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David Keene: The Beck chalkboard, covered in incomprehensible writing, will stand in perpetuity at Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform conference room – to remind them what they’re fighting for. Yes! GNP! 1.8%! Woodrow Wilson!
Signing off!
Posted at 7:00pm by Tim Mak
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One blogger on blogger’s row: “think about the abused puppies!”
Posted at 6:57pm by Tim Mak
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Sweat or tears?
Posted at 6:57pm by Tim Mak
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He’s so close to tears. The room fills with tension. Especially near R.S. McCain.
Posted at 6:56pm by Tim Mak
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R.S. McCain a.k.a. ‘The Other McCain’ on Blogger’s Row: I have $20 on Beck crying!
Posted at 6:55pm by Tim Mak
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Blogger at #CPAC: I’ve heard #GlennBeck speech before at the Educational Policy Conference. “He cries at the end.” You heard it here first.
Posted at 6:55pm by Tim Mak
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Slam poetry performance of “The New Colossus” by Glenn Beck.
Posted at 6:50pm by Tim Mak
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Blackboard now completely incomprehensible.
Posted at 6:50pm by Tim Mak
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Fact-checking Beck: Were the 1920s the largest expansion of middle class ever?
Wasn’t that the 1950s?
Posted at 6:46pm by Tim Mak
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“Hey, toots – you look hot, huh?” God save us from Beck’s flirtations.
Posted at 6:46pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: God killed Warren G. Harding!
Posted at 6:43pm by Tim Mak
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What do prohibition, Versailles, Hitler, the League of Nations and the Royal Order of the Orange have to do with current times?
Posted at 6:43pm by Tim Mak
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The Depression: A Lecture In Scare Tone
Statistics! GNP! Boo to Woodrow Wilson! He gave us the PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAX!
Boo to prohibition! Versailles! Hitler! LEAGUE OF NATIONS!
Some strange exhalation noise!
Posted at 6:39pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: How do we make ourselves competitive? “Economic Holocaust is coming!”
“I’m trying to get you out of a party where everyone’s drunk – they’re going to be vomiting in the morning of America soon! … No one has the spine in Washington to tell you. They don’t think you can handle it as an American.”
Posted at 6:33pm by Tim Mak
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Beck Newswatch: O.J. was guilty!
Posted at 6:35pm by Tim Mak
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“In Cuba, in Venezuela… choice is taken away from people. To restore America, we need less Marx, and more Madison.”
Posted at 6:34pm by Tim Mak
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“Government doesn’t create jobs… the American people create jobs!”
As David Frum points out, Romney made a similar statement during his speech but corrected himself:
At one point, Romney’s text read: “the government doesn’t create jobs … only the private sector can do that.”
Romney pronounced the phrase as written, then paused. Problem: It’s not true. Romney spontaneously corrected himself: “in a lasting way.” Meaning: Yes, government purchasing can create employment, but only the private market can sustain economic expansion.
Posted at 6:33pm by Tim Mak
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“When did it become a subject of ridicule… to be a self-made man in America?” Is it? I’m not sure I ever got that impression.
Posted at 6:29pm by Tim Mak
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“Every time the government grows, we lose a bit of who we are… every time it grows, we raise the price of the American dream… we are destroying our children’s future… there comes a point where you must stop and realize, ‘we cannot do it anymore’.”
Posted at 6:25pm by Tim Mak
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He’s not yet crying, but he is sweating quite a bit.
Posted at 6:25pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: “We have a right to fail. This is a God-given right.” Glenn Beck discusses his personal failings – “without failure, there’s not sweetness in success.”
Posted at 6:21pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: Only 20% liberals in America – how are they able to secure the majority?
Posted at 6:20pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: “I’m tired of feeling like a freak in America… we’re never going to agree.”
Posted at 6:18pm by Tim Mak
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Beck doing play by play, drawing comparisons between Tiger Woods’ appearance yesterday before the media and the GOP.
All they’re talking about is a “big tent… what is this, a circus. America is not a clown show… America is an idea… that sets people free!”
Posted at 6:17pm by Tim Mak
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Beck to GOP: “You got caught – are you sorry?”
To Republican Party reps: “You’re not just like me, you’re not like the rest of us.”
Posted at 6:15pm by Tim Mak
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Beck compares his alcoholism to the GOP’s addiction to spending.
