Rush Limbaugh

Pat Robertson Voodoo Doll on eBay

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eBay - Pat Robertson Voodoo Doll to benefit HaitiPat Robertson, as you probably already know, decided to rant about Haiti making a deal with the devil to get free of the French which, according to Robertson, is why Haiti has such problems… like earthquakes.

Nevermind that Haiti didn’t make a deal with the devil (or that the devil doesn’t exist) or that devil-deals are supposed to make things awesome (until you die) or that the cause of earthquakes is pretty well known or that thousands of people have died and thousands more are injured and at serious risk of dying… Robertson decided to take the opportunity to peddle his nonsensical, self-righteous bigotry instead of doing something to help those in need.

Well, johnnyvoodoo on eBay has decided to take matters into his own hands and is auctioning a Pat Robertson Voodoo Doll with 100% of the proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders to help with relief efforts in Haiti.

After an exclusive deal with devil, we are finally able to bring black magic into your very own home!  The lucky winner of this auction will attain the soul of Televangelist PAT ROBERTSON in a handheld figurine comprised of the finest straw, cloth, and other organic natural materials!

Ever wanted to cause Pat Robertson a massive headache?  give him back pain?  jab him in the crotch?   Of course you have!  Well then BID NOW to own your very own pysical representation of the dark, dark soul of Pat Robertson.

Accessories included with the doll are Pat’s very own “HOLY” BIBLE and BAG OF MONEY taken from real Americans!  WOW!

The bidding started at 99 cents and, at the time of this writing, was up to $1,200… with 73 bids! (see updates) The idea is awsome, but as johnnyvoodoo says, “the truly awesome people are the bidders.”

In addition, there’s evidently been enough requests that he’s also offering a Rush Limbaugh Voodoo Doll which includes a microphone and a bottle of Oxycontin. The high bid is currently $338.33 with 29 bids.

Each auction is a perfect combination of fundraising, humor, and (well deserved) smackdown!

(via)

Update (1/19/10 @ 11:00am): It seems the Pat Robertson auction has been removed. The Rush Limbaugh auction is still up. I sent a message to johnnyvoodoo asking what happened. I’ll post here if I get an answer. I’m very disappointed.

Update (1/19/10 @ 12:30pm): johnnyvoodoo said that the Red Cross had asked for the auction to be removed… I assume so it wasn’t associated with the dissing of Pat Robertson… so the new auction is to benefit Habitat for Humanity. New auction here. Links have been updated. Sadly, the auction had to be restarted.

Update (1/19/10 @ 9:30pm): Evidently, the new listing was taken down as well because it offered something for sale that didn’t exist. I think it was Pat Robertson’s soul or something, the existence of which johnnyvoodoo admitted he could not prove. So it’s been relisted at this URL. Sadly, again the auction had to be restarted and is without the funny commentary in the description. It also now benefits Doctors Without Borders. The Rush Limbaugh voodoo doll auction has also been removed. eBay has made me sad. That was quite a bit of money that was going to go for charity.

Update (1/20/10 @ 1:40pm): The Rush Limbaugh doll has been relisted. johnnyvoodoo is a hero for perservering through all the item removals and eBay policy issues.

Right turn, Clyde… or not.

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I’ve mentioned before that I wish the Republican party would “go back to being the fiscally conservative, small government party they used to be instead of the religious, anti-science, anti-intellectual, anti-environment party they are now.”

Andrew Sullivan, over at The Daily Dish,  seems to have the same idea, but in more detail. Andrew and I are not alone, either, since I’ve seen links to his post from two other blogs today, as well as a post by Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs who also put together a list of why he’s parted ways with the Right. No doubt there are plenty more who agree with these folks.

Here’s a sampling of items from both posts that I find particularly noteworthy (though I recommend going through the full posts of both blog authors).

From Andrew Sullivan:

  • I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.
  • I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.
  • I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.
  • I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.
  • I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy
  • I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.
  • I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations.

