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On his MSNBC program, The Last Word, Lawrence O’Donnell spent an entire segment criticizing his show’s part-owner, General Electric, for paying no income taxes on over $5B of profits in 2010. He went even further by attacking the loopholes written into the tax code, many of them sponsored by GE’s lobbyists, that allowed such an egregious outcome to have occurred. He railed at GE’s stable of 975 tax lawyers and accountants, producing such a long and complicated tax return that the understaffed IRS could never mount an effective investigation.
Now, that is integrity writ-large, for which O’Donnell should be recognized and applauded. It is rather pathetic that integrity has become such a rare commodity in our public discourse that it is now a special event, worthy of praise and

People! Beloveds! Glenn Beck is absolutely right.
There is indeed manifest glory all around! There is divine meaning, electric significance, cosmic text messaging blasting forth this very instant from all over the world, nay the universe, both negative and positive, radiant and dangerous, Shiva and Shakti, all whirling in a great cosmic dance, from parking space to porn star, Libyan uprising to nuclear meltdown, Wisconsin insult to Indian holi festival to the very first gasping, sputtering breath of Spring.
I am delighted to share this wisdom, this sacred thrust and thrum, with the infamous Glenn Beck! I had no idea the renowned right-wing fudgeball was, like me, also a burgeoning neo-pagan tantrika with a mystical, metaorgasmic, well-caffeinated alchemist edge, studying and practicing and soaking in the universal Spanda, the eternal vibrational wisdom of the ancients.
Is it not amazing? I had no idea the so-called “King of All Semicoherence,” the same portly n’ pungent pundit who recently claimed on his radio show, in some sort of semi-garbled nonsensical half-statement, that the Japan earthquake/tsunami and subsequent nuke meltdown are very likely “a message from God,” and we’d best “buckle up” because we’re in for “a very bumpy ride” because of — well, I’m not sure what. The Clean Air Act? Abortion? George Soros? Our dependence on Japan for some vital iPad 2 components?
Doesn’t

News Corporation, the parent company of Dow Jones and Fox News, has declared itself carbon neutral. According to a memo from Chairman Rupert Murdoch:
Murdoch’s memo also says its businesses in Britain now obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. And its offices in South Brunswick, N.J., shared with Dow Jones at a corporate office campus, is nearing completion of a 4.1-megawatt solar power system that will provide nearly half of the facility’s electrical needs at peak capacity.
How wonderful that the owner of Fox News, in particular, is so forward-thinking and progressive when it comes to issues concerning the environment. Murdoch is one of the most successful media moguls on the planet, and part of this is due to his focus on the bottom

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.
The ‘GNR’ is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio’s mobile app!.
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Dems call for probe in U.S. Chamber of Commerce plot to target citizens like us; Indictment in WV coal mine disaster investigation; Deepwater drilling permits resume in the Gulf, but that’s still not good enough for Republicans; Climate scientists in fake ‘ClimateGate Scandal’ vindicated — AGAIN; PLUS: More on the WI GOP power play to privatize Wisconsin’s power plants … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below. All GNRs are always archived at GreenNews.BradBlog.com.
IN ‘GREEN NEWS EXTRA’ (see links below): NYT “fracking” bombshell: toxic & radioactive water dumped in rivers; US

Ted Nugent, the “Motor City Madman” of ’70s hard rock, has a plan to fix Social Security: eliminate it. And make workers under 45 pay to wind it up. With enemies like this, does Social Security even need friends?
At this point in his demented career, The Nuge — Tedly, Uncle Ted, what have you — is an American institution, a living, breathing parody of contemporary rugged individualism that Glenn Beck and the Tea Party would have to invent if he wasn’t already roaming the Upper Midwest.
As occasional readers of our right-wing op-ed pages know, he’s also a political scientist of sorts. This month, he’s challenging the Republican Party to put its money where its mouth is on Social

