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WilliamPitt Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:14 AM
Original message
Idiot Wind


Glenn Beck. (Photo: Jennifer Ackerman / Deseret Morning News)

Idiot Wind
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Columnist

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Idiot wind, blowing like a circle around my skull,
From the Grand Coulee Dam to the Capitol.
Idiot wind, blowing every time you move your teeth,
You're an idiot, babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe.


- Bob Dylan


One thing is certain: martial arts movie star Chuck Norris does not like President Obama. Not at all. Not one little bit. Norris dislikes Obama so much, in fact, that he discussed running for the office of president of Texas, which doesn't exist, as part of a larger move by him and a variety of other right-wing groups to overthrow the American government and return honor and decency to the country.

No, really, he said all that, and more. Read it yourself if you don't believe me. The best part is where he writes, "Remember the Alamo!" Great stuff.

Or something.

There's more. The owner of right-wing web forum Free Republic, Jim Robinson, was recently forced to post a truly deranged piece of apologia regarding the attention his web site recently earned from the Secret Service. "Unfortunately," wrote Robinson, "we are saddled with a communist sympathizer in the White House. I don't know whether or not he's an actual card carrying commie, but he's definitely an America-hating, anti-capitalist Marxist leftist who thinks communism is the way to go. So now comes the problem. If you feel it's your duty to call Obama a traitor and use salty language in your proposed resolution, ie, suggest the commie be keelhauled, walked off the plank, run up the yardarm, tarred and feathered and run out of Dodge, etc, etc, etc, you may be facing a visit from your friendly Secret Service."

"Keep," wrote Robinson in closing, "your powder dry." Yeah, O.K., good thinking.

Or something.

Last month, Fox News celebrity Sean Hannity ran a poll on his web site. It asked readers what kind of revolution they'd prefer: military coup, armed rebellion or war for succession? "#3 seems most realistic," opined Hannity, "since it does present an opportunity for more homogeneous states to sort of capitalize on their homogeneity. However, it would likely lead to mass migrations of the minority partisans out of the rebel states. Of course, that may be fine with those states. Yet it seems that the ultimate paradox in any rebellion for freedom from within is that the ultimate goal is to impose the will of the rebels on everyone else through force. It seems the very foundation of representative democracy is ****tered if we accept that we exchange the power of ideas for the power of the sword upon each other. Nevertheless, I am still very interested in your own preferred form of revolt."

That page has since been removed from Hannity's web site, surely due to some technical glitch, but before it was taken down, "armed rebellion" appeared to be the most popular choice of the three.

Of course.

Earlier this week, right-wing loudmouth Glenn Beck asserted during his radio show that President Obama's lifting of the ban on embryonic stem cell research would open the way for the genetic development of a new master race. "So here you have Barack Obama," said Beck, "going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research, and then some, fundamentally changing - remember, those great progressive doctors are the ones who brought us Eugenics. It was the progressive movement and it was science. Let's put science truly in her place. If evolution is right, why don't we just help out evolution? That was the idea. And sane people agreed with it! And it was from America. Progressive movement in America. Eugenics. In case you don't know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening. So I guess I have to put my name on yes, I hope Barack Obama fails. But I just want his policies to fail; I want America to wake up. "

One assumes this forthcoming master race will enjoy minds of greater volume and depth than Mr. Beck's, because, well, people just can't get much dumber than this. It would be a profound waste of genetic material if we went out and created some master race that, like Messrs. Beck, Hannity and Robinson, was incapable of rational thought or speech. Just an idea.

There is even more out there like this, from all over the place, with each seemingly trying to out-weird the other. So, yeah, it appears a fair portion of America's hard-right population, along with most if not all of their spokespeople and commentators, have been driven absolutely, positively bat-poop crazy by the election of and policies by Barack Obama.

