it's becoming virtually unanimous -- even on Fox News -- that all this talk about "death panels" is the biggest load of hooey since black helicopters, he host a segment on his Fox News show with Ron Paul's son, Rand, proclaiming the threat of government-sponsored euthanasia real, real, real.

Of course, it came with a Beckerwockian caveat:

Beck: Tell me about – am I wrong in saying, without any inflammatory speech here, don’t call them “death panels”, just let’s call them what they are – you have a certain amount of money, you have a certain amount of people, you can’t -- they don’t -- you can’t give everything to everybody, isn’t it inevitable that you have to make tough choices?

Paul: Well, you know, the president says he isn’t going to pull the plug on grandma, but what I think he really means is, he’s not going to put the plug in in the first place, because you have to decide, some committee’s going to have to decide, what is the cost-benefit analysis for grandma? Grandma is not just your grandmother, she's a statistic, we have to decide, what is the cost to society to keep her alive? And I think she won't get plugged in. Her ventilator won't be plugged in if she's 92 years old, because society may say we don't have the money to do that.

Sounds like someone has been watching Soylent Green -- or maybe Logan's Run late at night. But then, what else should we expect for someone named after one of the world's worst now-deceased writers in combination with one of the world's worst living writers?

If Beck keeps this up, the stream of advertisers deserting him will turn into a flood. Which is no less than he deserves.