Megadittos, Rush!

Ann Coulter makes my stomach hurt.

Rush Limbaugh makes me froth at the mouth. It's the same sort of instinctive reaction that my dog has to cats. Once, my dog jumped through a glass window to get at a cat. Right through it. This resulted in multiple cuts, some of them quite deep, on his nose and muzzle. He didn't even notice. He kept on going at the cat.

That's my reaction to Rush Limbaugh. I hope never to see him in person, because that would result in serious trouble for me. (Not for Rush, I weigh 100 lbs in winter clothes.)

So bear with me as I attempt to dissect Rush Limbaugh *mmmmm* Limbaugh's words.

The Country is Still Conservative
November 12, 2008
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is James in Cincinnati. Nice to have you on the program, sir.
CALLER: Mega dittos, Rush. I can't imagine why people accept the appellation "dittohead" as a compliment. Think about what "ditto" means: "another of the same". Not at all different. I think Obama's great and Cliffy B. could possibly be god, but I don't want to be them. I'm me and I'm happy that way. It's really quite disturbing when you think about it.
RUSH: Yes.
CALLER: I got a very simple comment here. I think that there's a very simple solution to the conservative crisis end anti-intellectualism and kick the fundamentalist crazies out of the party? probably not. and the financial crisis in the country. this guy thinks it is simple - SIMPLE- to end the financial crisis in this country? Seriously? Yeah, it's so simple that you're the only one who thought of it. Yeah. It goes like this. Get out the electoral map, you flood the red states with conservatives, I thought the red states already were conservative. He wants to flood already conservative states with more conservatives? This is his plan? and you begin to actively promote the conservative way of life that half of Americans in this country want to live. What about the other half of the country? His plan is to make 1 in 2 people happy, and 1 in 2 people unhappy. This solves the financial crisis how? You know, family, free enterprise, freedom, and faith. As a liberal, I have to admit that I hate family, free enterprise, freedom and faith. Hate it. You bastards with your marriages and children, your jobs, your precious freedoms and god. How dare you! (As Jon Stewart pointed out, the tax rate currently is 36%, Obama wants to make it 39%. In what part of that 3% does this become socialism?) It would make the governors happy. Conservative governors, maybe. What about liberal governors? Basically, this guy's solution is to flip the happiness from liberals to conservatives. It would make the business leaders happy -- I'm way past making those fuckers happy. We give AIG bailouts, in the plural, and they throw fucking parties with the money. Fuck them.

RUSH: When you say flood these states, what do you mean, have people move there?
CALLER: Oh, sure, just like they do in California. The liberals flooded California and San Francisco and they create a little sort of liberal oasis. Damnit, who gave this guy a copy of the Liberal Agenda? Who? We can't just have that floating around, available to conservatives. Everybody get our your Agenda and read the first rule: There is no Liberal Agenda. Come on now, people!

Actually, the fact is that people of similar mindsets, whether they be political or religious or ethnic mindsets, tend to group together. "Birds of a feather flock together" is an astute observation. There was no liberal agenda to take over California, just as there was no conservative agenda to take over . . . say . . . the South.

There's no reason that conservatives can't do the same thing and, you know, make everybody well, half of everybody happy, business leaders, evangelicals and Catholics i've never noticed the love between evangelicals and catholics. generally, evangelicals consider catholics on par with muslims, if not satanists. besides, all this kumbaya stuff isn't very conservative. it's sort of socialist, all people of goodwill liberals and atheists are, by implication, not people of goodwill, happy.

Rush will now go off on a rant about how the country is really republican, republicans are the best people, obama shouldn't have won (HAHA HE DID)

RUSH: You know, it's interesting, I saw today the final county map, red state, blue state map by county, and if you just landed here from Mars, and you looked at that map, you would swear the Republicans won this thing in a landslide, if you didn't know where the population centers are. I guarantee you by county and by square mileage, we skunked 'em! By measurements that do not matter, we won! I wonder why Olympic athletes don't try this. "Yes, Michael Phelps was faster, which is the measurement of success in this sport, but I look far better in a speedo!" But then you look at the coasts, you look all up and down the Left Coast West Coast? my left, your left, what?, you look all up and down the East Coast, until you get past New Jersey and Maryland, DC, even Virginia, three counties in Virginia won it for Obama. Those three counties are microscopic on the map. Cows can't vote, Rush. But it's just amazing. The population centers feature big cities, of course, In general, that is what "population center" means. Unless you're in Kansas, and then the population center is the Miller's house, because they have 10 kids. and people who live in big cities are largely Democrat, and I don't know, for example, how many conservatives are going to want to move to a place like California. Wait for it. In 2 sentences Rush will claim that Republicans don't flock together like Democrats. Right after pointing out that Republicans wouldn't want to live in a liberal state like California. The cognitive dissonance on this guy probably explains the drug addiction. Look at the tax rate in California. How many conservatives who don't already live there, want to move to New York? I mean, you need a great job, a lot of money to live there. liberals don't need these things as well? NYC is expensive for everyone. Except the gays. That's part of their agenda. Sorry, there is no gay agenda.

