Revolution!

Health care has passed and conservative pundits aren't taking it well. Ok, they weren't exactly taking the run-up to health care reform passing well. Ok, they didn't exactly take the election of Barack Obama well. Ok, they didn't exactly take the eight years of the George W. Bush Presidency well. But on this, they're really not taking it well.

Of course the man taking it the least well is Glenn Beck. We all knew that one was coming. But even I'm a little surprised at how poorly our little aardvark loving aficionado is taking this. Right now he's huddled in a nuclear fallout shelter slamming GI Joes together, making "PEW PEW PEW" sounds with his mouth as he careens a jet fighter through the air, and is ranting about WAR and BATTLE and FIGHTING and THIS ISN'T OVER and YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE! So much so that Media Matters couldn't contain it in one post.

Beck: "The war is just beginning."
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Beck suggests that progressives support "armed insurrection."
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"Why would the president take up immigration right away, after he's just punched you in the face with health care?"
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"You'd pick up a gun? Have you ever thought of that?" He then pointed to several pictures, including images of Obama and Pelosi, and stated: "These people have. Because possibly, maybe the question should be asked, maybe they're tired of evolution, and maybe they are waiting for revolution." Beck also said: "Haven't we just been spanked? Hasn't most of the country -- doesn't most of the country feel like they've been spanked over health care? You bet. I do, you do. A lot of people do."
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"You can try to put the lid on this group of people, but you will never silence us. You will never -- you can shoot me in the head, you can shoot the next guy in the head, but there will be 10 others that line up."

Yes, we've all been spanked. Erotically spanked by health care. But enough of that, THIS IS WAR! REVOLUTION IS AT HAND! PICK UP A GUN! THEY'RE COMING TO KILL ME!

Yes, Obama has sent out hit squads to silence Glenn Beck. Even as we speak these elite SEAL teams are traipsing through the forests of Glenn's mind, unlatching the aardvark pen, busting through his windows, climbing up his pant leg with his grandma with a knife in their teeth, bursting out of his box of Golden Grahams, and hiding everywhere... waiting to get him. Don't you get it? Don't you see?



MOSES! JEWS! COMMANDMENTS! The second American revolution is at hand!

I feel for Glenn I really do. Ok, I don't. I hope this ends with him lighting himself on fire at Teabagstock '11. But, I guess I just didn't foresee how poorly he was going to take this "slightly cheaper/better health care for the peasants" thing. This has just been what he's been up to over the past few days. Who knows what chalkboard diagrams, battle movements, and calls for armed insurrection he's drawing up in his basement, tears staining the plans as he cries "I didn't want to have to do this to you America, I LOVE YOU!"?

Glenn, just breathe into a paper bag, stop making batches of hard tack, and cancel the fife and drum lessons. It'll be all right. Well, at least until Sebelius and the HHS release the nanites that read thoughts and kill based on the degree of right wing rhetoric rattling around your frontal cortex. Then you're fucked. But there's nothing you can do about it. It's nanotechnology. That's why Obama chose it to kill the elderly and everyone who has ever uttered a thought in opposition to him. Didn't you read this health bill? This is all useless gesturing. You're dead already. Use what time you have left.

Stay classy, Hannity

We always like to mock Sean Hannity here at TB, and why not? The man is probably the most baldfaced liar on TV and he doesn't even have the nerve to be an interesting kind of crazy like Glenn Beck. I mean all he does is work himself into outraged conniptions about minor events he exaggerated and stories he invented in a annoyed windbaggy tone. No weeping, no stunts, no chalkboard. Boring evil.

And it's worked out pretty well for Hannity, as he's knocked down a $100 million dollar contract just for his radio show alone. But that's not enough money for him apparently, and has taken to using a charity he ostensibly started to help wounded soldiers and children of wounded soldiers and decided it should effectively be run as a PR machine and goodie bag dispensery for himself, his friends and his family. It's a shocker, I mean he just looks so trustworthy.

