Chris Christie, Mike Bloomberg, Haley Barbour have a very bad December - The Hill's Pundits Blog

Chris Christie, Mike Bloomberg, Haley Barbour have a very bad December - The Hill's Pundits Blog

It has been a tough December for media darlings in American politics. Let’s give three examples:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) faces a barrage of criticism from New Jersey voters for choosing to continue vacationing in sunny Florida while voters were deluged with snow, ice and blizzard. His Republican lieutenant governor was in Mexico during the blizzard, visiting an ill relative. No fault in that, but the governor should have been at his desk dealing with the blizzard and not engaging in leisure, entertainment, sporting and bathing pursuits while New Jersey voters were suffering the snow.

Christie's public-relations machine then tried to escape responsibility. Everyone knows it snows in New Jersey, he said. Bad answer. Bad plan. Bad time for partying in the sun.

Christie's numbers were down significantly before his Florida visit, a fact the political chattering class that boosts Christie for 2012 is not yet aware of. He might turn out to be a good governor, or he might be a major flop, but he will not be on the Republican ticket in 2012. Not ready for prime time, not even close.

Meanwhile, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a man I greatly admire, had a disastrous blizzard himself. While Bloomberg was teasing the media about national politics, and recently going to China to discuss U.S.- Chinese finances, he should have been well-aware of the weather report predicting a blizzard disaster well ahead of the event.

Mayor Bloomberg blew it. He was not prepared and his administration was not ready. The snow piled up and the good people of New York are not happy campers. The mayor responded by blaming the people for complaining about the poor performance of his government. Now he has apologized.

Simply put, Gov. Christie and Mayor Bloomberg did not "stick to their knitting.” They dropped the ball, and made major unforced errors.

Not to be outdone, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), a man I greatly respect who has been mentioned as a candidate for the Republican nomination, initiated a discussion about which 1960s segregationist group he preferred. Need I say more?

Somewhere in the West Wing of the White House, David Axelrod is smiling.

Trust me.

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• Haley Barbour, nowhere fast (maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com)
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Reagan’s Revolution: Stoking White Racism

A Time for Change

Things do not happen. Things are made to happen. – JFK

Revolution: Stoking White Racism

LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act in 1964

LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965

3 Civil Rights workers who were murdered in Neshoba County on June 21, 1964

Ronald Reagan made his first speech as a presidential candidate in Neshoba County

CNN has a post about LBJ and Reagan “loyalists” clashing over the “Obama agenda.”  


The article is essentially about the competing viewpoints about the economic 
legacy of LBJ and Ronald Reagan. One signed into legislation the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which changed life in the South as the old guard knew it.  
Those acts made Barack Obama’s candidacy an eventual possibility.  
Having been a Southern legislator, LBJ knew Republicans would benefit from the angry 
Southern backlash.  LBJ told Bill Moyers, “We’ve lost the South for a generation”  
after signing the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

It was Reagan’s intention to undo the Great Society.  He spoke in code and used dog 
whistle politics to speak to those who were unhappy with the civil rights and voting rights 
laws that had been passed. In 1980, Reagan spoke at the Neshoba County fair, which was 
his the first time he spoke after receiving the Republican nomination.  At that time, 
Neshoba was infamous for the murders of the three boys above by members of the
 Ku Klux Klan who were in Mississippi to try to encourage African Americans to vote.  
In an Op-Ed opinion in the New York Times, Bob Herbert explained the true significance 
of Reagan’s actions:

"It was a dangerous mission, and Andrew’s parents were reluctant to let him go. But the 
family had always believed strongly in equal rights and the benefits of social activism. 
“I didn’t have the right,” Dr. Goodman would tell me many years later, “to tell him 
not to go.”

After a brief stopover in Ohio, Andrew traveled to the town of Philadelphia in Neshoba
 County, Mississippi, a vicious white-supremacist stronghold. Just days earlier,
 members of the Ku Klux Klan had firebombed a black church in the county and had 
beaten terrified worshipers.

Andrew would not survive very long. On June 21, one day after his arrival, he and 
fellow activists Michael Schwerner and James Chaney disappeared. Their bodies 
wouldn’t be found until August. All had been murdered, shot to death by whites enraged
 at the very idea of people trying to secure the rights of African-Americans.

The murders were among the most notorious in American history. They constituted Neshoba
 County’s primary claim to fame when Reagan won the Republican Party’s nomination for 
president in 1980. The case was still a festering sore at that time. Some of the conspirators 
were still being protected by the local community. And white supremacy was still the order 
of the day.

That was the atmosphere and that was the place that Reagan chose as the first stop in his 
general election campaign. The campaign debuted at the Neshoba County Fair in front of 
a white and, at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000, chanting: “We want Reagan! We 
want Reagan!”

Reagan was the first presidential candidate ever to appear at the fair, and he knew exactly 
what he was doing when he told that crowd, “I believe in states’ rights.”

***

Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. 
Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. 
The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew.

He was tapping out the code. It was understood that when politicians started chirping about 
“states’ rights” to white people in places like Neshoba County they were saying that when 
it comes down to you and the blacks, we’re with you.

And Reagan meant it…

***
Throughout his career, Reagan was wrong, insensitive and mean-spirited on civil rights and 

other issues important to black people. There is no way for the scribes of today to clean up 
that dismal record.

To see Reagan’s appearance at the Neshoba County Fair in its proper context, it has to be 
placed between the murders of the civil rights workers that preceded it and the 
acknowledgment by the Republican strategist Lee Atwater that the use of code words 
like “states’ rights” in place of blatantly bigoted rhetoric was crucial to the success of 
the G.O.P.’s Southern strategy. That acknowledgment came in the very first year of the 
Reagan presidency.

Ronald Reagan was an absolute master at the use of symbolism. It was one of the primary 
keys to his political success.

You can hear the videotape of Reagan’s Neshoba County Fair speech here.  An unlikely 
first stop for the Presidential nominee, unless you are intent on making a statement.

Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman connected the dots on Reagan’s exploitation 
of the white backlash against the civil rights movement and “the rise of the conservative 
movement.” Krugman argues that voting data corroborates that non-Southern whites never 
turned against the Democratic party; rather, the only shift was the formerly Democratic 
white southerners.

…everyone knows that white men have turned away from the Democrats over God,
 guns, national security and so on. But what everyone knows isn’t true once you exclude 
the South from the picture. As the political scientist Larry Bartels points out, in the 1952 
presidential election 40 percent of non-Southern white men voted Democratic; in 2004, 
that figure was virtually unchanged, at 39 percent.

More than 40 years have passed since the Voting Rights Act, which Reagan described in 1980
 as “humiliating to the South.” Yet Southern white voting behavior remains distinctive. 
Democrats decisively won the popular vote in last year’s House elections, but 
Southern whites voted Republican by almost two to one.

