Limbaugh Bashing: New Olympic Sport?

Melanie Slaugh sent this to me thinking folk might enjoy it. I did and will share it.

10 Blogs that LOVE to Bash Rush Limbaugh

On April 11, 2012, in in my area, by admin

When it comes to left-wing, liberal, blue state, Occupy-Whatever political discourse, there are few targets quite as satisfying as right-wing, conservative, red state,War-on-Whatever radio commentator Rush Limbaugh. His no-holds-barred anti-liberal vitriol just hits the spot, and there’s no shortage of places on the web where he’s routinely lambasted accordingly. The following is a list of ten blogs that love to bash Rush Limbaugh:

1. Huffington Post – A news aggregator founded by Arianna Huffington, with a liberal slant to its content. The Huffington Post makes frequent use of its pages to tell Rush what for. Rush hasn’t exactly been making it difficult for them lately.
2. Wonkette – This blog is part of an online magazine created by Ana Marie Cox, and dishes a left-leaning smorgasbord of political gossip and snark. The Rush menu is extensive, and tasty.
3. Daily Kos – A self-described “news organization, community, and activist hub’, Daily Kos is the brainchild of Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, who serves as publisher and writer. As a liberal, progressive platform, Daily Kos has its share of pieces concerning Rush Limbaugh.
4. Crooks and Liars – You don’t have to dig too far to dredge up some dirt on old Rush here at C&L.  Visitors can search categories such as Blue America, Occupy America, Newstalgia, and Video Cafe. Don’t miss William Shatner’s rendition of It Was a Very Good Year at Late Night Music Club.
5. ThinkProgress – A non-partisan project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ThinkProgress is intended to provide “a forum that advances progressive ideas and policies.” Find TP’s blogs about Limbaugh here.
6. Oliver Willis – Boston-based blogger Willis is a Democratic voice of considerable import. On his blog you will find a wide array of social and political fodder, not the least of which is the subject of our popular conservative lightning rod, Rush.
7. Firedoglake.com- A progressive blog and news site with a very vocal online community. You can get some interesting discourse on all manner of political issues. Here is a sampling from the archives re: Rush Limbaugh.
8. Democratic Underground – In their mission statement, Democratic Underground describes itself thusly: ”… an online community where politically liberal people can do their part to effect political and social change”. Check out some DU digs at Rush Limbaugh.
9. Political Animal (Washington Monthly) – Washington Monthly is actually a bimonthly (as of 2008), non-profit political magazine which was formed by Charles Peters way back in 1969. It takes a non-partisan approach, though it can be regarded as left of center in its ideology. As such,Limbaugh gets his share of ink.
10. Classic Liberal – Political leanings are a bit complicated – and verbose- so glean what you can from here. That being said, there’s a potpourri of political pot shots to peek at here, including our man Rush Limbaugh of course.

All ten of these sites love to bash Rush Limbaugh, and he frequently gives them plenty of ammunition to do it with. You can’t help but wonder who else they will bash when Rush retires from the political scene…

Truth Masquerades

Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich have both said recently that gas prices under the Obama administration have doubled. Okay, when Obama took office the average cost for a gallon of gas was $1.83 and today the average gallon of gas in the country is $3.92. $1.83 x’s 2 = $3.66. So it’s true, what a bad thing Obama has done. Technically Mitt and Newt are correct but it’s more of a lie that the truth.

Oh, if you look at the highs, the Obama has dropped gas prices by 79 cents. All of this is whacko. These things happened under each administration but to lay everything at either president’s administration is naïve and in this case, misleading to the nth degree.

This may be the nature of politics but it is like taking a close up of a person’s ear and defining them by that tiny bit of information. You have to look at things in context; you need to have some sense of history even a short history will show these misinformation pieces.

The conservatives just love to talk about how bad Obama has been for the economy and they are pretty effective in convincing people that is true; the majority believe Mitt will be better for economic recovery. To me that is just like the misleading gas bit.

