Glenn Beck Passes Along Discredited Memes

If you like listening to hysterical people on the radio, then have I got a treat for you. This is from CNN host Glenn Beck's radio show:

Audio

BECK: We'll tell you the truth. We'll tell you the things that are politically incorrect. I'll go on and I'll tell you the fires have very little to do with global warming, if anything. The globe was the hottest in 19 -- was it 1934, Stu [executive producer Steve "Stu" Burguiere], or '37? -- '34, 1934 was the hottest year. A stat, by the way, that was, I believe, intentionally distorted by the guy the left holds up as the scientist on global warming. America's temperature peaked in 1934. Since 1934, the hottest year on record was 1998. It has not gotten warmer since 1998. That's a fact.

Nope. The globe was not the hottest in 1934. Earlier this year, NASA corrected its data for the continental United States only. Whereas previously 1998 was thought to be 0.01ºC warmer than 1934 in the U.S. rankings, it now turned out to be 0.02ºC cooler after the temperature correction.

The story was immediately picked up by FOX News columnist Steve Milloy, the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, etc. They all shouted this story from the hilltops, conveniently leaving out the part where the global temperature rankings did not change at all, and the continental United States temperatures changed only by a statistically insignificant amount. Rather, they chose to pretend that 1934 was the new hottest year for the globe, and that global warming must surely be a hoax. This claim is apparently still reverberating in the echo chamber.

Also, what's this about James Hansen "intentionally distorting" the data? Do you have any reason to think that, other than the fact that this guy (a NASA scientist with many peer-reviewed papers on the topic) disagrees with you on a matter you know nothing about?

Beck goes on:

BECK: Now, why are these fires burning out of control? Al Gore and everybody else will have you believe that it is all about global warming. Well, really? A one-degree temperature change that happened at the first part of the century, not in the last part of the century, at least most of it, and a temperature change that hasn't changed since 1998 is causing superfires in California and only California? Only America? It's in the American borders. How is that possible?

Actually, let's take a look at the global temperature graph from the past century:


[Note: This is actually the pre-correction temperatures overlaid on top of the post-correction temperatures - notice how they are identical to within 1/1,000th of a degree]

According to a recent NASA report:

Global warming is now 0.6°C [1.08° F] in the past three decades and 0.8°C [1.44° F] in the past century. It is no longer correct to say that "most global warming occurred before 1940". More specifically, there was slow global warming, with large fluctuations, over the century up to 1975 and subsequent rapid warming of almost 0.2°C [0.36° F] per decade.

Whoops, I guess you got that one wrong, too.

Also, who are these "hippie California environmentalists that won't let you touch the landscape, wont let you clear the brush on the side of the hills where your house is because that's natural"? I've certainly neither seen nor heard of these people. Perhaps next time, you can cite something to back up your reckless claims that the California wildfires were caused by environmentalists.

One more thing: Why does CNN give this guy his own show? This seriously puzzles me.

Bill O'Reilly On DailyKos: Part VI

O'Reilly has recently gone off the deep end, criticizing Democratic presidential candidates for attending the YealyKos event, based on the "hate stuff" he perceives on the DailyKos website. Of the comments O'Reilly actually cited in support of his claim, one was completely accurate ("the pope is a primate"), one was rather callous (a user who commented, while Tony Snow was battling cancer, that he didn't care if the man died or not), and one involved crude sexual humor (a photoshopped image of Joe Lieberman on his knees in front of George W. Bush). But by attending the YearlyKos event, O'Reilly has accused the Democratic candidates of "legitimizing" material he has compared to that of the Nazis, the KKK, Mussolini, and David Duke.

Well, on the flip side, let's see what kind of company the president keeps.

According to Hugh Hewitt on Townhall.com: "President Bush invited ten talk show hosts into the Oval Office for an hour of conversation today -- Glenn Beck, Bill Bennett, Neal Boortz, Scott Hennon, Laura Ingraham, Lars Larson, Mark Levin, Michael Medved, Janet Parshall and me. This was an off-the-record conversation, and so I won't be quoting the president."

If the problem here is wishing ill on your political enemies, then Neil Boortz topped the Tony Snow comment when he suggested:

"When we defeat this illegal alien amnesty bill, and when we yank out the welcome mat, and they all start going back to Mexico, as a going away gift let's all give them a box of nuclear waste. Give 'em all a little nuclear waste and let 'em take it on down there to Mexico. Tell 'em it can -- it'll heat tortillas."

(6/21/2007)

Audio here:.

If the problem is simply making crude sexual comments about your political enemies, then college dropout and reformed addict Glenn Beck has the same problem. Remarking on Dennis Kucinich's hot wife, Beck said:

"How did that happen? ... I'm wondering if it's some sort of, some sort of, you know. What's that date rape drug? ... Yeah, but it's not powerful enough to actually knock you out, but it's powerful enough to, like, make you think that you're not standing next to Dennis Kucinich and making out with him... I was thinking cyanide. That would be the only thing that would really dull the senses enough. Even then, your dead body would be like, 'Dennis Kucinich has his tongue in my mouth'"

(6/4/2007)

Audio here:.

