Daily Dope: Rush Limbaugh

So The Donald is a birther. You've heard The Comb-Over's spiel. Now along trots Rush Limbaugh, and that echo echo echo you hear? It's the sound of today's Daily Dope:

"You and I have known all along that we're dealing with a man-child here who has, literally, no qualifications, no experience, and according to Donald Trump now, no birth certificate," Limbaugh said. "Trump is performing a valuable service here. He is attempting to help Obama out of a jam. You can't say Trump is a kook right-wing birther. Trump realized the problem that Obama faces here with credibility. He's giving him a chance here to establish some credibility by producing the birth certificate.

The media was "covering it up" and "papering it over," he said. "Trump's not the kind of guy to comb over difficulties. If he's going to bring this up...you know that it's serious."

Tweet

Dick

From beyond the grave, the racist rants of Richard Nixon continue to seep out in newly-released tapes made 16 months before he resigned in disgrace.

From the New York Times:

“The Jews have certain traits,” he said. “The Irish have certain — for example, the Irish can’t drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.”

Nixon continued: “The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but,” and his voice trailed off.

A moment later, Nixon returned to Jews: “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.”

At another point, in a long and wandering conversation with Rose Mary Woods, his personal secretary, that veered from whom to invite to a state dinner to whether Ms. Woods should get her hair done, Nixon offered sharp skepticism at the views of William P. Rogers, his secretary of state, about the future of black Africans.

“Bill Rogers has got — to his credit it’s a decent feeling — but somewhat sort of a blind spot on the black thing because he’s been in New York,” Nixon said. “He says well, ‘They are coming along, and that after all they are going to strengthen our country in the end because they are strong physically and some of them are smart.’ So forth and so on.

“My own view is I think he’s right if you’re talking in terms of 500 years,” he said. “I think it’s wrong if you’re talking in terms of 50 years. What has to happen is they have be, frankly, inbred. And, you just, that’s the only thing that’s going to do it, Rose.”

Now, of course, they'd give him a radio show:

Tweet

Daily Dope: Rush Limbaugh (Again)

The de facto leader of the Republican Party proves yet again that a racist, ignorant, fat fuck with a microphone is still nothing but a racist, ignorant, fat fuck with a microphone.

What's The Rush? We're Listening To NPR.

From Mother Jones, a f#ck you to Rush Limbaugh and his roving band of shrieking, opportunistic mimics:

A common question on the left is, "Why is there no liberal talk radio?" That is, no wildly popular liberal version of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Laura Schlesinger. And the answer is: there is. It's called NPR. When lefties listen to the radio, that's what they listen to.

In one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged not as the bespectacled schoolmarm of our imagination but as a massive news machine poised for what Dick Meyer, editorial director for digital media, half-jokingly calls "world domination." NPR's listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff. Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly — far more than USA Today's 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News' 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations — "boots on the ground in every town" that no newspaper or TV network can claim.

Read more here.

Daily Dope: Rush Limbaugh--"Storefront," Factory," And "Worker" Are "Marxist-Leninist Terms."

'Daily Dope' Rush Limbaugh: "If You Don't Have Any Teeth, So What? What's Applesauce For?"

Conference Call.

Have you ever wondered how the cretinous drones in the right-wing echo chamber manage to sing from the same daily hymnal?

Here's a primer:

From the Washington Post:

In November, the morning after Election Day, a conservative blogger in Georgia blasted an e-mail to 65,000 people.

Erick Erickson's 5 a.m. "Morning Briefing" seemed counterintuitive -- the election of a Democrat to a U.S. House seat in Upstate New York held by

Republicans for more than a century, he wrote, was "a huge win for conservatives."

Yet the missive immediately was posted online by the conservative publication Human Events, a corporate sibling of Erickson's blog, RedState. It next reached the Web site of the American Spectator magazine, whose publisher, Alfred S. Regnery, sits on the board of the conservative publishing house that owns RedState and Human Events.

