The announcement today by President Obama should come as no surprise to the American public. President Obama has consistently fought against protecting the institution of marriage from radical social engineering at both the state and federal level. The President recently opposed the North Carolina constitutional amendment and, of course, he refused to defend President Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act before the U.S. Supreme court. The charade is now over, no doubt an attempt to galvanize his core hard left supporters in advance of the November election.
President Obama’s comments today in support of the redefinition of marriage are deeply saddening. As I stated in my public letter to the President on September 20, 2011, the Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by the President and the Administration to strengthen marriage and the family. However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.
It's official. Obama has announced he supports gay marriage after talks with his wife and daughters, gay service members, and others. Pink smoke coming from the White House chimney.
President Obama will be hurt by this decision in the swing states. More than that, he has now made this cultural matter a major issue in the presidential campaign.
The time has finally come to pass a constitutional amendment affirming marriage as an institution reserved to the only two people who can naturally produce a family, namely a man and a woman.
Same sex couples should be allowed to marry. It's only fair.
And just because the bigotry is faith-based, doesn't mean it isn't bigotry.
After reporting that the total number of companies to drop their advertising from the Rush Limbaugh Show was up to 140 earlier yesterday, Think Progressannounced that Rush's syndicator was suspending all national advertising for two weeks:
Radio-Info.com reports that Premiere Networks, which syndicates the Rush Limbaugh show, told its affiliate radio stations that they are suspending national advertising for two weeks. Rush Limbaugh is normally provided to affiliates in exchange for running several minutes of national advertisements provided by Premiere each hour. These ads are called “barter spots.” These spots are how Premiere makes its money off of Rush Limbaugh and other shows it syndicates.
Looks like when Rushbo slandered Sandra Fluke -- and by extension, the vast majority of women in this country -- he bit off a little more than he could chew.
As of this morning I did NOT see an ad for Gold at Limbaugh's website. I did see a link to a radio news site that itself had a link to the American Red Cross.
And a couple of ads for an on-line data storage service.
My guess is that someone wised up at EIB and slapped on the link to the Red Cross.
LIMBAUGH: About the premiums going up, and my brilliant dissertation on why prices will go up in the private sector, even if the public option is not there, and even if the Medicare buy-in is not there. It’s not just preconditions that are mandated to be covered in the health care bills in either the House or the Senate.
There was a recent amendment that was mandating private insurers to provide mammogram and other women’s issues coverage, including spousal abuse! Insurance for spousal abuse! And mammograms! Even though the mammogram age has been raised to the age of 50. You think of all the mandates that will be added onto private insurance, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The "Insurance for spousal abuse!" refers to the fact that some health insurance companies say that victims of domestic violence have a "pre-existing condition" and deny them coverage because of that.
As Think Progressnoted, poor widdle Rushy can't figure out why only 37% of women view him favorably.
There's been a curious practice among some members of the news media for some time. In order to look "fair" and "balanced" it seems that the general practice is to say "well, both sides are doing it" and let it go at that.
Case in point.
This morning just as I was waking up, I saw a few moments of Morning Joe. In their discussion of how both sides are politicizing the shooting at the Holocaust Museum, they equated this:
where at about 45 seconds in, Rush Limbaugh says:
Well who did he hate? He hated both Bushes. He hated neocons. He hated John McCain. He hated republicans - he hated jews, as well. He believed in an inside-job conspiracy theory of 9/11. This guy is a leftist, if anything. This guy's beliefs, this guy's hate stems from influence that you find on the left, not on the right.
Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view from this administration” and label them as terrorists.
But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.
There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically fed by the conservative media and political establishment.
Yea, those are the same. Exactly the same. Both sides are doing exactly the same thing.
And if you don't get the sarcasm, you're reading the wrong blog.
This week's column, Jack takes on the recent Washington Press Corps Dinner.
Newsflash: Jack Kelly thinks the Washington Press Corps is in the tank for President Obama!
Only his "proof" is far from convincing.
And oddly enough he spends almost half of the column on Meghan McCain - even though she's not in the tank for Obama and not a member of the Washington Press Corps - as "evidence."
Huh?
He describes Ms McCain with this:
[T]he not-especially-bright daughter of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
And with this rhetorical question:
Why would a woman of no discernible accomplishment think other people ought to know who she is, or care?
