A video clip featuring Beck’s words was uploaded Monday by the Santorum campaign.

The campaign also offered the following transcript of Beck:

I don’t endorse candidates, I don’t get involved in politics, I don’t make donations to any politician. Rick Santorum is a friend of mine, but I choose my friends carefully and I would never tell you someone was a friend of mine if I didn’t have great respect for them. I will tell you this. People ask me all the time, ‘who is out there?’ I tell them the same thing, I don’t trust any of them, but if I had to trust the reins of power with one person that is currently in this field and, because I think the next president has got to be Abraham Lincoln, he has got to be somebody who knows exactly who he is, knows exactly where he stands and is willing to, in the end, turn those reins of power back over. The temptation and the pressure is going to be absolutely enormous. If there is one guy out there that is the next George Washington, the only guy that I could think of is Rick Santorum. I would ask that you would take a look at him.

To place the Santorum-promoted piece in context, visit The Right Scoop blog, where a nearly 17 minute clip has been posted of the same exchange.

“We think all of the candidates suck,” Beck said after Santorum joined him by phone.

Beck added that there are only two candidates, in his opinion, that don’t have “scary policies.” Those two being Santorum and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann.

“So, what do we need to do to get you and Michele Bachmann to be the president? Vice-president? I don’t care — you can switch chairs whenever you want. You can work it out. What do we do?” asked Beck.

Santorum’s response was his website address and an ask for campaign donations.

From the EpicStep website:

Our nation’s economy and system is collapsing under the control of the top 1% of wealthy Americans. Unemployment is at a standstill, foreclosures are displacing families and the future of the United States is in the hands of unemployed college graduates with excessive debt from student loans. Changes on Wall Street including globalization and the government widening the threshold of Wall Street’s power gave tremendous opportunity for the rich, who possess 40% of the nation’s wealth, and stripped the lower and middle class of the American dream.

We must unite, stand strong and demand the government hears the voice democracy gives us. If you are the 99%, you can take back your voice.

In Denver, Occupy Denver continues to grow, with hundreds turning out for a cold rainy march on Saturday and dozens of tents now holding fort at the Capitol.

Nationally, Herman Cain and Glenn Beck have been among the most outspoken in condemning the movement.

Occupy Wall Street has inspired spinoffs in cities from coast to coast, including Occupy DC, Occupy Austin, Occupy Minnesota, and Occupy Fort Lauderdale.

U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, D-Ia, has been one of the few mainstream politicians so far to speak favorably about the Occupy Movement.

“There are many [people] in this country called the fun-employed,” the former Fox News personality told the crowd, implying that the young Americans protesting on Wall Street and state capitals across the country are willfully unemployed.

“The violent left is coming to our streets, all of our streets, to smash … to bankrupt  … to destroy,” he said.

Taking a pause from attacking liberalism, “Jon Stewart Marxism” and the media, Beck addressed the attacks his religion – Mormonism – has received during the summit.

“I am a proud member of the church of Jesus Christ,” he said. “Jesus Christ is my lord and savior. He redeemed me. I am a member of the American religion. There is a god. We must serve Him and serve our fellow human beings.”

He suggested that students frustrated by mounting student-loan debt and high unemployment should not go to college.

“You go to school, you rack up a lot of student loans, that was your choice,” Beck said. “If you can’t afford to go to college, go to the free public library. I did it.” Later, he pushed back against the idea that the government should have a say in setting tuition prices, saying universities should lower their prices.

Beck affirmed a point made by nearly every speaker and presidential contender at this weekend’s conservative conference, that the protesters want to overthrow capitalism and take what is not theirs.

The event will also feature John Stemberger, president of the anti-gay and anti-abortion Florida Family Policy Council, as a speaker.

Also attending the “briefing” is David Barton.

Barton is an evangelical Christian minister and activist who has had the ear of influential conservatives such as Mike Huckabee and Glenn Beck. Barton is also a self-proclaimed historian who believes that America’s separation of church and state is a myth.

