WPITW: Fox & Fiends

The late great Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Unfortunately that concept is totally alien to Fox “News” that gets busted in this instance for blatantly misrepresenting unemployment figures on graphs to fit its own counterfactual narrative:

As for the actual “winner” being the crowds attending the GOP “debates” that seem prone to enthusiastically cheering for the death penalty, allowing the uninsured to die without treatment, fatally electrocuting illegal immigrants, and putting poor black kids to work cleaning school latrines… Pretty standard fare for the average Republican primary voter, apparently. There really is no proposition too outlandishly crazy, mean-spirited, or downright inhumane for these feverishly angry crackpots not to support with tremendous gusto.

WPITW

A trifecta of sexism, ignorance and paranoia today:

In fairness to Republican hopeful Herman Cain, at least he had the decency to preface his crackpot theory with the caveat of not having the facts to back it up. Too bad the other nuts in the GOP clown car aren’t as candidly forthright about the baselessness of their assertions.

Update: Great new hash tag courtesy of TDSWJS:

#idonthavethefactstobackthisup

Rules of Civility: Glenn Beck Style!

I know that attacking right-wing blowhards for their hypocritical douchebaggery is swinging at the low hanging fruit, but sometimes the urge is just impossible to resist.

On his show today, Beck spent a few minutes decrying the behaviour of people in Los Angeles who, for several hours, exploited a pricing mistake by a gas station without ever bringing the dumb oversight to the attention of the staff. Beck claimed this was a breach of our “moral obligations” and to reinforce his point, he piously wielded a copy of George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation as being a model that we should all strive to live by…

And now, here’s Beck practicing what he preaches about civility and decent behaviour by spending 8 full minutes of his radio program the other week making the sound of vomiting into a bucket at the thought of Meghan McCain baring herself for a PSA about the risks of skin cancer.

Funny thing about those “Rules of Civility” that Beck was flaunting as if they were Holy writ from the Founding Father. In fact, they’re based on a code of conduct devised by the French Jesuits in 1595 and most probably were just copied out as part of an exercise in penmanship assigned by the young Washington’s schoolmaster.

Finally, where does Beck’s “moral obligation” enter into the equation of that free market gemstone Caveat emptor? This, of course was a far more rare case of Caveat venditor, but the principle is essentially the same, no?

Gaia’s Wrath?

Insane rodeo clown Glenn Beck on the disaster in Japan: “I’ll tell you this. Whether you call it Gaia or whether you call it Jesus, there’s a message being sent. And that message is: ‘Hey, you know that stuff we’re doin’… [maniacal laughter] Not really workin’ out real well. Maybe we should stop doin’ some of it. I’m just sayin.’”

What exactly “the stuff we’re doin’” might be is anyone’s guess, but something similar to the ‘sins’ articulated in the moralistic pronouncements of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell immediately post 9-11 about the catastrophic punishments meted out by their mean-spirited, vengeful God wouldn’t exactly stretch the imagination.

Dumb & Dumber

Oh, noooo! Please tell me that I don’t have to side with Bill “Wrong About Absolutely Everything” Kristol in the zero-sum ideological spat between him and Glenn Beck over which of these two knuckleheads is best articulating the present “conservative” position on foreign policy with respect to current developments taking place in the Middle East.

Glenn Beck says that “only one side can be right”… Well, I beg to differ. In the case of these two catastrophically dense blowhards, I would argue that both sides can be completely wrong. And, as a matter of fact (not that it seems to matter to these two individuals), past events have tended to demonstrate that they most usually are.

Just for hypothetical fun, why not let’s take a little survey on the matter…

TDS: ((( Jon Stewart )))

What a terrific spoof of Glenn Beck’s convoluted, conspiratorial ranting…

Note: Video link deleted as it was pulled by YouTube ages ago.

Barking Mad

Glenn Beck reacts in theatrical fashion to Joe Biden’s risible claim that stimulus spending hasn’t resulted in any significant fraud or abuse.

Of course, when umpteen billions of dollars are involved in any kind of spending program — whether it be sponsored by the government or the private sector — there’s inevitably bound to be a certain amount of waste, corruption, graft and abuse; hey, it’s just human nature, after all. But is it really fair to trash the putative aims of such initiatives on that basis alone, or to dismiss the ends because the means of achieving them were less than sanitary in nature?

Glenn Beck v. Ida May Fuller

Perhaps Beck’s rant will have some appeal to rabid right-wing ideologues that resent old folks drawing a pension after their retirement from the workforce, but it’s difficult to see who else might find his crackpot argument all that compelling.

“Aunt Ida” was something of a statistical anomaly, by the way. She retired in January 1940 at age 65 but lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975. In 1940 the average remaining life expectancy for those surviving to age 65 was less than 15 years. What’s perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Ms. Fuller’s payroll deductions at the time of her employment were a measly 1 percent!

Also, Beck’s vile slander against Harry Hopkins is complete hogwash.

If ever there was a shining example of monstrous intellectual dishonesty this cretinous, pudgy demagogue should be the poster boy for it.

Dumb & Dumber

It’s hard to think of any two people in America that come across as more patently phony and disingenuous than this pair of blithering idiots.

The most egregious part of this segment was cringe-inducing exchange precipitated by Beck asking the former half-term Governor, “Who’s your favourite Founder?”

“You know, well, all of them, because they came collectively together with so much–” Palin began, in a manner much like her non-answers to Katie Couric’s questions about which newspapers she’s read (“All of them.”) and which Supreme Court decisions she’s disagreed with (which brought a similarly broad answer about how there are a lot of decisions).

“Bullcrap,” Beck interrupted. “Who’s your favourite?”

“– so much diverse and so much diversity in terms of belief, but collectively they came together — and they were led by, of course George Washington, so he’s got to rise to the top.”

John Cole put it best: “This is like one of those awkward moments in school when a student is giving a presentation they are completely unprepared for, and the teacher knows it, the student knows it, and everyone watching knows it, yet you sit there and go through the charade.”

Glenn Beck Pimping Goldline

Explains quite a lot of things, I’d say.

Shouldn’t Fox “News” at least have some fair disclosure when one of their fearmongering blowhards is also a “paid spokesman” for Goldline International, a vendor of “gold, silver, and platinum coins and bars as well as rare and collectible numismatic coins”? One might think so.