Rush to the Cliff

Rush Limbaugh has no testicles.

(one now wonders how many Google hits I'll get for that line)

Seriously, though, I think it's high time we discussed Rush Limbaugh's manhood, or lack thereof. Since apparently, if someone criticizes him for saying stupid, bigoted and/or blatantly false things (which he does on a not-unfrequent basis), that person is another person who Hates America, is not Manly Enough to Debate Him on the Air, is a Terrorist, or is a FemiNazi (a word apparently coined by Professor Tom Hazlett of George Mason University).

In the past week or so, many Republican politicians have taken Rush to task over his statement that he would like to see Obama and all his policies fail. Rush then takes the politicians to task over the airwaves, and many of those politicians have fallen over themselves to apologize to Rush and his legion of dittohead fans. Gov. Michael Steele, the newish token dark face of the Republican National Committee, apologized not more than three hours after Rush called him out on his criticisms of the great Limbaugh. 

Steele, by the way, is not to be confused by the other newish token dark face of the Republicans, Gov. Piyush "Bobby" Jindal.

Am I a racist? Probably. But only against idiot Republicans that think if you put a dark face on a bad idea, that somehow makes it better.

Anyway, back to the testicularly-challenged Rush. This is a man who regularly states falsehood as fact, and bigotry as good-old-fashioned American values. He is the first radio personality to play that cute little ditty, "Barack the Magic Negro." This is the man who, at three hundred pounds, yells for everyone else to show some self-control. This is the drug addict who wants other drug addicts to go to prison forever (though not himself, of course). He does not have the huevos to actually debate anyone in the real public, but has no problem shutting down anyone who calls into his show with a differing opinion. He has occasionally visited the real world of other TV shows and had his yam-sack handed to him on a paper plate most of the time.

(the famous instance of his appearance on David Letterman, when Dave asked him, "Do you ever think to yourself, 'Boy, I'm just a bag of hot gas?'" The audience response was loud, raucous and supportive of Dave - Rush turned a shade or two of green)

So, Rush, if you have the stones to come out and debate, I'll debate you. Live, in public, anyone can ask anything. Bullhorns at thirty paces, c'mon Rush - you can do it.

Can't you?

(disclaimer: he may have not been neutered in the real world, but I am only claiming he is unable to father good ideas)

Paying the Piper

Time to blame some folks. All of us.

The electorate gets the politicians it deserves. 

We elected a former movie actor (not even really a star - no one thought he was that good) to the presidency in 1980, who based his speeches on a dubiously mixed message of hope, optimism, folksy avuncularity, and vicious red-baiting (does anyone remember red-baiting?). He began the process of deregulation of the banking system, fired air-traffic controllers for going on strike for better wages and working conditions (after which, we had a few more accidents than before), and told lies as anecdotes that the press rarely bothered to fact-check. His administration subverted the constitution, sold arms to terrorists, propped up aging dictators against popular uprisings, and even helped train folks who went on to run Death Squads. I hadn't heard of Death Squads before the Reagan presidency.

Then we elected his lieutenant. A former head of CIA, a Texas oilman who didn't live in Texas, whose father was a supporter of Nazi Germany during WWII. He didn't do much except invade a country that had not threatened us, and push back Saddam into Iraq, while watching Saddam murder all those that the President had told to rise up against Saddam, effectively gutting any Iraqi resistance movement there was ever a hope of having. Bush.01 watched as the Soviet Union imploded, now generally believed to have been inevitable.

Then there was Bubba. The Dot-Com boom was caused as much by the people who believed in it unquestioningly as it was by the flim-flam artists who thought they could make money out of nothing. While the Dot-Com thing was happening, America was prospering, and we kept thanking Bill Clinton for that prosperity, as well as Alan Greenspan, the "master." No matter that the only thing Bill and Alan did for the economy was to deregulate it to the point where normal market corrections would never happen until someone started yelling about the emperor wearing no clothes. And then we would find that none of us had, or could afford, clothes.

During that prosperity, Americans became more complacent than ever, allowing our politicians to do what they would, and accepting journalism's slide into a contest between who could shout the loudest versus, well, who could shout the loudest back. Then Phil Gramm and friends decided to end the protections in the banking system, and better yet, deregulate things like derivatives and swaps to the point where they are now a market valued (until recently) at around 500 trillion dollars. Really. That's the insane number that's been bandied about.

During the immediately previous administration (also known as White House Occupant Shrub, or Bush.02), since the regulations had been axed, why not oversight as well?

And of course, it's 500 trillion dollars of exchanges between banks and bankers. Perhaps the money is only around a trillion, or even a few hundred billion. But it all changes hands every few seconds, thus driving the virtual value up and up and up, until it sounds simply impossible.

