Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh: Obama Will Own The Media

Posted by on June 5, 2009 at 4:36 pm. 3 Comments :

Sean Hannity recently interviewed Rush Limbaugh and much was made of Limbaugh’s warning to Osama Bin Laden that, if he wanted to “demolish the America we know and love,” he had better hurry because “Obama’s beating them to it.” That was certainly worthy of attracting attention as a classic articulation of Limbaugh’s patently asinine opinion. However, there was another segment of the discussion that didn’t get much play despite being at least as disturbing and stupefying:

Limbaugh: “People ask me about the Fairness Doctrine all the time and I’ve been watching something here – newspapers are losing money. Advertising revenue is down, circulation. But radio companies, too, Sean. Television companies – their advertising revenues are down. Advertising as a whole is down.

Now, what happens if they have to file Chapter 11? What if all these radio companies can’t make their debt payments next year or the year after that and have to go Chapter 11? If Obama is controlling the banks and the banks then will or will not lend to the broadcasters and the newspapers to make them solvent, we could reach a point where Obama controls radio and TV, because he will own it by virtue of the banks he controls owning it.

This is a very stealth way – you don’t need the Fairness Doctrine. You don’t need localism. […] So, if you think that the media in this country cannot also be owned by Barack Obama, think again.”

So, just to break this down…Obama is somehow going to wind up owning all of the banks. Then, he will instruct the banks that he owns to attach conditions to any loans they make to failing media companies. Those conditions will, presumably, include the forced carriage of liberal programming and, perhaps, even the cancellation of programs like Limbaugh’s. In this way the Fairness Doctrine will have been implemented by stealth and Obama will emerge as the owner of all of the media, in addition to the banks, the auto manufactures, the health care providers, the United Nations, the World Wrestling Federation, and Disney World.

This is conspiracy theorism run amuck. Limbaugh is connecting dots that only exist in his OxyContin riddled brain. The right wing’s incessant paranoia with regard to the Fairness Doctrine – which no one is pursuing in Congress or regulatory agencies, and for which Obama has publicly stated his opposition – is warping their their judgment beyond any hope for normal human comprehension (see the related posts below). This obsession is threatening to turn their entire movement into either a political relic or a pathetic joke (most likely, both).

And I still can’t figure out why these people, who regard Obama as an incompetent who could not survive without his TelePrompter, are still terrified of his omnipotent evil genius that will subjugate them all to slavery were it not for the eternal vigilance of superheroes like Rushman and his Boy Hannity.

Fox News: Republicans Divided Over How to Attack Sotomayor

Posted by on May 29, 2009 at 12:21 pm. NO Comments :

An article on FoxNews.com is lamenting the difficult position in which Republicans find themselves with regard to President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court:

“Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, is posing a conundrum for Republicans who are struggling to unite against a woman they presume will be a reliable vote for liberal causes.

“The GOP doesn’t want to give Sotomayer (sic) a free ride, because they believe she is a judicial activist who will legislate from the bench.”

So what’s the problem? Why don’t they just attack her as a liberal judicial activist? If that’s really their objection to her, it seems that there would be nothing controversial about taking that approach. All they have to do is fire up their slogans about Socialism and set Glenn Beck and his posse loose, and they have the makings of a conventional rightist campaign of obstructionism. The truth is, that isn’t really their objection. The article states that they are…

“…concerned that if they launch a no-holds barred attack on Sotomayor, the first Hispanic to be nominated to the court, they risk alienating a growing minority they want on their side in the voting booth.”

The only way that they can alienate the Hispanic electorate is if they were to oppose Sotomayor on the basis of her race. Consequently, they are inadvertently admitting that that is precisely what they want to do. The argument within the ranks of Republicans is not centered on Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy or record. Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich and others have already staked their claims that she is a racist, and that her gender renders her susceptible to that peculiarly feminine characteristic of empathy.

It becomes crystal clear that the dilemma facing Republicans, and Fox News, is tied solely to race and gender when you consider this simple scenario: If the nominee were a white male, would they have any hesitation to executing a straightforward campaign criticizing his record as a jurist?

The fact that there is a debate going on in the party at all, and trumpeted in right-wing media, is conclusive evidence that the real subject of the controversy is the nominee’s race and gender. They just don’t want to admit it. And we can count on Fox to obfuscate that truth and to portray the internecine squabble as something more benign. But if they were truly worried about how Sotomayor would rule as a Justice, then why would criticizing that risk their standing amongst Hispanics?

The answer? It wouldn’t. They’re lying. As usual.

Now Republicans Are An Oppressed Minority

Posted by on May 27, 2009 at 5:21 pm. NO Comments :

This doesn’t need much accompanying commentary:

Per Rush Limbaugh: “If ever a civil rights movement was needed in America, it is for the Republican Party. If ever we needed to start marching for freedom and constitutional rights, it’s for the Republican Party. The Republican Party is today’s oppressed minority, and it know how to behave as one.”

Per Karl Rove (speaking about George W. Bush): “And let’s be honest, a certain part of the country doesn’t like people who speak with an accent.”

I guess Rove never heard of Bill Clinton or Lyndon Johnson. And this on the heels of Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. What a couple of wankers.

Rush Limbaugh To MSNBC: Leave Me Alone

Posted by on May 20, 2009 at 10:26 am. 1 Comments :

The towering ego that is Rush Limbaugh is tottering on its foundation. On his radio rant yesterday, Limbaugh lashed out at what he perceives to be a vicious cabal, led by MSNBC, dedicated to being mean to him. In the typical manner of bullies everywhere, Rush wiped his nose, stammered a bit, then fired back a volley of indignant spittle:

“It is clear to me that MSNBC is hoping to build its ratings on my back. […] they cannot go any appreciable length of time without showing video of me […] or excerpts from this radio show or having a bunch of hack guests on to discuss me. So my challenge is this, to MSNBC […] Let’s see if you can do Rush withdrawal. Let’s see if you can run your little TV network for 30 days without doing a single story on me”

Poor Rush. Those meanies at MSNBC won’t stop saying stuff about him. He would like it much better, I’m sure, if he were allowed to spout off about whatever he wants, no matter how ignorant or infested with lies, without some TV news commentators pointing out what a fraud he is. He would be so very happy if, for just thirty days, he could be free from having his ill-informed tripe rebutted by facts and logic.

This is the same Limbaugh who can’t go a day without flailing at what he calls the “drive-by” media. He is one of the most vituperative critics of any and all press with whom he disagrees. He bashes MSNBC regularly, but now he is begging for a thoroughly one-sided truce.

What could have provoked this pique? Ordinarily Limbaugh would be thrilled that people were talking about him at all. He frequently asserts that his adversaries just make him stronger. Now, all of a sudden, he wants them to shut up? Perhaps he revealed the answer in this remark:

“As you know, Michael Steele made a speech today outlining the future of the Republican Party. And apparently he mentioned every conservative’s name in the book except mine and Cheney’s. This has caused many excited media people to point this out.”

There it is. Steele’s speech actually cited only three conservatives (all deceased), in a rambling dissertation on how his leadership will bring change “delivered in a tea bag.” But by leaving out Limbaugh (not deceased, but still extinct), Steele set off a media frenzy that didn’t include the de facto head of the Republican Party. That is an unforgivable oversight that must be immediately corrected by imploring the press to pay more attention to Boss Limbaugh.

So Rush issues a challenge that he knows won’t be considered in an attempt to turn the spotlight back on himself. In the process he advocates for constraining the free speech rights of his critics. And underlying all of that, he exposes himself as the thin-skinned, sorehead that we all knew him to be. If Limbaugh really wants MSNBC and others to leave him alone, there is one very simple way to accomplish that: Leave!

Late Breaking: On his radio program today Rush issued this announcement regarding his position as Republican Party chief:

“I have been anointed to this position by members of the drive-by media, and of course, the Obama White House. I am resigning as the titular head of the Republican Party.”

Uh oh. Does that mean that the party is stuck with Michael Steele? Rush nominated Colin Powell for the job, but let’s be realistic…it’s more likely to be Dick Cheney. Given the choice of Limbaugh, Steele, Powell, or Cheney, Democrats would probably choose all of the above.

Joe The Plumber Joins Arlen Specter

Posted by on May 7, 2009 at 1:50 am. NO Comments :

The Republicans favorite symbol for what they imagine ordinary Americans to be, Joe the Plumber, has turned his back on the GOP. And while he has not taken the additional step of registering as a Democrat, the blow will surely come as a shock to Sarah Palin and the rest of the right’s lunatic fringe. From Time:

Big Government is never popular in theory, but the disaster aid, school lunches and prescription drugs that make up Big Government have become wildly popular in practice, especially now that so many people are hurting. Samuel Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, tells TIME he’s so outraged by GOP overspending, he’s quitting the party – and he’s the bull’s-eye of its target audience. But he also said he wouldn’t support any cuts in defense, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid – which, along with debt payments, would put more than two-thirds of the budget off limits.

As the defections accelerate, the GOP will soon be left with only Carrie Prejean, Ted Nugent, and an ocean of dittoheads, to lead their trek back to relevancy. Of course, this could all be unfolding exactly as planned by Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele.