Ricocheting inside the Beltway, Erickson's analysis fueled discussion later that morning at two influential weekly meetings of D.C. conservatives. Next, it was endorsed by radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, considered by many conservatives the ultimate authority. "We kept a horrible Republican from possibly winning," Limbaugh said.

The ability of a single e-mail to shape a message illustrates the power of the conservative network -- loosely affiliated blogs, radio hosts, "tea-party" organizers and D.C. institutions that are binding together to fuel opposition to President Obama and, sometimes, to Republicans.

With the Democratic defeat in the recent special senatorial election in Massachusetts, engineered in part by tea-party activists working with several Beltway-based groups, the conservative movement is more energized than it has been in years.

It is also more unified. Disputes festered between economic and social conservatives during the Bush years, but they have eased amid what all sides decry as Obama's liberal agenda. "Nothing unites like a common enemy," said Colin Hanna, president of the conservative group Let Freedom Ring.

There's an echo in there.

More here.

Demagogues Slithering Amidst The Ruins Of Haiti.

Oops! Limbaugh Loves Him Some Socialized, Unionized Health Care!

Now that Rush Limbaugh is out of the hospital and not dead, we are no longer under a societal obligation to act as if we are extending our best wishes.

From Firedoglake:

I don’t think Rush Limbaugh realized at the time what a colossal blunder his “I don’t think there’s one thing wrong with the American health care system” comment would turn out to be. And it all comes down to the fact that he was vacationing in Hawaii, which really doesn’t have a health care system with the same features as the American health care system. For one, they have a strong employer mandate that has led to the lowest premium prices in the country:

Hawaii’s health care system is distinct from the rest of the country, in that they passed a version of health reform decades ago, in 1974. The Hawaii Pre-Paid Health Care Act includes a requirement for employers to provide health coverage to their workers. As you may know, a similar requirement on large employers is a key part of the reform now pending in Congress.

And the employer requirement seems, by and large, to have succeeded. It has increased coverage–just under 8 percent of the state’s population is uninsured, second only to Massachusetts–and access to care. At the same time, Hawaii still has some of the lowest health care costs in the nation, despite its high cost of living and without an apparent decrease in quality–as Limbaugh himself discovered.

In fact, Hawaii’s system goes FURTHER than the efforts in the House and Senate to mandate employer responsibility, without complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions that lead to things like the “free rider” problem in the Senate bill. This has not killed jobs on the island and has led to far lower costs.

Hawaii also forces its employers to choose one of a few standardized insurance packages, which feature low co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses.

Hawaii is effectively tied with North Dakota for having the lowest average employer provided insurance premiums and has the lowest employee contribution toward premiums in the country. This is a very impressive accomplishment for a variety of reasons. First, Hawaii basically has the highest cost of living in America. Almost everything except health care costs dramatically more in Hawaii, compared with the mainland. Second, because of the “Prepaid Health Care Act,” the average quality of the employer-provided insurance in Hawaii is substantially greater than the rest of the country. Finally, Hawaii is the state with the second lowest level of uninsured people. None of the other ten states with the lowest level of uninsured are also in the top ten for lowest average single coverage employer health insurance premiums. Based on all metrics (cost, cost growth rate, quality, coverage, life expectancy, etc.), Hawaii has probably the best health care system in the country.

The real world evidence from this country and others points to some clear solutions. Mandating only a few (or one) precisely defined, high-quality, low-cost-sharing benefits packages would help keep costs down. It reduces administrative overhead, helps prevent insurance companies from gaming the system, allows true apple-to-apple comparison shopping, and encourages people to seek early treatment (the more cost-effective kind). Providing everyone with actual high-quality, affordable health insurance is not just morally the right thing to do, but also makes strong financial sense.

Limbaugh stayed at Queen’s Medical Center, where nursing staff are represented by the Hawaii Nurses’ Association (read: a labor union). The nurses at Queen’s are protected by their contract, which adheres to the ANA’s safe-staffing principlesguaranteeing appropriate staffing levels for any patient care unit.

