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...

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.

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.

Limbaugh Unhinged Over Safety Net

Everyone knows about Mint Rawmoney's unintentionally truthy gaffe about not being concerned about the very poor, since they have a safety net.

Of course Rusty Limpdick came unglued over it, but not over its obvious tin-ear deafness to the needs of real Americans. No, this is what he has to say:

...the safety net is contributing to the destruction of their humanity and their futures! Everybody knows what he's trying to say but he didn't say it and he makes himself a target with this stuff. He comes across as the prototypical rich Republican. And it's gonna make it harder and harder and harder and harder to go after Obama because this turns around on him. You know, all these Wizards of Smart in the Republican establishment say, 'We can't have Newt out there! Why, Newt's gonna be the topic. We need Obama to be the topic. We need Obama to be the guy campaign's about. If Newt's out there, it's only gonna be about Newt.' Well, what evidence is there that it's not gonna be about Romney with these kinds of statements?
Everybody knows what he's trying to say here, but you give them 'I'm not concerned about the very poor,' you chop it off there and it could be about anything. I'm not concerned about the poor in the way they're eating. I'm not concerned about the poor and the car they have. I'm not concerned about the poor and where they live. You can do all kinds of things with that. And it isn't gonna be enough to say, (crying) 'You've taken that out of context.' We know what he's trying to do. He's trying to zero in and tell the middle class, 'I'm thinking of you.' But this repair the safety net stuff? The safety net is contributing to poverty. The safety net contributes to poverty. It does not solve it. We've got proof every year since the Great Society and whatever else Johnson named it, starting in the sixties. It hasn't fixed anything.

This is from the official show transcript, to be found over at Politico.

If you don't have the bloviating ass-pimple-draft-dodger and self-appointed leader of the Rethug Party on your side, then what chance do you really have to win an election in November?

Answer: Not much, and that's good for our side. Bring it on!

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...

Remember When...

Today we're going to play Remember When.

Remember when the FBI and Homeland Security came out with a report entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalism and Recruitment?

That was in April 2009. Remember how Rush Limphole and Michelle Mockery hooted with derision about its findings?

Here's Rush:

I mean, the language they use in this report to describe conservatives... We hear all the time that the left is a bunch of pacifists, make-love-not-war types. They don't want violence. They just want to get along, and why can't everybody just be happy together, and yet when you read what a typical leftist like Obama or Janet Napolitano put together in this Department of Homeland Security report, you conclude nothing else that they are extreme partisan radicals, and they're ready to go to war with a domestic enemy, conservatives, that they consider to be a greater threat than Iran, than China, than North Korea, than Venezuela, Russia, or any other nation that threatens the United States. Conservatives are the biggest threat to America. That's the message coming out of Washington from Obama and Janet Napolitano.

Well, Rusty, since the American death toll from all those foreign and smelly countries remains at zero, and the death toll from American-bred wingnuts is something like over a hundred, with a full 25% of those being police officers who were gunned down by white supremacists, I think you need to issue a correction.

Yeah, good luck with that happening...

And let's not forget Michelle:

The “report” ... was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.
. . .the piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives. And the intent is clear. As the two spokespeople I talked with on the phone today made clear: They both pinpointed the recent “economic downturn” and the “general state of the economy” for stoking “rightwing extremism.” One of the spokespeople said he was told that the report has been in the works for a year. My b.s. detector went off the chart, and yours will, too, if you read through the entire report — which asserts with no evidence that an unquantified “resurgence in rightwing extremist recruitment and radicalizations activity” is due to home foreclosures, job losses, and…the historical presidential election.

So how's that famous b.s. detector working out for you, Michelle? I think you need new batteries... Maybe you can recycle them from your Steely Dan.

Or better yet, a new Bullshit Detector Watch. It's all the "rage" ... in other words, perfect for you.

As Stephan Salisbury over at Tom Dispatch said, America's political landscape is littered with bodies, victims of the rightwing killing machine.

When is Terrorism Not Terrorism?

When is terrorism not terrorism? That's today's pop quiz.

Here are just a few names to give you a hint: Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, Scott Roeder, Byron Williams, Jared Loughner.

The answer, as far as the media is concerned, as far as the Teabaggers are concerned, as far as the spewing blowholes over at Clusterfox "News" and wingnut radio are concerned, terrorism is not terrorism unless Muslims are behind it. "Normal" people, i.e. "white" people, don't do terrorism. They do "isolated incidents" of personal violence... Like blowing up buildings, killing abortion providers and shooting members of congress.

As much as they are in denial over the fact, the hate-filled rhetoric of the vicious pundits of the plutocracy has had an effect.

They have been falling all over themselves for the last 24 hours or so trying to take the heat and the focus and the spotlight off of them. Bullshit! They are as culpable as they would have been if they had physically superglued the Glock into Loughner's hand, curled his finger around the trigger and shoved him towards the crowd.

That said, I don't know what can be done about it. We still do have free speech in this country (sort of) and I'm not comfortable with the government trying to silence them... But maybe if they got a little of their own medicine, it might give them a wakeup call.

No, I am not advocating violence against them. That would be wrong. But I will admit that I have a serious moral failing in that I would unavoidably experience just a bit of schadenfreude if someone kneecapped Glenn Beck, if someone curbstoned Rush Limbaugh...

I'm just sayin'...

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.