Echo chamber: Beck brings Drudge's Pelosi, Biden cosmetic surgery smear to Fox & Friends
SUMMARY: After the Drudge Report linked to an article about a possible excise tax on cosmetic surgery alongside photos of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Beck parroted the Drudge Report's smear on Fox & Friends.
Linking to an article on discussions about a possible excise tax on cosmetic surgery, the Drudge Report posted photos of Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) on July 27 alongside a headline stating, "Don't go there:? Dems Eye 10%?Tax on Botox, Cosmetic Surgery." The next morning on Fox News' Fox & Friends, Fox News host Glenn Beck parroted Drudge's smear, stating, "We should ask Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi how much they would pay for that face."
As Media Matters for America has documented, conservative media figures often resort to attacks on Pelosi's appearance while discussing issues that involve her. Moreover, Fox News personalities frequently echo the Drudge Report's attacks on progressive figures or policies.
From the Drudge Report:
From the July 28 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
GRETCHEN CARLSON (co-host): All the talk about taxes with health care, and now did you hear about this latest "Bo-tax" that was potentially being discussed?
BECK: Yeah. Well, why not?
CARLSON: That they would just charge an extra tax on top of people who are gonna go do anything cosmetically.
BECK: We should ask Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi how much they would pay for that face. I mean --
Bowing to conspiracy theories and nasty personal attacks where Matt Drudge drives their news cycle on Fox News?
Pretty pathetic. And certainly not anything remotely close to governing ...
Can't find someone to come on your show to make highly partisan and personal attacks? Fine, just recruit another one of your FoxNews cronies to come on your show, and so the cycle continues.
It's pathetic actually.
These are the original Twelve Steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I am proud of MY GOVT. guessing you are not. you need to be more country first then head in your 4th point of contact.
Odd that rising national debt coincides with lowering taxes and "shrinking government". It's almost as though there's a correlation between taxes and revenue. Who knew?
This is why when those guys get out of office, the next guys increase taxes. Overall I'd put that at about 9th grade level (public school) math.
Or, FOX could talk about Nancy Pelosi's face.
I'll tell you what I think of a small increase in my taxes (if I were making enough money to qualify for such a thing) to help pay for health care. I'm for it. It's for the good of the people of our country.
After all, we spend more on the military that the rest of the nations in the world COMBINED.
Let's not have taxes at all them. What a grand economy we'll have. Why, I'd have so much more money to invest in a miniature fire truck just in case my house catches on fire.
Thing is, I would hazard to bet that you can't find anyone who doesn't thing they're being taxed too little in this country. It's been a common gripe amongst our citizens since before we were even a country.
Sure, I'd like to keep more of the money that I earn, but as I said, for something like health care/insurance, I'd be all for it.
The government has been a good steward of our money, in some cases.
How bad are the roads in your area? How bad are the schools? Would you rather we not pay taxes to help improve these things? And then you fail to mention the one item that we could most save money, national defense, as it takes up the majority of our budget. Want to save some real money? Cut the defense budget down to an acceptable level, but that's definitely never going to happen.
I think, on average though, our federal government tries to do its best, and the majority of our monies are spent well.
I don't know about your local government, that's a local problem.
I'm sorry you have to pay taxes; the mean old government seems to think its their job to provide society with sewege, electricity, military defense, police, public education, roads, prisons, mental hospitals, innoculations, etc., when we all know you could provide things yourself. In fact, why not give it a try?
You left out bailouts and healthcare to the tune of a few trillion dollars. All to be paid for by the top 2%
Tough road to go down right there. Let me make more than $250,000 per year, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be too angry about losing 2%.
I'd hazard to guess that most of those millionaires pay about as much, or less, for their healthcare than I do.
The super-rich do not "produce" their wealth, they have it because of the labor of thousands. And they would not be able to be rich without the society around them, which in turn could exist without government money. So excuse me for not feeling sorry for them if they have to contribute a greater share in taxes for that society.
Are you Joe the Plumber?
Where does the employer get the money to pay the paychecks? Either he got a loan, or he got the money from a past business venture where workers created money for him (and themselves), or he got the money as inheritance from his pops. Either way, that money is traceable to many people doing hard labor. The wages that workers earn comes ultimately from THEIR work, thats how they get a paycheck.
Wealth is created by people working, not people getting hired to work. But no doubt you will remain obstinate in the face of this undeniable reliality.
1) product/service (requires employees)
2) loans (chancy, but high probability of return, requires 'borrowers')
3) gambling (low probability of return, see Stock Market)
You may not be able to recall, but this thread was originally about a smear of pelosi and Biden, until you and Dave decided to make it about taxes, so don't lecture me about "reframing arguments".
Also, keep in mind that my post was in response to Dave, who, among other things, resorted to the standard zombie meme of "Don't you want to KEEP more of your money? Do you think the govt knows better than you do on how to spend it?", to which I responded with a list of things that government does for him. If you think that was "disengenuoudly reframing the issue" or whatever, go ahead and keep insisting.
You keep asserting, with zero evidence, that "history shows" the government cannot spend tax dollars effectively, and that its never spent the way its intended. Guess what? Its a bunch of non-sense. All I have to do is look out the window and I see literally dozens of examples of good government spending. If you dont like the fact that I keep stating the obvious, then stop coming at me with simplistic non-sense about government waste. The only response to such pablum is to state the obvious.
Finally, you make an interesting assertion in your post: "because they say they don't have enough and if we don't give them more our houses will burn, crime will run rampant and go uninvestigated, our prisons will empty, our schools will close, our roads will go away, our trash will never get picked up and other essential services will dry up because we are greedy and horrible people. You believe them, I don't."
Its interesting because, well, its pretty to close to what's actually happened in this country. In 2000, we voted in (well we almost did) a government which gutted FEMA just in time for Katrina, which decimated the white collar crimes unit of the FBI, thus allowing the big money boyz to sell worthless mortages to hapless investors and which gutted our regulatory system in oh so many other ways as well. Why? Partly because a lot of people didn't want to have to pay for the same government services which built this great society of ours. And before you go nuts, yes democrats bear much responsibility for what has happened. But I think almost all the blame can be traced back to the anti-government philosophy of the American right wing.
Whatever you say.
Don't like getting taxed so much, move somewhere else. Right?
As for personal responsibility, it you feel the founders felt that money should be taken from earners and given to non-earners, then you'd better read it again. There wasn't even welfare for the first 150 years or so.
Reasonable people can disagree on some of the roles govt. can take. For example, I think most people will agree that the govt. should not provide a car or an ipod to every household.
But where does the Constitution imply that it can't, for instance, provide healthcare to its citizens? Or grants to students with excellent academics who cannot afford college?
As for personal responsibility, it you feel the founders felt that money should be taken from earners and given to non-earners, then you'd better read it again. There wasn't even welfare for the first 150 years or so.
Huh? What does personal responsibility have to do with this? There are many hard-working, poor Americans--the "non-earners", as you call--who can barely make ends meat and must rely on govt. assistance. Are you making an argument against welfare because you think the founders were against it?
If they were in fact against such thing...too bad for them. They aren't infallible and times do change.
Right, and congress has the right to levy taxes. It doesn't say how much taxes congress can levy, therefore that is not a constitutional issue, it is a policy issue. Just like welfare isn't a constitutional issue. That's all I was saying.
And I find it funny how certain you are that the founders wouldn't have approved of "taking money from earners and giving it non-earners". Its not like they all believed the same things, but I suggest you read some Thomas Paine. I think you'd be awfully surprised by what he has to say about that.
But, but, taxes!!!!!!!
Feel better?
The real question I have for conservatives and Republicans is...are you really comfortable with this guy, Glenn Beck, representing you? A guy who says that Obama has a deep-seated hatred for white people, a guy who thinks ACORN is the most evil organization to ever exist, a guy who believed, at least initially, in the existence of FEMA concentration camps, and a guy that urges his viewers to "stand up" against the "thugs" of their government before they are silenced forever? How could you possibly be okay with this paranoid, imbalanced, violent rhetoric-spewing lunatic representing you?
Also, there is very little correlation between tax rates and economic growth.
Saint Ronnie raised taxes 7 times and even did it during a recession.
Lastly, Bush raised your taxes; he just didn't tell you - that's what happens when he and Reagan doubled the national debt.
Nobody is concerned about this tax because it is a specific tax on a specific action and that action one that is purely cosmetic and is entirly discrentionary.
If people choose to use money on such a procedure they can pay a surtax on it. That is fine with me. Infact, I thought that was how the right thought we should collect all taxes, as taxes on how the money is used.
The mere fact that we have taxes is in no way troubling. I like things like roads and bridges and infrastructure.
I also like things like division of labor, the nuclear family, the modern concept of retirement, the 40 hour workweek, and on and on. All of these things are possible because of the goverment and the taxes we pay.
If you want a society and the benifts it provides you have to have taxes.
Whats more, because in this country taxes your tax "bracket" is only refering to money paid on the last dollar everybody pays the same taxes on the same value.
This tax is neither disturbing nor is it unreasonable. A tax on elective cosmetic surgery? Yes to that!
Yet, in the same breath, they have no problem with making "harmless jokes" about Nancy Pelosi getting Botox (which, by the way, I struggle to see any correlation that has to her leadership role).
But then, like the old saying goes, "One man's vicious attack is another man's harmless joke." Or something like that. Just sit back and enjoy the hypocrisy.
Or are they being serious?
I find that class warfare is not only not boring, but it's happening at an astonishing rate. You think it's perfectly alright for a president to spend endlessly tearing up a country or two, but the minute some of our elected officials try to help EVERYBODY it's wrong to do so. You don't want to help out your fellow citizens get an insurance plan that won't bankrupt them? Is that what you're suggesting? That doesn't sound too patriotic to me.
I was talk growing up you give people the same respect you expect to get. You help them up. Help them help themselves.
What you want and won't admit is you'd rather see the helpless and underprivileged go further behind, so you can feel superior.
A telling thing: The people crying racism are WHITE, WEALTHY MEN.
Go figure....
He really does get his talking points from The Sludge Retort, doesn't he!
Hey! Conan enjoyed the obvious comedy material too!
● Members of the Senate are considering a tax on cosmetic surgery. When they brought it up, you should have seen the look that Nancy Pelosi’s face tried to make.
This one was after a thigh slapper regarding Sarah Palin.
Political humor is as old as the Magna Carta, kids. Get over it.