For 35 years the country has mostly followed supply side economics (trickle down); if the rich get all these tax breaks and the like everyone will benefit. And they are still trying to sell this same old story. The problem is that it has never worked. All it did was redistribute the wealth from the middle class to the upper 1%. You don’t have to be an econ major to figure it out; you just have to look at a rather short piece of history.

You cannot wreck an economy with bad economic policies for 35 years and expect anyone to repair it in 4 years.

Now I’m getting up in years and my memory is not what it used to be. But I do remember and examine the last 35 years (and a lot more) and see conservative ideological baloney as baloney. Do all Republicans have collective Alzheimer’s or is it just plain lying or is it stupidity or worse?

It is like the Obamacare mudslinging. As PK mentioned in one of his comments, Obama’s program was proposed by Republican administrations, Nixon et. al. So, the Republican got what they wanted but now uses it as a way of throwing stones at the current administration. Read your history. Newt has a PhD in history, he got paid a lot of money for being one as a non-lobbyist, so what is his excuse?

BB-Idaho also makes an excellent point about the news and whether anybody even watches it anymore. They keep reporting these memory deficient pieces. Unfortunately I think that is where the majority do get most of their information and don’t know how to find more reliable sources that have perspective and factuality rather than selling a product they call news.

Henny Penny got it wrong, but Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Goosey Loosey, Turkey Lurkey, followed along happily with all the misinformation until Foxy Loxy and his family ate them. Well Henny Penny lucked out by being slow and lived to run away; I want to be historically accurate.

It’s time to grab all the Henny Pennys or Witty Mitteys running around and teach them some history and common sense. 

TV’s Eastern Standard Time – A National Bane

We spent the winter in Florida where one of our major daily tasks is watching TV, as we do here in the Midwest. But east coast TV is absolutely, without a doubt, stupid and a major cause of what’s wrong with the nation. Evening programming is an hour later on the east coast versus the more enlightened Midwest. I don’t know what they do on the West coast, maybe they don’t either. So, primetime evening programming runs from 6 to 10 here compared to the eastern 7 to 11 pm on the East coast. And why on earth does everyone mention program times as something eastern and the something central; bigotry I say in one its most heinous forms.

One of the big deals in health today is that folk don’t get enough sleep. Why? It’s the stupid programming on the east coast. This likely leads to obesity as folk eat while watching TV and the later you eat the more fat builds up. It’s evil! It’s decadent! Rise up people and get smart. Demand TV earlier and solve society’s problems.

On the home front that means Doreen and I fall asleep during most of evening TV while on the east coast rather than just the last hour as we do here. And many of our favorite programs are merrily playing while we snore away. This is obviously a serious national problem that needs to be addressed post haste.

Forget the campaigns, this is an issue we must all get behind and right a grievous wrong. Rise up America demand earlier programming and protect you health, sanity, and the American way.

Now to be fair the Midwest has its problems. In our area we have local news 5 pm then national news at 5:30 pm then local news again at 6 pm. What bonehead thought that up? Plus local news often is not local at all they just repeat what was said on the national news. The result, we only get Wheel of Fortune and loose Jeopardy. It causes brain rot. I already feel a little dumber post Jeopardy which is likely witnessed by this article.

Campaign Costs

Every day I get a bunch of emails asking me for money so we true blue liberals can defeat the various evil conservatives. And, I will likely give some, but I sign a lot more petitions. I also sure that you of the conservative persuasion receive the same email just in reverse. It’s rather like the ad I am currently seeing on TV where it is the same ad, they just change the name of the one they are condemning following by fake internet searches.

There is no doubt the cost of political campaigns have reached ridiculous proportions as seen in the church below.

I’m going to be redundant here but money spent on elections does not help the political process; the only ones who benefit are the advertisers.

I still believe that campaigns should just be a mandatory $2 or $3 of your income tax, divvied up among the candidates. They can then spend that money as they see fit for two to three months before the actual election. And the media could just publish the position statements in their respective media without undue commentary so the voters have facts upon which they would base their vote. I also believe that libel and slander laws ought to apply to candidates so they can no longer lie about each other freely.

Of course I realize that this has about a snowballs chance in Hades of ever happening, candidates as ad folk won’t let it. But it would certainly be good fodder for a grass roots movement. Our present system, in my opinion, makes it next to impossible for politicians to maintain integrity if they want to have any chance of winning.

