On his show yesterday Glenn Beck has uncovered yet another secret Obama administration plot. This time it’s Native American reparations.

In a speech last Thursday, on the same day of the Ft. Hood massacre, Obama talked about Native Americans. He actually spoke about Native Americans on that day. Here’s what he said.

“Few have been more marginalized and ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans – our first Americans,” Obama continued. “We know the history that we share. It’s a history marked by violence and disease and deprivation. Treaties were violated. Promises were broken.”

Beck was outraged. He said he “couldn’t believe it.” He couldn’t understand how that type of rhetoric could “spill out of my television” on this day.

“I saw President Obama talking,” Beck said, “about Native American rights in the middle of the tragedy at Ft. Hood.”

But to make matters worse, we’re not just talking about a few casino licenses and free health care. What Beck has discovered is that this Obama policy that the president so shamelessly pushed on the day of the Ft. Hood killings is actually part of Van Jones’ “passionate plans for Native Americans.”

Back in February, the former Green jobs Obama appointee, said this about Native Americans: “Give them the wealth! Give them the respect that they deserve!”

So there you have it. Van Jones, who worked in the White House for like a week, is still firmly in control of Obama’s policy, particularly when it comes to Native Americans. The next thing you know Obama will be talking about reparations for slavery too.

Now of course, Obama’s speech wasn’t the non sequitur Beck made it out to be on his show. The president was actually giving a speech at the Tribal Nations Conference in Washington, D.C. Obama assured the 400 tribal leaders who attended the event that his campaign promises were not just “lip service.”

His administration has opened the door to better communication between the tribes and the federal government by signing a memorandum strengthening a Clinton executive order to foster better relations.

And as for reparations, whether it’s a “passionate plan” of Van Jones or not, is it such a crazy idea? Some might argue that genocide comes at a cost not just for the victims but the perpetrators too.

On his show yesterday, Glenn Beck ran through a series of photographs from the Chairman Mao regime and read from Mao’s “red book.” Beck said that several people working in the White House are Maoists because of a speech White House Communications Director Anita Dunn gave in June when she said Chairman Mao was one of her favorite philosophers.

“We’ve found all kinds of crazy people that work at the White House,” Beck said. “I think we found two or three that worship Chairman Mao.”

He didn’t say who the other alleged Maoists are, but Beck’s certain that Dunn is one of them. However, according to Dunn, her reference to Mao was an attempt at irony.

Here’s what she said to a high school graduation class at St. Andrews Episcopal School in Potomac, MD:

A lot of you have a great deal of ability. A lot of you work hard. Put them together and that answers the why not question. There is usually not a good reason. And then the 3rd lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers. Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled with each other, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point which is you’re going to make choices, you’re going to challenge, you’re going to say why not. You’re going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here’s the deal, these are your choices, they’re no one else’s.

In 1947, when Mao Tse-tung was being challenged within his own party, on his plan to basically take China over, Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalist Chinese held the cities, they had the army, they had the air force, they had everything on their side and people said how can you win, how can you do this, how can you do this against all the odds against you, and Mao Tse-tung said “You fight your war and I’ll fight mine.”

Think about that for a second, you don’t have to accept the definition of how to do things and you don’t have to follow other people’s choices in the past. OK. It is about your choices in your path, you fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what is right for you. You don’t let external definition how good you are internally. You fight your own war. You let them fight their’s. Everybody has their own path.

And then Mother Theresa who upon receiving a letter from a fairly affluent young person you asked her whether she could come over and help with that orphanage in Calcutta responded very simply, “Go find your own Calcutta.” Go find your own Calcutta. Fight your own path. Go find the thing that is unique to you. The challenge is actually your’s – not somebody else’s challenge.

Clearly Dunn used Mao and Mother Theresa to make her point that these young high school graduates should not be discouraged by what others are saying, but to pave their own path regardless of the difficulties they may face. Beck is purposely being intellectually dishonest by pretending Dunn is a Maoist. Referring to Mao in a speech does not mean that Dunn is a Maoist – she also mentioned Mother Theresa. Does that means she worships at the altar of Mother Theresa too?

In his show, he ran through a series of photos of the Mao regime trying to make his point that the Obama administration wants to implement a Maoist communist plot to overthrow the US republic.

“I thought, you know, if you want to see the future, let’s look at the past. Who are these people idolizing? And I came up with a few pictures. Words? Come on. I just decided to look at some of the pictures first,” Beck said.

The photos were of Mao firing a gun, Mao celebrating Stalin’s 70th birthday, Mao replacing workers’ names with numbers and a Mao torture technique. Beck ended this segment by showing a photo of a party at the White House and saying, “This is just a picture of a party at the White House the other night.”

