I have never been a stranger to admitting when I have been wrong. My philosophy is that is better to be wrong than to have no opinion. Since I write many of my thoughts here and at Kos, I am never short for feedback to show me how I am wrong, and I actually appreciate it. I always strive for accuracy, and welcome any corrections.
I have been very wrong about Limbaugh. I started listen to him around 1993 (please do not ask why, because the answer is extremely convoluted and very personal, [thanks, Cruz]) so we will not go there. Please follow my thoughts.
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
We are on the brink...so we are told and so we will see as the photographs roll in from Haiti, images of death, destruction, survival, conflict, and despair.
We are ready, as they will paint a whole people as thugs and thieves and we will consume these images with a shake of the head. These descriptions will come from all sources, whether believed to be "left" or "right," "objective" or Fox.
But we remember Katrina. We remember the power of the photograph and the greater power of seeing behind the image. Experiencing the visual content in light of the context.
For the last couple of days I've been trying to put together my thoughts on the recent claims by one liz cheney, she don't deserve caps for name. But as this royally pissed me off when it first aired I kept getting madder and madder trying to write something, not being a writer adds to that, and I just had way to much hitting my mind to say to her and anyone else. But low and behold I found a piece by another Veteran that says allot of what I wanted and figured I can link to his while adding the links I wanted to.
This is what I first started out with and kept changing:
... is a book about Limbaugh's unsuccessful bid to become a co-owner of the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League. It will hit book stores all over the country tomorrow, filled with hot air and inane explanations of why this good man was sabotaged from becoming an active participant in America's favorite pastime, professional football.
Vic Harville, Stephens Media Group (Little Rock, AR)
:: ::
Caller #1: Mega-dittos, Rush. Now that your brief foray into professional football has been sabotaged by liberals, what are you gonna do next?
El Rushbo: I'm going to Disney World! In Obama's America, an honest white man does not get equality of opportunity. I'm just going to go back and lead the Republican Party to victory in 2010, 2012, and beyond. The pinko, socialist, communist, racist owners and their toadies in the NFL will have hell to pay!
Crossposted at Daily Kos. Look in the Comments Section of Daily Kos for more cartoons on the economy and sports. Somehow, I couldn't fit them in the main text of the diary.
THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
This weekly diary takes a look at the past week's important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.
When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:
1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?
2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?
3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?
The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist's message.
:: ::
Mahmoud, Hugo, and Muammar... Meet Rush, Glenn, and Sean Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune
If you heard this on the TV, would you sit and think, interesting Opinions?
"The facts are simple," says Charles K. Johnson, president of the International Flat Earth Research Society. "The earth is flat."
"Nobody knows anything about the true shape of the world," he contends. "The known, inhabited world is flat.
[...]
the stars are about as far as San Francisco is from Boston."
As shown in a map published by Johnson, the known world is as circular and as flat as a phonograph record. The North Pole is at the center.
Or if you heard this loudly stated Opinion, would you think, "Well, They have a Right to their Opinions"
Mr. Johnson, who called himself the last iconoclast, regarded scientists as witch doctors pulling off a gigantic hoax so as to replace religion with science. He based his own ideas on the Old Testament references to a flat earth
The lesson we should learn from Dr. Tiller's murder is that if someone is demonized enough in the mass media, some crazy person will try to kill them.
Marabout40 has an excellant RecListed diary at Dkos titled Thank You Rachel Maddow & Frank Schaeffer!. Within that diary there is a video featuring Frank Schaeffer which I strongly suggest that you watch. In that video Mr. Schaeffer is quoted as saying :
"Their coded message to their own lunatic fringe is very simple, 'Go for broke'
~snip~
[It is} literally leaving a loaded gun on the table, saying 'The first person who wants to use this, go ahead'"
I do not wish to fear monger, but I genuinely fear for our President, and our Democracy.
