I had the misfortune of having to listen to some of Rush Limbaugh’s speech on the radio yesterday. I tried to hang on and listen as long as I could-but there came a point where I just could not stand it anymore. Rush Limbaugh does not care about people-except in how they can line his overstuffed pockets of his over sized trousers. I hit the preset and turned it over to the 80’s channel.
Afterwards though I thought about it some-and marveled at the fact that old Rush was still around and able to be a person of influence. He’s made a career out of being outrageous and has the bank account to prove it.
Rush Limbaugh and the rest of his cohort are outrageous. Yet they get away with it. Voice your opinion strongly on the other side? You get castigated and spat upon.
I went back and googled my nom de guerre as an after thought. Since I comment on a lot of blogs and have written a lot myself, there is a pretty good electronic trail for me. I went back and read some of my comments over the years. Some are pretty damn smart, if do say so my self, others were ill considered and could have been phrased better, and a lot are in between. However I’ve been pretty consistent about the things I feel strongly about. Does not amount to a hill of beans in the grand scheme of things.
I find it interesting that Rush’s kind of outrageousness gets rewarded. What is really sad, to me, is that those within the Republican party who actually recognize that the stridency of the herd at CPAC is driving too many good people away-those folks are branded with derogatory terms like Rino. Jon Huntsman of Utah points out well-what Rush Limbaugh and the rest ignore: “Our moral soap-box was completely taken away from us because of our behavior in the last few years,” he said last week. “For us to now criticize analogous behavior [in excessive spending and borrowing] is hypocrisy.”
But that’s not what Rush wants. Its interesting that he uses the same words he once labeled as traitorous-in that he wants the President to fail. When the other side said it, that was treason. When Rush says it-that’s somehow OK.
Its Ok because Rush needs for the President to fail. As was noted in The Times of London:
Hence the one sliver of Republican hope. They need an epic failure from Obama to give them some chance of regaining power. They need a second Great Depression, intensified by a long-term fiscal failure. It’s just tragic – for both right and left – that the only serious path back from the brink for the Republicans is the implosion of their own country.
When guys like him become the spokesman of the opposition ideas-the ideas never get heard. Which is sad, because there are some important things to be herd from the right, right now. Especially with respect to when spending and taxation goes too far.
… “the opposition”?
Conservatives see Americans and their potential. We want all Americans to be the best they can and want to be. Our beliefs are our core. We are not the enemy.
I’m not sure that a second Great Depression is going to help the GOP any. After all, the first one didn’t seem to help them very much in 1936 (when Alf Landon won a total of two states) and 1940.
After it became politically acceptable to get rid of all the money, the center of the debate shifted from whether it’s proper to do to who should benefit from doing so. And that’s a debate that the Republicans simply can’t win.
After eight years of massive subsidies to agribusiness and giving grandpa his hard-on pills, the GOP simply has no credibility on fiscal responsibility. And Obama has at least two years of milage in pointing out that he inherited this mess, which happens to be true.
Unless and until the GOP can build a leadership around people who demonstrably opposed the excesses of the Bush years, they’re well and truly fucked.
Liberals see the same thing-Americans and their potential. But guys like Limbaugh only see $$$ signs by stirring up the worst things in a portion of America.
Can see I’ll have to revisit skippy saltine since he took the trouble to come over to your site and pollute it.
So Rush is a thought criminal for despising the ONE’s fiscal recklessness and that makes all Republicans haters and thought criminals too. Hm. Not quite the trumpet the dems and liberals and progressives were blowing back when they routinely accused the President of every kind of crime…..in spite of the fact that the dems controlled Congress and the purse strings etc. Suck it up! Conservatives see the ONE as Hugo Chavez’s little brother. We see exactly what he intends, contrast it with what he says, observe that anything he says is a lie and would like to move on as quickly as possible to someone who doesn’t deeply desire to lick Stalin’s balls. Does that make us unpatriotic?
I’m with Rush on this. Progressives are nothing but thieves and tax cheats. You can double check that every day of the week by checking Drudge. Most newspapers, now going into bankruptcy for totally absenting factual news from their pages, could once have pointed you towards this conclusion. Regrettably, they became unpaid shills for progressive politicians.
I can’t reach skippy saline’s site following either the link on your page or using the hyperlink from his posted email. His loss, as usual. 🙂
That is cause he has a new site.
Whatever the merit to Limbaugh’s argument, its ruined by his presentation of it. What shows the truth is Michael Steele having to back track and kiss Rush’s ass for what was a legitimate statement about the fat, drug addict. When the party cannot tolerate that kind of disagreement, its in trouble.
By presenting Limbaugh as the savior of the party-and the idea that all Republicans have to do is be even more reactionary, what ever chance Republicans have to serve as a balance is being ruined.
I hope Obama succeeds-if for no other reason than to rub it in guys like Limbaugh’s face. Who by the way, wants Obama around because he makes more money that way.
I often hear the swillage of words “those who disagreed with Bush were casigated as traitors.” Yet I have yet to see anyone give one example where that was said by anyone but comenters. I guess that if you say something enough, you just believe it is fact.
