A Bible-thumper who wants your money?

It always troubles me deeply to see how much money there is in propagating Biblically-informed right-wing twaddle to racist cretins. It's mesmerizing watching Glenn Beck in front of his chalk-board, talking about how atheism leads to Nazism, socialism, and Universal Healthcare, then tying it into an explanation of how Obama hates white people. Ann Coulter shills her bestselling books portraying the American right-wing as jews in Nazi Germany, trying to rally against the oppressive movements of gay-rights, abortion-rights, and rights for anybody other than white anglo-saxon christians. There's money in scaring comfortable fat white people.

Brannon Howse
Today's villain.

Every now and again, out of sheer boredom, I'll turn on the 'Christian channel' at my girlfriend's house to see how long it takes for my hackles to be raised. Venturing into the heart of the echo-chamber isn't a particularly comfortable experience, but I get to learn about a whole new cadre of assholes. Just the other day, I learnt about the existence of Brannon Howse. He hosts 'Worldview Weekend Rallies' - a traveling roadshow broadcast on Christian TV channels, in which he talks about the evils of liberalism and pluralism, and praises Jesus and capitalism. Think of a low-rent Glenn Beck and you're halfway there.

I watched a few minutes of his programme - it flogs the usual canards of fundamentalist nonsense with a forced sense of urgency and a ham-fisted attempt at fitting red herrings to biblical prophesy on the end-times. I can't recall the exact quotes, but the gist of it was 'educated people want to turn your child into a hedonistic pervert'. I'll mine from the sizzle-reel posted on his website:

"Philosophy 101 should be called Atheism 101 - Religion 101 should be Religious Pluralism 101. Biology 101 is more like Evolution 101!"

Worlds like 'pluralism' and 'globalism' are dirty words to Howse and his followers, who can also tune into his talk-shows on Christian radio. Let's look at some choice topics covered in these shows:

• Brannon reveals Bible verses that God will cause someone to die for their continued rebellion. [02/03/11].

• How unions are and the communists work together, how Muslims and Marxists work together and why the National Education Association is run by people that do not carry about [sic] the teachers or children. [22/02/11]

• If Obama sees that he is not going to be re-elected as President of the United States of America will he and his team do everything within their power to destroy America and thus really accomplish what has been their goal since taking office? [20/10/10] 

• Topic: Obama's Reeducation For Social Change. Understand The Goals of Obama's Radical, Anti-Christian, Socialist, Feminist, Pro-Homosexual Public Service. [19/11/10]

• Brannon also discuss [sic] how America is becoming a third world country with the increase in illegal aliens that are taking jobs from Americans, increasing crime, our nation's debt and bringing disease to our country.

The word 'environmentalism' appears 32 times on the archive page, and only six times is it not preceded by the word 'radical'. 'Obama' appears 615 times.

I don't think I need to delve any further into his level of discourse - the guy is an asshole, using this religious soapbox to hijack his audience's reasoning, and to coax money from fools. Let's have a look at what's on offer at his online store:

Tat. Brought to you by America

His website pimps his e-books on the front page and enthuses that "The Worldview Weekend E-Gift Card makes a perfect gift!" His radio shows are free for 14 days, after which the price jumps up to $5 each. Devotional music performed by Mr. Howse is available for $0.99 a track. An atrociously badly put together PC Game costs $19.99, which is apparently marked down from the 'standard price' of $24.95. (Back of the box features include "Sound effects")

I'll assume that these are not indicative of the '3D graphics' boasted on the game-cover

A sister organisation called 'Worldview Weekend Foundation' solicits donations to pay for the rallies (sneakily making 'weekly donation' the default option). To inspire urgency they're called 'Code Blue Rallies' (likely because their benefactors are acquainted with cardiac arrest themselves), and have posted articles like "Losing it in College" and "The Storm before the Bigger Storm" on the frontpage.

Sure, I scoff at these products, but they clearly hold some value to a stupider person, so I can't entirely begrudge Brannon for earning a crust filling this niche. Where things get really sinister is the 'free' offering posted on the front page:

The Truth about Money? A free Educational CD & DVD on Money Truth? It's got Brannon Howse's face on the front - if you trust him with on his religious and your political advice, why not money?

So what is the Truth about money? The truth is you need to buy gold, Jerry! GOLD!

Why yes, that is Obama riding a paper-airplane made out of a US dollar. He's about to crash it, you see.

I'm not particularly au-fait with investing, but everything I've heard from people in the know leads me to believe that it's a terrible investment for all kinds of reasons. That said, tinfoil hat wearing troglodytes who fear everything they've worked for will be taken away by that Kenyan-born moslem in the white house (read: conservative nutjobs) think that filling their nuke-shelters with gold will insure against financial apocalypse.

