Since Bruce Jenner's transformation into Caitlyn Jenner she has been in the news or talk shows daily. Like many folks i'm sure, I am, and have been totally indifferent to the chatter over her transformation. I admit to not understanding her decision, How could or would I? There is no desire in fact to understand her decision, it does not affect me or my loved ones in any way whatsoever. Neither does it affect broader society in any appreciable way whatsoever, unless you choose to let it. What is important in my view is to simply accept that Caitlyn made the decision that was right for her, for me that is the end of the story.
Apparently there are some who feel differently. Those who believe Caitlyn for some reason should not be accepted for who she is. Maybe it is because of loyalty to biblical verse, or perhaps out of fear that society will be forever changed. Or in the case of El Rushbo apparently it it political, an opportunity to once again to attempt to define the GOP as the intolerant judgmental party that Limbaugh prefers it to be.
Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh thinks Republicans should reject Caitlyn Jenner, even if she agrees with them politically.
Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday that liberals are trying to “redefine normalcy” in an effort to stigmatize conservatives and that conservatives shouldn’t agree to their terms by accepting Caitlyn Jenner as a woman.
He likewise dismissed a conservative blog that wrote that Republicans should embrace Jenner as one of their own to seem more humane, saying that doing so would constitute falling into a liberal trap.
Under this system, “conservatives and Republicans are the new weirdos, the new kooks,” the pundit said, “and that is part of the political objective here in normalizing all of this really marginal behavior. I mean, if less than 1 percent of the population is engaging in it, it’s marginalized behavior. It isn’t normal, no matter how you define it.
“We should not be celebrating this, we should not be lionizing this, we should not be encouraging this. These people have a very serious problem, and they need treatment,” he said. “They need help, not encouragement.
Hey Rusbo, since when has simply accepting situations that harm no one encouraging the situation? Caitlyn's decision is a highly personal one (as it would be with anyone making the same decision) and affects only her and her family, a family that has as far as we know understands and has accepted her decision.
“This fits everything the media wants to do in terms of turning the culture upside down, redefining what ‘normal’ is, getting revenge against the majority for all of these decades of discrimination and mockery and disapproval and all these religious fanatics judging other people simply because of, quote, ‘who they love,’
It is impossible for those of us who know Caitlyn's transformation, while significant for her, is really just a minor news event in the broader picture of important issues. Via: Memeorandum Via: POLITICO
You know, markets are self-correcting to some extent, maybe
not enough that we don't have to inspect meat or test drugs or set
safety standards for airplanes, but maybe enough that dangerous
products, unappealing products and frankly annoying things like the lies
and propaganda and bigotry that Clear Channel produces and airs on
about 600 radio stations in the US aren't doing well in the market any
more. Perhaps it's that people are getting tired of the slander and
quasi-treasonous, excremental and septic opinions of Rush Limbaugh, or
perhaps it's the effect the boycotts, the petitions and various activist
campaigns are having on investors. Booya!
Remember when anyone like the Dixie Chicks, for instance, or you and I
expressed any sense of shame for any actions our country may have taken
or not taken: any shame for having elected Caligula Jr. the
Warpresident? Well certainly the great weight of Limbaugh and the
fire-farting far right came down on such unfortunates back in the day
when expressing pessimism about the Stock Market was evidence of being
an "America Hater." Even peripheral actions like perhaps wanting to
publish the names of soldiers killed in the early days of our Shokinaw
war in Iraq was disgraceful and shameful because there was the chance
someone might use it to express regret for or disapproval of any action
of a Republican president, illegal or otherwise.
So shocked I was to hear than ol' rant 'n rage Rush declare yesterday that he was ashamed -- that's right, ashamed
of the United States of America. It's hard to reconcile that with all
the loud Limbaughian flatulation when Michelle Obama said that for the
first time in her life she was really proud of our country, which
allowed speculation that she might ever have thought less of it than
she thought of God Almighty or perhaps Allah to some dittoheads.
There's usually no worse offense, nothing closer to treason than not to
gibber in epiphanic ecstasy at any description of our New Jerusalem,
our greatest of all Christian Nations under God and all it ever has
done.
But not this time.
“To
be watching all of this, to have my intelligence – all of us – to
have our common sense and intelligence insulted the way it is….it just
makes me ashamed,” the fat man sang on his afternoon radio program.
“Seriously man, here we get worked up over 44 billion dollars — that’s
the total amount of money that will not be spent that was scheduled to
be spent this year.”
Only $44 billion he said
as though we would hardly have a problem if we hadn't and still didn't
have the most expensive and protracted war in our history and one which
not only didn't pay for itself as promised, but didn't solve any of the
problems it was supposed to do. How many trillions did George spend
and refuse to pay for? Isn't nearly all of that "spending" he wants to
cut service on the Commander Guy's extravagance? Well of course
it is, but all that sound and fury could never be as offensive to Rush
as making sure that other people don't have to die of things like
infected anal cysts or that some kid doesn't have to go to bed as hungry
as Rush gets after 10 minutes of not stuffing his fat face. It's
shameful that the less than wealthy should presume to do more than ditto
him.
“We just keep spending more money. We create more
dependency, we get more and more irresponsible one crisis to the next,
all of them manufactured. Except for the real crisis that nobody ever addresses — and that is we can't afford it.”
Nobody
Rush? Perhaps not so you could hear over your own sound and fury, but
your party hasn't shut up long enough for anyone to pause and ask who
decided we could afford the most expensive war we ever had because the
magic Tax Fairy would pay for it. Wasn't that a manufactured
crisis that created a real crisis -- the WMD that weren't, the
yellowcake hoax? We couldn't afford it and you told us we could because
tax cuts for you would create magic money instead of the predictable
debt and crisis that in fact created all that dependence.
So,
I'm sorry to insult your intelligence with the truth and sorry to
mention that your followers tend to be on the two digit side of the bell
curve, but your self serving, self contradictory logorrheic slurry
of never-ending shit is an embarrassment to God and country -- and to me.
“I've said the same things over and over for 25 years”
said
Rush, but of course he said it during the most prosperous period in our
history as well and while the debt shrank and the surplus grew. "I just
hate slick Willie" he said. "I mean he just makes me sick." While
employment and wages grew and debt shrank and Lord Rushbaugh and
millions of us got rich: while the economy bloomed and peace prevailed;
while he screamed about the greatest tax increases in world history.
"Both parties are spreading fear and panic," said Rush who may be afraid
that he'll not get this year's Oscar for fear and panic mongering. What else has he ever done?
