Beck: Help us restore traditional American values

[Good_News_1]

It means, if you are going to make outrageous claims against a person, the burden of proof is on you.

Without belaboring the point too much further, this isn’t about me. It isn’t about a “burden of proof.” It isn’t about whether I have the time to scour the internet to make a case to you. I have a life.

It is about the truth. It’s nice you looked up another link. Decide for yourself. For my money, you have done nothing to rehabilitate Beck’s reputation for accuracy. It’s funny - you say I have the burden of proof for making one “outrageous” claim, and have a burden of proof - but Beck makes many outrageous claims every night, suggesting the President is a Marxist and we are “losing our country” whatever that is supposed to mean, and his entire body of work is presumed valid in your mind unless someone specifically disproves it. But I commend you doing research instead of relying on me, Schultz, O’Reilly, etc to form your opinion, or to pretend we are in a courtroom, with some “burden of proof” to disprove Beck’s wildly improbably nightly narrative.

So, are you a union member?

This isn’t about bias. If you look at my posts here (not that I suggest you have the time), they pretty clearly indicate that I am not an employee at all.

But if I were a union boss, that wouldn’t make Beck any more or less reliable.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Without belaboring the point too much further, this isn’t about me. It isn’t about a “burden of proof.” It isn’t about whether I have the time to scour the internet to make a case to you. I have a life.

It is about the truth. It’s nice you looked up another link. Decide for yourself. For my money, you have done nothing to rehabilitate Beck’s reputation for accuracy. It’s funny - you say I have the burden of proof for making one “outrageous” claim, and have a burden of proof - but Beck makes many outrageous claims every night, suggesting the President is a Marxist and we are “losing our country” whatever that is supposed to mean, and his entire body of work is presumed valid in your mind unless someone specifically disproves it. But I commend you doing research instead of relying on me, Schultz, O’Reilly, etc to form your opinion, or to pretend we are in a courtroom, with some “burden of proof” to disprove Beck’s wildly improbably nightly narrative.

This isn’t about bias. If you look at my posts here (not that I suggest you have the time), they pretty clearly indicate that I am not an employee at all.

But if I were a union boss, that wouldn’t make Beck any more or less reliable.

It does seem to me that when someone on here says someone in the public view is “lying”, that person should have the burden of proving it. Either that or he should let it go to someone else who, perhaps, can prove it. On the other hand, if the public figure in question is saying something untrue without intending to deceive, it would be best to characterize the person as “reckless” or “inaccurate” or something of that nature. Seems to me that’s what the argument is about here.

Regardless, I haven’t seen Beck more than maybe two or three times. It does seem to me that he, like many (if not most) pundit types, engages in hyperbolic expression. I suspect he really does believe Obama is a Marxist. Truth is, we really don’t know what’s in Obama’s head. Maybe he is, and maybe he isn’t. Perhaps Beck would do better to point out those ways in which Obama’s actions bespeak Marxist policies or tactics, and maybe that’s all he does. I don’t watch him, so I couldn’t say.

Seems to me “losing our country” is also hyperbolic. Truth be told, the U.S. is pretty socialist already, if that’s the yardstick, and in a lot of ways we don’t acknowledge. Some of it seems good to me, some of it bad. But regardless, we’re a long way down the socialist road already, and have been for a very long time. The government also endorses immorality more and more all the time; a horrible thing for it to be doing. Yet it does, and people are largely silent about it because we’re told again and again that the State has no business dealing with morality, notwithstanding that it pervasively does so, and has to. America was once relatively sure of itself when it came to foreign dealings, or at least maintained that posture, as all nations do, and as most ought to do. Our president is now going around the world apologizing for this country. Jingoism aside, that cannot possibly be conducive to good foreign relations, particularly with allies who depend on us.

“Losing our country’s professed ideals even more” might have been a more appropriate statement. But then, all these TV personalities engage in hyperbole. But hyperbolic statements, whether believed or not, are not the same as lies.