The info-pack is from a company called Swiss America, who must be giving Howse a commission on every sucker he sends their way, given his commitment to the schtick. A special hour-long talk with Michael Weiner of Swiss America is available for free on the website, and Howse also incorporates pimping gold into regular programming on his radio show: "Utah considers return to gold, silver coins and alternative currency along with 11 other states" [04/03/11]. I think this exemplifies the level of cynicism we're dealing with here.

This subject exhausts me. Every now and again I try to convince myself that people so aggressively against the forces of progressivism are the bitter old pensioners who will throw money at hucksters with backwards, racist opinions until they all die off and the rest of the sane world won't have to put up with any more of the dishonest and lazy rhetoric that pays the bills for people like Beck and Howse. There's money in taking advantage of people who can't think for themselves, which means that people who try to do the thinking for you will continue to pop up on our radars.

tl;dr version: Conservative religious people are stupid and are paying people to say things they want to hear. Stupid free-market.

Dáil Election 2011 Follow-up

For those interested, I've followed up on a few bits and pieces from the Dáil elections:

It looks like outgoing TD Peter Power will need to change his Twitter username...

And his Facebook page username:

And his official website-- oh wait...

Also, it turns out that John Dillon lied to us through song:

[The lyrics page verifies that yes, they rhymed 'mussels' with 'Brussels']

Dillon's gonna win? Gonna win what? You deceitful knave!

And what about our old friend Mike Deegan in Dun Laoghaire? How did he fare?

Dead last. Perhaps the Irish voters aren't as hopeless as I thought.

While I'm ragging on independents...

One of the independent candidates running in yesterday's election certainly has his act together when compared with the less accomplished lunatics also vying for election to the Dáil.

He has a website! He has proof of a previous leadership role! He has posters! He has laid out his policies. He even has an election-anthem:



Why should you vote for Dillon? Cos Dillon's gonna win! The song even says it!

One fateful night, he called to my mother's door at dinnertime. I told him I didn't want to stay long, and he gave me his five second pitch and shook my hand. Decent chap. I liked him. He gave me a flyer:

Neat! An independent who doesn't openly display an easily-diagnosed mental illness! Let's have a look here...

"@dillondelivers@twitter.com?" Sorry John, you just got bumped to #2.

Vote Cretin with a Webcam No.1

Facebook throws up some woefully inappropriate ads sometimes, and I begrudge them for it, but every now and again, it only gets them slightly wrong. Like when it implored me to "Vote for M*** D***an". Alas, he's asking to be elected "as your TD for Dun Laoghaire Rathdown".

I don't get a vote in that constituency, but I am curious to see what motivates this independent candidate, so I decided to stick around and see if he's really "NOT more of the same", as his Facebook page insists.

The Facebook page started on February 2nd. Since then there have been a grand total of ten posts by M*** D***an. He has 31 'likes' at the time of writing, and two of the three posts by visitors consist of someone who (ostensibly) loaned him the tie in his profile picture, and another with the same surname. Of the ten posts, six of them consist of the same two YouTube videos posted and reposted. One of the four remaining posts explains his modus operandi:

"I am running my campaign as did Obama using the internet and personal interactions without environmentally damaging printed material."

This is hugely commendable! An online-only campaign! So where's the rest of the information? Well, there's no website, so the Facebook page is the only information repository. Since I want to know about this would-be public servant, I suppose I'll have a look at the first of his two videos, which serves as a de-facto manifesto.

A middle-aged, somewhat dishevelled man is sitting in a badly lit room. He speaks slowly with a distracted affect, punctuating his sentences with long 'em's and sighs. It's a bad first impression. But let's not discount him yet. He could be the future of Irish politics!

Click here to watch it for yourself (or just read on and avoid the hassle)

He didn't really hook me with the opening salvo:

"This video is me, talking to you. Telling you that much as I don't really want to, I will be running for the Dáil in the next general election."

Okay, the begrudging public servant. It's an angle that could work! Do go on.

"People say "M*** are you crazy?" Perhaps I am"

At least he's not saying anything so far that the audience can disagree with. But why is he going to all this trouble?

"For me. For my family. For my parents, my child. For the future and the current state of Ireland."

Inspiring stuff. He's a patriotic family man who will stand up because nobody else will. I'm on board. But others won't be won over so quickly. Why should we vote for you?

"If you want to vote for me, vote for me. If you don't, don't. That's how it works, isn't it?"

I take it back. M***, you're insane. Such banal lessons on the democratic process have led me to realize that I'm eighty-five seconds into a rambling YouTube video from some mentally unstable internet-addict.

I may as well sit here for the next three minutes and see what other verbal diarrhoea spills forth:

"I'm not going to be putting my poster on every lampost in the neighbourhood or anything like that. No. I'm not going to be doing that."

Making your total lack of a budget sound like a virtue isn't particularly effective M***, can we please get onto the policy stuff?