For the last several years, Sean Hannity and the Freedom Alliance “charity” have conducted “Freedom Concerts” across America. They’ve told you that they are raising money to pay for the college tuition of the children of fallen soldiers and to pay severely wounded war vets.
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But it’s all a huge scam.

In fact, less than 20%–and in two recent years, less than 7% and 4%, respectively–of the money raised by Freedom Alliance went to these causes, while millions of dollars went to expenses, including consultants and apparently to ferret the Hannity posse of family and friends in high style. And, despite Hannity’s statements to the contrary on his nationally syndicated radio show, few of the children of fallen soldiers got more than $1,000-$2,000, with apparently none getting more than $6,000, while Freedom Alliance appears to have spent tens of thousands of dollars for private planes. Moreover, despite written assurances to donors that all money raised would go directly to scholarships for kids of the fallen heroes and not to expenses, has begun charging expenses of nearly $500,000 to give out just over $800,000 in scholarships.

And who revealed all of this? Conservative commentator Debbie Schlussel. Et tu Brute? Media Matters, not one to give Schlussel credit, even goes so far as to say that her numbers check out and points to further work done on the Charity Navigator page. There, on the website that rates and analyzes charities to see if they're scamming people and how much of the money they get is actually spent on their supposed cause, alleges that Hannity's charity might even spend less on wounded veterans than Schlussel does. Noting that by Freedom Alliance's own tax filings they have taken in almost $50 million since 2003 and doled out only &1.8 million to the families of veterans.

I guess this is why Hannity is always railing against the government for misuse of revenue: he sees that kind of abuse first hand all the time and must have a sixth sense for when it's happening.

Well this is all just so surprising. I mean, for one, who thought Sean Hannity would be so thoroughly dishonest is his dealings? Secondly who thought that a charity he started in an attempt to get publicity for himself and puff his chest out about how he cares more about the troops than liberals, wouldn't actually be committed to the spirit of charity? On the other had he did get a lot of free promotion and content for his radio and TV shows and he did get to meet Trace Adkins and Toby Kieth a bunch of times, so defrauding the American public and wounded soldiers worked out like gangbusters. Stay classy, Sean, I know you will. Can't wait to hear about how this is all a giant liberal conspiracy against you.

Broken in Brief: Rove book ravages fact checking industry

NEW YORK—“Just let me die… just let me die. So… many… lies. There’s so much evil in the world,” were the cries of Media Matters intern Melissa Fargas from her hospital bed after her attempted self-disembowelment. Ms. Fargas had made her way through nearly four paragraphs in the misguided attempt to fact-check former White House Deputy Chief of Staff and Special Advisor Karl Rove’s new book Courage and Consequence.

These lamentations have afflicted many organizations and news outlets devoted to fact checking as scores of naïve young interns and associates come to grips with the true soul-deadening horror of life and the futility of existence as they attempt to wade through what Rove humorously calls "facts."

“We’re down 7 staffers and an associate editor and we’re only three chapters in,” lamented Faiz Shakir, editor of ThinkProgress. “I hear Fact Check.org mysteriously exploded minutes after their shipment of books arrived. And most of the staff of Politifact stripped down to the nude and ran off into the woods, clawing at their own flesh and shunning the entirety of society.”

“I’ve seen some sick shit in my life: most of Hannity’s books, pretty much every tome written by a former White House press secretary, and even the entire Coulter catalogue. But this just resets the bar. Now, if you’ll excuse me…,” Shakir finished by throwing himself out of a nearby window yelling, “You say the White House took care not to overstate the terrorist threat or exaggerate the danger posed by Iraq? My God….the gall. The balls,” before he impacted on the sidewalk below.

Until such a time as the sanity of fact checkers can be assured, most groups are refusing to even open Rove's new summer home book. Some are more adventurous, using three-man teams working with sentence fragments and random words so that the full brunt of Rove’s claims cannot be comprehended.