 

[Good_News_1]

It does seem to me that when someone on here says someone in the public view is “lying”, that person should have the burden of proving it. Either that or he should let it go to someone else who, perhaps, can prove it

And I did that. I mentioned something that he said the last time I listened to him, and gave links on that topic. Then a statement was made in response, and I researched that and showed it to be untrue. In the course of this, I pointed outo politifact, which - regardless of whether someone says they are biased or in fact biased - gives detailed descriptions of a number of false statements, including a number they judge under “pants on fire” (a silly name, but clearly one that indicates, in their opinion, Beck was so far off the truth as not to be innocent).

So, I’ve met any burden of proof. I could go through everything media matters says about Beck, but some of what they note is just stuff that is a little over the top or that media matters disagrees with, and some are verifiable lies. To sort it out, I would need to independently research the links, etc.

And the question is, what do you consider “proof” of a pattern or intention. If I spent two hours going over the links, and came up with seven pretty clear falsehoods, would that prove to you he is a liar? Fifteen?

I don’t make a moral distinction, for someone in Beck’s position, between recklessness and intent.

But hyperbolic statements, whether believed or not, are not the same as lies.

They can be worse than lies, equal to lies, or less harmful than lies. It depends on the statement and the lie it is compared with. Again, you are making a moral distinction that I don’t necessarily think is particularly important in this case, and regardless the behavior is equally immoral, , and the effect is the same. The main reason that lying is important to me in this case is that Beck uses small to mid sized lies to sustain a false narrative, and then generate fear based on that largely false narrative that is harmful to conservatives and to the nation. So, in my view, he (probably) lies more than most in his position, and he couldn’t possibly fashion the hyperbolic narratives without using the lies as points of persuasion. But, as you may guess, I find little benign in the man. But recklessness is not forgivable, and neither is hyperbole on this scale. The defense that he is “merely” a reckless, serial exaggerator isn’t very convincing.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Everytime I’ve listened to Beck, he has engaged in “intentional lies, meant to deceive the listener.” That’s why he is so poorly suited to preach to people about values.

Almost too many to mention, and individually, they aren’t always significant.

The last time I listened to Beck, he had a bit on something someone from the Apollo Alliance said. He stated, at least five times, that the Apollo Alliance wrote the stimulus bill.

I can find other examples.

And the fact is that no one claimed the Apollo Alliance “wrote the health care bill” except Beck and that in making the claim, again and again, Beck is playing people for fools.

Every time I listen to Beck, I review his claims, and usually they are untrue.

So, the burden of proof is on you because of the above statements. You have made it out so that everyone here thinks that you watch Beck on a regular basis, take notes, and research what he says. Although I believe his claims on the Apollo Alliance were from last year, you can not seem to provide anything other than that, and I’ve provided evidence that it is questionable. It is possible, and likely, that the Apollo Alliance was consulted by certain members of congress during the process of writing this bill. It is possible that they heavily influenced it. I’m no expert, but I know that bills are not always written by the people you elected to office. I think they draw up a rough draft, send it to a team of lawyers and consultants who technically write the bill for them, they send it back to the congressman is “supposed” to read it sign off and send it the the proper channels.

Here is a direct quote from Beck’s show:

I think there was a very telling quote from Harry Reid about the stimulus bill. I want to get this exactly right. He said, “The Apollo Alliance has been an important factor in helping us develop and execute a strategy that makes great progress on these goals and in moving the public to support them.”

And I think that second part is really critical, the way that brought together all of the major elements of the leftist coalition and they used it to bring public opinion to them. Now, historically, the unions have been very much against environmental regulation.

The insight here with Apollo and Van Jones and so on is that if you raid the U.S. Treasury and you take all these money and use it to subsidize these so-called green jobs and make them union jobs, give money to the social justice street organizers and so on, you can get every one of these leftist constituencies on the same side with taxpayers on the other side. And they can loot the U.S. treasury in order to support all of their friends.