From Charles Johnson (reasons why he parted ways with the Right):

  • Support for bigotry, hatred, and white supremacism (see: Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Robert Stacy McCain, Lew Rockwell, etc.)
  • Support for throwing women back into the Dark Ages, and general religious fanaticism (see: Operation Rescue, anti-abortion groups, James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Tony Perkins, the entire religious right, etc.)
  • Support for anti-science bad craziness (see: creationism, climate change denialism, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, James Inhofe, etc.)
  • Support for homophobic bigotry (see: Sarah Palin, Dobson, the entire religious right, etc.)
  • Support for anti-government lunacy (see: tea parties, militias, Fox News, Glenn Beck, etc.)
  • Support for conspiracy theories and hate speech (see: Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Birthers, creationists, climate deniers, etc.)
  • A right-wing blogosphere that is almost universally dominated by raging hate speech (see: Hot Air, Free Republic, Ace of Spades, etc.)
  • Hatred for President Obama that goes far beyond simply criticizing his policies, into racism, hate speech, and bizarre conspiracy theories (see: witch doctor pictures, tea parties, Birthers, Michelle Malkin, Fox News, World Net Daily, Newsmax, and every other right wing source)

I think all of those issues are critical issues with the Right, but I tend to focus in on the anti-science, anti-intellectual issues like evolution and climate change… and then I just continue down the path of monumental incredulity at the crap that is touted, supported, and defended by what used to be a fiscally and bureaucratically conservative and responsible party.

I will grant that not all Republicans are this way, but the party in general (or as Andrew Sullivan puts it… “in so far as it means the dominant mode of discourse among the institutions and blogs and magazines and newspapers and journals that support the GOP”) has taken on the self-righteous air of superiority, while in practice, promoting ignorance, hatred, and the idea that the better educated you are, the smarter you are, and the more experience you have, the less qualified you are to partake in intellectually challenging endeavors.

If this country is going to improve its status (and it does need improving) or even maintain its current position in the world, the Right needs to change its ways or get out of the way, because its current pattern of blocking science and education, glorifying ignorance, and pounding its virtual fists on the podium of bigotry doesn’t cut it and it won’t cut it in the future.

As Charles Johnson said:

The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff.

I won’t be going over the cliff with them.

I won’t be jumping off that cliff, either.

Rush Limbaugh Logic

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Rush Limbaugh Listening to Rush again, I came to the conclusion that he really has a tough job. He’s got to talk, almost non-stop, for hours a day… is it four hours? Five? I’m not sure how long his show lasts each day (I can only listen for 10 minutes or so). He also has to put together and edit audio clips that eliminate anything that contradicts what he’s saying and that he can spin to support his rants. Then (and this he doesn’t, perhaps, do quite as well), he has to try to logically tie everything together as though he’s an analytical genius who represents truth, intelligence, and the average American.

His ties from a politician’s statement to a brilliant analysis tend to be weak… or even non-existent. However, he spins better than Bill O’Reilly, twisting the facts in torturous ways that would make even the most seasoned CIA operative cringe.

Here’s an example. I made it up. He didn’t really say this, but it’s pretty accurately along the line of the stuff he does say.

Democratic Politician: I’m not really that fond of hamburgers.

Rush: You heard it here, folks! He has declared that he wants this administration to eliminate the beef industry and he will do whatever it takes to help them make it happen!

Perhaps that sounds like a bit of an exaggeration, but if it is, it’s not much of one. Rush makes those kinds of "connections" on a regular basis and generally provides no evidence to back up his statements. When he does, he plays carefully edited clips that provide no context (other than what he gives himself).

While this does indicate that Rush is a very savvy entertainer, it’s somewhat frightening to me that he is taken seriously… by anyone. His shtick is hateful, disturbed, misleading, and spiteful, yet people listen to him with rapt attention, as though every word he utters is auditory gold.

But he knows how to pander to his audience.

More Rush stupidity.

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I can’t accuse Limbaugh of ignorance on this one because that implies that he just doesn’t have the information. This time, it’s just a case of stupid.

I found this article from Metavirus over on Library Grape about Governor Sanford’s affair and what the cause was. Jimmy Kimmel had some humor (I’m assuming), but Rush took the cake with this…

Rush Limbaugh, without a hint of humor, argued that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) cheated on his wife, betrayed his family, and abandoned his professional responsibilities to fly off to Argentina … and it’s President Obama’s fault.