Skippy,
I know about his new site. Been there many times. It’s just not there anymore.
You pose your dislike for Rush on one basis, that he makes more money if Obama fails. Where do you get that? As I understand it, last year he signed a $400 million contract for 10 years. I’m not aware of any “incentive” clauses. 🙂
I really think you should reflect, listen to Rush, relax, have some wine, take the S.O. out to dinner and accept….Rush does not in any way shape or form see himself as the voice of the Republican Party. Neither do I. I think we both have nothing but contempt and disgust for the Republican Party. I don’t know about Rush but if I was walking down the street and found the Republican Party lying in the gutter on fire I’d do the responsible thing and dial that emergency number, 411 or whatever it is. 🙂
400 million for 10 years? That is obscene-hell is going to win 30 games or something?
No wonder he’s so afraid of taxes. He’s not worth 400K a year, much less 40 million.
Yeah, but at least it’s his customer that is willing to pay him that in the expectation of a profit at the end of the deal. You can juxtapose that with the obscene payments to our government “servants” like the head of the post office $800K after losing $6 BILLION last year or the enormous payments to Claude Raines or Jamie Gorelick et al who were the only ones responsible for the banking catastrophe today.
Have you never wondered about AIR AMERICA? They were paying stations to put their shitty programs on the air. Now contrast that with the conservative paradigm. Stations were PAYING Rush to air on their stations because they make money running ads in his airtime.
There really is no clearer statement about the utter total difference between communism/state directed crap and free enterprise. Even when the shitheels paid to run their shit they could not find people willing to run their stations at a loss on the revenue side against a man they were willing to pay a lot of money to for the privilege of hosting.
Sounds like NPR. Who but NPR plays that crap? Is it ‘SYNDICATED’ on any other network? Oh, I know some of it is. I used to listen to Pacifica on the longer commutes in the Bay Area just because it made me angry enough to drive without falling asleep in Bay Area traffic.
There is another alternative-conservative talk radio does well because of the predlictions of its listenership. Conservatives love to be told over and over again how right they are. That is why there is a market for guys like Rush and there is probably not a market for the other side.
NPR is a secret vice that a lot of conservatives listen to, but won’t admit it. You know why? Because NPR has variety. It not all liberal you know-they have a wide variety of stories and they stick to a format that actually allows stories to be explored in some depth. Which is probably more than the average Rush listener can deal with-which is why they like having Rush Limbaugh spoon feed the end conclusion to them.
800k for the head of the post office is actually cheap-compare that to what the President of DHL makes. Plus DHL does not have to provide most of the services the post office is required to by law. The post office operated in the black the last four years, using the money to pay down debts-only when fuel prices spiked did it lose 1.13 billion. Plus the post office does not get any money from the federal government-so if it decides to pay the postmaster general less, the governing board of the post office can do that. Meanwhile, the post office said on-time delivery reached record highs for all three categories of first-class mail the Postal Service tracks. Overnight service was 97 percent on-time, up from 96 percent during the same period last year. Two-day service was 95 percent on-time, up from 93 percent, and three-day service was 94 percent on-time, up from 91 percent.
Of course those facts never get reported on conservative talk radio-it wrecks the story line. That is why Rush and all the rest, Hannity et all need to be run over by a bus.
Oh please Skippy-san,
The loser running the USPS is a government wog being compensated for his service by the US Government. He is a complete loser. I no longer commute for an hour a day each way and so I don’t listen to radio. I’m not advancing a talking point.
The CEO of DHL is CEO of a public corporation and is being compensated by a board of directors who are totally into licking shit off each others dicks but have approved that losers compensation. They are ‘accountable’. Just who decided to compensate a loser like the head of USPS and who is holding them accountable? Is it/are they the same ones that approved Fannie May and Freddie Mac’s board of director salary and bonuses? You know, the crew that wrecked this economy with their corruption of normal business practices within the banking and mortgage business? When is Jamie Gorelick going to show up to “rescue” us from the current fiscal meltdown?
Ask yourself this. Why am I paying some scumbag to run the USPS more than 3 times what I’m paying the scumbag I’m paying to run the United States? and why is that scumbag declaring again and again that loser CEO and loser corporation execs should not be paid more than $500k?
Do you sense the dichotomy?
Like shooting fish in a barrell………………
“The Postmaster General’s actual salary according to the reports is $260,000 (which was upped by Congress last year from $185,000, so at least kick Congress for a part of this ) and he also got a $135,000 bonus , but the BIG difference then between those two and $850,000 is in the $400,000+ range that the reports lists as retirement and other perks. Now that does NOT make a lot of sense. I DO know that last year the Postal Office was required to change its accounting to PREFUND all retiree pay differently and that itself might account for the big perhaps one time jump.
It is, however, not correct to list retirement numbers as pay as that is never mentioned when reporting other people’s pay as it is not something that they get at that moment to spend.”
Actually this proves my point in spades. Rush Limbaugh’s brand of talk radio takes a snippet of information-expands on it-and then allows the audience to take off like the lemmings they are.
You can buy me a beer any time now………