So this seismic shift that the Republicans / conservatives / right wingnuts talk about from 
the Democratic party to the GOP really only occurred in the South.  Reagan used Nixon’s 
model of “constructing a politics and a strategy of governing that attacked policies targeted 
toward blacks and other minorities without reference to race — a conservative politics that 
had the effect of polarizing the electorate along racial lines.”

According to Krugman, this was an intentional strategy based on a concession that the GOP 
had not had much luck winning the African American vote. “The G.O.P.’s own leaders admit 
that the great Southern white shift was the result of a deliberate political strategy. ‘Some 
Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying 
to benefit politically from racial polarization.’ So declared Ken Mehlman, the former chairman 
of the Republican National Committee, speaking in 2005.”  Ronald Reagan used it, exploited 
and benefited from it.  Some examples of Regan’s exploitation of racism:

He was opposed to the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was the same year that 
Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney were slaughtered. As president, he actually tried to 
weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

He opposed a national holiday for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., giving in only when 
Congress passed a law creating the holiday by a veto-proof majority

He tried to get rid of the federal ban on tax exemptions for private schools that practiced 
racial discrimination.

in 1988, he vetoed a bill to expand the reach of federal civil rights legislation. Congress 
overrode the veto.

Reagan also vetoed the imposition of sanctions on the apartheid regime in South Africa. 
Congress overrode that veto, too.

When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the 
story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting.

in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food 
stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. 
True, as The New York Times reported, the ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration 
before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never 
used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large 
black man.

Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South”

In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the 
verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating in 1983, Reagan 
fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission.

The upside to all of this ugliness is as relevant today as it was on the day that Krugmen 
wrote his article.  He argued that Reagan’s support for “states rights” was “a coded declaration 
of support for segregationist sentiments.”  Krugman argues that a permanent conservative 
majority will never be maintained because as “we have become a more diverse and less racist 
country over time. The “macaca” incident, in which Senator George Allen’s use of a 
racial insult led to his election defeat, epitomized the way in which America has changed for 
the better.”  The direct link between the conservative movement and racial backlash has been 
undermined by what Barack Obama discussed in his inauguration speech– that seismic shift 
in politics that is directly linked to the declining power of that racial backlash.

So when you saw “the base” showing up at Sarah Palin rallies last year where her supporters 
where blatantly and openly racist, that’s no surprise.  They are the people who watch Faux 
News (Fox News) psycho-tainment, listen to Rush, love Bill O’Reilly, think Hannity 
is a “great American,” and love Sarah Palin because she speaks the code of Nixon and 
Reagan.

“We believe that the best of America is not all in Washington, D.C. … We believe that the best 
of America is in these small towns that we get to visit, and in these wonderful little pockets of 
what I call the real America, being here with all of you hard working very patriotic, um, very, 
um, pro-America areas of this great nation.” –Sarah Palin, speaking at a fundraiser in 
Greensoboro, N.C., Oct. 16, 2008

No wonder her supporters say that she is the second coming of Reagan.  She doesn’t have his 
skills, but she exploits the ugly racial backlash just the way he did.  They are shrinking, but 
the work is not done.  Clearly.

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• "[T]hat interview with Rand Paul on May 19, because it got so much attention
• , it hurt my ability to get conservative guests and Republicans to 
• come on this show for the rest of the year."(maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com)
• Years later, Miss. still lacks civil rights museum(seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Apparently Burning down a church and murdering three young 
• people is "not that bad" to Haley Barbour (iflizwerequeen.com)

Haley Barbour, organ broker - Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour corrects a miscarriage of justice but with ethically dubious conditions.

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‎'Two bombs worth' of nuclear material secured - Rachel Maddow interviews Thomas D'Agostino, head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, about the removal of weapons grade uranium from Ukraine, avoiding a potential global catastrophe.

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If U.S., China would listen | The Japan Times Online

If U.S., China would listen | The Japan Times Online

NEW YORK — In 2010, economic conflict between the United States and China became one of the most worrying global developments. The U.S. pressed China to revalue the renminbi, while China blamed the U.S. Federal Reserve policy of "quantitative easing" for currency market turmoil. The two sides are talking past each other even as both are making valid points.

The global imbalances that were at the root at the Crash of 2008 have not been corrected — indeed, some have grown larger. The U.S. still consumes more than it produces, running a chronic trade deficit. Consumption remains too high, at nearly 70 percent of gross domestic product, compared to an unsustainably low 35.6 percent of GDP in China. Households are over-indebted and must save more.

The U.S. economy needs higher productivity, but U.S. corporations, which are operating very profitably, are accumulating cash instead of investing it — with quantitative easing aimed at heading off deflation.

In China, by contrast, bank lending needs to be reined in, but regulatory efforts have been hindered by off-balance-sheet financing and the development of an informal quasi-banking sector. The economy is showing signs of overheating.

These imbalances could be reduced by the U.S. using budget rather than monetary stimulus, and China allowing the renminbi to appreciate in an orderly manner. But domestic politics in both countries stand in the way.

In the U.S., the Republicans, who won the midterm elections, were determined to extend the Bush tax cuts in their entirety. That left little room for a budget stimulus, while the tax cut is more likely to be saved than invested. That's why the Fed had to resort to quantitative easing, even though it tends to stimulate asset bubbles rather than productive investments.

China interprets quantitative easing as a plot to devalue the dollar and force a revaluation of the renminbi. The U.S., in turn, cannot understand why China should be so reluctant to allow the renminbi to appreciate, as doing so would help to dampen inflationary pressures.

Maintaining a two-tier currency system and an undervalued currency has been the key to China's success. It is much more efficient than taxation as a means of skimming a significant share of payments for Chinese exports, which accrue as currency reserves and can be used at the central government's discretion. This has made the central government very powerful, attracting the best brains into its service.

China would prefer to improve the trade balance through removal of trade barriers rather than exchange-rate adjustment, because it is reluctant to put additional strain on its export industries and eager to gain access to American technology.

The U.S. maintains restrictions on high-tech exports to China because of the latter's lack of respect for intellectual property rights. The U.S. prefers higher Chinese import prices to help relieve deflationary pressures — which would also eliminate the need for quantitative easing, removing a source of Chinese complaints.

As things stand now, each country is pursuing policies that do not help the other and are suboptimal for their own economies. The entire global economy would benefit if both sides listened to each other and coordinated their economic policies. But the opposite is happening. The conflict in economic policy is spreading to the geopolitical sphere. First, China asserted a "core interest" in the South China Sea, effectively claiming its 200-mile (320-km) "special economic zone" throughout the region as territorial waters.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton countered that America has "interests" in this area, bringing the two countries to loggerheads over a vast and critically important maritime region in Asia.

