You’ll have to click the image above to enlarge – it’s really illuminating.

People have been speculating for a long time about Glenn Beck’s associations with Goldline, and how every time he screams insensibly about the coming economic apocalypse that will be of course completely the fault of liberals everywhere, that you should invest in gold and hide under your mattress until it all blows over and only the good Christian conservatives are left.

What Beck doesn’t tell all of us is exactly how closely related he is to Goldline, and exactly how much money he — and they — rake in from his fearmongering.

Over at the blog The Big Picture, this fantastic timeline of exactly how Glenn Beck is fleecing his viewers and listeners came to light, and it’s amazing to read.

For as much as the media is trumpeting up the standard talking points for a mid-term election; that the party in power generally takes losses and that the party in power is generally the one doing poorly in the polls (both of which are indisputably true) it’s also worth pointing out that even though the Tea Partiers and Republicans are frothing at the mouths about repealing everything the government has done for the American people these past two years, they’re not exactly winning any popularity contests themselves:

There were a couple of trends that jumped out at me, though, beyond the obvious numbers. The first is that the public, while discouraged and pessimistic about the status quo, still doesn’t much care for Republicans.

Respondents were asked, for example, how much confidence they have in various leaders to “make the right decisions for the country’s future.” For Obama, the number is 43%. For congressional Democrats, it’s 32%. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, is a distant third at 26%. Indeed, while support for Obama’s handling on the economy has fallen quite a bit, the poll asked which political party voters “trust to do a better job handling the economy.” Democrats still lead Republicans by eight points.

Dems aren’t faring well in this political landscape, but it’s not because voters are moving in large numbers to the GOP.

Now that’s a level of analysis you probably won’t find in many media outlets – they’ll stick to the top-level talking points, which are all worth discussing, but they’ll completely avoid digging into the details – it’s not that the voting public prefers Republicans or Tea Partiers, it’s that they’re just unhappy with the pace of the economic recovery and the political process entirely, so much so they’re disenchanted with everyone, not just Democrats in Congress or with President Obama.

This is where campaigning really needs to play a role, and incumbent Democrats and the President need to get out in front of this disillusionment and show the country what they’ve done for them, the good it’s doing, and the fact that voting for Republicans and Tea Partiers will not only take the country back in the wrong direction but will likely have abyssal results for the American people – since neither of those two groups care about the average American nearly as much as they both claim to.

One more tidbit that has to do very much with my last piece on the matter:

There was also this:

“Because of the economic downturn, Congress has extended the period in which people can receive unemployment benefits, and is considering doing so again. Supporters say this will help those who can’t find work. Opponents say this adds too much to the federal budget deficit. Do you think Congress should or should not approve another extension of unemployment benefits?”

It wasn’t even close — 62% want to extend unemployment benefits, 36% are more concerned with the deficit. For those who blocked the Senate from voting on this — three times in three weeks — the argument was that Americans, overcome with deficit-reduction mania, want Congress to stop spending. The evidence to the contrary is pretty clear.

Democrats everywhere – the American people just handed you an ace in the hole. Play it.

[ Keep in Mind, Republicans Fare Worse Than Obama in Discouraging New Poll ]
Source: Washington Monthly

Pay close attention to that headline: this isn’t the normal complaints that progressives have about right-wing talk radio, and this isn’t the normal smackdown that the real media and real journalists levy against the nuts who host these shows, lie on the air, and then complain when they’re called out on their fiction, this is someone in their own corner – someone who would be more likely to be asked on one of these shows than not. Here’s the post:

Rep. Bob Inglis (R-SC), who lost recently in his primary run-off for the Republican nomination to keep his seat in Congress, is speaking out about the influence of hate radio and right-wing fear mongering in the Republican Party. In an interview with the AP, Inglis called out reactionaries like Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck for spreading “demagoguery” and hatred in society:

– Noting that Palin had spread the “death panel” smear, Inglis said, “there were no death panels in the bill…and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership.”

– Inglis slammed GOP leaders for following hate radio talkers, rather than leading on principle: “I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading [...] What it takes to lead is to say, ‘You know, that’s just not right.”

– Inglis on the right-wing’s effort to divide America: “It’s a real concern, because I think what we’re doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni. It’s very difficult to come together to find solutions.”