When asked if this wasn’t too much of a risk to the safety of the fact checkers, John Daniels, Director of CNN’s Political Ticker FactCheck, scoffed “That’s why God created unpaid interns.”

Lying liar of the year

As it is the end of the year, Media Matters has come out with it's Misinformer of the Year "award". It's not so much an award as it is a call for rotten fruit to be thrown at said person and perhaps a suggestion that a national public square should be built in Washington with a national stockade, where the lying dregs of this nation can be offered up for public humiliation and eggings from disaffected youth.

Unsurprisingly Glenn Beck won the award. Really, who else could it be? His lying stats were simply Ruthian, with Beck eclipsing 60 majorly dishonest whoppers in a single television season, a staggering 4-to-1 lie to truth ratio, proved the statistical importance of crazy diagrams, bizarre skits, and weeping paens in measuring lunacy, and generally made an ass of himself on a daily basis. Not only did he do all this, but he did it while tragically not being in a fatal car accident and after revelations arose that he might have raped and murdered a young girl in 1990.

I think we all need to just take a moment to sit down and spend a few seconds remembering all that Glenn has done this year. Because what we witnessed was epic crazy of the type unlikely to be reached again. It makes me a little sad inside. Anyway, here's Glenn's highlight reel. He truly is the king.

Is our Wolf Blitzer learning?

Not a misprint. Not a Late Night with Conan O'Brien sketch. Wolf Blitzer went on Celebrity Jeopardy and racked up a -$4600 smackeroo defeat. You know, Celebrity Jeopardy: the Jeopardy that dumbs down it's questions. That's "won't even allow you to answer the final question" territory. That's "take money from your chosen charity" territory. That's "Wolf Blitzer might be functionally retarded" territory.

It's not surprising. I mean any guy that has 8 pages worth of links on Media Matters listing his numerous inadequacies and mental shortcomings as a news host surely isn't going to be able to rattle off facts about Charlemagne or who played bass for Foghat. How could he? It's Sean's famous "anyone who remotely looks like Will Ferrell's version of Alex Trebek stands no chance on Celebrity Jeopardy" corollary in effect again.

I am shocked to hear this

According to a study published by Media Matters, Fox News is putting on health care opponents six times as much as health care supporters. My God, next you'll be telling me that they have multiple shows hosted by deranged right wing pundits who traffic in deluded conspiracy theories, fear mongering, lies, rabble rousing, and unseemly aardvark affections.

All I can say to this dramatic revelations is....really? Only 6 to 1? It isn't more? Because really, when you turn on Fox News it doesn't look like they would even put on one person who supported health care reform. I guess that's just because every show on Fox News where these 63 guests have talked on is hosted by a talking head who is also against the creeping grandma murdering death of Obama's socialist health care wasteland. I'd really like to see a "minutes spent attacking health care reform vs. minutes spent defending health care reform" graph. I can already imagine it: one number bar dwarfing another, the way the Sears Tower dwarfs an ant.

Christmas come early

Bill O'Reilly Plans Barack Obama Book

In a Page Six interview, popular right-wing pundit Bill O'Reilly said is planning a book about President Barack Obama to be released next year.

The talk show host said he reads two or three books every week. O'Reilly has sold millions of copies of his books, and there are eight titles currently sold on his website, including "The O'Reilly Factor for Kids."

Here's more from the interview: "My next book, out the latter part of 2010, is on Obama. He's becoming a historical figure not because he's black, but because his liberal agenda is taking the country in a direction we've never been before."

What's that, Think Progress? You're going to be kept in business for another year just because of this book? Good to hear. Media Matters has also come out to announce that it will in no way strangle its own mother to get an advance copy. Kieth Olbermann hass reportedly placed a large three ring binder on his lap so no staffers can see the erection this news gave him.

300 pages of O'Reilly whining about the liberalism of a black guy. I'm sure this book will in no way be racist or hilarious.