Harpooning the Great White Whale

Long-time readers of this blog know that I've always taken a special delight in skewering Rusty Limpdick (aka Rush Limbaugh), but I've noticed to my chagrin that it's been a while since I thrust a harpoon at the Great White Whale.

Well, that hiatus has come to an end. When I read 25 Examples That Prove Rush Limbaugh Is A "Low-Information" Radio Host over at Media Matters, I couldn't help myself. I had to pass it on.

Some examples:

Limbaugh Mocks Fact That Unemployment Benefits Are Stimulus. Limbaugh denied that unemployment benefits have a positive effect on the economy, saying it's a "crock" that extending them translates into economic growth. In fact, studies show that these benefits stimulate the overall economy and provide greater economic impact on growth than the Bush tax cuts for upper-income earners.
Limbaugh: "Everything -- Except The Polls -- Points To A Romney Landslide." Under the headline "Everything -- Except The Polls -- Points To A Romney Landslide," Limbaugh's website posted a transcript of his radio show in which he said his "intellectual analysis" of the election was that "it's not even close. Three hundred-plus electoral votes for Romney."
Limbaugh Rewrites Obama's Dreams To Falsely Claim "Racist" Attack. Limbaugh used a new biography about President Obama's life to claim he viewed his high school basketball coach and his team as "racist" and that Obama wrote in his book Dreams From My Father that "he played black ball, the coach coached white ball, and as such the coach was a racist, the team was racist, strategy of the game was racist, and Obama rode the bench." In fact, Obama wrote that he disabused a friend who suggested racism was a factor in him not getting more playing time on the basketball team.

There's a lot more, so be sure to read the whole thing.

Oh, and Rusty, you fucking draft dodger, I'm still waiting for that High Noon Showdown that I challenged you to way back in 2005. But I don't have to worry. If Rusty ever came up against a real Vietnam veteran, he'd be wetting his pants faster than a fratboy after beer call.

Rush Limbaugh Gay? (Not that there's Anything Wrong With That...)

Ah, the wonders -- the miracle -- of Stumble. Do a Google search for "Jeff Christie" and see what you get.

It seems that our ole good buddy -- and of course one of my favorite whipping boys -- professional blowhard (I use the term advisedly--read on) fat-boy drug-addict draft-dodging chicken-hawk multi-millionaire and multi-married Rush Limbaugh was once fired from Pittsburgh radio station KQL, where he worked under the pseudonym of Jeff Christie, after soliciting ... gay sex!

It's also been widely reported that he had a brief but heated "affair" in college (before poor Rusty dropped out) with a guy named Elliot Sanders, who says that Limbaugh is so gay that he didn't -- couldn't -- consummate any of his four marriages; it's also fairly common knowledge that when Limbaugh worked in Sacramento radio, his friend and "mentor" was flamboyantly gay Norm Woodruff (who later died of AIDS).

There's a lot more circumstantial evidence out there. Naturally Rusty is claiming that it's all lies, made up by "liberals" who hate him and want him to fail. You know, like it was all lies when he was first accused of being a drug addict. Like it was all lies when it became public that an ingrown hair on his ass kept him out of Vietnam. Like it was all lies when ... well, you can fill in the blanks. His whole public persona is built up from a series of lies, untruths, half-truths and prevarications.

Okay, so why am I, a person long-known for championing gay rights, coming down on criticizing this poor sexually-confused pathetically-closeted fat-assed windbag for being gay?

After all, as the Seinfeld TV show had it, "not that there's anything wrong with that"...

Unless you are Rush Limbaugh and you have built an entire -- and disgustingly lucrative -- career working the wingnut side of the aisle, denigrating and demonizing gay people, abominizing gay marriage, and sucking up (damn, there I go again) to the bible-thumping holy rollers of the world (including, dare I say it, Ted Haggard? Hmmm ... but I digress). Then it becomes the height, the very pinnacle, the textbook definition, of rank hypocrisy. Imagine what is going to happen when (or IF -- we're still dealing with the CPM* here) this story goes mainstream and his poor duped dittohead knuckledragging mouthbreathing white-guy-victim listeners find out the truth about him. If you'll recall, it almost came out back in 2006, when he was arrested for possession of Viagra after a "boys only" trip to the Dominican Republic (the western hemisphere spot notorious as a magnet for child-sex tourism).

It's kind of sad ... in a bent, twisted worm-caught-on-a-hot-sidewalk kind of way.

Okay, not really, but if he hadn't been such an arrogant fucking obnoxious lying liberal-hating asshole all these years -- and continues to be one -- then I might actually feel a little sorry for the guy.

Yeah, probably not. After all, he'd still be Rush Limbaugh.

* * * *

* CPM = Capitalist Pig Media

Rush Limbaugh and the Phony Soldiers

I was pretty much out of contact with the real world for over a week, but one of the things that I heard was that Rush Limbaugh had called anti-war military members and veterans "phony soldiers". Which I guess pretty much encompasses me and my fellow members of Veterans for Peace.

I've actually heard a recording of the remarks, unlike most of the Limbaugh apologists, and it's pretty clear from the context that he was not talking about just the one or two frauds who claimed to have been in Iraq and weren't, but pretty much all soldiers and veterans who do not support the Bushco Maladministration's misadventure in the illegal occupation of Iraq.

The fact that Rush himself edited the transcript of the show available on his weak excuse for a website indicates that the bloviating blowhard knew he'd over-extended even his own shifting boundaries of taste and common sense.