And fulfilling the comedy rule-of-three, finally with this:
Mostly, of course, because Meghan is a spoiled brat. Her father became a hero because he believed in service to his country. She thinks that for no other reason than that she is a blood relation she ought to be served.
Funny, 8 years ago a lot of people were saying the same thing about the Torturer President.
But back to McCain. She's gotten into trouble with the Republicans true believers for writing things like this:
[C]ertain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans. Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter. I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time.
Though I find this odd because Jack also has had issues with Coulter:
But the dyspeptic denizens of the Right believe in addition by subtraction. To make the GOP stronger, moderates must be calumnized and driven from it. Polemicist Ann Coulter is so angry with Mr. McCain's occasional embrace of Democratic ideas that she says she'll campaign for Democrats if Mr. McCain wins the nomination.
Ms. Coulter says this sort of thing whenever she feels she's not getting enough attention. Her position is extreme, even among the extremists.
I wonder if Jack still thinks McCain is "not especially bright" now?
With little or no rhetorical segue, Jack suddenly starts in on Wanda Sykes and her performace at the White House Correspondents' Dinner:
The entertainment at the dinner was provided chiefly by Wanda Sykes, a "comedian." Her routine, and the audience's response to it, says much about Washington's glitterati.
Typically at these dinners, the incumbent president is lampooned. But Ms. Sykes directed her fire at conservatives. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh is a "traitor." He would have been the 20th hijacker on 9/11, but was too strung out on Oxycontin to make the flight. She hoped Mr. Limbaugh would die of kidney failure.
Note the ironic quotations marks. Subtle. Before we let Jack get all PC on Sykes' jokes (if Jack were writing that it would have read: Sykes' "jokes"), let's take a look at Eric Boehlert over at Mediamatters.org. Boehlert finds similar angst with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. Taranto wrote:
Why do liberals find this joke funny when they should find it embarrassing? The answer, it seems clear, is that this is an example of shock humor: a genre that relies on the frisson of violating taboos. By our count, Sykes runs afoul of five taboos in her Limbaugh joke: She equates dissent with treason. She likens a domestic political opponent to a foreign enemy. She makes fun of the disabled (Limbaugh's past addiction to painkillers would entitle him to protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act). She makes light of a form of interrogation that some people consider torture. And she wishes somebody dead.
Which Boehlert deconstructs:
The comedy gold, of course, is that Taranto unwittingly describes, point-for-point, the Rush Limbaugh show as its been heard for nearly two decades. But over that 20 years time, how many times has Taranto taken to the Op-ed town hall to tsk-tsk Limbaugh's brand of hateful humor? This is just a guess, but I'm guessing it's a bullseye: ZERO.
When Limbaugh or the GOP Noise Machine equates dissent with treason, likens political opponents to a foreign arm, mocks the disabled (paging Michael J. Fox), makes fun of interrogation and wishes somebody dead, it's funny and insightful. But when a liberal comedian does it, guess what? It's the end of the world as we know it.
And what of Ms McCain? She also didn't reportedly like Sykes. From the same Daily News article Jack quotes:
“Sen. McCain gave you grief about the new helicopters you didn’t order,” said Sykes, adding, “I think Mr. McCain was a little bitter because he wanted to be in the new helicopters. Mr. McCain, I’m sure if you ask nicely, your wife will buy you a new helicopter.”
While the assembled crowd of politicos, journalists and celebrities roared with laughter, Meghan was not among them.
“I didn’t like the joke about my mom [Cindy],” the young McCain told us after the dinner. “Why talk about her at all? I (didn’t mind the jokes) about my dad, but leave my mom out of it. It really wasn’t in good taste.”
Rush Limbaugh reaffirms that he wants the President of the United States of America to fail:
Michelle Malkin Agrees:
Tom Delay chimes in:
Even Lil Ricky Santorum gets in on the act:
The Rush statement has a bonus Steelers mention. Anyone else feel dirty listening to Rush talk about rooting for the Steelers? Anyone else remember when it was considered evil, unpatriotic and downright traitorous just to say you were embarrassed by the president? .
How about somebody like Rick Santorum as veep? How about some conservative who could be counted on across the board to help lead the country in the right direction and rebuild the Republican Party? Lieberman can't do that.