Again, look for models in Europe which seem to do a much better job of controlling what happens in their political campaigns.

Subsidizing the Most Profitable Industry on Earth

I stole the title for this piece from Bill McKibben on Bill Moyers web site.

Now Rick Santorum has provided us with wonderful environmental insights:

“There is no such thing as global warming,” he told Glenn Beck on Fox News in June 2011.

“It’s just an excuse for more government control of your life and I’ve never been for any scheme or even accepted the junk science behind the whole narrative,” he told Rush Limbaugh

[Climate change is] an absolute travesty of scientific research that was motivated by those who, in my opinion, saw this as an opportunity to create a panic and a crisis for government to be able to step in and even more greatly control your life. … I for one never bought the hoax. I for one understand just from science that there are one hundred factors that influence the climate. To suggest that one minor factor of which man’s contribution is a minor factor in the minor factor is the determining ingredient in the sauce that affects the entire global warming and cooling is just absurd on its face. And yet we have politicians running to the ramparts — unfortunately politicians who happen to be running for the Republican nomination for president — who bought into man-made global warming and bought into cap-and-trade.

[T]he left is always looking for a way to control you. They’re always trying to make you feel guilty, so you’ll give them power so they can lord it over you. They do it on the environment all the time. …

Environmentalism is also, apparently, a religion — and not the good kind. Opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is just “pandering to radical environmentalists who don’t want energy production, who don’t want us to burn more carbon,” he told Iowans in December. “It has to do with an ideology, a religion of its own that’s being pushed on the American public.”

“All subsidies to energy should be eliminated,” Santorum said on Feb. 6, which might sound good to libertarians as well as some clean-energy advocates who’d like to see a level playing field without huge advantages for fossil fuels.

Now the last one is interesting. Last week Senator Robert Menendex proposed the “Repeal Big Oil tax Subsidies Act,” which would include billions of dollars enjoyed by the top oil companies. It failed. President Obama is also calling for an end to oil subsidies in his early campaign, but he is also drilling everywhere. Bernie Sanders will introduce a more comprehensive bill that tackles all fossil fuels; it has not chance either.

So what is at stake here? The energy industry is getting between $10 and $40 billion annually while they are making historic profits. You’d think the Occupy movement and the Tea Party would get on this.

The problem is we don’t like taking about subsidies, we tend to nod off during these discussions. Subsidies are used to encourage something, that is the idea of them, yet why do we want to continue fossil fuel subsidies rather than renewable sources? One reason is that it gives the 1% money from the 99%, or business as usual.

Bill McKibben gives 5 reasons on subsidies I find interesting:

1. Don’t subsidize those who already have plenty of cash on hand. No one would propose a government program of low-interest loans to send the richest kids in the country to college. (It’s true that schools may let them in more easily on the theory that their dads will build gymnasiums, but that’s a different story.) We assume that the wealthy will pay full freight.  Similarly, we should assume that the fossil-fuel business, the most profitable industry on Earth, should pay its way, too. What possible reason is there for giving Exxon the odd billion in extra breaks? Year after year the company sets record for money-making — last year it managed to rake in a mere $41 billion in profit, just failing to break its own 2008 all-time mark of $45 billion.

2. Don’t subsidize people forever. If students need government loans to help them get bachelor’s degrees, that’s sound policy. But if they want loans to get their 11th BA, they should pay themselves. We learned how to burn coal 300 years ago.  A subsidized fossil-fuel industry is the equivalent of a 19-year-old repeating third grade yet again.

3. Sometimes you’ll subsidize something for a sensible reason and it won’t work out. The government gave some of our money to a solar power company called Solyndra.  Though it was small potatoes compared to what we hand over to the fossil-fuel industry, it still stung when they lost it. But since we’re in the process of figuring out how to perfect solar power and drive down its cost, it makes sense to subsidize it.  Think of it as the equivalent of giving a high-school senior a scholarship to go to college. Most of the time that works out. But since I live in a college town, I can tell you that 20% of kids spend four years drinking: they’re human Solyndras. It’s not exactly a satisfying thing to see happen, but we don’t shut down the college as a result.