He is the founder and president of WallBuilders, which describes itself as “a national pro-family organization that presents America’s forgotten history and heroes, with an emphasis on our moral, religious and constitutional heritage.” One of the group’s main goals is to “educate the public concerning the periods in our country’s history when its laws and policies were firmly rooted in Biblical principles.”

The theme of the Pastors’ Policy Briefing is “Rediscovering God in America.” The event has been held before and is typically aimed at getting churches and pastors more involved in political action. According to an announcement about the event, lodging and meals are all paid for by the Florida Renewal Project.

In 2008, Mike Huckabee spoke at the last Florida Renewal Project event as a presidential candidate.

“This is an appalling attempt by the Religious Right to turn houses of worship into house of partisan politics,” said Rev. Berry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. “Americans attend church for spiritual guidance, not to get a list of candidates to vote for on election day.”

The Alliance Defense Fund, a religiously motivated legal group which considers itself as a counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, is encouraging pastors throughout the nation to “freely speak to their congregations on political matters from a biblical perspective.” This year’s event is an extension and continuation of the group’s 2008 “Pulpit Initiative,” which challenged the Internal Revenue Service restrictions on pastors speaking about political candidates under threat of IRS investigation.

Lynn contends that the ADF is encouraging pastors to break the law by endorsing or opposing certain political candidates as a part of religious ceremony.

“I know the Religious Right would like to forge fundamentalist churches into a partisan political machine,” Lynn said, “but the law doesn’t allow it, and the American people don’t want it.”

The group points to a recent study finding that 73 percent of Americans agree religious leaders should not intervene in elections, and they have pledged to report offending religious institutions to the IRS, the government agency that is charged with investigating and enforcing tax law provisions.

“Church electioneering is illegal, and the people don’t support it,” Lynn added. “It’s time for the Religious Right to stop trying to drag churches into backroom politics.”

In 2006, the IRS issued a report stating that it examined 132 non-profits during the 2004 election cycle. The tax agency noted that “fewer than half” of the entities examined were churches and concluded that in many of the case, significant violations of the law had occurred. Written warnings were issued in 55 cases.

In 2008, the IRS took the step of sending letters to officials in the national political parties, reminding them that houses of worship and other tax-exempt entities cannot endorse candidates.

The ADF doesn’t seem to be arguing that such political practices from the pulpit is legal, but that it should be legal. The group views the restrictions placed on church as a part of their tax-exempt status as an undue shackle, which they believe violates the constitutional right of free speech. The group notes that in the almost 60 years since Congress added the provision to the tax code “there has been no reported situation where a church has lost its tax-exempt status or has been directly punished for sermons delivered from the pulpit evaluating candidates for office in light of scripture.”

Appearing recently on Glenn Beck TV, Pastor Jim Garlow of Skyline Wesleyan Church, who also serves as chairman of Renewing American Leadership, argued that “any pastor can say whatever he or she wants from the pulpit.”

During the original Pastor Initiative, according to Garlow, 33 pastors knowingly and purposefully violated federal law by issuing and recording political speech from their pulpits, and afterward provided those recordings to the IRS, which did not prosecute. The following year, a total of 84 pastors did the same — also without penalty. And the year after that 100 pastors did the same without penalty.

“This year,” Garlow said, “we expect close to 500 pastors to intentionally in their sermons defy the Johnson Amendment — they can speak whatever they want — and mail it to the IRS and the Alliance Defense Fund will defend [their right to do so].”

The News Corp. CEO and Chairman is under investigation for allegations that the now-defunct British tabloid News of the World, hacked into the voicemail of a murdered British girl. (Murdoch has since offered a multi-million dollar settlement to the family of the young victim.) The controversy drew international scrutiny, and U.S. lawmakers have called on federal agencies to investigate allegations that others under his media empire hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims.

