Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Rage Against the Machine

“To Rush Limbaugh: Hey Jackass, stop using our music on your racist, misogynist, right wing clown show. Sincerely, Rage Against The Machine”

- Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, sends a message to Rush Limbaugh via Twitter.

This is now the third band/musician to enjoin Limbaugh from the use of their music. Both Peter Gabriel and the Canadian rock group, Rush, were the first to order Limbaugh to cease and desist playing their music on air after the hatemonger’s comments re Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Congress on contraception.

Via Bob Cesca

Follow the Money

No need to wonder any longer why Romney has been so reluctant to criticize Limbaugh over his “slut” comment. The Daily Beast:

Fourteen directors of Clear Channel, the company that hosts the Rush Limbaugh show, have contributed $726,400 to Mitt Romney since 1994, most of it in the current presidential campaign. Romney has come under attack for refusing to criticize Limbaugh’s comments about Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, other than to say that calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute” was “not the language I would have used.”

Romney’s former company, Bain Capital, acquired Clear Channel in 2008 with another Boston-based investment firm, Thomas H. Lee Partners (THL), so five of the entertainment company’s directors that have given to Romney come from Bain, while three are affiliated with the Lee firm. Three other directors are members of the Mays family that founded the company and continued to run it until 2011, when CEO Mark Mays stepped down. The remaining three donor directors come from other investment firms.

The $26 billion merger, which was launched simultaneously with Romney’s first presidential candidacy in late 2006 and placed Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and much of the talk-show right under Bain/Lee control, also involved Romney’s longtime law firm, Ropes & Gray, whose managing partner is the trustee of the family’s blind trust. David C. Chapin, a lead Ropes lawyer on the merger, has also given $12,700 to Romney, and five other partners who worked on it added another $10,400.

While Bain partners, employees and family members, including the Clear Channel directors, have given a combined $4.7 million to Romney’s two presidential campaigns, THL also has a long history of Romney support, with some donations dating back to Romney’s first, unsuccessful run against Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1994. THL tallies $180,300 including its Putnam affiliate and led by its co-chairs, Scott Schoen, Anthony Dinovi, and Scott Sperling. With Sperling’s wife and son contributing as well, Sperling has donated $25,100 to Romney, starting in 1994. In The Real Romney, the recent biography written by Boston Globe reporters Michael Kranish and Scott Helman, Sperling is credited with spearheading “the biggest investment of Romney’s career,” the highly lucrative purchase and quick sale of a credit company named Experian. Sperling is a Clear Channel director, and THL and Bain are deeply invested in the company, one of the largest deals ever done by either equity firm.

Quote of the Day

“By the way, you know what a slut is? A guy who takes erection pills to the Dominican Republic without any female companions. We can only assume the purpose was to engage in anonymous sex with one or more partners — he didn’t bring one or two, but an entire bottle indicating he planned to have sex multiple times. That’s a slut.”

- Progressive pundit, Bob Cesca in a piece for The Daily Banter, obviously referring to Conservative radio show host, “she’s a slut” Rush Limbaugh.

Jon Stewart Takedown of Rush Limbaugh, Radio Sleaze

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention, a Georgetown law student, Sandra Fluke, recently testified before the House on coverage of contraception by insurance companies. Ergo, Limbaugh took this and did a smear job on Fluke, calling her a “slut” and a “prostitute”.

Although Limbaugh made a non-apology apology, national advertisers, under some pressure on social media sites such as Twitter, are canceling their ad contracts in near droves. Two radio stations have also cancelled Limbaugh’s show, and it’s beginning to look like Rush’s radio show may go the way of Glenn Beck’s television show. And that is a very good thing.

So anyway, Stewart threw on a hazmat thingy to protect himself from Limbaugh’s bile, and dove into the slime.

Watch:

Best line from the takedown:

“To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don't like: Welcome to the f*cking club. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies, and diaphragms are on me!”

Morning Quote: George Will

“Mr. Boehner comes out and says, Rush's language was inappropriate. Using a salad fork for your entree, that's inappropriate. Not this stuff... And it was depressing, because what it indicates is that the Republican leaders are afraid of Rush Limbaugh. They want to bomb Iran, but they're afraid of Rush Limbaugh.”

- Conservative Washington Post columnist, George Will, on ‘This Week’, deriding Republican leaders for their miserably inadequate response to Rush Limbaugh, who called Sandra Fluke, a law student at Georgetown who testified before a House committee regarding contraception, a “slut” and a “prostitute”.

While President Obama has denounced Limbaugh’s comments as “reprehensible,”  Republican leaders and GOP presidential candidates have used far milder language.

Stupid Quote of the Day

Rush Limbaugh:

“There is a revenue stream called tax cuts.”