Perhaps someone should remind our friend the Oxycotin addict how badly Lil Ricky lost. In a state that Senator Kerry won by only 3%, Lil Ricky lost by a whopping 18%.
18%.
You have to go back to George McGovern's loss in 1980 to see worse numbers. And McGovern had that whole Reagan "revolution" to deal with.
Things must be real panicy over in Wingnuttia these days.
According to talkingpointsmemo, in a state-by-state round up of the upcoming Republican primaries, Senator John McCain looks to be in a good position. In fact they say:
The bottom line: John McCain has it made.
And this morning, they posted:
On the Republican side the picture is coming pretty quickly into focus: John McCain looks poised to crush Mitt Romney on Tuesday. If you look at the results of the Gallup daily tracking poll, virtually all of Giuliani's support nationally has gone to McCain, pushing him up into the mid-forties. Put that apparent break-out together with the fact that the Republican side is dominated by winner-take-all primaries, and it seems more than likely McCain will take Tuesday in a blow out. Probably enough to effectively end the Republican race. [emphasis added.]
So when the "more conservative-er than thou" crowd is unhappy with McCain's Con-credentials, it's up to our Jack Kelly to try to calm things down. Here he is from today's column:
The race for the GOP nomination for president is all but over, save for the weeping and gnashing of teeth among conservatives.
I don't think Arizona Sen. John McCain would be a good president. He lacks the temperament for it, he has virtually no managerial experience and the economy is, as George Will put it, "a subject with which Mr. McCain is neither conversant, nor eager to become so."
But there is a big difference between being a mediocre president -- as one could argue George W. Bush has been -- and being an awful one.
First off, let me congratulate Jack Kelly for putting in print something we've been waiting to hear him say for a long time: George W. Bush has been a mediocre president. But is it possible that he's saying that McCain would be a worse president than dubya? Or is he making a comparison between a McCain presidency and an Obama or Clinton presidency?
This part is unclear to me. Perhaps his editors should have asked him to tighten that one up a bit.
In any event, he makes his case for and against McCain. First the pro:
For this conservative, the paramount issue is winning the war on terror, because if we lose, nothing else will matter very much. Arguably, Mr. McCain is better suited than anyone else to lead us to victory.
The next most important issue to me is to appoint to the federal bench judges who will follow the Constitution. Mr. McCain supported the nominations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, but some are trying to manufacture doubt about whom he'd appoint. There's no doubt about what kind of judges Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama would choose.
Then the con:
Mr. McCain was wrong to oppose the Bush tax cuts, and his refusal to admit his mistake fuels MDS (McCain Derangement Syndrome).
In between he outlined the dangers facing the citizens of the Red States:
While it is true no Republican can be elected president without the support of the conservative base, it is also true that no Republican can be elected with the support only of the conservative base. When moderates are no longer comfortable in the Republican Party, Democrats will win all the elections.
That being said, I thought it would be fun to see just what they in fact are saying about McCain.
John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth. Like McCain, pollsters assured us that Dole was the most "electable" Republican. Unlike McCain, Dole didn't lie all the time while claiming to engage in Straight Talk.
Of course, I might lie constantly too, if I were seeking the Republican presidential nomination after enthusiastically promoting amnesty for illegal aliens, Social Security credit for illegal aliens, criminal trials for terrorists, stem-cell research on human embryos, crackpot global warming legislation and free speech-crushing campaign-finance laws.
I might lie too, if I had opposed the Bush tax cuts, a marriage amendment to the Constitution, waterboarding terrorists and drilling in Alaska.
And I might lie if I had called the ads of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth "dishonest and dishonorable."
Astonishing. For the record Bob Dole was born in the summer of 1923. So that means that in 1996 (when he ran for President) he turned 73. John McCain was born in late-summer of 1936. So in 2008 he'll turn 72. Kinda kills Coulter's age joke, doesn't it?
Or maybe I'm just lacking a sense of humor.
Here's Rush Limbaugh on John McCain. The headline of the transcript goes like this:
It's Plain to See: McCain Chooses to Surround Himself with Liberals
Followed by a picture of McCain Governor Schwarzenegger and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. At Schwarzenegger's endorsement of McCain, the Governator touted McCain's ability to reach out across the aisle. This rubbed the Rush the wrong way:
Well, that's really helpful. He reaches across the aisle well. (sigh) That means he reaches out to Democrats -- and of course Schwarzenegger probably could write the book on that.