Hmm, wonder what Reid meant by that.

It is about the truth.

The truth, is Beck is exactly right about us losing our country. Our country, as Ridge said, is socialist. And it is becoming more and more so. That is undeniable truth, and that is what Beck preaches. And the truth is, the more socialist we become the more destruction we do to the individual, and the more destruction we do to the individual the more we do to the family.

Taking the country back, means taking it back to the days when marriages lasted. Back to a time when the divorce rate was low and religion was important. When people lived within their means and abortion was illegal. If people can not truly see the decline of our society and the increase in our government corruption and draw the same conclusions that people like Beck and I do, then we will just continue down this same road.

I’m curious, what do you think of Judge Andrew Napolitano?

youtube.com/watch?v=M1P53wMbnsw

 

[Nec5]

politifact.com/personalities/glenn-beck/statements/

In a Dec. 3, 2009, broadcast, Beck decried that Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, appears more times in a White House visitor log release than anyone else.

“You’ve got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country,” Beck said. “If I would have told you instead that the most frequent visitor of the White House, over the secretary of state and everybody else, is a labor union president [Stern] who has repeatedly said workers of the world unite … would you have believed it?” (For the record, “Workers of the world, unite!” is the popular, if unofficial, translation of the final exhortation in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto .)

We found the source of Beck’s claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern’s name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including Clinton, who was listed three times.

But that’s not the whole story.

Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).

Among those who visited more frequently than Stern, according to the combination of the two logs, were Lewis (Lee) Sachs, counselor to Treasury Secetary Timothy Geithner, with 92 visits; associate attorney general Tom Perrelli, with 49; Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski with 47; Spencer Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general, with 38; and Health and Human Services office of health reform director Jeanne Lambrew, with 27. (Stern visited twice more during the period covered by the second batch of data, giving him a total of 24 visits.)

Another complication is that the first batch of data – covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead – is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, that name would not appear in the database. So there’s no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public. (All records dated after Sept. 15, 2009, will be released, the White House says, with exceptions for issues of national security, personal safety and a few other caveats.)

Finally, there are a lot of important people whose visits are not ordinarily captured by the White House log system – most notably, Cabinet members, like the one Beck mentioned, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

While the visitor logs show a mere three visits by Clinton, we were able to confirm at least 26 separate White House visits by the secretary of state by using three public Web sites – the White House’s own site, the White House Flickr site and the State Department’s site. Our sources column at the right includes the full list of Clinton’s 26 visits, with links to the documentation. Since the White House has said that it cannot fulfill our request for a full listing of Clinton’s White House visits, it’s possible that the number of Clinton visits is actually higher. (And we have not included instances in which Clinton met with the president in locations away from the White House itself, such as flights aboard Air Force One and foreign travel, even though we found evidence documenting those sorts of visits as well.)

So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect. We rate his statement False.

So let me get this straight.

1. Beck was correct based on the information released disclosing a six month period of people having access to the white house.
2. The information changed only a week before he made the statement (hardly a lot of time when doing research).
3. The site references an unnecessary and arcane procedure for shaping these logs, which involve public requests and leaving out certain individuals.
4. Obama promised transparency.
5. Andy Stern visited the White House many times more than many people, not that we can ever know that because the White House logs are never accurate by the site’s own admission.

Hardly a lie by Beck. It’s mainly another example of a terribly corrupt and cumbersome bureaucracy avoiding real transparency. It sounds to me like Beck’s point holds true. And politifact won a Pulitzer in 2009, which is rarely a good sign.

 

[Good_News_1]

So, the burden of proof is on you because of the above statements.

This is getting ridiculous. If you want to make excuses for Beck, fine. I don’t have a “burden of proof.” Regardless of whether I do nor not, I have more than met the fictional hurdle of burden of proof. You want to split hairs and make excuses. I think someone on national television should be held to a standard a little higher than someone ranting on a street corner. I’m not interested in going another round, because I’m actually a little bored with winning at this point.

