A Challenge

Over the years, Glenn Beck has had a successful career spreading fear, hate, lies, and promulgating himself as some sort of Messiah-like voice for his brainwashed conservative viewers. He has launched hateful campaigns against some influential progressive individuals, sometimes even going as far as to smear their names with misinformation and false accusations in order to derail their careers. This was undoubtedly his mission with former "green jobs" czar Van Jones, whom Beck and other radical talking heads accused of being a violent extremist, communist, and otherwise danger to "American values." They claimed that his views, which included a criticism of the Republican party and a call for truth about the attacks of September 11th, were proof that he was too partisan to be effective in the White House. As if no one in Washington has ever held a personal opinion, or sought out truth in the face of endless lies. They accused him unfairly in such a radically exaggerated measure that what followed was a resignation, not a resolution.The result of Beck's haterade campaign resulted in the removal of a social and environmental visionary from a position of potential influence.

Now, two years after resigning from his post, Van Jones is challenging Glenn Beck to a debate. Not that Mr. Jones needs to clear his name or prove anything to the manic Beck, but perhaps this proposed debate would allow him to give Beck the intellectual spanking that the outgoing anchor so greatly deserves on behalf of the American people.

Watch Jones' Challenge here:

Insanity, Made to Order

It seems as if those rascally republicans in the House of Representatives haven't missed a beat in laying a thick layer of hateful crazy onto the capitol since taking power earlier this week. They've already taken a number of damaging, damning actions and are threatening to do much more to our environment, our health care, and to our voter's directly.

It's hard to choose from the array of craziness just which measure proposed by the republicans is the craziest. Is it the exhaustive, but ultimately futile promise to repeal a health care reform law that the American people actually favor when words like "ObamaCare," "Government Option," and "Death Panels" are excluded from the rhetoric, and the true intention of the bill is explained? After all, a new finding by the Congressional Budget Office estimates that repeal of the health care reform law would actually increase our federal deficit by $230 billion. It is only the thick-pocketed favorite children of the insurance industries who so fervently defend this repeal (see Fox News' 5 Reasons Repealing ObamaCare Won't Increase the Deficit -ha!).

Then there is the republicans' outright assault on the environment. In just one week, they've managed to eliminate the House Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, declared that greenhouse gases should not be subject regulation under the Clean Air Act (despite the Supreme Court ruling them so back in 2007), announced intentions to block funding for government agencies who support cap and trade, and ultimately pushed to limit the power of the Environmental Protection Agency's regulation of greenhouse gases and methane emissions. Meanwhile, the head of the house committee on oversight and government reform has reached out to energy companies and other business executives, asking them how they would like the government to be re-shaped.

But perhaps the insanity plat-du-jour is the blatant and vile racism that the republicans have shown towards citizens in the District of Columbia and in other U.S. Territories. Despite paying full federal taxes, residents in Washington, D.C. are not provided with any full representation in Congress. The one representative that they do have, Eleanor Holmes Norton, was stripped of her already limited voting rights in congress by House Republicans this week. Previously, the D.C. representative was allowed to vote on amendments and procedure, and could serve on committees, but could not vote to enact legislation. However, the Republicans in power have squashed even those limited rights that were previously allowed to the DC representative. And it is more than just a little suspicious that D.C., along with another 5 U.S. territories denied voting rights, is a Democratic area with a large number of minority constituents.

This is just the first week of the next two years of Republicans holding power in the House of Representatives. Over the course of this next Congressional session, we may anticipate more of such outrageous behavior. We could also maybe anticipate that the Republicans will continue, with the help of Fox News and other media puppets, to twist the truth and interject fearful, hateful language to further confuse and frustrate the American People. But perhaps we can also anticipate that this extremism will result in a powerful whip effect from progressives in the U.S., and that our citizens will become more informed, and thus more powerful to rally against this carefully pitched, well disguised agenda of the Republican lunatics.

Unfair and Unbalanced

Since the Supreme Court's landmark decision earlier this year that corporate expenditures could be used without limit and in any capacity to finance political campaigns, our elections process has seemingly become a special interest free-for-all. Although campaign spending was ludicrous as it were, with the 2008 presidential election costing a record $5 billion, now corporations literally have all of freedom they need to oversee our elections processes, and may under the protection of law, because somehow limiting their power would be a violation of freedom of speech.

And Newscorp was among the first big-time companies to cash-in, so to speak, on this convenient new allowance. Are you surprised? The parent company of FOX news and the Wall Street Journal, which over the years has blatantly revealed its conservative biases, has now openly admitted to their partiality: they have gifted a donation of $1 million to the Republican Governor's Association.

This is quite alarming for several reasons. First, Fox continues to be a major outlet for news stories covering this year's elections. And with this enormous open endorsement of Republican candidates, how can their "reporting" ever be "fair" or "balanced," as they claim? The radical right-leaning commentary that one hears on Fox news would not fool most informed viewers, but rather serve to the fire of misinformation and preexisting incendiary opinion. Still, this action further exposed Fox's position as being the most unfair, unbalanced news source in the nation.

But more importantly, this action is done within the confines of complete legality. Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision to lift a limit on the amount and type of corporate spending on campaigns, I would bet that donations such as Newscorp's $1 million to the Republicans will be given much more frequently, and in much higher numbers. Not that they haven't been happening already, but with the declaration of open season on campaign spending, all the money trails will be exposed, showing our political process for what it really is.

Pants on Fire

Conservative media just loves to get you riled up, even when they aren't necessarily telling the truth. A few weeks ago FoxNews ranted and raved over a UNESCO Public Health Report which suggested sexual education for children under the age of 10. According to the lunatics at Fox, the main point of the UNESCO report, which was geared toward reducing rates of HIV and STI transmissions worldwide, was that the U.N. was advocating to "Teach Masturbation to 5 Year Olds." And Life News brilliantly reported that the UNESCO guidelines "Call on Children to Promote Abortions." Wow. Way to miss the point, guys. Instead of focusing on the fact that UNESCO was attempting to reduce the number of children who engage in dangerous sexual activity at increasingly younger ages by providing educational guidelines that could be implemented by teachers worldwide, they fell back on their small-minded "beliefs" about what children that age "should" be learning.

In fact, what the guidelines suggest is actually a gradual exposure to issues of sexuality, starting at ages 5-8, when basic sexual topics are explored, and becoming increasingly detailed as children age, culminating with a curriculum for 12-15 year olds about contraception, abortion, and abortion alternatives, including the risks of improvised pregnancy terminations.

Considering that at the end of 2007, 30 million people worldwide were living with HIV, 2 million of those being children, it would seem as if any measure necessary to impede the spread of this deathly illness would be a positive measure. But in the skewed world of Christian extremism, voiced by the right-wing punditry, outdated morals and cultural elitism are more important than working to solve a global epidemic.

What is frightening is the power that these pundits have to coerce us into agreeing with them by using sensationalized, and even falsified information. It is absolutely misleading to report that UNESCO wants to teach masturbation to children. In fact, according to Time magazine, the 102 page UNESCO document mentions masturbation only five times, twice to explain to 5-8 year olds what the term actually means. So beware the lying pundits, because if they can stretch the truth on a matter as important as children's health, there's no telling what else they could do to try and sway our opinions. They insult our intelligence by thinking they can make up our minds on our behalf, but we are stronger than they think. We have the ability to make a distinction between right and wrong despite and without any zealous persuasion. We are stronger than they think.

Thought is free. Peace.