Weaver95

Rush is having a rough day today.  Right out of the gate, it was all about how Obama had failed last night, how the country was doomed, how the Republicans were doing great, blah blah.  The real surprise so far today was Rush’s comments about the NY23 race.  Apparently, the Democrats didn’t win NY23, the Republicans lost.  And they lost because it was all the fault of not having a primary race.  No, wait - it was all the fault of Dede Scozzafava.  No - wait!  it was a Tuesday!  Yeah!  geez Rush, make up your damn mind already.

The show today is oddly disconnected.  Rush is almost avoiding the election results as much as he’s paying attention to them.  My impression (and this is just my guess so bear with me) is that Rush wrote the notes on his monologue late last night and is going off those notes.  He’s just doing this show by the numbers, saying his pre-digested sound bytes and hitting his markers but not really putting any of himself into any of it.  No callers yet onto the show and I’m not sure if i’ll stick around to hear any since today is spaghetti day and I have to get to the market soon to get some supplies.  Gotta give it time to simmer down properly after all.

Now we’re talking about Obama wanting to rebuild the Berlin Wall.  Damn - I didn’t turn the radio off fast enough.  Oh, and we’ve got a caller!  lucky me.  They’re talking about NY23 and how people ‘hate sarah palin’. I think the problem with Palin is that they don’t ‘hate’ her.   They just don’t respect her.   But Rush of course is making the caller’s comments all about Rush.  He’s saying how this isn’t a big failure on his part, and that Palin is beyone reproach as well.  And now we’ve got another caller - Barbara.  Barb sounds stoned.  I don’t really care with Barb has to say, because I can’t get past the feeling that she’s either stoned out of her gourd or drunk.  well, whatever - Barb sounds pretty happy today.  I think Rush is ok with Barb’s substance abuse ’cause I swear to God I just heard him snort a line of Oxy while Barb was all moonbeams and sweetness.  Oh, and Rush was still on about some Catholic guy winning an election somewhere.  This caller is hard to follow and Rush is apparently down with the whole ‘free association’ vibe she started.

Thank GOD!  A commercial!  yeesh.  two callers, one of whom is sure that Republicans losing NY23 isn’t a big deal (despite it being a big deal last week) and one substance abuser really into free association therapy with Rush Limbaugh.  And that’s it for me.  Rush isn’t very ’snappy’ today, he seems kind of out of it actually.  A very disappointing start to the whole affair and not likely to get any better.  Radio is off and i’m going to go inventory the kitchen supplies to make sure i’ve got what I need to make a big pot o’ spaghetti sauce for later tonight.

y’know, every now and then Rush says something and I really have to stop and wonder if he’s just pulling our collective leg. Take this story for example…I honestly don’t know if Rush is being serious.  Like this statement:

I never said I supported slavery and I never praised James Earl Ray. How sick would that be? Just as sick as those who would use such outrageous slanders against me or anyone else who never even thought such things. Mr. Wilbon refuses to take responsibility for his poison pen, writing instead that he will take my word that I did not make these statements; others, like Rick Sanchez of CNN, essentially used the same sleight-of-hand.

I find that statement brings me to the edge of insanity.  Rush Limbaugh complaining about media figures distorting statements, making up lies and giving out false information in support of a political agenda.  Rush is no stranger to such tactics himself.  In fact, lying on air is the basis for his entire career.  And yet here is an editorial from the man himself, where he laments the use of the very tactics that earn him over $400 million dollars a year.

Sorry Rush, but I don’t think you’re gonna get much sympathy.  You’ve betrayed the Republican cause, and have poisoned the political debate for decades.  If someone wants to step up and use your own tactics against you, well then I’d consider that poetic justice.  I suggest you take it like a man.

However, back to my original point - I honestly don’t know how Limbaugh can make statements like these and keep a straight face.  I mean he COULD just be mocking society.  He could see this all as one big, giant joke on the voters.  It could be his way of showing us all that he’s in the position to demean and degrade everyone on the Right wing and does things like this merely because he can do it and get away with it.  Its like one giant, open air public demonstration of a dominant/submissive relationship.  Rush standing there in his dominatrix suit and the Freepers on a short dog leash licking his boots.

now there’s a mental image you aren’t gonna get out of your mind any time soon.  I think I’ll leave you with that and end this entry here.

