Love Him or Hate Him, You Must Admit He Has a Good Point.
Beck's bizarre, dangerous hit at Soros
By Michael Wolraich, Special to CNN
New York -- Creepy medieval puppets hung from the ceiling on the set of the "Glenn Beck Program" -- a conquistador, a squire, a witch, and a bearded guy who looked like a cross between Santa Claus and the Fiddler on the Roof.
"Make no mistake, we are watching a show," Beck gravely told his audience. That much was obvious enough, but Beck did not mean his own television program. "You have to see who's behind the puppets," he continued, "Who is choosing the puppets and the players? Who's the puppetmaster? George Soros."
George Soros is an 80-year-old Jewish billionaire. Born in Hungary in 1930, he survived the Holocaust and eventually immigrated to the United States, where he made a fortune as a currency speculator and became an international philanthropist. After the Iron Curtain collapsed, Soros donated generously to Hungary and other Eastern Bloc countries, funding scholarships, university endowments, and science grants.
In return for his generosity, anti-Semites in the new Hungarian parliament accused him of participating in an international Jewish conspiracy to bankrupt Hungary in order to restore communist rule -- despite the fact that Soros had been an ardent opponent of Hungary's communist regime
Anti-Sorosism first arrived in the United States in the late 1990s, courtesy of renowned crackpot Lyndon LaRouche. LaRouche has published a number of articles in his comically misnamed journal, the Executive Intelligence Review, accusing Soros of devious manipulations ranging from an attempt to start World War III to running drugs for Queen Elizabeth II's drug cartel.
But LaRouche's audience is small, and most Americans paid little attention to George Soros. In 2003, everything changed. Infuriated by the policies of George W. Bush, Soros sent his philanthropy homeward, donating $23 million to political action groups during the 2004 election. Suddenly, George Soros became the most powerful, evil mastermind in the world.
First, the influential conservative magazine NewsMax ran a story that cribbed LaRouche's conspiracy theories and accused Soros of secretly plotting a "regime change" in the United States. Then Fox News host Bill O'Reilly discovered that Soros' foundation had donated to the ACLU and therefore reasoned that the billionaire and the civil liberties organization were conspiring to destroy Christmas.
When former Republican majority leader Tom DeLay ran into trouble for ethics violations, he blamed Soros for masterminding critical coverage by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the L.A. Times, Time magazine, and Newsweek. And former speaker of the House Dennis Hastert insinuated to an incredulous Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" that Soros got his money from drug operations. (Hastert did not mention Queen Elizabeth II, however.)
Glenn Beck, as usual, trumped them all. He told his audience that Soros has a five-step plan:
1. Create a "shadow government" under the guise of humanitarian aid.
2. Take control of the media.
3. Destabilize the state by building anti-government sentiment. (Yes, Beck attacked his opponent for building anti-government sentiment.)
4. Subvert the American electoral system.
5. Take over the world, of course.
Glenn Beck's conspiracy theories are no less bizarre and inflammatory than those of LaRouche, but his nightly audience numbers in the millions. Earlier this year, Americans voted Beck their second favorite television personality after Oprah Winfrey.
In consequence, he is far more dangerous. It must be a great sorrow to George Soros, who having survived the Holocaust now finds himself the subject of the same kind of conspiracy theories that the Nazis used to demonize the Jews.
The big bad "Jewish masterminds" of Hitler's day were the Rothschilds, a family of bankers who have featured prominently in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since the 1800s. Like Soros, they have been accused of controlling the media, instigating war, overthrowing governments, and of course, taking over the world.
But in 21st century America, a popular television host cannot outright espouse anti-Semitic ideas. Thus, Glenn Beck took pains to present himself as a friend of the Jews. According to Beck, it was George Soros who was the anti-Semite.
Soros had survived the Holocaust by, at 14, pretending to be the godson of a non-Jewish Hungarian official. Since the official's responsibilities included confiscating Jewish properties, Beck implied that Soros had cooperated with the Nazis. This accusation too echoes Lyndon LaRouche, who has published articles calling Soros "a small cog in Adolf Eichmann's killing machine" and "a Nazi beast-man seizing Jewish properties."
Welcome to the "Glenn Beck Program," where Jews are Nazis and those who exploit ancient anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives are friends of the Jews.