“I have not heard people in the Republican Party admit they have a problem. I haven’t seen the come to Jesus moment in the Republican Party yet… I don’t even know what they stand for anymore!”
Posted at 6:14pm by Tim Mak
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It’s going to be a good year for conservative ideas, says Beck. “But it’s not enough just to not suck as much as the other side.”
Posted at 6:12pm by Tim Mak
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Did @TeddyRoosevelt want to bring about a socialist utopia? #PANIC!
Posted at 6:10pm by Tim Mak
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Does anyone understand what Beck is talking about right now?
Posted at 6:10pm by Tim Mak
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Down with Theodore Roosevelt! The PROGRESSIVE party! Oh, save us all!
Posted at 6:10pm by Tim Mak
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Oh! Van Jones reference – is he a communist? Isn’t he?
Posted at 6:09pm by Tim Mak
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Beck whips out his glasses and starts reading aloud from a book published a century ago.
Posted at 6:07pm by Tim Mak
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“I don’t want stuff in my eyes! Stop stabbing in the eyes!” says Beck, using a strange metaphor to represent what progressivism is doing to our country.
Posted at 6:07pm by Tim Mak
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Beck: Progressivism is a “disease”.
Posted at 6:07pm by Tim Mak
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Glenn Beck’s chalkboard gets a standing ovation. “You have no idea what it’s like to travel with one of these things.”
Posted at 6:06pm by Tim Mak
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Obama “is too simple of an answer” for what ails the country.
Posted at 6:06pm by Tim Mak
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Glenn Beck falters – did the teleprompter halt?
Posted at 6:03pm by Tim Mak
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Rumors from the floor – a fellow journalist tells me that there are rumors about a protest during the Glenn Beck protest.
Posted at 5:58pm by Tim Mak
* * *
Glenn Beck show is like a “graduate seminar in political philosophy,” says David Keene in introduction.
Posted at 5:58pm by Tim Mak
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kevin47 // Feb 21, 2010 at 3:18 pm
“sdspringy, I take that to mean that you would be okay with our enemies waterboarding Americans as long as the Americans survived.”
I would assume that sdspringy isn’t okay with our enemies doing anything to Americans other than surrendering to them. There are arguments against water boarding, but this isn’t one of them.
“The left wing answer is to go ahead and raise those taxes. ”
The left wing answer is to pretend those problems aren’t on the horizon. Raising taxes is a means to pay for the bloated programs they are eager to introduce.
“However, the full-throated vicious attacks against Obama started long before he actually even took office, which clearly shows that much of the criticism leveled against him is because of who he is, and not what he is trying to enact in policy.”
The full-throated attacks against Obama began when he began running for the presidency. The fear was that, even though he was running as moderate, he was actually quite liberal. So yes, that is part of who he is, and we see that in the policies he is trying to enact.
“I have no problem if Republicans do not like certain policies or if they are antithetical to what they would prefer – by all means they should offer up alternate views.”
They are. It’s just that many of the views do not fit your pre-conceived parameters for what constitutes a solution. In your paradigm, it is not a matter of whether the government should act, but how it should act. You have thereby dismissed, a priori, the proposition that the government ought not act.
Kevin B // Feb 21, 2010 at 4:14 pm
I would assume that sdspringy isn’t okay with our enemies doing anything to Americans other than surrendering to them. There are arguments against water boarding, but this isn’t one of them.It is absolutely THE argument against waterboarding, and any other “enhanced” interrogation technique.
Will we call those same techniques torture when they are practiced against us? Or have we surrendered the right to to be outraged by any act that doesn’t result in death or lasting physical scars?
Will we call them torture when they are used by our own government against our citizens?
sinz54 // Feb 21, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Mandos: by inducing irresoluble calamity in the United States through political paralysis
Until this past month,
the Dems had a 60 vote filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. The GOP couldn’t have “paralyzed” anything.
We are not responsible for any “political paralysis.”
Blame Baucus, Nelson, Reid, and all the other Dem senators who just couldn’t agree on anything.
sinz54 // Feb 21, 2010 at 4:32 pm
aDude: Demographics are going to give us a nightmare for the next 30 years as the bulge of the Baby Boomer generation crosses into retirement. ….we either take a meat cleaver to elderly benefits or raise Federal taxes by 50%. That is the stark choice facing us, and I have yet to hear CPAC, Tea Party, or any other Conservative group give the details on how we should approach it.