But
hey, I wouldn't want to live in a country Limbaugh approved of so I
can't say that I'm sorry for his simpering claim to shame. He's not
ashamed of backing Joseph Koney while claiming that Obama was not a
Christian, he's not ashamed that none of his prophecies, his apocalyptic
warnings have shown merit. He's not really ashamed at all. It's just
another gambit, another lachrymose plea for attention, another
distraction, another smokescreen to hide his irrelevance, his dependency, his shameful life.
There is a distinct possibility that I am spending entirely too much of any given day thinking about Rush Limbaugh. (As in "I need to scrub my brain with steel wool, because the words 'Limbaugh' and 'sex' have appeared in the same sentence.") But sadly for someone with an active imagination, he is in the news of late. And sex is involved.
So, question time. Rush has been married for roughly twenty of the sixty-one years he has infested this earth. He is known to have acquired Viagra (and a few other substances) through a number of sources. A few of them were even legal.
So, it's probably safe to assume that he had sex with one or more of his wives. (I started to have this mental image of him being lowered onto her with a crane, but then my gag reflex kicked in and I spent the rest of the night gripping the porcelain throne and dry-heaving...)
He doesn't have any kids. So I'm guessing that either birth control was involved, or those D-cup man-boobs have very little to do with him being morbidly obese.
Now, you take a man who hasn't seen his winkie without a full-length mirror in decades, a man with a documented willingness to lie about any subject in the world, a known drug addict with a fondness for cigars that smell like petrified turds: you take that man, and then you note that he is currently married to a reasonably hot woman half his age, and you know one thing as a universal truth. That man is rich.
You know for a fact that she didn't marry him for his looks, or for his charming personality. He wouldn't have a chance in hell of landing this woman if he didn't have in excess of seven figures in the bank.
So, we have a woman who is willing to occasionally allow this bloated half-human slime to bounce his sweaty nethers against hers for a few seconds, before a thin dribble of lifeless sperm oozes out and he rolls over, exhausted, and falls into a bourbon-induced coma.
(And the next day, while he's railing against whatever liberal plot he claims is destroying America this time, she dashes off for a morning of passion with Reynaldo, the Dominican pool boy.)
So, in essence, the former Kathryn Rogers is having sex for money. Which would apparently mean that, by Limbaugh's definition, she's a prostitute.
I'm just saying...
But that is neither here nor there. More importantly, before anybody loses control of their gag reflex, let's turn away from this sordid scene of the human Hindenburg and his harlot, and consider one fact.
What does it say about America that Rush Limbaugh has been sending up racist dogwhistles for over twenty years, but it's his sexism that finally causes him to start hemorrhaging advertisers at an alarming rate? Why is it sex and not race that brings him down?
This fat bastard has been sexist for years: I mean, admittedly, there are more white women than black people in America, but bigotry is bigotry, isn't it? From the beginning of his program, before he was even syndicated, he was using the term "feminazi" to refer to... well, to any woman who said anything that wasn't strict Judeo-Christian submission to a man. And it isn't like he's ever pulled back from that position.
I have long told you, for example, Undeniable Truth of Life No. 24, written back in 1987: Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.
See, I recently made fun of an idiot who titled a blog post "In Defense of Pat Buchanan and the First Amendment," where I finally had to explain to him, in tiny little words, why Pat Buchanan qualified as racist. And Limbaugh uses exactly the same tactics as Buchanan: he dog-whistles his way through life.
It all boils down to the "Southern Strategy" of the GOP, as explained by Lee Atwater, advisor to Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, and later Chairman of the Republican National Committee.
You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' -- that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me -- because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'
And there you have one of the core strategies of Rush Hudson Limbaugh III.
There are dozens of articles out there listing the various racist things he's said, going back to his earliest days in the radio. His empty-eyed zombie supporters will then find one that isn't properly sourced, and claim that the whole list is therefore invalidated. So the best way to play this little game is to find the ones that still exist in recorded form.
Unfortunately for Rush, this is not a difficult thing to do. Watchdog groups like Media Matters have literally hours of the stuff.
His favorite tactic (and that of much of the White Right Wing) is to paint Obama as a usurper, an outsider. He's different from "you and me," and so he's scary! He's the "Halfrican-American," the "angry black guy" from Kenya who's taking over the country: Limbaugh draws on the stereotype that all black men are gang members and thugs, and therefore, that Obama is dangerous.
Rush then reinforces this with continual references to Kenya, to Obama being "more African in his roots than he is American" and "behaving like an African colonial despot." Why specifically an African colonial despot? Well, see, Africa is full of black people! And it's in chaos! Which is what Obama is going to do to us!
And Limbaugh is fairly open about it. Not like Newt Gingrich, who calls Obama "the food stamp president" (see, all black people are on food stamps), but then gets to talk about "more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history" (a lie, by the way - that record is still held by George W. Bush). Rush doesn't hide behind code words like "food stamps" and "entitlement society" - he comes right out and tells you that Obama is going to confiscate your house.
This guy's -- this guy obviously has got a new role model, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. The next thing to look out for is for Obama to take the farms. Well, that's what Zimbabwe, that's what Mugabe did, he took the white people's farms.
That little clip actually covers many of Limbaugh's little tricks, all tn two minutes and forty-four seconds of your life that you'll never get back. It's got Obama looking up to African dictators, it's got America spiraling into chaos, Obama taking your house - hell, early on, he even get's the subconscious "violence" reference in, saying "Bernanke and Obama are out of bullets, that they've got nothing left in the quiver." See? The angry black guy is dangerous! He has guns! (And bows and arrows, because Africans use arrows, right?)
Well, with his sponsors running away from Rush Limbaugh so fast that he has to play dead air and PSA's, maybe we're finally hearing the death rattle of the Rush Limbaugh show. But let's not remember him just as some bile-spewing, misgynist asshole: there were so many other reasons to hate him.
Winston Churchill is occasionally said to have made the statement "Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains." This is, of course, a lie. As Paul Addison of Edinburgh University put it:
Surely Churchill can't have used the words attributed to him. He'd been a Conservative at 15 and a Liberal at 35! And would he have talked so disrespectfully of Clemmie (Clementine, the Baroness Spencer-Churchill, his wife), who is generally thought to have been a lifelong Liberal?
And I like to think that I'm proof of the exact inverse of that theory, regardless of which idiot said it.
As a young man, I entered the military as a relatively moderate conservative. I listened to Rush Limbaugh, I had few interests in helping anyone but myself, I was known to make sexist and (yes, I'm afraid) racist jokes once in a while.