Beck himself said it best,
"There are a few working parts to a puppet show. There is the puppet master. Here. There is a stage. There's the audience. There are the strings to each puppet. And then there's the story. There is also why? Why is the story? Why is the show happening? What is the puppet master? What is his motivation? Is it for the money? Is it for entertainment? Is it personal gain? What is it?"
What is it, Mr. Beck?
(CNN) -George Bush's memoir only hit bookshelves Tuesday, but already one prominent ex-world leader says the former president isn't being truthful when it comes to his description of a 2002 conversation about the possible use of force in Iraq.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who left office in 2005, is disputing a passage in Bush's new book that claims Schroeder privately offered the president full-fledged support in 2002 should he decide to invade Iraq.
"The former American president is not telling the truth," Schroeder said Tuesday according to the German newspaper Der Spiegel.
In his new book Decision points, Bush writes that in a January 2002 White House meeting with Schroeder, the German leader said of possible force in Iraq: "What is true of Afghanistan is true of Iraq. Nations that sponsor terror must face consequences. If you make it fast and make it decisive, I will be with you."
"I took that as a statement of support," Bush writes of the conversation. "But when German elections arrived later that year, Schroeder had a different take. He denounced the possibility of using force against Iraq."
Speaking Tuesday, Schroeder said the 2002 meeting was actually focused on the mere possibility former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had anything to do with the September 11 attacks, and said he made no unequivocal commitments
"Just as I did during my subsequent meetings with the American president, I made it clear that, should Iraq ... prove to have provided protection and hospitality to al Qaeda fighters, Germany would reliably stand beside the US," Schroeder said of his comments to the president. "This connection, however, as it became clear during 2002, was false and constructed."
Bush, whose relationship with Schroeder quickly turned frosty after the chancellor expressed opposition to the war, writes he was "shocked and furious" with the actions of his ally, especially after the German justice minister accused Bush of acting like Adolf Hitler in his efforts to "divert attention from domestic political problems."
"It was hard to have a constructive relationship again," Bush writes of his future relations with Schroeder.
Top 50 Dumb Quotes from Conservatives
1. "When the President does it, that means that it's not illegal." ~ Richard M. Nixon
2. "We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." ~ President George W. Bush
3. "The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them." ~ Rush Limbaugh
4. ''My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed. You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.'' ~ South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, arguing against government food assistance for poor residents.
5. "The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews." ~ Jerry Falwell
6. ''Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you.'' ~ Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina)
7. ''We need to uptick our image with everyone, including one-armed midgets." ~ Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele.
8. "You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test." ~ George W. Bush
9. ''Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.'' ~ Rush Limbaugh
10. "I couldn't imagine somebody like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Chanukah." ~ President George W. Bush
11. "Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful. But there isn't even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.'' ~ Rep. Michelle Bachmann
12. ''The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.'' ~ Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX)
13. "He is purple - the gay-pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle - the gay pride symbol." ~ Jerry Falwell's warning to parents that "Tinky Winky," a character on Teletubbies, may be gay
14. "Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts." ~ Dan Quayle
15. ''The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.'' ~ Pat Robertson
16. "Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn't it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate." ~ Sarah Palin
17. "'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!'" ~ Sarah Palin
18. "Go back to what our founders and our founding documents meant -- they're quite clear -- that we would create law based on the God of the bible and the Ten Commandments." ~ Sarah Palin
19. "What I don't know is what the unexpected might be." ~ John McCain
20. "We have a lot of work to do. It's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border." ~ John McCain (the countries share no common border)
21. "I love California; I practically grew up in Phoenix." ~ Dan Quayle
22. "If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.'' ~ Ann Coulter
23. ''I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under another, then under another Democrat president, Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.'' ~ Rep. Michele Bachmann
24. "We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say." ~ Ann Coulter
25. "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." ~ George W. Bush
26. "Do you have blacks, too?" ~ George W. Bush
27. ''We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals.'' ~ Ann Coulter
28. "When I see a 9/11 victim family on television, or whatever, I'm just like, 'Oh shut up' I'm so sick of them because they're always complaining." ~ Glenn Beck
29. "I'll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office." ~ George W. Bush
30. "Well, I learned a lot....I went down to (Latin America) to find out from them and (learn) their views. You'd be surprised. They're all individual countries" ~ Ronald Reagan