Oh boy, is Rush on a rant today!  He’s spent a lot of the day telling us all that he’s not a racist scumbag.  which is somewhat odd, since as far as I know nobody is calling him a racist bastard.  well, not lately anyway.  Mostly people just assume he’s an elitist dirtbag racist and don’t feel any special need to tell him about it.

I think the best thing about the Limbaugh show today is listening to Rush tell us all about how rising unemployment is bad for the economy.  No kidding Rush - really?  well dude, maybe you should sidle over to your corporate buddies and mention that perhaps they should stop outsourcing manufacturing jobs overseas?  But we both know you aren’t going to do that.  If every corporation brought manufacturing back to this country, we’d be out of our unemployment bind in about 2 years.

The thing that always gets me about Limbaugh (and the Republicans) is how stupid they’ve been on the economy.  Corporations, as Jefferson warned, have no ties to any country.  They are loyal only to their bottom line.  Rush is very pro-corporate, and knows what corporations are doing to the labor market…but he doesn’t say or do anything about it.  He spends an hour implying that high unemployment is all the fault of Obama and….the teacher’s unions.  I’m not really sure how this is the fault of a bunch of teachers.  Ok, granted - there are some serious problems with the public education system…but really Rush - the lack of manufacturing jobs to Asia and Mexico is the fault of the teachers?  c’mon dude, even YOU can’t be THAT stupid!

*sigh*

I guess I just have a low tolerance for the Limbaugh hour today.  So perhaps I should turn the show off and go do something important…like update my UI mods for World of Warcraft.

I don’t really know what I was expecting from the show today.  Maybe a class act, maybe a knock down bloody awful rant.  I was expecting it to be a good show, or at least an active one.  Turns out, it was actually rather bland.

Rush started off the show a bit late.  All to the good - I figured he was just doing last minute prep for a rockin’ show.  Instead of hitting the pavement running, Rush decided to fill the first 30 minutes of his show with…sound clips.  Lots of sound clips.  Clips of various Democrats all saying nice things about Ted Kennedy.  The one phrase Limbaugh DID use was something he must have thought up on his own, because he used it all day long: ‘Ted Kennedy, lion of the senate - we were his prey’.  So expect to hear that phrase quoted to death for the next couple of weeks.

The rest of the show was mostly various callers.  Boring stuff really, about what you’d expect.  we didn’t get our first Chappaquiddick reference until 12:33 east coast time, much later than anticipated.  The one caller that DID stand out was a woman named ‘Christine’.  She was smart, focused and stayed on message.  She raked Rush over the coals with the whole ‘death panel’ lie, then went after him on living wills and why they’re necessary.  Of course, Rush quietly lost her call during the next commercial break and she didn’t come back.

There were then more callers, a couple of whom who were VERY angry with ‘Christine’.  Rush himself seemed to be extremely upset that a caller was able to stay on message like that.  In fact, Rush was SO pissed off he had Snerdly queue up the tape of the call and replay it….the entire call took about 4 minutes.   Then Rush yelled at the tape for another 6 minutes or so.  Amazing stuff.

The rest of the Limbaugh show was rather boring.  Rush was actually respectful and didn’t hammer home anything about Kennedy’s policy positions or the mistakes of his life.  He actually kept off that stuff for the most part, limiting himself to slamming Pelosi and other Democrats for using Teddy’s death to advance their health care legislation.  There was also a very brief discussion of the situation around who gets to replace Teddy in the Senate.  My view on that is the law shouldn’t be changed, they should wait 5 months and hold their special election just as the local Democrats intended…but given the political pressure from the national party, i’ll bet the law is overturned.  It’s wrong, it’s a disgrace if they do it…but the needs of the DNC come over the rule of law so don’t be surprised if/when Deval Patrick decides to bow to the whims of his superiors.  At any rate, Rush covered the background story and spoke about what he thinks will happen.