Beck then read from Mao’s “red book,” which says, “Oppose extravagant eating and drinking and pay attention to thrift in the economy.”

So wait, the Obama administration is filled with Maoist – who are opposed to extravagant eating and drinking – and yet, there’s a photo of an extravagant party at the White House?

Here’s the video segment from Beck’s show Oct. 21, 2009

Whether you like it or not, television shows have been advertising vehicles since the invention of product placement. Jerry Seinfeld ate Banana Nut Crunch cereal for breakfast and Elaine chugged Snapple. But now that the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a Hollywood charitable organization, is working with the television industry to encourage volunteering Fox News commentator Glenn Beck says that’s communism.

Huh?

“Celebrities are coming together to make it cool to volunteer,” Beck said Monday on his show.

The EIF campaign is spreading their message to promote volunteerism across 60 shows on all of the major networks, including Fox. In some cases, it will be woven into the plot.

“Well, isn’t this fantastic,” Beck said. “It’s almost like we’re living in Mao’s China right now.”

Beck sees communists around every corner.

“Obama controls the message through the media he holds in his pocket, or in his little hand. And soon if you disobey,” Beck said Obama will slap your hand.

It can be difficult to follow Beck’s logic, because like all of his “arguments” are devoid of reality, but let’s play along. From what I can tell, Beck is worried that if EIF can encourage enough people to volunteer, that will create a huge army of volunteers which Obama can then control to do something evil. But like a Vermonter might say, “You can’t get there from here.”

It just doesn’t make sense, haven’t all presidents encouraged volunteerism? Isn’t that a cornerstone of most religions including Mormonism? Beck’s a Mormon, but I guess he hates volunteering because all volunteers are foot soldiers for Obama’s communist agenda.

Can you say “Red-baiting“?

For some reason the White House has picked a fight with Fox News. On Sunday, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn said that the cable news network was not in fact a news organization but rather an extension of the Republican Party.

“The reality of it is that Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” Dunn told CNN’s Howard Kurtz. “Take their talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air, and that’s fine. But let’s not pretend they’re a news network the way CNN is.”

Fox News commentators jumped at the chance to strike back at the White House.

Glenn Beck blew Dunn’s remarks way out of proportion. On his show, he took out a tourist map of Manhattan, drew a circle around Fox News headquarters, he then played army with military toys, putting a fence around the Fox building and encircling it with tanks and missiles.

“We’ve got the missiles pointed right a Fox,” Beck screamed into the camera. “And let’s make sure that everybody understands this is the enemy America. Everything that’s going wrong with the country – happening right here.”

Dunn didn’t say that Fox News is responsible for everything that’s going wrong with the country. What she said was that Fox News is a “wing of the Republican Party.” In true Beck fashion, he’s creating the illusion that the White House is actively seeking to destroy Fox News – to get them off the air. Dunn didn’t say anything about stopping Fox News from broadcasting.

“Free speech under attack. Sure. In the coming days,” Beck assured his audience. “I’m going to show you how this administration is consolidating power, and that you’re right to speak out, and your right to hear simply opposing voices – people who are asking legitimate questions – all under assault.”

Bill O’Reilly chimed in during his Talking Points Memo segment. He said the White House is attacking Fox News because they’re the only cable news network willing to ask tough questions. O’Reilly said that Fox News is “fair and balanced” and he challenged anyone to prove him wrong.

The other news networks, such as CNN and NBC, O’Reilly said “clearly favored” Obama over McCain during the election and NBC continues to give the president good coverage. O’Reilly demanded evidence that the network’s hard news is anything but honest, objective and fair and balanced.

Well, it just so happens, that last month, Fox News producer Heidi Noonan was caught on tape rallying the crowd while reporter Griff Jenkins delivered some of that “fair and balanced” hard news coverage O’Reilly was bloviating about.

Oh and the 9/12 rally was sponsored and promoted by Fox News and Glenn Beck in particular. The network’s commentators over-reported the turnout, and even ran a newspaper ad chastising the other news networks for not covering the event, even though they actually did.

If you listen to wind-bags like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity you’d think that America is the greatest country ever formed and anyone who disagrees with them is a commie-terrorist-socialist-bastard. But if you look at where we’ve been, and more importantly, where we’re headed, the United States of America is no longer, if it ever was, the greatest country in the world.

First let’s set aside the rhetoric of the so-called patriots and let’s look at the reality of life in the US.

We once were a powerful industrialized nation that made things. We used to make everything from cars people actually purchased to televisions, radios, fans, suitcases, clothes and whatever else we needed. Now we make bankers, insurance policies and print money when we need more of it. Our manufacturing sector has been thoroughly gutted. We now import just about everything and export jobs to Taiwan, India, China and wherever corporations can find cheap labor. As a result, real wages in America continue to fall and consumer debt has skyrocketed. In August, Americans were shouldering $2.4 trillion in debt, with revolving debt at about $900 billion. Check the Federal Reserve stats on consumer debt

We also should look at education as Paul Krugman did in this column today.

