BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnapped aid worker Margaret Hassan was believed to be dead Tuesday after a video received by Al-Jazeera television showed a hooded figure shooting a blindfolded woman in the head. pistol into the head of a blindfolded woman wearing an orange jumpsuit, Al-Jazeera spokesman Jihad Ballout said. "She was presumed to be Mrs. Hassan," he told The Associated Press.

The station initially said it would air parts of the video, but Ballout then said it would not.

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Among the many illogical disconnects that have accompanied Glenn Beck's eliminationist jihad against progressives, none has been more glaring than Beck's seeming embrace of progressive civil-rights leaders like Martin Luther King.

That contradiction was simply glaring on Beck's show yesterday, when he started out by reminding everyone of the ground rules of his program's running thesis:

Beck: The enemy is not the Republicans. It's not the Democrats. It's not the President. It's not! It's the distortion of the truth, that's the enemy. That somehow or another, Big Government is good. That's not true! The Founders have been proven right, over and over and over again. When the government gets too big or out of control, it always ends the same way. And it's not a happy ending.

We're putting a documentary out called, "Progressivism: America's Cancer." It is an in-depth look at how progressives threw America way off track around the turn of the century.

For a sample of just how accurate this documentary will be, Beck then explained how exemplary those pro-gun protesters were outside the Capitol, and wasn't it remarkable how there wasn't even a pistol-whipping? But he couldn't even get this right: Beck proclaimed they had "loaded guns!" outside the Capitol, but that's not accurate: The people carrying guns had to protest outside D.C., in Virginia:

In the nation's capital, where possession of guns is strictly regulated, they came carrying only signs and handbills, which one man had thrust into an empty holster.

Beck then went on a rant contending that Bill Clinton was to blame for Oklahoma City because he had so angered right-wing nutcases like tim McVeigh that of course he was bound to go off sooner or later. (Sorta aligns with Beck's theory that if Tea Party violence erupts, it will have been deliberately provoked by Obama and Co.)

Ah, but because they have weathered this awful media storm of being accused of being unhinged xenophobes, the Tea Party folks therefore deserve to be compared to the gallant Civil Rights marchers of the 1960s, at least on Planet GlennBeckia -- because they used to say things just like that about Martin Luther King!

Beck: America Tea Party goers, you are in good company. Standing up against the government -- a government that you feel is grabbing too much power or is out of control. If you do it peacefully, you are in good company. And so far, that's the only evidence they have. Peace.

In a finishing touch, the "Speak Boldly" promotional segment then featured footage from the 1960s Civil Rights marches.

Ironically, it was just a couple of weeks ago that Glenn Beck was chiding John Lewis -- one of the most important figures of the Civil Rights era -- for having dared to walk through the crowd of anti-health-care Tea Partiers "because they wanted to compare themselves to the civil rights activists. How dare you!" he cried.

Even more ironic is a simple fact that seems to have eluded Beck's attention: Civil Rights always have been a progressive cause. And Martin Luther King was a major progressive figure. As we explained:

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David Letterman talks about his old pal, Sarah Palin in his top ten.

10. Ruined office floor by drilling for oil

9. Detached a retina from winking at the camera

8. Got confused-- thought she signed with QVC

7. Pistol-whipped three guys who called her "Tina"

6. Released a statement saying she won't follow Leno

5. At lunchtime, Todd picked her up driving snowmobile through lobby

4. Sad to learn there was no actual fox to hunt

3. Hosted a "Fire Dave" roundtable

2. Actually found a place with more white people than Alaska

1. Announced plans to run for President in 2010

And Howie Klein has some good news for a change.

Yesterday I had to put off a meeting with the Blue America attorney because he was manning a northern Virginia polling station. I hadn't realized there was a special election, but he reminded me that when lunatic-fringe sociopath Ken Cuccinelli was elected Virginia Attorney General, his state Senate seat came open. It's a Republican-leaning district and no one really expected it to go from insanely die-hard Republican to unapologetic Democratic. But I had to postpone the meeting again today because he was celebrating. His candidate, state Delegate Dave Marsden, a former Republican, won the seat last night!

Apparently the Goldman Sachs management is starting to connect the dots? Alice Schroeder from Bloomberg writes:

Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- “I just wrote my first reference for a gun permit,” said a friend, who told me of swearing to the good character of a Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker who applied to the local police for a permit to buy a pistol. The banker had told this friend of mine that senior Goldman people have loaded up on firearms and are now equipped to defend themselves if there is a populist uprising against the bank.

I called Goldman Sachs spokesman Lucas van Praag to ask whether it’s true that Goldman partners feel they need handguns to protect themselves from the angry proletariat. He didn’t call me back. The New York Police Department has told me that “as a preliminary matter” it believes some of the bankers I inquired about do have pistol permits. The NYPD also said it will be a while before it can name names.

