Apparently Beck's never read The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

Does America have a will? How will we decide who gets her stuff when America finally dies?

I call dibs on the BPA, the TVA, the Soo Locks and Angel Island...

Glad to see the right wing continues to promote the best and brightest among them.

@3 Fine. Dibs on all the ICBM's and the launch codes. Oh, and an aircraft carrier. Dibs on an aircraft carrier.

Question of the day: If America dies, to the natives get it back?

@6 Nope. Apes!

He just makes s#!t up as he goes on. "Legalistic games"? He sounds like a drunk guy on the corner muttering about pigeons, but in this case it's a sweeping immigration reform bill that will help our country. "Save the nation"? What is this guy talking about?

By the way, "there is no 2016" for the GOP if they don't pass immigration reform and keep alienating Hispanic voters. They will never again win a national election.

Well, for once, I don't see how I can refute his logic. Well played, sir.

Heh...well, the transcript didn't make sense to me (dunno why I would have expected anything else) so I actually listened to it.

I have to say, in defense of the Father Coughlin of our times, wack-a-doodle that he is, he is right. It's not the end of our America - the America of the 80% of us who are not teahadi Christo-fascist Know-Nothing Nativists - but it is the end of that faction's outsized influence on our politics, courtesy of the geography gerrymander of our Constitution.

They've lost control of the national government and they're afraid they're about to lose control of their party. The Christo-Fascist Know-nothing Nativists will never win another national election, but they could hang onto their veto via the Congress if they can hold onto the GOP. You pass immigration reform - allow the GOP to participate and start to rehabilitate itself, and these whackadoodles will not only lose the national government (all those new democrat voters) but they'll be in retreat in the GOP civil war. Because moderate GOPers will start to be able to fight back by pursuing a more mainstream stance and policy.

The lesson of the 80s under Raygun (really since '68) is: the herd of cats known as Democrats is only held together by the glue of alienation from the odiousness of the Teahadis.

Their paranoia is appropriate...not that we're gonna confiscate their savings accounts to hand the loot off to Latin/South Americans who come running (like bible thumping Okies) across the border in a benefits (land) grab race the minute this passes. Rather, these paranoid dead-enders are facing demographic extinction. Oh, sure, like the Teahadi backlash of 2010, some retrograde reactionaries will always be among us, but they'll be consigned to the fringe.

That's what David Brook's' character-assisination/screed against Snowden yesterday was really all about: the fading power of this minority to set and enforce what 'normative' means. Brooks is wrong: it's not that society is becoming unglued and unbound by normative institutions - those remain as does the human tendency to - paraphrasing d'Toqueville - re-affirm our individualism by joining like minded groups of like-thinkers/believers. What is happening is that the old groups are being replaced - they're losing the culture/hegemony war.

Like Dead-Eye Dick said, "the death throes of dead enders". At this point they're reduced to a pathetic rear-guard retreat, simply hoping to stall the inevitable as long as possible, one skirmish at a time. Really, since this crowd is mostly dying off, perhaps they "win" if they can just stall long enough to get around to dying first. Personally as a Dem/lefty, I hope they succeed so we can keep winning and make lifetime voters out of this new bloc.

Paul, what kind of partisan sites are you going to that Glenn Beck is even on your radar? Life is way too short to poison yourself and us with this partisan garbage.

Markus: When I was young the possibility of Ronald Reagan being governor of California was the basis of comedy routines (Stan Freeburg) and being president was a throw-away line in particuarly weird Science Fiction (James Tiptree jr).

One has to dip into the fringes from time to time to keep an eye on these people. Sometimes they get power. True Believers tend not to play fair. Also: every once in a great while they have a point in their somewhere ( Beck being a likely exception).

If Paul is willing to wade in and report back: I commend him. if only because as I get older the blood pressure medication is of only so much help and short concise reports mean short BP spikes rather than a constant plateau.

That's actually one of the most coherent arguments Beck's ever made.

@11, They don't have to win a national election. They just have to win enough regional elections to make sure that the people who did win the national election can't do anything and since Democratic politicians are such a bunch of spineless pussies the Christo-facists end up getting most of what they want anyway. I've heard people like you crowing about how the Republican party is dead and we don't have to worry about them anymore. That's bullshit! I won't believe the Republican party is dead until I see the last one bleed out on the floor. Don't be complacent. Vote.