October 17, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
DEPRAVED RIGHT-WINGERS
For years, faithful Rush Limbaugh fans have called themselves "Ditto Heads." They let Limbaugh do their thinking and their talking for them. So it's probably fair to assume that the Ditto Heads believe veterans of the Iraq war are "phony soldiers," or that Michael J. Fox was just faking his Parkinson's disease. After all, that's what Rush said. Limbaugh and others of his ilk just keeping sinking lower and lower into the muck. They can't talk about legitimate issues because the American people and people around the world don't support their hideous view of the world. So now they attack injured twelve year kids who get government health care assistance, or they foam at the mouth that Al Gore got awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. Maybe they're in such a frenzy because their time is quickly approaching its end. Let Limbaugh and O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter go off into that place reserved for the vilest of the vile. This commentary by Eric Boehlert is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
The examples of depravity were everywhere last week, with virtually every robotic right-wing blogger dutifully dumping on the Frost family, and often doing it with a demented sense of glee. Go here to read Weekly Standard blogger Samantha Sault's take on the Frost story and count the number of falsehoods she passed along, while making fun ("just for laughs") of the working family with two seriously injured children. Also note that when the right-wing lies about the Frosts were quickly disproved (i.e. they do not pay $20,000 a year to send their kids to private schools), Sault failed to acknowledge the litany of smears she helped spread about a 12-year-old boy who survived a coma. (No wonder so few people take the Weekly Standard seriously when it lectures The New Republic about journalism ethics; the Standard appears to have none of its own.)
But the whole messy slime offensive against the Frost family came as no surprise to anyone who follows Malkin and her army of true believers. As I detailed last winter and spring, they're most dangerous when they accidentally bump into some facts and suddenly think they're Woodward and Bernstein.
Showing posts with label Limbaugh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Limbaugh. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
June 13, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LIMBAUGH TAKE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
I should point out that I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. But today I had to get a shuttle ride home because my car is getting maintenance and, unfortunately, the shuttle driver had KKKMJ Radio on. Immigrants, Limbaugh says, are people Democrats "can control." He said that "Democrats are running out of victims." According to Limbaugh's skewed vision of the world, Democrats want low-paid people in the country who will vote for Democrats because Democrats support social programs that help poor people. Never mind that under Democratic administrations poverty decreases and more people rise into the middle class. It is people like Limbaugh who want a permanent underclass. Even more, people like Limbaugh don't want government to intervene to help the poor. The poor are victims of a predatory capitalist system. I like this article by Barbara Ehrenreich just because Limbaugh was trashing it. It's at www.thenation.com:
The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one's plate.
Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it's far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless. In the recent book There's No José Here: Following the Lives of Mexican Immigrants, Gabriel Thompson cites a construction company manager who says things like, "I've got to get myself a couple of Josés for this job if we're going to have that roof patched up by Saturday." Forget the Juans, Diegos, and Eduardos - they're all interchangeable "Josés."
Hence no doubt the ease with which some prominent immigrant-bashers forget their own personal reliance on immigrant labor, like Nevada's Governor Jim Gibbons, who, it turns out, once employed an undocumented nanny. And as the Boston Globe revealed late last year, Mitt Romney's lawn in suburban Boston was maintained by illegal immigrants from Guatemala.
THE RICH: BY THE NUMBERS
The aforementioned Rush Limbaugh, like so many reactionaries, is aghast at the concept of the "redistribution of wealth." That's only a problem with Limbaugh if the "redistribution" goes to middle class and poor people. As long as the money is being vacuumed up by the very rich, there's no problem. It should outrage us that the Walton family, among the richest people who have ever lived on the planet, prosper at the expense of their underpaid employees. There is no excuse for people being hungry in this country, or homeless, or going without medical care. The system effectively blocks getting a world class education, that panacea for what ails us, because college is too expensive. This article by Clara Jeffery is at www.motherjones.com:
AMONG THE FORBES 400 who gave to a 2004 presidential campaign, 72% gave to Bush.
IN 2005, there were 9 million American millionaires, a 62% increase since 2002.
IN 2005, 25.7 million Americans received food stamps, a 49% increase since 2000.
ONLY ESTATES worth more than $1.5 million are taxed. That’s less than 1% of all estates. Still, repealing the estate tax will cost the government at least $55 billion a year.
ONLY 3% OF STUDENTS at the top 146 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile; only 10% come from the bottom half.