If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word, that word would be “education.” In the 19th century, America led the way in universal basic education. Then, as other nations followed suit, the “high school revolution” of the early 20th century took us to a whole new level. And in the years after World War II, America established a commanding position in higher education.

But that was then. The rise of American education was, overwhelmingly, the rise of public education — and for the past 30 years our political scene has been dominated by the view that any and all government spending is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Education, as one of the largest components of public spending, has inevitably suffered.

Like manufacturing, education in American has been gored, gutted and tossed in the dumpster. Teachers are underpaid, students and parents don’t seem to give a rip, higher education is way too expensive and politicians tell us that all government spending on anything other than military is just wrong. While we’ve yet to truly realize the destruction of creating generations of uneducated citizens, when we do, it will be too late to do anything about it.

We’re seeing some of the impact of poor education with the so-called tea bag protesters who don’t know why they’re mad – they just are. They can’t think critically about any issue because they haven’t been taught the value of critical thought. This is just the beginning. In another 20 years we’re going to have millions of citizens who can barely read and write trying to compete with countries like India, China, France and Germany that actually do believe that education is the key to their nation’s success.

Our priorities are completely out of whack in the US. We’d rather spend more than $1 trillion fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no clear objective in mind, than on health care, education and building industries of the future. So what can we do to change this? Unfortunately, the answer is not much. Our political system has been hijacked by defense contractors, ideologues and corporations. Everything that we do has to involve the “profit motive,” which is another way of saying, corporations need to make money off of education, war, health care and anything else the government does. And if you think we should just elect people to Congress who can change this – we can’t. At least 90 percent of all House of Representative seats are not competitive because of elaborate gerrymandering and the high cost of running a campaign.

The only way to change the direction of this country from continuing down the rabbit hole is for a complete overhaul of our political process and political parties. And the only way for that to happen is through an outright rebellion by the people. Our only hope is to organize. We need to make use of technology to communicate and coordinate a takeover of the government and put the power in the hands of people. Anything short of a true revolution will not result in any meaningful change.

It doesn’t matter which one you pick, whether it’s Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, the self-appointed leaders of GOP continue their gay-bashing as they try to take down another Obama appointee.

Beck and Hannity call them “czars” – under the Bush administration they were called presidential appointees. The current target is Kevin Jennings, the director of the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Jennings alleged met a student 21 years ago about being involved with an older man.

Check out the Media Matters for America story about this.

Now that William Safire has succumbed, the only reasonable conservative worth listening to is David Brooks. Brooks takes on Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly in his column today.

What I take away from Brooks’ column is that he thinks these “men” are merely entertainers creating the illusion of real political power while the Republican party pees its pants every time one of these shock-jocks takes a poke at the party.

He’s undoubtedly correct.

As for Beck, I’m trying to get through his book “Common Sense.” It’s a difficult book to read. It’s full of sentences in all-caps and exclamation points. When you can’t write very well, you have to use these tricks to create the feeling that you’re outraged. Beck should look up how to use active verbs and descriptive nouns, but I digress. What also makes it a hard book to read is that I’m also reading Hemingway, so when I have to choose which book to read, Beck tends to lose.

But kudos to Brooks for standing up against Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck and O’Reilly. They all do a disservice to the political discourse in this nation and should not be given even the illusion of any real political power. They’re entertainers.

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense on Amazon
Al Franken’s Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot on Amazon
Bill O’Reilly books on Amazon
Sean Hannity’s book Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism on Amazon

It’s says a lot about the United States of America that someone like Glenn Beck can be, well, Glenn Beck.

He’s undoubtedly one of the most outrageous entertainers on television. Just a few months ago he called President Obama a racist with a deep-seated hatred of white people. He helped organize a rally on 9.12 in Washington, DC of approximately 75,000 people (Beck didn’t attend). And he’s got this book called “Glenn Beck’s Common Sense.”

I’ve only read the note from the author, but there’s plenty to write about in just these three pages.

Beck starts of with writing about Thomas Paine – one of the much-heralded “founding fathers.” Paine wrote the 1776 pamphlet “Common Sense” calling for independence from Britain. Beck portrays Paine as a commoner who was just fed up with the status quo.

“For two years [Paine] worked hard and watched as his fellow colonists grew tired of the British oppression. Then he decided to act. Using his contacts in the publishing industry, Thomas Paine anonymously released a pamphlet that made the case for revolution …”

Of course, Paine wasn’t simply just a fed up bloke tired of toiling in the hot sun under the oppressive rule of the British Empire. While living in London, Paine was introduced to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote him a letter of recommendation to move to the colonies in North America. That was 1774. In 1775 he became the editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine. Paine was also an inventor and civil engineer.

