Rachel Maddow: FOX "News" Wants a New Waco; Ruby Ridge

Who knows why FOX "News" seems to want to egg on arch-conservatives, in order to turn the "Bundy Ranch" thing into another Waco or Ruby Ridge. But they sure seem to.

CrazyTown II: Idaho Edition!

Click to embiggen. Image from source.

In case you missed it, Glenn Beck isn't the only one proposing a massive, self-supported, armed fortress of liberty and freedom. Conservatives are weird. I'd say "scary," but this is just too funny.

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IDAHO: Survivalists Plan Armed Fortress

Idaho survivalists have launched a website detailing their plan to create an armed fortress city surrounded by a "defensible perimeter" complete with gun towers. . .

Read more at: Joe.My.God

Glenn Beck Wants to Build CrazyTown!

Too bad you're crazy. Too bad you're loony as hell. Image from RawStory

I'll be honest, I never saw the appeal of Glenn Beck. I caught a few of his early HNN shows, back in the day. I braved the insanity/inanity of his FOX "News" program. I have never listened to his radio show, or partaken in his online "television" program, but I've seen enough clips and excerpts to form a generally informed opinion: he's a loon. Batshit crazy. The butter has dripped off of his noodle.

Or, he's just a craven (albeit weird) manipulator, adept at wrangling money and attention from other crazy people. Beck's organized events have been grandiose, overblown and oddly vague. He reminds me of a faith healer or charlatan psychic, making vague predictions, and finding conspiracies in mundane things. He's certainly not averse to leaps of logic, extreme supposition, and strawman arguments. And he's good at taking any news story of the day, and bending and shaping it to fit his preformed narrative. Or, alternatively, shapes the narrative around the facts, making it up as he goes along.

It is scarier to me that Beck gathers such a fervent audience. Because Beck himself is--as Keith Olbermann used to say--Lonesome Rhodes. He's schtick. He may or may not believe what he himself is selling, but he's in it for the fame and fortune. So his latest scheme is just--oddly enough--the next logical step. But it isn't really original. Las Vegas has been attempting this sort of thing for years, a sort of self-contained living center, complete with amusement rides, shopping, movies, leisure. Beck has just married that idea to a 60s commune crossed with a heavy dose of Waco's Branch Davidians. And apparently, the key to freedom and liberty is to lock yourself in self-contained, walled off compound.

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Glenn Beck hopes to build utopian city-theme park hybrid

Conservative personality Glenn Beck last week announced grandiose plans to construct a self-sustaining “city-theme park hybrid” that would reflect traditional American values. The city, to be called “Independence,” draws heavily from ideas espoused by Walt Disney and libertarian novelist Ayn Rand. The project is expected to cost more than $2 billion. . .

Read more at: Raw Story

Bad Anniversaries: Waco and Oklahoma City

Photo from source, CNN

Today is April 19th. It is the anniversary of the "shot heard 'round the world" that started the American Revolutionary War. It's the day the Bay of Pigs fiasco ended. It's the day Tim Curry was born (twenty years to the day before I was). And, as I'm never able to forget--because it is my birthday--it is the anniversary of the end of the Branch Davidian conflict in Waco, Texas, as well as the day of the Oklahoma City bombing by domestic terrorism.

There was a period when I worried that my coming birthdays would herald even worse catastrophes, based on sympathisers of one or both of these events. Fortunately, to date, that hasn't happened. But every year, like clockwork, I find these two events "memorialized" on my birthday. It could be worse, I supposed. At least my birthday isn't September 11.

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Waco, Oklahoma City mark anniversary of tragedies

Two towns with an odd connection will pause Sunday to reflect on two tragedies that culminated in a wake-up call to domestic terrorism: the Oklahoma City bombing and the standoff that ended in fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. . .

Read more at: CNN