OH MY GOD! Fascism has arrived, and it's dressed up as a founding father:

[originalpckelly]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA

Oh God, it's started.

[chrisa]

1. I remember that guy.

Check out his other "common sense" video.

[originalpckelly]

2. What's absolutely terrifying is that he's tapping into the pent up demand for change.

We ought to have a revolution, but look at the anger in his eyes. He's pissed off, and not thinking rationally. None of these people are, and irrational revolutions end up causing problems.

[chrisa]

3. He's a spooky person.

I do find the Civil War fantasies to be amusing, however.

[originalpckelly]

4. I tend to think he's a fascist 3rd way type person.

He literally sounds like an American Hitler, making pleas to nationalism, bigotry, with a few worker's arguments thrown in for good measure.

[chrisa]

10. Probably.

But I've seen more charisma in halogen lightbulbs.

[originalpckelly]

13. How does a 70 year old man know enough about computers/cameras/lighting/video editing/sound...

to make a video that looks so high quality?

I'll say that again:
How does a 70 year old man know enough about computers/cameras/lighting/video editing/sound to make a video look that good?

No offense to 70 year old men, but I don't tend to think of them as tech savvy. That may be ageism, and I apologize for offending anyone in advance.

Where did he get such a good outfit and a well written dialogue? Where does anyone of any age get all that help for that matter?

This man has some kind of professional help. You can't see any blue screen on his background fuzzy from consumer level software, and it's definitely computer generated. Someone else is working the camera. Someone is doing professional sound. Someone is doing professional lighting.

Who is putting up the money for this guy to make these movies? These aren't amateurish productions. That's what scares me.

[chrisa]

27. He's probably pulling a "Glenn Beck."

Say the most outlandish, violent things you can think of in order to get viewers. It's all a big show, with somebody financing the project.

[anigbrowl]

36. Nah, this is penny-ante stuff, no big budget required.

[anigbrowl]

35. It's not all that difficult these days

You just need 1 or 2 people that are into what he's saying and want to help. Even if you don't own the equipment (and a lot of people do), you can rent it for a weekend for a few hundred bucks. Decent quality software isn't all that hard to get hold of either. I think the whole Adobe CS4 suite can be had for around $2k, much less if you're student, or much much less if you know how to apply a crack for it. There's nothing especially complex here, you could do it in your garage.

[my2sense]

5. I don't find it amusing at all

It's rather scary considering the conditions we find ourselves in. The economy tanking, folks are hurting and looking for someone to blame. Couple that with the spike in gun sales and hate groups and you have a recipe for disaster. It doesn't take that many "crazy" people to spark some bullshit that will take us all down.

[chrisa]

9. The only thing we can do is laugh.

It's the best medicine. The best part is that Freepers don't know how hillarious their rants are, because they're so removed from reality. They were saying the same things when Clinton was in office. Only difference now, imo, is that they learned how to use the internet (an amazing feat in itself).

[originalpckelly]

17. It should be noted that the nationalist sentiments of the USSR brought it down.

Each of the republics didn't want to be dominated by Russian culture. I have to wonder where this will lead. Will the USSA break up?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFKGrmsBDk

In that one, which is not as professional, that guy really goes all out with this crap. The second one, the more professional one, appears to have been watered down so more people would like it. Someone got to him.

[originalpckelly]

14. Yes, I agree, but the real question is how a 70 year old guy makes a video like this...

That video was shot on a high definition camera, he had help from someone to work the camera. Hell, he even reads the speech so well, it looks like he's a damn actor.

This is fucking AstroTurf, and I want to know who the fuck is planting this shit. Where did the money come from?

[my2sense]

21. Bingo

The biggest question is who is financing this nonsense. I didn't realize free speech allowed folks to openly incite folks to violence overthrows of our government.

[blogslut]

22. If it's the same guy

He's some sort of motivational speaker:

http://www.bobbasso.com

[originalpckelly]

24. So he's giving a motivational speech to the freepers to start a revolution?

There's not enough self-help shit in the world for these people. FAIL, try again.

[blogslut]

26. I don't know

I just googled the name "Bob Basso" and that's what I found. Motivational speakers can have personal social agendas. If it's any consolation I rated the video down - it's boring and silly.

[anigbrowl]

37. Why do you think this is so hard/expensive?

Have you seen what even the consumer cameras can do these days, never mind the prosumer ones that can be had for a few grand? There's a lot of people with video cameras, and doing a chroma key for a sitting subject like this is trivially easy. OK, so the guy is a loon, but as I said above, you could make this in your garage.

I just looked on ebay, and you can get a Canon HV20 (a consumer camera beloved of amateur film people because it shoots 24p at 1920 x 1080) for $399. Couple of lights, a boom or a body mic, a simple green flat and a few hours in Final cut or whatever to do color correction and and a simple chroma key, done.

