Beck, Boortz, Limbaugh, Bunker and Bigotry

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Joe Conason blogged about how racist Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are. Keith Olbermann has accused Neal Boortz of the same. The trend is that conservative talk radio and television news shows are soaring in ratings while the liberal media outlets sulk under the table waiting for a scrap to hit the floor, and they don’t like it. The truth is everyone is vying for ratings.

I was a senior in college when I first saw a bigot on television. It was on January 12, 1971. It was a Tuesday night and I had gone to the empty family room on my floor to use the oven. The TV there was on, although there was no one watching. More and more students had TVs in their rooms, so we were losing the camaraderie of watching and discussing current programs, news, and events. Two screeching voices came on singing the most horrible song I had ever heard, and I had to check it out. I sat down with my “dinner” to watch the premiere of All in the Family, and I was shocked! I was watching a young black man making fun of an old white bigot and hearing that white bigot talking about "spicks and gooks and pollocks"! During the first commercial, I ran up and down the hall and we filled the room for the rest of the show.

Archie Bunker’s show held the top slot in ratings for over 5 years (The Cosby Show and American Idol are the only other two to ever do so), as America gathered to watch Archie, the Dingbat, the Meathead and Mr. Jefferson debate race, homosexuality, women’s lib, rape, divorce and impotence. No subject was off limits for Norman Lear and the excellent cast that he had brought together.

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My father and I often discussed the show. We weren’t sure why it was happening, but we knew the whole nation either loved Archie or loved to hate him. Bigoted Americans evidently never realized the irony and satire of the show, so they championed behind his stance on issues. Liberated Americans did understand the satire, and championed the stance of those around Archie. Those clueless Americans with no agenda just loved the humor and were amazed by the topics that were exposed. Regardless of the category, everyone entered the discussion at the coffee pot or water cooler every Wednesday at work.

So why don’t we love bigoted show hosts or a bigoted president?

Conason said:

The behavior of those media provocateurs over the past few months is almost beyond parody. They call the president a racist, even though there is no evidence of prejudice on his part and much evidence to the contrary.

I beg to differ. In these last few months, the FIRST person to “play the race card” was the President when he, after admitting that he was uninformed about the details of the arrest of Professor Gates, said the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” because of racial profiling. President Obama, with a few inappropriate and unsolicited sentences, ushered in the Gates-gate, put “beer summit” in the dictionary and killed any chance of his administration being post-racial.

Conason and Olbermann will point to the past of Beck, Limbaugh and Boortz and accuse them of mimicking black dialect or expounding on black stereotypes or playing the music from The Jeffersons, also a top rated show. These guys are selling books, playing the ratings game and entertaining while they enlighten us. (They are not, Bette, inciting genocide!) But the liberal pundits never mention Obama’s past when he was steeped in socialist and communist communities. And, since he has thumbed his nose at his own promise of transparency and buried the records of his past, no one can completely follow a paper trail on the president. But we can follow public records and testimonies of those that worked with him, follow the teachings of Rev. Wright, read the works of Holdren and Sunstein, and read about the corrupt Chicago Health Initiative that made Michelle Obama wealthy at the behest of Valarie Jarrett… and on … and on… and on… They never point out his lies. They never point out his ineffectiveness, weakness, or inexperience that has destroyed our economy and weakened our position on the international stage.

So, we don’t laugh at his antics or love him like we did the dear, bigoted Archie Bunker.

What Is A Trillion?

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We keep hearing about “trillions of dollars” these days. The National Debt is $11 trillion and growing. Heath Care may cost $3 trillion. It’s just too much to fathom! So, just how much is a trillion?

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One trillion has 12 zeros: 1,000,000,000,000.

One trillion seconds ago there was no recorded history. It was 31,546 years ago and Homo sapiens had just migrated across the Bering Straits to North America for the first time. No one can count to 1 trillion even at one number per second. First, they won’t live long enough and, second, some numbers can’t be said in one second. Ex: Nine hundred and ninety nine billion, nine hundred and ninety nine million, nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine.

Texas is roughly 270,000 square miles. One trillion square miles would equal 3.7 million Texas-sized states or about 20 Earths, since we have 50 billion square miles of land above sea level.

If you travel around the world at the equator 40 million times, you would travel one trillion miles.

The national debt is over $11 trillion. Just how much money is that?

A packet of one hundred $100 bills = $10,000

One hundred packets of $10,000 = $ 1 million

10 standard-sized pallets full = $ 1 billion

A thousand billion = a million million = ONE TRILLION dollars.


THE NATIONAL DEBT = $ 11 TRILLION !


It should be clear to everyone why this is not acceptable.

Michelle Obama and Greta Van Susteren: Sisters?

NOTE TO CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: THIS IS NOT TRUE!

I just found it interesting that the bust of Michelle Obama done in white clay looks so much like Greta Van Susteren!

Double click image to enlarge it for a bigger hoot!

I report. You decide.

The ACORN 8: Watchdogs

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There are so many supposedly corrupt organizations, tax cheats, crooks and shady characters around President Obama that it is difficult to disseminate it all, especially when there are so few in the media who will cover the stories. However, recently, Andrew Breitbart and Glenn Beck provided two courageous young journalists, James O'Keefe and Hanna Giles, web and television platforms to showcase their work and thus expose the corruption they found at various ACORN offices across the United States. The taped “advice” was so deplorable that members of ACORN have been fired, more investigations started, and funding withheld pending further investigation. But, O’Keefe and Giles were not the first to look into the corruption of this community organizing /social engineering group that had many ties to President Obama.