Then China became embroiled with Japan in a dispute over the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands. Few Westerners appreciate how seriously China takes this issue. Geologically, the islands are connected to Taiwan, and Japan gained control over them by taking possession of Taiwan in 1895. This elevates these uninhabited rocks to the same level of importance as Taiwan or Tibet in the official "one China doctrine." China greatly resented it when the U.S. endorsed the Japanese position.

China's rapid rise, and America's equally rapid loss of power and influence, have created a dangerous situation. With the exception of the peaceful transition of world leadership from Britain to the U.S. after World War I, such global power shifts have always involved armed conflict. The deterioration in U.S.-China relations is particularly troubling because it takes place against a background of global imbalances and serious internal political divisions, which drive both countries to take intransigent positions.

The global imbalances could be cured, and conflicts avoided, only by greater international cooperation. Macro-economic policy is not the only area that would benefit from better understanding between the two countries.

Consider Afghanistan. The country is rich in mineral resources that China needs, but it is the U.S. that spends $10 billion a month occupying a country whose annual GDP is only $15 billion. As things stand, the U.S. is likely to reduce its presence before Afghanistan is pacified and the mineral resources developed. Since China is the obvious market for these minerals, it would make sense for China to encourage continued American engagement by making a significant contribution to the cost of training the Afghan army.

China was farsighted when it adopted the doctrine of harmonious development, but recently it has veered from it. Apparently, the rate of change has been too rapid for Chinese leaders to adjust to it. The leadership is preoccupied with taking care of the needs of its own people, many of whom still live in poverty. But China has become a great power, with all the obligations for maintaining world order that go with it, whether the leadership acknowledges it or not.

When U.S. President Barack Obama visited China in November 2009, he acknowledged China's rapid rise and offered a partnership in maintaining and improving the world order. But the Chinese leadership declined the offer, explaining that China is a developing country that can hardly meet its own people's needs. That rift is unfortunate, because improvement in Chinese living standards ought to go hand in hand with Chinese participation in building a better world order.

Only if China pays closer attention to how it is perceived and accepted by the rest of the world can it continue to rise in a peaceful manner.

China's leadership knows that it must fulfill its own people's minimum expectations in order to maintain internal peace and stability; now it must learn to make itself acceptable to the rest of the world in order to preserve external peace and stability. That means becoming a more open society and playing a more active role in maintaining a peaceful and stable world order.

China ought to regard this not as a burdensome obligation, but as an inspiration to greatness. The best periods in Chinese history were those in which the country was most open both internally and toward the outside world.

By contrast, when it comes to military might, China will not be a match for the U.S. for some time to come. If current trends continue, China is bound to devote an increasing proportion of its resources to the military at the expense of the general population, whose expectations the leadership will find increasingly difficult to meet.

In that case, today's prosperity is likely to prove transient. Worried neighbors are likely to seek protection under the wings of the American eagle, reinforcing the U.S. military budget, which is already oversized. Unless a deliberate effort is made by both sides to reach a better understanding, the world faces a turbulent time in 2011 and beyond.

George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management. © 2010 Project Syndicate (www.project-syndicate.org)

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Image via WikipediaMichael Vick, Racial History and Animal Rights

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Michael Vick, Racial History and Animal Rights

Melissa Harris-Perry | December 30, 2010

Last night I had one of those awful television moments that sometimes afflict those of us who spend part of our life in classroom where we have 90 minutes to discuss a topic and the other part of our life on television where we are constrained to four-minute analyses. On Wednesday evening I joined The Rachel Maddow Show to discuss the current flap surrounding Michael Vick and President Obama.

My goal was to offer some historical context for understanding the vastly different responses to Vick’s crime, to the severity of his punishment, and to the sense that he should be given a second chance to earn a living as a professional football player. I believe that to understand these different public responses we need to know how the Vick case evokes often unspoken, but nonetheless powerful, and deeply emotional interconnections between the rights of black Americans and of animals. Instead, having vastly underestimated the allotted time for the segment I instead seemed to argue that Vick’s acts were justified by the history of American racism. This touched off quite a flood of hate mail to my email inbox last night. So I’ve decided to make one more effort to discuss this complicated issue.
Last year I was teaching an introductory politics course at Princeton University when a campus animal rights group [1] brought to campus a fascinating and provocative exhibit that linked animal cruelty to human degradation, imprisonment and slavery. The images in the exhibit were part of a larger international PETA effort [2]. They were disturbing, but also very powerful.

Many African American students on campus were deeply offended, hurt and angry about the exhibit's comparison of animal suffering to the realities of the slave trade and lynching. The Organization of Black Students organized a protest and boycott. The campus animal rights group organized a teach-in. I had leaders from both student organizations in my class that semester. The tension, emotion, and analytic challenges raised by the exhibit became an important aspect of the class. A group of students even made a film about the issue for the final class project. As I sought to help guide my students through these interactions I opened up a new line of research on the politics of race and animal rights.

Recall that North American slavery of the 17th and 18th century is distinguished by its "chattel" element. New World slavery did not consider enslaved Africans to be conquered persons, but to be chattel, beast of burden, fully subhuman and therefore not requiring the basic rights of humans. By defining slaves as animals and then abusing them horribly the American slave system degraded both black people and animals. By equating black people to animals it both asserted the superiority of humans to animals, arrayed some humans (black people) as closer to animals and therefore less human, and implied that all subjugated persons and all animals could be used and abused at the will of those who were more powerful. The effects were pernicious for both black people and for animals.

Equating black people to animals was a practice that continued after emancipation. Consider the image below. It is a picture of an Alabama store during the Jim Crow era. The sign reads: No Negro or Ape Allowed in the Building.

This pair of images reminds that these comparisons continue in contemporary popular culture and often with particular relevance to American sports.

When the abuse and oppression of an entire group of people is justified as acceptable because they are defined as animals, then it stands to reason the society is suggesting that abuse and oppression are acceptable ways to treat animals. Michael Vick committed horrendous acts of cruelty. I have had dogs as pets for my entire life. I am sickened by his actions. At the same time I recognize that he is one individual in a larger society that is profoundly complicit in the abuse and mistreatment of animals. Ideologies of white supremacy have particular culpability in that attitude toward animals because it was part of the governing ideology of slavery and segregation.

Given this history we might think that African Americans would be particulalry strident animal rights activists, seeing their interests as profoundly linked. But the relationship between race, rights, and animals is more complicated. Dogs, for example, were used by enslavers to catch, trap and return those who were trying to escape to freedom. Dogs were used to terrorize Civil Rights demonstrators. In short, animals have been weapons used against black bodies and black interests in ways that have deep historical resonace.