Rush Limbaugh Leaving New York?

Posted by on April 2, 2009 at 11:44 am. 7 Comments :

When Rush Limbaugh says something, you can take it to the … well, the AIG subsidiary that manages credit default swaps.

On his radio program yesterday, Limbaugh went on an extended tirade over taxes in New York. Seeing as how hundreds of millions of dollars, and villas in New York, Florida, and probably more, aren’t enough to satisfy his thirst for opulence and Oxy-Contin, he is threatening to abandon the Big Apple and relocate elsewhere:

“I’m gonna look for an alternative studio somewhere outside New York. I’ll sell my apartment. I’ll sell my condominium. I’m gonna get out of there totally because this is just absurd, and it’s ridiculous.”

I’m going to go record now as being completely and utterly skeptical that Limbaugh will keep his word and flee the city. It is just another example of his boorish posturing that is more theatrical than truthful (which pretty well describes his whole act).

Although I don’t for a second believe that Limbaugh will bail, Jon Stewart (and millions of New Yorkers) are hoping that he will:

Go on Rush…we DARE you!

Fox News Lies About Carville For Limbaugh

Posted by on March 12, 2009 at 12:50 pm. 3 Comments :

Obviously Rush Limbaugh’s infantile tantrum regarding his hope that President Obama fails has not gone over well with most Americans. But it has warmed the hearts of dittoheads, Republicans, and Fox News personnel. At the top of that list would be the Fox News Washington managing editor, Bill Sammon.

In his zeal to to defend Limbaugh, the leader of the Republican Party, Sammon dug up a comment by James Carville in 2001. Referring to President Bush, Carville was quoted as saying, “I certainly hope he doesn’t succeed.”

That mere sentence fragment is the whole of Sammon’s reporting on Carville’s comments. Carville said a great deal more which was reported elsewhere, but Sammon chose not to include any of it because it didn’t support the impression that Sammon wanted to create – which was to associate Carville’s statement with Limbaugh’s. Well, here is the rest of Carville’s comments:

“People basically like this president as a person and they want him to succeed, but they have some pretty serious doubts that have not crept in but are sort of there. You have almost half the country saying he is in over his head. Over half the country saying he is for the powerful. And as much as I would like for it or wish for it, they are not going to pull away completely from him months into his administration.

“I don’t care if people like him or not, just so they don’t vote for him and his party. That is all I care about. I hope he doesn’t succeed, but I am a partisan democrat. But the average person wants him to succeed. It is his country, his life or their lives. So he has that going for him. There is a lot that is going to happen between now and next November. It is not that people don’t like him. It is not that people don’t want him to succeed but it is also not that he doesn’t have some serious underlying problems.”

It seems abundantly clear that the only thing Carville is talking about was succeeding electorally. He was not saying that he hoped Bush’s policies fail, he just wanted Bush and other Republicans to lose elections. Contrast that with Limbaugh’s repeated assertions that it is President Obama’s agenda that he hopes will fail. What’s more, Limbaugh encourages others to adopt the same hope for failure, and disagreeing with Limbaugh is tantamount to treason. Carville is directing his comments to results from polling that express public opinion. He is not attempting to persuade anyone to adopt his opinion. And if he were, there would be no repercussions for those who disagreed.

It is also abundantly clear that Sammon deliberately truncated Carville’s statement to slant the story against Carville. Furthermore, Sammon included responses from Limbaugh regarding this story, but didn’t give Carville the same opportunity to respond.

Fair and balanced? Uh huh. And remember, Sammon is a news executive at Fox, not a commentator. But even he must bow down to kiss Limbaugh’s ring.

Prediction: I want to go on record as the first to predict that Fox will launch a new TV program starring the leader of the Republican Party. Fox News CEO, Roger Ailes previously produced a syndicated show for Rush Limbaugh that failed miserably – perhaps because TV required that viewers actually look at him. But Glenn Beck has proven that Fox viewers are less discriminating than the broader syndication audience. Ailes and Limbaugh will try again, this time on a more friendly platform.

Fox News Fires Up Financial Fear

Posted by on March 6, 2009 at 3:01 pm. 2 Comments :

It’s been going on for months. Conservatives have been pointing their fat finger of blame at Barack Obama. Somehow, perhaps by mystical Voodoo spells, Obama managed to cause a global economic collapse even before he was elected President. Earlier this week, Rush Limbaugh declared that…

“Barack Obama has been the controlling political authority on the economy for six months.”

