LNSmithee says:

This is absolute nonsense. Beck is a multimedia franchise on the rise – TV, radio, books, theater. The reason why FNC has redefined cable news is because the people running the joint are SMART. Dumping on Beck a year after extracting him from the CNN Headline News ghetto and making him a daily habit for over a million Americans would be DUMB. Roger Ailes knows better than to mess with success, and whatever potential he sees in Palin, she is, metaphorically, two in the bush. Beck is his bird in the hand.

If Palin is being considered for her own FNC show, it won’t be anytime in the near future. She’s not ready. Huckabee’s just hitting his stride as a host, although I find his show boring.

In answer to TRRK: It was just a couple of months after Beck made his huge ratings splash in the FNC schedule that there was talk about Greta Van Susteren shaking like a leaf that Beck would be moved into her slot. That materialized into nothing. Why should we believe that this rumor is any different?

But by all means, go ahead with the wishful thinking. Get your hopes up. It makes it all the more fun for me when you’re smacked by a faceful of truth.

LNSmithee says:

Regarding Gresham Striegel: If TV Newser is correct, and “Beck’s team” wanted to push him out, it says a lot about Beck’s clout at the net that he could get a 13-year vet bounced after mere months in the fold. Does that sound as if Beck’s in a position where Palin could undercut him after being on board for only a couple of weeks?

Come on, people. Use your head as more than a hat rack.

LNSmithee says:

Ted wrote:

LN – Talk about a distinction without a difference. You are the one spinning here. It’s apparent that you don’t like PolitiFact because they called Beck on a lie and you two are attached at the hip. I’m beginning to wonder if you are not on Becks staff. Based on your screed I think it’s a strong possibility…I’m just saying.

I’m not on Beck’s staff. That would be a lot more fun than my current job (not that I’m not delighted to have it in the Obamaconomy, boss).

I know you’re more used to intelligent debate like “you’re a dumb ass,” but give this a shot, Ted:

1. Why does PolitiFact’s Robert Farley (whose CV on the PolitiFact page lists as a journalistic highlight an award-winning report on Jim Morrison’s girlfriend) venture into the field of whether or not Holdren “advocated” sterilants or forced abortions when Beck NEVER said he did?

2. If providing ways by which an admittedly “horrifying” and “Draconian” policy such as adding sterilants into water and food could be deemed “acceptable” or exploring ways that forced abortions “could be sustained under the existing Constitution” are NOT “proposals,” how would YOU describe them, Ted?

3. If you would like more vivid examples of the types of things that Holdren signed onto in his co-authorship of Ecoscience, here’s a place you can find more digging than PolitiFact did:

Among the gems you’ll find reproduced complete with images of the printed page and full context (italics in original):

It is accepted that the law has as its proper function the protection of each person and each group of people. A legal restriction on the right to have more than a given number of children could easily be based on the needs of the first children. Studies have indicated that the larger the family, the less healthy the children are likely to be and the less likely they are to realize their potential levels of achievement. Certainly there is no question that children of a small family can be cared for better and can be educated better than children of a large family, income and other things being equal. The law could properly say to a mother that, in order to protect the children she already has, she could have no more. (Presumably, regulations on the sizes of adopted families would have to be the same.)

A legal restriction on the right to have children could also be based on the right not to be disadvantaged by excessive numbers of children produced by others. Differing rates of reproduction among groups can give rise to serious social problems. For example, differential rates of reproduction between ethnic, racial, religious, or economic groups might result in increased competition for resources and political power and thereby undermine social order. If some individuals contribute to general social deterioration by overproducing children, and if the need is compelling, they can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility—just as they can be required to excercise (sic) responsibility in their resource-consumption patterns—providing they are not denied equal protection.

Like I said before: There are probably thousands of people who met the qualifications to be “Science Czar,” but Obama chose this guy. I guarandamtee you that if Pat Buchanan, Ron Paul or even Mitt Romney had indicated that what you just read didn’t eliminate its author from eligibility as a potential advisor, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, and the rest of the leg-tingling lefties would be rending their garments on national TV asking what more evidence we would need to declare them dictatorial. Instead, everything Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote is laundered with Hope Detergent — if Brilliant Barack says it doesn’t bother him, who are the rest of us ordinary people to question his judgment?

LNSmithee says:

I knew you would respond with a non-sequitur, Ted. Why? Because just lobbing another insult at Beck is much easier than confronting the fact that Obama has chosen as an advisor someone who has a track record of suggesting ways in which Mao-style forced abortion could be deemed Constitutional (and to whom the phrase “reproductive rights” don’t exist).

The fact that you refused to look at the text of the book says all there is to know about you. You let other people do your thinking for you as long as you’re assured in your own mind that they’re smarter than you are.