Look into Paul Ryan’s plan.
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/Issues/Issue/?IssueID=8520
The Dems have blasted it precisely because he won’t back away from the “stark choice” you mentioned.
sinz54 // Feb 21, 2010 at 5:00 pm
Kevin B: Will we call them torture when they are used by our own government against our citizens?
They were used. And worse.
Prior to the formation of the ACLU,
the way cops solved many street crimes was the so-called “third degree”: They took the hoodlum down into the basement of the police station and worked him over. This could involve waterboarding, or just beating him to within an inch of his life.
That was local law enforcement circa 1920.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Feb 21, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Adude wrote: “The left wing answer is to go ahead and raise those taxes. What do we answer? The silence speaks volumes.”
This is not accurate. The left wing advocates raising taxes, cutting Medicare benefits (Medicare Advantage), allowing the importation of pharmaceuticals from abroad and implementing a robust public option. Conservatives have said no to all of these.
athensboy // Feb 21, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Anniemargret, keep posting, you are a sane and fair voice in these troubled times.And as far as anyone using terms like”obambi” I immediately tune them out as punks.Back and forth dialogue is great, name calling is for the third grade.The gop may get back into power in2010, but unless they’ve learned some valuable lessons from their disaster of 2000-2008, I expect very little. McConnel and Boehner have no new ideas, they are both partisan hacks, not any different than Reid and Pelosi.I just want incumbents to lose, they have poisoned the well in Washington.Wall Street and the top 1% have garnered most of the nation’s wealth and their lobbyists control both parties.This country is sitting on a powder keg and the powers in the country better take care of mainstreet.
anniemargret // Feb 21, 2010 at 7:20 pm
athensboy: thanks.
GOPer: What a screed. Unless you are David Frum behind the moniker, you have no right to insist anyone not post here, unless they fall under your idea of what a ‘conservative’ is. David Frum is big enough and smart enough to know that the more people post here, the better it is for him to get his word out.
If Frum wants a litmus test for bloggers here, he can post it. I respect him enough to honor his wishes if he wants ‘liberal trolls’ to post elsewhere.
As far as my being ‘confused’ about what you call, EIT, the majority of military generals and military lawyers call it torture. They’re pretty clear on it. In fact…
…Petraeus disagrees with the Cheneys on it . West Point does not teach it, going so far as to ask “24″ star Sutherland to come out and speak to the cadets because they were fearful his portrayal on the show was being taken too seriously. Sutherland, a Democrat, reminded them it was a TV show. I like “24″ like others, but I think I will stick with the military generals and military lawyers if they agree it is not only illegal, it is ineffective, and of course immoral if they want to keep our country on the high moral ground.
It is not a ‘liberal’ issue, but an American one. There are conservatives speaking openly against it as well. It is vitally important issue, and well worth conservatives and liberals debating it, but with you, it has to get personal.
Also, you called me out on another thread for ‘trashing Palin’s kids” which I never did or would ever do, & accused me of making fun of “Mormons’ which I never did, or would never do. So where does it come from?
Your screed above with typical liberal trashing points is one you assign to anyone that has a “D” after their name without question. You just throw the mud and hope some sticks, right?
Your misogynist ‘Princess” label is sophomoric, along with the other belittling names you have called me and other women posting here who have disagreed with you.
There is room for debate. Telling me or anyone else to go back to ‘al Jazeera” is not only disgusting, it is a testament to your own unpatriotic mindset. If you are an example of where the GOP is going, then Frum has a lot more work to do.
anniemargret // Feb 21, 2010 at 9:34 pm
Correction… I should say Sutherland is apparently ‘Democrat-leaning’ – rather than a Democrat, particularly his views on healthcare reform.
aDude // Feb 21, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Sinz – Ryan is on the right track, but his plan still does nothing to address the deficits of the next 11 years. And beyond that there is still the same demographic issue. Currently the Federal government spends about $11,000 per year per recipient of Medicare. Ryan’s plan still spend the same $11,000 per year per recipient (albeit through private insurance rather than Medicare). The problem is that there will be twice as many recipients, so we are still stuck with a giant deficit. His Social Security plan is better, but if most people opt out of the private plans we are still stuck with the $15,000 per year per recipient we are spending now. And again, there will be twice as many recipients, so we still have a giant deficit.