"Hmmmmmmmmm... What else should I say? What am I pushing? Well, older people is a major thing for me. One day, I will be older, just like you, and I want to address the way we treat older people in Irish society. The disabled also come in under a - connected, similar remit of how they are treated in our society."

Finally! But these statements are a bit vague. What exactly does he mean? And what does he propose we should do about it?

"And then onto the wider picture."

M***, don't you think that you should finish your thought on the disabled and "older" people, (whatever that means exactly) you didn't even go into --

Well, jobs. Absolutely. Of course. Jobs. There's so much to talk about. Job creation. It's difficult to know where to start... The government [says] that whatever has to be done to create jobs has to be done. And I would agree"

Hang on. You've said nothing at all here. And you agree with the government that you're railing against? I don't think that you have any original ideas in your head whatsoever. I think you're just some cretin with a webcam who is jumping on the bandwagon of exasperated people who are fed up with the current government, even though they have no better ideas of how to address the problems Ireland is currently facing themselves.

"Aaaaaahhh further to that. The environment. Some call it climate change, some say it's not climate change." 

Yeah, that's right M***, the discord surrounding climate change revolves around the nomenclature.

Whatever it is, it's happening. It's affecting our world. It's affecting everybody. We have big problems with delivering potable drinking water to large parts of the world. We have difficulty providing food to large parts of the world. we are burning too much fuel to power our - everything, and an alternative needs to be arrived at... Discovered."

What the hell? You're running for TD in flipping IRELAND. If a major Irish industry consisted of "delivering potable drinking water to large parts of the world", maybe this would make sense, but it doesn't. And your magic-bullet solution to environmental trouble is "discovering" an alternative to burning fossil fuels? Shouldn't you be doing that now instead of nattering into a camera?

Let's have a quick look at what else he's been posting:

Good. Freaking. God. M*** got drunk for his birthday. Now he's making birthday resolutions. He's going to turn his life around. But first he'll go to the city. But he can't remember why.

You goddamn ignoramus. How dare you waste my time by populating my web-browser with your Facebook ads. How dare you waste Google's bandwidth with your rambling, hollow pontifications. Yes, jobs are important. So is the environment. If you had something worthwhile to say about it, you would've said something tangible, but you didn't. It's commendable that you're putting yourself out there for your principles, but you've completely failed to show what they are exactly. Instead of making a positive impact on Irish politics, you've just wasted ten minutes I could have spent researching some credible candidates. This pitiful pageant of quixotic balderdash leads me to believe that you're just some manic-depressive desperately trying to give his life some meaning.

"That is basically me."

"Your Idiot Friends"

I hate Glenn Beck. He's a magic-underpants wearing racist who has the power to inspire hundreds of his fellow mentally-impaired citizens to take to the streets in loud emotional histrionics that terrify casual observers with their boisterous lack of sense.

Whilst having a chuckle at Sarah Palin's book on Amazon earlier, Glenn Beck's latest literary offering was brought to my attention:

It's titled, appropriately enough: "Arguing with Idiots" - and it certainly makes sense that one of America's foremost idiots would know a thing or two about being entirely obtuse in a discussion.

According to the book's blurb on the official website, it's a rather cynical extension of the Fox News pundit's practice of arming right-wing nutbags with pre-made 'arguments' that can be used to bring a dialogue about certain issues to an abrupt close:

The next time your Idiot Friends tell you how gun control prevents gun violence, you'll tell them all about England's handgun ban (see page 53). When they tell you that we should copy the UK's health-care system, you'll recount the horrifying facts you read on page 244. And the next time an idiot tells you that vegetable prices will skyrocket without illegal workers, you'll stop saying "no, they won't" and you'll start saying, "actually, eliminating all illegal labor will cause us to spend just $8 a year more on produce." (See page 139.)

The subtitle for this book ought to be "Why think for yourself when you can be a mouthpiece for Glenn Beck?".

Bonus: here's a clip of Glenn Beck out of his element that illustrates the slick rhetorical style that you can claim as your very own!

Via Stephen Spillane: Videos from the No Side

Stephen Spillane is a man with a general interest in European affairs, whereas I tend to tune in when it's time to decide something, which is why I find myself paying more attention to his blog in times as this, with the Lisbon Treaty: Part Deux looming.

He posted some videos on his blog today [original post here] that dovetail nicely with my earlier posting, and I was excited by the prospect at going a step lazier than my last video-dump post by taking somebody else's video-dump.

The general theme is: "It doesn't matter that arguments are flaccid, we can scare the shit out of people by lying to them about Lisbon and achieve our goals that way!"






As much as I'm aware of what a rich parody of democracy the government's affinity for mulligans represents, I see no harm in a do-over given the ubiquity of mis-information around Lisbon.