Quick Take: Rush Limbaugh Losing Audience

Some good news by way of Business Insider, which notes that Rush Limbaugh’s ratings are down by 33% in the past six months.

With a lull in ratings since November, Rush Limbaugh had a 3.0 share of listeners for his radio time slot, which is a 33% slide from October and from last April, reports Crain's Business.

Morning Quote

Rush Limbaugh had the utter gall to tear in to the First Lady for eating a rib dinner in Colorado, on a ski vacation with her kids. He accused her of hypocrisy, and inferred that she is fat. Has that fool looked in the mirror lately?

Listen:

 

cousin avi responds, and obliterates the dumbstupid Limbaugh in an awesome manner, as well as describing Michelle Obama to a T. Enjoy:

What strikes me, though, is the rather obvious core motive for it. Michelle Obama is a beautiful, strong mother of two, exudes class, makes dress designers look talented, and holds a JD from Harvard Law School. She's not only obviously healthy, profoundly charming, and stone cold competent, she's the First Lady of the United States.

Rush, Viagra/Oxycontin/Dominican Sex Tours notwithstanding, is a fat dropout currently married to the fourth woman who could hold down her gag reflex long enough to sign a pre-nup to get close to all that money.
The bitterness...it stings. And no amount of money or Haitian child prostitutes can make the pain stop.

Adding…. another commenter on Cesca’s site pointed out that FLOTUS wasn’t exactly eating a bunch of high cal ribs like most of us do when we eat ribs, she was having a much lower calorie, healthier, and more elegant treat at Kelly Liken:

- pickled pumpkin salad with arugula
- braised ancho-chile short rib with hominy wild mushrooms
- sautéed kale

Bite us, Limbaugh.

via Bob Cesca

Video & Transcript: Alan Grayson Goes After Fox News Hosts/ Bush Era Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

Via Huffington Post:

Grayson took to the House floor to debate the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy with seven large cardboard slides, each complete with a color headshot of the person and a description of how prolonging the current tax rates for the top two-percent of income earners in the United States would benefit those individuals.

His argument: Fox News contributors such as Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly and Sarah Palin, as well as the previous president of the United States himself, support, and in some cases aggressively lobby for, the complete extension of the Bush tax cuts because they would pad their pockets with an additional six-figure (in Rush Limbaugh's case, seven-figure) sum each year.

"They want tax cuts for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves," Grayson said. "Instead of placating these people and letting them spew out onto the airwaves their lies about the Bush tax cuts without ever revealing the fact that they stand to gain millions, millions of dollars each year from their selfish desire to take advantage of the rest of America, let's do this: Let's take that money and create jobs."

Watch:

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Madam Speaker, we've heard endless braying from the Republicans, time after time, demanding an extension of tax cuts for the rich in this country. They tell us that somehow extending tax cuts for the rich will somehow create jobs. When we've had tax cuts for the rich for nine years and I haven't noticed a lot of jobs being created in nine years.

The Bigot, Rush Limbaugh, on Native Americans and Thanksgiving

Ah, the bigotry is breathtaking. Perhaps soon the bigots will once again be seen publicly in full regalia, white hoods and all. From HuffPost [Limbaugh remarks are in bold, emphasis mine]:

Rush Limbaugh tried to rain on Barack Obama's Thanksgiving Day parade, lashing out against a proclamation issued by the president to honor the national holiday and the story behind it.

He also went on the war path against Native Americans, calling for a look at the "scoreboard" of number of people killed since European settlers arrived, and insisting that "a bunch of Native Americans scammed us" in the deal to purchase Manhattan.

As found in the show's transcript, Limbaugh interprets Obama's version of events:

So, we were the invaders. We were incompetent idiots. We didn't know how to feed ourselves so they came along and showed us how and that's what Thanksgiving is all about.[...]

Every cliche that is wrong about Thanksgiving shows up in his proclamation: The Pilgrims showed up at Plymouth. The Indians have been their for thousands of years. We get off the boats. We don't know how to feed ourselves. The Indians show us how.

[Obama] said that Thanksgiving is about the Indians saving us, with their agriculture and everything else. The true story of Thanksgiving is socialism failed. Of course we showed them gratitude! We shared our bounty with them, not because we didn't know how to make it. It was because we first failed as socialists. Only when we turned capitalists did we have plenty. The Indians didn't teach us capitalism.

You can find President Obama’s Thanksgiving remarks here.

H/T Bob Cesca

Rush Limbaugh's Silly A$$ Red Baiting

Limbaugh, moron that he is, compares the Cold War to the fight over Park51.

Yeah, to uphold American values as documented in our Constitution, is waaaay too much for Muslim Americans to ask...

We're now fighting the mosqueovites.

. Give me a freaking break.