In July, at the height of the hacking controversy, Perry urged caution in judging the claims against Murdoch. The pause from Perry came after questions of whether or not he should return the $1.25 million News Corp. donated to the Republican Governors Association under Perry’s leadership last year.

“I think that to judge Mr. Murdoch at this particular point in time is rather premature,” said Perry, stressing there are contributions of “tens of millions of dollars made by a host of individuals” to the RGA. Perry said money has been given back, in some instances, after companies receive indictments.

Murdoch is the owner of a the world’s second-largest media conglomerate, including film, print, TV and online holdings — some of which have helped to fuel Perry’s rising star.

The op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal misleadingly praised Texas’ job growth record under Perry, and defended the governor’s “treasonous” remark leveled at Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. “Everybody knows Mr. Perry meant no literal harm and was indulging the irrational exuberance that is one of his trademarks,” the Journal wrote. The paper has also been critical of Perry’s main GOP rival Mitt Romney.

Murdoch isn’t the only Fox-affiliated figure Perry has hung out with as of late, though. This weekend Perry also spent time with former Murdoch employee and controverisal Fox News show host Glenn Beck during a Lone Survivors Foundation Gala in Houston.

The Colorado Statesman’s Ernest Luning was at the event last Thursday and reported on Coffman’s remarks.

The congressman opened by explaining his vote in favor of the debt-ceiling deal. It was a tough vote, he said. It would have been easier to vote against it because then he “could have told conservative audiences he stood in the way of more government borrowing and he could have told liberal audiences he had drawn the line against deep spending cuts.”

“Told liberal audiences”?

Democrats in the state have been working hard in the ongoing battle over redistricting to redraw Coffman’s district to include many more Democratic voters. If they succeed, Coffman may have to begin explaining his votes to “liberal audiences.” Until then, he’s more likely to hold fast to his present strategy of ignoring them altogether.

Coffman moved from there on to the debate over growth in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“If not for Republican control of the House of Representatives,” he said, “we wouldn’t be having that debate at all. This country would be simply slipping into insolvency.”

“If we act soon, we can turn this around,” he said. “If not, we’re going to be in a Greece-like situation where there’ll be so many folks depending on the government that there’ll be civil disturbances in this country.”

So, if not for Republican control of the House, the nation would be “slipping into insolvency”? And we could expect a “Greece-like situation” of civil disturbances due to government dependence?

Coffman is talking mainly here about Social Security and Medicare, isn’t he? These mostly serve retired people, and Social Security is a solid program. There is no shortage of funds. As Luning notes, it’s running a surplus based on payroll tax hikes instituted during the Reagan years.

On the matter of individual dependency on the government in the U.S., has Coffman ever looked at any data comparing such dependency here with government dependency in any other developed nation in the world? Probably not, but alarmism has become the stock in trade of Obama-era GOP politics as well as the stock in trade of Colorado GOP fundraisers under new “moderate” Chairman Ryan Call.

Coffman closed with a piece on the recent low popularity of Congress.

“People complain about Washington today. I think we have an approval rating of– 13 percent, is it?”

“Historically,” Luning notes Coffman said with a grin, “we’ve been somewhere between pedophiles and trial lawyers, and pedophiles are passing us up.”

That was last week. His people thought he was ready for a round on the radio this week.

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Groups like the Citrus County Tea Party, the West Orlando Tea Party, Tea Party Manatee, Bear Witness Central in Jacksonville and other groups of concerned individuals from around the state have had their eye on the U.N.’s “Rio Declaration on Environment and Development” and its “Statement of Principles for the Sustainable Management of Forests” — also known as Agenda 21.

The initiative is a non-binding program that provides local communities that seek to grow in a manner that is kind to the environment with resources such as grant and conference announcements.

The organization that provides these resources is the International Council for Local and Environmental Initiatives (known as ICLEI). Almost 600 cities all over the United States are “global members” of ICLEI, including more than 30 cities, municipalities and counties in Florida.

Among the ICLEI members in Florida is South Miami. South Miami Mayor Philip K. Stoddard says that ICLEI has provided his city with information that helps the city move toward more environmentally friendly practices.

“They help connect you with people that let you know about grants, and conferences,” Stoddard explains.

But some conservative groups are convinced the initiative is a plot by the U.N. to take away the United State’ sovereignty and citizens’ property rights. These folks are also taking their concerns to local government meetings to “tutor” local officials about what their sustainable growth plans really are.

Stoddard says the paranoia is completely unfounded; he says ICLEI has no authority over its members.

“ICLEI simply provides resources for communities looking to improve their sustainability codes,” he says.

While the genesis of this recent upsurge in Agenda 21 paranoia is unclear, the subject was fodder for a few national right-wing conspiracy theories from the likes of Alex Jones and former Fox News host Glenn Beck. Jones has propagated many controversial theories, including “9/11 truth” ideas.

In June, Beck said on his now-canceled Fox News program that Agenda 21’s plan for sustainable development is really just a means of instituting “centralized control over all of human life on planet Earth.” Beck said the plan “is a massive movement, and its real intentions are being masked with environmental issues.”

“This structure was set up by those who want to set up a global government system,” he said. “They wanted to set this structure up years ago.”

Beck argues that local governments are going to try to control populations under the guise of environment protection with marching orders given by the U.N.

In 2009, American Thinker, a daily online conservative magazine, featured an article that described some of the most frequently heard theories from the right. The piece describes Agenda 21 as an “amalgamation of socialism and extreme environmentalism brushed with anti-American, anti-capitalist overtones.”

According to the article:

Smart growth plans usurp property rights and constitutional rights. Local officials, at the behest of State Government, revise zoning laws to fit into a “smart code” zoning template. A massive reshuffling of property rights ensues. Farmers may lose subdivision rights; conservation land adjacent to population centers may be rezoned into commercial employment centers; and low-density land in small towns is re-designated as growth area and rezoned to accommodate diverse housing including high-density apartments and condominiums.

Finally, a healthy dose of federal- or state-sponsored housing initiatives is embraced to ensure communities are properly balanced. The net effect of these plans is to create highly urbanized population centers throughout otherwise-rural counties, while simultaneously limiting the availability of land for suburban and estate subdivisions, as these are considered an unsustainable waste of land by Agenda 21 disciples.

The article warns that, “regardless of political orientation, two indisputable facts remain.” One: “Agenda 21 is a direct assault on private property rights and American sovereignty.” And two: “It is coming to a neighborhood near you.”

Right-wing activists in Florida have acted on such fears by calling on state legislators to repeal a septic tank inspection bill, for example.

Tea party members in Citrus County fought new restrictions on boating and fishing proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Kings Bay. The restrictions were imposed to protect manatees in the bay (the animals are facing a high number of deaths due to boating activity), but they threw the Citrus County Tea Party into a full-on protest.

From the St. Petersburg Times:

“We cannot elevate nature above people,” explained Edna Mattos, 63, leader of the Citrus County Tea Party Patriots, in an interview. “That’s against the Bible and the Bill of Rights.”

Federal officials “want to restrict the entire bay,” she contended. “They don’t want people here.”

Last week, Mattos, who says she has 800 members signed up on her group’s website, and other tea party members picketed outside a public hearing on the new rules. Because they weren’t allowed to bring their signs inside, she said, “my anger took over” and she sent a sharply worded e-mail to thousands of tea party members across Florida, urging them to write to Congress to block the Fish and Wildlife Service.

…

To Mattos, what the agency has proposed will erode private property rights. She predicted they will prevent people who own waterfront land from tying up boats at their docks “because you can’t have anything that interferes with the manatee because they’ll get trampled on.”