But one other thing that I would like to ask those of you who are military -- and you know of my profound, deep respect and awe for you in the decades of support on this program, but I would like to ask you about McCain's support for closing Club Gitmo. Senator McCain wants to shut down Guantanamo Bay because of abuses that the Europeans are accusing us of committing, and so he wants to appease the Europeans and whoever the hell else around the world who thinks that we are committing torture. These are the people with whom we are at war. We have gleaned operational intelligence from people at Guantanamo. Waterboarding gave us everything we needed to know about the 9/11 mastermind and hijackings and the strategery and the operations of it. Waterboarding, not torture. The attorney general was put on the spot yesterday in hearings and he told the guys at the committee, screw you -- he didn't use those words. He didn't back down. Waterboarding is not torture. I'm not going to tie my government's hands. He said, (paraphrasing) "I would love to institute my personal preferences on these kind of things, gentlemen, but I am the attorney general of the United States, and my first duty is the defense and protection of the Constitution here. I am not going to just by fiat tie my country's hands dealing with this enemy."
Senator McCain wants to do that. He wants to bring these prisoners of war into the United States, give them constitutional rights and lawyers, and basically fight the war in the court system. So on the one hand Senator McCain sounds all gung-ho, I'm for the surge and this sort of thing, but if you look at some of the other things that he's trying to do, like cut down on the interrogations that take place. I mean, isn't that part of the war, the internal security of the country? We were attacked here on 9/11, after all. I don't think we need to close Club Gitmo. Senator McCain says that if we waterboard these clowns we're no better than our enemy. What do the troops think of that? I'm just throwing some questions out there, not trying to agitate, not trying to stir the pot. That happens naturally. Don't have to try. Just throwing some questions out there.
John McCain said at the GOP debate two days ago: “I’ll rely on people to judge me by the company that I keep.” The company John McCain keeps:
Russ Feingold. Teddy Kennedy. Lindsay Grahamnesty. Juan “Mexico First/Free Flow” Hernandez. Jerry “Spanish first” Perenchio. Geraldo Rivera. La Raza. Charles Keating. John Kerry. The New York Times.
Ouch. John Kerry, the New York Times AND John Keating.
Here's Hugh Hewett at Townhall.com. He just quoted McCain's opposition to drilling in ANWR:
As far as ANWR is concerned, I don’t want to drill in the Grand Canyon, and I don’t want to drill in the Everglades. This is one of the most pristine and beautiful parts of the world.
There in a sentence is another example of the dynamic that drives conservatives away from John McCain. Not only do the vast majority of Republicans support exploration in ANWR, they also deeply resent the idea that such a position is on a par with a proposal to strip mine Yellowstone. But here is John McCain comparing exploration in ANWR to drilling in the Everglades or the Grand Ganyon. It isn't just that McCain's position is opposite that of the Republican party. It is also that he uses the harshest rhetoric of the left to convey that disagreement
I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. My convictions regarding the sanctity of life have always been clear and consistent, without equivocation or wavering. I believe that Roe v. Wade should be over-turned.
And:
No candidate has a stronger record on the sanctity of life than I do. I have always been actively and aggressively pro-life. I first became politically active when I helped pass Arkansas' Unborn Child Amendment, which requires the state to do whatever it can to protect life.
As Governor, I used that Amendment to pass pro-life legislation. The many pro-life laws I got through my Democrat legislature are the accomplishments that give me the most pride and personal satisfaction. I banned partial birth abortion, I required parental notification, I required that a woman give informed consent before having an abortion, I required that a woman be told her baby will experience pain and be given the option of anesthesia for her baby, I allowed a woman to have her baby and leave the child safely at a hospital, and I made it a crime for an unborn child to be injured or murdered during an attack on his mother.
He's also opposed to research on embryonic stem cells.
I believe that we are currently engaged in a world war. Radical Islamic fascists have declared war on our country and our way of life. They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god. We go to great extremes to save lives, they go to great extremes to take them. This war is not a conventional war, and these terrorists are not a conventional enemy. I will fight the war on terror with the intensity and single-mindedness that it deserves.
