Rachel Maddow does an excellent job explaining how the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded in the past and why President Obama deserved to receive the award. The most stark example being this portion comparing then candidate Obama’s view of diplomacy compared with that of John McCain.

Maddow: The Nobel Peace Prize not always, but often awards effort. It recognizes people trying in big ways to get the world on a more peaceful path. The deadline for nomination for the prize is February first of the year in which it's awarded.

President Obama's critics say that by February first he should not have been nominated. He'd done nothing by then and by the way he's done nothing since to deserve it.

Obama: We need a fundamental change if we’re going to dig ourselves out of the hole that George Bush has placed us in and that’s going to require the kind of aggressive diplomacy— preparation yes—but aggressive diplomacy, personal diplomacy of the next president to transform how the world sees us. That is ultimately going to make us safer.

Maddow: Before he was nominated for the Nobel, Mr. Obama had persuaded the people of the most powerful nation on earth to choose him and his vision of strength through diplomacy—instead of the vision offered by his rival for the presidency.

McCain: You know that old, uh, that old Beach Boys song, bomb Iran? Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb… anyway…

Rachel goes on to contrast President Obama’s words to those of John Bolton, President Bush’s choice to be our representative at the United Nations. Another stark reminder of just what we finally rid ourselves of with the end of the Bush administration.

The entire segment is well worth spending the eleven minutes or so of your time to watch. Rachel wrapped it up with this.

Maddow: President Obama’s critics railed today that winning the Nobel Peace Prize is somehow an insult. That international encouragement and hope for success for an American president is something to be ashamed of. I never thought that I would quote Charles Krauthammer, but Obama derangement syndrome appears to be upon us. The American president just won the Nobel Peace Prize. By any reasonable measure, all Americans should be proud.

Glenn Beck has intimated previously that President Obama wants to destroy you -- after all, who could forget the time he doused another Fox weenie with "gasoline" and then held a match in his vicinity, saying he was Obama?

He did it again last night, by way of explaining why he said he thought John McCain would have been worse than Obama. He put out a pot of boiling water, playing off the old scenario about boiled frogs, and how they can't tell they're in lethally hot water until it's too late if you turn the heat up slowly. That, he argues, is what has been happening to us, and McCain just would have continued the process.

Beck thinks what Obama is actually doing is turning the heat up all at once and then tossing the frogs (that is, the American people) in. So he grabbed a supposedly live frog and tossed it into the water. (Later, he had John Bolton declare that it was actually a fake rubber frog.) Gosh, he says, he was hoping the frog would jump out.

It really is amazing to think how far and how fast Beck has pushed the envelope of acceptable rhetoric for the American Right. I remember when Alan Keyes declared Obama "a radical communist," everyone laughed and shrugged and took it as another sign of just how far out to lunch Keyes really is. But Beck -- who really does increasingly resemble the lunatic who talks to himself on the streetcorner, except that he has a media megaphone and millions of dollars -- can say this stuff now and it scarcely raises a ripple.

Watch for the Obama Genocide Program theories to start turning up on this show any day now.

Probably the most ironic -- no, make that flat-out bizarre -- aspect of Glenn Beck's ultimately successful campaign to force out Van Jones is that it was predicated on Jones' supposed indulgence in extremist rhetoric ideas.

This isn't just a matter of the pot calling the kettle black. It's more like the black hole calling the sunspot dark.

Glenn Beck's history of indulging in extremism -- not just turning a blind eye to its presence, but promoting it outright to an audience of millions -- is so deep and wide that whatever indiscretions Jones might be guilty of fade into total insignificance.

Of course, we're all familiar with the remarks that lie at so much of the root of this matter: Beck's outrageous claims that President Obama is a "racist" who has a "deep-seated hatred of white people", which prompted a largely succesful campaign by Color of Change to encourage advertisers to pull their support for Beck's Fox News program. But that, frankly, is barely scratching the surface.

Keith Olbermann has put out a plea for information about Beck's own background in outrageous remarks. Of course, all he probably needs to do is go through the C&L archives on Beck for everything he needs.

Still, what Olbermann -- and everyone else wondering how to fight back from this latest round of right-wing viciousness -- should focus on is the inordinate number of times that Beck has simply promoted extremist ideas and memes straight out of the most fringe elements of the American far right.