Sean Hannity places Obama’s omnipotent dominance back even further, to May 2008. Never mind that in the first half of 2008, Republicans were insisting that the economy was in swell shape thanks to the financial acumen of their beloved George W. Bush. But all of that must now be swept aside because a new culprit must be found guilty of having soured what everyone now concedes is a disastrous economic meltdown.

To further that end, Fox News conducted a poll (pdf) to ascertain the mood of the public and their views on the leadership of the new President. Unfortunately for Fox, the poll revealed that broad majorities of the people support Obama and his policies. Democrats and Independents are distinctly separating themselves from Republicans, who are the lonely naysayers of the nation.

One question in particular stood out as I was studying the results:

Do you think all the doom and gloom talk and constant focus on the economy is actually making the economy worse, or is the talk not making much of a difference?

Making
economy worse		 Not making
a difference
Total 55% 38%
Democrats 44% 47%
Republicans 69% 28%
Independents 57% 36%

You’ve got to hand it to Fox, the domain of doom and gloom, for asking a question about “all the doom and gloom talk.” Their incessant chatter bemoaning the Obama administration and agenda is the core of their programming. No wonder Republicans in the poll are so far removed from other respondents. It is well documented that Fox has a disproportionately large majority of Republican viewers. But if Fox is truly interested in an inquiry into economic gloominess, they need look no further than themselves and their own on-air propaganda spewers:

Rupert Murdoch: …the downturn is more severe and likely longer-lasting than previously thought.

Bill O’Reilly: …our financial system is rigged and Americans should be very wary about buying stocks in this environment.

Glenn Beck: Be wary of anyone who says you should just leave your money in the stock market, because they are proving themselves incapable of seeing a real worst-case scenario.

And for good measure, Rush Limbaugh: The market is plunging. Investors are shorting it. They’re not putting money in the market. The economy is getting worse. This is being done on purpose, I believe, just as they are trying to sink the stock market.

Add to this list the names of Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, Dick Morris, Ann Coulter, Steve Doocy, Bill Sammon, Megyn Kelly, Fred Barnes, Charles Krauthammer, Karl Rove, etc. Virtually every Fox News contributor is contributing to the doom and gloom. And what’s more, the hard times ahead are all the fault of Obama, who has only been president for six weeks.

At a deeper level, it needs to be noted that the main thesis that these pundits peddle is simply wrong by any objective standard. They are promulgating the falsehood that Wall Street is an indicator of the nation’s economic health. It’s not! The stock market is a facility within which to assign value to shares of corporations and commodities. That value is the result of traders negotiating with one another with the purpose of generating profits for themselves. Anyone who tells you that the price of a stock at any given moment is an actual representation of a company’s worth is a liar. The only thing it represents is what a broker was able to get for that stock at that moment. If you have any doubt, just consider whether you believe that General Motors is actually worth less than $1 billion today, but was worth over $9 billion just six months ago – with the same products, the same people, and the same plants.

Wall Street isn’t tanking because of some random chatter in Washington, DC. If that were possible than Fox News is more at fault than Obama. Stocks are declining for the reason they always decline: dismal corporate earnings, collapsing markets domestically and internationally, and four million Americans unemployed and not consuming.

So let’s get this straight once and for all. The interests of Wall Street are unique and distinct from the public interest. The manic volatility of the Dow Jones index is no more an indicator of the state of the national economy than an eBay auction for a Hummel figurine. And Obama didn’t cause the decline on Wall Street by articulating a vision for improving the real fundamentals of the economy – productivity, consumption, and jobs. Progress in those areas is what will lead to the recovery that Wall Street needs.

The Fairness Doctrine Of The Undead

Posted by on February 26, 2009 at 7:16 pm. 1 Comments :

Never mind that President Obama has repeatedly stated his opposition to the Fairness Doctrine.

Never mind that no one in congress has drafted, introduced, or advocated a bill reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

Never mind that almost every liberal organization, including the most prominent media reform group, Free Press, has come out against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine.

Never mind that it’s been 20 years since anyone has taken an official action in support of the Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine is presently the most serious threat to the United States short of Al Qaeda.

And now we can add an actual vote to prohibit the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine – an overwhelming vote by a Democratic Senate of 87-11 – to the list of things that we can ignore because hysterical right-wingers STILL believe that the Fairness Doctrine is lurking just around the next bend in the road, waiting to pounce on their loudmouthed radio ranters and deflower the virtue of America.

In a bill aimed at giving the District of Columbia a vote in the House of Representatives (along with a new seat for Utah), the Broadcasters Freedom Act was added as an amendment. The text of this legislation prohibits the FCC from reimposing the terms of the Fairness Doctrine. The margin of approval for the amendment should put to rest any discussion that Democrats are endeavoring to bring back the Doctrine. It should be put to rest, but it won’t be. Republicans are so wedded to the fear they seek to generate with this issue that they will embrace it with all their might rather than recognize that they are battling a phantom.