Also, keep in mind that these comments were made by the radio personalities themselves, rather than a handful of the 500,000 daily website viewers at DailyKos.

So let's see if Bill O'Reilly says in the next few days that the president is "legitimizing" hateful content on par with the Nazis, KKK, etc. (Hint: He won't, because the root of his problem with DailyKos is that they are a liberal website)

CNN Takes Apocalypse Seriously

CNN recently aired an hour-long presentation entitled "Honest Questions About the End of Days." In it, host Glenn Beck interviewed Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, authors of the Left Behind series (which even spawned a video game) about how Russia and Iran are probably going to fulfill some biblical prophecies and bring about the rise of the antichrist, etc. The whole program is ridiculous, but here are a few quotes to capture the flavor.

First, they ackowledge that people consider them crazy.
GLENN BECK: "This is a show that I`ve wanted to do for a while, but quite honestly, what stops me from doing it is people think I`m nuts."
JOEL ROSENBERG, AUTHOR, "EPICENTER": "people, for years, have been saying that evangelical Christians who talk about the Book of Revelation or the last days are sort of the weird and spooky ones."
JERRY JENKINS, CO-AUTHOR, "LEFT BEHIND" SERIES: "We get labeled as crackpots"
GLENN BECK: "It might sound nuts, but I encourage you to listen and, at the end of the hour, judge for yourself. Is this nuts, or is it possible that this is happening?"
JERRY JENKINS: "they`re saying we`re crazy"
GLENN BECK: "There are times I think I`m nuts"
TIM LAHAYE: "I was afraid that people would come to this conclusion and think we`re crazy and then, after they read it, then they knew we were crazy."
GLENN BECK: "there would be people that would say, this is nuts"

So what prophecies have been fulfilled so far?
TIME LAHAYE, CO-AUTHOR, "LEFT BEHIND" SERIES: "In Daniel 12, he talks about in the last days -- he specifies when it will be -- the people will be running to and fro on the earth and knowledge will be increased. You talk about evidence of the supernatural in the Bible, how in the world did that prophet, 2,500 years ago, link up knowledge and travel? And yet, that`s exactly what we have. Because of the increase in knowledge, there has been an increase in the speed of travel. And people are running everywhere in the world."
AMAZING!

When will this happen?
TIM LAHAYE: "I`ve come to the conclusion that the world cannot last, prophetically, more than 25 to 50 years."

This isn't the first serious treatment of apocalyptic scenarios I've seen on CNN. But what's most distressing to me is that it's not just CNN who takes this crap seriously.
JOEL ROSENBERG: "And what`s fascinating to me, since I have, I`ve been invited to the CIA, invited to the Pentagon, to the White House, to speak to people on Capitol Hill, and in countries all over the world -- privately, it`s almost, you know, off the record, we want to sit and ask you, Joel, do you really believe that Iraq is going to rise as the most wealthy and powerful country on the face of the planet? A senior adviser to the prime minister of Iraq had breakfast with me in Washington to ask me that question."

EDIT: Glenn Beck also reveals his fears that global warming is merely an excuse for the UN to create the one-world government that the bible prophecies predict the anti-christ will run.

Glenn Beck and Godwin's Law

In his recent documentary on CNN titled "Climate of Fear," Glenn Beck demonstrates that his irony-meter is broken.

I found this exchange from the program particularly interesting:

LEGATES: Somebody says that whenever you get into Nazi connections, you've really jumped the shark.

BECK: No Nazi references? But how would these people even form sentences? Even I got to jump into the World War II of weather. Robert F. Kennedy called me "CNN's chief corporate fascism advocate." When asked why by The Washington Post, he recalled that I was voicing doubts about global warming a few weeks back.

LEGATES: When you have the science on your side, you argue the science. When you don't have the science on your side, you attack the messenger.

I also liked this final thought from the program:
BECK: "You`d think that scientists would look back at their history, when out-of-control churches locked them in towers to stop progress, and realize that just yelling, "The debate is over, and these people are heretics or Nazis," as loud as you can is not really the best way to advance science."

But is this the same Glenn Beck who, just days earlier, said this:
BECK: "Now, I'm not saying that anybody's going to -- you know Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal. Back in the 1930s, the goal was get rid of all of the Jews and have one global government."

And this:
BECK: "You got to have an enemy to fight. And when you have an enemy to fight, then you can unite the entire world behind you, and you seize power. That was Hitler's plan. His enemy: the Jew. Al Gore's enemy, the U.N.'s enemy: global warming."

And this:
BECK: "Then you get the scientists -- eugenics. You get the scientists -- global warming. Then you have to discredit the scientists that say, "That's not right." And you must silence all dissenting voices. That's what Hitler did. That's what Al Gore, the U.N., and everybody on this global warming bandwagon -- all the way to RFK Junior, who has called me a fascist for doing it -- all the way over to the global warming special that happened over in London a couple of weeks ago that is fantastic."

And who said this, just one month earlier, about Al Gore's testimony before the Senate:
BECK: "It is really -- one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this -- what did he call it? -- a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels."

And who said this last year about Al Gore's movie:
BECK: "See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in "and it's the Jews' fault." That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening."