Kyle Mantyla's blog

Last night on his television program, Glenn Beck announced that all this week he would be unveiling his modest plan to fundamentally revolutionize the world with something called "The American Dream Labs."

While making repeated references to "Galt's Gulch" and comparing his efforts to the things done by Thomas Edison and Walt Disney, Beck announced that his "dream labs" were working on ideas that will "blow your mind" by transforming everything from technology to education to agriculture to entertainment and even inventing new forms of energy.

And soon the people who laughed when Beck was kicked off of television "will beg for the time when I was only on an hour every day, five hours a week" because "Hank Rearden is about to pour some steel and it will fundamentally transform us" and finally make us worthy of calling ourselves Americans! 

• Andrew Kirell @ Mediaite: Several Republican Congressmen Vote For Allen West Over Boehner For House Speaker.
• Chris Geidner @ BuzzFeed: Illinois Republican Party Chair Backs Marriage Equality.
• David Weigel: Remembering the Republican "Pledge to America."
• Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion: Bradlee Dean and the Sovereign Citizens.
• Jeremy Hooper: Scott Lively equates gays & Obama with Nazis & the antiChrist; says rainbow flag is sign of EndTimes.
• Ben Dimerio @ Media Matters:  Will Keith Ablow Become The Latest Fox News Candidate?

• Rick Joyer warns that "Obama has demonstrated the kind of leadership that is the foundation of tyranny" and declares that "if what is being done to us is found to have been intentional by Obama, others in our government, the Federal Reserve, or anyone one else, it is the highest form of treason."
• After failing to purchase Current TV, Glenn Beck hints that he'll soon be launching a campaign to get his viewers to pressure their cable providers to start carrying his The Blaze network.
• Tony Perkins' new daily radio program begins airing on Monday.
• Gary Cass has released his list of the "Top 10 Anti-Christian Acts of 2012."
• The National Organization for Marriage is vowing "to form an Illinois state PAC and spend $250,000 defeating Republican legislators who vote in support of same-sex 'marriage' in Illinois."
• Finally, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach may be our new hero, thanks to this highly-entertaining debate he had today with Bryan Fischer:

David Barton's tendency to utterly misrepresent things in order to promote his own right-wing political agenda is well-established, but it never hurts to keep documenting examples, especially since he continues to provide them on a regular basis.

On today's broadcast of "WallBuilders Live," for instance, Barton claimed that the reason President Obama won re-election was because voters "were not thinking right."  And one of the reasons voters don't "think right" is because the higher education system is dominated by Obama supporters, as demonstrated by the fact that, according to Barton, 96% of the professors at Ivy League colleges donated to Obama's campaign:

After the election, we had those two days where we talked about it afterwards and we went through a lot of the numbers just showing that people were not thinking right.  They voted according to what they thought, but they were thinking wrong about so many areas.

And so, if we're going to change the direction of the nation and the way its headed, we have to change the way people think.  It's real simple. 

What are the areas that cause us to think the way we do?  Well, the media is one, education is one, the pulpit is one.  There are several areas that help us shape the way we think.  Now, I will point out, if we're looking for help out of universities, it ain't going to happen.

This is a report that I just read that is kind of amazing: 96% of the faculty at the elite colleges donated to President Obama ... Not just voted; 96% of faculty donated.

So you have 96% of faculty who donated to the Obama campaign; 96% from the elite colleges.  So if we're looking to get help out of the schools, that ain't going to happen.

You will be undoubtedly be surprised to learn that the report to which Barton referred found not that 96% of faculty donated to Obama but rather that 96% of the donations made by faculty and staff from the Ivy League schools went to the Obama campaign.

Think about it: if only one donation was made by a faculty member from a particular university and it went to the Obama campaign, then the percentage of donations coming from that university that went to Obama would be 100%. But that doesn't mean that 100% of the faculty at that university donated to Obama, which is the claim that Barton is making.

Considering that Barton is a former math teacher, you'd think he'd be a little better at math.

It seems that Religious Right anti-gay activist "Chaplain" Gordon Klingenschmitt, perhaps best known for claiming to have freed a lesbian soldier from homosexuality after performing an exorcism on her, has started producing a daily television program that consists of him filming himself talking about the news of the day. 

On episode two of his new series, Klingenschmitt took issue with the recent statement from Newt Gingrich saying that the GOP has to adjust to changing opinions on the issue of marriage equality, claiming that Gingrich is doing so because he is trying to "present himself as the left-wing, moderate Republican candidate" for 2016. 

Klingenschmitt went on to say that since the Bible says that "homosexual acts are worthy of death," Gingrich himself is now condemned for having endorsed it and declares that Gingrich has been influenced by a "demonic voice" in taking this position.

But perhaps the most amazing thing about the video is the revelation that Gingrich personally reached out to Klingenschmitt during his presidential run in 2012 and sought his advice:

Glenn Beck returned to the airways last night for the first time since before both the "fiscal cliff" deal and the Sandy Hook tragedy and hauled out the chalkboard to lay out his grand theory explaining it all.  He spent an hour rambling about the importance of the reason "why" people do things, going off on tangents about everything from Apple stores to faded t-shirts to fake rust painted on signs at Disney World, all in an effort to explain how both the fiscal cliff situation and the reporting on Sandy Hook were driven by "incompetence, power, and greed" because nobody wants to talk about the real issues, such as how all the Democrats and Republicans in Congress ought to be tried for treason and how video games are turning the nation's children into "zombie killers who are practically dead inside":

• PFAW: Empty Courtrooms in Obama’s First Term: A Slow Start on Judicial Nominations Magnified Many Times Over By Republican Obstruction.
• Chris Rodda: Barton’s “Jefferson Lies” Once Again Listed as a Thomas Nelson Book on Amazon –Thomas Nelson Probably Won’t Like That .
• Joe Hagan @ New York Magazine: Blues Cruise.
• Jeremy Hooper: How dare the 'warlike' bloggers quote Dr Dobson accurately?!
• Matt Gertz @ Media Matters:  NRA Blames Violent Films For Mass Shootings, But Their Museum Features "Hollywood Guns."
• Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: House GOP blocks Violence Against Women Act.
• Scott Keyes @ Think Progress: Leading Conservative Religious Organization Warns That Christians Will Soon Be Treated Like Blacks In Jim Crow Era.

• We're sure the Religious Right will be up in arms over reports that House Speaker John Boehner told Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to "go f— yourself!"
• Wiley Drake is starting an "imprecatory prayer meeting to be held each Wednesday."
• WND names Michele Bachmann its "Woman of the Year."
• Scott Lively's "Top 10 Heroes" of 2012 offers a pretty solid list of the most vehemently anti-gay activists operating today.
• Rick Green cannot believe what is happening to America: "Over the last two months, we've seen an un-informed, Constitutionally ignorant part of our country re-elect a President who glorifies everything that is wrong with America today."
• Finally, it seems that Liberty Counsel is now in the business of producing rap videos:

Bryan Fischer is not at all pleased with the legislation passed last night by the House of Representatives in an effort to avoid the "fiscal cliff, "declaring that it is a violation of the Ten Commandments' prohibition on covetousness, meaning that the Democratic Party is driven by a "Satanic" ideology and the resulting legislation is "demonic":

Glenn Beck returned from his lengthy holiday vacation to announce a new policy for his daily three-hour radio program: anyone who mentions the name of President Obama or plays any audio from him is fired: