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.

Beck, O’Reilly, Hannity, and Van Sustern are all professionals. Leno and Letterman are professionals. Matthews and Anderson Cooper are professionals. You cannot give an hour every day to an amateur, no matter how skilled they are as communicators.

My impression of Palin is that she’s a very nice person, but what she has to say is not enough to fill the first hour of any time slot. She may be very good as the keynote speaker at a political event, but she is not suited for the small screen.

He can’t keep doing the morning radio show and also a prime-time TV show. And realistically, he cannot move the radio show — a lot of affiliates follow Beck with Limbaugh.

So, IMO it makes sense to keep Beck where he is on the FNC schedule, and maybe move the replay to an earlier slot in the evening. Greta may squawk and scream, but she is the weak link in the current evening schedule

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?

PolitiFact? More like PolitiFallacy.

Something’s wrong with the PolitiFact page at this moment (no images, raw HTML) but I have seen what it says about Beck in one particular case, and I have found it — to say the least — wanting.

As I point out in this thread from last month, PolitiFact spins like a hurricane in order to make Beck out to be a liar when he said that WH Science Czar John Holdren once “proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.”

If you read just the headline and the conclusion (which, unfortunately, a lot of people do), you might buy their verdict that Beck’s “Pants [are] on Fire.” If you read in between the lines, you see the deception. In the midst of supposedly proving Beck wrong, they actually quote from the text from the 1977 book Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment in which Holdren (and co-authors Paul and Annie Ehrlich) propose “Involuntary Fertility Control”! But PolitiFact’s Robert Farley slyly switches the argument: After accurately saying Beck accused Holdren and the Ehrlichs proposed “Adding a sterilant to drinking water or staple foods” (which they clearly did) and suggesting that “compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution” (which they clearly did), Farley goes about proving that Holdren didn’t advocate such actions. Glenn Beck never said Holdren advocated the institution of the policies, which were obviously written in the context of worst-case overpopulation scenarios. The Ehrlichs and Holdren did, however, explore the methods by which sterilants or forced abortions could be “acceptable.”

To pretend that those weren’t “proposals” is to redefine the word “proposal” itself. And if Robert Farley is smart enough to have a byline, he knows that he’s temporarily suspending his understanding of the word to slam Beck. Farley’s pants couldn’t be more on fire if his name was Abdulmuttallab.

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

Steve: How about putting up a thread about the unbalanced coverage last night:
————————————————
When Martha Coakley (D) took the podium to concede the election, all three channels aired most or all of the eight-minute speech. However, Republican Scott Brown’s address was cut short on CNN after just seven minutes. On MSNBC Keith Olbermann cut Brown’s mic and instead attacked the Republican candidate, talked about “teabaggers”, and ran commercials. CNN only ran 26% of Brown’s speech, while MSNBC aired 37%.

See Johnny$s place for details. MSNBC aired MORE of the victory speech than CNN. LOL. CNN went to Haiti despite the historic significance of the election last night; MSNBC went into its standard tirade.

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.

who cares!

Sarah Palin/Fabio 2012!

I wouldn’t think they would place Palin (a newbie) in that time tested slot either… Unless FOX has a case of the Zuckers, I can’t imagine them doing something this screwy.