And:
s president, I will fight this war hard, but I will also fight it smart, using all our political, economic, diplomatic, and intelligence weapons as well as our military might. The terrorists unfortunately have a great many sympathizers all over the world, folks who are happy to show up and be filmed shouting "Death to America," but the actual number of those willing to blow themselves up is relatively few, and they train and plot in small, scattered groups.
It's an enemy conducive to being tracked down and eliminated by using the CIA and the Pentagon's Joint Special Operations Command. We can accomplish a great deal, we can achieve tremendous bang for the buck, with swift, surgical air strikes and commando raids by our elite units, working with friendly governments, as we've done with the Ethiopians in Somalia. These operations are impossible without first-rate intelligence. When the Cold War ended, we cut back on our human intelligence, just as we cut back on our armed forces, and both have come back to haunt us. As President, I will beef up our human intelligence capacity, both the operatives who gather information and the analysts who figure out what it means.
The First Amendment requires that expressions of faith be neither prohibited nor preferred. We should not banish religion from the public square, but should guarantee access to all voices and views. We should share and debate our faith, but never seek to impose it. When discussing faith and politics, we should honor the "candid" in candidate - I have much more respect for an honest atheist than a disingenuous believer.
I am focused on winning. Withdrawal would have serious strategic consequences for us and horrific humanitarian consequences for the Iraqis. If we leave, Iraq's neighbors on all sides will face a refugee crisis and be drawn into the war: Iran to protect the Shiites; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to protect the Sunnis; and Turkey to protect its control over its own Kurd population. Iraq is a crossroads where Arab meets Persian and Kurd, Sunni meets Shiite, so if it's not a peaceful buffer, it can easily become a tinder box for the region. When we deposed Saddam, we emphasized Iraq's central location as a prime place to establish democracy and have it spread. That was the potential dramatic upside. Now we're faced with the potential dramatic downside that the terrorists are fighting to take advantage of: Iraq's central location as a prime place to create chaos and have it spread .
And now some Republican criticism of Mike Huckabee.
"Governor Huckabee says he is a fiscal conservative," Club for Growth President Pat Toomey said, "but his ten-year economic-policy record as the governor of Arkansas is mixed, at best. His history includes numerous tax hikes, ballooning government spending, and increased regulation. To be sure, Governor Huckabee's record displays an occasional deference to a pro-growth philosophy, but that is only a small slice of a much bigger picture. The Club for Growth feels citizens deserve a full picture of where Governor Huckabee stands on the critical economic issues of the day."
And:
By the end of his ten-year tenure, Governor Huckabee was responsible for a 37% higher sales tax in Arkansas, 16% higher motor fuel taxes, and 103% higher cigarette taxes according to Americans for Tax Reform (01/07/07), garnering a lifetime grade of D from the free-market Cato Institute. While he is on record supporting making the Bush tax cuts permanent, he joined Democrats in criticizing the Republican Party for tilting its tax policies "toward the people at the top end of the economic scale" (Washington Examiner 09/13/06), even though objective evidence demonstrates that the Bush tax cuts have actually shifted the tax burden to higher income taxpayers.
“A fiscal conservative is a person who truly understands that it’s not a problem in the federal government that our taxes are too low,” the former governor told the crowd at CPAC in 2007. “It’s a problem that our spending is too high and out of control.”
But by Gov. Huckabee’s own definition, there’s serious reason to doubt that he’s a truly fiscal conservative himself.
Much of conservatives’ concern about Gov. Huckabee centers on his record of raising taxes. He signed Americans for Tax Reform’s no-tax pledge, but only after dismissing such covenants as dangerous. He blasts the fiscally conservative Club for Growth as the “Club for Greed”. He publicly opposed repealing a tax on groceries and medicine, though he claims that he’s “always philosophically supported” axing the tax. According to ATR, after his 10 years in office, Gov. Huckabee had raised the state’s sales tax by 37 percent, motor fuel taxes by 16 percent, and cigarette taxes by 103 percent.
Not surprisingly, all these tax increases allowed for greater spending. According to Americans for Tax Reform, state spending under Gov. Huckabee rose by 65.3 percent during 1996 to 2004. The number of workers on the state’s payroll increased by 20 percent during his tenure, and its general debt obligation rose by nearly $1 billion. The spending increase is due largely to the creation of new government programs and the expansion of existing ones.