The truth, is Beck is exactly right about us losing our country. Our country, as Ridge said, is socialist. And it is becoming more and more so. That is undeniable truth, and that is what Beck preaches.

The truth is, that’s beyond absurd, and not even worth discussion or debate.

I’m curious, what do you think of Judge Andrew Napolitano?

Never seen him before. He has nice hair. Why?

 

[Good_News_1]

1. The information changed only a week before he made the statement (hardly a lot of time when doing research).

Hardly a lot of time when doing research??? Wow.

1. The site references an unnecessary and arcane procedure for shaping these logs, which involve public requests and leaving out certain individuals.

Gosh, if I were on national television, with a budget to hire a couple college students to do some fact checking so I didn’t mislead my trusting audience, I would understand how the list was compiled, and if I was misinformed by my own research or someone else’s, I would retract or modify my statement and take corrective action, to preserve my precious reputation.

1. Obama promised transparency.

Beck promises he checks his sources. Call it a draw, at best.

1. Andy Stern visited the White House many times more than many people,

But that isn’t what Beck said, is it???

And politifact won a Pulitzer in 2009, which is rarely a good sign.

The Pulitizer is a negative?

 

[bbarrick8383]

This is getting ridiculous. If you want to make excuses for Beck, fine. I don’t have a “burden of proof.” Regardless of whether I do nor not, I have more than met the fictional hurdle of burden of proof. You want to split hairs and make excuses. I think someone on national television should be held to a standard a little higher than someone ranting on a street corner. I’m not interested in going another round, because I’m actually a little bored with winning at this point.

The truth is, that’s beyond absurd, and not even worth discussion or debate.

Never seen him before. He has nice hair. Why?

He’s a very intelligent man. He was the youngest judge in NJ. Pro-life, Catholic.

Take the time, if you are interested in the truth, and listen to his video’s on youtube. Like the one I linked to. Let me know if you do, and I’ll tell you more about him.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don’t make a moral distinction, for someone in Beck’s position, between recklessness and intent.

They can be worse than lies, equal to lies, or less harmful than lies. It depends on the statement and the lie it is compared with. Again, you are making a moral distinction that I don’t necessarily think is particularly important in this case, and regardless the behavior is equally immoral, , and the effect is the same. The main reason that lying is important to me in this case is that Beck uses small to mid sized lies to sustain a false narrative, and then generate fear based on that largely false narrative that is harmful to conservatives and to the nation. So, in my view, he (probably) lies more than most in his position, and he couldn’t possibly fashion the hyperbolic narratives without using the lies as points of persuasion. But, as you may guess, I find little benign in the man. But recklessness is not forgivable, and neither is hyperbole on this scale. The defense that he is “merely” a reckless, serial exaggerator isn’t very convincing.

Possibly you make no distinctions between recklessness and intent, but the law certainly does, and in a very major way. So, in the realm of human judgments, that might be instructive.

I understand that you don’t like Beck. But it has to be recognized that hyperbolic statements are pervasive in politics. I am not sure what the ratio of hyperbole to “flat” factual statements is, but it would be extremely high. All politicians and all pundits do it. So, of course, do all sales people.
So does everybody who is making an argument or nearly any kind. One could go on and on.

For goodness sake, if you take the health insurance bill alone, we have received how many versions of the cost now? After hearing that the bill would not cause premiums to rise, at least one government source says they will, after it previously said it wouldn’t. We heard that it would not add to the deficit. Then we were told that it would. Are they lying? Are they reckless? Or are they only stating opinions based on what facts they thought believable at the time? Going a step further, when the president of the U.S. assured everyone that it would not cost the government anything, was he lying? Was he engaging in hyperbole? Was he stating his belief? Should he have known better than to say what he did? Was he being reckless?

Not being one of his regular watchers, I can’t say that he never lies. I will say that on those few occasions when I did watch him, he didn’t say anything that was an outright “lie”. Yes, he did put things in a dramatic fashion. But that’s not the same thing as lying.