BUSH’S TAX CUTS GIVE a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722—or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
LIMBAUGH TAKE ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
I should point out that I don't listen to Rush Limbaugh. But today I had to get a shuttle ride home because my car is getting maintenance and, unfortunately, the shuttle driver had KKKMJ Radio on. Immigrants, Limbaugh says, are people Democrats "can control." He said that "Democrats are running out of victims." According to Limbaugh's skewed vision of the world, Democrats want low-paid people in the country who will vote for Democrats because Democrats support social programs that help poor people. Never mind that under Democratic administrations poverty decreases and more people rise into the middle class. It is people like Limbaugh who want a permanent underclass. Even more, people like Limbaugh don't want government to intervene to help the poor. The poor are victims of a predatory capitalist system. I like this article by Barbara Ehrenreich just because Limbaugh was trashing it. It's at www.thenation.com:
The punitive rage directed at illegal immigrants grows out of a larger blindness to the manual labor that makes our lives possible: The touching belief, in the class occupied by Rush Limbaugh among many others, that offices clean themselves at night and salad greens spring straight from the soil onto one's plate.
Native-born workers share in this invisibility, but it's far worse in the case of immigrant workers, who are often, for all practical purposes, nameless. In the recent book There's No José Here: Following the Lives of Mexican Immigrants, Gabriel Thompson cites a construction company manager who says things like, "I've got to get myself a couple of Josés for this job if we're going to have that roof patched up by Saturday." Forget the Juans, Diegos, and Eduardos - they're all interchangeable "Josés."
Hence no doubt the ease with which some prominent immigrant-bashers forget their own personal reliance on immigrant labor, like Nevada's Governor Jim Gibbons, who, it turns out, once employed an undocumented nanny. And as the Boston Globe revealed late last year, Mitt Romney's lawn in suburban Boston was maintained by illegal immigrants from Guatemala.
THE RICH: BY THE NUMBERS
The aforementioned Rush Limbaugh, like so many reactionaries, is aghast at the concept of the "redistribution of wealth." That's only a problem with Limbaugh if the "redistribution" goes to middle class and poor people. As long as the money is being vacuumed up by the very rich, there's no problem. It should outrage us that the Walton family, among the richest people who have ever lived on the planet, prosper at the expense of their underpaid employees. There is no excuse for people being hungry in this country, or homeless, or going without medical care. The system effectively blocks getting a world class education, that panacea for what ails us, because college is too expensive. This article by Clara Jeffery is at www.motherjones.com:
AMONG THE FORBES 400 who gave to a 2004 presidential campaign, 72% gave to Bush.
IN 2005, there were 9 million American millionaires, a 62% increase since 2002.
IN 2005, 25.7 million Americans received food stamps, a 49% increase since 2000.
ONLY ESTATES worth more than $1.5 million are taxed. That’s less than 1% of all estates. Still, repealing the estate tax will cost the government at least $55 billion a year.
ONLY 3% OF STUDENTS at the top 146 colleges come from families in the bottom income quartile; only 10% come from the bottom half.
BUSH’S TAX CUTS GIVE a 2-child family earning $1 million an extra $86,722—or Harvard tuition, room, board, and an iMac G5 for both kids.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
May 08, 2007
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: WAR GOOD, ENVIRONMENT BAD
George W. Bush has used the excuse that tighter environmental standards to reduce greenhouse emissions could hurt the economy, but he doesn't mention the economic harm done by war. Contrary to common assumptions, war is not a good stimulus for the economy. After a few years it starts to have a negative impact on job creation. In this article Dean Baker takes a look at the economic consequences of this debacle in Iraq. The article is at www.commondreams.org;
In order to better inform the debate, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned the econometric forecasting firm Global Insight to simulate the impact of a sustained increase in military spending equal to one percentage point of GDP, or $140 billion annually at present (approximately the same increase that has taken place since 2001). Global Insight was selected because it has a highly respected econometric model and is one of the oldest econometric forecasting firms in the country (it was formed from the merger of WEFA and DRI).
The model showed that after an initial stimulus, the impact of higher military spending turns negative around the sixth year. By the tenth year, the economy is projected to have 464,000 fewer payroll jobs in the high-spending scenario. If the higher spending persists for 20 years, the simulation shows job loss reaching 670,000. The job loss is concentrated in construction and manufacturing, with the construction sector projected to lose 144,000 in the tenth year and the manufacturing sector 95,000. By the twentieth year, the number of construction jobs is projected to be 211,000 lower in the high military spending scenario.
The projections also show a considerably larger trade deficit, which would add roughly $1.8 trillion (in 2007 dollars) to the foreign debt in 20 years (approximately nine percent of GDP). In the twentieth year, car sales are projected to be 730,000 lower in the high military spending scenario, while housing starts and sales are projected to be down by 39,000 and 287,000, respectively.