But then I met people. I learned things. I discovered that a "society" made up of devoted followers of Ayn Rand would simply fall into chaos: with every member dedicated to their own selfish pursuits, the fabric of that society would eventually fall to shreds. Why would a Randian want to join the police, or the enlisted ranks of the military, where nobody gets rich? A philosophy of selfish materialism can only work if it is allowed to grow, like a wart or a tumor, out of an otherwise healthy society.
Look up the history of the "robber barons" in industrial America to see how well that worked out.
So, I slowly overcame my shameful past - and I have to admit, much of the cause of this has to do with trying to live up to the example of the Trophy Wife, one of the few truly good people I have ever met.
In a way, I suppose that means that I'm worse than the "ordinary" liberal (if such a thing exists) - I'm a Born-Again Liberal. I came from the darkness of selfish ego, into the white light of humanity.
But, yes, I used to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I thought he was funny. I haven't thought so in years.
And now, he's going on his national soapbox, and calling a private citizen a slut. Because he's an bloated, lying bag of ass. He is the herpes sore on the face of society.
What does it say about the college coed Susan Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does that make her?
It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She's having so much sex she can't afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We're the pimps... the johns, that's right. We would be the johns... no! We're not the johns. Well... yeah, that's right. Pimp's not the right word.
OK, so, she's not a slut. She's round-heeled. I take it back.
Her name, you oozing pile of rotting feces, is "Sandra." And those ellipses are there, not because I cut anything out, but because the drugs are finally taking their toll and his ability to spew bile and lies occasionally goes off-track. Hopefully, the memory lapses will get worse, and he'll shut up altogether.
(Actually, if there was any justice in the universe, he would get Parkinson's and be completely unable to communicate. That isn't happening, and therefore, there is no god. Q.E.motherfuckingD.)
See, that's what Rush said. It is, of course, unrelated to reality, but it's what right-wingers want to hear. Because the last thing they want is for people to know what Ms Fluke actually said.
A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown's insurance because it's not intended to prevent pregnancy.
Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn't be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt's amendment, Sen. Rubio's bill or Rep. Fortenberry's bill there's no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs...
In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.
For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She's gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
After months paying over $100 out-of-pocket, she just couldn’t afford her medication anymore, and she had to stop taking it.
I learned about all of this when I walked out of a test and got a message from her that in the middle of the night in her final exam period she'd been in the emergency room. She'd been there all night in just terrible, excruciating pain. She wrote to me, "It was so painful I'd woke up thinking I’ve been shot."
Without her taking the birth control, a massive cyst the size of a tennis ball had grown on her ovary. She had to have surgery to remove her entire ovary as a result.
On the morning I was originally scheduled to give this testimony, she was sitting in a doctor's office, trying to cope with the consequences of this medical catastrophe.
(Those ellipses are because I did cut some stuff out. Go read the whole thing. And yes, Mr Santorum. This woman had to be medically sterilized because you are opposing birth control. It would be ironic if it weren't so goddamned sad.)
That's Rush Limbaugh for you. More than happy to lie on any subject, at any time.
Now, Rep. Jackie Speier is calling for a boycott of his sponsors. And I think that's a pretty damned good idea: the right wing will whine that he's having his free speech suppressed, but he's welcome to say whatever he wants to; he just also gets to take responsibility for his lies.
Now, because Rush is a turd, Quicken Loans, Sleep Train, LegalZoom.com and Sleep Number have all pulled ads over this. (If you want to say thanks, they all have contact us or feedback somewhere on those links I gave - but you should know you'll probably end up on a mailing list.) However, there are others.
There simply aren't words adequate to describe Rush Limbaugh unless we quote his own. I'm tired, to tell the truth, of trying to match polemics with him, tired of denouncing him and of course the ears of his acolytes are deaf to such things anyway.
I admit that I don't actually listen to him any more and that's been true for many, many years. I simply can't trust myself in the presence of so much evil, so much hatred of the kind of America I hope for, but at the bottom of it, I can't stand to hear some sinister thing that the law requires us to treat as a human being and citizen, so incapable of reason, so bereft of any human feelings and so unable to feel any kind of shame, so full of hate.
But as I say, his followers can listen to him demanding harsh treatment - even death - for drug users while knowing he's a long time abuser of opiates who has had his employees risk their freedom by buying drugs for him. His hangers on can quote his self contradictions without pause and will smile and nod when he wishes disaster on our country if disaster is what it takes to promote Republicans and destroy any Democratic president. Who but Rush, after all, can call Obama an ineffectual "empty suit" and a tyrannical demagogue at the same time; tell us he was born in Kenya and Indonesia simultaneously and not instantly be dismissed as casually as one flushes a toilet.
Certainly not Limbaugh's ignorant army. They surely applauded his latest verbal atrocity; telling us how that evil Obama sent troops to Africa to help kill Christians: The Lord’s Resistance Army. They certainly aren't going to notice or care or believe that the LRA are a genocidal terrorist group who has murdered, raped, kidnapped and terrorized tens of thousands over many years. They've killed some Muslims, you see and that makes them Christian Soldiers, marching as to war.
They aren't going to be shocked at the way Limbaugh assembles scraps of misunderstood or non-existent or invented stories without any concern for truth or decency or patriotism or anything but the potential to destroy Barack Obama. No, not as long as he keeps up the endless supply of nasty little lies they can tell their friends over a beer and at the barber shop where Fox plays on the TV, where the stupid go to get their wisdom confirmed and hate is in the air.
"Hey didja hear how Rush called Oh-BAH-ma an empty suit? He sure got that right!"
I'm not Yahweh, The Hulk or Captain America and I'm not into destroying countries with hellfire or even evildoers in hand to hand combat, but If I were, I have a feeling I would have a hard time finding enough good people to convince me to park the thunderbolts and volcanoes and floodwaters and let it all this American hate culture continue. Yes as a humanist and a non-believer, I have a hard time condoning that sort of world-drowning temper tantrum in the first place, but I sure as hell empathize with the old dude. We sure as hell deserve another dunking. Maybe in boiling water, this time.
Speaking of empathy. I walked into a shop today and as I was looking for some hardware, I chanced to hear the voice on the radio ( I think it was Rush) trying to twist the Oslo shooting story into some form where it seemed liberals ( who hate Christianity) were trying to portray the shooter as a Christian when he really was a "neo-Nazi" and they were just calling him Christian because he wasn't a Muslim. Funny how that doesn't work with Muslims not all being terrorists to inside the Rush Bubble, but never mind, amidst the tumult and the roar, I heard old anal-cyst for brains tell us "Barack Obama told us after 9/11 that we have to have empathy with Muslim terrorists"
the owner said to the clerk,
"Did you hear that? Obama told us to empathize with the terrorists" "Oops!"
Well, nail Jesus to the cross, sell your mother to a brothel, piss on everything holy, but never question Rush. It's too big a lie to deny, too tasty not to swallow. It's certainly too much work to check it out. Like so many people I'm becoming disgustingly familiar with, these nice people sit in their little store all day injecting hate, smoking hate, cooking up hate like some junky in a basement room with a needle and a spoon and who gives a damn if any of it is actually true?
Well did I pull out a gun and slaughter them? Drive back there with a car bomb? Did I even say, "no he didn't and Rush makes Satan look like Santa Claus?" Sorry to say, I didn't, not in this town, not in the gun toting, burn your house down, hide your body in the swamp Bullshit Belt. I just said, "have a nice day" and left and won't ever shop there again. I'm not proud. I'm not proud of seeing a fake statement from the First Lady saying she "will side with the Muslims" in another shop not far away and not saying anything. But I won't be returning there either.
Of course what Obama really said was:
"The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. "
The exact opposite. It's like saying "Jesus told us to hate our neighbors"
But you know, these are otherwise, friendly, nice people. The kind you'll meet in Church or civic organizations and out helping their neighbors in times of disaster: the kind Hell must be full of.
Hatred and ignorance and Rush Limbaugh, the primal ooze and petrie dish of evil. Was Brievik influenced by right wing religious intolerance or was he simply attracted to it. Should we call him Christian or a Freemason and should we call Osama bin Laden a real muslim and who gives a shit? This kind of mindless, relentless, evil dripping, malignant and malevolent propaganda is as delightfully irresistible to "felaheen America" as carrion to a buzzard and is as able to wrap itself around facts, digest them and turn them into shit as a snake.
God damn Limbaugh and all his friends and all his sponsors and all his words and all his lies and all his hate and all his wealth -- and that's as close to praying as I've come in these last 60 years.
Long before we had Steven Colbert with his espousal of conservative views that reveal trenchantly cynical commentary beneath, we had Petroleum V. Nasby writing in the dialect of the South in praise of the "secessionists" and their northern friends the Copperheads. But it works both ways and the infamous Palm Beach man of the people, Rush Limbaugh is borrowing the technique to express his gratitude to God that we have a man in the White House like Barack Obama.
Such a character as Colbert uses takes strength and skill to maintain, but it's a strength that Rush either doesn't have or doesn't want to have. Like a dog who just can't sit still with the smell of bacon in the air, it didn't take long, yesterday night, for Limbaugh to crack under the strain of decency and honesty and reveal what hunger lies beneath.
"I, me, my, three of the most used words in President Obama's media appearance last night, not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, military adviser, came up with the idea...not one of them... according to Obama, had the ability to understand the need to get DNA. This was Obama's message last night,"
said Limbaugh. I suppose he simply didn't listen to the same speech I heard and perhaps he wrote the script before it even aired, but at any rate even the faux appearance of pleasure at our success in doing away with mass murderer Osama bin Laden was too much of a strain and the cynical, dishonest and slimy hate just had to come out.
No, Obama just couldn't be honest enough to admit that George W. Bush really was responsible for it. Couldn't resist telling us that it would have been better just to carpet bomb Abottabad and perhaps start another trillion dollar war against Andorra. He couldn't even be a man enough to admit being a Muslim and to stop fooling people with his birth certificate. But then what can we expect of a black man and a Democrat?
There's a difference between comedic impersonations and bigoted mockery; between comedy and things that make racists, bullies, mean spirited, angry people laugh. One could invoke the German Schadenfreude; yet the laughter when a clown slips on a banana peel isn't quite the same and isn't as universal as the sound that comes from the man in the white sheet laughing at the humiliation of another man.
Ive seen enough bullies in my day. I've seen some of them confronted and heard the common refrains of "I'm the victim here" and the almost inevitable " didn't you know I was joking?" So I wasn't surprised to hear Glenn Beck whine to Meredith Viera that his detractors didn't have a sense of humor adequate to know that when he advocates beating a public official with a shovel or tells us of the need to shoot Democratic leaders in the head, it's those dumb liberals who are humorless.
For the most part, the law has never found incitement amusing: shouting fire when there isn't one - for laughs. Even those orating innocently about a strike have been punished in America because someone used the occasion to toss a bomb. You don't make bomb jokes in the airport and you don't joke about killing democrats to an audience you know to include deranged and armed enemies of Democrats - even if for no other reason than avoiding making yourself look bad. But looking bad is just what many of these frustrated losers want to do.
But times seem to be changing and that old time evil is bubbling up again, or at least some groups now have enough power to make the clowns take off the blackface and to think twice about anti-Semitic rants and maybe be a bit more circumspect before going after Homosexuals Females and all the other pet victims of the Right.
Mexicans? Chinese? Well they are still targets of opportunity for those willing to descend that far. Some comedians don't realize they're being offensive to people who don't deserve it, some of them don't care as long as they get an audience and others couldn't get a job unless it was entertaining bigots. So if Margaret Cho makes jokes about her Korean family, we don't cringe - unless we are her relatives. When Michael Richards goes on an N-word binge we question his sense of decency -- to say the least.
Watching Dennis Leary's charity benefit the other day, I was appalled at his crude attempt to make fun of the world's most widely spoken language. No, not the real difficulties of speaking, it but with facial contortions and weird sounds that didn't seem funny or sound anything like Chinese to one familiar with the language. Bad taste I think, and enough to alienate a lot of people to the objectives of his charity.
And then there's Limbaugh.
What is an American president called when he visits China? They call him Mr. President. He's only called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face and we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them.
What is Chinese President Hu Jintao called when he's a guest here? The "Chicom Dictator " says Rush. "Ching chong, ching chong, chong" mocks the flatulent Palm Beach Bastard Billionaire, who makes a living lowering the estimation of my country in the eyes of the world. Condescending, contemptuous and contemptible: "Ching chong, ching chong, chong" while millions of Americans, with or without Chinese origins cringe.
No, Presidents from Nixon onward have been treated well in China, it's only in the sewers of the American Right that President Obama is called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face, to induce them to trust our intentions and yet we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them while his adolescent friends laugh and mock.