Not only have animals been used as weapons against black people, but many African Americans feel that the suffering of animals evokes more empathy and concern among whites than does the suffering of black people. For example, in the days immediately following Hurricane Katrina dozens of people sent me a link to an image of pets being evacuated on an air conditioned bus [3]. This image was a sickening juxtaposition to the conditions faced by tens of thousands of black residents trapped by the storm and it provoked great anger and pain for those who sent it to me.
I sensed that same outrage in the responses of many black people who heard Tucker Carlson call for Vick's execution as punishment for his crimes. It was a contrast made more raw by the recent decision to give relatively light sentences to the men responsible for the death of Oscar Grant. [4] Despite agreeing that Vick's acts were horrendous, somehow Carlson's moral outrage seemed misplaced. It also seemed profoundly racialized. For example, Carlson did not call for the execution of BP executives despite their culpability in the devastation of Gulf wildlife. He did not denounce the Supreme Court for their decision in US v. Stevens (April 2010) [5] which overturned a portion of the 1999 Act Punishing Depictions of Animal Cruelty. After all with this "crush" decision the Court seems to have validated a marketplace for exactly the kinds of crimes Vick was convicted of committing. For many observers, the decision to demonize Vick seems motivated by something more pernicious than concern for animal welfare. It seems to be about race.
It is into this murky racial history that President Obama inadvertently waded this week. Whatever the quality (or lack thereof) of his argument about incarceration and its lifelong effects on those who serve time, I suspect the President could not be heard over the din of emotion, anxiety, and history around race and animals in this country. Last night I found myself similarly unable to articulate the difficult and complex relationships that can make it so difficult to hear one another across this divide. My goal was not to defend Vick nor to condemn him, but to try to understand our very different national reactions to him.

Related articles

• Prof. Melissa Harris-Perry Ties Michael Vick Case To Slavery, Civil Rights On MSNBC (mediaite.com)
• What Tucker Carlson said about Michael Vick. (althouse.blogspot.com)

15 Whoppers Glen Beck Did Not Get Fired For In 2010 - Media Matters for America

Image via Wikipedia

15 Whoppers Glen Beck Did Not Get Fired For In 2010

December 30, 2010 10:38 am ET

In 2010, Glenn Beck repeatedly made up facts on Fox News show -- a barrage of lies that would force any credible news outlet to fire him. Media Matters counts down 15 of the most notable fibs that Beck told this year on Fox News, culminating with the biggest lie of all.

No. 15 The Fed Hoards Its Profits

Beck Complains That "Nobody" Is Looking To Recover The Fed's Profits. During a January interview with Sarah Palin, Beck discussed the Federal Reserve's 2009 profits, and claimed, "Exxon had their record profit a couple of years ago. It was $45 billion. The Fed just had record profit, over $50 billion. No one's having hearings on the Fed. Nobody is looking for a windfall profit tax on the Fed. We can't even open the Fed's books." [Fox News, Glenn Beck,1/13/10, via Nexis]

REALITY: The Fed "Returns Its Profits To The Treasury." The Washington Post reported that the Federal Reserve "will return about $45 billion to the U.S. Treasury for 2009 ... the highest earnings in the 96-year history of the central bank. The Fed, unlike most government agencies, funds itself from its own operations and returns its profits to the Treasury." The Post added that these profits "are good news for the federal budget and a sign that the Fed has been successful, at least so far, in protecting taxpayers as it intervenes in the economy -- though there remains a risk of significant losses in the future if the Fed sells some of its investments or loses money on its stakes in bailed-out firms." [The Washington Post, 1/12/10]

No. 14 Tax Dollars Funded An Art Exhibit Actually Paid For By Private Donors

BECK: "And Then You Have The Tax Dollars Funding This Wonderful Art Display. It's Christmas At The Smithsonian." Beck said of an exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, which is titled "Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture":

Perfect storm. Eroding values. Hard work, sacrifice, thrift, honor, truth, God. As a nation born out of faith in God, how's that going today, huh? Twenty-five percent of those under 30 years of age describe their religion as atheist, agnostic, or nothing in particular. Now, as you get older, it goes down. Thirty to 40 years old, only 19 percent. Ages 40 to 50, 15 percent. If you're over 60, less than 10 percent say that.

And then you have the tax dollars funding this wonderful art display. It's Christmas at the Smithsonian. Here's this wonderful -- oh, look, it's Jesus with ants on him. They describe it as the first major exhibition to focus on the sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.

What? You got to be kidding me, right? What does this have to do with the birth of the baby Jesus, and why is he now covered in ants? Whose values are these? And you wonder why there's the breakdown of the family. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/30/10]

REALITY: Smithsonian "Receives Public Funds" But "Does Not Use That Money For Exhibitions." The Washington Post reported:

The exhibition, which opened Oct. 30, was funded by the largest number of individual donors for a Portrait Gallery show. The show, which cost $750,000, was also underwritten by foundations that support gay and lesbian issues.

As part of the Smithsonian, the gallery receives public funds. Overall, the Smithsonian gets about 70 percent of its annual budget from the federal government, but it does not use that money for exhibitions. [The Washington Post, 11/30/10]

No. 13 Obama Did Not Make Oil Spill "Our Priority"

BECK: Obama Did Not Prioritize The Oil Spill. Beck falsely claimed that Obama did not prioritize ending the oil spill in the Gulf:

BECK: What are we doing now with the spill? If this were really about the spill, we would first work on, what? Stopping this!

Before talking about energy and taxes and cap and trade or solar panels or saying, "Don't tell me that we can't fundamentally transform the country into solar panels and green energy." You would stop the oil spill. You would get a tourniquet. This should be our priority. But it's not. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/17/10]

REALITY: Obama Said "Make No Mistake: We Will Fight This Spill With Everything We've Got For As Long As It Takes." During an address from the Oval Office prior to Beck's claim, Obama stated: "But make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever's necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy." [Remarks By The President To The Nation On The BP Oil Spill, WhiteHouse.gov, 6/15/10]

REALITY: Obama Had Called The Spill "My Top Priority." During an earlier press conference, Obama said: "Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don't know the facts. This has been our highest priority since this crisis occurred." He also said, " But here's the broad point: There has never been a point during this crisis in which this administration, up and down up the line, in all these agencies, hasn't, number one, understood this was my top priority -- getting this stopped and then mitigating the damage; and number two, understanding that if BP wasn't doing what our best options were, we were fully empowered and instruct them, to tell them to do something different." [Remarks By The President On The Gulf Oil Spill, WhiteHouse.gov, 5/27/10]

No. 12 U.S. Sending "Another Trillion Dollars, Your Tax Dollars" Over To Europe

BECK: "Now We Find Out Through The Fed That We Are Going To Do Almost Another Trillion Dollars, Your Tax Dollars, Over To Europe." Discussing efforts by the International Monetary Fund to stabilize European economies, Beck said:

BECK: We also told you that the IMF would bail out Europe. Here we were on this program, oh, I don't know how many months ago. Watch.