In fact, Hawaii has one of the greatest percentages of organized workers of any state and also had the highest percentage of organized RNs. All private-sector acute care hospital RNs are organized, with just two known exceptions. We’re guessing this might have something to do with why Limbaugh found the Hawaii hospital staff’s work so “confidence-inspiring.”

When Limbaugh was released from Queen’s Medical Center, he cheerily noted, “The treatment I received here was the best that the world has to offer.”

Whether he realized it or not, Limbaugh was praising the care he received from union nurses in one of the country’s most progressive health care systems. On behalf of the labor movement and health reform advocates everywhere, THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT, Rush!

Let me add my thanks, asshole. Your role as a loud-mouthed, ignorant media whore actually helped expose some truth this time.

Rich Demagogue Lauds Health Care System; Rich Demagogue Doesn't Golf With The Uninsured.

Shatner's "Raw Nerve": Limbaugh Compares Ability To Afford Health Care To "A House On The Beach."

You can live without the house, asshole.
(From Raw Nerve.)

Limbaugh's Ghoulish "Death Book" Lies.

I'm not a believer, but Rush Limbaugh invoking God and using Ted Kennedy's death to further the lie about "death books" seems pretty f*cking unholy--even to me.

(H/T: Media Matters.)

Old Radio Racists Never Die, They Just Get Rehired.

If you are a regular visitor to JackRabbit Café, you may be aware of the extraordinarily low opinion voiced here over the radio (and talk-TV) antics of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly--hell, the entire FOX News line-up--as well as those of their titular leader, the vile Rush Limbaugh. What you may not know is that their sickening schtick is really just a warmed-over version of Bob Grant.

Grant was fired by New York's WABC in 1996 as the result of an effective campaign to get his racist, xenophobic ass off the public airwaves.

As you've read on this blog, ColorofChange.org has had some success excising over 30 of Beck's advertisers, although there is little chance the right-wing FOX News will be showing him the door unless he shoots Roger Ailes in the face live, on-air at the top of the hour.

WABC is the current radio home of a plethora of drooling conservative talkers; Limbaugh, Hannity, Mark Levin, ex-Guardian Angel dipshit Curtis Sliwa and--beginning next month--the returning Grandpappy of Raving Bullshit, Bob Grant.

Almost 18 years ago to the day of Grant's unwelcome return to the airwaves, an already-deified Limbaugh roasted him at the Friar's Club in New York, with his usual blend of hatred, racism and factless stupidity.

I've included it here if you can stomach it. And, hey--I hope Grant gets thrown off the air again soon:

Limbaugh Loves Nazi Talk; Goes Homophobic On Barney Frank.

The Right Wing Is Trying To Scare Your Grandma.

Beware the snake-oil salesmen. Their products will make--and keep--you sick.

Some welcome perspective on the current role of the United States government in the health care of millions from Lincoln Mitchell, Assistant Professor in the Practice of International Politics at Columbia University, on HuffPo:

Old people, some poor people and veterans already have government supported health care through Medicare, Medicaid and various veterans benefits. These programs are, of course, far from perfect, but they are pretty good. While many seniors would like to see Medicare reformed, it is rare to see senior citizens, or organizations of senior citizens call for abolishing Medicare. Similarly, many veterans, some who served decades ago rely on veteran's hospitals for an important part of their health care. My father is a veteran who voices more than the occasional criticism of the US government, but I have never heard him say that he wishes veterans didn't get any health care or that the government should close the veterans hospitals.

Senior citizens and veterans are both well organized and powerful interest groups, representing tens of millions of Americans, but government involvement in the health care sector has hardly caused any pubic outrage among these two key constituent groups. On the contrary, both usually push very hard for the expansion of Medicare and veterans benefits. If the American people really wanted government out of the health care industry, or if the government was unable to play a useful and positive role in the delivery of health care, it is pretty likely that these groups would have made a lot of noise about this issue years ago, but they have not.