And:
Though he told The Washington Times that he supports “empowering people to make their own decisions”, Gov. Huckabee has consistently initiated and supported government meddling in the market economy. Not only did he increase Arkansas’s minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 per hour, but he even encouraged the U.S. Congress to do the same thing nationally. He ordered Arkansas regulatory agencies to investigate “price-gouging” in the nursing-home industry and threatened to launch a government investigation of “gouging” on gas prices after September 11, 2001. He signed a bill forbidding private companies from increasing prices on services like roof repair and tree removal by 10 percent in advance of a natural disaster.
Even Rush Limbaugh has his doubts. This from The Politico:
"Ladies and gentlemen, Gov. Huckabee, mighty fine man and is a great Christian, is not a conservative, he’s just not," Limbaugh said. "If you look at his record as governor, he’s got some conservative tendencies on things but he’s certainly not the most conservative of the candidates running on the Republican side."
From Rush's website. A Huckabee supporter called in to plead his case:
Well, I've been listening, I'm a 24/7 subscriber and everything, but I'm also a big Huckabee fan. I think you've been unfair, and I think Club for Growth has been unfair. Ronald Reagan had the same problems as what Huckabee had in his -- went up double, taxes went up. And it's because of the format of -- it's the format of the government, you know, you have to have a balanced budget as governor.
And Rush responded:
Can you tell me -- I mean, I understand the technique here, because this is the second or third attempt on the part of Huckabee supporters, who, by the way, you know, I think he's a fine man. He's just not a conservative. And this is what, to be quite honest with you, offends me greatly with this attempt to compare him to Ronald Reagan. You have to go back and cite their records as governors, some sort of a non-establishment candidate and so forth. Could you tell me something about Huckabee rather than trying to compare him to Ronald Reagan, a comparison of which I will blow out of the water in mere moments?
And then:
Here's my problem with this. I say this with all compassion, and I say this with love and respect for all of you who support Huckabee. But how dare you compare Mike Huckabee to Ronald Reagan. That is simply intellectually vapid, and it's grasping at straws. Ronald Reagan not only served as a governor, but he wrote and spoke for years about conservatism. Ronald Reagan was there at the beginning in 1964 about conservatism. I said yesterday, I have not spent a lifetime advocating conservative principles only to throw them away to embrace a particular candidate. I don't support open borders and amnesty. I don't support the release of hundreds of criminals. McCain supports open borders and amnesty. Huckabee released hundreds of criminals. I don't support repeated increases in taxes. I don't support national health care, whether you call it a children's program or whatever it is. I don't support anti-war rhetoric. I don't support Republican candidates trashing the war in Iraq when we're winning it. I don't support Republican candidates claiming the president doesn't read the National Intelligence Estimates as an excuse for him not knowing what the hell is in one. And that's Governor Huckabee.
As a Republican, when you've lost Rush Limbaugh you've lost everything.
Here's what they had to say this morning. The whole thing's from the Scaife-owned "Media Research Center, run by Brent Bozell. After quoting MSNBC's Chris Matthews:
Radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh says veterans who support withdrawing the troops (from Iraq) are 'phony soldiers.' Those are his words.
They try to correct the "media bias" with this:
Actually Limbaugh was talking about leftist anti-war groups touting tales of U.S. atrocities from Jesse Macbeth, a soldier who flunked out of basic training and who is going to prison for making it all up.
The story's changed so much I'm not sure where the Limbaugh spin has settled. The Addict himself initially claimed to be talking about ONE "phony soldier", Jesse MacBeth, not, as Scaife's various hacks claim, "leftist anti-war groups" QUOTING Jesse Macbeth. Here's what The Addict said on September 28:
I was not talking, as [MSNBC's] Contessa Brewer said here, about the anti-war movement generally. I was talking about one soldier with that "phony soldier" comment, Jesse MacBeth.
Then he changed his own tune later that day:
Yes, because there have been a number of these people, but they were not active duty -- I was not talking about anti-war, active duty troops. I was talking about people who've been exposed as frauds who never served in Iraq but claimed to have seen all these atrocities...
So it was about troops who never served in Iraq, but claimed to have seen atrocies there - still not the groups touting phony tales.
Here's the transcript, by the way:
LIMBAUGH: Another Mike, this one in Olympia, Washington. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER 2: Hi Rush, thanks for taking my call.
