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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.

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The latest step in Minutemen cofounder Chris Simcox's extreme makeover is now up for electoral review: Simcox is challenging John McCain in the Arizona 2010 GOP primary.

For starters, there's going to be all that footage available of Simcox when he was in his full-on Minuteman phase, including footage like that above -- excerpts from filmmaker Nikolaj Vijborg's excellent short documentary, USA Under Attack, containing the following quotes from Simcox:

I feel that the people that are coming across, invading this country, I think that they should be treated as enemies of the state. We need to putting them in work camps. Anyone could walk through these borders of this country bringing bombs, chemicals, weapons of mass destruction. I think they should be shot on sight, personally.

Those guys [D.C. politicians] need to be, you know, lynched. If we're attacked again, then we need some vigilanteism. Then we need some going into Washington, pulling them out of their offices, kicking them out of office. We need revolution.

And then there was his Minuteman compatriot in this video, Craig Howard:

No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicxans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.

Stephen Lemon at Phoenix New Times is positively licking his chops, since Simcox's candidacy will make for an entertaining primary, if nothing else: "This must be what reporters in Louisiana felt like when ex-Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke ran against Edwin Edwards for Governor of the Pelican State."

Moreover, Simcox has so much baggage that you can probably count on a good deal of ink being spilled over the job of dredging it all up:

But this sort of calculated posturing will not rid him of all the baggage he's accumulated in his weird journey from L.A. kindergarten teacher to self-avowed border patriot in Cochise County, and now Scottsdale resident and seeker of public office. He is widely loathed in his own movement for his high-handedness, hence the nickname, "The Little Prince." Defectors from his ranks have regularly accused him of financial shenanigans, shenanigans he's denied. According to the few financial records MCDC has online, Simcox draws no salary from the organization he leads, which raises the question as to the source of his personal income.

Simcox cannot write off these complaints and questions as coming from sore losers, traitors and plotters of internal coups. In 2006, the conservative Washington Times published a stinging expose about Simcox's lack of financial accountability as president of MCDC. The article pointed out that former MCDC-ers were "questioning the whereabouts of hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of dollars in donations."

Then there's the problem of his criminal record. In 2004 Simcox was convicted in U.S. District Court of carrying a semi-automatic handgun onto a national park, and giving a "false or fictitious report" to a federal park ranger about the incident. He received 24 months of supervised probation and a fine of $1,000. The gun carrying stuff might play well with his followers, but his conviction for giving a "false or fictitious report" could raise concerns about Simcox's credibility.

A piece I wrote for The American Prospect last October exposed these dealings in even greater detail:

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One of the more disturbing trends we've been observing is the return of far-right "Patriot" rhetoric about government oppression with the election of President Obama. Fueled in no small part by mainstream right-wing talkers proclaiming we're headed into "socialism" -- not to mention a "radical communist" who must be "stopped" or else America will "cease to exist" -- the overheated rhetoric has been gradually getting higher in volume, intensity, and frequency with each passing week.

The initial concern that this raises is the possibility of a new wave of citizen militias, particularly when you have mainstream pundits like Glenn Beck out there helping to promote the concept. As Glenn Greenwald observed, the "Patriots" are back with a vengeance.

At least for the time being, however, there isn't any evidence of new militias forming, though we may see numbers growing within the coming months within existing units, particularly as Fox News and radio pundits start fueling right-wing anxieties.

However, we are starting to see a trend that's even more disturbing: Military veterans voicing Patriot-movement beliefs, including threats of violent resistance to the Obama administration.

One of them made the news recently:

A federal grand jury indicted a former Camp Lejeune Marine on Wednesday on charges that he threatened the life of Barack Obama, the U.S. Attorney's Office confirmed today.

Kody Brittingham, 20, formerly a lance corporal with 2nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Marine Division, was accused of making threats against Obama while he was president-elect, said Robin Zier, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's office for the eastern district of North Carolina.

Brittingham was arrested by the Jacksonville Police Department on breaking and entering charges in mid-December 2008.

Naval investigators discovered a journal allegedly written by Brittingham in his barracks after his arrest by civilian authorities in December. The journal contained plans on how to kill the president, as well as white supremacist material, a federal law enforcement official said.

This is an example of why I've called the Iraq War "the Timothy McVeigh Finishing School": Inevitably, there are going to be competent killers either joining the far right from our military ranks -- especially if they've been recruited into those beliefs either before or during their service -- or enacting far-right "lone wolf scenarios," and they are going to have the ability to wreak a great deal of havoc.

Another vivid example is the above video, in which an anonymous "Marine" not only urges that citizen militias form to resist any new gun laws and possibly taxation, but also promises them that "there is a resistance" within the military as well.

Note also that the video opens with a quote from Thomas Jefferson: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Of course, this was the inscription on the T-shirt worn by Timothy McVeigh (picture here) at the time of his arrest for the April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

Remember, too, that there have already been concerns raised about concerns raised then by the FBI hold true in this situation as well:

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