Defending Glenn Beck

Doug Giles latest article sticks up for poor benighted Glenn Beck. According to Glenn Beck (and why would he fib about this), the White House is calling him up during his show and asking him to dial the rhetoric back. But, according to Giles, all Beck has are questions and facts.

Questions like "Are the President’s advisers working to better the country or their own ideals?" Yeah that's a real head-scratcher. I wonder if that question could have been asked during the Bush era? No I'm sure people like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were clearly working to better the country. It also begs the question of, if you think your ideals are what is best for the country, isn't working for them a way of working to better the country?

Glenn Beck also believes that the United States might have suffered a coup in the recent election of Barack Obama.

At this point, gang, I'm not sure, they may be able to because they are so far ahead of us. They know what they're dealing against; most of America does not yet. Most of America doesn't have a clue as to what's going on. There is a coup going on. There is a stealing of America, and the way it is done, it has been done through the -- the guise of an election, but they lied to us the entire time.

Yep the election of 2008 was a coup. You might consider some of the implications of that suggestion; how should you act if your countries political power has been usurped by an impostor?

Appeasers and Flip Floppers

Salon is good today; they have an article on the Appeaser Meme propagated by the right wing in which anybody who wants to talk to terrorists is an Appeaser. According to Gary Kamiya this isn't a reasonable line of attack.

The coming election is shaping up to be a referendum not just on Iraq but on that black-and-white mind-set. McCain and the GOP will relentlessly attack Obama as weak, inexperienced and cowardly, pointing to his willingness to talk to our enemies as evidence. But the fact is that what Obama is proposing is simply rational, realistic foreign policy. And the proof is that the rest of the world, including Israel, has defied the Bush administration and is talking to the "terrorists."

If it's appeasement to talk to "evildoers," we are all appeasers now. Everywhere you look, our allies -- or we ourselves -- are negotiating with members of the "Axis of Evil" and their allies.

Israel, whose U.S.-backed security theoretically could be most directly compromised by "appeasement," has been talking to the Palestinian militant group Hamas, using Egypt as an intermediary. Israel isn't doing this because it suddenly decided that "some ingenious argument will persuade [Hamas] they have been wrong all along," as Bush derisively commented in his thinly veiled attack on Obama, but because it is trying to reach agreements on issues critical to its security, including a cease-fire, prisoner exchanges and border-crossing arrangements. Israel has realized that pretending that Hamas does not exist, or wishing it would disappear, is not a viable strategy.

That is the most damning part of this attack. If it were really that bad and and that anti-Israel to talk to Hamas, why would Israel be doing it?

One answer is that Christian America's support for Israel is not motivated by the same desires as Israel's desire to keep existing. Christians support Israel, at least in part, because they believe it's existence is necessary for the Second Coming of Christ. Israel wants to survive because it wants to survive. Those two different motivations might lead to different approaches - Israel has no reason to want a conflict with it's neighbors. But many Christians believe that such a conflict will usher in the end times.

Salon also has a great post by Glenn Greenwald on Senator McCains change of heart on wiretaps.

Worse, when answering the Globe back in December, McCain said that "presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is." Yesterday, though, McCain said that the President and the telecoms did nothing wrong in spying on Americans without warrants and that such spying was "appropriate" and constitutional "in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001". How can spying in violation of the law possibly be justified by the circumstances of 9/11 (as McCain said yesterday) if (as McCain said in December) the President is barred from spying outside of the law "no matter what the situation is"?

McCain knows who he has to keep won over, and so he's got to take these extremist positions, particularly in regards to executive power. He basically has to uphold the Bush power grabs, or he feels like he has to, or he actually believes in a unitary executive theory (or something like it).

Or to put it another way, was McCain Lying when he said he thought the President had to obey the law or is he lying now when he says the President didn't?

Scott McClellen and his book

Scott McClellen has written a book, in which he claims that the Bush Administration propagandized us into war, he claims to have seen Karl Rove and Scooter Libby having a clandestine conversation, and he claimed that the media was overly deferential to the White House. Can you figure out which of those three claims the Conservative and the Mainstream Media aren't touching with a ten foot pole. That's right. Everybody knows we have a liberal media or an aggressive professional media; for McClellen to to claim they are just lapdogs is crazy!

So instead we get bizarre attacks, like this one from Mike Gallagher's latest article.

I often wonder if people like Scott McClellan ever stop and think about the pain and grief their money-grubbing antics cause the families of the brave men and women who are serving their country overseas. After all, if one accepts the premise that President Bush erred in going to war, then the mission of the United States military is absolutely in vain. Perhaps when McClellan cashes his hefty paychecks, he'll be like Ebeneezer Scrooge seeing the face of Marley on the door post and see the pained faces of men and women who simply cannot understand why a man like him would want to publish an anti-war book smack dab in the middle of a war.

Do you suppose Osama bin Laden will read McClellan's book? If he does, he's sure to enjoy it.

That's just down right nasty, isn't it? Telling the truth about this war is practically an act of treason and it stabs our brave fighting men and women in the back. Nasty. And untrue.

We have civilian control over the military and thus it is our duty as citizens and civilians to keep an eye on the military. We need to protect our military from being used unwisely, a task that we, as a nation, failed at in 2001. The fact that we were propagandized into invading Iraq is not a slur on the soldiers, as Gallagher asserts, but instead a condemnation on us and the Bush Administration. The Bush Administration for deceiving us, and us for letting ourselves be deceived.

For more on what I think is McClellen's most damning complaint, that the media was too compliant in the run up to the Iraq War, here is a post from Glenn Greenwald.

Just consider how remarkable that is. George Bush's own Press Secretary criticizes the American media for being "too deferential" to the Government. He lays the blame for Bush's ability to propagandize the nation on the media's uncritical dissemination of the Republican administration's falsehoods. And most notably of all, McClellan actually uses cynical scare quotes when invoking the phrase which, in conventional political discourse, is deemed the most unassailable truth of all: The Liberal Media.

How much longer can this preposterous myth be sustained when even the White House Spokesman not only mocks the phrase but derides the media for being "too deferential" to the right-wing Government "in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during [his] years in Washington"?

Yeah, I guess I can see why the Media and Conservatives aren't keen to talk about this.

If Fire Could Vote, Would It be Democrat or Republican?

Two controversial comments.

I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today.

There are a few people that hate America. But I don't think the Democrats are those. I think there are those posing as Democrats that are like that.

Glen Beck, speaking on the Fires in California.

Boxer: Thank you so much for your offer of help. It is so important right now for California. So I know we have differences on climate change, but there's no difference in helping each other when our states are in trouble. Right now, we are down 50 percent in terms of our National Guard equipment because they're all in Iraq, the equipment, half of the equipment. So we really do need help. I think all of our states are down in terms of equipment.

Bond: Sen. Leahy and I on the National Guard caucus will welcome your help because the Guard has traditionally been underfunded, when Iraq started, when Katrina hit --

Boxer: You're right.

Bond: ... The Guard had only one-third of the equipment it needs. This is a battle we fight with the Pentagon, and our colleagues have been most helpful.

Boxer: That's another area where we can work together, and I think it's good for people to see it. I joined your caucus several months ago, and I'm really ready to go because I have a letter that states, from the Pentagon itself, that if there's a real catastrophe, such as the one we're having now, we're really in some kind of trouble. So thank you very much for that.

Senator Kit Bond (R) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D), speaking on the Senate Floor.

These two comments are apparently equally offensive. Meaning the one by Glenn Beck and the one by Barbara Boxer (Kit Bond, being a Republican, apparently gets off the hook for agreeing with and expanding on Boxer's comments).

Wait, sorry - just got a revision. It turns out that Glen Beck's comments weren't controversial at all, and only a liberal snob would think they were. That doesn't sound right.

Is Glenn Beck Racist?

I've been thinking about this in relation to Glenn Beck's new show on CNN, and the compilation of quotes Media Matters has gathered that certainly portray Mr. Beck in a negative light. And there certainly are some stinkers in there, particularly one he did in a "blackface" voice. And suggesting that Mexico "has been overtaken by lawbreakers from the bottom to the top."

But despite all that I'm willing to believe that Glenn Beck may not be racist. I've never met the man, and it's possible he doesn't have a racist bone in his body.

What I do know is that a significant portion of Beck's audience (and Limbaugh's audience, and almost any conservative talk show hosts audience) is racist and wants to hear validation for their point of view.

And Glenn Beck (and Rush Limbaugh and all the rest) is certainly aware of that.

Actually the most offensive thing, in my opinion, that Glenn Beck said was in regards to Michael Moore.

Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?

I don't know about a guy who feels like someone should die simply because they express a view point you don't agree with. Of course I'm sure Beck's supporters will explain that he was only joking. If so, than permit me to note there must be something wrong with my sense of humor because I just don't get it.