– Although Inglis did not hear the racial slurs hurled at Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) at a tea party protest on Capitol Hill during the health reform vote, he did see threatening and abusive behavior. “I caught him at the door and said, ‘John, I guess you’ve been here before,’” said Inglis, referring to Lewis’ role in the Civil Rights movement.

Like Inglis, Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) lost his GOP primary, despite a similarly conservative voting record. Bennett later slammed the GOP for being held captive to far right-tea parties and Fox News, noting, “I find plenty of slogans on the Republican side, but not very many ideas.” Inglis, who stood out as one of the only Republican lawmakers to publicly criticize Glenn Beck, warned that voters eventually will discover that the GOP is “preying on their fears” and turn away.

The thing here is – as simultaneously funny and sad as it truly is – that we’re watching the cannibalization of the Republican party by its far-right, xenophobic, racist, militant elements: you may know them as the Tea Party. The same folks who are short on brains and short on ideas for actually improving the state of the country unless they involve getting everyone on trains gestapo-style and choo-choo-ing us back in time to where their privilege reigned supreme.

Even Republicans I would be more than happy to stand against are calling out the right-wing media for its kowtowing to these same far right elements and legitimizing them through radio and outlets like Faux News.

[ GOP Rep. Inglis: Republicans Are “Preying on Fears,” Spreading Messages With Hate Radio ]
Source: Think Progress (courtesy of AlterNet)

True to nature, whenever there’s good news to be had or real leadership shown by the Obama Administration, the conservative reaction is to say nothing if at all possible, especially when they know that being negative will just further marginalize them from the rest of American society.

For example, when the President and the Secretary of State both collectively stand behind podiums in front of world leaders and explain that the threat of a Cold War-style annihilation is lower than it’s ever been but the threat of a rogue nuclear attack by a terrorist or non-state organization is higher than ever, conservatives can’t dispute that because to do so would make them look not only crazy, but contradictory to their own policies less than 2 years ago. (Not that they’re any stranger to self-contradiction – these are the same people who yelled down progressives for “not respecting the office of the President even if you don’t respect the person in it” and less than 2 years later are summarily publishing racist cartoons and training for the woods for the “next Civil War.”) At the same time, only the fringiest of fringe conservatives (and they’ve definitely stood up) can bash the President’s vision of a world where the threat of nuclear weapons doesn’t loom large over the populous of every nation around the globe.

So what do the conservatives do when they can’t acknowledge something good is happening? They just ignore it, of course:

On Monday and Tuesday, President Obama convened a historic gathering in Washington to deal with the most urgent threat facing the globe: nuclear terrorism. Never before have so many world leaders gathered to discuss together how to thwart one of the greatest nightmares imaginable; 47 nations were represented. Though no sweeping treaties or agreements were reached, Obama did succeed on two important fronts. He placed the issue of controlling and securing nuclear material that could be used by terrorists (including al-Qaeda and its allies) at the top of the global to-do list. And he encouraged nations to take their own individual steps. Chile gave up its entire stockpile of highly enriched uranium (HEU), the material that terrorists need to produce a weapon. Ukraine said it would eliminate its HEU stockpile, as did Mexico. Canada agreed to do the same with much of its HEU. (Reducing and controlling HEU stockpiles is the key to preventing nuclear terrorism.) China, Japan, India, Argentina, Pakistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and Italy each announced nuclear security initiatives.

There’s still much that the nations of the world, including the United States, must do to prevent HEU from slipping into the hands of terrorists. (It only takes a lump the size of a grapefruit to make a bomb, and the bomb-building part isn’t so tough. What’s hard is getting the HEU.) But with this summit, Obama did move the world in a safer direction. He nudged it toward policies that could lessen the odds that one or more of our cities are incinerated by a nuclear weapon cobbled together by a band of evildoers. Everyone — even people who believe Obama is a Kenyan-born secret Muslim with a covert plan for imposing socialism on the United States — should be grateful for that, right?

Maybe not. After Obama’s summit was done, I went looking to see how prominent conservatives and Republicans were reacting to it on the Twittersphere. I found a lot of silence. Newt Gingrich tweeted on Tuesday about a meeting where he would “outline 2010 and 2012 big choice themes 2+2 equals 4 is key concept.” (Don’t ask me what that means.) But not a peep about the summit. Sarah Palin, ditto. Same for Karl Rove. These folks are all active Twitterers, ever ready to share their opinions and thoughts in 140 characters or less. But none saw fit to do so regarding the nuclear security summit.