Medicaid recipients are not as well organized as either veterans or senior citizens, but recipients of Medicaid very rarely argue for weaker Medicaid programs or less involvement by the government in providing health care services. Again, the opposite is true. Recipients of Medicaid have often shown a preference for bigger programs with more government involvement.

Medicare, Medicaid and veterans' benefits have become an indispensible part of our health care system providing valuable services and benefits to people, many of whom would have very few health care options were it not for these government programs. This is something which should be kept in mind when scare tactics about government takeover of health care are used. These programs also demonstrate the inaccuracy, or perhaps nuttiness, of some of the more outlandish claims about Obama's proposed programs. For example, if the government were really going to ration health care or set up "death panels" as part of government health care programs, wouldn't the government have started by doing these things to the poor, the elderly or disabled veterans-precisely the people who rely on the government for health care today?

The right's "death panelists"--Sarah Palin, Chuck Grassley, John Kyl, Newt Gingrich and others--along with their megaphones at FOX News and talk radio continue to spread misinformation and blatant lies about health care reform. They have portrayed government involvement in health care--especially the public option--as a bogeyman. President Obama commented at a town hall meeting in late July, "I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said, 'I don't want government-run health care. I don't want socialized medicine. And don't touch my Medicare." Even a Republican--Representative Robert Inglis of South Carolina--told to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," said, "I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government...(b)ut he wasn't having any of it."

The concerted effort on the right to spread false information about health care reform will not end. Many Americans get their information--or misinformation--from conservative talk radio entertainers and the "talk TV" that is FOX News. To this slice of the electorate, dissemblers such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are seers, and brave truth-tellers battling an encroaching tyranny that, of course, they are slickly packaging for their gullible public. For the rest of us, some welcome perspective such as Dr. Mitchell's is a necessary respite from the liars and snake-oil salesmen trying to sell their bad medicine.

Incoherent Dittohead Rants At Pelosi Event In Denver.

Talk Radio: Sucking The Air Out Of The Room.

According to a 2007 Gallup poll, one in five Americans turns to talk radio as a daily news source. Considering that it's not even news, that's rather disconcerting.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and dozens of other loudmouths on talk radio stations nationwide continue to lie about health care. Limbaugh goes so far as to say there isn't a health care crisis at all:

Conservative columnist Cal Thomas lies about the liars on FOX News (which is just videotaped talk radio, anyway):

Joesph Goebbels himself couldn't have designed a propaganda network as deeply penetrating as conservative talk radio. As posted previously on JackRabbit Café, Limbaugh's success comes largely through his syndicator's policy of offering his show for free to hundreds of small and medium-sized radio stations across the country in exchange for ad time. It's called "vertical integration," which really means that as you scan the AM dial, there is no escaping the feverish screaming from the right.

Here is broadcast journalist Sue Wilson on AlterNet:

Drive across the seven states they represent: Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee, and Utah, turn on your car radio, and you'll know why public opinion has changed. According to Pew research, 22 percent of Americans get their news from talk radio. And conservative talkers have been lying to their listeners about what's in the health care bill.

Lies from Sean Hannity like, "If you don't have private insurance the year that this bill is passed, you can't get that later on from your employer." Lies from Rush Limbaugh that the bill would "outlaw individual private coverage." Lies provided in talking points from the Republican National Committee like "Democrats are proposing a government controlled health insurance system, which will control care, treatments, medicines and even what doctors a patient may see."

Tell a lie often enough, and people will believe it.

And there is nobody there to call them on their lies. Nobody there to set the record straight. Nobody to push back against the propaganda that corporate radio promotes in its own political self interest. In the Blue Dog Seven states, just three stations broadcast any kind of progressive talk. Three progressive radio stations in seven entire states. But Sean Hannity "freely" prevaricates on dozens of radio stations; Rush Limbaugh deceives people on 98 in those seven states alone. 98 publicly owned frequencies where public debate comes second to selling ads for Snapple.