BECK [video clip]: We're not only bailing ourselves out, Fannie and Freddie, but now we're trying to bail out Europe as well. The European Union, along with the IMF, is giving $1 trillion to Greece -- $1 trillion. The U.S. contributes 17 percent of the IMF funds.

BECK: OK. So, we told you that, and nobody really paid attention. Now we find out, through the Fed, that we are going to do almost another trillion dollars, your tax dollars, over to Europe.

We also found out that we have sent $3.3 trillion in our bailout, a lot of it went over to Europe, went over to France, went to Germany, Spain, et cetera, et cetera. And we're sending more. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 12/2/10]

REALITY: The WSJ Reported, "The U.S. Isn't Discussing A Larger International Monetary Fund Contribution To The European Rescue Package." The Wall Street Journal reported:

The U.S. isn't discussing a larger International Monetary Fund contribution to the European rescue package, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

European Commission officials have been discussing whether to increase the EUR750 billion rescue package as a way to handle possible sovereign debt problems in Spain and other countries. A bigger fund would likely include a larger financial contribution from the IMF, which now is committed to spending as much as EUR250 billion on euro-zone rescue loans.

(This story and related background material will be available on The Wall Street Journal Web site, WSJ.com.)

U.S. Undersecretary of Treasury Lael Brainard is now in Germany discussing the Europe's plans to contain the euro zone's sovereign debt woes. A U.S. official said those talks don't now include a larger IMF contribution. [The Wall Street Journal, 12/1/10]

REALITY: AP Reported That A U.S. Official "Said That An Addition To The IMF Support Package Was Not Something That Was Being Discussed Currently." The Associated Press reported:

A U.S. official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity because discussions were still ongoing, said that an addition to the IMF support package was not something that was being discussed currently.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner did dispatch Treasury Undersecretary Lael Brainard, Treasury's top official on international matters, for talks with European officials. Brainard had meetings in Madrid with economic officials on Wednesday and was scheduled to be in Berlin on Thursday and Paris on Friday.

The U.S. "can't afford to let Europe implode," said David Gilmore of Foreign Exchange Analytics. But the reported statement by the U.S. official does not necessarily mean that the U.S. has already agreed to a deal allowing the IMF to contribute more money or that it will pony up more money for Europe itself.

Investors were relieved by the implication that the EU and the IMF might be assembling a larger bailout fund, Gilmore said, because of the threat of there not being enough funds for Spain, should it need a rescue.

A spokesman for the EU's monetary affairs chief Olli Rehn said he had not heard of talks about extending the EFSF fund. [Associated Press, 12/1/10]

No. 11 Beck Time Travels To 1995 To Show George Soros "Didn't Mince Words" In 2004

BECK: In 2004, Soros Called The Election "Not A Normal Election," And Said That "In Periods Of Regime Change, Normal Rules Do Not Apply." Accusing financier and philanthropist George Soros of setting up a "shadow party" to interfere in the 2004 elections, Beck cited David Horowitz and Richard Poe's The Shadow Party and said:

BECK: A shadow party is not a political party, it is a -- at least not in a tangible sense. It works outside the normal electoral system. In 2000, Soros funded one-third of the shadow conventions. Do you even remember these? They were run by Arianna Huffington, the president's favorite source of news. And one of the lead organizers next to her was Jim Wallis, one of the guys who is campaigning against this program, surprise, surprise.

The idea was to parallel the Democratic and Republican conventions -- the shadow convention. Huffington said at the time, the message of the shadow conventions was, quote, "Not left or right, and the answers to these issues are not going to be found in the old ideas of the past. Clearly, the Great Society solution of top-down programs has failed." Top-down programs. "Instead, the answers could be found in the raw power," quoting, "of government appropriations." Wow.

But it was the next election cycle that truly launched the shadow party. In 2004, when Soros didn't mince words, he stated, quote, "This is not a normal election. These are not normal times." And, quote, "I do not accept the rules imposed by others. If I did, I would not be alive today. And in periods of regime change, normal rules do not apply. One needs to adjust one's behavior to the changing circumstances."

By the 2004 election cycle, Soros' shadow party had shaped the Democratic message. Under Soros, the guidance of the shadow-party infrastructure had assumed the coherent shape by early 2004. They were seven extensively independent nonprofit groups, which included MoveOn.org that would help the Democrats. Really? [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/09/10, emphasis added]

REALITY: Soros Said "I Do Not Accept The Rules Imposed By Others" And "In Periods Of Regime Change, Normal Rules Do Not Apply" In 1995 - Not 2004. Those comments are actually from the 1995 book Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve:

KRISZTINA KOENEN (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung): You have been accused of playing by your own rules and changing the rules when it suits you.

SOROS: I plead guilty. I do not accept the rules imposed by others. If I did, I would not be alive today. I am a law-abiding citizen, but I recognize that there are regimes that need to be opposed rather than accepted. And in periods of regime change, the normal rules don't apply. One needs to adjust one's behavior to the changing circumstances.

Look at the tremendous changes I have gone through on a personal level. Consider my career as a philanthropist. In the beginning, I avoided any personal involvement. I sought to remain anonymous and shunned publicity. Later, when the revolution gathered momentum, I accepted the fact I was deeply involved. After 1989, I actively sought to gain a hearing for my views. That alone was a major change. At the same time, I continued to abstain from doing business in Eastern Europe. Now, I have given that up to. The reversal from my starting point, when I dissociated myself from my philanthropy, is complete. I accept everything that I do, whether as an investor or as a benefactor as an integral part of my existence. And I am very happy about it because in a sense my whole life has been one long effort to integrate various facets of my existence.

There is a remarkable parallel in the evolution of my attitude toward philanthropy and my attitude toward making money. At first, I didn't want to identify myself with my business career. I felt there was more to me than making money. I kept my private life strictly separate from my business. Then I went through a rough patch in 1962, when I was practically wiped out, and it affected me deeply. I had some psychosomatic symptoms, like vertigo. It made me realize that making money is an essential part of existence. Now I am completing the process by doing away with the artificial separation between my activities as investor and as philanthropist.