LIMBAUGH: You bet.
CALLER 2: I have a retort to Mike in Chicago, because I am a serving American military, in the Army. I've been serving for 14 years, very proudly.
LIMBAUGH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER 2: And, you know, I'm one of the few that joined the Army to serve my country, I'm proud to say, not for the money or anything like that. What I would like to retort to is that, if we pull -- what these people don't understand is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is about impossible because of all the stuff that's over there, it'd take us at least a year to pull everything back out of Iraq, then Iraq itself would collapse, and we'd have to go right back over there within a year or so. And --
LIMBAUGH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. They can't even -- if -- the next guy that calls here, I'm gonna ask him: Why should we pull -- what is the imperative for pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out? They can't -- I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "Well, we just gotta bring the troops home."
CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what --
LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.
CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.
LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.
CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.
LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --
CALLER 2: A lot of them -- the new kids, yeah.
LIMBAUGH: Well, you know where you're going these days, the last four years, if you signed up. The odds are you're going there or Afghanistan or somewhere.
CALLER 2: Exactly, sir. And -- and my other comment was -- and the reason I was calling for -- was to report to Jill about the fact that we didn't, didn't find any weapons of mass destruction. Actually, we have found weapons of mass destruction in chemical agents that [inaudible] been using against us for awhile now.
I've done two tours in Iraq. I just got back in June and there were many instances of -- since [inaudible] not know what they're using in their IEDs [improvised explosive devices]. They're using mustard artillery rounds. The vx-artillery rounds in their IEDs.
Because they didn't know what they were using, they didn't do it right, and so it just kind of -- it, it didn't really hurt anybody but there are -- those munitions are over there, it's just -- it's a huge desert. If they've buried it somewhere, we're never gonna find it.
LIMBAUGH: Well, you know, that's a moot point for me right now --
MIKE: Rush --
LIMBAUGH: -- the weapons of mass destruction. We gotta get beyond that. We're, we're there. What -- who cares if, if -- we all know they were there and, and Mahmoud [Ahmadinejad, Iranian president] even admitted it in one of his speeches here about -- talkin' about Saddam using the poison mustard gas or whatever it is on his own people -- but that, that's moot, right? What, what's more important is all this is taking place now in the midst of the surge working.
And all of these anti-war Democrats are getting even more hell-bent on pulling out of there, which means that success on the part of you and, and your colleagues over there is, is a great threat to them. It's just, it's frustrating and maddening, and it is why they must be kept in the minority.
Look, I want to thank you, Mike, for calling. I appreciate it very much. I gotta -- let me see -- got something -- here is a "Morning Update" that we did recently talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. And they have their celebrities.
One of them was Jesse MacBeth. Now, he was a "corporal," I say in quotes - 23 years old.
From the context it's obvious (to anyone with a functioning brain, that is) that the discussion of "phony soldiers" was about those men and women in the military interviewed by the media who are against the war. The caller then asserts that "real soldiers" (as opposed to the anti-war soldiers the media talks to) are proud of their service, they understand their sacrifice and so on. As if the anti-war soldiers do not. The Addict, to his ultimate discredit, does not disagree.
After that, I want everyone to notice three things, 1) how long it takes The Addict to get to Jesse MacBeth and 2) there's a whole discussion of WMD in between and 3) The Addict still thinks there were WMD in Iraq when dubya gave the order to invade.
Still a far cry from what the Trib's editorial board said.
At least The Addict has an excuse - he's an addict. What's the Brent Bozell's excuse? The Trib's
From the AP. Things aren't looking up for God's Own Party, nationally. Poor guys. The major leading indicators point downward for our friends across the aisle.
Fundraising for Republican campaign organizations lags. That is strikingly so in the House, where the party committee spent more than it raised in each of the past two months, reported only $1.6 million in the bank at the end of August and a debt of nearly $4 million.
Democrats reported $22.1 million in the bank and a debt of slightly more than $3 million.
So even with the Rush "phony soldiers" Limbaugh noise machine working for them, they're still having trouble fundraising in the House. Poor guys - no really. I weep for them every day.
Speaking of The Addict, did you see that instead of condemning him (like they did with the Moveon.org ad) some Republicans want to commend him for supporting the troops. I guess those Republicans also believe that only those troops that support Dubya's bloody war are "real" soldiers.