Besides, conservatives don't Balkanize themselves. I will deal with this separately. From Wikipedia: Balkanization is a geopolitical term originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. You may wonder about my quibble with Rush's use of the word "Balkanize". It's in the definition, specifically the words hostile and noncooperative. The United States is one country. It's divided into 50 states and then into various counties, cities, towns, etc., but all of this is one thing. Texas is not hostile or noncooperative with California. Austin, TX and Dallas, TX are not hostile or noncooperative with each other.

What Rush is describing is the first steps to civil war (see: Kosovo), and he's attributing that to Democrats. That's offensive. And untrue.

They live their lives; they want to be happy and so forth. Liberals don't live lives or want to be happy. We're vampires or some fucking thing. Liberals are the ones that organize in little communes yes! and cliques and cities when did "city" become a liberal thing? why is my agenda not updated? am I still on the mailing list? and so forth and only want to hang around with each other and themselves. I actually can't hang out with myself. I can be alone, but I can't hang out with myself. We're not that way in many regards. In some parts of country that happens to be the case it's an illusion!, but this map is just stunning. Ow! My eyes! And I'll tell you something else that's stunning. If you look at the counties, what I call the Hispanic border states racist much?, you go up the border of Mexico with Texas, the only blue counties in Texas, other than one outside of Houston, are right on the border with Mexico, and then you go into New Mexico, same thing, go into Arizona, pretty close, same thing, you go to California, you can see the Hispanic vote. You can see where it's gone. It's all blue. Well, not all, but I mean it's just amazing. Not really. Hispanics aren't idiots. All the racist antiimmigrant rhetoric finally caught up with the Republicans. And the Republicans think they're going to crack that by going out and acting like Democrats and just promising a better list of goodies? It ain't going to happen out there. It's not the way to do it. Rush is right, but for the wrong reason. If my husband calls me a bitch, he's not going to be forgiven because he hands me flowers. You can't spend years working on your racist rhetoric, then give the target of your tax break and expect them to forgive you. This makes Hispanics significantly smarter than fundamentalists, who vote on abortion solely and are thus easily dismissed. Let me play this audio sound bite right now. Andrea Mitchell Nightly News last night, she had a report about Chris Shays and I all over the news yesterday and last night, also in this report.

because I enjoy watching the Republican party fall all over itself figuring out where they went wrong, I will give you this.

MITCHELL: Is the party over? As Republican governors prepare to meet in Miami to debate what went wrong and who will lead them out of wilderness, Republicans have to resolve their identity crisis. Do they want to follow moderates like Chris Shays, who lost his Connecticut House seat?

SHAYS: You gotta reach out to African-Americans, you gotta reach out to Latinos, and you gotta be an inclusive party, and we aren't right now, but we will be. Shays recognizes half the problem. In high school, the power clique gains power by excluding everyone. This doesn't work in an election. Shays is missing the other half of the problem: the Republicans ran on fear, the Democrats ran on hope. (Of course, the albatross that is Bush hanging around McCain's neck didn't help much either.) Fear only motivates for so long. Eventually, people get tired of being afraid, and try something new.

MITCHELL: Or should the party align itself with traditional conservatives? If the "traditional conservatives" you are discussing are Goldwater conservatives, this might work. If the "traditional conservatives" you are discussing are racist, fearmongering, fundamentalist anti-intellectuals, this will not work.

RUSH ARCHIVE: We can get women, we can get everybody with a set of core principles that we do not abandon that benefit everybody, regardless the damned color of their skin or their gender! More "liberals are unprincipaled, immoral heathens" rhetoric. It didn't work for McCain, Rush. It won't work anymore. Starving the poor, killing innocent civilians and allowing working people to suffer and die for lack of health care are not principals. They are bad policy. Usians have spoken. (The working definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Make of that what you will.)


RUSH: That was from yesterday, and I stand by that. I'm consistent within a 24 hour period! We start going after groups of Americans, Does anyone else get a little nervous when the political party funded by religious crazies and gun nuts starts saying things like "going after"? the middle class, Wal-Mart people the entire US? Has he been to Wal-Mart lately? I hate Wal-Mart and I shop there. Oh, yeah, Rush is rich, he probably never has been to Wal-Mart. This is probably a code phrase for "poor people" or "welfare queens". and then the Kmart people boat people? and let's go get the Starbucks crowd liberal, beret-wearing gay elitists!and let's go get this group, Hispanics foolish Hispanics, you have drawn the attention of Darth Rush. You shall pay.

Loser -- we just did that! Conversational shift I didn't quite follow. We just did it. The architects of this should be disqualified from running another Republican campaign. Karl Rove should be disqualified from ever interacting with human beings again. When in McCain's campaign did anyone make a push to bring in hispanics and poor people and boat people and liberal, beret-wearing gay elitists? They didn't. They tried to scare the pants off all those people, which is different. If Rush doesn't see the difference between scaring people and embracing people, his foreplay must be very . . . interesting.

Set of core principles that improve life for every rich human being (gays, blacks, women and hispanics may or may not be human beings) in the country, and you will attract them, I don't care where they were born, I don't care what their skin color is, what their gender is, what their sexual orientation, none of that. You attract enough of them to win. because gays, blacks, hispanics and women are too stupid to figure out that Republican policies are badbadbad for them. good luck with that, rush!

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