I only really listened to the first 2 hours of the show.  I had to take a few notes, and then I have places to go/things to do this afternoon.  plus I wanted to write this entry before I logged off and started on my round of chores.  It’s good to get things down somewhere while impressions are still fresh in my mind, or at least I think so anyway.  My conclusion - Rush was actually semi-respectful.  A bit too attached to his ‘lion of the senate/we were his prey’ line, but that’s fine.  He’s allowed to congratulate himself on his cleverness.  Overall, the show itself was bland, save for the ‘Christine’ incident.  If you didn’t tune in to the show today, you didn’t really miss much.

Yup. that’s really his answer.

Amazing, isn’t it? You would figured that a recovering drug addict would be a tad more sympathetic towards the plight of other people. That maybe he would have learned a bit of humility and compassion. But nope - Rush actually told a caller that he shouldn’t have gotten hurt in the first place, then his medical costs wouldn’t be so high.

I’m not going to dissect the many problems of our current health care industry here. That’s a complex issue and there ain’t NOBODY involved in it who’s on our side. But one of the things I find despicable is someone who repeatedly mentions God in his show (talent on loan from God - remember?) and then proceeds to utter the most un-Christian things imaginable…well, it really makes you wonder about just how committed Rush is to his chosen religion.

Today, as I type this, Rush is ranting about health care right now. Snippets of conversation ‘Obama…failure…Democrats fault…’ all repeated several times and mixed in with sound clips and commercials. Granted - the Democrats DO have the ability to pass this legislation but Rush ignores the impact that he and others have had on the debate.

I don’t know that I’ll be able to listen to Rush’s show much at all today. I do have errands to run and other things to accomplish today. But given the content of the show of late, I doubt I’ll miss anything of substance!

I haven’t tuned into the show in a while, mostly due to lack of interest.  I’ve had plenty of other things to occupy my time and I just couldn’t dedicate myself to turning on the radio and listening in on the show.

But today I decided to bite the bullet and see what Rush has been up to lately.  And I gotta tell you - Rush is angry.  No, not the usual faux angry white guy thing he usually has going on, but he’s angry enough to almost cursing on the air.  He had to hit the ‘oh shit’ button on his broadcaster delay console more than once today already.  So what has him angry?

Cash for clunkers.

Oh yes, that’s what’s got him upset.  Apparently, the Federal government run program has Rush up in arms.  It’s the epitome of all things evil, it’s bloated, it’s corrupt, the point of the program is contrary to the US Constitution.  It’s all together ooky!   Thing is - i’m not really sure WHY it’s wrong.  Rush never stopped long enough to explain his point.  He just fired up the rhetoric and hit the sound clips.  I think we’re supposed to just wait for the Limbaugh group mind to tell us the reasons why we’re all supposed to hate this program.

Granted, the whole idea is a poster child of good intentions gone wrong.  But why Rush has decided to dedicate his first hour of a friday show to telling us that it’s a bad program is entirely beyond me.  If Rush really wanted to rant and rave about the evils of government spending, there’s the whole ‘government bailout’ of wall street to cover.  But then he’d have to admit that Bush was wrong and Rush simply will not do that.

Oh, and of course Rush is talking about tax cuts.  We’re not going to talk about SPENDING cuts to go along with those tax cuts but hey - math has never been Rush’s strong point.  And of course he’s calling Democrats ‘idiots’.  Ok, some of them ARE idiots but so are most of the Republicans currently inside the D.C. beltway.  So I don’t know how effective Rush is on that particular issue.  However, he’s soldiering on regardless.

Poor Rush.  He’s got at least several issues out there that he could cover, but he can’t touch them without contradicting himself and losing his fan base.  He can’t point out that it was the Republicans that screwed up on the wall street bailout issue.  He can’t really talk about health care reform, because he’d have to explain how the Republicans can take money from people who drop coverage for cancer patients just because they could.  He can’t really talk about energy reform, because half the Republican party sold their souls to Big Oil, so advocating a switch to nuclear power would lose him the support of all that oil money.  Rock meet hard place.