4. Don’t subsidize something you want less of. At this point, the greatest human challenge is to get off of fossil fuels. If we don’t do it soon, the climatologists tell us, our prospects as a civilization are grim indeed.  So lending a significant helping hand to companies intent on driving us towards disaster is perverse. It’s like giving a fellowship to a graduate student who wants to pursue a thesis on “Strategies for Stimulating Donut Consumption Among Diabetics.”

5. Don’t give subsidies to people who have given you cash. Most of the men and women who vote in Congress each year to continue subsidies have taken campaign donations from big energy companies. In essence, they’ve been given small gifts by outfits to whom they then return large presents, using our money, not theirs. It’s a good strategy, if you’re an energy company — or maybe even a congressional representative eager to fund a reelection campaign.  Oil Change International estimates that fossil-fuel companies get $59 back for every dollar they spend on donations and lobbying, a return on investment that makes Bernie Madoff look shabby. It’s no different from sending a college financial aid officer a hundred-dollar bill in the expectation that he’ll give your daughter a scholarship worth tens of thousands of dollars. Bribery is what it is.  And there’s no chance it will yield the best energy policy or the best student body.

But here is my take on the issue. We will continue our absurd subsidies for fossil fuel industries until other countries start causing more problems than we do. In other words, before too long China will begin to make us look like pikers when it comes to a huge carbon footprint. That will do it, then we can point fingers at those evil folk for messing everything up and we can condemn them. The problem for us is that they know this and are investing heavily, subsidizing, alternative fossil fuel industries that will leave us behind.

Meanwhile we bicker and borrow and import.

Slogans and Reflections

I have collected some of the occupy movement slogans you find below for you viewing pleasure. The meatier part follows.

Banks Rob America (ed. not unlike man bites dog)

When the People Lead the leaders will follow

They got bailouts we got sold out

Apply the golden rule not the rule of gold

Stop the Austerity

Burn down the house but keep the foundation

Make jobs not war – 99% are poor

Jobs are not bailouts

Come senators congressmen please head the call 

I won’t believe corporations are people until Texas executes one.

Why are we bailing them out when none of them are behind bars?

Lost my job, but found an occupation.

The Occupation Movement as we know began September 17 2011 when folk occupied New York City’s Zuccotti Park. Now the movement has gone to 95 cities and 82 countries and likely a lot more. Their basic slogan is “We Are the 99%” referring to the collection of wealth by the 1% of the country. They are people articulating in various ways that while the country has grown economically, that wealth has not been distributed in any way shape or form equally with the ultra rich getting very rich and the middle class losing ground and the poor in deep doodoo.

It took the media a fairly long time to acknowledge this rather massive movement and it still doesn’t garner a lot of coverage. Like the Tea Party which got a lot of coverage at the least in the beginning, it reflects that and great number of people in this country are unhappy about the direction the country has taken over the last three decades. The conservatives seem to want to go back to yesteryear which doesn’t seem terrible realistic as the world has changed just too much to do so. The liberals or more aptly the progressive want basic changes in the governmental structure that favors the middle class as it once did and compassion for the lower classes.

In my eye the conservatives are not longer conservative in the classic sense but have become in part what they condemned, the spend party while keeping the no tax position. A position that is plain untenable and has resulted in incredible debt both at the national and individual levels. I applaud those trying to get the party back to its traditional values; they are needed.

The liberals in my eye, have just abdicated being liberal and moved to the right, for example they are now the party wanting to put the breaks on spending.

I wish conservatives would go back to be conservative in the manner they were before the Reagan election and liberals would go back to being liberals of the same era. Now, everything is just a confused mess.

To the root of this prevailing “evil” is, as the scripture says, “the love of money,” or just plain greed. Unregulated corporations create and imbalance in the marketplace that favors the rich and powerful over smaller of often more efficient business without stock owners to pay. Unregulated unions promote ruffian grabbers of the economic pie that can hurt the very business they want to be paid by. And folk you want to go back to the olden days, will just shoot each other.