Of course he knows what he's doing, and of course he doesn't care if he puts a white sheet on Uncle Sam and confirms the belief of billions that we are a nation of snarling pirates who don't deserve respect or trust or cooperation. He'll keep doing it as long as we let him, support him, laugh at him, watch him and patronize his unworthy, unscrupulous and unAmerican sponsors.
Alice Miller (1923–2010), the preeminent and influential Swiss psychologist, devoted her life to spreading this message: The roots of violence are known. No child, she says, is ever born violent. Violence is driven by nurture, not nature. Violence exists because most children on this planet are raised in violence … often beaten, humiliated, and broken in the first years of their lives.
Consider the options available to a battered child. If a child runs away, who will provide food and shelter? Self-defense is no option because fending off an overpowering adult is more likely to result in further mistreatment. How can a child resolve the contradictory experiences of adult as caregiver versus adult as tormenter? A child may try to be perfect, but perfection never works.
In most corners of the world, child abuse is sanctioned - even held in high regard as long as it is defined as child rearing. Thus, abusive practices are allowed to originate, flourish, and pass from generation to generation often under the cover of righteous piety and administered with this injunction: This is for your own good.
The normal emotional release for anxiety, pain, and resentment is forbidden to battered children, who will suppress their feelings, repress all memory of trauma, even put their abusers on pedestals and idealize them. The life of an abused child turned adult may take many paths. Some may turn their repressed rage against themselves in the form of addictions, anxiety disorders, and depression, even suicide. Others may turn their suppressed rage against their own children ... or against society as criminal offenders.
The issues raised by Alice Miller have social and historical implications. Sometimes abused and traumatized children reenact their childhoods on the political stage and turn themselves into tyrants or become the adherents, adulators, and henchman of tyrants and lunatic ideologues. Systemic child abuse is the wellspring of injustice, ignorance, and evil in the world.
If we write a history of tyrants through the ages - along with their adherents, adulators, and henchman - what should we write about them? Shall we focus on recorded events, on the mass murder of their victims, and their legacy as villains of history? Or might we gain more insight in studying the abuse and violence that shaped their lives?
Joseph Stalin. From historical accounts, Stalin’s father, Vissarion, was a cobbler whose alcoholism led to business failures, domestic violence, and frequent relocations that left his family in poverty and deprivation. A family acquaintance recalls: “Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as the father.” Thus, the brutal and ruthless dictator remained faithful to his father’s example.
Adolph Hitler. Numerous biographies recall the Führer’s obsession with doubts over his family lineage - the illegitimate birth of his father, Alois Schicklgruber, and the true identity of his paternal grandfather. The presumptive fathers of Alois were two brothers, Johann Hüttler or Johann Georg Hielder. A third possibility was a Jewish family from Graz who employed the maternal grandmother during her pregnancy and paid her support money for 14 years. For Alois, the stigma of being born illegitimate, and part Jewish in a time of rising anti-Semitism, was a source of intolerable shame. Alois projected his self-loathing upon his sons, especially Adolph, in the form of daily beatings that once left the boy unconscious and near death at 11 years old. Later, Adolph Hitler would write:
I want the young to be violent, domineering, undismayed, cruel (…) They must be able to bear pain. There must be nothing weak or gentle about them.
More to the point, Hitler avenged his father’s shame upon the political stage … culminating in the Final Solution.
In the biographies of dictators, there is a consistent thread of early abuse in the lives of Ceausescu, Franco, Mao Zedong, Idi Amin, and Saddam Hussein, as examples. Furthermore, brutal tyrants have an uncanny ability to mobilize the suppressed rage of followers, presumably abused as children, who become their adherents, adulators, and henchman.
It should come as no surprise that brutal tyrants and serial killers share common traits. Neurologist Jonathan Pincus interviewed violent criminals on Death Row to study the long-term consequences of severe childhood mistreatment. His findings:
Every perpetrator had been exposed to extreme physical and emotional abuse by at least one parent or caregiver;
Each homicide reflected the same kind of brutality that the murderer had endured in childhood;
Those who experienced extreme cruelty as children directed their anger at others as a form of retaliation;
None of the convicts incriminated their abusers, even when consciously aware of the abuse;
The pathologies of convicted murders were similar to the pathologies of their abusers;
The biography of each and every convict represents a feedback loop of terror directed back at society.
The research of Jonathan Pincus shows that aggressive impulses accumulated in childhood play a role in causing developmental brain damage, usually as a consequence of long-term brutal mistreatment.
Is it possible for a nation, a society, and a culture to follow a similar path? When demagogues and hacks strut their hypocrisy, hysteria and lies upon a national stage, why shouldn’t we regard these as analogous to abuse? When citizens brandish guns, or imply Second Amendment remedies as an alternative to civil discourse, why shouldn’t we assume their purpose to bully, stifle debate, and suppress the rights of others? Does the impulse to win by any means and win at all cost remind you of the tactics of tyrants? Are these the signs and symptoms of Abused Nation Syndrome?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and sometimes it's just what it looks like. Sometimes, when the fat man sucks on it, all hell is smiling.
"The true story of Thanksgiving is how socialism failed."
Said Rush to a caller and President Obama is hiding that fact behind an honest account of history. No, that's not just a cigar and of course we didn't get tobacco from the Indians - what are you anyway, a Communist?
Rush Limbaugh has long since run out of relevance, run out of ways to prove that president Obama is a Kenyan, anti-colonial (would he rather have him be a pro-colonial?) Muslim Christian extremist who hates white people and is an avowed communist, atheist, trotskyite, racist antiChrist ultraLiberal Fascist. He's exhausted every epithet of every stripe -- and it seems he's now reduced to the even more pathetic state of turning the most mundane acts of traditional presidential sentiments and statements into fuel for his bonfires. Lapel pins, terrorist fist bumps; leave that to the girl scouts. Rush Limbaugh is the Big League.
What would have been, to anyone else and by anyone else, a tepid, ritual recognition of the long standing American myth that the Plymouth colony was helped in adapting to the harsh climate and unfamiliar environment of 17th century Wampanoag territory by some of the native people living there has been taught to school children for at least a century and of course it's filled with inaccuracies and covered with a sloppy whitewash, but only in the cigar sucking mind of Mr. Limbaugh does that 3rd grade pageant constitute a damnation of Mr. Obama.