None of that matters, though, since the wingnuttery has pounced on the predictable reaction by the progressive left, denouncing all and sundry as traitorous assholes who don't "support the troops".

All this over some juvenile salivary spew from a fat-pig drug-addled draft-dodging chickenhawk who got to sit out the Vietnam war because of a pimple on his lard-laden hairy ass.

I know how the draft boards worked in those days. Limbaugh came from a wealthy and influential family in good ole Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and, like similar small towns all over the country, their draft board was made up of fellow pillar-of-the-community types who had the power to protect the sons of their peers by figuring out ways to keep them from being drafted. Pimple on his ass? Bullshit. I was drafted with people who had torn ligaments in their backs, birth defects in their knees and flat feet (I was one of them). The only difference was that all of us were from the other side of the tracks and didn't have any family friends on the local draft board who could protect us. And we didn't have anyone in the National Guard or Reserve with enough pull to get us to the front of the enlistment line and away from the draft board.

So I'm not about to take advice on veterans' matters from that stupid lying pimple-assed moron, and Rusty can just shut the fuck up about the military and about veterans and pretty much everything else that he knows nothing about.

But then that would be pretty boring for his dittoheads, who would be forced to listen to three hours of dead air.

Not that they would notice.

More on Right Wing Radio and John McCain

Naturally I'm not the only one to question the motives behind wingnut radio slinging mud at the man who has the lock on the Rethug nomination.

In Reading the Tea Leaves of Today's Biggest Broadcast Idiot, P M Carpenter rings in on what he calls "the biggest, fattest, most conservative broadcast idiot of them all" (Rush Dope-Addict Limp-Dick Limbaugh, in case you didn't already guess it):

I write, of course, of Rush Limbaugh, he of 13.5-million weekly listeners who, it would seem, wouldn't know serious political philosophy from botany. If you've ever been gripped by sufficient masochism to tune in, you know what I mean. There they are, the fawning, sycophantic dupes of dittodom, queued up on the switchboard, hankering to get at Rush so they can regurgitate his wretched unenlightenment from the Dark Ages.

. . .

Rush may in fact represent less of an actual, loosely organized mass movement than merely a massive intellectual bowel movement.

. . .

When it's all over, I'm venturing, this most reactionary of broadcast idiots will be found to have held only a negligible sway over his presumed legions of lapdogs -- and he may even soon go the way of his equally offensive and finally beyond-the-pale broadcasting forebear, Father Coughlin...

I am a devotee of so-called "Old Time Radio", so I have some recordings of the infamous Father Coughlin, and yes, I can see that there are some striking similarities between the fascist-apologizing freedom-hating Coughlin and the bloviating Missouri gasbag. In their respective times, they each were the biggest non-elected (and unelectable) demagogues in the nation.

Here's Carpenter again:

McCain, however, may wish that Limbaugh's voice grows even louder. Because returning again to the era of Father Coughlin, Rush represents what Franklin Roosevelt denounced as "government by organized money" -- "the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism [and] war profiteering" who were aligned in rabid opposition to the New Deal. But rather than accommodating them, rather than seeking peace with them, rather than staging powwows of compromise, Roosevelt announced: "I welcome their hatred." He then cleaned their clocks in the '36 election.
If McCain is shrewd -- and I think he is -- he will return the same fire against the on-air reactionaries and extremists of today, and thereby gain the allegiance of moderates and independents who otherwise would quake at the thought of a presidential candidate in bed with the malignant likes of a Rush Limbaugh.
In short, as Rush himself has suggested, his alienation from McCain may be the best thing that could have happened to McCain. The extreme right is shrinking, and Rush's intimation would seem to verify that he even he knows that. It's out of whack with the times, an aging and dying ideological dinosaur whose cranky intrusion into this race could cause any candidate more injury than benefit.

Like I said before, this whole thing seems just a little too calculated, a little too neatly wrapped, for it to be what some of us out here in Left Blogistan would like to see, which is nothing short of an implosion in the Rethug Party. Keep watching.

Idris Elba a Black James Bond? Great! -- Not So Fast, Says Rushbo

A little background: Idris Elba is one of my all-time favorite actors. Who can forget him as Russell "Stringer" Bell, the crimelord/aspiring businessman in that great HBO series, The Wire? Or as the angst-ridden police Detective John Luther in the terrific BBC series, Luther? He's been suggested as a possible future movie version of James Bond

With his versatility and range, along with being able to project a sense of smoldering danger, he would be great at playing that role. James Bond may have been originally conceived as a blue-eyed half-Scots half-Swiss white guy by his "daddy" Ian Fleming back in 1953 (over 60 years ago!), but there is nothing in his character or behavior or job description that would preclude the role being taken by a black man. I'm not aware of anyone having a fit over Bond's CIA pal, Felix Leiter, turning black in 2006 for Casino Royale.

But wait! I forgot to include the wheezy rants of America's foremost neo-19th-Century wingnut, that drug-addled ass-pimpled flailing gas-bag draft dodger, Rush Limbaugh:

"James Bond is a total concept put together by Ian Fleming. He was white and Scottish. Period. That is who James Bond is," Limbaugh said.
"But now [they are] suggesting that the next James Bond should be Idris Elba, a black Briton, rather than a white from Scotland. But that's not who James Bond is."
And as if that wasn't bad enough…Limbaugh finished up his rant with an alarmingly self-aware thought.
"I know it's racist to probably point this out."

Gee, ya think?

As the E! Online story pointed out, that statement is, in fact, "alarmingly self-aware" of him. Could Rush Limbaugh finally get so self-aware that he sees that he's become totally irrelevant?