The internal barriers have crumbled and I am all of one piece. It gives me a great sense of fulfillment. I realize that I cut a larger-than-life figure and I feel ambivalent about that. On one hand, I find it gratifying, but on the other, the sheer magnitude of my activities, both in business and in philanthropy, makes me uneasy. I must admit that I wanted it that way and I probably could not feel all of a piece if I weren't larger than life. It makes me somewhat abnormal and that is the source of malaise. Still, it is better to have abnormal accomplishments than to harbor abnormal ambitions. For the first 50 years of my life, I felt as if I had a guilty secret now it is out in the open and I am proud of what I have accomplished. [Soros on Soros, Pages 145-146, emphasis added]

No. 10 "Every Single American Who Invests" Earns More Than $250,000 Per Year

BECK: President Obama Proposed To Increase The Capital Gains Tax On "Every Single American Who Invests." Beck falsely said that Obama "sought to raise the capital gains tax, which affects every single American who invests, which -- I know that sounds like the big Wall Street fat cats, but if you have a 401(k), that would be you." [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 4/7/10]

REALITY: Obama Proposed Capital Gains Increase Only On "Upper-Income" Earners. The White House budget for fiscal year 2011 called for reinstating the 20 percent capital gains tax rate only on families with income greater than $250,000 and on individuals with income greater than $200,000. [Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2011]

No. 9 Rauf Is Not A "Peaceful Muslim" Because Someone Else Said Something Nine Years Ago

BECK: "Would A Moderate Imam, A Peaceful Imam Employ Another Imam Who" Said 9-11 Attacks Were "The Jews' Fault"? Discussing Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is a member of the board of trustees at the Islamic Center of New York and who is spearheading efforts to build an Islamic community center in Manhattan, Beck claimed:

Now, let me ask you this: would a moderate imam, a peaceful Muslim employ another imam who told an Arabic language Web site that, quote, "Only the Jews could have perpetrated the 9/11 attack." That kind of sounds like Jeremiah Wright, doesn't it?

And if Americans only knew that it was the Jews' fault, they, quote, "would have done to Jews what Hitler did," end quote. And that Jews, quote, "disseminate corruption in the land and spread heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism and drugs." Oh, that's the kind of moderate imam I've been looking for right there at ground zero. How about you? [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 8/10/10, via Nexis]

REALITY: Comments Attributed To Muhammad Gemeaha. In October 2001, the Middle East Media Research Institute posted a translation of an October 4, 2001, interview that Muhammad Gemeaha gave to the website lailatalgadr.com:

Q: "Does this mean that the Jewish element played a role in igniting the flame of fitna (internal strife)?"

Gamei'a: "The Jewish element is as Allah described it when he said: 'They disseminate corruption in the land.' We know that they have always broken agreements, unjustly murdered the prophets, and betrayed the faith. Can they be expected to live up to their contracts with us? These people murdered the prophets; do you think they will stop spilling our blood? No." "You see these people (i.e. the Jews) all the time, everywhere, disseminating corruption, heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs. [Because of them] there are strip clubs, homosexuals, and lesbians everywhere. They do this to impose their hegemony and colonialism on the world." "Now, they are riding on the back of the world powers. These people always seek out the superpower of the generation and develop coexistence with it. Before this, they rode on the back of England and on the back of the French empire. After that, they rode on the back of Germany. But Hitler annihilated them because they betrayed him and violated their contract with him." "We saw these Zionists, just one hour after the event, broadcasting on the BBC, the biggest media channel, that the Arabs, and particularly the Palestinians, were celebrating and rejoicing over the American deaths. [To do this] they broadcast a video from 1991, [filmed] during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But Allah thwarted them when a professor from a Brazilian university stated that the video was a forgery, because she had a copy of it. These people have a script prepared in advance, and they have the ability to fabricate events in their favor."

[...]

Q: "What about the American president's declarations that the war that the U.S. is waging is a crusade?"

Gamei'a: "Herein lies the danger. As President Bush said, this is a crusade against Islam and against Muslims, but the American people are innocent in this matter, because the war was planned falsely." "This war will destroy everything. This is [the kind of] war that the American president tried to avoid, when he [tried] to take back what he said. He went to the Islamic center in Washington and took back his words, but he did this only after he incited the souls and revealed what happened behind the scenes of American policy." "For this reason, I advise every Arab and every Muslim leader not to offer any aid whatsoever to the oppressing superpower [to help it] attack Muslims, because this is a betrayal of Allah and his Prophet..." "On the news in the U.S. it was said that four thousand Jews did not come to work at the World Trade Center on the day of the incident, and that the police arrested a group of Jews rejoicing in the streets at the time of the incident... This news item was hushed up immediately after it was broadcast... The Jews who control the media acted to hush it up so that the American people would not know. If it became known to the American people, they would have done to the Jews what Hitler did! ..." [The Middle East Media Research Institute, 10/10/01]

REALITY: NY Times: Gemeaha Departed Islamic Cultural Center Of New York City Before Making Those Comments. The New York Times reported:

Three days after the terrorist attack on the United States, Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, leader of a prominent mosque on East 96th Street in Manhattan, delivered a sermon in English to an interfaith audience calling for peace, healing and love among people of all religions.

Two weeks later, he suddenly moved his family back to Cairo, telling an Arabic-language newspaper that he left because his family had been threatened at their home on the Upper West Side. He sent a letter of resignation to the mosque.

His departure from the Upper East Side mosque, the Islamic Cultural Center of New York City, which regularly draws 4,000 Muslims for Friday prayers, comes amid questions about an interview he reportedly gave to an Arabic Web site on Oct. 4 saying that Muslims in America were being persecuted, that their children were being poisoned by Jewish doctors in American hospitals, and that ''Zionists'' in command of the nation's air traffic control towers aided the suicide hijackings. [The New York Times, 10/23/01]

REALITY: Conservative Author David Horowitz: Gemeaha Left ICC Before Comments. David Horowitz wrote:

Rauf is a permanent trustee of an Islamic Cultural Center (ICC) which his father founded in New York City. Until September 28, 2001 -- seventeen days after 9/11 -- the ICC employed Imam Sheik Muhammad Gemeaha, who later would say that "only the Jews" could have perpetrated the 9/11 attacks; that if Americans only knew about this Jewish culpability, "they would have done to Jews what Hitler did"; and that Jews "disseminate corruption in the land" and spread "heresy, homosexuality, alcoholism, and drugs." [DiscoverTheNetworks.org]

REALITY: NY Times: Head of Islamic Center's board was "outraged" by comments. The New York Times also reported that Mohammad Adbullah Abulhasan, "who heads the mosque's board," criticized the comments, saying they did "not represent at all the policy and the beliefs of the Islamic Cultural Center." A November 2, 2001, New York Times article further reported that Abulhasan was "outraged" by the comments, which he said "did not reflect the position of the mosque":

Ambassador Abulhasan said that he was outraged by the remarks and stressed that they did not reflect the position of the mosque. He said he had expressed his displeasure to Imam Gemeaha in a call to Cairo.