“This is almost like, ‘I don’t give a damn, the country’s going to Hell in a handbasket, I just want out of here,'” Limbaugh said. “[Sanford] had just tried to fight the stimulus money coming to South Carolina. He didn’t want any part of it; he lost the battle. He said, ‘What the hell. I mean, the federal government’s taking over — what the hell, I want to enjoy life.'”

Limbaugh added, “The point is, there are a lot of people whose spirit is just — they’re fed up, saying, ‘To hell with it, I don’t even want to fight this anymore, I just want to get away from it.'”

A listener apparently sent Limbaugh an email during the program, asking if he was kidding about the White House’s economic policies being responsible for Sanford’s affair. “No!” he said, adding that the governor may have realized, “The Democrats are destroying the country; we can’t do anything to stop it.”

As a general rule, I try to avoid name-calling… though I’m having a tough time refraining in this case because it seems to be somewhat warranted.

Metavirus sums it up thusly…

Remember when conservatives used to say that liberals were opposed to people taking responsibility for their own actions? Good times, good times.

Or, if you’d rather go with lolspeak…

Teh stoopid! It burnzz!!

Rush Limbaugh is profoundly ignorant

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Rush LimbaughEvery now and then, I listen to Rush just to see what he’s up to. Usually, I find him ranting, sometimes incoherently, about the evils of the Democratic party or giving some sort of out-there, right-wing dissertation on how to interpret the latest actions of the liberal elite. It’s entertaining, in a “pandering to intellectual vapidity” kind of way, but I end up shaking my head in dismay within 5 or 10 minutes, after which I change the station, lest my eyes glaze over and I veer uncontrollably off the freeway.

At times, however, Rush just gets his facts wrong… or contradicts himself… or misses the point. Today, he did all of the above in grand style. Not only that, but he displayed a huge amount of sheer ignorance about the subject on which he was speaking. Sadly, I don’t have a transcript, because it’s not on his site yet, since it was less than an hour ago that I heard this part of his show. However, I got the main gist of it.

There’s an addition to what he was calling the “cap and trade” bill. I didn’t hear the beginning, so I’m not sure of the exact bill, but the addition was a list of items related to gaining energy independence. The government would offer an award to anyone who could invent technology to accomplish any of the tasks in the list during the next 10 or 20 years. The list included solar energy, better gas mileage, bio-fuels efficiency, and a number of other items that we don’t currently know how to do in any practical sense.

Rush lambasted the entire list, calling the items absurd or pointless or senseless… or some other combination of words that escapes me. He decried the list with exclamations such as “We don’t have the technology to even do that!” or “We’re nowhere near being able to do that!” or “If there was profit in it, we’d already have it now!” Evidently, in Rush’s little world, since it’s currently profitable to build Toyota Sequoias, we should have had them since the dawn of time. Or since nuclear energy is profitable, we should have had nuclear power plants way before the civil war.

But then he says the following about alternative energy as opposed to coal and oil (paraphrased until a transcript is available):

The coal already has the energy in it. All we have to do is dig it up. The oil already has energy in it. We just have to get it and refine it.

Magic coal and magic oil. The energy is already in it and magically appears in our homes just by digging it up! That’s all we have to do!

He then stated that our energy problems would be solved if we just drilled here at home… and that the world was nowhere near the point of running out of oil or natural gas… as if that would be a perfectly valid reason to never do any research into any alternative sources. Never mind pollution. Never mind cost. Don’t plan ahead. That would be bad… and silly.

Rush seems to have no concept of what research is or how it works. He misses the fundamental point that technology advances with research. It doesn’t just appear in a magic poof of spontaneous Republican ingenuity. The research takes work and it takes time and it takes money… and if it gets started now instead of next year, it puts us one year closer to a beneficial result. Rush seems to prefer doing nothing but burning coal and oil. Don’t bother with the research because “we don’t have that technology now.” Don’t bother rewarding those who can come up with more energy efficient solutions. Don’t bother improving technology so we don’t have to pollute the Earth. Don’t bother because we have plenty of oil and natural gas.

…and it seems Rush is producing most of the gas.