While we wait, Goldman has wrapped itself in the flag of Warren Buffett, with whom it will jointly donate $500 million, part of an effort to burnish its image -- and gain new Goldman clients. Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein also reversed himself after having previously called Goldman’s greed “God’s work” and apologized earlier this month for having participated in things that were “clearly wrong.”

Has it really come to this? Imagine what emotions must be billowing through the halls of Goldman Sachs to provoke the firm into an apology. Talk that Goldman bankers might have armed themselves in self-defense would sound ludicrous, were it not so apt a metaphor for the way that the most successful people on Wall Street have become a target for public rage.

Common sense tells you a handgun is probably not even all that useful. Suppose an intruder sneaks past the doorman or jumps the security fence at night. By the time you pull the pistol out of your wife’s jewelry safe, find the ammunition, and load your weapon, Fifi the Pomeranian has already been taken hostage and the gun won’t do you any good. As for carrying a loaded pistol when you venture outside, dream on. Concealed gun permits are almost impossible for ordinary citizens to obtain in New York or nearby states.

In other words, a little humility and contrition are probably the better route.

Until a couple of weeks ago, that was obvious to everyone but Goldman, a firm famous for both prescience and arrogance. In a display of both, Blankfein began to raise his personal- security threat level early in the financial crisis. He keeps a summer home near the Hamptons, where unrestricted public access would put him at risk if the angry mobs rose up and marched to the East End of Long Island.

Yves has more.

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[H/t Heather]

Why is it so difficult for the Villagers to allow the natural process of investigation to take place so we can get to the truth about how the Bush Administration used torture? Peter King uses the usual conservative talking point that says we hate America if we want to find the root cause for this moral cancer in the beltway. King attacks the ACLU as America-haters when all they are doing is righting a terrible wrong that was let loose by Bush and Cheney.

Hey, I robbed a store, pistol-whipped the cashier and abused a female customer. As a few years have gone by since then, I realize now that I shouldn't do that anymore. Do you think the police, the store, cashier or woman will just let bygones be bygones? Would Peter King?

One of the main takeaways from the phony controversy over the DHS' bulletin on right-wing extremism was the self-revealing way that mainstream conservatives attempted to obliterate from public view the very real existence of the ongoing threat to their well-being from right-wing extremists.

Why the frantic effort to obscure this reality? Because they know the ideological and associative distance between far-right extremists and mainstream conservatives has shrunk dramatically over the past 10 years. They dread the consequences of what will happen when the real ugliness starts to break out.

The Ugly Storm has been gathering for awhile. We've been reporting regularly on the increasing activities of far-right extremists, particularly the anti-Obama racism rampant throughout much of this contingent. Of course, it doesn't help when mainstream conservative media are fanning those flames, either. And it seems like it's getting close to an outright explosion.

My friend Max Blumenthal went to a gun show in California and emerged with the above video and the following report:

Fueled by the screeds of radio hosts Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and the lesser-known but increasingly influential online conspiracist Alex Jones, many gun-show attendees I spoke to were convinced Obama planned to usher in a Marxist dictatorship. They warned that the president’s power grab would only begin with mass gun seizures. “If Obama takes away our guns,” a young, .45 pistol-toting man from Reno told me, “it’s just a step into trying to take away everything else.”

Indeed, in their minds, average Americans opposed to the Obama agenda would be herded into FEMA-run concentration camps by a volunteer army of glassy-eyed liberal college graduates. “When they start imprisoning Americans, and people start seeing that we’re the enemy, then that’ll make it hot,” predicted one Antioch-based young man sporting a button for former Republican presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul. “People talk about a revolution,” the young man continued, “an armed revolution. I think police crackdowns on individuals will tip the scales.”

More than a few gun dealers and attendees echoed the young man’s seeming enthusiasm for armed revolt. One Contra Costa, California-based gun dealer named Rich predicted during an otherwise casual off-camera conversation that “some nut” would assassinate Obama within one year of any Democratic attempt at gun-control legislation. While the prospect of organized right-wing violence against the federal government seems far-fetched at this point, the paranoid rhetoric I documented suggests the militia movement that organized against President Bill Clinton’s policies during the 1990s could experience a dramatic resurgence by mobilizing resentment against Obama.

The gun-show crowd is more the "Patriot" contingent of far-right extremism: obsessed with guns and conspiracy theories, yet capable of paranoid bursts of extreme violence by "lone wolf" actors.

Yet we're also seeing a similar upsurge in outright white-supremacist organizations. Newsweek also has a report on this trend from Eve Conant:

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