Beck is trying to equate his modern day call for a revolution with that of Paine’s. The way Beck sees the world, he and Paine are one in the same – just regular guys trying to spread truth with plain language and common sense.

But of course, neither Beck nor Paine are, or were, just regular guys, and America’s independence from Britain wasn’t a revolution. Too often Americans – patriots like Beck – overstate the so-called American “revolution.” The war against Britain was a war for independence, but it has none of the telltale signs of a revolution.

You know you’re looking at a revolution when there’s a fundamental change in power that takes place rather quickly. That didn’t happen after the colonists booted out Britain. What did happen was the same elite colonists remained in charge. The only difference being that before the war they were paying taxes to the King of England. Poor colonists were still poor. Most people couldn’t vote. The concept of democracy didn’t really take root until the 1820s when Andrew Jackson road that wave into the White House.

If the war against England in 1776 was a democratic revolution, it sure was a slow one. Women didn’t get the right to vote until 1920. Blacks temporarily got some rights following the Civil War only to have them taken away by Jim Crow laws and other tactics until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

And that’s where Beck goes next when he quotes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. three times in five paragraphs. I guess Beck sees the Civil Rights Movement as another revolution, again, it wasn’t. But like King’s reliance on non-violence in the face of violence, Beck cautions the reader of his book to not resort to guns and killing after hearing him break it down for them in the next 160 pages.

“As you read the details of the immense harm that both parties have done to our country, you might find yourself wondering what can be done to change our course. I lay out several options, but I want to be clear that none of them includes violence.”

So no immense violence after hearing the details of the “immense harm” done to our government by the political parties.

And here’s his call to action.

“If you believe that it’s time to put principles above parties, character above campaign promises, and Common Sense above all – then I ask you to read this book, declare yourself a creative extremist, and then pass these words along to other who may agree with something else that Martin Luther, Jr., once said:”

The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict.

So wait, politicians are supposed to break campaign promises? That is a common sense approach to politics, tell people what they want to hear and do whatever you want once elected. Wait, how’s that different than what we have? I guess I have 160 pages to find out.

Glenn Beck’s Common Sense from Amazon
Thomas Paine’s Common Sense from Amazon
Thomas Paine Wiki
Glenn Beck Wiki

TIME’s cover story with Glenn Beck is a grotesque attempt at journalism. The magazine is hoping to ride Beck’s coattails in pandering to right-wing extremists. Not that it’s surprising, the bulk of mainstream media spend most of their time chasing the latest fad rather than doing honest journalism. It’s sad but expected.

Read Greg Mitchell’s analysis of the Beck story in TIME
The TIME story about Glenn Beck

It’s hard to believe that a lunatic like Glenn Beck can actually have this much influence with Obama’s administration that people are actually being fired and demoted over what he says on his show, but it’s really happening.

Maybe it’s all just a coincidence that Obama’s man in charge of creating green jobs is fired after Beck attacked him on his show. It’s probably just a fluke that this guy over at the National Endowment of the Arts is demoted after Beck pinpoints this pinko-commie-bastard with his laser of doom.

I doubt it.

This is how the Democrats achieve political victory. They cave to right-wing extremists on every issue until they’re voted out of office. I guess I don’t have the political intelligence to figure out how their strategy leads to implementing a liberal agenda. They are supposed to liberals, right?

Read the Huffington Post story about Beck’s latest victim

I’m still not used to Glenn Beck, I couldn’t believe it when I saw him making an ass out of himself on national television again. In a segment this week Beck wrote six phrases on a chalkboard and somehow found the “word” “oligarhy.”

He meant to spell oligarchy, but he got confused and forgot that he’s a complete moron.

The six phrases were: Obama, left internationalist, graft, ACORN style organizations, revolutionaries and hidden agendas.

Beck then circled the letters: O, L, I, G, A, R and H and said, “One letter is missing … The one that’s missing, it’s ‘Y’.” Oligarhy? Really? Oligarhy? Seriously? Um OK, I’m starting to feel bad for making fun of Beck. Check out the video.

Here’s Beck’s response to the liberal bloggers who pointed out his spelling mistake. Czars! Ha ha, that’s what he left off the list, czars. Why didn’t he just say, commie-bastard-liberal-sons-of-bitches?

Here’s the video.

Colbert explains Glenn Beck’s logic that Obama doesn’t dislike white people, he has a deep-seated hatred of white people.

“Beck likes arguing,” Colbert said, “but has a deep-seated hatred for logic.”

Colbert Destroys Beck: “A Deep Seeded Hatred of Logic” from Crewislife on Vimeo.