Mayor Stoddard says that ICLEI is an “information service, not command and control from Geneva.” He also says that the people up in arms about ICLEI are “raging loons.”

“These are the guys that wear aluminum foil hats,” he says. “They have completely lost touch with reality.”

The rhetoric is hardly exclusive to a handful of right-wing activists.

This past month, Senate candidates George LeMieux, Mike McCalister, Craig Miller and Adam Hasner took part in a debate hosted by the Central Florida Tea Party and the Florida Family Policy. Each candidate stood behind the tea party’s anti-sustainable growth stance, because they say they want to protect the country’s “sovereignty.”

The candidates were posed this question by Clyde Fabretti of the West Orlando Tea Party during the debate:

The sovereignty of America and the sanctity of our individual property rights are being threatened by America’s involvement in the United Nations’ globalist subsidiary the International Council for Local and Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI). ICLEI and the U.N. have circumvented our congress and our constitutions for direct relationships with 600 U.S. cities and over 41 local Florida governments to persuade them to adopt U.N. foreign policy initiatives such as Agenda 21, which separates private property from its rightful owners under the label of “sustainable development.” If elected to the U.S. Senate, would you take specific legislative action to remove this threat to America’s sovereignty and our individual property rights under ICLEI — and if so, how would you do that?

“The United Nations is a corrupt organization,” Hasner said. “I believe that we should not be jeopardizing America’s sovereignty … through the admission into these types of globalist organizations and international organizations.”

McCalister received a big round of applause when he answered, “We must stay sovereign in this country and we do not need the U.N., or any other country, telling us how to run this place and certainly not trying to tell us where we are going to live with their ‘one world government’ concept and trying to take away our guns.”

“We need people to wake up and realize there is an effort afoot to take away our God-given rights,” LeMieux warned.

“When I started learning about this silent invasion of our country’s sovereignty,” Miller said, “I literally was flabbergasted.”

At the start of business on Tuesday, Aug. 2, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the national debt subject to the legal limit was $14.293975 trillion. Obama signed legislation that day lifting the limit by as much as $2.4 trillion—with an initial and immediate increase in the limit of $400 billion. By the close of business on Friday, Aug. 5, according to the Daily Treasury Statement, the national debt subject to the limit had grown to $14.536130 trillion.

Over just four days, the debt had jumped $242.155 billion.

By contrast, according to the Bureau of the Public Debt, over the ten-year period from the end of fiscal 1950 to the end of fiscal 1960, the national debt grew from approximately $257.36 billion to approximately $286.33  billion—an increase of approximately $28.97 billion.

Using the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator, $28.97 billion in 1960 dollars equals $220.92 billion in 2011 dollars.

Thus, the $242.155 billion in 2011 dollars that the Obama administration increased the debt between last Tuesday and last Friday is more in inflation-adjusted terms than the combined debt increases of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations in the ten-year period from the end of fiscal 1950 to the end of fiscal 1960.

The figures in the article are accurate, although the author of the piece understates the amount of debt taken out during the 1950s by adjusting for the value of the dollar in 1960, and not adjusting for its value during each year in the 1950-1960 period. The claims made in the article are nevertheless misleading because they obscure the fact that any debt taken on from August 2-5, 2011, was done so in order to spend on programs and agencies whose budget was already authorized — and thus mandated — by an act of Congress.

Because the U.S. Treasury reached the debt ceiling on May 16, the budgetary obligations that accumulated during the weeks and months that followed had to be immediately paid for once the debt limit was raised. The fact that the Treasury immediately took on $242 billion doesn’t mean that the Obama administration arbitrarily took on that amount of additional debt during those four days. Rather, spending had already been authorized by Congress and the Treasury was obligated to pay for it with additional debt, or face the legal consequences of failing to do so.