" A beloved American tradition, Thanksgiving Day offers us the opportunity to focus our thoughts on the grace that has been extended to our people and our country. This spirit brought together the newly arrived Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe -- who had been living and thriving around Plymouth, Massachusetts for thousands of years -- in an autumn harvest feast centuries ago. This Thanksgiving Day, we reflect on the compassion and contributions of Native Americans, whose skill in agriculture helped the early colonists survive, and whose rich culture continues to add to our Nation's heritage. We also pause our normal pursuits on this day and join in a spirit of fellowship and gratitude for the year's bounties and blessings."
Jesus Christ. No, really -- Jesus Christ. this could be a Sunday Sermon preached somewhere in Middle America to a pastel congregation painted by Norman Rockwell. To The Palm Beach tycoon however, it's occasion for a racist sneer about casinos and
"So, we were the invaders, we were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about."
Tell that to every school kid who had to make Pilgrim and Indian costumes complete with anachronistic flintlock blunderbusses and buckled shoes -- the America hating little bastards.
"He says nothing about the Constitution in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation because he's got a problem with it,"
Limbaugh continues to rant and in the absence of any supporting information for it, fails also to tell us how a document written nearly 170 years afterward would be have any relevance to the Thanksgiving holiday other than one only obvious to a malicious, neurotic saboteur grasping for any wrench he can toss into the works of truth, honesty and human decency.
But of course thanking a long ago vanished tribe, acknowledging the cultural tributaries of our nation and being grateful to whatever name one attaches to providence that our country ever came to be, is no more a qualification for venomous condemnation than saying good morning or asking what time it is. Failing to mention the Constitution of 1789 means no more than failing to mention the Emancipation Proclamation and it says nothing about Obama or the United States of America founded so many years later and mostly by other people. The only uniting element in this or any Limbaughean argument is the desperate attempt to make Obama an "America hating" alien in order to make sure we continue making the same arrogant, ignorant mistakes we pridefully ignore. If the President came out against slavery and wife beating we can be sure Rush would show us just how this was the one-way door to communism and the terrifying notion that Rush may have to earn an honest living. But Rush reveals so much with every word.
"Somebody is toying with me. Somebody is seeing if they can get one past me. Somebody is trying to take advantage of me being not as focused on the day before Thanksgiving and falling for this prank."
That's right, it's not about an alliance of convenience between the Wampanoag and a ragged group of Englishmen who had suffered serious losses in the previous winter, it's about Rush. The President isn't following tradition, isn't being aware of history, isn't telling the truth, isn't being a general good guy in that love thy neighbor and let's work together, and can't we all get along mold. He's trying to trick Rush, take advantage of Rush and interfere with Rush's millions, with the profits of his betrayal of my country, the malignant, hyperbolic, fabrications intended to sabotage everything good and decent and true.
No, it's true Rush. You're right. The long, slow and erratic movement toward freedom and responsibility and justice you're trying to retard is only something designed to get around you and your mission. There's nothing else behind it but an attempt to "get around" you and Obama's not the only one. We're all trying to trick you and in fact history is trying to trick you, the truth is trying to trick you and come to think of it, Satan himself is trying to trick you into thinking that's just a cigar.
So how long did you think it would take? Actually I'm surprised that Chairman Rush took so long to blame the oil rig disaster on "hardcore environmentalist wackos." He couldn't have been waiting for some evidence before making accusations of murder and terrorism since there hasn't been any and he's never let that bother him before. Besides he isn't actually making any accusations in the first place:
"I'm just, I'm just noting the timing here."
It happened on Earth Day of course. It's always so easy to say "case closed" when there isn't any case so I won't even hint that Halliburton, the recipient of unholy amounts of government subsidies, grants and contracts and with strong ties to Dick Cheney is handling the capping of the well. I'll just note who's getting rich from it.
It didn't take long either, for the "government can't be trusted" set to pledge their trust to the Arizona police never to define their "reasonable suspicion" in a way that lets them stop and harass American citizens of Hispanic origin or Hispanics with legal work papers. They don't have to worry at all, though they should be sure to have witnesses standing by, to never go out of the house without proof of citizenship and to be very, very polite to Sheriff Arpaio when he demands they stand and deliver.
There's simply no reason to worry about abuse except that the recently signed bill seems to have been drafted by Kris Kobach who is a lawyer from the Federation for American Immigration Reform , which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007 and who was former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft’s top immigration adviser. Hey, I'm not suggesting anything, but Ashcroft isn't known for respecting the niceties of Constitutional law in matters concerning the Bill of Rights. So maybe it's constitutional, maybe it's not, maybe it's going to be hell for Hispanics in Arizona, maybe not, but I'll simply consider the source.
I'd call it the house that hate built, or the penthouse more accurately. It's one of Rush Limbaugh's abodes, on 5th avenue in New York with spectacular views across Central Park and a paneled Library. It has frescoes on the ceilings, antique furniture and a few sets of leather bound matched sets of books that look like they were bought by the yard rather than for the content. Perhaps there's a gilt edged Ayn Rand volume or two. It's not that Rush really wants to move, but increasing real estate taxes are -- well, just so Marxist that it's, you know, a matter of principal. It's enough that he tips the doorman on Christmas and he shouldn't have to be taxed like some ordinary peasant.
I supposed he'll have to rough it at his obscenely huge oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, as cold as it is these days (it has nothing to do with climate change) in Florida. It has its own charms and on a good day, you can plink at the Haitians floating offshore on styrofoam rafts.
At fourteen million bucks plus tax, it's just waiting for some Trotskyite Castro sympathizer to move in and share the wealth with those Liberal New Yorkers. I'd offer him no more than twelve though. It's a buyers market now that Obama caused the housing bubble and the credit crunch.
So let me get this straight, President Obama, or if you're a Republican, just plain Obama, is a dangerous leader because when someone tried to blow up a plane he took hours before mentioning the magic word "War." That was bad. Never ever talk of criminal activity when you can describe it as an act of war, unless of course it's our criminal activity. The non-sequitur correlate of this principle is that no rules apply when the words are coming from on official right wing spokesman, like Rush or Sarah. So it's OK for him to call people "retards" on the air, but just disgusting for Rahm to use it in private. Likewise it's OK for Rush to insist there's no war on while all the rest of his party continue to justify each and every contradiction. Actually no rules apply to Rush at all, since he can get away with such statements as insisting that the President has already dealt the US a more devastating blow than we suffered in World War II without being called a liar, an ignoramus or the worst enemy Truth ever had.