No, I'm not counting on it either.

Yassuh, Toby Be Good...

In a disgusting yet telling display, newly-anointed GOP "leader" Michael Steele was forced on bended knee to kowtow to the real leader of the Rethug party, Rush Limbaugh, after he made some "unconsidered" remarks about the Fatboy Dopehead.

Jeez, given all of the racial problems that the Rethugs have had over the last forty years or so (ever since Tricky Dick's "Southern Strategy" starting circa 1970) -- and especially given Limbaugh's own problems with black people -- you'd think that this would be the last thing they'd want the American public to see.

But no, there it was, for all America to see: Poor Michael Steele, looking like he just stepped out of a scene from Roots, having to figuratively -- and almost literally -- lick his master's boots.

And now I hear that there are rumblings that the Fatboy himself may be considering a run for the Offal Office in 2012.

Really? In that case, bring it on! I can't imagine a candidate on the right who would be better for the Democrats, unless it was Sarah Palin.

So imagine this: A Palin-Limbaugh ticket in 2012.

Of course that's not gonna happen. It would have to be Limbaugh-Palin -- ole Rusty just couldn't stand the thought of having a woman on top...

The Fault, Dear Brutus, Lies Not in the Stars but in Ourselves...

In my innocent youth -- my time of naivety about how the world really works -- I was more or less surrounded by howling packs of intellectually-challenged emotional morons, blatantly bigoted racists, quasi-neo-nazis and sheet-on-the-clothesline members of the KKK.

Mostly they were a squalid lot, a rabble of tarpaper-shack-dwelling semi-toothless goons with chronic white-lightnin' breath, tobacco stains on their chin-whiskers and family trees that looked like telephone poles.

But when I considered them, I thought two things that turned out to be problematical:

(1) These assholes were all old -- at least to my young eyes -- and how much time did they really have left to spew their bullshit anyway, and who would listen to it?
(2) None of the younger generation -- my generation --shared their beliefs, not even their own children.

So, obvious conclusion, all we had to do was basically wait it out until the old fuckers died off, and their attitudes and beliefs died along with them, and then we'd be free. Free at last. Yes, great gawdamighty, we'd be free at last.

Except it didn't quite work out that way. Here it is, nearly 60 years after I arrived at those faulty conclusions, and this is what I observe now:

(1) They might have died off, but their ideas remain vibrant.
(2) The younger generation that I knew personally was, apparently and evidently, an insufficiently diverse sample from which to draw any conclusions.

Of course, looking back (in retrospect, which is the best way to do it...), I realize that even at that young age I would not have included in my circle of friends anyone who thought that way, which left me with a self-limiting sample, in statistical terms a bad thing.

Which brings me to the news today, that the new president of an outfit called the Young Republicans is one Audra Shay (R-Deluded), who, at nearly 40, stretches the definition of "young", and who is just as racist and bigoted and psychotically paranoid and homophobic as those old geezers I knew 60 years ago.

Shay is actually little younger than Sarah Palin (R-Quitter), and it is just a little odd that someone who is approaching the age of 40 could be a leader of the YOUNG Republicans, but there she is, Audra Shay, now famous for her racist rants and her Bachmann-Beck-induced trumpeting of an impending Obamanation Meltdown.

In the meantime, our old friends the Freepers over at the so-called Free Republic website, are insulting the Obama daughters (children!) thusly: "A typical street whore ... A bunch of ghetto thugs ... Ghetto street trash ... Wonder when she will get her first abortion." (See the exposé of this over at The Political Carnival and brace yourself -- it's pretty ugly stuff). But this is really nothing new for the party of hate, whose spokesman and chief motherfucker Limbaugh said many years ago that Chelsea Clinton was the White House dog...

All of which goes to depress me some, knowing that I was wrong -- REALLY WRONG -- way back in the day. But that's not so depressing (if I started counting up everything that I've been wrong about in my life, the numbers would outlast the days I have left until my biblically-allotted threescore and ten...) as the fact that this shit is still with us, and it seems to be getting more virulent.

And in the famous words quoted from William Shakespeare by Edward R. Murrow when he was basically the only person to stand up to Joseph McCarthy: "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves."

In other words, we let this happen. We let people like Audra Shay and Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Michelle Malkin and Michael "Savage" Wiener and the hundreds of other raucous voices braying Big Lies over a public airway at an uniformed populace without break, without end, and without correction.

I'm for free speech as much as anyone, but in the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., free speech does not extend to "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theatre".

And no, I don't have any immediate solutions. But these people have an immense amount of psychological power over their sheeple listeners and they need to be dealt with somehow. I'm not so much in favor of silencing their voices (except on a personal level -- after all, I did challenge Limbaugh to a wild-west shootout...), but I do like the idea of boycotting their sponsors.

If anyone can provide a comprehensive list -- hell, even a semi-comprehensive list -- of the sponsors of hate-talk/lie-talk venom, including Faux News and the manifestly-misnamed Excellence in Broadcasting Network (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rush Limbaugh), I'd be glad to promote it.

One of our biggest problems over here on the left is that we lack the Nazi-like organization, the Gestapo-like regimentation, and the blind willingness-to-follow-any-orders-at-all that the right wing has been perfecting for years, and that lack of lock-step skills has left us in the lurch so many times. The very fact that I can't seem to find a comprehensive list of the sponsors of hate talk illustrates this.

Rusty Limpdick another "Hanoi Jane"?