MCCARTHYISM THEN AND NOW
One of the most shameful periods in American history was during the 1950's when Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an anti-Communist hysteria that destroyed lives and careers. People who had done absolutely wrong suddenly found themselves blacklisted and unable to get work. The techniques of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee were to get people to name their friends and associates as "Communist sympathizers." It was a kind of smear pyramid scheme. In our time we've seen McCarthyism revived by people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly. We heard George W. Bush claim that "you're with us or against us," as though any dissent from his policies was treason. This article by Walter C. Uhler contrasts the 1950's and now with a look at a voice of reason, the late George Kennan. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Kennan excoriated McCarthyism's "alarmed and exercized anti-communism," as "an anti-communism of a quite special variety, bearing an air of excited discovery and proprietorship, as though no one had ever known before that there was a communist danger, as though no one had ever thought about it and taken its measure, as though it had all begun about the year 1945 and these people were the first to learn of it."
President Bush behaved the same way, as if "alarmed and exercised" anti-terrorism rhetoric would enable him to hide his failures to prevent 9/11, notwithstanding numerous warnings about impending terrorist attacks. Attempting to gain proprietorship, Bush's numerous asinine assertions about the terrorists demonstrated that he didn't have a clue.
First, he ignorantly claimed: "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." Then he foolishly promised to "rout out terror wherever it may exist." [Woodward, p.73] More ominously, he would "make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." [p. 30] Finally, he also promised to "rid the world of evil." [p. 67]
Such words befit an overeager, ignorant, petulant child, not a mature statesman. Yet, can any less be said of all the Americans, who found such nonsense persuasive? No wonder citizens throughout the rest of the world consider the United States to be the greatest menace to world peace.
IMPEACH BUSH
IMPEACH CHENEY
BUSH: WAR GOOD, ENVIRONMENT BAD
George W. Bush has used the excuse that tighter environmental standards to reduce greenhouse emissions could hurt the economy, but he doesn't mention the economic harm done by war. Contrary to common assumptions, war is not a good stimulus for the economy. After a few years it starts to have a negative impact on job creation. In this article Dean Baker takes a look at the economic consequences of this debacle in Iraq. The article is at www.commondreams.org;
In order to better inform the debate, the Center for Economic and Policy Research commissioned the econometric forecasting firm Global Insight to simulate the impact of a sustained increase in military spending equal to one percentage point of GDP, or $140 billion annually at present (approximately the same increase that has taken place since 2001). Global Insight was selected because it has a highly respected econometric model and is one of the oldest econometric forecasting firms in the country (it was formed from the merger of WEFA and DRI).
The model showed that after an initial stimulus, the impact of higher military spending turns negative around the sixth year. By the tenth year, the economy is projected to have 464,000 fewer payroll jobs in the high-spending scenario. If the higher spending persists for 20 years, the simulation shows job loss reaching 670,000. The job loss is concentrated in construction and manufacturing, with the construction sector projected to lose 144,000 in the tenth year and the manufacturing sector 95,000. By the twentieth year, the number of construction jobs is projected to be 211,000 lower in the high military spending scenario.
The projections also show a considerably larger trade deficit, which would add roughly $1.8 trillion (in 2007 dollars) to the foreign debt in 20 years (approximately nine percent of GDP). In the twentieth year, car sales are projected to be 730,000 lower in the high military spending scenario, while housing starts and sales are projected to be down by 39,000 and 287,000, respectively.
MCCARTHYISM THEN AND NOW
One of the most shameful periods in American history was during the 1950's when Senator Joseph McCarthy launched an anti-Communist hysteria that destroyed lives and careers. People who had done absolutely wrong suddenly found themselves blacklisted and unable to get work. The techniques of the House UnAmerican Activities Committee were to get people to name their friends and associates as "Communist sympathizers." It was a kind of smear pyramid scheme. In our time we've seen McCarthyism revived by people like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly. We heard George W. Bush claim that "you're with us or against us," as though any dissent from his policies was treason. This article by Walter C. Uhler contrasts the 1950's and now with a look at a voice of reason, the late George Kennan. The article is at www.smirkingchimp.com:
Kennan excoriated McCarthyism's "alarmed and exercized anti-communism," as "an anti-communism of a quite special variety, bearing an air of excited discovery and proprietorship, as though no one had ever known before that there was a communist danger, as though no one had ever thought about it and taken its measure, as though it had all begun about the year 1945 and these people were the first to learn of it."
President Bush behaved the same way, as if "alarmed and exercised" anti-terrorism rhetoric would enable him to hide his failures to prevent 9/11, notwithstanding numerous warnings about impending terrorist attacks. Attempting to gain proprietorship, Bush's numerous asinine assertions about the terrorists demonstrated that he didn't have a clue.
First, he ignorantly claimed: "They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." Then he foolishly promised to "rout out terror wherever it may exist." [Woodward, p.73] More ominously, he would "make no distinction between those who planned these acts and those who harbor them." [p. 30] Finally, he also promised to "rid the world of evil." [p. 67]
Such words befit an overeager, ignorant, petulant child, not a mature statesman. Yet, can any less be said of all the Americans, who found such nonsense persuasive? No wonder citizens throughout the rest of the world consider the United States to be the greatest menace to world peace.
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