Real Clear Politics’ Alexis Simendinger: After the Republicans run down the alley from which there is no exit, will the president be standing there or calling them?
WH Spokesman Jay Carney: The dangers of throwing out metaphors is that people pick them up and, what I am confident of is that they don’t have, at the end of that alley, like, a Batplane to fly out, you know, to their own rescue… Do you remember that scene? It was good. It was a good scene.
Other Reporter: Does the president have a Batplane?
WH Spokesman Jay Carney: I can’t talk about that. It’s classified.
Rush tomorrow: Why won’t the President’s handlers come clean about his Batplane? And, isn’t it really more of a Batcopter? Why does this man lie so often?
Tag: Rush Limbaugh
Amazon Women of the Modo
Holy Lord is Alex Pareene’s Salon piece required reading:
Was President Obama “henpecked” into waging war on Libya by his “Amazon warrior” female advisors? Only if you’re shocked by the thought of women in positions of power actually asserting their power. It also helps if you consider skepticism of military engagement to be inherently “feminine” and think that getting convinced of something by a woman is in and of itself emasculating. And if you’re Maureen Dowd you repeat all that stupid, backward cant, because you’re the hard-charging award-winning New York Times columnist with the most retrograde conception of gender relations this side of Hays Code-era Hollywood.
Dowd’s first paragraph is simply a list of clichéd terms for war-making women. In the rest of the column she purports to be simply compelled by the media attention paid to the role of Susan Rice, Samantha Power and Hillary Clinton in planning the Libyan campaign, but she is actually just reveling in the opportunity to call a Democratic male politician an effete weakling surrounded, as always, by ball-breaking bitches […]. There is little daylight between her “position” on the matter and Rush Limbaugh’s, except that Rush is at least honest enough not to cloak his chauvinism in the trappings of irony.
All I have to say to that is: more please.
Conservative Radio Hosts Called by Scripted Actors
Premiere On Call is our new custom caller service,” read the service’s website, which disappeared as this story was being reported (for a cached version of the site click here). “We supply voice talent to take/make your on-air calls, improvise your scenes or deliver your scripts. Using our simple online booking tool, specify the kind of voice you need, and we’ll get your the right person fast. Unless you request it, you won’t hear that same voice again for at least two months, ensuring the authenticity of your programming for avid listeners.
The report notes that the “service” is part of the overall operation that syndicates Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity among many others. I keep thinking that one day one of these “shocking revelations about the conservative message machine” will stick, but then we’ve long known that W. Bush and his administration planted editorials, basically employed journalists to run preferred stories, and openly bragged about controlling various “mainstream” media outlets and programs (notably Meet the Press, but also obvious ones like Hannity and etc…). None of those seemed to register with people and the MSM has an obvious vested interest in letting such stories drop. Quickly . This one probably won’t register either, though it does get at their precious, precious two hours hate…and we certainly can’t have that.
Anyway and once again: they are lying to you with malice aforethought. Your entire media construct is bought and paid for with the express intent of fucking you out of what is yours so that the folks at the top can extract an additional fractional percent at your expense this quarter. They call that “shared sacrifice.” There are more of you; one would think the center could not hold. Not forever, anyway. Thanks for consistently proving me wrong on this. It’s really made my day. Over and over and over again. That is all.
(via militantagnostic)
Spread
Well, it’s only online (MSM read: world wide interweb-log, or “blog”) commentary for the moment, but for the MSM this appearing (and staying) on the NYT site amounts to a clarion call:
In the much-discussed Pew poll reporting the spike in ignorance, those who believe Obama to be Muslim say they got their information from the media. But no reputable news agency — that is, fact-based, one that corrects its errors quickly — has spread such inaccuracies.
So where is this “media?” Two sources, and they are — no surprise here — the usual suspects. The first, of course, is Rush Limbaugh, who claims the largest radio audience in the land among the microphone demagogues, and his word is Biblical among Republicans.
[…]
Once Limbaugh has planted a lie, a prominent politician can pick it up, with little nuance. So, over the weekend, Kim Lehman, one of Iowa’s two Republican National Committee members, went public with doubts on Obama’s Christianity. Of course, she was not condemned by party leaders.
[…]
[Then] there is Fox News, whose parent company has given $1 million to Republican causes this year but still masquerades as a legitimate source of news. Their chat and opinion programs spread innuendo daily. The founder of Politifact, another nonpartisan referee to the daily rumble, said two of the site’s five most popular items on its Truth-o-meter are corrections of Glenn Beck.
Beck tosses off enough half-truths in a month to keep Politifact working overtime. Of late, he has gone after Michelle Obama, whose vacation in Spain was “just for her and approximately 40 of her friends.” Limbaugh had a similar line, saying the First Lady “is taking 40 of her best friends and leasing 60 rooms at a five-star hotel — paid for by you.”
The White House said Michelle Obama and her daughter Sasha were accompanied by just a few friends — and they paid their own costs. But, wink, wink, the damage is done. He’s Muslim and foreign. She’s living the luxe life on your dime. They don’t even have to mention race. The code words do it for them.