I’m ashamed. Late at night, in bed, with my laptop anchored snugly in my comforter, I watch YouTube clips of conservative pundits, usually ones with “ballistic,” “explodes” and “gets served a cold glass of shut up juice” in the title. It’s not that I’m trying to school myself in Republican talking points. There is nothing so noble about waking up to “Bill O’Reilly Discusses Lesbian Teens” branded across your Macbook screen.
These jaunts are more accurately likened to the colonial encounters of an Imperial

In 2009 the star attraction at the conservative gabfest CPAC was Rush Limbaugh, and in 2010 it was Glenn Beck. This year’s scene-stealer couldn’t make it in person. That would be Ronald Reagan:
Tim Pawlenty said that “Barack Obama is not behaving like Ronald Reagan, he’s behaving like Jimmy Carter.” (Must be the pending solar panels on the White House roof.) “I hate to tell this to our friends at MSNBC: Barack Obama is no Ronald Reagan,” Newt Gingrich told CPAC. Two weeks earlier, Mitt Romney wrote in a USA Today op-ed: “Reagan’s legacy is very much

By Mark Green
After 18 days in Cairo, protestors show that Egypt changed over 30 years, not Murbarak. He’s out, what’s in? The women also discuss Obama giving the Chamber the business… and clash on whether Rumsfeld is terrific or delusional. (Click below to listen.)
*On Egypt: Mary notes that things are rapidly shifting in Egypt (“in the time it takes to take a

Since Glenn Beck launched his television show on Fox News Channel in January 2009, the program has become the premier conservative showcase for conspiratorial incoherence. But in recent months his ratings have taken a nosedive. Most strikingly, nearly half of his audience has disappeared in the last year. Has Beck gone too far even for Fox News? And how will Beck respond to his falling fortunes? Will he take a sharp turn toward reality, or will he double down even further into the paranoid world of nonsensical conspiracy theories that has become his signature? And, if so, will Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes pull the plug before Beck implodes on the air?
Beck’s nightly fright-fests feature a famously diverse cast of

For some there is no better way to get attention for oneself than to appeal to the fears of an unknowing audience. To do so risks inciting hatred, but ultimately it may be the act of a desperate person.
These were my thoughts as I watched Glenn Beck spew his secret plot for a Muslim takeover of the world. Last week he stood at a map of the Arab states and concluded that Islam would soon be united as a caliphate stretching from Iran west to Morocco. The center, or the capital, would be Babylon, in

TWITTER: @GreenNewsReport.
The ‘GNR’ is also now available on your cell phone via Stitcher Radio’s mobile app!.
IN TODAY’S RADIO REPORT: Midwest digs out and Australia dries out — just two of this week’s ‘Storms of the Century’; Oh, look! Glenn Beck misrepresents climate science (again)!; GOP’s solution to Egypt’s unrest: more offshore drilling! … PLUS: Obama talks sexy, sexy energy efficiency … All that and more in today’s Green News Report!
Got comments, tips, love letters, hate mail? Drop us a line at GreenNews@BradBlog.com or right here at the comments link below.

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Conservatives are outraged over decisions by two federal judges ruling against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (or Obamacare as they wont to call it). They point out that the legislation was duly enacted by both the House and Senate, the elected representatives of the people and signed into law by the President of the United States, who was elected by a substantial majority of the American people. Rush Limbaugh declared it a perfect example of the men in black robes “thwarting the will of the people”. Senators Hatch and Sessions issued a joint statement reminding that they had warned about judges who would “legislate from the bench and impose their own agenda” rather than upholding and enforcing the duly adopted law of the land.
Glenn Beck cried out in despair that the decisions reminded him of what had happened in Nazi