Most definitely, his calling Obama a Marxist, if that’s what he said, is not readily identifiable as a “lie”. Beck might well believe that. Maybe he has sufficient reason to say it, and maybe he doesn’t. But if he believes it, it isn’t a “lie” to say it. Perhaps it’s even true. Nobody knows Obama’s mind but Obama. But as citizens we have some duty to try to figure out what the thought patterns are of those who govern us. If he says Obama is ruining the country, there is no particular reason to think he doesn’t believe it, and he most definitely isn’t the only person who says it or believes it. Half the people in the media say it in so many words. Perhaps more than half now.

Finally, I doubt there is a pundit on earth who has not said something that was provably untrue. Some, no doubt, lie. Some got bad information. Some took some bit of evidence and extended it.

So far, I have not, in this thread, seen anything that really looked like a proven outright lie to me.

Dislike Beck if you want. It’s a free country. But that’s different from catching him deliberately misleading viewers.

 

[Good_News_1]

He’s a very intelligent man.

Probably so. I do note from Wikipedia that he was slammed pretty heavily in National Review for not being much of a Constitutional scholar, and getting facts wrong. Do I know whether National Review is right? No: I’d have to look more deeply.

Take the time, if you are interested in the truth, and listen to his video’s on youtube. Like the one I linked to. Let me know if you do, and I’ll tell you more about him.

The truth about what, exactly?

 

[Good_News_1]

Possibly you make no distinctions between recklessness and intent, but the law certainly does, and in a very major way.

Criminal, yes, civil, no. But I didn’t think we were in Court.

All politicians and all pundits do it.

Watch a Presidential debate. Then watch Glenn Beck. With Beck, hyperbole is constant and in all caps.

For goodness sake, if you take the health insurance bill alone, we have received how many versions of the cost now?

I’d need to go check. I can get back to you.

Most definitely, his calling Obama a Marxist, if that’s what he said, is not readily identifiable as a “lie”.

I see. It’s ok to call the President a Marxist on national television, because he might subjectively believe it’s true, no matter how irresponsible.

So far, I have not, in this thread, seen anything that really looked like a proven outright lie to me.

Well, I’ve learned elsewhere in this threat that Politifact is unreliable because it received the Pulitizer prize. And when it documents, in detail, false statements from Beck and gives them the “pants on fire” label, that counts for zero in your mind. Which means, to me, that evidence doesn’t matter: Beck will never be proven a liar in your mind, and the argument will never advance, no matter what is presented. Thankfully Politifact hasn’t received the Nobel, or they would be due even less consideration.

 

[Good_News_1]

For goodness sake, if you take the health insurance bill alone, we have received how many versions of the cost now?

I could be wrong, but I think two from the CBO. The second added costs for the IRS and other administrative agencies of $115 billion. That’s an increase of about 12% by my math.

The way it came about was a request from a Congressman, apparently to put some detail to figures that were left as “such sums as may be necessary.”

cbo.gov/ftpdocs/114xx/doc11490/LewisLtr_HR3590.pdf

I’m not sure what I think of this. The additional funds are discretionary - the Congress doesn’t need to appropriate them, and in fact I have heard opponents suggest the bill could be starved by refusing the appropriations. The Congress could decide to enforce the mandate with a light hand or a heavy hand, it seems to me, so these costs are probably variable. Leaving the discretionary costs out could have been strategic on the Democrats’ part. It partly depends on what the CBO’s usual practice is with regard to these sorts of discretionary costs: if they are generally left out, I would judge the Democrats’ innocent, if they are generally included, then I might fault the Congressman for having them scored.

I

 

[bbarrick8383]

Probably so. I do note from Wikipedia that he was slammed pretty heavily in National Review for not being much of a Constitutional scholar, and getting facts wrong. Do I know whether National Review is right? No: I’d have to look more deeply.

The truth about what, exactly?