[my2sense]

6. dupe-delete

[gratuitous]

7. So that's what happened to Bilbo

I wonder if he still misses his ring? Or his marbles?

[ColbertWatcher]

8. Is there a way to know what's in the video without giving the bastard a click?

Has someone transcribed it yet?

[chrisa]

11. You're not missing much.

It's pretty much the entire manifesto of Free Republic, read by a guy dressed in a Halloween costume.

[csziggy]

23. And he never stops to breathe - a continuous harrangue

No wonder he's so messed up - he's not getting enough oxygen!

[G_j]

12. yep

the pic is enough for me.
I don't want to watch it..
:eyes:

[butterfly77]

15. What in the hell is he talking about when he says..

we the people want our country back. This crazy old motherfucker and his we the people have had it for eight years and look at what they have done to it..

[Juche]

16. He is fairly decent

His right wing populism, which is fundamentally (like all right wing populism) just designed to empower corporations and the wealthy and disempower the working class sounds like it might work on some of them. That is the scary part.

[originalpckelly]

18. He sounds like a racist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKFKGrmsBDk

That's another one, and it's far more racist and anti-immigrant.

[Juche]

33. He is a racist xenophobe

Which is one of the funny things about right wing populism. On one hand the backlash movement hates anyone foreign, but wealthy corporations love the fact that they get undocumented, non-union labor that doesn't qualify for workers comp and the minimum wage. Pleasing two masters at once can be fun to watch. As a rule of thumb the corporations get what they want though.

[rvablue]

19. ALERT! ALERT! This wackadoodle in a wig participated in Cry Baby Beck's "We Surround Them" circus!

[originalpckelly]

20. Oh he did, did he?

It's starting to make a little bit more sense now, as to how this guy produced such a high quality video, at least compared to his prior one.

[chrisa]

28. lol

This is getting better by the moment.

[Oilwellian]

30. Yep, here's an interview they did together

Basso is also a visiting professor from UCLA. Beck showed part of the video in this interview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvrCOmPjLyY

[Vickers]

25. Good lord, is that Barbara Bush in a frock coat?

:puke:

[burning rain]

29. What's ironic...

is that Tom Paine was very much the lefty for his time; he came up with an early scheme for funding social assistance to farmers and the poor and elderly with taxes.

[santamargarita]

31. Just another Goddamn Fascist Pig with a candle that knows...

what he represents will be destroyed by true Americans!

[hyphenate]

32. Well, I don't know about anyone else

But there were a couple of things in the video that I can agree with him on. It's true, for example, that allowing a rep or a senator vote for his or her own pay raises should be forbidden, that many of the congress people should be limited in their terms of office, and that they shouldn't get their congressional pay in toto for their pension--they should all be getting what the rest of the workforce get, and let's see them live on that! Another thing I agree on is public service--I would LOVE to see the Peace Corps come back in-force, with anyone who gets a government grant, for example, for college to be given the choice to pay it back in service to their country by spending a couple of years in a foreign country or third world nation in some capacity with a nominal salary.

Some of these things aren't even related to partisan politics, unless someone makes them partisan. Common sense should be the key in some of these "battles" and whether a person agrees to any extent over them or not is purely a gut instinct.


As for the production values for the video itself, I hate to tell a lot of people, but there is very little in the video that couldn't be done with a budget of a couple of hundred dollars. What's there, after all? A candle, with some sort of table to hold it, a background consisting of an enlarged copy of the Constitution on a transparency, and a guy with a costume depicting the 18th century. Costumes can be rented, you can get that kind of a large transparency from any Kinkos or large photography shop, and it could even be a stock photo image. And the candlestick--puh-lease, you can get a tapered candle from even the 99 cent store. A black covering over any table would be just as easy to get.

The speech? For anyone who writes, a 6 minute piece is pretty simple to do--in my own case, stopping at 6 minutes would be harder to do!--some help with the research he talks about would be only limiting factor, but something most people could do with the will and the determination--I would surmise that anyone can find whatever material they needed if they do a google search on the topics.

Almost anything and everything in that video is reproducible and not expensively. A three person crew is all most people would need--most video cameras nowadays would handle the low lighting in the video, and set design is minimal. A person behind a video-cam on a non-moving tripod would be all that would be needed, a person to check and control sound, and the "actor" himself. He says his name is Thomas Paine--perhaps he is a descendant of the original Tom Paine, but while some of his laundry list might be worthy of his ancestor, some of it isn't a whole lot of Common Sense.

[Marr]

34. Wow, Judy Dench is looking rough.

[Joe the Liberal]

38. LOL I watched it..........

"blah blah illegal immigrant blah blah blah, congress, blah blah blah taxes, blah blah blah, spending bill blah blah blah, time for revolution blah blah blah!!!"

I really wasn't paying attention so that's pretty much all I heard him say, this guy is a fucking clown!