First of all: A necessary disclosure that most long-time readers of my Philadelphia Daily News blog Attytood already know, which is that more than three decades ago, I went to high school with Keith Olbermann; in fact he was the first editor, on our school newspaper, that I ever worked for (I’m about 10 days older than Olbermann, but he had skipped two grades ahead of me — even his enemies have never said the guy isn’t smart!). So we knew each other somewhat, way back when, and then about seven or eight years ago we became occasional email buddies; I’ve also been a guest on Countdown twice. So when I watched Olbermann on MSNBC, there’s always been an element of “I knew him when” pride, and when people talked about his foibles like his mercurial disposition, I was never that outraged as some folks were, because it was pretty much just the same guy I remembered as a teenager… Keith being Keith.
Today, and at least for the near future, Keith being Keith means being

Black and white is easy; nuance is hard. Which is why it’s much easier to just lump media outlets and personalities into simple boxes: left v. right, or partisan v. objective, for example.
So if you want to play that game, it’s easy to dismiss Keith Olbermann, who broadcast his final episode of Countdown on MSNBC

If anyone thinks that the vitriol that Glenn Beck spews on his radio and TV shows doesn’t stir people to aggressive and hateful action, they should take a look at the postings on his website, The Blaze, about Frances Fox Piven.
For two years Beck has targeted the political science professor as a Marxist Machiavelli whose writings constitute a manifesto for a radical revolution.
But in recent months Beck has escalated his hate campaign against Piven, a professor at the City University of New York, former vice president of the American Political Science Association, and former president of the American Sociological Association. He labeled Piven one of the “nine most dangerous people in the world,” and “an enemy of the Constitution.”
Not surprisingly, this has led to a dramatic rise in ugly threats to the 78-year old Piven.
Some of Beck’s followers have emailed Piven directly. One of the anonymous emailers simply wrote “DIE YOU CUNT” in the subject

Since the tragic events in Tuscon, Sarah Palin has once again been at the center of American politics. An image on her website, which included a map of the US with crosshairs over Gabrielle Gifford’s congressional district as well as several others that Palin was targeting for the midterm election was viewed by some of Palin’s critics as evidence that the former Alaska governor, who has certainly been prone to aggressive and heated rhetoric and not afraid of violent imagery and language, was somehow in some way partially responsible for the shooting in Tuscon. This interpretation proved somewhat presumptive as in the days following the shooting, it became increasingly clear that Jared Lee Loughner, the man who shot Gifford and the others, was a mentally unstable man without any cohesive political views. Therefore, while it was legitimate to express concern over Palin’s rhetoric, the direct link between her and Loughner did not exist.
After being thrust into the middle of these events, presumably against her will, Palin stumbled

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – The Fox News Channel announced today that it would mark Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech by airing an opposing view.
“For years, ‘I Have a Dream’ has been synonymous with the legacy of Martin Luther King,” said the official Fox statement. “We can think of no better way to honor that legacy than by offering a strongly-worded rebuttal.”
The Fox speech, entitled “I Have a Feverish Nightmare,” will be delivered by network host Glenn Beck.
In an excerpt released to the press, Mr.

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When Sarah Palin’s team of marketers ill-advisedly placed a few crosshairs on a map of Democratic districts that included U.S. Congresswoman Gabby Gifford’s, they probably hoped to invigorate their base and rally some support. They couldn’t have known that within a few months a crazed Jared Loughner would open fire on Arizona innocents, critically injuring the Congresswoman. Regardless, the Palin team’s map took a six-person killing and breathed life into a national debate about public

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – Impressed by his speech at the University of Arizona last night, the Fox News Channel today took the extraordinary step of naming President Barack Obama an honorary American.
“Let’s face it, he’s earned it,” said Fox host Glenn Beck. “I don’t care where he came from, he’s one of us now.”
Naming President Obama an honorary American was only one of a series of conciliatory moves made today by what promises to be a kinder, gentler Fox News.
A network spokesman said that starting this week, Fox would air one minute of civil discourse every Sunday at 4 AM.