The problem with democracy

Watching this video of a 'protest' outside a Town Hall meeting in California makes me feel awfully sorry for Barack Obama, if not for the United States as a whole.



Reflecting on the collection of public, histrionic outbursts that this filmmaker has put online, it's easy to lose track of the fact that there are legitimate points to be made against Obama's proposed reform, but the sheer volume of people who have been convinced that some great evil is about to befall their nation is a mite worrying.

Much like the Irish reaction to the Lisbon Treaty, there's a great deal of false information bullshit motivating these people's vociferous denunciation of healthcare reform - many of it propagated by Fox News and the right-wing media (and indeed, some of those interviewed invoke Sean Hannity, Glen Beck & Michael Savage - the latter of whom gained notoriety for being banned from entering the United Kingdom in May this year for fostering extremism).

Some curious bits from the video:

• The quote: "God will take care of healthcare - God will take care… - The Children of Israel walked in the desert for 40 years and their sandals were not even worn out"

• The multiple 'trust Jesus' signs

• General conspiracy theory nuttery:

"They're claiming that abortion is not in the bill… But it is"
"This is a just a smokescreen"

• The dude holding up the book at 1.27 calls the book in his hands "The USS Constitution"

• "[Obama's] church was based on racism"

And the scorecard:

Hitler references: 5
Socialism references: 5 (often used in the same sentence as Hitler, oddly enough)
Communism references: 3
Fascism references: 1
Outbursts of "Theeey toook awwrrr jawbz!": Sadly, 0

Civic Irresponsibility

Do not be perturbed by my recent blogging-lapse, dear reader - it is a consequence of having precious little free time. The hours of my day that would be spent online reading, listening to podcasts, twittering and blogging have been encroached on by petty matters like work and sleep. Much like before, I'm going to have to find a way to 'make' time for this noblest of hobbies.

I'm fighting the temptation to put up a sign reading 'Back in July' or suchlike, but I'll try and limp on a bit longer before succumbing.

Now that the excuses are aside, it's time to address the pressing matter of the European and local elections taking place tomorrow.

I've read a smattering of campaign literature, and nobody seems to stand out as being particularly original. Will I vote for the guy who wants to improve amenities for children and facilities for old people or the lady who solemnly vows to make a priority of catering to the needs of young and old people who have been callously neglected by the fat-cats currently in power?

Teasing out the finer points of a candidate's policy and deciding where to use your vote is a process that works a little differently for everybody. Here's how I decide what to do with the noblest of my civic duties. [And before I start, I have to give props to the Limerick Leader for putting their Election supplement online - even if its purpose was to bilk some money out of the candidates, it's a useful document nonetheless]

Leo Walsh

Not voting for him because: Whilst looking at his election poster and trying to determine whether that monstrosity under his schnoz was vandalism or his actual 'stache, I damn-near crashed my car.
Why I'd reconsider: I can empathize a man who is too busy to tend to his personal grooming, regardless of how ridiculous he may look.

Richie Smith
Wouldn't vote for him because: Stop the apostrophe neglect. It's no joke.
Why I'd reconsider: Richie seems to suffer from a split-personality disorder, and I'm a sucker for those two-for-the-price-of-one deals.

Robert Gardiner
Wouldn't vote for him because: He didn't even look up how to spell the words that comprise his platform.
Why I'd reconsider: In his frothing excitement to get his point across, he seems to have confused the order of his sentences. I think this means a lot to him...


Mary Harty
Wouldn't vote for her because: She couldn't think of anything to put on her ad other than her name and "Vote No.1". So she left it blank. Which is incredibly retarded.
Why I'd reconsider: She could have been trying a bold political move known as 'The Obama', in which the voters project their hopes and dreams onto a blank canvas. I don't think Obama literally used blank canvas, however. (What a dumb bitch!)

Tom O'Callaghan
Wouldn't vote for him because: They set aside a few minutes to focus on getting a decent picture for the campaign, and he still ended up looking like a drunken old lecher having a grand auld stare at the purty gurls across the street.
Why I'd reconsider: Guys like this are always fun to have around when there are large groups of people. Just fill 'em full of liquor, point 'em towards inappropriately young girls, and watch the hilarity unfold!

"Broken"

I'm posting this video because it deserves to be shared and seen by as many people as possible. If you're not interested in US politics, you might want to give this post a miss, however.

The clip is a delightfully succinct summation of the type of brazen hypocrisy that propaganda-spewers will indulge in, and the highest concentration of these offenders seem to sit on the right-wing, making the job of political satirists like Jon Stewart a very easy one indeed.

It's testament to how broken political reporting is in the United States when Stewart can just compare statements made by pundits (and politicians) and get the laughs he does. To a casual-follower of US politics, Jon Stewart's comedy (!) show is essential viewing, as it represents the most forthright and concise criticism that one can find on US television.