Meanwhile, prosperity, prosperity, prosperity. If I can afford a widescreen TV to hang directly over my bed, I'm just fine, and so is our country, and so is our economy.

Ummmm.....  nope.

We learned in the last decade that folks who run companies can tout their own stock price, and even hire actors to play traders that are making fake deals with fake oil, or (if you're one of the lucky ones) they can run your state's economy into the ground by holding back energy and raising the price on what they do release to you. This gives you an empty pension, a recall election and a Governator. 

We learned that if you want to, you can drive the price of oil through the roof for the fun of it, because you really, really want to get into the Guinness Book of World Records.

We learned that if the guy running the country is someone you'd like to have a beer with, that doesn't mean he's qualified to run the country. For example, I like to have a beer with my cats.

What we didn't learn was that if we don't keep a careful eye on our stewards of the economy and the general welfare of our country, everything goes to hell. Well... now we know.

The question is, what will we do with our newly rediscovered power?

Buddy, Can You Spare a Mil?

Obama and his economic team at the White House have finally done something a progressive can wet his/her pants about: they want to put a compensation cap of $500,000 on anyone working for any firm that receives any more TARP funds, including CEOs. To which I say, about effing time. In years past, there used to be a limit on how much a corporation could write off on salaries, but I believe that must have gone away, because what would be the point of paying people huge salaries if you couldn't write it off your corporate income tax?

And the response by the various Repugnican talking heads and of course, business-folks who think about these things all the time, has been pretty predictable: "How do we retain top talent if we can't pay them s&%tloads of money?"

Seriously. They keep calling these loan-sharking imbeciles "top talent."

WAKE UP!!! Haven't you people been watching what's been happening? These fine examples of top talent have been working specifically to make themselves a great deal of money by exchanging feathers & sand, and calling it gold. All the while, regulators have been watching this and seeing the money going to the major shareholders and repeating to themselves endlessly that it's "gold not feathers, gold not feathers, gold not feathers."

Somehow, by exchanging debt instruments, these geniuses have created a lot of real money for themselves while their investors (people like you and I) not only didn't get anything in return, it's like we just put all of our money on black and lost.

What I don't understand is why the Mafia didn't come up with this scheme a whole lot earlier.  In the book Wiseguy, Henry Hill describes stealing bonds and selling them for ten cents on the dollar to Wall Street bankers who would then use them to collateralize loans from foreign banks (and you only needed about ten percent of the value of the loan in collateral). Sounds so familiar...

What's missing in all of this is that it's the US economy. The whole damn economy. If these "wise stewards" are all we can hope for, I tend to agree with Chris Hedges latest article: It's Not Going to be OK.

If we don't put some kind of restrictions on these people, they will continue to do the wrong thing. Personally, I only expect to pay people for doing the wrong thing when I sign my check over to the IRS every year.

Oh... right...

Bi-Partisan or Bi-Polar?

The Republican members of Congress have a message from President Obama: in the spirit of bipartisanship and cooperation,

F^&K YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE IN ON!!!

Other than that, can we buy you a drink?

So, Obama gave out more tax cuts than he really wanted to, in order to get the Repugnicans to join with their brothers and sisters in the House and vote for the new stimulus bill. Repugnicans, behaving in a way we (living in the real world) have come to expect, basically told him to go stuff himself, because they weren't going to blow all that money on government pork.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh, you're serious?

We can stuff money up the backside of countless large banking firms so they can purchase other banks and pay their executives ludicrously large bonuses (for putting their clients' money to sleep forever) and we can't find out even who got how much, and they're complaining about a little money for infrastructure spending?

Obama also pulled out a provision for $200 million for family planning for poor people (because, you know, that just means abortions abortions abortions in Repugnican code-slang), even though the CBO says it will save at least that much in Medicaid payments over the next couple of years.

So, President Obama, you keep compromising, and the Repugnicans will keep laughing in your face. They did it to Bill Clinton, and they'll do it to you.

I'm experimenting with a new segment (which may morph into it's own blog) called FreepWatch, wherein I shall seek out the most bizarro headlines on the Free Republic website and comment. Remember, Freepers are the ones that Repugs tend to listen to, no matter how foolish.

FreepWatch - January 29th 2009

Obama - President Forever?

The headline reads: Constitutional Amendment to Make Obama Eligible to be President Forever. If it's accurate, Jose Serrano (D, NY) has proposed repealing the two term limit for the Presidency. However, it could have meant that we could get Bush forever, or Reagan forever, or (insert name here) forever. Obama can veto the bill (and I suspect he would). One of the sort of things that the right likes to flip out over, yet something very small.

As several folks mentioned in the comments spew, this has been proposed almost every year since 1992. No one's biting. Also, I believe we can always vote someone out of office in between terms. Roosevelt was voted into office three times - he didn't sit in the White House after the end of his first or second terms saying, "sorry, not budging."