The byplay of liberals and conservatives in the pre-Reagan days kept each other in relative check. Now we just have gridlock.

But what I believe we have lost the most is the concept on the national good. European countries, while they are struggling with the same issues we are, seem to have maintained that concept. They have paid more attention to infrastructures and those things that allow the nation to grow and be more globally competitive. And then there is the near and far East which are providing some new economic models for the world.

We bicker and complain and fight for bigger pies of the pie; one side which has obviously won) will others have been more creative and taken the longer view.

Has the American dream moved abroad? If so, we need to repatriate it.

Just to be fair here are some Tea Party Signs:

Don’t let the Kick-tater make you a poor-tater.

Obama get your hand out of my pocket! I can stimulate myself.

Obamanomics: rigging the game to make it “fair.”

Momma Grizzles stand up.

Government should be small like me.

Bend over tax payers$ Obama want to be your proctologist.

Refudiate Obama.

Obama is the terrorist from within.

You want the government to control doctors’ decisions? Are you insane, stupid or just plan evil?

Aporkalypse.

NBC you suck! I don’t believe in Liberal media!

Hydrogen Barackside: kills capitalism on contact, kills jobs on contact, stimulates Marxist tendenceies, no oversight needed, enforced by unions…

No more rinos & liberals.

Socialized medicine is to die for.

Obama is a robbin’ hood.

Mr. President stop insulting dogs!

Clinging to my guns and bible!!!

Church Corporations

I find it amusing and confusing how folk view to government. Some seem to see it as the devil incarnate out to make lives of citizens miserable. Some see it as the tool that has been taken over by corporate interests to do their bidding. Some see the government as representative democracy (not a pure democracy), we get what we elect; with a variation the public is manipulated by wealth and power special interests.

And now we have the discussion as to whether corporations are people and thus entitled to freedom of speech rights.

I have lived my professional life in an institution called the church and each church is a corporation (a great many churches may not have up to date files of incorporation and are in violation of the law, but it is required.). In a previous article I stated I felt it was my obligation as a pastor to encourage people to vote their convictions, and I hoped that their convictions reflected the religious beliefs, but that I had no right to interpret or tell them specifically how or whom to vote for. I also believe that is true for the church corporations as well. And those who do take that stance have often found themselves in trouble with the government and for good reason.

The point is that churches as corporations cannot speak with a single voice. For example the Roman Catholic Church has a pope which may claim to speak for the church but he doesn’t; for example 98% of American Roman Catholics are for using birth control which the Pope is against (and immoral position in my opinion on the pope’s part.) The Roman Catholic Church like all other churches has as many opinions as they have members. It is representative of hierarchical churches. I’m a Presbyterian which is a representative democracy, the model the country was based upon. The national body of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. may make statements of behalf of that body but they only speak for that body. The most powerful of the governing bodied of Presbyterians is a Presbytery (states rights; our bishop) but they also speak for themselves not for each Presbyterian. And then there are the congressional forms of government churches such as the UCC, Baptists, and Lutherans which the highest power is the local congregation. Even they do not speak with a single voice even though they may come to consensus of various topics.

These corporations never are capable of speaking with a single voice. Neither can business corporations. It is an absurd concept. Now management may find consensus and decide to spend money on particular candidates at this point without disclosure. But to say they speak for all members of the corporations is false. It is as false as unions working in some of those corporations may speak for all their members. Groups may encourage political views but they cannot speak with a single voice and that single voice does not exist.

The Tea Party certainly does not possess a united voice, or even the political parties.

Election laws should protect these individual voices and not allow them to be coerced by groups in those organizations to say otherwise.

While I don’t believe churches should take political stands for specific parties and politicians, they do have the right to speak to Christian principles as applied to government laws and practices. The same is true for other corporations. But disclosure of giving should be consistent and open.

Secret organizations as the Kock brothers attempted to be should be called to task and be open.

Right now it seems as though corporations what to have it both ways, corporate anonymity and forcing the members toward specific support.

Well, enough perhaps I’ve confused you as much as I have myself at this point.