Lyndon Obama

Bob Hebert’s column from today is a must read. And it’s depressing as hell.

“The U.S. doesn’t win wars anymore. We just funnel the stressed and underpaid troops in and out of the combat zones, while all the while showering taxpayer billions on the contractors and giant corporations that view the horrors of war as a heaven-sent bonanza. BP, as we’ve been told repeatedly recently, is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the wartime U.S. military. . . .

Watch out Barack, this could be you

“There is no overall game plan, no real strategy or coherent goals, to guide the fighting of U.S. forces. It’s just a mind-numbing, soul-chilling, body-destroying slog, month after month, year after pointless year. The 18-year-olds fighting (and, increasingly, dying) in Afghanistan now were just 9 or 10 when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were attacked in 2001. . . .

“Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.”

He hits on the exact points where we are so misguided with this war – all these wars. He hits with a damn sledgehammer, and still very few of us will look up from the Sunday crossword tomorrow to notice.

The gipper on my mind

For some reason, my brain has been hovering around Reagan lately - I think it’s because in reorganizing some bookshelves, I came across the biography Dutch, by Edmund Morris. A superb book by the way, much maligned by the radio and FOX talking heads who couldn’t possibly have read it even though they railed against it. Had they, they’d have known it’s not unkind to Ronnie. Morris used a literary device of injecting himself into the story (in a teeny way just to allow for transitions), which was a kind of  a biographer experiment. That did not go down well anywhere actually, but when the Right heard that someone had fiddled with the heroic history of their favorite prez, they pretty much went ballistic.

In any case, I feel confident that the professional conservative talkers didn’t read this book – at 874 pages including 100+ pages of footnotes, it’s not exactly Sean Hannity’s style. Okay, maybe Charles Krauthhammer read it.

Anyway, Reagan on my mind and all – remember “Government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem!‘

As I say, not as I do: PART THE THIRD

Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach has married yet again.  For the fourth time.  Mr. Bouncy Bouncy previously married Roxy Maxine McNeely (1977-1980);  Michelle Sixta (1983-1988) and Marta Maranda Fitzgerald (1994-2004). Yesterday, he married Kathryn Rogers (2010-).

But he doesn’t like gay marriage. Here’s what he said to the Palm Beach Post in 2004 (the year of his last divorce) about that: Marriage is about raising children. That’s the purpose of the institution.  In his three previous marriages, Rush hasn’t managed to have any children. I hear he does have a cat.

This champion of the common man – most of whom marry once – lives in a $24 million, 36,500-square-foot oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, Florida. When he doesn’t live in his lavish $14 million condo in New York City. Which has been profiled in magazines like New York Magazine!

Mazel tov, idiot.

(To my horror, famous gay Elton John performed at the rehearsal supper for one million American dollars.)

Oil and water and Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach

Mr. Bouncy Bouncy is most put out with the nature of the President’s response to the Gulf spill. I think he wants Obama to grab some paper towels and head to Louisiana.

Now today, it’s looking more and more that the oil could get into the loop current and affect the east coast of Florida. And that’s where the always-on-a-diet one lives. That oil might even lap up on the private beach of Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach just as he’s planning his fourth marriage. That’s stressful. So maybe when Obama is done in Louisiana he  can scoot over to help with the mop up at Mr. Limbaugh’s place.

Teh Sarah. Teh Rush. Teh ignorance.

From Sekanblogger over at Kansas Mediocrity. He is remembering “Drill, Baby, Drill” and its author. Our own Sarah Palin:

“Say something to us, Sarah. Speak. Don’t just utter yet another cryptic tweet about “foreign oil co’s.”

“Your colleague Rush Limbaugh has already suggested a solution: Leave it alone. That was his solution. “The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone out there,” he said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water.”

“You can do better than that, Sarah. Actually, my cocker spaniel could do better than that.”

Ahhh Rush. Let’s take a trip down memory lane:

“This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation…I’m talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?” –on the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal

“The phony soldiers.” –on U.S. service members who support withdrawal from Iraq

“He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He’s moving all around and shaking and it’s purely an act. … This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn’t take his medication or he’s acting.” –on an ad by Michael J. Fox endorsing Claire McCaskill for Senate for supporting embryonic stem cell research

“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.” –on Haiti earthquake relief, Jan. 13, 2010

That last one might be my favorite.

But it’d be fun to see them side by side in golf shirts

The blessed New York Post, desperate for a headline this morning (has Blessed Father Murdoch cut the budget?), has this:

Obama Won’t Golf With Limbaugh

Wouldn’t the etiquette require the President to issue any invitation? Does the New York Post think Limbaugh is more important? Why, yes they apparently do. Or their syntax could use some work.