Global Warming A Hoax

Headline: Groundhog Gore Explains it all for You: The End is Near

It's cold in DC, so global warming is a hoax. Never mind that if the North Polar Ice Cap melts, the resulting loss of ocean currents will invariably create colder temperatures in Europe (a "mini Ice Age" has been predicted), and bizarre local weather patterns will happen. Global warming does not mean that suddenly New York City will become a desert. It does mean that low-lying areas will flood, that deserts may become more inhospitable, and that trees will no longer attain their full height, thus accelerating the progress of global warming.

And there are very few scientists that do not accept the theory of global warming, many of them funded by oil and coal companies. 

Why I Am No Longer A Journalism Student

Just read a piece in Common Dreams that has helped me to understand my decision (for the moment) to give up on my degree in journalism.

And no, it's not because I can't type that well.

As the Obama administration begins its "well-choreographed" first weeks, using the political capital they have right now to do what they can do, more and more news outlets (including the old standby, NPR) still let people say stuff that is outright stupid, misinformed, or wrong, and the only counter the other side might have is simply the opposite viewpoint.

And then, there are the facts. Which might prove both sides of the argument wrong, but at least there can be facts, can't there? Noooo. Just each person's view of the facts. That's called "balance." Because news shouldn't be confrontational, should it? Challenging the person in front of you to recite the facts of the case, rather than the truth? Or do we have to wait for the courts to decide that news is supposed to be in the public interest?

As John Adams once said, "Facts are stubborn things." And he was right. Facts are the things that are, that can be proved, than can be seen. Truth is simply one's relationship to the facts. I watched a compilation from the Daily Show of all of the talking head news about the Obamas and all the different reasons given by the right-wing media about why Obama was the wrong choice. Fist bumps, affiliations with terrorists, the Muslim thing, "halfrican," etc., etc., etc. And it was funny, while being equally infuriating and sad. How can these people still be receiving a paycheck? How stupid do they think we are?

Oh, yeah - they think we're really stupid. And we must be, because we still let these airheads sell us news and push the dictation of public policy that's nearly suicidal in it's insanity. As Ronald Reagan said (quoting Adams): "Facts are stupid things."

As the article in Common Dreams asked, "And why do the Jews deserve to die, Mr. Hitler?"

Not a DIME's worth of difference

While not wanting to sound too alarmist, it would appear that Israel is again, rapidly losing ground in the "How Moral We Are" sweepstakes that it has been the cheerleader for, and sole recipient of, since the Holocaust. In this case, I speak of things known as Willy Pete (or good old white phosphorus), and DIMEs (Dense Inert Metal Explosives).

White Phosphorus - the gift that keeps on giving until you no longer have a face

This stuff burns on contact with any oxygen source, and keeps burning until there's no phosphorus left. This causes third degree burns down to the bone. White phosphorus munitions are "acceptable" in a theatre of war when they're used as a smokescreen device. Detonated in air, they produce masses of white smoke, spreading with characteristic octopus-like tentacles. At the end of each tentacle is a burning piece of phosphorus, and if they don't burn completely away by the time they hit the ground, anyone standing in the way is subjected to horrible, painful burns, that are permanently disfiguring (unless you happen to know the cast of Nip/Tuck personally). As a simple incendiary munition, WP is illegal and considered a war crime. As a smokescreen device it's OK. Unless it's a lot of smoke, then it's considered a poison gas weapon, and a war crime.

How do you know exactly which one you're going to get when you fire one of these off?

DIMEs - or - multiple organ failure and only a pinhole to show for it

Dense Inert Metal Explosives are made with tungsten powder (a known carcinogen). They explode about knee level, and can cause cauterized, below-the-hip amputations that look almost surgical. Or, the injured can look outwardly fine, with only a small hole in, say, their abdomen, but with mutilated organs that appear to have been peppered with some sort of fine black powder. Organs can continue to rupture and self-destruct after all the shrapnel has been removed, as if something is still in the victim, relentlessly exploding. X-rays reveal nothing, and the patient dies.

Meet the victims of the Israeli incursion into Gaza. Children with melted faces, missing limbs, permanently malfunctioning internal organs. A generation of handicapped people, whose lives will be painful until they die. Where the doctors wish they could just kill the victims, rather than watch them suffer.

Hamas should stop firing rockets, yes. But Israel no longer can say they are the "moral" ones. Using these kinds of indiscriminate, mutilating weapons cuts the high ground right out from under the Israeli government. And hearing the stories of Israelis watching the war from a hill overlooking Gaza, cheering on a "good strike" makes me ill. This is no football match. This is hundreds of children and old people dying so the Israelis can get at a few militants spread through the population of over a million.

Again, I ask, STOP.

Still

holding my breath...