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Conservative radio host Glenn Beck responded to a shooting at Houston's largest airport on Thursday by suggesting that it had been a plot to "set up" gun owners like the the burning of German's parliament -- or Reichstag -- in 1933, which Nazis exploited as a pretext to suspend constitutional rights.

According to CBS News, a man named Carnell Moore fired a pistol into the ceiling of Terminal B at Bush International Airport and was shot by a federal agent. At the same time, Carnell also shot himself. A fully-loaded, black Smith & Wesson AR-15 was found in a suitcase next to where he was sitting.

Messages on social media indicated that Carnell had planned a mass shooting, but a suicide note found on the body suggested that he changed his mind.

But because the shooting happened as members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) were arriving in Houston for its annual convention, Beck saw a conspiracy behind Carnell's actions.

"The idea that this is happening at the airport with the NRA is too much to believe," Beck told a studio audience in Houston. "If I were a journalist -- let me correct that -- if I were an honest journalist, I would be looking for these connections. Look for the connections of who this man is and any connection he might have to the uber-Left."

"I believe this man could fall into the category of somebody who has lost his job, is depressed, etc., etc. Somebody comes in off to the side, winds him up, says, 'Oh, you should make a statement, you should make a statement.' I believe that's probably -- I shouldn't say that -- I believe it is a very good chance that is what happened."

But Beck speculated that the man realized that "that's not who I am" and decided not to go through with the mass killing.

"If I were an honest journalist, I'd find out where these guns came from -- were they purchased or were they illegal?" he continued. "If there were illegal, oh, I can guarantee you, this is a set up. Someone knows history. I do."

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For anyone who didn't think Gov. Rick Perry was a big enough wingnut to suit the state of Texas, there's an even nuttier one waiting to take his place -- secessionist Larry Kilgore. The Daily Show's Jessica interviewed Kilgore and his sidekick, Lynn Troxel, and it was a surreal enough segment that it could have been something you'd find over at The Onion.

Sadly, this guy is actually talking about running for office in Texas: With Stickers, a Petition and Even a Middle Name, Secession Fever Hits Texas:

Secession fever has struck parts of Texas, which Mitt Romney won by nearly 1.3 million votes.

Sales of bumper stickers reading “Secede” — one for $2, or three for $5 — have increased at TexasSecede.com. In East Texas, a Republican official sent out an e-mail newsletter saying it was time for Texas and Vermont to each “go her own way in peace” and sign a free-trade agreement among the states.

A petition calling for secession that was filed by a Texas man on a White House Web site has received tens of thousands of signatures, and the Obama administration must now issue a response. And Larry Scott Kilgore, a perennial Republican candidate from Arlington, a Dallas suburb, announced that he was running for governor in 2014 and would legally change his name to Larry Secede Kilgore, with Secede in capital letters. As his Web page, secedekilgore.com, puts it: “Secession! All other issues can be dealt with later.”

In Texas, talk of secession in recent years has steadily shifted to the center from the fringe right. It has emerged as an echo of the state Republican leadership’s anti-Washington, pro-Texas-sovereignty mantra on a variety of issues, including health care and environmental regulations. For some Texans, the renewed interest in the subject serves simply as comic relief after a crushing election defeat.

But for other proponents of secession and its sister ideology, Texas nationalism — a focus of the Texas Nationalist Movement and other groups that want the state to become an independent nation, as it was in the 1830s and 1840s — it is a far more serious matter. Read on...

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Jon Stewart took the hypocrites over at Fox apart again for their cries of tyranny over President Obama's executive orders on gun violence in America -- which, as Stewart pointed out, somehow the likes of Sean Hannity or Dana Perino had absolutely no problem with when their buddy Bush was issuing them.

He also gave a little history lesson to all of the wingnuts out there who believe that the 2nd Amendment gives them some protection from government tyranny and who are throwing out ridiculous hypotheticals like saying that the Jews having guns would have protected them from Hitler or that we wouldn't have had slavery if African Americans were allowed to have guns.

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Jon Stewart was still on fire his second night back from vacation, despite having some trouble with his voice due to a cold and he laid into the right for their staunch opposition to any new regulations or form of gun control, even though we're constantly hearing them say that "everything should be on the table" to deal with the problem.