Spartacus – No raising taxes and no cutting Medicare benefits. The only thing left are giant deficits. That’s exactly what is wrong today. Democrats raise taxes and spend too much. Republicans cut taxes and spend too much. There is still no plan to cut the deficits.
JeninCT // Feb 21, 2010 at 10:17 pm
I like Paul Ryan’s plan as well but it’s going to be as popular with Democrats as Chris Christie’s plans are with New Jersey school teachers.
Beck is right though. The worst is coming.
SpartacusIsNotDead // Feb 22, 2010 at 12:28 am
Adude, the Senate Democratic healthcare reform plan would have cut the deficit by about $90 billion over its first 10 years and by even more than that over the next 10 years. There are no other credible proposals out there on any issue that would have reduced the deficit by these amounts.
Additionally, it’s factually incorrect to suggest that the Social Security program contributes to the federal deficit. The exact opposite is true. For quites some time now, payments into the Social Security program have vastly exceeded payments to beneficiaries. The Social Security program will contribute to future deficits only because the excess Social Security receipts that are collected each year are used to pay for other federal spending instead of saving it for future payments to beneficiaries as intended. This is why Al Gore kept harping in 2000 on putting those excess receipts into a “lockbox” that could not be used to fund current federal spending on other programs.
The record on deficits over the past4-5 decades is unequivocally clear. Republican presidencies have produced much, much larger deficits than Democratic presidencies. And, of course, the last full-term Democratic presidency produced a huge budget surplas that was quickly turned to the largest deficit in this country’s history by his Republican successor.
If fiscal accountability and federal deficits are the issue, there is no question that Democrats have been much better than Republicans.
joedee1969 // Feb 22, 2010 at 6:55 am
Bad times are coming if we don’t support these people going to school who will be cut off from unemployment:
http://americaspeaksink.com/2010/02/unemployment-the-new-jobless-problem/
GOProud // Feb 22, 2010 at 10:22 am
annie-keeps-her-blunderbuss: “GOPer: What a screed. Unless you are David Frum behind the moniker, you have no right to insist anyone not post here…”
Sigh. Once again Annie, you’re spinning faster than RobertDoughBoiGibbs on a Monday morning.
The question isn’t what FF or anyone else wants. It’s about YOUR –that would be y-o-u-r pledge to stop commenting.
You can spin like a whirling dervish in a prayful state but that won’t help you spin this or deflect it.
You pledged. You promised. You’re vilating your pledge faste than Obama can slide downhill… and that’s pretty fast.
We’ve got TeaBagged giving us your typical rants and meaningless two-bits on nearly every issue. The perspective is covered. Honor your promise… unless you want to pull a Kerry-Obama flip flop. Simple as that, princess.
ratgov // Feb 22, 2010 at 3:15 pm
I also agree that social security isn’t a problem. My understanding is that if we continue to increase the social security tax cap (what it it now around $120k?), we can keep benefits and the program is still be balanced.
It’s medicare that’s going to really blow up in our faces.
kevin47 // Feb 23, 2010 at 3:11 am
“Will we call those same techniques torture when they are practiced against us? ”
What difference would it make, in terms of policy? Whether they are waterboarding our soldiers or holding them at the Four Seasons, we are going to kill them for doing so. The case you are trying to make is that terrorists might choose to waterboard our soldiers. The problem with this case is that waterboarding would be a much more desirable fate for those soldiers captured by our terrorist enemies.
Kevin B // Feb 23, 2010 at 3:45 am
What difference would it make, in terms of policy? Whether they are waterboarding our soldiers or holding them at the Four Seasons, we are going to kill them for doing so. The case you are trying to make is that terrorists might choose to waterboard our soldiers.The case I’m trying to make is that torturing prisoners makes us torturers. Whether or not they treat our soldiers (or civilians) well.
And you ignored the second part of my case. What’s the argument against performing the same enhanced interrogation techniques on suspects in ordinary domestic crimes?
garlic // Feb 23, 2010 at 11:35 am
Chicago cops have been and are being investigated for criminal offense related to the torturing of suspects under Jon Burge.
If it’s not something the police can do to you after pulling you over on the highway, it’s not something they or the military should do either.
Part of the reason military tribunals are necessary for guantanamo detenees is that the evidence gathered doesn’t meet the standards of normal courts. That’s a bad thing.