He said he told Sheik Gemeaha that the essence of what he said was wrong, was against Islam and was "against what you taught us." [The New York Times, 11/2/01]

No. 8 Soros Manipulated Congress To Introduce Energy Legislation Eight Years After Congress First Introduced It

BECK: Soros Manipulated Lawmakers To Pursue Cap And Trade. Discussing an interview with Soros that was published on November 24, 2008, Beck said:

BECK: Soros also heavily promotes green jobs and cap and trade. Also, days after Obama was elected, he called for a new energy bill. "I think this is a great opportunity to financially deal with global warming and energy independence. The U.S. needs a cap-and-trade system with the auctioning of licenses for emissions rights. I would use the revenues from these auctions to launch a new, environmentally friendly energy policy that would be yet another federal program that could help us overcome the current stagnation."

Well, Congress introduced, but you stood up, and you said, "Uh, I don't think so." Hm-mmm. The audience started to resolve. Cap and trade failed. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/9/10]

REALITY: Cap And Trade Has Been Debated In Congress For More Than 10 Years. Contrary to Beck's claim that Soros manipulated Obama to introduce cap and trade legislation "days after" he was elected, Congress has been debating similar proposals for more than a decade. [The Washington Post, 8/19/01]

REALITY: Obama Supported A Cap And Trade Bill During The 2008 Election. In fact, then-Sen. Barack Obama supported legislation that would have created a cap-and-trade system while campaigning in 2008. [The Washington Post, 6/1/08]

No. 7 "Zero Warming For Over A Decade"

BECK: There Has Been "Zero Warming For Over A Decade." Beck claimed, "Cap-and-trade is the biggest socialist scam, totally discredited climate change industry and zero warming for over a decade. Zero warming for over a decade." [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 4/23/10]

REALITY: NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), The National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), The U.K. Met Office, And The World Meteorological Organisation Have All Stated That 2000-2009 Was The Warmest Decade On Record For The Globe.

NASA Goddard Institute For Space Studies: 2000-2009 Was "The Warmest Decade On Record." ["2009: Second Warmest Year on Record; End of Warmest Decade," National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies, 1/21/10]

NOAA: "The 2000-2009 decade is the warmest on record." ["State of the Climate Global Analysis," National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, October 2010]

Met Office: 2000-2009 "has been, by far, the warmest decade on the instrumental record." ["'Noughties' confirmed as the warmest decade on record," Met Office, 12/7/09]

WMO: "2000-2009, The Warmest Decade." ["2000-2009, THE WARMEST DECADE, World Meteorological Organization, 12/8/09]

No. 6 Obama's Trip To India Would Cost "Up To $2 Billion"

BECK: Obama's Trip To India Will Cost "$2 Billion." Beck falsely claimed that Obama's November trip to India "could cost up to $2 billion to make sure he's safe." [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/4/10]

REALITY: White House Spokesman Matt Lehrich Called That Figure "Wildly Inflated." In a statement Media Matters for America obtained and made public the day before Beck's broadcast, White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said that the figure -- which had been reported by the Press Trust of India -- had "no basis in reality." Lehrich also said, "Due to security concerns, we are unable to outline details associated with security procedures and costs, but it's safe to say these numbers are wildly inflated." [Media Matters, 11/3/10]

No. 5 Obama's "Fishing Ban"

BECK: Obama Wants To Ban Fishing. Beck said that a "report claims that Obama will no longer listen to the public as he tries to prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing on some of the nation's oceans, coastal areas, and great lakes, even some inland waters. No more fishing." Beck also said, "How about a fishing ban? A fishing ban that would put jobs at risk in the middle of an economic crisis, but beyond that, you and your son being told you can't go there to fish! What the hell is happening to us?" [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 3/10/10]

REALITY: "Fishing Ban" Falsehood Debunked As "Absurd" Before Beck Promoted It. The day before Beck promoted the "fishing ban" claim, Charlotte Fishing Examiner.com columnist Jeffrey Weeks wrote:

In what may be the worst example of outdoor sports reporting in the history of America, ESPN has claimed that President Barack Obama is on the verge of banning recreational fishing.

ESPNOutdoors.com writer Robert Montgomery posted an article today claiming that the administration's decision to end the public comment phase of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force means that Obama is likely preparing to issue an executive order outlawing recreational fishing in America.

As a sportsman who covers fisheries management and politics I do think there are many issues surrounding the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force and its eventual recommendations that all fishermen should be aware of and concerned about.

But to go from concern to suggesting that President Obama is about to ban fishing in America is the most absurd and irresponsible thing I have ever seen a major news outlet publish. There is not even a remote possibility that a standing president of the United States will outlaw fishing in America. [Charlotte Fishing Examiner, Examiner.com 3/9/10]

No. 4 The Brazilian Oil Conspiracy Theory

BECK: The Obama Administration Loaned Money To Brazil In A Plot To Enrich George Soros. Beck falsely claimed that the Obama administration was lending $2 billion to Brazil to benefit foreign oil interests at the expense of the U.S. economy in order to enrich George Soros:

BECK: I'm not sure if [Soros] knew that the administration would be making a $2 billion preliminary commitment for Petrobras, for Petrobras, for exploration, just days after he strengthened his investment. Isn't that weird? You see, he's got some connections here, but I'm sure he had no idea what was coming on the other side of the circle? No. It's probably just another one of those bad luck situations for Obama, because this doesn't seem to pass the smell test at all. No. Billionaire investor dumps money into a state-controlled Brazilian oil company; days later the American administration dumps $2 billion into the exact same company. What are the odds, Gilligan?

Let's go here. George Soros starts the Center for American Process with John Podesta. John Podesta, Center for American Progress, selects the Obama transition team. Soros buys $900 million in gasoline powered bras. Then, in a completely unrelated story, BP has their oil spill. But wait a minute, who's this guy? John Podesta. John Podesta is the guy who does all the lobbying for BP? Certainly -- I'm sorry, Tony Podesta -- certainly no relation to John Podesta, other than they're brothers. We'll have to come back to that one later in the show. So then Center for American Progress starts to make Obama policy. This one, we'll show you, laid out by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal. One of the policies: cap and trade, which goes right to Crime Inc. and all of the Obama friends with the Climate Exchange in Chicago. That's weird.

Then Obama suspends the deepwater drilling at 1,500 meters. He says "Hey, hey, that's dangerous! Fifteen hundred meters, that's crazy." Petrobras is drilling at 2,777 meters. Obama knows it and loans $2 billion to Petrobras. Last stop, Petrobras shareholders get rich. Oh my gosh, we're back at the beginning: shareholder, Petrobras. Getting rich. You getting screwed. You see how this works? [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/21/10]

REALITY: Bush Appointees At Export-Import Bank -- Not Obama -- Unanimously Approved Loan To Brazil. FactCheck.org called the claim "bogus," noting that the Export-Import Bank of the United States approved a "preliminary commitment" to Brazil to finance "their purchases of U.S. equipment, products and services." At the time, "the Bank's Board consisted of three Republicans and two Democrats, all of whom were appointed by George W. Bush." [FactCheck.org, 9/18/09]

REALITY: Loan Is "For The Purchase Of American Goods And Services." Politico's Ben Smith reported:

A spokesman for the bank, Phil Cogan, noted to POLITICO that the bank does not rely on tax money and that Palin's statement ignores the bank's central function: To lend money to foreign companies for the purchase of American goods and services.