But let's start at the beginning, Rush claimed yesterday that Wal-mart was lobbying heavily to keep "Obama" from nationalizing the company. Lord knows they have lobbyists, but it takes a certain kind of person to broadcast that there is any likelihood of such an action and a really special kind of person to believe it. Now why would that be something awful you might ask Rush? Because there's no war on, says he, driving home the point that whether there is or isn't is situational and specific to any particular argument he's trying to make. There's a war when you can attack the President with it and there isn't when you can attack the President with it and both times Rush will be right.
"The last time this happened was World War II, but that was because there was a war on and it made sense"
The last time what happened, Rush? It may make sense to him, but not only are we losing men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, we did not nationalize Wal-Mart then or ever, nor is anyone contemplating it but Rush.
"Country is under assault, more so than we were during World War II, other than the Japanese. But the Germans never attacked us, the Japanese did."
he continued and I'll leave it to you to figure out what alternate universe these "facts" come from. I suspect there are numbers of people who will simply accept that the current administration is more dangerous to our national security than what in the late 1930's was the most powerful military on Earth, will simply nod and accept that Germany didn't declare war on us and didn't over-run Europe and attack England and that we didn't lose almost half a million troops or that untold tens of millions of people didn't die -- Obama is dangerous and has already done us more harm than the Axis powers and without a doubt is going to nationalize Wal-Mart.
Does anyone reading this believe that Rush Limbaugh isn't stark raving mad with power, thinking he can invent alternate histories, create alternate realities and use them to attack the government and the people of the United States of America? There are millions who do and it may be that one or two of them will take it upon themselves to do Rush's bidding and rid us of the man who has already ruined everything for everyone.
Of course it's a United States of America where the president's imaginary "gun grab" has already taken place, where people who just got a tax cut are protesting an imaginary increase, where people who can't afford a check-up much less treatment for a serious illness are screaming about "Obama" taking away their ideal situation and somewhere, somebody is plotting acts of violence because after all, "Obama" is not only a Nazi, but a more dangerous one than Hitler. Thus spake Limbaugh.
I've lived in declared disaster areas several times and have been involved in emergency communications and food distribution during three category 2 hurricanes in the last 5 years alone and of course, the destruction of property, the loss of power for months is no fun, but to compare any of that with what's going on in Haiti right at this moment shows the inadequacy of the word disaster. In Haiti, the lives of almost all have been a disaster all along and they are a living hell for the lucky survivors.
The first I heard about the earthquake in Haiti was a communication from the ARRL, which represents Amateur Radio in the US, asking us to keep certain emergency frequencies open and to listen for any communications coming out of Haiti. I heard nothing myself, although the Caribbean is at my doorstep. There was nothing but background noise on 14,300 Mhz -- the Intercontinental Assistance and Traffic Net (IATN) until the Rev John Henault, HH6JH, made contact late Wednesday morning. He said that he was safe, but had no power and no phone service. He was operating on battery power and hoping to get a generator running later in the day so he could report on conditions.
It's been reported that the UN peacekeeping force headquarters building has collapsed and may have killed everyone inside including the UN envoy. About 150 U.N. staff members remain unaccounted for and 22 are confirmed dead.
It may be a while before any final death toll can be determined. In a country of such massive poverty people will continue to succumb to disease, starvation and dehydration, but it will, no doubt be a very large number. France has airplanes on the way and the US has arrived and secured the airport so that emergency aid can land safely. President Obama has pledged $100 million in relief and has assured what remains of the Haitian people that they will not be forgotten. The Red Cross is actively soliciting funds with telethons and operators are standing by as you read this.
Rush Limbaugh wasted no time weighing in on the suffering of millions, on the slow, sordid, lonely deaths of countless children, on the agony of those crushed by fallen buildings:
"This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, "credibility" with the black community--in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made-to-order for them. That's why he couldn't wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there."
Yes, Rush is a heavyweight in more than one way. Limbaugh, who lives in barely imaginable luxury simply doesn't want another damned thing done for those ungrateful "light-skinned and dark-skinned" people, dying of thirst, hunger and disease. As to private donations to the Red Cross? Forget it!
"we've already donated to Haiti--it's called the U.S. income tax."
Of course Rush cares about some people, particularly when he can use their deaths to defame anything he defines as liberal: things other people call decency or charity, or humanity, or compassion. We're supposed to be outraged in perpetuity at the death of any American citizen at the hands of Muslims - White citizens preferred of course, but Rush doesn't give a damn or a dollar for anyone else.
Remember that the next time you listen to him, the next time you think it's so cute how he lampoons his shoddy straw men. Remember the next time you patronize his sponsors. This is the man who looks into the eyes of a bereaved mother, a dying child and says "screw you and screw anyone who gives a damn."
Whatever the cause of Rush Limbaugh's chest pains, they haven't been as fatal as some have reported but whether or not angina is involved, we can be sure they weren't pangs of conscience. His web site thanks us for our prayers ( if only he could hear mine) and is, as always, jam packed and bloated with fear mongering, dire predictions and apocalyptic warnings that if we don't "fight like hell" our country will be changed forever.Let's hope.
I recently read that only about 5% of those admitted to hospitals with chest pains die within a year, so one important and very needed change is probably not going to happen -- all the more so since most billionaires can not only afford health insurance but can afford to do without it. If you or I had rendered ourselves uninsurable through a lifetime of belly bustin' burgers, cigars, uppers, downers, pain killers and beer we might have a rather different experience and a bit less cause for optimism.
Yes, we have to fight like hell to stop this "buffoonery" says Rush about Bob Menendez' call to set aside ideology, turn off Limbaugh and pass the legislation that most Americans want. But Congress is ignoring the will of the people -- or at least the minority of the people he represents, says Rush. Public health insurance will change America forever -- forever! Government will "take over" health care just the way it took over all those plans you made for retirement. ( huh?) Just the way Veteran's benefits took over - well whatever they took over and medicare helped keep exploding profits from eating up every last dime retired people have set aside.
It's a tenet of Buddhism, and a nice bit of wisdom, that change is constant and suffering is universal when we refuse to accept it. It's too bad in this case that Rush's refusal to let go of failed 19th century ideas will cause more suffering for everyone else than it will for him. We have been changing from the outset in terms of making the US a better place to live for more of its people and Rush has been a major clot in the artery of truth and justice and decency.
No, I'm not going to descend to his level and wish him an immediate death, in fact I hope he lives long enough to see that not one dire thing he has predicted has materialized and that he's been pretty much wrong about every thing he's said -- and until that happens, I hope those pains continue to hurt like hell.
No, that's not some Zen Koan, it's Rush Limbaugh. Caught being fooled by some blog with a fake Obama speech allegedly from his college years, Rush didn't apologize for his total lack of journalisticintegrity but instead called it "satire."