God, I love it when the rightwing starts to devour itself -- for example see my previous post about the McCain daughter attacking mAnn Coulter.

Now over at the Huffington Post, Frank Schaeffer, a former wingnut evangelical Rethug and now fulltime member of the Reality-Based-Community, tells it like it is when it comes to the current state of affairs in the Party:

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!
With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal...
When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."
For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Go ahead and read the whole thing. It's a very telling examination of the new Rethug Party. Of course Schaeffer will be excoriated as a "traitor" himself -- it's really all they have now to fall back on.

Rush Limbaugh and the Evil Voting Machine

I swear you can't make this shit up. News out of Palm Beach today carries the story that notorious gasbag and brain-addled drug addict Rush Limbaugh couldn't figure out the voting machine when he went to vote in the Florida primary yesterday:

"I hit 'Next' and it didn't go there," said Limbaugh, who lives in Palm Beach and often recounts the county's electoral foibles on his show.
Then he hit the "Back" button and "got my candidate page again with the vote already recorded there. So I said 'hmmmmm, I wonder if this is going to count twice."
So he unclicked his favored candidate, clicked that candidate again and hit "Next" a second time - and it worked.
"I don't know if I voted twice," he said. "Probably not.

Yeah, uh-huh. This is the guy, you'll recall, that made a ton of malicious fun back in 2000 and 2004 about the stupidity of people who complain about voting machines.

What a fucking moron. Maybe you should pop a couple of Vitamin V tablets next time. Kind of perk up your head, so to speak.

We've Found the Pimple on Limbaugh's Ass -- It's Tom Tancredo

Some interesting news from Buzzflash today: Bottom-feeding-tier presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-Chickenhawk), congressman out of Colorado, was eligible to serve in Vietnam but didn't go.

Tancredo, a war-hawk on Iraq and a drum-beater on Iran, apparently was no different when it came to Vietnam: He supported the war way back then, but he didn't have to go fight it, either.

The reason: Tancredo had been treated for "depression" when he was a teenager and was classified 1-Y by his draft board.

Getting a 1-Y classification was not the same as 4-F, but it was almost a golden parachute. For a long time I was classified 1-Y myself, but I had to keep reporting, on a regular and frequent basis, for draft physicals until they finally got tired of seeing me, reclassified me 1-A and drafted my ass.

The point being that a 1-Y pretty much kept you from getting drafted until the condition was corrected -- or corrected itself.

So Tancredo -- like Limbaugh -- was a chickenhawk who was happy to cheer us on from the sidelines, but wasn't so gung ho that he was willing to enlist and go to Vietnam.

Incidentally, back in the day, a 1-Y classification kept you from actually being drafted, but the vast majority of those 1-Ys were for conditions that, like Limbaugh's ass pimple, would not have prevented you from enlisting in the service. Especially the army, who would take you as long as you were room temperature, regardless of your draft status.

And, as one of the commenters on the Buzzflash story says, if Tom Eagleton was "unfit" for the vice-presidency way back in '72 because he had been treated for depression, why is Tancredo now suitable to be president, having been treated for the same thing?

The answer: Because Rethugs have absolutely no problem with their own hypocrisy.

When Even Motor Trend is Against You...

...you know you've crossed some kind of line.

Except if you are Rush Limpdick, the pimple-assed draft dodger, who recently went on a rant about the new Chevrolet Volt being named MT's Car of the Year.

From what I can tell, Rusty doesn't like it because he doesn't like it. He's never driven one, he's never even seen one. But it's electric and doesn't use a lot of gasoline, so it must be bad.

Motor Trend, surprisingly, unwilling to buy into the whole "That's just Rush being Rush" justification that the rest of the media uses an excuse not to call him on his bullshit, shot back -- and shot back big -- in a column by Todd Lassa, called Rush to Judgment:

You said, “Folks, of all the cars, no offense, General Motors, please, but of all the cars in the world, the Chevrolet Volt is the Car of the Year? Motor Trend magazine, that’s the end of them. How in the world do they have any credibility? Not one has been sold. The Volt is the Car of the Year.”
So, Mr. Limbaugh; you didn’t enjoy your drive of our 2011 Car of the Year, the Chevrolet Volt? Assuming you’ve been anywhere near the biggest automotive technological breakthrough since … I don’t know, maybe the self-starter, could you even find your way to the front seat? Or are you happy attacking a car that you’ve never even seen in person?
Last time you ranted about the Volt, you got confused about the “range,” and said on the air that the car could be driven no more than 40 miles at a time, period. At least you stayed away from that issue this time, but you continue to attack it as the car only a tree hugging, Obama-supporting Government Motors customer would want. As radio loudmouths like you would note, none of those potential customers were to be found after November 2.
Back to us for a moment, our credibility, Mr. Limbaugh, comes from actually driving and testing the car, and understanding its advanced technology. It comes from driving and testing virtually every new car sold, and from doing this once a year with all the all-new or significantly improved models all at the same time. We test, make judgments and write about things we understand.
Chevrolet has not sold one Volt because it’s not on sale yet. It will not sell 10,000 this first model year (although GE plans to buy truckloads for its fleet), because it takes time to ramp up production. See, Rush, because we’re the World’s Automotive Authority, we get access to many cars before they go on sale.
Rush to Judgment imageBut, harrumph. In its attempt to force cars that don’t use much gas on us — how un-American/un-ExxonMobil/un-Halliburton is that? — the Obama administration is offering a $7,500 tax credit on the Chevy Volt, grabbing tax breaks and credits right out of the deserving, job-creating pockets of America’s richest individuals. How dare he?
This is another of your distortions, Rush, repeated by the otherwise more level-headed George Will in The Washington Post last Sunday. The $7,500 Obama tax credit is an expansion of President Bush’s hybrid credits from the last decade. The Obama tax credit extends to the new Nissan Leaf, too, but if you or Will slammed that car, I’ve not heard or read it. I’d be surprised if you did, though, as Nissan is building the Leaf in a non-union factory in a right-to-work state represented by two Republican senators. A factory located there because Tennessee offered Nissan big tax credits. Maybe you’re worried that if the $7,500 tax credit works, too many people will buy the Volt, and that could reduce the need for oil drilling tax credits?