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That the organization was either in trouble or corrupt was first noticed by members last year. In May of 2008, it was first revealed to the board of ACORN that nearly a decade earlier Dale Rathke had embezzled about one million dollars and that his brother, Wade Rathke, the long time CEO of ACORN had covered it up. Both Rathkes were removed from their positions as a result. Some members immediately decided to form an investigative committee: Karen Inman, who would investigate issues related to the embezzlement; Marcel Reid, who would scrutinize the organizational structure; and Carol Hemingway, who would focus on other financial issues.

What they found was more criminality than initially suspected. It appears the group has been in violation of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, mismanagement of pension funds, other incidences of embezzlement, and money laundering between the many other “ghost” organizations that ACORN has established in violation of its tax status. Citizen’s Consulting, Inc was the arm of ACORN that played the shell game with all funding. In one case, millions of government dollars meant to fund health care projects in poor neighborhoods was used to fund a media campaign.

As the board was discovering that ACORN was millions behind in taxes, and as the investigators were refused their requests to see the financial records of the organizations, these brave women and a handful of others, became bold whistleblowers, and the ACORN 8 was founded. Inman and Reid both appeared on The Glenn Beck Show to tell their stories.

Their message is that:
• ACORN is not living up to its original mission; and that is to give meaningful voice and empower low and moderate income members of society.
• ACORN has been corrupted from its original purpose by senior management and an organizational structure that exploits the low and moderate income membership ACORN was founded to serve.
• ACORN’s leadership has been corrupted and lacks any accountability.

The committee states:

Like you, we’re activists. We’re dedicated to helping people like ourselves — people of limited means — get a better shake. That’s why we joined ACORN in the first place. That’s why we’re fighting now to make it an open organization with clean books, honest leadership and a willingness to grow through scrutiny and criticism. ACORN has suffered through the turmoil of embezzlement of huge amounts of money by key figures in the organization. To move forward it needs to openly confront the past and eliminate the possibility of such abuse in the future. That’s what the ACORN 8 are about.

Glenn Beck: Murderer of Frogs and Corruption

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Everyone in the United States must know who Glenn Beck is now. He’s been crucified and vilified for the 9-12 Project to get people back to believing in American values and principles, for saying that he thought Obama may be a racist, and, last week, for the murder of a rubber frog. Yes, it was rubber. Yes, it was a prank. Yes, they showed it was a prank on the show.

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What I don’t understand is why all the hoopla over Glenn Beck to begin with? Unlike The One, Beck has never been glorified or worshipped or idolized. He does, however, unify. Maybe this is why he is hated. To unify was the one trait that Obama exhibited above all others when he was campaigning, but as promise after promise after promise has been broken, voters’ remorse is taking its toll on his congregation or worshippers. They are leaving the temple of “mmm mmm mmm mmm Barrack Hussein Obama” and turning to Fox News and Glenn Beck.

But, people who only watch Glenn Beck on television have no idea just how brilliant this man is. If you listen to his radio program and read his books, you will realize that, first, he is a brilliant entertainer, and, second, he and his staff are master researchers. For a few minutes a day, the GB audience watches video clips that take hours and hours to find and edit and transcribe. He runs through the past relationships of radicals in 10-20 minutes of his air time a day, but he and his staff have had to dig for hours and days and weeks through old and new, but always obscure, records.

He put out a call for “watchdogs” to stay aware and vigilant, and as a result of the callers, tweeters, researchers, staff, and his own diligence, he has been able to publically expose more corruption and have a bigger impact on US politics than Upton Sinclair when he penned, “The Jungle” or Rachel Carson with her “Silent Spring.”

He’s caused the public and Congress to question the shady manipulations and power grab of Obama’s shadow government of Czars. He has helped the courageous “watchdogs” Hannah Giles, James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart expose the illegal activities of ACORN to the point that all other governmental agencies are running from this group that Obama worked so closely with for years, but “just hasn’t paid attention to” lately. He’s exposed attempts at organized propaganda by the National Endowment of the Arts and the White House’s attempts to collect names, form enemy lists and hijack our personal computers. And he is currently exposing Obama for the network of socialists, communists and progressives are attempting to hijack our government. With all the lies that Obama tells and the ease of catching him in them, Beck’s staff is finding it easier and easier to pinpoint examples of corruption that we need to see.

He could never do this, however if he were not also a master teacher. I've said for years (since I'm a teacher, too) that all a good teacher needs is chalk and a blackboard and the ability to share with words and graphics what is inside his or her mind. That's the hard part. As a science teacher who understood ionic bonding, I had to find a way to transfer my understanding to 32 other brains per hour. He has to do it to millions of brains a day! But he does, even if he must murder a rubber frog along the way.

Beck also has a wonderful sense of humor. I think I witness it more by listening to his radio show where he interacts more with staff than on his Fox News show, but you can see it loud and clear on his latest book cover and in some of the crazy skits he's done in the past. The radio show admits up front that he is a blend of "entertainment and enlightenment." Although I know he infuriates those that he calls out, he is totally entertaining.

And, because I don't know if he is merely entertaining or being frank and candid, I don't really know how sincere his tears are or how real his fears are. I do believe, however, that he is UN-partisan and hell-bent on fighting corruption in government wherever it exists. And I thank him for that.

I fear he will lose his humility, though. It's hard to be famous and humble. President Obama is a prime example of that. Just this week, on an international stage, our President constantly touted his own accomplishments with lies and exaggerations as the world’s worst evil-doers praised him. If Beck doesn’t maintain his humility, I think it will be his personal downfall. Some newsman’s comment about great athletes who go bad has stuck with me for years. The anchor stated that "obscene salaries create obscene people." I don’t want Glenn Beck to become obscene. I want him to stay fresh, stay dedicated, stay humble, and stay in need of his watchdogs. We want to be his watchdogs. We want to be needed. We love helping to put our Republic back on a noble course.

At least, I do.