Mr. Olbermann, can we talk a minute? Let the Dog start off by saying he is a huge fan of your show Countdown, he and Mrs. Dog have watched for years, all the way back to when you were counting the days since the declaration of mission accomplished in Iraq in the low 1000's. This all prefaces to talk about an issue the Dog has with you in one very particular area.
Apparently, Rush Limbaugh just could not let Michael Sheuer win the worst person of the week award.
" If we had any good luck, Honduras would send some people here and help us get our government back. "
Why yes, wouldn't we be lucky if a coup overthrew the American government, disrupting millions of lives and the important issues facing our nation.
Gee, wouldn't that be just swell.
That way, Conservatives who are so unappealing they can not get elected can get their Government back. What were we the people thinking? Didn't we know that this is a center-right nation?
I guess the only thing that can even compete with " The only thing that can save America is a massive attack by al Qaeda. " is hoping for a coup.
And what kind of coup would please Herr Limbaugh? A military coup? A bloodless coup? A violent coup? Would it be okay if we deport the President like they did in Honduras? Or maybe we need something a little more drastic?
When did " I hope he fails " become " I hope he is overthrown ? "
And I wonder who would replace Barack Obama as President?
I'm sure Rush has an idea.
So, according to Rush, we Americans would be "lucky" if a coup overthrew our Democratically elected Government, throwing our nation into havoc and harming our recovery from the clusterfuck left behind by, that's right, the Conservatives.
Is it fuck patriotism week and nobody told me?
What a way to celebrate our nation's independance.
Breaking news of the latest right-winger incited to commit acts of violence in support of the most virulent political party since the Nazis. A Kansas abortion doctor was gunned down in cold blood today in a Wichita, Kansas church, just another example of how these religious fanatics that dare to call themselves Christians would make Jesus puke were he return to earth tomorrow - then the same bastards would crucify his liberal ass. Here we have yet another example of the sort of mayhem that unstable, armed-to-the teeth freaks are capable of when their buttons are pushed by the malignant filth the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest of the house propagandists for the American fascist state. Nothing is sacred to these miscreants, murdering their whole families and then committing suicide is commonplace, the same houses of worship that they claim to be places of sanctity are now legitimate shooting galleries, shit some lunatic right-winger not long ago dressed up as Santa Claus and massacred a houseful of former relatives including children. A terminally diseased political philosophy breeds this type of scum and they should all be subject to euthanasia for the good of society. If you consider that to be overly harsh just imagine how many of these human time bombs that you in your normal daily doings encounter, they hate liberals, gays, minorities and even going to the grocery store becomes a dangerous endeavor when surrounded by them.
You. Yeah, you. You pontificating white males (so unrepresentative of the vast majority of your fellows in race and gender) that think that one bloody word in one speech years ago, a membership to an organization with a Spanish name and a decision upholding a city's move to limit its liability and scrap a bad test because its results uniformly favored one racial group over another one...
...get real.
You think that Judge Sotomayor is worse for the country than the Confederacy winning the Civil War? You seriously believe that Victoria Woodhull, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony would have locked arms with you in protesting her nomination to the Supreme Court?
You believe that if Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today he would be on the Sunday talk show circuit talking about how she's a "reverse racist"?
Memo to Rush: if you want us to stop laughing at you, stop saying stupid shit.
Keith Olbermann lays down the vicious and savage beating all over Rush Limbaugh's fat keister. WTF!
To sum this total owning up.
"The crushing majority of America thinks you suck"
The mental gymnastics engaged in by Rush on a daily basis do not make up for his lack of physical gymnastics over the last 2,000 mid night snacks. If Rush evened the score between the two, he could run marathons and power the national grid with the hot air emitting out of all of his orifices.
The irony is that Rush wants the attention either way, but he wants to be able to entirely control the message, from the moment it passes by his hungry lying lips to the second those words pass your ear drum. The problem for Rush is in how to control the message even after facts prove that he is entirely full of shit.
Now, if only Rush could eat his own words with the same zeal that he attacks the native salmon making their return to the river during spawning season.