I really don’t have anything to link to either - Rush is just ranting and raving with conspiracy theories galore today (did you know that ‘cash for clunkers’ is a plot by greenpeace to steal our cars?).  Nothing is up on his site yet either, at least nothing I can find that’s probative.  Good word, that - probative.  vaguely offensive, in a sexually suggestive way.  Heard it on law and order once, and I’ve been trying to work it into a sentence ever since.

I’ll listen in on the show for a bit more, but then i’m done for the day.  He’s not saying anything of substance today.

Today has seen an…interesting…development in the Limbaugh show.

Friday afternoon we had a surprise announcement from Sarah Palin that she was leaving office before the end of her term.  She gave a rambling speech on a late friday afternoon/hastily called press conference right before a holiday weekend.  To say the least, it caught everyone by surprise.  Then she got outta town and hasn’t been seen in front of a camera since that stunning announcement.

So I tuned into the show today expecting to hear Rush Limbaugh pontificating from the mountain top about how none of this means anything and that Palin was still cool and all.  But to my surprise…Rush was not there.  Some guy i’m not familiar with is standing in for Rush.  And not only is Rush out for the day, he’s apparently out all week!  According to Limbaugh.com Rush is out on a ‘golf trip’.

Hmm.  Golf trip.  Unannounced golf trip.  After a mysterious and shocking announcement from Palin that she’s quitting.  Granted, I love conspiracy theories.  They’re a guilty pleasure for me.  But Limbaugh making this sudden announcement after Palin’s friday shocker makes me wonder if there’s something going on in the upper reaches of the Republican leadership.  Something that perhaps requires Limbaugh to pound out the details on the golf course with his buddies?

Were I to engage conspiracy mode, I would start to wonder if Palin quit her job suddenly because she was deeply and inextricably tied to some sort of  unforgivable scandal.  But Sarah Palin is the ‘chosen one’ of Limbaugh wing politics.  If she goes, it severely damages that wing of the Republican party.  Rush and his pals have been building her up as the greatest thing to happen to their version of conservatism since sliced bread.  So her quitting all the sudden (and out of the blue) is very damaging to their long term plans.   I think Rush went out on vacation this week so that he could do some behind the scenes talks to figure out what in the hell he’s going to do now that Palin is out of the running.

The alternative of course is that Rush is very worried that whatever caused Palin to pull out is SO damaging to the Republicans that Rush is in full on panic mode.  So much so that he had to take a sudden vacation and run off to personally handle some damage control.  That’s just a theory of course.  I have no idea what could scare Rush Limbaugh into staying off the air for a week.  But if we accept that Palin is hiding from some kind of scandal, then it’s not out of line for Rush to run off in a panic to handle part of the mess.

Interesting times indeed!  Stay tuned folks, I’ll see what I can dig up.

Yes, Rush has gone loony toons.  Limbaugh defended Michael Jackson today. plus, he smacked down a caller who dared suggest that there were lingering doubts as to the now deceased King of Pop’s sex orientation:

CALLER:  Well, instead of that they’re doing all these big stories on Michael Jackson — who, by the way, I am still convinced is a child molester.  Then you’ve got Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays.

RUSH:  Wait a second now.  You’re no different than the media!  He was acquitted.

Acquitted doesn’t mean innocent there Rushbo, as well you know.  Actually, I’m not at all surprised Rush would defend the guy.  Sure, MJ was a weird dude.  His nose was rotting off while we watched - that had to have some significant effects on MJ’s mental state.  But Limbaugh defending MJ has to be the strangest of the strange.  I suppose that Limbaugh can only feel some sort of odd kinship with a grown man who liked to spend all his time with kids, lots and lots of pills and doctors who didn’t ask too many questions.

I wonder if Rush is planning another trip to the Dominican Republic any time soon?  No reason I ask…i’m just curious is all.