I can think of no other instance in which a prominent, national news source has even intimated (much less directly called out) the modern news cycle. Let me be the first to say: Welcome to Earth. We breathe a mix of nitrogen and oxygen here.
Second House Indistinguishable from Health Care
Shatner: “Here’s my premise, and you agree with it or not. If you have money, you are going to get health care. If you don’t have money, it’s more difficult.”
Limbaugh: “If you have money you’re going to get a house on the beach. If you don’t have money, you’re going to live in a bungalow somewhere.”
Shatner: “Right, but we’re talking about health care.”
Limbaugh: “What’s the difference?”
Shatner: “The difference is we’re talking about health care, not a house or a bungalow.”
Limbaugh: “No. No. You’re assuming that there is some morally superior aspect to health care than there is to a house. …”
Tomorrow is Obama’s birthday, not that we’ve seen any proof of that… What? We haven’t seen any proof of that! They tell us August 4th is the birthday; we haven’t seen any proof of that! Sorry. It is what it is.
Rush Limbaugh, birther.
Until he and all the rest of these pitiable individuals admit that Obama was born in Hawaii, Hawaii is and was then a state in these United States, and that his mother was a citizen of same, they must be hounded daily, at every public appearance large or small, about these “beliefs.” And the DNC (or an affiliate thereof) should be paying for said hounding.
Until he and all the rest of these pitiable individuals admit that Obama was born in Hawaii, Hawaii is and was then a state in these United States, and that his mother was a citizen of same, they must be hounded daily, at every public appearance large or small, about these “beliefs.” And the DNC (or an affiliate thereof) should be paying for said hounding.
IOKIYAR
Helen Thomas says something stupid (about Israel, no less) and what happens to her:
Thomas had been dropped by her speakers’ agency; upcoming appearances were being canceled; the White House was unlikely to call on her ever again; and perhaps most importantly, the board of the White House Correspondent Association (WHCA) was considering whether to revoke her front-row seat. The board was not likely to deliver a response Thomas would like – in a statement, the WHCA called her comments “indefensible.”
Glenn Beck, on the other hand, offers no apology this morning for his latest edition of fetid spew:
This morning on his radio program, Glenn Beck responded to the general outcry over his approving comments last week for the work of Elizabeth Dilling, a virulent anti-Semite who actively supported Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. Beck’s response contained neither an apology nor a disavowal nor any indication whatsoever that he was at all contrite over using his considerable media presence to promote a discredited and hateful woman’s writings.
Rush Limbaugh likewise offered no apologies on his recent work re: the Nazis:
Rush Limbaugh, last week unfurled shocking rhetoric in which he compared the Obama White House to a Nazi organization and even likened Obama to Hitler. (“Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate.”) The outlandish attacks seemed to be a case of Limbaugh playing catch-up to Fox News’ Glenn Beck (Limbaugh = Beck Lite?), who had been pounding the noxious Nazi angle for weeks.
There is literally nothing a right wing pundit can say that will get him or her removed from the “serious people” commentariat. Nothing. Concomitantly, almost any comment, no matter how banal, will, can, and probably has already been used to permanently silence someone with known left-wing tendencies. I don’t pretend to defend Helen Thomas, but her near-instant defenestration is absolutely without context relative to the treatment of far more horrifying offenses taking place daily from the mouths of commentators with far more reach and impact than Helen Thomas has ever had. Unforgivable. Your Liberal Media at work.
Oilbama
Krugman makes predictions on just how it is that Obama will be blamed for the oil platform explosion and subsequent mess:
Will it be claims that liberals and/or scientific conspirators sabotaged the rig, to undermine good Americans who want to drillheredrillnow? (Michael Crichton already wrote that novel).
Will it be that oil workers, demoralized by the march of socialism, fell into despair and let the accident happen?
Will it be claims that since this didn’t happen under Bush, it obviously shows that Obamanomics is responsible?
Apparently Rush has already started in on choice #1.
I think my vote is more along the lines of
“…and I think it’s clear that this accident only happened because we aren’t drilling enough. These poor companies are over-working what they have because they can’t make a walkable ring of oil platforms that encircles Florida. This sort of lunatic under-drilling leads directly to the sort of accidents we’ve seen off the coast of Louisiana, Wolf. That, and I might just mention that Biden used the F-word.”
Which, by the way, I’m for installing. So there’s that. Thank me later, Florida.
Wolf’s answer to that statement, you ask?
“Alright, we have to leave it there.”
What the fuck else does he ever say?
I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented – I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica.
Rush Limbaugh. Why wait, Rush?
The “Philosophical” Difference
Louise Slaughter (D, NY): I even have one constituent — you will not believe this, and I know you won’t, but it’s true — her sister died. This poor woman had no denture. She wore her dead sister’s teeth, which of course were uncomfortable and did not fit. Do you ever believe that in America that that’s where we would be?
Rush Limbaugh: I mean for example, well what’s wrong with using a dead person’s teeth? Aren’t the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don’t have any teeth, so what? What’s applesauce for? Isn’t that why they make applesauce?
Lemkin 