To that list, you can add other conservative tweeters: John McCain, Michele Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and John Boehner.

You bet that if this had happened under the Bush Administration (not that Mad King George would ever have been able to comprehend the issue of nuclear weapons, much less have the will to bring so many world leaders together to discuss it, much less be respected enough by any of those leaders for them to actually attend) they’d be shouting from the rooftops about how important and historic the moment was and how it was a turning point in world history – and, if it had happened under their watch, they’d all be right.

But it was all of those things – it was historic, it was turning point, and it was the first time a lot of those leaders had convened in the same place to discuss the same issues and all agree that it was important. And the simple fact that everyone – including the mainstream media that these conservative wingnuts love to hate so much – covered it, does more to destroy their credibility in some ways than anything they possibly could say about any other issue. Sorry guys, you don’t get to pick and choose the news, and you don’t get to pick and choose what’s important and what’s historic.

[ Obama's Nuclear Summit: Invisible for Conservatives? ]
Source: Politics Daily

I don’t think this deserves much explanation. Art by Adam Zyglis, and originally published in The Buffalo News!

Much love for The Far Left Side, a political comic that’s worth reading if you’re of the progressive political persuasion, and much thanks to Papamoka Straight Talk, one of my favorite political blogs with attitude and biting commentary.

It’s sad, but true – expect that the costs of waging political war incurred by corporate America to make sure their friends get elected (and make no mistake, those friends are not friends of the American people, they’re friends of the American CEO) will be passed directly on to the American consumer. When Exxon and Shell need to raise money to fight political candidates who advocate a clean environment and breathable air and drinkable water, they’ll pass that cost right along to you and I to make sure that their dirty air and filthy water friends get into office – their interests will be not only in poisoning the planet to make a buck, but in making sure they make that buck back out of your and my wallets.

Writing for the Buffalo Beast, Michael Roddy and Ian Murphy have an excellent rundown on some of the planet’s worst enemies right now – people who would make excellent villains in an episode of Captain Planet and the Planeteers – and while I’m being a little sarcastic, these are folks who not only put their own heads in the sand to the damage they, their businesses, and their interests do to the environment and the health of the planet, they also spend tons of money to make sure that you put your head in the sand and keep it there.

What makes the story even better is that The Beast comes up with some scenarios that would be poetic justice for these folks as well. Here are a few of my favorites:

George Will, Columnist

Misdeeds: The errors Will has committed to print over the years are both more numerous and irresponsible than his bow tie collection, for which he also feels no remorse. He claimed in a February 2009 Washington Post column that “According to the University of Illinois’ Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.” The Center responded: “We do not know where George Will is getting his information… global sea ice levels are 1.34 million sq. km less in February 2009 than in February 1979.”

Corporate teats: The Republican Party, a catchall for corporate polluters, his wife, rapacious swine in general, and anyone who cites Ronald Reagan to justify his massive carbon footprint.

Most egregious lie: “So the column accurately reported what the Center had reported.” Incredibly, the Post backed him up.

Comeuppance: Locked in a large freezer, strapped to a chair directly under a ten-foot icicle and made to write a column. The room’s climate is controlled by a computer program, which checks his column for scientific veracity. The temperature goes down when Will’s right and up when he’s wrong. He either freezes to death or the icicle falls and splits his head open. It’s up to him.

…

James Inhofe, Senator from Oklahoma

Misdeeds: Inhofe thinks that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind,” yet somehow served as the Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee from ‘03 to ‘07. Once called Jurassic Park author Michael Crichton to testify as a key witness. Believes that “scientific consensus” on climate change is a conspiracy perpetrated by greedy scientists to score grant money. Went to Copenhagen as the leader of the Climate Truth Squad, earning big laughs from overseas reporters. Lifetime recipient of Twelve Dumbest Members of Congress award.

Corporate teats: Seven figures from Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Conoco Phillips and anyone willing to pay for his “campaign expenses.”

Most egregious lie: “You know, God’s still up there. We’re now going through a cooling spell.”

Comeuppance: Locked in an outhouse and set on fire.

…

Fred Singer, University of Virginia

Misdeeds: For the last 60 years, Singer’s pimped his PhD credentials to any and every industry in need of phony science. He’s slithered seamlessly from denying that smoking causes cancer to saying that DDT is harmless to “raising questions about and undercutting the ‘prevailing scientific wisdom’” of climate change. Glacier data he later attributed to his wife was denounced as “complete bullshit” by the Glacier Monitoring Service.