This is not so much a case of a zombie doctrine rising from the dead, as it is the GOP reanimating a corpse for their own exploitation. Rush Limbaugh began raving about the return of the Doctrine almost as soon as the Senate had voted to prohibit it. And he did it in typical racist Limbaugh fashion. He attempted to explain that completely unrelated media reform measures like local programming, and ownership diversity, were really just new disguises for the Doctrine. On diversity, he described why that wouldn’t work saying that it would be faked by corporate schemers who…

“…would go down to the barrios of Los Angeles, and they would pick somebody out, ‘Hey, you, Hector, over here,’ and they’d put Hector in charge of the company…”

In that brief citation, Limbaugh managed to double down his dumbness. First, he insulted Latinos by implying that they are all residents of barrios and none are qualified to run a business. Second, he admitted that companies are too corrupt to entrust with minor social contrivances like obeying the law – companies like the one that employs Limbaugh.

So now there has been a vote, and everyone is on the record. But the Fairness Fairies are clapping as hard as they can and they refuse to let this go. Obviously, this will never end. No matter how many spikes pierce the heart of the Fairness Doctrine, delusional conservatives will exhume the body and pretend that it still lives.

Rachel Marsden’s Guide To Being An Idiot

Posted by on February 20, 2009 at 11:30 am. 2 Comments :

Rachel MarsdenFormer Fox News personality and serial stalker, Rachel Marsden, has penned a column that purports to be a survival guide in these tough economic times. She condenses her advice into a 7-point program, some of which makes a little sense. She perked my interest early with her first suggestion: “Turn off the TV news.” But it just went downhill from there.

There is much to criticize in TV news. It can be shallow, artificially dramatic, and biased toward the views of the giant corporations that own them and support them through advertising. But Marsden’s call to avoid TV news is really an attempt to insure that people cultivate ignorance. She isn’t really interested in tuning out the static and disinformation of news manglers like Fox News, she just thinks that staying current on political affairs is a waste of time:

“I think everyone has a general idea of the idiocy in which Obama and the Democrats are engaged. You know why cable networks keep showing us this financial disaster porn? Because you keep watching! You don’t need to rivet yourself to a blow-by-blow of the implosion. The Obama administration is going to be like any other soap opera – you can tune out and come back in three years without having missed anything.”

Marsden’s true intent begins to unravel with her second point: “Listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, every day.” Clearly she is plotting to keep you ill-informed by avoiding responsible news sources, and then indoctrinating you to the dis-information of Limbaugh:

“Rush won’t tell you how great you are as a result of your mere existence, but he’ll tell you what you need to do to achieve greatness…”

Really? So a thrice-divorced, drug-addled, gasbag, whose motivational counsel consists of cultish calls to become an unquestioning dittohead, should serve as an example of personal responsibility and achievement? A racist provocateur who incites riots is Marsden’s idea of a role model?

Marsden’s whole scheme comes crashing down when you jump to point number five: “If you’re in university, now is a good time to seriously rethink what the heck you’re doing with your life.” Accepting for the moment that self-reflection is always a good thing, what Marsden appears to be recommending is that you drop out of school, seek vocational training, and keep your mind safe from the nasty liberal world of academia:

“Universities and colleges are businesses. Businesses run almost exclusively by liberals. That should tell you everything you need to know about what kind of return you can expect on your investment. They take your money, it disappears into the black hole of academia, and you get spit back out with your pockets emptied and your brain thoroughly washed.”

It’s interesting to hear a conservative disparage the sanctity of business. If Marsden is so repulsed by the thought of academic institutions operating in a free market, perhaps she would prefer that public education be extended to include college. I would join her in pursuit of that, but somehow I doubt that that is where she’s going.

I should be careful about agreeing to join Marsden in anything. Her history of criminal harassment is the stuff of legends. She was even thrown off the set of Fox News for “bizarre and erratic behavior,” as reported by Murdoch’s own New York Post. Somehow, though, she keeps managing to find work. This article on surviving was published by Human Events, whose bar for coherent discourse is set lower than the Mariana Trench.

When looked at as a whole, Marsden’s survival guide is nothing but the glorification of ignorance. She advocates shutting yourself off from information, immersing yourself in lies, and avoiding the destructive consequences of learning. That’s a good recipe for becoming a docile subject of the sort of brain-dead totalitarianism propagated by the Republican Party and Fox News. But it’s a terrible guide for survival in these, or any other, times.