"It has to be produced by U.S. workers," Cogan said. Palin's statement refers to "creat[ing] jobs and health benefits in the U.S."

"That's exactly what a purchase financed by the U.S. government would do," Cogan said.

In this case, Cogan said, the proposed loan would likely finance engineering services, sales of ships to service oil platforms, or drilling equipment. [Politico.com, 8/19/09]

No. 3 Ohio City "Hasn't Taken Any Money From The Government"

BECK: Wilmington "Hasn't Taken Any Money From The Government." Promoting his Fox News special in Wilmington, Ohio -- a city hit by significant job losses in recent years -- Beck falsely claimed, "this town hasn't taken any money from the government." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 11/22/10]

REALITY: Wilmington Had Received Millions In Stimulus Funds As of November 22, recipient reports posted at Recovery.gov showed that the city of Wilmington received at least $2.6 million in stimulus funds. [Recovery.gov, accessed 11/22/10]

REALITY: Surrounding County Received Millions In Stimulus Funds. As of November 22, 2010, recipient reports posted at Recovery.gov showed that Clinton County Ohio had received at least $4 million from the stimulus. [Recovery.gov, accessed 11/22/10]

REALITY: Wilmington Officials Asked For $63 Million In Stimulus Funds. Wilmington city officials confirmed to Media Matters that the city requested more than $63 million under the stimulus. State officials said that use of Medicaid, food stamps, cash assistance, and unemployment insurance have increased in recent years. [Media Matters, 12/15/10]

No. 2 Soros Was Responsible For "Taking The Property From The Jews As A Teenager"

BECK: "Soros Was Asked If He Felt Guilt At All About Taking The Property From The Jews As A Teenager. He Responded, No." From Glenn Beck:

BECK: There's a lot of meat here that I need you to do your own homework on and learn the truth yourself. But we want to find out a little bit more about him and who he is and where did he come from.

His childhood is shocking, traumatic. He grew up in Nazi Europe. Fourteen years old, he had to help the government confiscate the lands of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors. He didn't grow up in a Jewish household. His mother was a strong anti-Semite -- George Soros' words, not mine.

But when he had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors who were being sent to the gas chambers, I can't imagine what that would do to a teenager, or anybody, an adult. Well, what did it do to George Soros? In an interview with Steve Kroft, Soros was asked if he felt guilt at all about taking the property from the Jews as a teenager. He responded, no. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/9/10]

REALITY: Soros Said He "Had No Role In Taking Away That Property." In an interview with Kroft, Soros explained that he felt no guilt because he "had no role in taking away that property":

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's--that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not -- not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't -- you don't see the connection. But it was--it created no--no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c -- I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was -- well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the--whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt. [CBS, 60 Minutes,12/20/98, via Nexis]

REALITY: Biographer Reported Soros "Collaborated With No One." In Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire -- a book cited by Beck during the program -- Michael T. Kaufman detailed Soros' reaction during the interview, as well as Soros' actions in Nazi-occupied Hungary:

While he was living with Baumbach as Sandor Kiss, an event occurred that more than a half a century later would become the basis of charges that George Soros, the international financier and billionaire, had somehow collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of his homeland and had exploited his fellow Jews. The issue was raised in a bizarre television profile and interview of Soros aired on the CBS television program 60 Minutes in December of 1998. In the segment, Steve Kroft, the interviewer, noted with prosecutorial gusto that George's father had "bribed a government official to swear that you were his godson," and added that this survival strategy "carried a heavy price tag." For, he continued, "as hundreds of thousands of Jews were being shipped off to the Nazi death camps, a thirteen-year-old George Soros accompanied his phony godfather on his rounds, confiscating property from the Jews." Visibly dumbfounded by the line of questioning, Soros could only manage to say that he had no role in the seizure of property and was merely a spectator. To underscore Kroft's point, film footage showed masses of Hungarian Jews being led away at gunpoint.

This is what actually happened. Shortly after George went to live with Baumbach, the man was assigned to take inventory on the vast estate of Mor Kornfeld, an extremely wealthy aristocrat of Jewish origin. The Kornfeld family had the wealth, wisdom, and connections to be able to leave some of its belongings behind in exchange for permission to make their way to Lisbon. Baumbach was ordered to go to the Kornfeld estate and inventory the artworks, furnishings, and other property. Rather than leave his "godson" behind in Budapest for three days, he took the boy with him. As Baumbach itemized the material, George walked around the grounds and spent time with Kornfeld's staff. It was his first visit to such a mansion, and the first time he rode a horse. He collaborated with no one and he paid attention to what he understood to be his primary responsibility: making sure that no one doubted that he was Sandor Kiss. Among his practical concerns was to make sure that no one saw him pee. [Soros: The Life and Times of a Messianic Billionaire, Page 37]

No. 1 Fox Will Fire Beck If He Tells Lies

BECK: "[D]o You Really Believe That I Could ... Just Make Things Up And Remain On The Air?" Beck said:

What is it that we make up? I would ask you to just take a moment here -- do you really believe that I could -- or anybody here at Fox News could -- just make things up and remain on the air? No. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 11/29/10]

BECK: "If I Get Out Of Control And Start Leveling Baseless Charges ... Guess What Happens? I'm Fired." Beck claimed, "If I get out of control and start leveling baseless charges that can't be backed up, guess what happens? I'm fired. I lose my job. If Congress does the same thing, you lose your freedom." [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 6/14/10]

BECK: "If I Were Making Up Lies ... Rupert Murdoch Would Fire Me." Attacking Soros on his show, Beck said: "If I were making up lies about you, I couldn't stay on the air. First of all, you wouldn't have to pressure. Rupert Murdoch wouldn't put me on the air. He would fire me." [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 11/10/10]

BECK: "If I Was Inaccurate, [Fox] Would Have Fired Me Long Ago." Responding to groups putting pressure on Fox News because of Beck's rhetoric, Beck said:

I have nothing bad to say about Fox. They have left me alone. They have let me do -- they hold me responsible for what I say. They make sure that it's right and it's accurate. They do that. They - If I was inaccurate, they would have fired me long ago. Long ago. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Glenn Beck Program, 10/28/10]

REALITY: Despite A Litany Of False Claims, Fox News Has Not Fired Beck.

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