Nyuk, nyuk nyuk...Take that, asshole.

There's more to this, so be sure to check out the whole story, and especially the last line. There is also a ton of comments on it, and there are surprisingly few dittoheads in there, but a lot of people who are going to subscribe to MT because of this.

Boycott Limbaugh Sponsors

By now you all know exactly how I feel about that pimple-ass draft-dodging professional blow-hole/windbag Rush Limbaugh. Well, I feel the same way about anyone who is willing to sponsor his pollution of the airways. Thanks to the Daily Kos, here's a list of Rushbo's sponsors, companies that we should all feel free to boycott. Now.

This list contains his top ten advertisers: Lifelock, iHeart Radio, 1800flowers, Stamps.com, Visiting Angels, ProFlowers, Hillsdale College, Lear Capital, PajamaGram, and IDrive.

Read the full story, which also contains links to the company websites, and keep those companies in mind whenever you are thinking about purchasing some goods or services. Find out who their competition is and patronize them instead. Vote with your wallet. You'll feel better about yourself.

And speaking of feeling better about yourself, why not sign this petition? It will be sent to those very same sponsors every time they get an additional 500 names. Make your voice heard!

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You will, of course, be asked to make a monetary contribution. It's not required and even though I am anti-capitalist, I realize that this is an imperfect world and money is required to keep it spinning... Contribute if you like, or not. Because freedom...

Right Wing Talking Points on Von Brunn

I was wrong when I said the wingnuts would fall all over themselves in denial that they had any responsibility in Wednesday's terrorist attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

I was way wrong. Instead they came out swinging, insisting that James von Brunn's racist anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions were the responsibility of the Left, and not the Right.

Cue the Scooby-Do "Huh?" sound clip.

Yesterday Pimple-Ass Limbaugh went into a rant about von Brunn's views being "Leftist", and that was followed up by one Kathy Shaidle at the Washington Examiner (naturally a rightwing rag), who says that von Brunn's political views, "like so many in the Anti-Semite community, track left rather than right".

Huh?

Memo to Limbaugh and Shady Shaidle: Just because Nazi Party had "socialist" in its title does not mean that they were "socialists" or had "socialist" ideas. Do a little research, people, for chrissakes.

But, as we all know, the truth is meaningless to these assholes. They are still adherents to the "Big Lie" theory, and will do everything they can on every occasion to blame the ills of the country on "The Left". And they'll continue getting away with it as long as their sheeple keep following them blindly.

I also heard on the radio yesterday some joker -- I tuned in somewhere in the middle and didn't get his name -- who was apparently speaking for the NRA, arguing with Big Eddie Schultz about whether people like Asshole von Brunn who are as openly and violently hostile to a class of people such as Jews or African-Americans should be allowed to own firearms.

It's an interesting question and one that deserves discussion, but this guy of course added nothing to the debate, instead falling back on the NRA's same tired old position, "enforce" the laws we already have, everyone has a right to own a gun, etc etc etc.

But remember that it was the NRA who was very late to the game in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and it wasn't until they were basically shamed into it that they protested the ongoing confiscation of firearms from New Orleans residents.

Why? Because those residents were predominantly black, and the last thing the NRA really wants is a bunch of armed black people...

Okay, now fast forward to Wednesday, and try to tell me with a straight face that if the Holocaust Memorial murderer was a black guy named Mohammed that they still would come out so vociferously for him to have been able to carry a gun.

Uh-huh.

Dominican Republic Sex Tourism: I Knew It!

Following up on the Rush Limbaugh Viagra bust post from yesterday, I managed to do a little research on the sex trade in the Dominican Republic. Apparently I've been living under a rock for the last several years (okay, I've been happily married for the last 24 years, which, when it comes to this subject, is just like living under a rock...)

It turns out, to my surprise, that the Dominican Republic, of all places, is ground zero for the sex trade in the Western Hemisphere, as this Google search illustrates: There are over 542,000 hits for the words "dominican republic sex tourism" -- and many of those sites refer specifically to child prostitution, such as this one and this one.

Not that I am in any way accusing -- or even suggesting -- that Rusty "Limpdick" Limbaugh has been anything but an honorable and law-abiding Republican* in his consorting with prostitutes in the Dominican Republic. But it really makes you wonder why he felt the need to go all the way to the DR for sex when it's so readily available for a reasonable price all over South Florida, and especially in Miami and nearby Miami Beach, both of which are right down the shore from where he lives. Plus he's a media celebrity, for chrissake, and despite the fact that he's a fatassed flabby limp-dick slob, even he must have an adequate number of rightwing groupies to nail right here in the good old USA.

So why did he go all the way to the Dominican Republic?

* Surely an oxymoron, but never mind...

