Poor, poor Glenn Beck. Faced with plummeting ratings, advertisers abandoning ship like rats in a storm, and a boss on a tear about the help doing political things, what else is there to do but look for an arranged marriage?

Lucky for Beck, Dick Armey is always on the lookout for a good dirt hill upon which to plant his AstroTurf. Need meets need, and ... a partnership is born. FreedomWorks, meet Glenn Beck. He only slept with Americans for Prosperity a few times ... he's still pure enough for you.

Listen carefully to the very beginning:

BECK: This half-hour is sponsored by FreedomWorks

Then the long explanation of how the elopement happened. From the beginning, I'm guessing the NRA didn't want to sponsor him? Toward the end of his little speech, there's this:

And we must, must, must link arms with people. Everybody plays a different role. My message to you is to shore yourself up personally, with history, with faith, and with your own personal finances. That is my course that I am charting. I’ve got to move away from the political stuff. That is what kept me up last night. But political stuff has got to be done. You have to pay attention. There are things that are happening in Washington that you have to know about. We need the Tea Party protests to continue. We need to organize and reach out to each other. So I want you to go to Freedomworks.org, because freedom works.

See, Rupert already smacked Hannity down, and Beck has a benefit planned for August. Enter FreedomWorks, ready to accept all the Glenn Beck faithful into their fold.

As if they're not there already.

(h/t Think Progress)

Gin and Tacos: How to lie with statistics; also, laziness.

skippy: the rats are leaving the ship.

Whiskey Fire: K-Lo – a nitwit, but so much more.

Dave's Daily Dump: Expand the Civil Rights Act to include LGBT rights – a video collection.

Balloon Juice: Try to keep up with the shifting wingnut talking points. (Maybe spicing things up with magic unicorns and ravenous zombies would help.)

Glenn Greenwald: Still banning the word "torture" in reporting on torture. (How will they cover the CIA IG report on torture, I wonder?)

Headline poetry from Poetic Justice and Mad Kane.

Guest post by Batocchio. Temporarily e-mail tips to batocchio9 AT yahoo DOT com.

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Earlier today, Rush Limbaugh said that he wasn't backtracking on calling Sonia Sotomayor a racist like Gingrich did, but now he's saying that he might possibly support her because he likes Catholics and she may like "life" or some nonsense. Now all the rats are running for cover from their racist rants against Sonia.

I imagine some GOP internal polls came out saying that Gingrich and Buchanan and Limbaugh were going too far in their attacks on Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a "racist" and they are all pulling back.

Limbaugh:You know she would be the sixth Catholic on the Supreme Court and there are a lot of people worried about that, that does not bother me at all. I know a lot of Catholics and I love Catholics, but Sotomayor is a Catholic and she doesn't have a clear record on abortion and I'm, youuuu....overturning Roe vs Wade, that would be huge. I don't know if it will ever happen. I can see a possibility of supporting this nomination if I could be convinced if she does have a sensibility towards life.

Hahahaha, what a joke.

Martini Republic: We're pro-democracy, but we aint that pro-democracy

Informed Comment: What about the Kurds? Well, they've just jailed a journalist for 18 months for criticizing Massoud Barzani

Altercation: While George Bush and company were out invading countries that did not threaten us in any way, wasting trillions, killing tens of thousands, destroying functioning infrastructure, torturing innocents, inspiring hatred, and portraying America as a nation of incompetent, lying, torturing, illegal phone-tapping hypocrites to the entire world, what else was happening?

Brilliant at Breakfast: Tell me again how only Gerge W. Bush can keep us safe

The Daily Background: Misuse $45 Million in American taxpayer dollars. What can we expect from the company that charges the U.S. goverment (and subsequently us taxpayers) twenty-two dollars per ice tray?

Booman Tribune: If there is one decent quality about Bush it is his recognition of what vile rats the DC punditocracy are. He treats them with more respect than they deserve.

Cooper started the interview this way:

Cooper: "Does the federal government bear any responsibility for what is happening, should they apologize for what is happening now?"

Landrieu put on a happy face and thanked all the wonderful politicians for showing their support. I mean WTF? Everyone is worried about their own asses and doing little if anything for the people on the ground.

Download | play -WMP-(it's really compressed because my servers are working really hard now. What's important is to hear the audio)

Download | play -QT

Think Progress has the transcripts.

Jeralyn: "He laced into Sen. Mary Landrieu saying people who have witnessed the devastation don't want to hear politicans congratulating other politicians for how they've responded. He was yelling, basically, "Don't you get it yet?" He mentioned seeing a woman's body on the ground being eaten by rats. Landrieu told Anderson she understood what he was saying and then thanked the President again ."

All Spin Zone: Cooper Rocks: "Cooper has been down in the middle of the devastation on the Gulf Coast since the beginning of the week. Today, he apparently hit his breaking point...read on"

Wonkette: Cooper's 360 Roundhouse: Do not get the pretty boys mad: Mary Landrieu goes on about how great Bill Frist is. Anderson Cooper responds that it's hard to take politicians thanking each other when rats are gnawing dead bodies in the streets...read on
Tags-katrina

The whistle-blowing article by Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman recounts how the author was approached to serve as the front author on a manuscript already written by a “medical education company” on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. The manuscript purported to be a review of interactions between warfarin and herbal remedies. The manuscript was provided to Dr. Fugh-Berman in essentially complete form, with her name on the first page as first author... the apparent goal of the manuscript was to disparage warfarin, the drug with which the pharmaceutical company’s new product would compete.

[I]s this really more of a conflict than traditional advertisers pose? I tend to think yes, since we're conditioned to be skeptical about ads, but tend to trust what looks like a well-researched article.

Panel members said Nogroski's work contained an alarming number of invalidated claims and irrelevant findings. They were particularly disconcerted by the figures in Nogroski's third paragraph, which begins "How do otters survive? Here are some facts about that."

"He didn't even say how they survive," Glass said. "He was just like, 'Otters are about one to 1.2 meters long. Otters' whiskers are about three inches long.'"

"I know!" Swain said. "It's like, 'Hey Mike, how do sea otters survive?' 'Dur. I'm Mike. Sea otters survive by being one meter long.'"

"Hey Mike," LaMott added. "What do sea otters eat? 'Dur, I'm Mike. Sea otters have whiskers that are three inches long. Also, I don't bathe and my jacket is acid-washed.'"

thoughts on the rise of pay-for-print -- when journals require authors to pay the printing costs. Often, if the authors can't afford it, their paper doesn't get printed. She wonders about conflicts of interest:

[I]s this really more of a conflict than traditional advertisers pose? I tend to think yes, since we're conditioned to be skeptical about ads, but tend to trust what looks like a well-researched article.

Panel members said Nogroski's work contained an alarming number of invalidated claims and irrelevant findings. They were particularly disconcerted by the figures in Nogroski's third paragraph, which begins "How do otters survive? Here are some facts about that."

"He didn't even say how they survive," Glass said. "He was just like, 'Otters are about one to 1.2 meters long. Otters' whiskers are about three inches long.'"

"I know!" Swain said. "It's like, 'Hey Mike, how do sea otters survive?' 'Dur. I'm Mike. Sea otters survive by being one meter long.'"

"Hey Mike," LaMott added. "What do sea otters eat? 'Dur, I'm Mike. Sea otters have whiskers that are three inches long. Also, I don't bathe and my jacket is acid-washed.'"

Alas, manuscripts full of illogical ramblings aren't confined to the realm of acid-washed third graders. And if only reviewers were this mature!

There is bone-snapping pressure of conservative not even to pursue PhDs! I simply don't believe that the "chilling effect" on conservatives can get much worse. Meanwhile, the warm, nurturing, environment for champions of Jackassery couldn't be much more encouraging. Hang Churchill (metaphorically of course). Send a signal...

Studying Churchill like he was a lab rat isn't a good idea precisely because he is exactly that -- a lab rat. Typical in every way; the baseline. No one studies lab rats qua lab rats anymore. You only study them after you've done something to them. The only thing that would make Ward Churchill interesting for study is if you cut him loose. See how the other lab rats react. I'm sorry if I sound to Machiavellian...