31. ''I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.'' ~ Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
32. "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" ~ George W. Bush
33. "Exercise freaks ... are the ones putting stress on the health care system." ~ Rush Limbaugh
34. "As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured." ~ George W. Bush
35. "Good Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions." ~ Jerry Falwell
36. "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator." ~ George W. Bush
37. "I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." ~ Ronald Reagan
38. "Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them." ~ Jerry Falwell
39. ''It may be a blessing in disguise. ... Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. Haitians were originally under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon the third, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you will get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal. Ever since they have been cursed by one thing after the other.'' ~ Pat Robertson
40. "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." ~Jerry Falwell
41. "Facts are stupid things." ~ Ronald Reagan
42. "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." ~ George W. Bush
43. "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on --shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." ~ George W. Bush
44. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country." ~ George W. Bush
45. "Trees cause more pollution than automobiles." ~ Ronald Reagan
46. "This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating." ~ George W. Bush
47. "I would not say that the future is necessarily less predictable than the past. I think the past was not predictable when it started." ~ Donald Rumsfeld
48. "She wears little eye-patch underwear. So, the other day she came here with her underwear, Thursday. And so, we had made love Wednesday--a lot! And so she'll, she's all, 'I am going up and down the stairs, and you're dripping out of me!' So messy!" ~ State Rep. Mike Duvall (R-Calif.) on a live mic referring to an affair with a lobbyist
49. "I am here to make an announcement that this Thursday, ticket counters and airplanes will fly out of Ronald Reagan Airport." ~ George W. Bush
50. "I think I was unprepared for war." ~ George W. Bush
So, How Did The Bush-era tax cuts actually work out for the economy?
The hard, empirical facts:
The tax cuts did not spur investment. Job growth in the George W. Bush years was one-seventh that of the Clinton years. Nixon and Ford did better than Bush on jobs. Wages fell during the last administration. Average incomes fell. The number of Americans in poverty, as officially measured, hit a 16-year high last year of 43.6 million, though a National Academy of Sciences study says that the real poverty figure is closer to 51 million. Food banks are swamped. Foreclosure signs are everywhere. Americans and their governments are drowning in debt. And at the nexus of tax and healthcare, Republican ideas perpetuate a cruel and immoral system that rations healthcare -- while consuming every sixth dollar in the economy and making businesses, especially small businesses, less efficient and less profitable.
This is economic madness. It is policy divorced from empirical evidence. It is insanity because the policies are illusory and delusional. The evidence is in, and it shows beyond a shadow of a reasonable doubt that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts failed to achieve the promised goals.
So why in the world is anyone giving any credence to the insistence by Republican leaders that tax cuts, more tax cuts, and deeper tax cuts are the remedy to our economic woes? Why are they not laughingstocks? It is one thing for Fox News to treat these policies as successful, but what of the rest of what Sarah Palin calls with some justification the "lamestream media," who treat these policies as worthy ideas?
The Republican leadership is like the doctors who believed bleeding cured the sick. When physicians bled George Washington, he got worse, so they increased the treatment until they bled him to death. Our government, the basis of our freedoms, is spewing red ink, and the Republican solution is to spill ever more.
Those who ignore evidence and pledge blind faith in policy based on ideological fantasy are little different from the clerics who made Galileo Galilei confess that the sun revolves around the earth. The Capitol Hill and media Republicans differ only in not threatening death to those who deny their dogma.
How much more evidence do we need that we made terrible and costly mistakes in 2001 and 2003?
Continue reading the sad, disgusting story here....
And when you're done swallowing your brain in anger and disgust -because facts don't lie, they simply exist- you can read Paul Krugman's opinion on this whole fiasco here, and then you'll REALLY want to get our your torches and pitchforks!
by Will Bunch
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- "We are on the right side of history! We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, dammit, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement -- because we were the people who did it in the first place." -- Glenn Beck, on his nationally syndicated radio program, May 26.
It is Glenn Beck's most audacious stunt yet: This Saturday, in the company of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the National Rifle Association and others, the Fox News Channel host will stand in the sacred shadow not just of the Lincoln Memorial but of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, near the spot where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech 47 years earlier to the exact day.
During this event -- billed as "Restoring Honor" -- Beck will aim to "reclaim the civil rights moment" for his cause, and in the process he will continue what he's been doing for the last 18 months: bending the history of 20th-century America like a Philadelphia soft pretzel.
The revisionist message behind "Restoring Honor" is nothing new for the conservative shock jock. In the year and half since President Obama took office, Beck has led his loyal followers on a journey not just to "reclaim" civil rights but much more audaciously to rewrite the sweeping narrative arc of American history from the time of the Founding Fathers forward.
The backbone of the Tea Party is over-55s and especially retirees -- some planned, some forced -- with the most valuable asset of all, time.
They see studying U.S. history as a powerful reconnection with their youth. Waiting for Beck's "American Revival" show in Orlando, Florida, in March, 70-year-old fan Joseph Cerniglia told me he was way too busy for civics lessons when he was raising kids and working as a stockbroker and then cider-maker. "I have learned more from Glenn Beck -- learned more about American history and government, from Glenn Beck -- than in the previous 40 years of my life," the retiree told me.
For thousands of followers such as Cerniglia, there is a genuine desire to relearn American history. The only problem is that what they're learning is bunk. It's not history as it happened, but rather a Beck-scripted, Tea Party rewrite of history that demonizes Obama, Democrats and progressive activists.
In this alternate reality version of the past, the 20th century's heroic battles over equal rights for racial and ethnic minorities, women and homosexuals are recast as a march toward socialism and away from the Founding Fathers. Meanwhile, flawed progressive Woodrow Wilson and even Teddy Roosevelt become America's Lenin and Trotsky while it is the pre-Depression-era Calvin Coolidge who belongs on Mount Rushmore.
More recently, Beck has featured on Fox, at several well-attended "American Revivals" and on his web-based "university" a new right-hand man -- David Barton, a key figure in the recent right-wing rewrite of Texas school textbooks -- to teach his viewers the much-debunked idea that America's creation was rooted in Christianity.
Barton's machine-gun-paced spewing of 18th-century God references and black-robed revolutionary preachers gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state. In April, Barton told Beck's 3 million TV viewers that "we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years."
The results of this re-education campaign have been nothing short of phenomenal. A mere on-air endorsement by Beck of any obscure book -- such as "Sacred Fire," on the spirituality of George Washington -- will propel it to the best-seller list. Now, thousands of fans have signed up for a paid "insider" package that includes an online Glenn Beck University with lectures by Barton and others.
But pseudo-history is having a real impact on current events. In Texas, the new school curriculum downgrades democracy-minded Thomas Jefferson as well as 1960s civil rights. In the political arena, some activists are pushing to repeal the 17th Amendment that allows people to elect U.S. senators directly -- largely because the measure was enacted during Wilson's progressive era.
While all these histories are too important to lose to revisionism, none represents more of a risk than the civil rights era. In 1963, King understood that his dream of equal rights for black Americans would never happen without intervention from the federal government, a concept that's such an anathema to the Tea Partiers, the Beck-sponsored 9/12 movement and the other right-wing radicals who'll occupy the Mall this Saturday.
Famously, King lashed out at the Alabama governor -- George Wallace -- who had "his lips dripping with the words of 'interposition' and 'nullification' " -- a reference to claims by Wallace and other segregationists that states' rights trumped the power of Washington to promote integration.
Yet these two maligned principles are exactly what the Tea Party wants their red-state governors to do to block health care reform and other major federal initiatives of the first black president. This contradiction is lost on the Tea Partiers, and if the recent past is prologue, such facts will matter little to the mass of people who've risen up in the backlash against the Obama presidency.
Most moderates and liberals aren't even aware that this Hollywood-size script doctoring of U.S. history is taking place -- and the political consequences may be enormous. George Orwell wrote that "who controls the past ... controls the future." Beck and his fans may reclaim a lot more than the legacy of 1960s civil rights this weekend -- unless America's too silent majority is finally ready to start fighting back for our past.
What have you done for me lately?
- Wall Street reform
- Historic health care reform
- Fair pay for women
- A recovery act that pulled us back from a depression
- Got our economy moving again
- Record investments in clean energy that are creating jobs
- Sstudent loan reforms so families can afford college
- A weapons system canceled that the Pentagon didn't want
- Reset our relationship with the world
- Negotiated a nuclear weapons treaty that gets us closer to a world without fear of these weapons
- And at the end of this month, 90,000 troops will have left Iraq and our combat mission will come to an end.