Special assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy, Susan Crawford told Broadcasting and Cable magazine, "The administration understands the important role traditional terrestrial broadcasting continues to play."

Maybe they should be listening to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who says in Broadcast Blues, "If you're concerned about health care or you're concerned about the environment as your number one issue, fine, but a piece of advice from me, is you better make media reform your number two issue, because you won't get anywhere on number one without media reform."

I Don't Know If The Cambridge Police Department Is Racist, But I'm Sure Rush Limbaugh Is.

Race relations according to Big & Sweaty:

While Rush Limbaugh continues to babble in an outhouse, President Obama has invited Prof. Gates and Sgt. Crowley for a beer at the White House.

Oxy's Moron Is Stuck On "Fail."

It's His Tea Party And He'll Kill If He Wants To.

From blog.wired.com with a h/t to Christie Keith:

An Oklahoma City man who announced on Twitter that he would turn an April 15 tax protest into a bloodbath was hit with a federal charge of making interstate threats last week, in what appears to be first criminal prosecution to stem from posts on the microblogging site.

Daniel Knight Hayden, 52, was arrested by FBI agents who identified him as the Twitter user CitizenQuasar. In a series of tweets beginning April 11, CitizenQuasar vowed to start a "war" against the government on the steps of the Oklahoma City Capitol building, the site of that city's version of the national "Tea Party" protests promoted by the conservative-leaning Fox News.

"START THE KILLING NOW! I am willing to be the FIRST DEATH!," read a tweet at 8:01 PM that day. "After I am killed on the Capitol Steps, like a REAL man, the rest of you will REMEMBER ME!!!," he added five minutes later. Then: "Send the cops around. I will cut their heads off the heads and throw the[m] on the State Capitol steps."

Hayden's MySpace page is a breathtaking gallery of right wing memes about the "New World Order," gun control as Nazi fascism, and Barack Obama's covert use of television hypnosis, among many others.

Hmm. Didn't the right-wing echo chamber take offense to the recent Department of Homeland Security report warning of this type of threat, even though the report never uses the word "conservative"? 

Michelle Malkin: By contrast, 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.

Glenn Beck: Well, now we have the report from DHS on rightwing extremists. You will see in this report why I didn't run to get this on the air because this report is extremist. This report will show you the things to come. It is phenomenal that this is a government document. 

Sean Hannity: “I'm not Ron Paul's biggest fan but if you have a Ron Paul bumper sticker, you might be viewed as a radical by the government...(w)hat do you think of that interpretation, especially coming from a guy that started his political career in the home of an unrepentant terrorist who bombed our Pentagon and Capitol and sat in Rev. Wright's church for 20 years?”

Rush Limbaugh: I had a report, I got this at 2:30 yesterday afternoon.  I just didn't have a chance to work it in yesterday.  It's this Department of Homeland Security report, it's nine pages, I've got the PDF here, and, by the way, this speech of Obama's and the DHS report yesterday are timed for one reason and that's the tea parties tomorrow.  This speech, the primary purpose of this speech is to take any glow off the tea parties.  The media is going to report on this speech later this afternoon and tell you about how great the economy is doing, how on top of it Obama is, how it's going to be a little while before it rebounds but it's coming back, and in having used that as the setup, they'll then go to videotape of the tea parties where they'll try to mock what's going on with these people, just agitators with no real reason behind what they're doing.  So this speech is designed to totally blunt the tea parties, which are grassroots affairs that will happen all over America tomorrow.  The DHS report, this comes from the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.  Now, when you read this whole thing, and it doesn't take long to read it, it's only nine pages, you can go to various places and read summaries of it as well.  For example, there is no proof here, no proof offered, no evidence offered that anything they project is true. 

Is a pissed-off teabagger tweeting death threats proof enough for you, fat ass?