Oh the defiling of that most glorious and blessed day in New American history! The pissy pants, red faced outrage is careening throughout the reich wing blogosphere and their multi-million dollar a year facist house pundits today. The audacity of that evil black woman Wanda Sykes to compare the head of the Republican Party Lardass Limbaugh to Osama bin Laden, and to do so at GASP...the White House Correspondent's Dinner was blasphemy of the hightest form. Sykes had a ball in firing up the conservative BBQ pit for a pig roast:
"Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails, so you're saying, 'I hope America fails,' you're like, 'I don't care about people losing their homes, their jobs, our soldiers in Iraq.' He just wants the country to fail. To me, that's treason,"
"He's not saying anything differently than what Usama bin Laden is saying," "You know, you might want to look into this, sir, because I think maybe Rush Limbaugh was the 20th hijacker. But he was just so strung out on OxyContin he missed his flight."
"Rush Limbaugh, 'I hope the country fails' -- I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? ... He needs a good waterboarding, that's what he needs."
Once in a blue moon I stumble across an essay by Mark Morford and, as always, I am automatically compelled to share it with other Progressives. For better or worse, Morford has a style you don't easily forget. He can make you laugh and cry all in the same sentence.
Evil overlords to flaccid clowns in the blink of Jesus' eye. Adorable!
Mark Morford:
This much we know: Hand evil a big, sticky gob of power, and it quickly becomes a feral monster, dangerous and cruel and willing to sell its own shriveled heart and the heart of its very remorseful mother for a shot at everlasting infamy, even more power and maybe some fresh, raw kitten blood, intravenously, just for the hell of it.
Oh, but take that same vile leviathan and suddenly strip away all its power and influence and capacity for wickedness, and watch it deflate like a wheezing circus tent, quickly turning into a trembling caricature of its former self, a tiny, elfin thing small enough to fit into a shoebox of panic and pathos and residual Godspit.
[...]
But weep not for Miss California, who's happy as a Prozac clam to take on the title as the new face of Republican hetero marriage. Isn't she lovely? A skinny, fake-breasted blonde mouthful of air who does exactly as she's told and never questions her scary Bible and doesn't really like sex and you want to stick that thing where? Ewww! She's perfect.
In his attempt to counter a perceived threat to America, Philip Zelikow, the policy representative to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the National Securities Council (NSC) Deputies Committee, unexpectedly became the threat from within the White House.
The Bush Administration believed the best way to deal with suspected terrorists was to inflict extreme physical and psychological pressure on these perilous persons. Mister Zelikow offered his dissent. In a written and verbally stated opinion, Philip Zelikow contradicted what the occupants of the Oval Office accepted as necessary. "Individuals suspected of terrorism, can be legally tortured."
A short time after the Office of Legal Council (OLC) issued the now infamous judgments which allowed for officially sanctioned torment, Mister Zelikow, his superior, who was then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and her Legal Adviser, John Bellinger, gained access to the torture memos. After a review, Philip Zelikow stated his concern. He sensed others within the Administration might share his angst. However, no one, inclusive of Mister Zelikow, publicly voiced an apprehension, that is, not until this past week.
From a mud caked Hello Kitty diary found by a stream:
New Galt Gulch - Day One!!!
Well we did it, just like Ms. Rand suggested we have left behind all the penalties that are being imposed on the creative people by the heinous Obama administration. Let's see how they like it when their society falls apart!
Here in NGG we are sure that we are just the first of the those that will drop out and make our own new way of living. Diary, you can not believe who is with us here! We have Michelle Malkin and her hubby, former Gov. Mark Sanford, and best of all Rush Limbaugh!!! He really is as big in real life as he looks on TV.
Things are a little Spartan, what with everyone setting up their campaign equipment from Lands End, but no doubt with all these creative people we will have new mansions in short order! Must run Diary, Limbaugh is hosting a first night Luau! You can't believe how much booze he brought with him!
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