Bite me

It’s way down in this very good story from TampaBay.com, but it seems America’s premier rocket scientist, Mr. Bouncy-Bouncy, has continued to opine on the oil leak in the Gulf.

Pundit Rush Limbaugh, who has a home on Florida’s Palm Beach, suggested that the explosion could have resulted from Earth Day eco-sabotage by one of the rig workers*. Limbaugh also said a cleanup was unnecessary.

“The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there,” Limbaugh said. “It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.”

It’s okay though, cuz he probably doesn’t have any listeners in Alabama or Mississippi or Louisiana anyway.

* Which one of the eleven dead ones is Rush thinking of I wonder?

Words matter, part the eleventyteenth

From Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish today:

Quote For The Day

24 Apr 2010 05:21 pm

“Trust is the prime constituent of the social atmosphere. It is as urgent not to damage that atmosphere by contributing to the erosion of trust as it is to prevent and attempt to reverse damage to our natural atmosphere. Both forms of damage are cumulative; both are hard to reverse.

To be sure, a measure of distrust is indispensable in most human interaction. Pure trust is no more conducive to survival in the social environment than is pure oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere.

But too high a level of distrust stifles cooperation as much as the lack of oxygen threatens life,” – Sissela Bok, Common Values, 1995.

This brings up a serious question for me re talk radio. Their stock in trade is not advocacy but scorn and they use very destructive language when targeting  a  person, a political party, a cultural institution or a government. All about naming people in particular as the enemy of the talker’s audience.

The talk radio world is conservative, but much more significant is their anti-Democrat, anti-liberal narrative, and because it is so focused, it’s bearing negative fruit. To pretend they don’t play an enormous role in the current state of political dialogue is nonsense.

(I wonder if Sissela Bok knew about American talk-radio?)

Because we need to hear more from him

In just 16 months they’ve added more than $2 trillion to the national debt . . . Had President Obama campaigned on this agenda, he wouldn’t have garnered 30% of the popular vote.

Our greatest mind, Mr. Rush Limbaugh, has a word or two to say in The Wall Street Journal today. The headline alone – “Liberals and the violence card” is accusatory – which of course is Limbaugh’s permanent tone. Be outraged, accuse someone (else) of being the cause, define them as ‘the enemy’, ‘the other’. It’s an old old song.

Not quite daily . . .

In his op-ed, he honors today’s Tea Party and says one of  the reasons for their  protests is what Obama has done to the debt. Rush has perhaps not noticed what happened between October ’08 and January ’09?

Obama was inaugurated as President of a very different country than he campaigned in. On October 14, 2008, Bush and Paulson announced the economy was on the verge of collapse and created the Troubled Asset relief Program for $700 billion.

The economy didn’t collapse. It did however crash. And the ongoing impact on our national debt spilled immediately into the Obama administration. Whether the actions of either administration were right or wrong for the country is something we don’t know yet.

It seems we need to remind Mr. Bouncy Bouncy of that little matter. We became a different country 21 days before Obama won the election.

He wraps it up with:

A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.

Which is, I guess, why the American people elected Obama and the Democrats. Silly Americans.

Good afternoon, Mr. Bouncy Bouncy

Again with the listening to Limbaugh. I can offer no good or rational reason why I do this to myself.  It isn’t to gather blog fuel, because it’s a behavior of mine that goes back much further than the birth of this thingee here.

Today, in his opening rant (others have opening monologues – Mr. Bouncy Bouncy opens with a rant about whatever has outraged him since 3pm yesterday), he was most distressed about jobless figures. Not about the jobless mind you. About the numbers.

He said: “Massive layoffs are edging up”.  Now that was a stand alone item, not a modifier or conditinal phrase or anything like that. Wow. Is there a mathematician or grammarian out there who can help me parse this one? It’s a construct that escapes me utterly.(Pino?)

But perhaps this unemployment numbers thing reveals that there is an upside to our fighting two wars (or is it three now) in Asia. Because if all those troops came home and mustered out, they’d need jobs. At least, as long as they’re carrying weapons, they’ve got a paycheck.

Something to think about I guess on the 137th day of the ninth year of the War in Afghanistan.

By the way, remember when he got out of the hospital in Hawaii, Limbaugh said that because he got great health care there, that meant there was no health care problem in this country? I guess by that reasoning, since he has a job, there is no unemployment in this country. What the hell is he ranting about?

And now we are asked to endure this?

Apparently there was a Miss America pageant recently. (once upon a time in a place far far away, young girls like me – um, me – were utterly entranced by the whole spectacle of what was then a huge event. And very magical.)

Anyway, it’s 2010 and they had this contest thingee and it’s not really on tv anymore, it’s on TMZ and shows up on some cable channel. Among the judges, Rush Limbaugh.  Sacrilege really.

No one, apparently, cares

And that is a very good thing. Makes my day. The Onion has written a faux self-loathing op-ed – by Rush Limbaugh and about Rush Limbaugh. The headline:  “I Don’t Even Want to be Alive Anymore.” Typical Onion.

Today, the Onion story makes it to memeorandum.com, a political news aggregator and one I check often. As with most aggregators, it grabs the original story and links to all those sites htat have picked up on the original story or the basic subject matter.

For the first time ever, today, I see an original story without any relevant links. No one cared enough to write about it. Enough people read it at The Onion, but no one wrote about it afterward.

Heh. Heh.

Ewww, wouldn’t it be loverly . . .

“The effect of this most recent Limbaugh calumny is, in my opinion, a clear SOS to mature and caring radio broadcast leaders to finally censure the man or, better yet, remove this dangerous hate-monger from the airwaves where he is increasingly and irresponsibly spreading his demagogic poison to the radical right and the emotionally vulnerable.”

Radio Ranch founder and Creative Director Dick Orkin, January 2010, in a letter requesting the National Association of Broadcasters to remove his own plaque from the Hall of Fame, until Limbaugh’s is removed. He doesn’t want to be in the smae company apparently.

Love letters

Mr. Limbaugh of Palm Beach

By now, pretty much all sentient and literate beings know the trashtalk that came from Rush Limbaugh last week after the Haitian earthquake. This sad fat man regularly reaches to the bottom of the barrel to titilate his drooling audience.Movie critic Roger Ebert has had enough I guess.On Thursday, he posted an open letter t o Limbaugh on his own website.* (I heard this exchange below in real time (masochist I am) and posted about it at the time.  It was far worse than it appears in print – full of sputtering noises, full of bluster and faux outrage.)

*It’s actually the Chicago Sun-Times’ site.

Here’s Ebert’s letter:

TO : Rush Limbaugh

FROM : Roger Ebert

You should be horse-whipped for the insult you have paid to the highest office of our nation.

Having followed President Obama’s suggestion and donated money to the Red Cross for relief in Haiti, I was offended to hear you suggest the President might be a thief capable of stealing money intended for the earthquake victims.

Here is a transcript from your program on Thursday:

Justin of Raleigh, North Carolina: “Why does Obama say if you want to donate some money, you could go to whitehouse.gov to direct you how to do so? If I wanted to donate to the Red Cross, why do I have to go to the White House page to donate?”

Limbaugh: “Exactly. Would you trust the money’s gonna go to Haiti?”

Justin: “No.”

Rush: “But would you trust that your name’s gonna end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes?”

Justin: “Absolutely!”

Limbaugh: “Absolutely!”

That’s what was said.

Unlike you and Justin of Raleigh, I went to Obama’s web site, and discovered the link there leads directly to the Red Cross. I can think of a reason why anyone might want to go via the White House. That way they can be absolutely sure they’re clicking on the Red Cross and not a fake site set up to exploit the tragedy.

But let me be sure I have this right. You and Justin agree that Obama might steal money intended for the Red Cross to help the wretched of Haiti.

This conversation came 48 hours after many of us had seen pitiful sights from Port au Prince. Tens of thousands are believed still alive beneath the rubble. You twisted their suffering into an opportunity to demean the character of the President of the United States.

This cannot have been an accident. A day earlier, in a sound bite from your show, you said “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.”

Setting aside your riff on Harry Reid, consider what you imply. Obama will aid Haiti to please African-Americans. Haiti has lost untold thousands of lives. One third of the population has lost its homes. Countless people are still buried in the rubble. Every American president would act quickly to help our neighbor. You are so cynical and heartless as to explain Obama’s action in a way that unpleasantly suggests how your mind works.

You have a sizable listening audience. You apparently know how to please them. Anybody given a $400 million contract must know what he is doing.

That’s what offends me. You know exactly what you’re doing.

Quick one

As Rush Limbaugh was in Hawaii singing the praises of a union hospital in a universal health care system, this week’s wanna-be, Mark Styne, was busily being brilliant at the mic today. He responded enthusiastically to a caller who was talking about the Amish way of paying for medical care: they have a common pool which they use to fund medical costs for individual families as needed. And they pay cash, so they get to negotiate with the providers. And according to Styne, this is brilliant and how we should be doing it instead of all this socialist stuff.

Missing me?

Where to begin? He is wrong on so many levels. First – what the Amish are doing sounds exactly like self-insurance, a once common practice among private companies ( less and less so as costs have escalated). And second, what they are doing appears to be re-distributing their wealth, according to need. Reminds me of something – perhaps Mark Styne can illuminate it for me in one of his more insightful moments.

Don’t tell him, though. He was so so proud of himself.

The dittoheads are in safe reliable hands.