That’s for you to decide. When it comes to misinformation and politics, the truth is often whatever we want it to be. Even though it may not be the truth.

Listen to him, and I believe he has a show on Fox as well now. Do all the fact checking you did on Beck to him, see where it leads you.

 

[kitkatty]

Taking the country back, means taking it back to the days when marriages lasted. Back to a time when the divorce rate was low and religion was important. When people lived within their means and abortion was illegal. If people can not truly see the decline of our society and the increase in our government corruption and draw the same conclusions that people like Beck and I do, then we will just continue down this same road.

I would like to add to that taking our country back definitly needs to include many people becoming less self centered and immature.

 

[JackVk]

Taking the country back, means taking it back to the days when marriages lasted. Back to a time when the divorce rate was low and religion was important. When people lived within their means and abortion was illegal. If people can not truly see the decline of our society and the increase in our government corruption and draw the same conclusions that people like Beck and I do, then we will just continue down this same road.

I would like to add to that taking our country back definitly needs to include many people becoming less self centered and immature.

Amen.

 

[mtolympus]

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor. 3:17)

I am really pleased and impressed with the inter-faith response to Becks message in Washington DC. I also like this qoute that I found on another thread:

“It is not a unity of religion we seek but a union of religious people. We may not be able to meet in the same pew, but we can meet together on our knees (as Christians)” Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.

 

[Good_News_1]

Taking the country back, means taking it back to the days when marriages lasted. Back to a time when the divorce rate was low…draw the same conclusions that people like Beck and I do,

What did Beck say at the rally about the divorce rate?

 

[Catherine_D]

“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” (2 Cor. 3:17)

I am really pleased and impressed with the inter-faith response to Becks message in Washington DC. I also like this qoute that I found on another thread:

“It is not a unity of religion we seek but a union of religious people. We may not be able to meet in the same pew, but we can meet together on our knees (as Christians)” Archbishop Fulton J Sheen.

Exactly.

Beck claims to not be political, particularly with this rally. Others will argue about that, but I will say that I believe the main political beneficiary of everything that Beck has done (although I doubt this was his purpose) is Mitt Romney.

A few years ago, many Evangelicals wouldn’t even consider voting for a Mormon. Since that time, maybe Romney hasn’t been welcomed by Evangelicals, but Beck has. Beck may be Romney’s best friend when it comes to soliciting the votes of Evangelicals because he’s shown Evangelicals that they can join with Mormons in achieving common goals. Romney needs more than that to get elected, but if he can get Evangelical votes now, that’s something he didn’t have before.

 

[bbarrick8383]

Exactly.

Beck claims to not be political, particularly with this rally. Others will argue about that, but I will say that I believe the main political beneficiary of everything that Beck has done (although I doubt this was his purpose) is Mitt Romney.

A few years ago, many Evangelicals wouldn’t even consider voting for a Mormon. Since that time, maybe Romney hasn’t been welcomed by Evangelicals, but Beck has. Beck may be Romney’s best friend when it comes to soliciting the votes of Evangelicals because he’s shown Evangelicals that they can join with Mormons in achieving common goals. Romney needs more than that to get elected, but if he can get Evangelical votes now, that’s something he didn’t have before.

And it seems to me that, unlike Catholics, the large majority of mormons are on the same page with one another. Compared to Catholics though, I doubt they will swing an election one way or the other. Whereas if Catholics had voted against abortion last election, Obama wouldn’t be there.

About half or so of Catholics tend to rationalize their vote for the party of abortion over the other by coming up with all sorts of excuses.

 

[Catherine_D]

And it seems to me that, unlike Catholics, the large majority of mormons are on the same page with one another. Compared to Catholics though, I doubt they will swing an election one way or the other. Whereas if Catholics had voted against abortion last election, Obama wouldn’t be there.

About half or so of Catholics tend to rationalize their vote for the party of abortion over the other by coming up with all sorts of excuses.

Unfortunately, that’s all too true.