The trend has been sucking in more and more high-profile members of the conservative community. Newt Gingrich was forced to jump up and down on Rush Limbaugh for saying he wants Obama to fail. Limbaugh responded by calling Gingrich "a fly-by-night operator," who can't be depended on and who "will sell you out." Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah came close to threatening Arizona with an infestation of crickets to shut John McCain up about earmarks in the budget. Conservative commentator David Brooks called House Minority Leader John Boehner "insane" after Boehner called for a complete freeze on federal spending as an answer to the ongoing economic crisis.

The rest: http://www.truthout.org/031109J
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berni_mccoy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:24 AM
Response to Original message
1. K&R.
:kick:
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FarLeftRage Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:28 AM
Response to Original message
2. I say...
Let the idiots follow through with their hollow threats.

Let us take of this problem sooner, rather than later...
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rvablue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:33 AM
Response to Original message
3. Traitors...one and all! n/t
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Orsino Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:33 AM
Response to Original message
4. Calling Beck dumb assumes that he believes all that trash-talk...
...and isn't just filling the airwaves with hate for money.

That's an enormous assumption, and an incorrect one, I suspect. He's playing dumb, because dumb makes him rich. Whether or not he ever learned to be smart may be a secondary concern.
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MrScorpio Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 01:19 PM
Response to Reply #4
23. No, Glenn beck is an idiot
It's a well established fact
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Orsino Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 01:48 PM
Response to Reply #23
25. Well, if not, I'm sure it would take a team of experts to tell the difference. n/t
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Morning Dew Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:35 AM
Response to Original message
5. pssssttttt. Secession not successsion - and k&r. nt
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madrchsod Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:38 AM
Response to Original message
6. two websites that i know of who have had visits from the SS....
stormfront and free republic. the right wing is imploding
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mlevans Donating Member (642 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:41 AM
Response to Original message
7. You know, if all this right wing hot air could be harnessed
we'd go a long way toward solving our energy woes. It's really a shame not to have it serve some useful purpose.
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live love laugh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 02:53 PM
Response to Reply #7
27. Unfortunately, it's not just hot air. It is dangerous, traitorous, inflammatory rhetoric. nt
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Beetwasher Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 08:53 AM
Response to Original message
8. I've Been Listening To A Lot Of Dylan Lately
As usual, good piece!

How's life?
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cilla4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 11:02 AM
Response to Reply #8
17. "No Direction Home"
Just watched part 2 of this excellent retrospective of Bob and his times, @ 1961-66, last night. Martin Scorsese directs. Highly recommend.
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 09:10 AM
Response to Original message
9. "positively bat-poop crazy", indeed.
If this is the kind of crap that's making it onto the airwaves, just imagine what's being swapped in the bars & basements. . (shudder)
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truth2power Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 09:59 AM
Response to Reply #9
12. In bars & basements? How about in supermarkets? I stood at the checkout
one day last week as the man in front of me, while bagging his grocery purchase regaled the cashier with some screed about, and I quote, "when a dark man governs America". This went on for a minute or so and seemed to relate to one of those faux Nostradamus "quatrains" or something. Yikes!

When I stepped up to the register the cashier was just shaking her head. It occurred to me at the time that there are many ways to be "dark". In that respect, Cheney and Bush would certainly qualify.

Scary, indeed! :evilfrown:
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L0oniX Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 09:13 AM
Response to Original message
10. America has woken up ...and that's why Obama is the president ...silly Glen Beck.
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lunatica Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 09:20 AM
Response to Original message
11. Chuck Norris the President of Idiocracy?
But, but, but... I know Texans who are really smart. Will they have to move away, if for no other reason than the inability to stomach idiots?
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tridim Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 10:12 AM
Response to Reply #11
14. I think President Camacho (sp) was quite a bit smarter than Chuck Norris.
I'm guessing cities like Austin will not accept a President Norris.
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bonzotex Donating Member (740 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 06:18 PM
Response to Reply #14
32. thank you....
Austin will not go quietly into that dark night.

