When I was in Arizona this past March I was a little appalled to find out my mom listens to Rush Limbaugh. Then I figured out she listens to him for the same reason I do, that being that he can be amusing and ridiculously aggravating, with his insipid rantifying, at times.
My mom can take listening to Rush Limbaugh longer than I can stand it. At the longest, I can listen to a half hour, usually way less.
The ridiculous nonsense has been amped up due to the election next month, that and there having been a Democrat in the White House for almost 4 years.
Limbaugh can say the stupidest stuff, and then repeat the stupid stuff over and over again, with, I guess, no one in his audience telling him he is wrong, even though the listener may know he is wrong but does not call to wise the man up.
In the past week, in the short periods I listen to Rush, I have heard him repeat, multiple times, that no president has been re-elected with the unemployment number being 8% or above. Apparently Mr. Limbaugh has never heard of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Some of the right wing nutjobs, like Limbaugh, have been crusading conspiratorially that the unemployment figures are the result of the Obama administration somehow cooking the books, because if the unemployment number were 8%, or above, come election day, no way could Obama be re-elected, because no incumbent ever has.
Except for FDR, whom Limbaugh neglects to mention. Or does not realize was an American President.
And now we've got the cadre of so-called Conservatives, who really aren't conservatives, but are more accurately identified as being irrational reactionaries, screaming that Obama and his administration's supposed lies, regarding the deadly consulate attack in Benghazi, are worse than Watergate.
To say such a thing is just embarrassing, much more embarrassing than that whole not knowing FDR got re-elected when the unemployment rate was above 8% embarrassment.
Read part of Limbaugh's rant from today's radio show, as transcribed on Rush Limbaugh's website, in an article titled "Obama's Libya Lies: Worse Than Watergate" and you'll get a good dose of the whacked out nonsense that the rightwingers are spewing in their alternative universe.
Anybody else from the regime who went out and tried to blame what happened to our ambassador at Benghazi and in Cairo on this video was lying, big time. Top officials at the State Department are unwilling to fall on their swords and take the blame for the lies. The AP, Administration Press, is reporting State Department officials have briefed reporters (all except Fox, they weren't invited) about what really happened at the US consulate there, and they say that they never linked the attack to the anti-Muslim video.
"That was not our conclusion," and the question about linkage is for others to answer, which, if the State Department says we had nothing to do with it, where else did this lie originate? Where else could it have originated? The White House, which is quite telling. This is a major falling out here between the radical left State Department, the radical left White House. The State Department has thrown everybody at the regime overboard and under the bus on this. This ought to be the lead story. I mentioned yesterday or the day before in a brief monologue about how I think the current acceptance of all of this economic deterioration as the new norm is directly traceable to Bill Clinton and his moral failings and our being told that we had to accept that as the new norm.
I made the point here that this is bigger than Watergate. If Watergate were to happen today and it was a Democrat president, it would be tolerated. It would be applauded and praised as brilliant political strategerizing and foresight in thinking if the Democrats did it. But folks, an American citizen is arrested, an American ambassador is dead, three other Americans are dead.
Bigger than Watergate? What's next? Limbaugh demanding to know what Obama knew and when did he know it? Which was one of the classic Watergate questions, as in, what did Nixon know and when did he know it?
Watergate was an epic scandal, a once in a lifetime scandal, the only presidential scandal that led to a president resigning.
And Rush Limbaugh thinks Benghazi-gate is worse than Watergate?
The Know Nothing Party arose in the 1850s. It's official name was the American Party. In the presidential election of 1856 former president, Millard Fillmore was the Know Nothing nominee. Fillmore had been a Whig, but the Whig Party was no more.
Fillmore's Know Nothing campaign slogan was "I Know Nothing but my Country, my whole Country, and Nothing but my Country."
The Know Nothings where known for being xenophobic and anti-Catholic, with other groups also targeted, like Irish and German immigrants, because the Know Nothings thought the country was being over-run by these groups. Hence the Know Nothings wanted to curb immigration and naturalization. Only male Protestants of British lineage could become a Know Nothing.
Do you see any commonalities between the Know Nothings of the 1850s and the Rush Limbaugh type self-described conservative Know Nothings of the 2010s?
Which brings to mind that saying that goes something like "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it."
Methinks the modern Republican Party may be doomed to becoming known as the Second Coming of the Know Nothing Party, and, in its place, a new party will rise. This happened many a time in the past. Not so much in the last 100 years.
But, as recently as 1912, Teddy Roosevelt ran for president on the Progressive ("Bull Moose") Party ticket and came in second to the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, with Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, the incumbent Republican, coming in 3rd with only 8 electoral votes, with Roosevelt getting 88.
So far, Taft has been the only incumbent American President to come in 3rd place in a bid for re-election. I don't know what the unemployment numbers were when Taft suffered his massive defeat.....