No one was spared from NRA head Wayne LaPierre, to Fox News, to GOP politicians to you name it. After playing some footage of Fox "news" and wingnut Glenn Beck and their fearmongering on the topic, Stewart pulled out an assault rifle on the set in reaction:

STEWART: I'm not sure what happened. I'm sorry. I blacked out in the middle of that and woke up with an AK in my... I don't know... or whatever this is. I'm sure I'll get letters about what this really is, which is plastic is what it really is.

It was nice to see him get in a not so thinly veiled swipe at the wingnuts who went crazy after David Gregory held up something that appeared to be a magazine on the set of Meet the Press. There is a mile long list of why I'd like to see Gregory off of the air, but that stupidity isn't one of them.

Stewart got a shot in on LaPierre for his solution to the problem with our mental health system failing us not doing anything to actually improve taking care of those with mental health problems, but a national database of the "lunatics" out there instead. After asking what someone might have to do to be added to that list, Stewart recommended that LaPierre be put on it for this:

LAPIERRE: Americans, don't want to be added to that pile of dead people that have been left defenseless by the U.N. policies.

STEWART: LaPierre with two r's is a run.

Next up was HuckaJesus saying we don't have a gun problem, but a sin problem instead, to which Stewart responded that he didn't realize that his masturbating had risen to the level of a national crisis. He wrapped up the first segment with Fox's Eric Bolling saying it's not the right time to talk about gun control and that he'd have to wait until the next segment to continue his conversation about it.

In part two, Stewart did a great job talking about all of the other things we are willing to regulate in the United States other than guns, and the list of reasons we're given by the politicians and the talking heads for not regulating them, along with all of the legislation that's been passed to make sure that the gun manufacturers are never held liable for their products, unlike every other industry out there which manufacturers products which might harm or kill people.

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The director of issues analysis of a conservative fundamentalist Christian organization who is opposing anti-bullying efforts found himself on the defensive on Tuesday after a CNN host pointed out that his "hate speech" revealed an anti-LGBT agenda.

During a phone interview on CNN, host Carol Costello asked the American Family Association's (AFA) Bryan Fischer why his group was fighting the the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) "Mix It Up For Lunch Day" anti-bullying effort.

"It's an attempt to push the normalization of homosexual behavior in public schools and to eventually punish students who would express a Judeo-Christian view of sexuality," Fischer explained. "It's interesting to me that they are doing this on Oct. 30, the day before Halloween, and what this program is, it's like poison Halloween candy. Somebody takes a candy bar, injects it with cyanide, the label looks fine, it looks innocuous, it looks fine. It's not until you internalize it, you realize how toxic it is. We want parents to understand that any program that comes from the Southern Poverty Law Center is going to be toxic to their student's moral health."

Costello noted that the program had been going on for 11 years and the SPLC's website "makes no mention of homosexuality whatsoever."

"The Southern Poverty Law Center has called your organization, the American Family Association, a hate group," she pointed out. "And some would say that's really what's motivating you."

"In reality, the Southern Poverty Law Center is out to bully students who have conservative moral values in silence," Fischer insisted.

"I think the Southern Poverty Law Center could turn the tables on you," Costello interrupted. "You have said, 'Hitler recruited homosexuals around him to make up his stormtroopers. They were his enforcers, they were his thugs. Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and cruel and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual soldiers had no limit to the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whoever Hitler sent them after.'"

"That spells agenda to me," the CNN host observed. "That, by many people's standards, would be hate speech."

Fischer then launched into a rant about how the SPLC was trying to destroy the AFA and other Christian groups and that "homosexuality has the same risks associated with it as intravenous drug use."

"That's just not true," Costello said, cutting him off. "I'm going to end this interview now, sir, because that's just not true. Mr. Fisher, thanks for sharing your views, I guess."

(h/t: Good As You)

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Another winner at Meemsy.

Probably not safe for work -- especially if you work with Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin.

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After being away last week, Jon Stewart got a chance to go after these hypocritical Catholic bishops for their opposition to the new health care mandate to cover contraception as only he can:

STEWART: Yes! We are men of god! That money must not be used for contraception! That money has been set aside for out of court alter boy settlements and of course, some priest relocation. Respect our authority! Seriously? A firestorm among "many Catholics" or the old dudes who run it? [...]