Don't give up on Texas. The headlines and politicians we gift to the Nation my bode ill, but we aren't all insane.
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tjwash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 10:09 AM
Response to Original message
13. Ah, good ol' chuckie....spoken as a true child of christ!
It's the nature of the beast. I think chuckie is a looneytarian, even though he did that campaign commercial with huckabee. It's just so damn hard to tell the Republicans from the Libertarians anymore.
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BuyingThyme Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 10:26 AM
Response to Original message
15. Keep it dry, comrade.
kcik
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Gregorian Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 10:56 AM
Response to Original message
16. I want to say that pretty soon there will only be a small minority of loons sitting in a corner.
But I don't want to tempt fate.

We won't be cloning cells taken from Kurt Vonnegut. Although they might like it if we did the same with John Wayne. And once they see we don't do those things, some of the less than crazy crazies will move a little bit away from the true nuts. And one by one they'll realize the truth.

But then maybe this does all devolve into a wasteland of idiots. That has always been my greatest fear.
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Yavin4 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 11:35 AM
Response to Original message
18. The First Rule of Right Wing Fight Club Is...
you don't talk about Right Wing Fight Club.
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nxylas Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 12:06 PM
Response to Original message
19. I'm trying to figure out what those asterisks stand for
I've been trying out various four letter words and none of them makes a real word when you add "tered" to the end of them. Fucktered? Shittered? Cunttered? Dicktered?
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Chorophyll Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 12:18 PM
Response to Original message
20. I just can't even comment on this stuff.
I'm not sure whether to :scared: or :rofl:
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acmavm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 12:30 PM
Response to Original message
21. Idiot Wind? More like Idiot Hurrican or Idiot Tornado.
These people (and I have to use the term loosely here because they're so stupid) should be in a room with padded walls.
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anigbrowl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 12:56 PM
Response to Original message
22. They are clearly better than us at the circular firing squad
I'm pretty centrist, so I have regular disagreements here with committed leftists who think I'm some sort of crypto-republican and who in turn I think are hopelessly impractical. You get this in any political party, and indeed the number of topic forums on DU is a good guide to how many different interest group and political impulses fall under the democratic umbrella. So much so that we all immediately recognize the phrases 'circular firing squad' and 'herding cats'.

But the GOP...man, they're a sight to see. If the Democrats sometimes resemble a sitcom, the Republicans increasingly look like candidates for the Jerry Springer show.


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Joe Fields Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 01:21 PM
Response to Original message
24. Call it idiocy, call it lunacy, but these fuckers are dangerous.
And most of their listeners could easily be molded into another Timothy McVeigh.
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live love laugh Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 03:11 PM
Response to Reply #24
28. Absolutely. They are the biggest threat to this country IMHO. nt
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noiretextatique Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 02:11 PM
Response to Original message
26. i'm really enjoying watching the republicant party implode
:nuke: good riddance. they sound more insane every day and they continue to alienate the few sane members of their party.
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struggle4progress Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 03:46 PM
Response to Original message
29. The Publican Party today is a curious amalgam of corporate interests and lunatic fringers
The Party reached out to lunatic fringers for bean-counting purposes: by recruiting some of them, the Party handed itself small but definite and reliable blocs of voters

There is now a history, stretching over several decades, of the Republicans reaching for different extremist groups

An early example was Nixon's Southern strategy, honed by Reagan: the Publicans absorbed anti-civil-rights extremists. This won 1968, and Reagan replayed the game in 1980. Reagan also reached out to the religious fundamentalists, a group later essential to GWB's coalition. By the Clinton era, the Publicans were reaching out to anti-government extremists (blaming Ruby Ridge on Clinton, for example, or making alliance with the "Wise Use" movement). An argument can be made that GWB's 2000 campaign made a serious effort to collect a number of voter blocs, such as folk with DUI convictions. During GWB's era, congressional Publicans began to aim at anti-immigrant groups. The 2008 campaign was notable for its overture to secessionists and xenophobes.