Too Good to be True: Limbaugh Busted -- Again

This just in: America's favorite fatassed blowhard radio voice was just busted coming back into the country with an apparently illegal prescription for ... Viagra!

"It's all Clinton's fault," Limbaugh did not say. "I wanted a blow job, too, and the only way I can get it up any more is by using this commonly-prescribed prescription. Which is available in every pharmacy, even those who won't dispense the morning-after pill."

How's that, you "family-values-focus-on-the-fetus" crowd out there? Your loudmouthed spokesman, the thrice-divorced addict to "prescription pain killers" (which he bought on the street -- or more accurately, sent his maid to score for him on the mean streets of Miami), currently on probation for that little stunt, has yet another prescription med that doesn't belong to him.

I refuse to listen to the pimple-assed bloviator, so I won't get to hear what lame fucking excuse he comes up with for this one, but it has to be good. Stephanie Miller will cover it, I'm sure, on her "right wing world" segment -- be sure to listen on Wednesday for the down and dirty.

Jesus Christ, how many times are his moonie-eyed dittoheads going to let him slide on this kind of crap? Never mind, I already know the answer to that one.

But Rusty, listen to me: You are fucking 55 years old, dude! Isn't it time you grew up a little bit, settled down and got a nice productive job, instead of jetting off to the fucking Dominican Republic, of all places?

Besides, didn't I hear somewhere that the Dominican Republic has turned into a kind of destination resort for old fat guys who want to score some teenage (and I mean early teenage) tail? Has anyone else heard that, and can you provide a source? America wants to know.

Spitting on Nancy Pelosi

My brother-in-law who lives in Hawaii and works in the medical field sends me wingnut stuff periodically, sometimes just to get my goat, but sometimes with actual questions. He unfortunately works in a rural part of the state with a number of reactionary wingnut medicos who are constantly trying to fill his mind with senseless rightwing bullshit.

So the other day he sends me a copy of this "open letter" written to the Speaker of the House by an attorney named Dennis L. Guthrie, who practices law in Charlotte, NC. The letter was dated August 11, 2009, so it is of recent vintage. I'm reproducing the whole thing here because it's actually quite humorous, in a bone-chilling car-wreck-on-the-freeway kind of way...

Dear Ms. Pelosi:
I write to you out of utter disdain! You are despicable and un-American as the traitor Jane Fonda.
I am a soon to be 65 year old who has voted in every state and local election since 1966. I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats alike. I have worked on campaigns for both Republicans and Democrats, white and black. I served the country I love in Vietnam, as my son did in the Middle East. I was awarded two bronze stars. I have been involved in politics since age 6 when my father was the campaign manager for a truly great American Congressman, Charles Raper Jonas, who worked for his constituents and his country, and was to be admired, unlike you.
You obviously haven't read the Constitution recently, if ever, the Federalist Papers, or even David McCullough's book on John Adams. You ought to take the time while riding around in your government provided luxury executive jet to do just that. You represent Socialistic and even Marxist principals [sic] that our founding fathers tried to avoid when setting out the capitalist republican form of government represented by our Constitution.
I find it interesting that you and your husband are multi-millionaires with much of your fortune being made as a result of your "public service". You have controlled legislation that has enhanced your husband's investments both on and off shore. At the same time you redistributed the wealth of others. Our system of a free market economy is being destroyed by the likes of you, Harry Reid, and now our President. You ride around in a gulf-stream airplane at the tax payer's expense while criticizing the presidents of companies who produced something for the economy. You add nothing to the economy of the Unites States; you only subtract therefrom.
I would like to suggest that you return to the city of fruitcakes and nuts and eat your husband's canned tuna and pineapple produced by illegal immigrants and by workers who have been excluded from the protection that 90% of the legal workers in the Unites States have.
I await your defeat in the next election with glee.
Don't ever use the term "un-American" again for protesters who love this country and are exercising their rights upon which this country was founded. By the way, while I served in the Army, I was spit on by the same type of lunatics who support you and who you probably supported in the 60's and 70's. You are an embarrassment to all of us who served so that you would have the protected right of free speech to call us un-American, as do the majority of the people of this formerly great country. You are a true disgrace to most of the people who served this country by offering themselves for public service in the United States Congress.
I feel certain you aides will not share this letter with you, but I intend to share it with many.
Sincerely,
Dennis L. Guthrie
dlguthrie@gdhs.com

Jeez, where to begin? The hatred squeezing out between the lines of this diatribe is almost physically palpable. Okay, this guy is supposed to be an attorney, yet he doesn't seem to have the slightest idea about the history of the founding of the United States.

Those Socialist/Marxist "principals" that the founders tried to avoid? Actually, it was pretty easy to avoid them, since Karl Marx wasn't born until 1818, and didn't publish the Communist Manifesto until 1848.

And that "capitalist republican form of government"? The US Constitution is remarkably silent on economic matters -- in fact, like "god", there is not a single reference to capitalism, freemarket economics or anything that could remotely be considered "economic" in nature, other than recognizing the existence of slavery, but only to establish in law that a slave was only three-fifths of a man.

The other charges? They are both stale and overblown, and have pretty much proved to be lies by now:

· Pelosi's "luxury" jet? Here's what Snopes has to say about that.
· Star-Kist Tuna, American Samoa and Nancy Pelosi's husband? Here's Snopes again.
· Redistributing wealth? Snopes.

He also claims that he was spit on while serving in the US Army. I doubt it. I really do, I'm calling bullshit on that claim here and now, and my regular readers all know how I feel about that.

It's really sad to see someone my own age, a fellow Vietnam veteran, being suckered in by all this rightwing propaganda bullshit that comes over the airwaves from the likes of Rush Pimple-Ass Draftdodging Limbaugh (BTW, where's Guthrie's Vietnam-vet rage about Limbaugh the draft-dodger?) and out of the mouths of the ClusterFox meat puppet magpies.

Of course Guthrie is from North Carolina ... anybody want to bet on his ethnic heritage? My next paycheck says that he's one of those fearful "White people are being kicked aside" guys, one of those closeted racists who just can't stand it that ONE OF "THEM" is now their president, but since we all now live in a "post-racial" nation, they can't just come out and say "Kill the Nigger", the way they'd like to. So they have to get their anger up over non-issues, such as the health care "death panels" and "socialized medicine" and the like, and redirect their hostility to a more easily attacked target, such as the Speaker of the House. Note that the president was mentioned, but only in passing as one of those evil "destroyers" of the free market economy.

Got news for ya, Denny G. It was the capitalist pig Wall Streeters and those greedy CEOs that you praise who have destroyed your precious "free market" economy.

Racist Homophobe Author: Here's a Book NOT to Buy

For obvious reasons, I'm usually a big fan of Vietnam War fiction. I belong to an email group of other Vietnam War authors, and normally the group is entertaining and informative.

But the other day I got an email that went to the group praising a new book of Vietnam War fiction: Land of Childhood's Fears - Faith, Friendship, and The Vietnam War by David Todeschini. For reasons which will become obvious, I refuse to give the guy's website or anything else about the book. Google him if you like.

This email itself was from a member of the group, and was not from this Todeschini guy, but attached to it was an email from The Toad, which said "Play the attached MP3 file; my sentiments exactly" with an .mp3 sound file of a song entitled "Sand Niggers". As you would expect, it was an inflammatory, violent and racist diatribe against Arabs -- but it also included gays and "communists" who "took god out of the schools". It also contained some wishful thinking that these "problems" could best be taken care of right here in the good ole USA by a shotgun and an M-16, accompanied by the sounds of shotgun blasts and fully-automatic rifle fire.

It is beyond me how someone who, presumably, is trying to sell as many books as possible would do something so incredibly stupid as to alienate a large portion of the book-buying public.

So, since silence is assent, I fired back my own diatribe to the group:

This is disgustingly racist and disturbingly violent and to make matters worse, it's not even funny. And, given the recent events in Tucson, it's also in incredibly poor taste. I'm sure that the parents of little Christina Taylor Green would just be tickled pink to hear this crap.
I am surprised that you would forward this, especially embedded in an otherwise striking review of this book.
But listening to this shit, I can swear that I will NEVER buy this book, I don't give a goddam how fucking good it is, if the author comes off as such an intolerant racist homophobe that this is what he thinks passes for political discourse. Especially since he has "faith" in the title -- it kind of begs the question, who would Jesus blow away with a shotgun and an M16?
I am appalled that in the second decade of the 21st Century people still think this way. This is not the America that we're supposed to have.
Please take me off this list if you ever plan on sending out anything like this again.
Life is too short for this kind of shit.

To be fair, the person who sent it to the group was not the author of the book, and he realized immediately that he had made a mistake and issued a profound apology. Which I accepted, along with, I assume, most other members of the group.

Except for this one. He (who shall not be named here unless he wants a public fight in which he will be the pathetic loser) sent me a personal email, not to the group, calling me out:

For the love of God, I do not know why some folks want to paint them selves [sic] as lilly [sic] white and pure in actions and deeds.

The word nigger was coined by the English, it means a dirty trashy person. It was their way of refering [sic] to the Irish, not anyone of color. Through hard work and intergity [sic] the Irish out grew [sic] the name. Then the blacks picked it up and now it is taking a violation of our right to free speach [sic], and laws passed by half assed politicians trying to buy votes at the cost of our free speach rights to make it a raciest [sic] term.

What is the NAACP? What is LULAC, La Raza, Brown Berets, and the Latino Congresional [sic] caucus? All raciest [sic] organizations.

If you are sincer [sic] point these organizations out as raciests [sic]. Other wise shur [sic] up.

A side note: Why is it that these people are all so spelling-challenged and thinking-impaired that they don't even know how to turn on the spell check in their word processors?

Also note that he claims that the Irish, through their "intergity" and hard work, outgrew the term, which of course blatantly implies that the "others" (i.e., black people) do not work hard and have no integrity...

Here's my email response to this jackass, to which as of this posting I have not received a reply:

Thank you for that reasoned and rational response. Ignoring the fact that your response was neither "reasoned" nor "rational", nor was it even correct.
From Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger):
"Nigger is a noun in the English language, most notable for its usage in a pejorative context to refer to black people (generally people of Sub-Saharan African descent), and also as an informal slang term, among other contexts. It is a common ethnic slur. The word originated as a term used in a neutral context to refer to black people, as a variation of the Spanish/Portuguese noun negro, a descendant of the Latin adjective niger, meaning the color 'black' ... In the Colonial America of 1619, John Rolfe used negars in describing the African slaves shipped to the Virginia colony ... In the United Kingdom and the Anglophone world, nigger denoted the dark-skinned (non-white) African and Asian (i.e., from India or nearby) peoples colonized into the British Empire, and "dark-skinned foreigners" — in general."
I can find no reference that backs up your claim that it was first used by the British to describe the Irish, and I challenge you to prove your claim. It's obvious from its etymology that it was first used to describe dark-skinned peoples, and ascribing any other origin to the term is nothing more than wishful thinking.
It is a horribly offensive -- and yes, racist -- term for black people, and those other organizations that you throw in willy-nilly are not "racist" in any normal usage of the term. However, to be fair you didn't actually call them "racist"; you called them "raciest"...
You have some ... issues ... with race, obviously, most likely taking the form of Denial. Go ask your friends who are black what they think about your statements.
Oh, wait. My guess is that you don't actually HAVE any friends who are black, do you.
So maybe you should do a little thinking for yourself before you tell anyone else to "shur up" (whatever that means).
"Violation of our free speech"? Really, that's the best you can do? You want to be able to call a black person a "nigger" without any responsibility for what that speech can mean? As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. stated in Schenk v US, free speech does not include things similar to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. In other words, freedom is not license; freedom comes with responsibilities.