Corporate teats: Exxon Mobil, Shell, Sun Oil, Competitive Enterprise Institute, American Petroleum Institute and the Heartland Institute.

Most egregious lie: “55% of glaciers have gained mass in the last 30 years.”

Comeuppance: While addressing yet another denier conference in 2012, the pressure created by an undetected tumor in Singer’s brain triggers an anomalous episode of schizophasia, causing his entire speech to spew forth as an incoherent word salad. Instead of the audience stopping Singer and urging him to seek the immediate medical attention he so obviously needs, they offer him a thunderous standing ovation and an invitation to speak again next year.

There’s so much more hilarity where that came from, too.

[ THE BEAST 15 Most Heinous Climate Villains ]
Source: The Buffalo Beast

Oh Michael Steele – I can hardly believe you used to be the Lieutenant Governor of my state. Or that your former boss is actually seriously considering another run at the Governorship of my state. All of that aside though, it’s well known that the GOP as a party doesn’t exactly understand or embrace the whole technology thing – these are the folks who don’t understand net neutrality and why it’s important (and just views it as “more regulation,” which they’re unilaterally against) and are quick to bash the “hollywood elite” when it comes to things like climate change or social injustice but ready to take the record industry or the movie industry’s side when it comes to wanting to “remotely disable” people’s computers that may potentially have pirated material on them.

But back to point, good old Michael Steele – now the Chair of the Republican party (who is completely disrespected by his own ranks) has himself a little problem. I’ll let my friend Tana Ganeva, writing for AlterNet, explain what happened:

his week, the RNC tried to make the Internet conservative. It was not a resounding success. Instead, a series of hilarious and fairly predictable misfortunes sent a tiny, animated Michael Steele on a wild ride to a bunch of porn, bondage and Communist websites. Here’s what happened, from Wired:

As part of its new media strategy, the Republican party launched a new site called GOP.am on Monday. It’s a URL shortener designed to make it easy for conservative web surfers to exchange links to web pages.

Pranksters almost immediately began using the service to link to controversial or ironically intended websites, such as the official site of the American Communist Party, a bondage website and a webpage advertising a sex toy in the likeness of Barack Obama. GOP.am apparently started blocking such links at some point Tuesday morning, and the GOP.am homepage was taken offline.

This story was picked up by a number of tech outlets, including some that I’m pretty familiar with, and Wired, whose text is used above. The really entertaining part of this is that it shows that the GOP isn’t just not familiar with basic Web services and technology, but that they don’t think to demo or beta test their own services before they rush to get them out and claim that they’re “all about those interwebs or whatever the young folk call it these days.”

I only wish this had happened during an election cycle, to point out exactly how bad they are, on the whole. There’s a reason why a lot of right-wing news blogs look like they’re straight out of 1994, and there’s a reason Drudge can’t be bothered to make his site look anything like a legitimate news site. (other than the fact that it isn’t)

[ GOP Tech Tragedy Sends Michael Steele on Wild Porn, Bondage, Commie Ride ]
Source: AlterNet

I’m actually pretty tired of the hubub running about over Sarah Palin – like others have said, there’s a lot of focus on the messenger here that’s detracting from the lunacy of the message – we’re all so focused on beating up Sarah Palin for being a nutjob – and don’t get me wrong, she is – that we’re missing the idiocy of the message and the ideology that she represents in the far-right – an ideology that a dangerous number of gun-toting, moose-shooting, global-warming-denying, high-on-revolver-oil people actually represent. It’s terrifying, and we as a progressive community should be leveling our sights (lot of gun puns today, sorry) on the mindset and the masses behind her. The fringe right isn’t like a snake (as much as they might seem to be) – you can’t cut off their head and the rest simply dies.

But to that end, and to prove that point, it’s true that the rest of America simply doesn’t like Sarah Palin – and yet her book is a New York Times bestseller. It’s not that there’s anything good in there – there really isn’t – it’s that the combination of idiocy that she represents and the forces behind her are catapulting her to a kind of moronic success that we’d only seen in the George W Bush political years:

Really, Palin should be celebrating the America-hating, liberal media that keep that stupid thing in the news. Especially since Palin’s love is kind of unrequited. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, a majority of Americans don’t like her that much, and very few would vote for her if she absurdly ran for President.

The poll reveals that 52 percent see the former governor in unfavorable terms. Only 9 percent say they would definitely vote for her if she were a candidate for President in 2012. 53 percent said they would definitely not vote for her. According to the Washington-Post/ABC analysis of the poll, about half as many Americans said they would definitely not vote for John McCain in Spring 2006.

There’s a lesson in this for Palin and the GOP; that lesson is obviously that only 9 percent of Americans really love America.

Thus sayeth Tana Ganeva, AlterNet editor. It’s absolutely true, and while it’s a terrible opportunity to bring up Sarah Palin, it’s a great opportunity to sit with some of the more sensible minds in the progressive community and say “let’s stop attacking her, and let’s move on to what she stands for and the ignorance that is the bedrock of her and her followers’ ideologies.”

[ Guess What? Americans Don't Like Sarah Palin ]
Source: AlterNet

The problem with a figure as moronic, ignoble, illiterate, and self-entitled as Sarah Palin is that as much as you think that in any good meritocracy a person like her would simply fade into the background, ridiculed for their own ignorance and stupidity, they won’t. She’s the cockroach of American politics: she won’t die, and every time you turn the light on her she scurries off under the closest object where she won’t be held accountable for her actions in the dark.

So this week Palin is releasing her memoir – a tome that Rush Limbaugh says is the finest policy book he’s ever read, which I wouldn’t be too surprised to hear from a drug-addled sex offender and stalker – a memoir of what, I’m not sure though; she has no political career to speak of even including her incredibly unremarkable term as Alaska’s governor. Perhaps readers will delight in her horrible metaphors or stories of seeing Russia from her porch or mayhap be treated to explanations of what she really meant every time she opened her mouth in public – that should be enough to fill a couple of books.

But alas, she’s off and running again, speaking out loud and opening her mouth to which a avalanche of falsehoods have emerged:

Sarah Palin’s heavily publicized book tour begins in earnest this Monday, but weeks before, her ghostwritten memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life, had already vaulted into the number one position at Amazon. Warming up for a tour that will take her across Middle America in a bus, Palin tested her lines in a November 7th speech before a crowd of 5,000 anti-abortion activists in Wisconsin. She promptly cited an urban legend as a “disturbing trend,” claiming the Treasury Department had moved the phrase “In God We Trust” from presidential dollar coins. (The rumor most likely originated with a 2006 story on the far-right website WorldNetDaily.)

In fact, a suggested alteration in its position on the coin was shot down in 2007 after pressure from Democratic Senator Robert Byrd. Nonetheless, Palin did not hesitate to take up this “controversy,” however false, since it conveniently pits a tyrannical, God-destroying, secular big government against humble God-fearing folk. In doing so, of course, she presented herself as this nation’s leading defender of the faith.

What’s really funny is that Sarah Palin demonstrates more of the biblical characteristics of the anti-christ than the evangelicals would like to pin on any progressive leader, including President Obama. Regardless, all Palin has to do is utter a lie here or there, make up some offensive banter at one time or another, and the frothing-mouth conservative base who would rather pull out their torches and pitchforks and go set up a burning cross on someone’s lawn than pick up a newspaper or a book are ready and waiting at her side, ready to do her bidding.

This is the true danger she represents: not a shift in policy and American politics, not in a change that can sweep all Americans – she represents an emergent thuggish far-right, ready to bend not only their own party but anyone else to their will, to subjugate the rest of America to fit into their own narrowly conceived concepts of what they believe is right and wrong, what they believe is justice, and what they believe is freedom. There will be no room for alternate views or interpretations, and their hypocracies will rule.

Immature collections of cells will be guarded as precious life, but single-mothers with those children will be told there is no room for them at the inn, because no one wanted to pay taxes for a social safety net. Women will be told their place is in the kitchen and not in the workplace, and if they do choose to enter the workplace that 80-cents on the dollar should be enough for them and besides, don’t they have a man to support them anyway? Racism will be labeled freely as a figment of the imaginations of minorities, but if someone dares celebrate Black History month someone will, foolish and unaware of their own privilege, try to strike the cirriculum from the record because there’s no such “white history month.” This is the world that Palin and her vocal evangelical minority would see us live in.

And it’s up to all of us, not just progressives, but those who have any real view of freedom and equal justice in this country, to stand against them – they may be loud, but they have no true power other than the power the rest of us allow them to exert and bully us with.

[ Sarah Palin Rules the GOP -- And She Will Destroy It ]
Source: AlterNet