The dilemma facing the Publicans is that most Americans do not actually share Publican philosophies -- so to win Publicans must squeeze every vote they can. This not only explains the reluctance of Publican leaders to ditch the lunatic fringe, it also explains the vote-suppression strategy that has become a hallmark of Publican governance

Right now, they're stuck with what they're doing

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BlancheSplanchnik Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 08:34 AM
Response to Reply #29
37.  The fear and hate driven seem to be a constant...
I've been reading "Team of Rivals" (well, listening)... and was fascinated to learn that the same conservative tactics of lying and violence were operating in Lincoln's day as well, sounding very similar to the extremists of today.

Seems a pro-slavery conservative went into the senate with a wood club and beat a progressive, anti-slavery Senator as he was sitting at his desk. The Senator was permanently disabled by the attack, while Southern (pro-slavery, Conservative) newspapers praised the attacker for his heroic act and called for more.

thanks--fascinating info--Do you have any reading recommendations on the subject?
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Itchinjim Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 03:47 PM
Response to Original message
30. Oh jeez, now I gotta go play "Blood on the Tracks"
Go get tangled up in blue for awhile.
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SpiralHawk Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 03:56 PM
Response to Original message
31. Yet another Republicon Chickenhawk
Talking tough, but refusing to serve America. Instead, doing what his chickenhawk butt can to make America Fail.

Ptooey on the Republicon Homelanders & Propaganda puppets.

I support America.
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Kievan Rus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-11-09 06:25 PM
Response to Original message
33. Did Free Republic just get a visit from the Secret Service?
I didn't hear about that. I'm shocked Beck and Norris haven't gotten a visit from them too (unless I haven't heard about that yet).
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BobTheSubgenius Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 12:18 AM
Response to Original message
34. Isn't it AMAZING???
How the right loved its noise machine when it was working for them.

Now, not so much.

Nice piece, Mr. Pitt. :)
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KG Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 12:56 AM
Response to Original message
35. of course beck fears a master race, coz it would rub out mental midgets such as himself and his ilk.
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zeemike Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 08:08 AM
Response to Original message
36. There is one meme you did not include in your post
And that is that they want to go "John Galt"
I don't listen to the right wing screed but keep in touch with a freeper that I know from way back to a place called The Globe. And he is my barometer to what is going on in the right wing mind...he always has the latest meme from the right wing.
When he posted it I suggested Paraguay and encouraged him to go and take his ilk with him. What a blessing that would be.

And I love the fact that you love Bob Dyland...K&R
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nuxvomica Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 08:46 AM
Response to Original message
38. Are we seeing one of the stages of grief here?
I recall Repubs arguing that almost half the country voted for McCain so they need to be heard and they're not irrelevent. That and Norm Coleman's efforts represent denial.
What you have so carefully sampled is probably the anger stage. I'm not sure if Repubs ever get past that stage. But people like Brooks and Frum are probably into the bargaining stage now, because their warnings bespeak a belief that the party can rise again if only they weren't so angry.
If I'm right, we might eventually see depression and, finally, acceptance, but I'm not betting on it.
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Hubert Flottz Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 08:55 AM
Response to Original message
39. I keep thinking I've seen them chubby cheeks on TV before


Is that Glenna there in the middle telling the others to shut up?
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serrano2008 Donating Member (363 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 09:36 AM
Response to Original message
40. Oh hell - I was hoping for a Dylan thread.
Then I click and have to see that A-hole (glenn beck NOT A. Lincoln).




http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/idiot-wind
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Brewman_Jax Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 09:41 AM
Response to Original message
41. The rabid racist right
isn't having fun since the rules they helped to create are now being applied to them. They can call the waambulance! :rofl:
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backtoblue Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 10:27 AM
Response to Original message
42. wow...
"However, it would likely lead to mass migrations of the minority partisans out of the rebel states. Of course, that may be fine with those states."

Wow. To be openly racists and full of hate is considered free speach, yet if I mention or sympathize with socialism or communism I am evil? What hypocrisy. What saddness
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underpants Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Mar-12-09 10:47 AM
Response to Original message
43. Marking for later read
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