I think that the reason he hasn't responded is that he's having too much trouble with words like "etymology" and "pejorative". Plus he's probably scouring desperately the Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin and Clusterfuck "News" websites to find that fake origin that he cites. I know that his enfeebled mind didn't come up with that on his own. He's just parroting something he's heard, and my best guess is that he heard it coming out of the spewing maw of that nitrogenous-waste semi-human pimple-assed draft-dodging slimebag, Rush Limbaugh. I can just hear him saying it...

15 Ways Black People Oppress Limbaugh, Beck, et. al

Over at Alternet, Christopher Deis has a fascinating mea culpa in which he admits that white men were missing from Obama's rousing get-out-the-vote-in-2010 speech.

Which naturally prompted the snarling rabid outrage that we saw from Limpdick, the Beckistanzer, Slanthead and all the rest that Obama was a "racist" etc etc.

But in this piece Deis admits to his sins and offers up his own 15 ways he oppresses white conservatives.
Excerpts:

1. If I join the Republican Party I will have a great advantage over my peers. I will receive funding to run against other black people. Black people who join the Republican Party are also guaranteed to be shown on TV at the Republican National Convention, and there is an excellent chance they will be asked to give a speech. Even if you can't win a single election, black Republicans have job security for life.
2. I will be placed directly behind many famous Republicans when they give speeches.
. . .
7. I know that my race is always an asset and never a liability. At will, I can play the "race card" and win any debate or dispute.
8. People of color have long dominated the evening news. We are disproportionately represented in the coverage of many types of news stories, especially those featuring reports of violent, criminal behavior. Moreover, with Barack Obama's domination of the evening news, the hyper-visibility of people of color is further encouraged in the mainstream media. To remedy this, I will do my best to support an increase in the amount of attention given to white people in the evening news and by popular culture at large.

The sobering thing about this great piece of satire is that it is sure to be taken literally by the maundering morons of the right.

How long do you think it will be until Limpy starts his "See I Told You So!" rant, rustling paper over the microphone? And for his dittohead listeners to start their sycophantic phone calls telling him how smart and wonderful and oppressed he really is.

Yes, they are that stupid.

Just a Little Taste...

I knew that the wingnut media would be falling all over itself to try to distance their actions from the Arizona shootings. But their protest tend to sound kind of tinny when you consider this list (from the terrific Skippy the Bush Kangaroo blog):

rush limbaugh: "i tell people don't kill all the liberals. leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for."
senator phil gramm: "we're going to keep building the party until we're hunting democrats with dogs."
rep. james hansen on bill clinton: get rid of the guy. impreach him, censure him, assassinate him."
john derbyshire intimated in the national review that because chelsea clinton had "the taint," she should "be killed."
ann coulter: "we need to execute people like john walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too."
ann coulter: "my only regret with timothy mcveigh is he did not go to the new york times building."
bill o'reilly: "if those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. will you have that done, please? send over the fbi and just put them in chains."
radio host glenn beck said he was "thinking about killing michael moore" and pondered whether "i could kill him myself, or if i would need to hire somebody to do it," before concluding: "no, i think i could. i think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and i could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong?"
fresno city council member jerry duncan in 2003 wrote in an email that police should "cap" members of the human relations commission and wrote, "if i had one dirty bomb and i could eliminate all the liberals in fresno at once."

Still want to believe the wingnut denials that they have any responsibility at all in this tragic shooting? Try the extensive list at Orcinus from back in 2007.

It's Not Just Imus

I heard some wingnut talk radio over the weekend, and all of the venom-spouting pundits are up in arms about their boy Donny being fired.

In the words of the Immortal Bard, "methinks thou protesteth too much" (Shakespeare, page 9).

Those guys have got to be running scared about this time, since they are seeing -- and rightly so -- that the Imus flap is a sea change in public discourse over the airwaves.

When you have people like inflated gas-bag drug addict Viagra-popping blowhard Rush Limbaugh, who has made a career out of hurtful comments (calling 12-year-old Chelsea Clinton "the White House dog", for example), or gay-baiting Michael Savage, who has called gay people "homos" on the air, or mad-dog frothing-at-the-mouth Neil Boortz referring to Hilary Clinton as a "raving bitch", still on the air, they've got to be shaking in their boots.

Unfortunately when it came right down to it, it was the bottom line that dictated the Imus firing, not some deathbed conversion to standards of decency. When the advertisers pulled out, Imus was toast.

But hey, that's capitalism, folks. If we don't buy the crap that the advertisers are pushing on these hurtful radio shows, they won't be sponsoring them, and those windbag assholes will be off the air and the next time we see them, they'll be showing up as a Trivial Pursuit question.

Just where they belong.