In order to accurately compare the 2011 deficit with the deficit of the 1950s, it’s important to recognize that the government is currently taking in revenue at a much smaller proportion to GDP than it did in the 1950s, a fact that cannot be directly attributed to the Obama administration. The primary reason for decreased federal government revenue is the ongoing economic slump, with secondary reason being the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts.

According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal government receipts averaged at 17.2 percent of GDP from 1950 to 1960, while in 2010, they were 14.9 percent of GDP. Federal tax revenue as a percentage of GDP is currently the lowest it’s been since the year 1950, after which it did not go below 16 percent until the year 2008, the start of the Great Recession.

As for spending, while it’s true that total federal discretionary spending averaged 17.6 percent of GDP in the 1950s and was a substantially higher 23 .8 percent in 2010, much of that can be explained by the one-time American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the 2009 stimulus law, which is already phasing out. Discretionary spending is projected to shrink in proportion to GDP in 2011 according to the Congressional Budget Office(PDF). Of course, that leaves off mandatory spending programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The latter two programs were created after the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, so including them in the comparison is also misleading.

The increase in debt during the August 2-5 period therefore reflects not an arbitrary effort on the part of the Obama administration to take advantage of increased borrowing authority, but rather a natural consequence of the profundity of the recession and the legal obligation to pay the costs of mandatory spending programs.

Sure, they like a little Rush once in awhile, even a little Glenn, but at the end of the day it’s just not enough. They also want their crop reports, their state legislative coverage and, yes, their CarTalk.

Writing in today’s New York Times, Timothy Egan says the conservative attack on NPR is misguided at best and counterproductive at worst.

POCATELLO, Idaho – It gets pretty lonely out here on the lava beds of the Snake River Plain if you’re looking for something other than a right-wing rant for company on the car radio. From Twin Falls to Idaho Falls, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Glenn Beck rule the airwaves. Beck is on two stations in Pocatello, case you missed one of his conspiracy theories.

The public airwaves that brush over this beautiful piece of high country carry a monopoly of thought — that is, until you pick up the first scratchy sounds of KISU-FM. It’s run by a proud conservative, Jerry Miller, but he serves up something different for Eastern Idaho.

You get a music program called “Potato Head Blues,” maybe some city hall news — up to 30 hours a week of home-grown programming. On top of that, KISU-FM delivers “Morning Edition,” “All Things Considered,” “Car Talk,” “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” from the stellar lineup of NPR. Late at night, the crisp, authoritative tones of the BBC can be heard in the Idaho Rockies.

It seems illogical that when the Republican Congress took aim at public radio, they were going after an audio lifeline much loved by their own constituents in Red State America.

…

The amount of money at stake in targeting small stations — about $430 million — would have zero effect on the budget deficit, the Congressional Budget Office reported.

By comparison, the state of Idaho got $2.7 billion in taxpayer-funded farm subsidies from 1995 to 2009, according to the excellent data system compiled by the Environmental Working Group. This at a time when crop prices are at near-record highs and big corporate farms are flush.

So why go after such a meager sum for public radio, when it means so much to the least-populated areas of America?

Spite. Ideology. Choose your poison, it’s there. Some conservatives just hate public radio. They think it’s elitist, snooty pants, full of borrrrrrrring civil discussions and, OMG — that 20-minute piece on chanterelle mushrooms! Surely no one in Idaho Falls cares what the BBC World Service has to say about Ivory Coast.

He notes that urban public radio stations would survive without the federal subsidy, but that the rural stations, one of which serves an area the size of Ohio in the heart of Republican Alaska, would be off the air without federal money.

So, the people the attacks on public radio will hurt most are those who tend to vote Republican, while listening to the best radio friend of Red State America — and see nothing inconsistent about it.

In Colorado, Rep. Doug Lamborn has been one of the most vociferous members of Congress in attacking NPR, but the rest of the Republican delegation has followed along. Meanwhile, urbanite Dianne DeGette has said enough is enough and stood squarely with rural conservatives who want a little news and culture in between blasts of bombast.