Old dudes who run it. Check.

Stewart got some good knocks in on Santorum, Gingrich and now the GOP for going off the cliff with their proposition for any employer to be able to deny health care coverage for "moral" reasons as well. Once again here, we've got the comedian pointing out how far off the Republicans have gone off the rails, while the media fails to do their job.

And speaking of media failures, more with Stewart nailing Hannity for his panel full of more crusty old white dudes as supposed "experts" on women's reproductive rights and the wingnuts out there pulling the Hitler card when claiming to be persecuted over this matter below the fold.

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Someone actually pays this man to write a column every week -- Cal Thomas On Obama Calling For Democracy In Egypt: "Germany Had Democracy And Voted In Hitler":

THOMAS: Social media’s great, but as President Obama talked about, he wants democracy, but when you talk about democracy… let’s look at democracy. Germany had democracy and voted in Hitler. Lenin came out of great turmoil in Russia and the Bolshevik revolution imposed a foreign ideology on Russia for seven decades. So a lot of these extremist movements rise the crest of a wave of legitimate objections to the leadership, but they wind up imposing something worse than what they have overthrown.

Maybe someone can ask Cal to go read this comment over at Media Matters.

And so much for Fox not invoking that Nazi imagery on Fox, huh Megyn?

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It's been three years since Ari Fleischer was pulling this same number on Hardball and playing the "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine as John called it at the time. The more things change, the more they stay the same. --Ari Fleischer's Propaganda Iraq War Ad:

The propaganda that is hitting our airwaves over the Iraq war with creatures like Ari is sickening. This warmonger brought up WWII and the tired and wrong "we shouldn't have gone into Germany" routine (Barbara mentioned this mind set in her C&L post) in his defense of this. Ari is so 2007---and we're all just Dirty F*&king Hippies stuck in a 2001-2002 mind frame. [...]

This link to Germany and Japan is despicable, but neocons have no shame. Iraq was not part of the World Trade Center attacks and Ari knows it, but they need a propaganda link, so---there you go. Ari doesn't even know the wounded soldier's name in his own ad. There is no hole deep enough for these people and not even Hell should welcome them...If you don't think this has been coordinated with the WH, well...I know you do. Ari's group is called Freedom Watch.

As Media Matters reported, Ari Fleischer wasn't the only one of these Bushies out there helping to spread the propaganda today. He had some help from Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley and others as well.

Media turn to discredited Bush officials to respond to Obama's Iraq speech:

Following President Obama's speech on the end of combat operations in Iraq, media outlets hosted discredited Bush administration officials Karl Rove, Stephen Hadley, and Ari Fleischer to respond, despite the fact that the three were at the forefront of the campaign of misinformation used to sell the war.

Lots more there so go read the rest. They forgot to mention Dan Senor who was about as infuriating as this hack Fleischer was on Morning Joe. Hardball also had Senor on and CNN's Anderson Cooper had Fleischer on as well. I'll have more on that soon since Paul Begala gave Fleischer a tongue lashing on CNN.

Transcript below the fold.

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Alex Castellanos Republican dirty trickster claims that President Obama has been a divisive president because he's...gasp, daring to take on Wall Street and insurance companies. I'm sorry Alex, but anyone's going to claim he's being divisive, those are two items where I think you're failing pretty badly with your talking points. The only division I've seen on those matters is the liberal base thinking they've not been tough enough with what may be coming and the astroturf tea bagger dupes out there with their Hitler signs. The reality I live in with fellow co-workers who aren't too happy about what's happened to their 401K, there isn't anything "divisive" about regulating Wall Street at all. We're also not too fond of our insurance premiums going up year after year.

He then goes on to say that "the rehabilitation of George Bush is well underway". And he said it with a straight face. Sorry Alex, but history is not going to treat George Bush well despite your best attempts at turd polishing. I'd love to know what street Castellanos lives on, but if I had to guess it's one called Upside Down Land. What's white is black and vice versa in this hack's world. He should be taken about as seriously as CNN's other newest contributor, Erick Erickson. They're both nothing but flacks for the Republican Party that never allow facts to get in the way of their talking points.

Transcript below the fold.

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