It goes back several years. Beck, in fact, openly promoted the John Birch Society and its "New World Order" conspiracy theories frequently when he was still at CNN Headline News. As I observed at the time:

Beck is busy building a narrative that not only opens the Pandora's Box of mass public consumption of far-right conspiracism, it also portrays the most hateful and paranoid and poisonous bloc of American politics as credible and normative.

Since joining Fox in January of this year, however, the tendency has not only intensified, it's simply gone off the rails.

Most notably, Beck has actively promoted ideas, theories, and concepts taken directly from the far-right "Patriot"/militia movement, many of which in turn derive from the ugliest sector of the right, white supremacy:

-- He "war-gamed" out an apocalytpic American future in which society has completely crumbled, leaving behind a "Road Warrior" society in which militias remained the only defenders of the remnants of white society.

-- He told his audience for several weeks running that he "could not disprove" the existence of concentration camps run by FEMA in which conservatives were to be rounded up. After a few weeks of this, he finally ran a segment that in fact did debunk these claims, explaining that in reality all of the supposed "evidence" for these camps was the product of a long-running hoax that began in the 1990s with the "Patriot"/militia movement. (He then later claimed that he had done nothing to promote these theories.)

-- He ran several segments, including one on his radio show, in which he promoted the concept of the secession of Texas from the Union. A little later, he tried to pretend he didn't agree with the concept while in fact giving a secessionist the opportunity to promote his plans to Beck's audience.

-- He regularly promoted "one world government" paranoia. This included a supposed plot to put us all on a global currency controlled by the New World Order.

-- He tried to argue that the chief cause of the sour economy was the United States' reliance on a central banking system.

-- He hosted an entire hourlong segment devoted to promoting militia-derived constitutional theories about state sovereignty.

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Good little GOP water carrier John King asks Susan Rice what she thinks about disgraced ex-UN Ambassador John Bolton's statement that "It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists" sending Bill Clinton to North Korea to free the two journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. Gee John, why didn't you just ask her if Clinton was "palling around with terrorists" while you were at it?

Rice appropriately said that the statement was ridiculous. I have a question for John King. Why do you think anyone should care what John Bolton thinks about anything? The man never found a country out there he didn't want to deal with in any manner other than with threats and intimidation. Bush had to put him in there as a recess appointment since he'd have never been confirmed by the Senate, but you're going to ask the new Ambassador who did make it through the confirmation process what she thinks of war monger Bolton's statement? Spare me King.

KING: Another dramatic international story this past week was former President Bill Clinton coming back from North Korea. A president you served at the State Department and in the White House. He came back with the journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been kept prisoner in North Korea.

There are those very critical of this. While they're applauding the release of these two journalists, they say essentially that the United States gave up too much. A man who once held your job at the United Nations, John Bolton, saying, "It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists," sending Bill Clinton over there and giving North Korea certainly a propaganda victory with those photographs. Perilously close to negotiating with terrorists?

RICE: Absolutely not. That's, in fact, a ridiculous statement. We don't negotiate with terrorists. That's the policy of the United States, but this was a unique opportunity for the former president, on a private humanitarian mission, to obtain the release of two American women who have been held for many months.

It would have been disgraceful for the United States, having verified that this was a real opportunity to obtain their release, to leave them in captivity.

KING: He's not just...

RICE: This was a private humanitarian mission. It accomplished the release of these two women. We're relieved and delighted to see them reunited with their families. It in no ways changes our policy or approach to North Korea, and we are quite pleased with the outcome.

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Real Time's New Rules for Aug. 7, 2009.

Maher: Now, before I go about demonstrating how easy it is to prove the dumbness that is dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life and death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq war, 70% of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9-11. Six years later, 34% still do. Or look at the health care debate going on now. At a recent town hall meeting in South Caronlina a man stood up and told the Congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare!".

Which is kind of like driving cross country to protest highways. This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas. We can be talked into anything, like wars. And we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls.

Listen to some of these statistics. A majority of Americans cannot name a single branch of government, or explain what the Bill of Rights is. 24% could not name the country America fought in the Revolutionary War. More than 2/3 of Americans don't know what's in Roe vs Wade. 2/3 don't know what the Food and Drug Administration does.

Some of this stuff you should be able to pick up by simply being alive.

Apparently not too friggin' much, at least as far as him being an objective critic of the Obama administration.

Hillary Clinton: If President Obama walked on water, he'd [Bolton] say he couldn't swim.

The dismissive, totally spontaneous laugh said it all.

While David Neiwert is on vacation this week, covering Beck unfortunately fell to me today and my team had this video waiting in my inbox. And as usual he was chock full of crazy only today he had on neocon extraordinaire John Bolton, the UN hater as his companion. Watching Beck and Bolton together makes one realize that our media seems to be dropping tabs of acid before they come on the air. And this was about as trippy as it gets. During their kaleidoscope adventures, Beck was whigging out because Hillary Clinton talked about India and hoped that they don't make the same mistakes when it comes to global warming. To Beckenstein, that means it's time to call her part of the Apology Tour. John Bolton was passing the Bill Kristol torch as Glenn Beck uttered this whimsical nonsense.

Bolton: I think this is the time to stand up. I think the president's program is in real trouble and I think once he starts losing as it looks like he will on health care, he'll lose on other issues.

Beck: I’m telling you this guy is dangerous. He’s never lost before. He won’t understand it. He won’t understand look how – he, uh, is like, who are you to question me? I mean, this guy is practically an imperial president now. When he starts to lose and people start to question him and push him back against the wall, he’s not gonna know how to react.

Bolton: But that makes me more optimistic...

These goofs are revealing in the hope that the president will fail at a critical time in our history. This encapsulates the republican/conservative/Beckenstein/Teabagger movement that began right out of the gate. It's saddening to see this unfold, but maybe if I drop a little window pain, I'll feel the same way.

As Think Progress notes:

Beck’s dire prediction is of course similar to that of Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” Beck, whose show is quite popular, is feeding the sentiment of his right-wing base who are now urging each other to “to throw off and alter the abusive government by peacefully recalling and removing from office the President of the United States.”

May 29, 2009 HBO

May 04, 2009 News Corp

Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton -- who was probably the closest thing to a Bircherite militiaman ever to have held that position, which no doubt was why G.W. Bush appointed him -- was on the Glenn Beck program yesterday.

Considering how Beck's militia fetish has been reaching feverish levels lately, you can imagine how this went.

Yes, it was as bad as you can imagine:

Bolton: You can see in this upcoming G20 Meeting in the next few days -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom has his own ideas for a global New Deal -- and we're gonna see whether predictions about the Obama administration being post-nationalist, post-American, if you will, are you going to come into play here.

Beck: You know, let's not throw Barack Obama under the bus solely. I think George Bush was not as bad, but he was on the same road. I mean, you know, we've been playing the game with the United Nations -- thank God George Bush put you into the United Nations! I know you, you were extremely unpopular there -- I cheered for that!

I mean, I think these guys -- these guys, they'll take away guns, they'll take away our sovereignty, they'll take away our, our, our currency, our money! They're already starting to put all the global framework in with this bullcrap called global warming! This is an effort to globalize and tie together everybody on the planet, is it not?

Bolton: Sure. If you say all problems are global in dimension, then it's not much of a leap of logic to say you need global solutions, and what better place to have them than in the U.N. or a comparable institution?

They then explored at length the ways that the Obama economic-recovery plan plays into the one-world-government scheme, and concluded thus:

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There's something about the annual Conservative Political Action Committee's annual convention that just draws out the ugly eliminationists. Every year it's someone -- usually Ann Coulter -- wishing aloud that someone would just blow away or lock up liberals and minorities en masse. This year it's John Bolton:

He [Obama] said during the campaign that Iran was a tiny threat. Tiny depending on how many nuclear weapons they ultimately are able to deliver on target. Tiny compared to the Soviet Union, but is the loss of one American city — pick one at random: Chicago — is that a tiny threat?

As Think Progress notes:

The audience erupted in cheers and laughter at the idea of Obama’s home city being obliterated.

It's nice to see they've expanded their targets. When right-wingers wish aloud for terrorists to obliterate an American city, it's usually San Francisco.