"You can't beat that", said Chris Matthews this evening on Hardball this evening and he's right. Rush did his usual bouncing up and down excoriating Obama for advocating massive redistribution of wealth and using as evidence a speech Obama never made. Typical Rush stuff and typical Limbaughian attempt to weasel out of it.
Humor he said, needs to have a grain of truth in it and this is humor, which of course wasn't identified as such until it became clear Rush was a victim of an amateur hoax, and that truth is provided by our inner knowledge that although Obama never ever said it he somehow has inner knowledge that Obama was thinking it - as has not been demonstrated. Get it? That's right. Rush is a mind reader and therefore can be excused for denouncing someone for something he never said or did. You can't beat that and since we know Rush is a Satan worshipping prophet of the Auntie-Christ who eats cute puppies, has sex with dead goats, is an admirer and homosexual lover of Slobodan Milošević and has a secret collection of Nazi memorabilia in his attic that he wears on Jewish holidays -- since we know it, we can sell it as the absolute truth and claim that it's journalism. That's Rush.
A Tale of Two Cities, The Miller's Tale, a tale told by an idiot - it doesn't matter in the great game of Pin the Tale on Obama. Any tale will do. Your host today is Rush Limbaugh and he's here to tell us that a tale of someone getting beat up on a school bus can be pinned on US President Barak Obama. What? You want a reason? Well two black kids beat up on a white kid for some undetermined reason and because nature abhors a reason vacuum, the bell rings and we pin the tale on Obama!
That means of course that this incident, because there doesn't seem to be evidence of it being race-related, instantly goes on to round two where it becomes the model for the future Where Barak Obama individually directs the actions of all high school students ( remember the speech?)
"In Obama's America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering,"
said Rush yesterday. In other words, the fact of a biracial president guarantees that the "darkies" will no longer frolic gaily about the plantation as God and the GOP intends and as Rush proves, have already formed an American Mau Mau movement to invade the inner sanctum of the white race, rape our women and drive the streets of Palm Beach in Escalades with that terrible racist music blaring while Rush is trying to sleep.
That's right - the white kids get beat up - all of them and all of the black kids will cheer and because this has never, ever happened before when the White House was really white, it's Obama's fault, QED.
Tune in tomorrow when Rush will explain to us that all the mockery he gets from those miserable liberals proves that everything he says is correct.
When the man behind the curtain speaks, Republicans listen. Others become speechless. It's all too predictable that Limbaugh would support Joe Wilson's outburst and not surprising that he claims to have been squealing "you lie" himself throughout the entirety of President Obama's health care speech.
"He is lying, President Obama is. From the moment he opens his mouth until he ends the speech"
he grunted on his radio show yesterday. Of course and as usual, no discussion of how or about what he actually lied ensued. Boss Hog said he lied, that's enough and Wilson never should have apologized and his colleagues shouldn't have pressured him to do so.
It reminds me of the first time I heard his radio show. I was driving through Georgia, in the days before satellite radio and I decided to give him a minute to see what he was about.
[Rush] "I mean, the guy (President Clinton) just makes me sick"
[caller 1] "Ditto Rush! I see him and I want to vomit"
[caller 2] "Ditto, ditto - oh ditto ? Rush everything about him is disgusting. He makes me sick, sick!"
The call and response chorus went on and on until I turned it off and I've only heard him a couple of other times in all these years - I mean he makes me sick, but I can usually tell you why without inventing things.
That no plan offered by anyone provides health insurance for illegal residents of the US isn't hard to determine, but Rush isn't about facts, he's about emotions; hate for the most part. It's easy for him to say that Obama is plotting
"to completely tear down the institutions and traditions that have made this country great."
It's impossible however, to make a case for that without lying. In fact his attempts to preserve some of those institutions are the basis for other Limbaugh anger crusades. I'm at a loss to understand what American institutions made America great and are now in peril from the concept of making insurance available to everyone, unless stupidity, dishonesty and perhaps insanity are institutions. I'm at a loss to understand just how
SEC. 246. NO FEDERAL PAYMENT FOR UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS. Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.
Means the opposite of what it says without subscribing to Limbaughian logic. In fact it proves that Rush is a liar, something all to easy to do, but one thing Rush knows is that the more absurd and preposterous the claim the less effective is the irrefutable proof of its falsity. Rush knows and Rush profits and Rush keeps on lying and Republicans keep on following in his wake, terrified to disobey.It's not so much that he makes me sick but that he is the sickness.
"We’re borrowing more to spend more ... it defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college."
said she to Insanity Hannity although that's been the main thrust of GOP economic policy since Reagan. Never mind that she didn't actually study economics in her long, picaresque romp through a series of fourth rate community colleges and hasn't any real idea of who owns what part of American industry. If she did, perhaps the failed beauty queen, failed VP candidate and desultory student would have to blush about Alaska's state ownership of oil and gas resources and her failure to bring capitalism to her state.
But that's OK. Former Speaker of the House and thoroughly dispicable human being Newt Gingrich says that whatever Obama may be driving us toward, President Barack Obama’s plan to fix the economy has “already failed” and “bowing to the Saudi King is not an energy policy.” Of course not, and Obama would agree. Playing basketball after hours isn't either, but neither is it supposed to be, any more than being a serial adulterer like Newt is a guarantee he means what he says. Of course none of us will get the chance to ask him whether Cheney's collusion with oil magnates about raising the price of oil is an energy policy either, but it helps that whatever Obama has been falsely accused of doing, he's failed to do it.
Rush Limbaugh isn't ready to call Sonia Sotomayor a failure yet, but he hopes she will be. Racist and hack yes, he's ready to say that, but as he does with our president and our nation, he hopes for a good, solid failure. And besides, of course, as with Michael J. Fox's Parkenson's disease, Ms. Sotomayor's recent broken ankle is certainly evidence of lack of character.
“Now, the question is, would a white, male judge have fractured his ankle in the same circumstances?”
No, actually the question is whether Rush can say anything at all without his racism and misogyny creeping through, but we won't embarrass him by asking it, not while he's back on the Vikes and babbling.
"Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate,"
Liddy said in a conservative fashion.
"That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."
Yes, Mr. Liddy, and the Lord knows that would be bad regardless of which Lord you mean, just like conspiring to overthrow democracy in the US and bragging about it -- which seems to be your main "conservative" credential.
Yes, 4 months is soon enough to talk about failure and face it -- who is more qualified to talk about failure than the Republicans?