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In the days since the massacre in Arizona, the mainstream political media (and much online discussion) have zeroed in on one question: Did the uncivil political discourse (with violent imagery) of the Glenn Becks, Rush Limbaughs and Sarah Palins of the world create an environment that encouraged or allowed an unhinged character to go on a shooting spree aimed at a Democratic congresswoman.
I would like to focus on a related question: Are the right wing pundits telling the truth?
The reason for my approach is that whether or not the toxic political environment influenced Jared Loughner, it is important to recognize that for the last two years, the right wing media has employed a concerted strategy to elicit in their listeners/viewers anger and a sense of delegitimization of the government (whether literally, in the form of the birthers, or ideologically, with false claims of socialism, or in practice, with false accusations of unconstitutionality and corruption that fly in the face of history and the record). And to do so largely by making baseless charges.
And when I listened and read as these right wing purveyors of venom rejected the claim that their incendiary rhetoric might have spurred an unstable individual to action, I was struck by how, once again, their approach to the issue was to make baseless charges rather than engage on the issue.
For example, Rush Limbaugh declared:
But it was just one year ago that Limbaugh said (in reference to the economy):
Want a more recent example? On January 10, 2011, after the shooting, Limbaugh said this about claims that violent right-wing rhetoric might have influenced Loughner:
“Don’t kid yourself. What this is all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it. Criminalizing policy differences at least when they differ from the Democrat (sic) Party agenda.”
So Limbaugh asserted last year that the government is at “war” with the American people, and he claimed days ago that the Democrats want to criminalize

The subject of the tragedy in Tucson has perhaps been talked to death on the major networks, but having watched the give and take on both sides of the political spectrum, as well as those who preach moderation, it’s my view regarding Sarah Palin and her ilk, that they doth protest too much.
I’ll let slide Sarah Palin’s use of anti-Semitic terms such as “blood libel” in her desperate attempt to cast aside aspersions to her integrity, because I honestly don’t believe she has the intellectual depth to have vetted the phrase from a speech clearly written by one of her staffers. However, I do take issue with feeble offensives by her and Rush Limbaugh, Fox News’ Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and other hate spewing commentators on the right in their bid to retaliate in a “You talkin’ to me?” stance, hoping it will ricochet the charges back to liberal enemies Keith Olbermann on MSNBC and Anderson Cooper on CNN.
Let’s face facts. Whether Sarah Palin and her minions really intend for violence to result from their rhetoric is not the issue. There’s been enough craziness in our lives over the last few decades — really since the Kennedy assassination — that a truly smart and sensitive person who terms him or herself a leader, in government or in the broadcast media, newspaper or magazines, ought to know words are powerful and shouldn’t in any way provide suggestions to an unbalanced person to take what they say literally.
When Palin talks about “reloading” and puts rifle cross hairs next to the names of officials like Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, whom she wants to defeat, how can she not take responsibility when a nut case thinks she’s

Slow down America. Slow down.
There is no finish line awaiting the fastest to pass judgment. There is no prize for the swiftest rebuke of political figures supposedly not earnest or sincere enough in their apologies for violent rhetoric in the months and years preceding the tragedy in Tucson.
There is no office of any elected official hanging in the balance. Nobody is set to go to the polls this Tuesday, the next, or anytime soon.
Slow down

Five years ago, a 47-year-old Missouri woman began a duplicitous on-line courtship through MySpace with a 13-year-old neighbor who once had been friends with the woman’s daughter.
The adult, Lori Drew, flirted with the 13-year-old, Megan Meier, through the guise of a fictitious, 16-year-old character named Josh Evans. Suddenly, “Josh” broke up with Miss Meier, writing to her, “the world would be a better place without you.” Just hours later, Miss Meier hung herself in her bedroom.
Words have consequences.
Drew wasn’t charged with the child’s death. In fact, a judge reversed her conviction on computer fraud charges, saying the law was intended to deal with hacking, not murder. But for most Americans, there is something deeply disturbing, something morally, if not criminally, wrong with deliberate torment, with predatory

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) – The Fox News Channel today attempted to bust what it called a “mainstream media myth” by reporting that there was no link between matches, gasoline and fire.
“Gasoline and matches don’t start fires,” said Fox host Glenn Beck. “People start fires.”
Mr.

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