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I've had this incredible video of John Bolton getting grilled on the BBC over the Iraq war sitting on my servers for a while now and after the holiday I was quickly reminded of it by his new article with John Yoo. He flails away about how bad Saddam was in the past and how he should have been removed in 1991, which led to this response:

John, my relatives are Sunni, Christian and Shi'ite. They've been living under Saddam's dictatorship for thirty years. I've lost more relatives in the last four years, than under 30 years of Saddam. So, I don't think that you can tell me how dangerous Saddam's dictatorship was. The good news is that the American people, who I love defeated Bush in the mid-term elections. That was really, really good news.

However, you still can't make up this garbage that appeared in the NY Times.

No one could have predicted this would happen. John Yoo and John Bolton, in the NY Times, discuss the need to limit executive authority. Up next, David Addington and Dick Cheney write in the Washington Post on the need to reject Unitary Executive theory. I knew these wankers would do this, I just didn’t expect it immediately and so brazenly.

Torture Yoo and John Bolton are embarrassments to this country. Whenever he appears on TV, he should be held up as the face of the complete and utter failure of the Bush administration and their Iraq war.(h/t Brian)

December 29, 2008 News Corp

I know this has been out there for a few days, but I had to post it. Hannity is the ultimate tool of the GOP, but I can't remember ever seeing him flip flop on a topic faster. We all know that this North Korean nuke deal is suspect to say the least, but Hannity fawns all over it in his opening to the segment until wingnut hero John Bolton attacks it and Hannity...well...see for yourself.

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transcript via Think Progress:

HANNITY: The news today brings a clear foreign policy victory for the Bush administration. But will the press report it that way? Joining us now for analysis, former ambassador to the U.N. and a Fox News contributor, John Bolton. What do you think this means?

BOLTON: I think it's actually a clear victory for North Korea. They gain enormous political legitimacy...In return, we get precious little. I think this is North Korea demonstrating again that they can out-negotiate the U.S. without raising a sweat.

HANNITY: Boy I tell you they've done it time and time again, and I'm sorta perplexed, Mr. Ambassador, to understand why we keep going back to the well knowing that they haven't kept the agreements in the past. Whatever happened to Reagan's "trust but verify"?

OMG, is this hysterical. Yes, will the press credit Bush with a monumental victory?----to---how could he be such a fool? The only fool is Hannity. Who needs Comedy Central when we have Sean . Should we even mention that since North Korea is one of Bush's Axis of Evil; isn't negotiating with them unthinkable? It made me think of this scene from Chinatown:

Mrs. Mulwray: I'll tell you, I'll tell you the truth.
Jake: Good. What's her name?
Mrs. Mulwray: Katherine.
Jake: Katherine who?
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my daughter.
Jake: (He slaps her.) I said, 'I want the truth.'
Mrs. Mulwray: She's my sister. (He slaps her again.) She's my daughter. (Slap.) My sister, my daughter. (Slap. Slap.)
Jake: I said, 'I want the truth!' (He throws her against the sofa.)
Mrs. Mulwray: ...She's my sister and my daughter!...My father and I - understand? Or is it too tough for you?

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Quiz: If you were to pick the least qualified person, the one with the worst reputation from the Bush administration to comment on Global Warming, whom would you choose? If you chose recess appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John R. Bolton, you're thinking like a Bushie, or at least their official public relations network, FOX News. When asked about mandatory limits on climate change, Bolton had this to say:

Well, it's not unusual for Vice President Gore to be wrong, either, as he is in this case. Of the G8 industrialized democracies, four -- the United States, Japan, Canada, and Russia --share our view...If you look at the developing countries, Brazil, India, and China all oppose these targets as well. So, the notion that this is the fault of the U.S. is wrong.

If anybody's isolated here, I think it's the Europeans and Al Gore...

Bolton is living in a fantasyland, as are most Bushites. The United States-- the only major industrialized country to reject the Kyoto treaty-- signed instead a compromise deal today which didn't mention any figures but set 2009 as a deadline for a new treaty, after much heel-dragging from the U.S. contingent. Senior U.S. negotiator Paula Dobriansky was booed loudly while a US environmental activist representing Papua New Guinea said to rousing cheers: "If you're not willing to lead, please get out of the way." In the end, after much grumbling, they did just that.