Ass Clown

Ass Clown

A friend of mine recently asked if I had actually listened to Rush Limbaugh.  My quick answer was no, but I had heard him enough to know I disagree with him vehemently.  He then sent me a series of links to Rush’s transcripts to see what I thought.

Well, here’s what I think.

I may do a series of these, since he sent me a few links.  I’ll be analyzing this one.

The debate begins after the break…

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, has warned all of us to be very, very careful how we say what we say about the Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. I want to apologize for shouting in my latter parts of that opening monologue. I will admit here to just being frustrated as I can be. We’re watching the greatest economy in the world crumble right before our eyes.

Thanks to the economic policies of the Bush administration (and yes, arguably the Clinton administration as well).

Every promised fix is failing right before our eyes. We have thrown trillions of dollars that no doubt cannot be tracked at all of these failing industries and the industries continue to fail and get worse.

The insurance bailout wasn’t tracked well AT ALL, and we paid the price for that. Keep in mind, this was the bailout that was implemented during the Bush presidency. The subsequent bailouts have had much tighter control.

We have authorized a Porkulus bill of near $1 trillion to get shovel-ready projects going, to get the economy going, it’s not working. There’s no new employment to report out there, unemployment at 25-year high last month. None of it is working. And what angers me is I think this is by design.

First off, yes it is working. Projects have begun springing up all over.
Second, it’s JUST STARTED!! You have to give these things time to take effect. Obama’s been president now for less than 6 months. Fixing the economy will take years. Government projects especially take time. What Rush is doing here is summoning the ire of his listeners by stating a lie as truth. Positive economic changes move at a glacial pace, slow enough so that it’s not immediately apparent to the average person. It’s the same thing as the changing seasons. Sure, we’re in the middle of spring right now, but I can’t tell you the difference between yesterday and today. But now his listeners feel empowered to say, “These Obama programs aren’t even working!” because someone in a seeming position of authority said so, and they have not sought out evidence to the contrary.

Nobody in their right mind, I don’t care, liberal, socialist, communist, everybody with half a brain knows that what is being done right now to fix the economy doesn’t fix an economy.

Again, shady tactics from Rush. Invoking the “Nobody in their right mind…” gambit is dishonest. It paints those with a differing opinion as people not in their right minds. In fact, many economists are saying this IS how you fix an economy. Hell, it worked for FDR and the New Deal amazingly well.

But it does a lot of other things. It empowers the people who are spending the money. It keeps the people who are the supposed recipients of the money impoverished. It keeps them nervous, it keeps them on edge. Those people are happy and very, very comforted that the government is trying to do something. And so far it hasn’t worked and so Obama said, “We’re working on this, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” so they’re going to be content to sit there and wait for more assistance to come and it won’t come because it cannot come. This economy is simply too large as it was to be supported by a single entity, the United States government. It simply cannot be. The math doesn’t work; the ideology doesn’t work; the philosophy doesn’t work; the theory doesn’t work. So, yes, I was angry, and I still am. This is the equivalent of a huge insult to my intelligence and to yours. It isn’t working. It can’t work. It will not work. It will fail.

Wrong wrong wrong. Obama’s economic plan doe not keep the top impoverished. It does quite the opposite. Company A needs money. Consumer B needs a job to buy what Company A is selling. What’s the solution? 1) Give money to Company A. 2) Give a job to Consumer B. 3) 1 and 2. The answer is 3. Just giving money to Company A means they are producing goods that no one is going to buy. Just giving a job to Consumer B means he has money, but cannot buy anything with it. By stimulating the company and being sure there’s a market for that company’s goods, the economy can recover. This is not the US Government being the sole means of support for the entire economy. This is the equivalent of living in your parents’ garage while you find a job. I’ve done it. Most of you probably have. Sometimes you need the support of someone who can give it.

As I scour the Internet for show prep or as I occasionally listen to the television news, I hear more and more people referring to my comment “I hope he fails,” referring to the president, still being very upset about this, “Oh, what a dumb political comment that was,” people are saying, “how silly, how stupid, that’s really going to bring moderates to the cause, right, because everybody, when they hear Limbaugh say, ‘I hope Obama fails,’ they think that Limbaugh wants the country to fail.” Now, let me say something to you right here and right now. And look at me. It’s this: Virtually everybody — I don’t care whether they’re conservative, liberal, independent, moderate, or Martian — virtually everybody who heard my comment, “I hope Obama fails,” knows exactly what I meant.

They know what you meant, Rush. But here’s the problem with what you meant, Obama is trying to rescue the nation from the economic disaster that was the last 8 years. He is trying to SAVE OUR ECONOMY. By hoping he fails, you are implicitly hoping his plan to rebuild the American economy fails. That’s myopic. You COULD have said, “I hope he succeeds, but I know he won’t,” but you’re a showman, aren’t you Rush? That would be too reasonable a thing for you to say.

There is not a sane person in this country who genuinely believes I want this country to fail. Ladies and gentlemen, this country is failing because President Obama is succeeding. I don’t care how you choose to measure it. There is no hope on the horizon for a job. There is no hope on the horizon for renewed prosperity. There is no hope on the horizon for economic growth. It’s not there. It’s been promised. It has been said that the only entity that can guarantee all the things I just mentioned is the federal government.

Again, FDR pulled us out of the Great Depression with similar tactics. There is absolutely hope on the horizon. It’s not going to be a sea change solution that happens in the blink of an eye. Hell, the New Deal took most of the 30s to truly take hold. But the only other options we seem to have available to us are do nothing, which would be disastrous, or continue with tax breaks for corporations, privatization of government services and deregulation of corporate regulations. These are EXACTLY the things that got us into the hot water we’re in now.

The federal government has thrown trillions of dollars at failing entities, industries, and they’re still failing and getting worse. President Obama’s policies will not fail in one regard: They will not fail in impoverishing and enslaving more and more Americans the longer his policies succeed. This that is happening to us, all of us at this moment, unemployment, record high since 25 years ago, one out of seven homes being foreclosed on, the automobile business basically bankrupt after trillions of dollars in bailouts now owned by Obama, Wall Street is an abject mess, the state of California is bankrupt, the state of New York soon will be. All of these places are talking about raising taxes further on people, which will reduce the number of people who are able to hire other people — in other words, create jobs. This is the exact kind of success I wanted to fail. And everybody who heard me say it knew exactly what I meant.

Again, we’re less than 6 months into the Obama presidency. When your car is headed toward a cliff at top speed, it’s going to take some time for the brakes to stop you. Yes, things are still getting worse, but that’s because of the momentum of failure we were left with. Bush didn’t pull over and give Obama the driver’s seat. He bailed out of a moving car, James Bond style. Obama has been VERY clear about the economy. He has said it will get worse before it gets better. No one expected him to be some kind of Deus Ex Machina who would descend from the clouds on a chariot and use his Liberal magic to make everything rainbows and unicorns. Besides, recent reports have indicated that home sales are going back up, and unemployment claims are going down. Neither are where they should be, but change is ACTUALLY HAPPENING!!

It is being used by people on our side of the aisle who are scared to death of conservatives. It is being used by them to say that I’m driving moderates away. It’s being used by people on the left to say that I want America to fail, when everybody in their brain knows exactly what I meant, just as everybody with a brain, everybody with a modicum of education knows that what President Obama is doing will not do what he promises, will not do what he says, it will not revive this economy. We are soon going to be approaching the one-year mark. In fact, the first stimulus package occurred over a year ago. And it was offered by President Bush, and it was rebate checks for the American people. This was to help us buy things. And then some months later there was a second installment of this same rebate plan, checks from the federal government. And then came, as we approached the one-year anniversary of the beginning of massive bailouts starting with TARP, then to the auto companies, and Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the mortgage industry.

Again with the “Anyone with a brain…” bullshit. It’s that attitude of Us Vs. Them that is absolutely destructive to America. We’re all Americans. We’re all suffering under this crippled economy. We all know someone who was in or is in Iraq. Fostering an atmosphere of distrust and fear is the REAL problem. Divide and conquer. Or in this case, divide and flounder.

A year, my friends, if stimulating these industry sectors with this amount of money has only made it worse, at what point does somebody have the guts to stand up and say, “Stop it. It has failed. It isn’t working, and it shows no signs of working,” and everybody with a brain, with a modicum of education, knows it can’t work. It never has worked throughout the history of human civilization.

FDR!!! FDR!!! FDR!!! STFU!!!

It’s unsustainable whether it be the mental health hospital in Sacramento, whether it be the economy of the state of California, whether it be the automobile industry, whatever government takes on outside of the government sphere, outside of its constitutional role, whatever it takes on that’s in the private sector, with the intention of fixing it, only gets worse. In fact, so do the things they do fix that they think are legitimately theirs to fix. They create the war on poverty; it’s worse than ever in terms of percentages. They create the great Great Society and all of these programs which have featured an $11 trillion transfer of wealth over the past 30 years or so, and these problems have not been abated, they have not been solved, they have not been reduced; they exist.

Fascinating that his estimation of the failures of our economy go back 30 years or so. Here I will agree with him. See, in that time, we saw the rise of Reganomics. Then we cap it all off with Bush II. So yeah, the past 30 years have seen some major economic failures.

It could be said that the federal government’s involvement in the massive welfare state has served to destroy families, minority families, because the government took over the role of the father. The father no longer had to hang around because the government was there every week or month or however often the checks come. So it isn’t working. This kind of failure is exactly what I wanted to avoid. I was hoping that Obama would not succeed in further destroying the United States economy. So there he is, in the middle of a bankrupt state, telling people there they ain’t seen nothing yet to rounds of applause and the standing ovation from, of course, the wealthy Hollywood elites.

It could also be said that the rise or Reganomics has created a middle class that will never be able to dig itself out of debt. Once deregulation swept across the playing field, and wages were kept from growing, we had an entire class of people dependent on credit to live. Want a house? Loan. Want a car? Loan. Want to go to college? Loan. Want to eat? Well, since you don’t have any money in the bank because you’ve been paying for a house, car and schooling, you better have a credit card! It didn’t used to be like this. An entire family could be supported by a single job. But Reganomics was the starter gun that sent credit companies racing for the savings of the middle class. Now we have an economy that doesn’t actually PRODUCE ANYTHING EXCEPT DEBT!! That’s where the failures are. I honestly am not completely on the apple cart with Obama’s stimulus packages. I think there are plenty of things that he shouldn’t do, things he should do differently and things he hasn’t even considered that would be essential. But he is honestly doing more for us now than has been done in, well, at least 8 years. Then maybe, when his plan is given time to flourish, we can start taking a serious look at ending the war on drugs, legalizing marijuana, neutering the health insurance industry, providing free college education for anyone who wants it, paying our teachers like doctors, providing health care for all so we have a healthy work force, opening up dialogues with our enemies so we can understand why they hate us, and they can understand why we don’t hate them.  Oh, and enough with the Hollywood Elite bullshit.  Just because they’re famous doesn’t mean they don’t have valid opinions.  I can think of a certain president from 1980 – 1988 who was Hollywood Elite, after all.

In conclusion. Rush Limbaugh is a fucking idiot.

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