Republican Tea Party candidates for office who belong to groups who characterize the Nazis like this and participate in reenactments to celebrate their valor:

Nazi Germany had no problem in recruiting the multitudes of volunteers willing to lay down their lives to ensure a “New and Free Europe”, free of the threat of Communism. National Socialism was seen by many in Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and other eastern European and Balkan countries as the protector of personal freedom and their very way of life, despite the true underlying totalitarian (and quite twisted, in most cases) nature of the movement. Regardless, thousands upon thousands of valiant men died defending their respective countries in the name of a better tomorrow. We salute these idealists; no matter how unsavory the Nazi government was, the front-line soldiers of the Waffen-SS (in particular the foreign volunteers) gave their lives for their loved ones and a basic desire to be free.

It’s no biggie, of course. He’s just a nice conservative Tea Partier with an unusual hobby. No reason for anyone to make sweeping generalization about the worldview of these far right candidates who are going to be swept into office next month. They are just salt-of-the-earth Real Americans for whom Nazi fetishes, theocratic philosophies, fluoridation obsessions, immigrant hatreds and racial animus are defining characteristics. And they are going to stop the Godless, socialist liberals before they destroy the very fabric of this great country. You got a problem with that?

.

Would They Have Shot Him?

by digby

This just breaks my heart:

Patrick Johnson’s grandmother apparently had her hands full with the 19-year-old who family members say had the mental capacity of a 5-year-old; at least a dozen times this year she called 911 when he “acted up” and she couldn’t calm him down on her own, just as she did Thursday afternoon.

[…]

According to police, at around 12:30 Thursday afternoon, two 911 calls, one by Johnson himself, were made to report a “person with a weapon.” When police arrived they found an agitated Johnson pacing back and forth from the house into the front yard. Police say he was breaking things and grabbing sticks or tree branches, which he tried to set on fire by using the kitchen stove, according to CBS affiliate KYW. Michelle Rynkiewicz, Johnson’s cousin, told KYW that Johnson was “severely retarded” and may not have understood the gravity of the situation. “He apparently had a stick in his hand or something and he wouldn’t put it down but you have to remember he has the mind of a 5 year old.” Rynkiewicz said. Police said when officers arrived, Johnson confronted them with a stick and at one point tried to set it on fire. They say that officers trained in crisis-intervention were called to the scene but that Johnson failed to respond to repeated verbal requests to calm down, and that a Taser gun had to be used to subdue him. “It had no effect,” said Philadelphia police spokesman Frank Vanore. A second Taser shot was apparently fired and Johnson dropped to the ground. He died at Nazareth Hospital at 1:10 p.m. Thursday, KYW reported.

He had the mind of a five year old. They aren’t known for their comprehension abilities when they are agitated. If police didn’t have tasers would they have shot this kid if he “failed to respond to verbal requests to calm down?”

The true horror, of course, is that he was incapable of understanding what being tasered meant. All he felt was the excruciating pain. And then he died.

This police torture of the mentally disabled with electric shock is going to be seen as one of the low points in human history. That we are doing this in 2010 is almost incomprehensible to me.

h/t to JC

It Does Not Mean What They Think It Means

by digby

Weigel reports on the Tea Party convention’s reaction to the news that their speaker Lou Dobbs employed illegal immigrants:

Steve Bannon, an organizer of this convention and director of a trilogy of Citizens United-Sponsored films, was disgusted.”It’s the politics of personal destruction,” said Bannon, “and it keeps happening. Sarah Palin. Niki Haley. Bill O’Reilly. Rush Limbaugh and oxycontin. Christine O’Donnell, whatever you think of her. It’s the same thing.

Well, he would know all about the politics of personal destruction if he works for Citizens United. They pretty much invented the modern form.

But here’s the thing. The politics of personal destruction are about political opponents using character attacks against their rivals. There is a case to be made that there has been some of that against Palin, Haley and O’Donnell, although in Haley’s case it was a former staffer who came forward and O’Donnell’s resume is so thin that the lies on it decimate her claim to qualifications for office.

But Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh deserve every single bit of personal destruction they get. They are themselves personal destroyers and they have begged to have their glass houses exploded all around them. Limbaugh is an admitted drug addict who has shown absolutely no compassion for others and O’Reilly is an admitted crude sexual harrasser. There is nothing unfair about anything those two scumbags have gotten. In fact they haven’t gotten enough.

But it’s typical of the right wing to claim victimhood when they are caught red handed doing the same things they accuse others of. It’s just how they roll.

By the way, Weigel also reports that they moved the convention from Vegas because “this is a movement with a lot of religious people — they don’t want to go to Sin City.” So much for the libertarian revolution.

.

Angle From Another Angle

by digby

I’m a little bit surprised to see Sharron Angle’s comments about Sharia law in America getting so much play, since they were revealed last week. (I wrote about it.)

Of course, nobody is talking about the amazing gall of someone who holds Christian Reconstructionist views attacking American Muslims for instituting Sharia law (which didn’t even happen.) That would be terribly rude. But it’s worth looking into. She’s a full blown theocratic nutcase:

The Las Vegas Sun reported this a couple of months ago:

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle describes her motivation for seeking elected office as a religious calling.Politics, including her bid to unseat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, is God’s purpose for her life — one he has long been preparing her for, she says.“When God calls you, he also equips you and he doesn’t just say ‘Well, today you’re going to run against Harry Reid.’ There is a preparation,” she said during a recent interview on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Moses had his preparatory time. Paul had his preparatory time. Even Jesus had his preparatory time, and so my preparation began on a school board.”Although those remarks triggered surprise and even outrage last week, people familiar with Angle’s career in public life understood.A Southern Baptist active in her church, Angle’s religious convictions have informed many of her positions throughout her years in politics. She believes abortion is a violation of God’s will and should be banned in all cases. She argued for the religious freedom of private and home schools. And she has said that public policy should support the “traditional” family structure as described in the Bible, in which one parent stays home with the children while the other works.Indeed, although many Americans view the separation of church and state as one of the keys to the nation’s success as a multicultural society, Angle believes that religion has an expansive role to play in government. And, she has repeatedly said anyone who opposes that based on the claim of separation of church and state misunderstands the Constitution’s ban on “establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”In this regard, Angle’s view of religion’s role in government parallels that of a religious political movement — Christian Reconstructionism — seeking to return American civil society to biblical law.[…]

To accomplish that, Reconstructionists interpret the separation of church and state doctrine as a constitutional wall protecting the church from the state. But unlike most interpretations of that doctrine, the Reconstructionists’ envisions a gaping one-way hole in the wall that allows Christian doctrine to infuse government. In other words, government must not interfere with Christians’ efforts to enact God’s law at home or at church and government itself should be run according to biblical law.

But hey, no need to mention that. We should leave it to the right wingers to define what theocracy is — Muslim.

Sharron will be getting some help from Gloenn Beck’s Black Robed Regiment chief pastor soon:

Nevada Renewal Project Oct. 21-22 in Las Vegas:

“Will you please put a little effort in helping us get Nevada pastors to the Rediscovering God in America event? We want to do everything we can to make sure Nevada does not stand alone in the fight to restore its Judeo Christian heritage!”

The Texas Restoration Project organizers — including David Barton of WallBuilders and the Rev. Laurence White of Houston — have used their Texas contact list to promote similar groups across the country since 2005, mostly in election years. Over time, in fact, Restoration and Renewal projects have popped up in many political battleground states, from Nevada to Florida and Iowa to Colorado. The obvious goal has been to mobilize conservative pastors in support of selected Republican candidates (who often speak at the events). Pastors are then encouraged essentially to turn drag their own churches into partisan politics.

.

Democrats Step Up

by digby

Jon Stewart on the foreclosure crisis: