Donald Trump Desecrates The Nation's "Medal Of Freedom"

(These caricatures of Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh are by DonkeyHotey.)

The Medal of Freedom has traditionally been reserved for people who have contributed to making the United States a better country for all its citizens. In the past, this has been true for both Democratic and Republican presidents who have given the medal.

Donald Trump is different. For him, the medal is a reward for loyalty to him and for celebrities that he likes. And his latest awarding of the medal is nothing more than a desecration of it.

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, Trump awarded the Medal of Freedom to the most undeserving person ever to receive it -- Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh is a drug addict, a liar, a spreader of conspiracy theories, and a bully. If Limbaugh is deserving of the medal, the the medal no longer has any meaning.

Through his job as a radio personality, Limbaugh has spread lies that divided this country.

Here, from PolitiFact, are a few of his most outrageous lies:

"Obamacare is . . . the largest tax increase in the history of the world."

This is Pants on Fire. The Affordable Care Act did include limited tax increases, but they were much smaller than tax increases signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1982 and President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1968. Obamacare is not the largest tax increase in American history and therefore cannot be the largest in the history of the world.

"11 straight years of no major hurricanes striking land" in the United States "bores a hole right through the whole climate change argument."  

This is Pants on Fire. Looking only at major hurricanes that hit the United States ignores storm activity around the world. Also, storm frequency does not strictly correlate with rising temperature. Finally, many other data points prove that climate change is real.

"Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what's going to happen in 50 years or 30. Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next 10 years. They're always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true."

This is False. Earth is the hottest it has ever been, and the impact is observable. Also, climate change predictions from decades past have largely been borne out. Some models project out into the future because it shows trends. But scientists also have near-term projections available.

President Barack Obama "wants to mandate circumcision."

This is Pants on Fire. Limbaugh in 2009 cited a Fox News story about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studying circumcision as a way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, because studies showed the procedure reduced the transmission of the disease from women to men. The recommendations have been under discussion since 2007, when George W. Bush was president, and Obama had never spoken on the issue. 

People "can't go fishing anymore because of Obama."

This is Pants on Fire. In 2010, an Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force was studying regional water policy. Limbaugh took that early discussion about the use of waterways and twisted it to make it sound like a ban on fishing. 

Says House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry of President Donald Trump "doesn’t feature the opposition party, it doesn’t feature cross-examination."

This is False. Republicans on the House Intelligence, Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees — 47 in total — participated in hearings organized as part of the impeachment inquiry. Those members asked questions and actively critiqued the House Democrats’ actions. 

"You can't read a speech by George Washington . . . without hearing him reference God, the Almighty."

This is False. There are several public comments from Washington that don’t reference God, most notably Washington's second inaugural address. It had no references to God, direct or indirect. Nor did Washington's Second Annual Message to Congress, the sort of speech that would come to be known as the State of the Union.

Washington admired religion in general, saying in his 1796 farewell address that of all the habits that lead to political prosperity, "Religion and Morality are indispensable supports." But he feared religious sectarianism. He wrote that religious disputes are "the most inveterate and distressing," that they could "endanger the peace of society," and the Constitution established "effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny."

Says Obama shut down NASA space flights and turned the agency "into a Muslim outreach department."

This is False, but it’s an exaggeration of a real incident. New NASA chief Charles Bolden said in 2010 that Obama had made improving relations with the Middle East a priority and that Obama had told Bolden "to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering." The White House later clarified Bolden’s remarks, with spokesman Robert Gibbs saying, "That was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA."

Says the Obama administration "planned the influx of illegal alien children at the border."

This is Pants on Fire. The reasons for the 2014 surge of children from Central America at the U.S.-Mexico border were outside the control of the administration. The actual causes were rampant violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras; limited capacity in this country to quickly send these children home; and a belief in Central America that if you get over the border, you can stay in America. No expert we reached gave any credence to the idea that the administration planned it. 

The children coming across the southern U.S. border "were never examined after they got here and quarantined if they had a disease. They were just sent out across the country. Many of them had measles ... We now have an outbreak of it all because of our immigration policy."

This is Pants on Fire. Limbaugh was one of several voices linking illegal immigration to measles in 2015. The idea was that the children had measles and Washington took no precautions before allowing them to stay. But the federal government did examine the children; the protocol, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, was to provide "vaccinations to all children who do not have documentation of previous valid doses of vaccine." Three years later,  a measles outbreak in the United States was largely attributed by the CDC to a lack of vaccination in the Orthodox Jewish community.

Limbaugh Again Demonstrates His Mean-Spirited Depravity

It has only been a few days since Americans learned of the tragic death of Robin Williams -- but that hasn't stopped right-wing radio creep Rush Limbaugh from trying to besmirch William's good name to attack those on the left, and promote his own vicious and hateful views. He has once again shown his depravity by saying the following on the public airways:

Now, what is the left’s worldview in general? What is it? If you had to attach not a philosophy but an attitude to a leftist worldview, it’s one of pessimism and darkness, sadness.
 
They’re never happy, are they? They’re always angry about something. No matter what they get, they’re always angry.
 
They are animated in large part by the false promises of America, because the promises of America are not for everyone, as we see each and every day. I mean, right herethere’s a story Fox News website. Do you know, it says right here, that the real reasons that Robin Williams killed himself are he was embarrassed at having to take television roles after a sterling movie career.
 He had to take movie roles that were beneath him, sequels and so forth, and he finally had to do television just to get a paycheck because he was in so much financial distress.He’d had some divorces that ripped up his net worth, and he had a big ranch in Napa that he couldn’t afford any longer and had to put up for sale, and a house in Tiburon that he couldn’t afford anymore. This is all what’s in the Fox News story.  
 
He had it all, but he had nothing. He made everybody else laugh but was miserable inside. I mean, it fits a certain picture, or a certain image that the left has.Talk about low expectations and general unhappiness and so forth. 

Limbaugh has been losing advertisers and listeners for a while now, and has been taken off several big radio stations because they just can't make a profit by playing his hateful show. I have to believe he didn't do himself any good with this attack on Robin Williams.

The truth is that while Limbaugh's popularity is dropping like a rock, Robin Williams was a beloved entertainer. As the chart below shows, a whopping 86% of Americans had a favorable opinion of Robin Williams (and 52% of them had a very favorable opinion), while only 8% say they had an unfavorable opinion. Limbaugh couldn't come close to those kind of numbers even at the height of his popularity (and his mean-spirited remarks may well contain a tinge of jealousy). At any rate, his remarks will only be appreciated by a tiny percentage of Americans -- and could well accelerate his loss of advertisers and listeners. I think Lewis Black probably gave the best reply to Limbaugh when he said:

FUCK YOU Rush Limbaugh. Your statements were beyond cruel and stupid. They were intolerable. Enough is enough from you. You are an idiot. Don't you ever demean the death of another human being. He was my friend. You disgust me.

That pretty much sums up my feelings too -- and I suspect a huge majority of Americans would agree. Limbaugh's remarks were beyond the pale, and should be rejected by decent people of all political persuasions.

The chart above was made from information contained in a new Rasmussen Poll. The survey was done on August 13th and 14th of a random national sample of 1,000 adults, and has a margin of error of 3 points.

(The caricature of Rush Limbaugh above is by the one and only DonkeyHotey.)

Stations Carrying Limbaugh Doing Poorly In The Ratings

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

A few years ago, Rush Limbaugh was the king of talk radio and talk radio was very popular. Those days are gone. That is the opinion of industry expert Holland Cooke, who says:

The conversation really picked up on February 29, 2012, Leap Year Day which was Day 1 of this three-day Rush Limbaugh/Sandra Fluke faux pas. And, if we were studying the history of talk radio, you stick a pin in the timeline there because at that moment, a very well organized and relentless advertiser boycott effort which remains underway today, rendered that business inviable.

Hundreds of blue-chip national advertisers basically have not only wandered away from Rush Limbaugh and some of the other righties, they’ve abandoned the format entirely.  They are afraid to be heard on a news talk station because this man’s use of his free speech triggered the opposing viewpoint exercising THEIR right to free speech.

The boycotters are speaking and using the marketplace to say, “ENOUGH!”  So as a consequence of all of this, the very company that owns, for instance, The Rush Limbaugh Show, which owns a bunch of great big talk stations has actually demoted him to smaller talk stations in two really big markets.  You and I did an Ed Show about this at the time. In Los Angeles and San Francisco they moved him aside because his continuing presence was making it tough to make a go of it with the big stations.

So he was told to go sit at the kid’s table and the irony in this is that for years the radio righties have been cackling about progressive radio’s failure to attain their level of listenership while the radio lefties had to go sit at the kid’s table.  Well now he’s there. . .

So the short answer is talk radio as we know it, the crazy uncle righty politically monologue-based I’m right you’re wrong genre is mathematically in trouble.

How bad is it? Well look at the ratings of the stations carrying Rush Limbaugh's show in the biggest markets. The stations carrying Limbaugh are 22nd in New York, 37th in Los Angeles, 19th in Chicago, 21st in Dallas, and 27th in San Francisco. That's a far cry from where he was a couple of years ago. The company Rush works for has removed him from their big stations (because he was losing them too much market share and money), and put him on smaller stations with less power (and therefore less reach).

Now some will say that this is censorship and a violation of free speech -- but that is nonsense. The constitutional guarantee of free speech just guarantees that the government will not punish Rush (or anyone else) for their speech. It does not say the public at large, or the radio stations, can't act in their own interests. The public, including those urging an advertising boycott, have just as much right to free speech as Rush does -- and their speech has been very effective (costing him more than 3100 advertisers).

The truth is that the free market (which right-wingers say they support) has spoken, and it is saying it wants nothing to do with Limbaugh. His days of radio supremacy are over. He may or may not get a new contract, but if he does it will be for far less than he's now making. His marketability has fallen drastically.

Rush Limbaugh To Moderate GOP Debate ?

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by the wonderful DonkeyHotey.)

This is hard to believe, but the Washington Times is reporting that the Republican Party is considering a change in the selection of moderators for their presidential candidate debates. Instead of selecting respected (and nonpartisan) journalists to moderate those debates, as has been done in the past, they are considering asking Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh to do the honors.

It seems that the national party believes they had too many debates in the last presidential election (probably true), and that the moderators of those debates were not always fair to their candidates. Evidently, they asked too many hard questions (which did not show those candidates in the best light). Party insiders say they plan to fix that by letting the purveyors of right-wing radio (Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity) moderate the primary debates.

Personally, I think that's a great idea -- and I'm sure that most Democrats would agree. While the far right might enjoy watching their hate-radio heroes lob softball questions at the GOP candidates, I think it would just scare the hell out of most Americans. It would conclusively tie the party (and their eventual candidate) to Rush Limbaugh and his ultra-right-wing cohorts, and remove any remaining doubt as to who is really running the Republican Party.

The fact that this is even being considered by the Republican Party shows that they still don't understand the electorate (and why they lost bad in the last two national elections). They seem to think the electorate is as ultra-conservative as they are, and if they just present their ultra-right views in the right way, the public will come around and vote for them. They are wrong. Most Americans are moderates, and don't like the extreme views of the right or left.

I hope the Republican Party does this. It will appeal only to the voters they already have, and drive most voters further away from them.

Thoughts On Rush Limbaugh

(The caricature of Limbaugh on the left is from the inimitable DonkeyHotey.)

Let me preface my remarks by saying that I have never liked Rush Limbaugh very much. He has spent years trying to divide this country, and vilifying anyone with the temerity to disagree with his vicious right-wing politics. And while the Constitution guarantees him the right to spread his vile hate speech, I personally consider him to be a nasty and infected boil on the butt of our society.

But I also don't think he's going away any time soon. Much has been made in some liberal blogs (and on Facebook) recently about the story at Politico.com that says he could be dropped by Cumulus Media's 40 stations that carry him. I don't know if this threat by Cumulus to drop Limbaugh (and Sean Hannity) is just a negotiating ploy to lower what they currently pay Clear Channel to air Limbaugh's show, or whether Cumulus is just tired of the controversy surrounding Limbaugh.

What is obvious is that Cumulus has lost a ton of money, thanks to an effective boycott that has caused over 1200 national advertisers to drop their support of the show -- and demanded that their advertising no longer appear on that show (or on Hannity's show). While some of those advertisers may agree with the hateful ideas Limbaugh propagates, they care a lot more about making money -- and they are not about to let the controversy surrounding Limbaugh affect their profit margin. And the same is true of Cumulus Media. They are not in business to lose money.

Cumulus may decide to continue carrying Limbaugh's show, but if they do it will be at a much, much lower price. And if they drop Limbaugh, Clear Channel will likely find other channels to carry him -- but that will also be at a much lower price. The golden days are over for Limbaugh, and his next contract with Clear Channel (if there is one) will be for far less money than his previous contract.

The boycott of Limbaugh's advertisers has been very effective -- and it should continue. While Limbaugh has the constitutional right to spew his hate, other people have the right to oppose that. But if Cumulus does drop him, that does not mean it's the end of his show. However, it might be the beginning of the end -- and for now, that's enough.

Advertisers Avoiding Rush Like The Plague

(This caricature of Rush Limbaugh is by DonkeyHotey.)

I'm sure Rush Limbaugh thought it would be a short-term problem when advertisers starting leaving his show in droves. Things would die down, and the advertisers would return. But that hasn't happened. According to one executive at Cumulus Media, 48 out of 50 of their biggest advertisers now require that their advertising on that network not be played on the show of Rush Limbaugh (or his right-wing buddy Sean Hannity). This means Rush Limbaugh is not the money machine that he once was for the radio stations carrying his show.

Will Rush survive? He well could, because there are still a lot of right-wing nuts that listen to him. But with the radio stations bleeding money during his show's hours, you can bet that Rush's next contract won't be nearly as lucrative as his last one. After all, the primary reason these stations exist is to make money -- and they won't pay him huge money if they can't sell advertising on his show. Here's how Media Matters sums up the current situation:

As numerous members of the conservative movement flee from the Heritage Foundation's flawed immigration study, conservative talker Rush Limbaugh has maintained a stalwart defense of the organization.

Not a surprise considering Rush Limbaugh's syndicator, Premiere Radio Networks, is the single largest independent contractor to the Heritage Foundation according to their latest 990 filing with the IRS, receiving $2,236,555 from the think tank.

With advertisers fleeing his show, and as a result radio companies suffering major losses, the fiscal sponsorship of the conservative movement is now fiscally critical. A "very high ranking" official at Cumulus, the owner of Rush and Sean Hannity's flagship station WABC, told Radio Ink, "Forty-eight of the top 50 network advertisers have 'excluded Rush and Hannity' orders. Every major national ad agency has the same dictate."

Without wingnut welfare, which has also included sponsorships from FreedomWorks, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity's shows would not be financially viable.

The financial relationship between the conservative movement and its radio hosts has existed for years -- Heritage has been a major sponsor of Premiere Radio talent, specifically Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, according to a 2011 report by Ken Vogel of Politico -- however with Limbaugh and Hannity's recent well publicized problems attracting sponsorship to their programs the role of the conservative movement is not rightwing radios key sponsor.

Limbaugh Show Bleeding Money

Premiere Networks is the organization that Rush Limbaugh actually works for. They are the company that distributes his radio show to small stations around the country to be aired. They make their money by selling expensive national advertisements, which the stations that carry the show are obligated to run. After running the national ads for Premiere, the local stations then run some local ads to make money for themselves. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was a lucrative arrangement for everyone concerned.

As the chart above shows, Limbaugh's unwarranted, abusive, and defamatory attacks on a young college student (and on women in general) has thrown a big monkey wrench in the business of hate radio. Decent people across the country have risen up and demanded the companies supporting Rush by advertising on his show stop it immediately or be subjected to boycotts of their products -- and that pressure has become so great that the advertisers are deserting Limbaugh's show in droves. It has now climbed to more than 150 companies that have refused to allow their ads to be aired on Limbaugh's show.

It has become so bad that Premiere Networks has informed the local radio stations that for two weeks there will be no breaks for national ads (the weeks beginning on March 12th and March 19th). They didn't give a reason, but the reason would seem obvious. They don't have any ads to run in those breaks (and even some charities have refused to allow free public service announcements to run on Limbaugh's show), and they don't want the show surrounded by "dead air" (radio silence). That would make the flight of advertisers away from the show even more obvious.

And it has gotten even worse for Limbaugh. Not only has he hurt his own show, but he's also hurt the shows of his fellow hate radio talkers (like Hannity, Savage, and Beck). Many of the advertisers have pulled their ads from not just Limbaugh's show, but from all of the hate radio shows.

Limbaugh has made a half-hearted apology (actually a non-apology apology), and I'm sure he and Premiere Networks are hoping the furor will die down in a couple of weeks, the advertisers will come back, and things will return to normal. There's a good chance that won't happen though. The demographic that most advertisers want is the 18 to 54 age group (especially women), and there aren't too many of those in his audience. He has mostly older white men as listeners, so the advertisers may just look elsewhere to spend their advertising dollars -- where they can get more bang for their buck.

And a new poll shows that the public didn't think much of Limbaugh's "apology" anyway. A Rasmussen Poll showed that only 29% of the public thinks Limbaugh's apology was sincere, while 53% thought it was not. In other words, he's not out of the hole he dug for himself yet -- and he may not get out of it.  

Limbaugh Makes A Non-Apology

(Above picture is by pxmolina on Sodahead.)

Evidently the number of advertisers withdrawing their support for his show has scared the perverse and bigoted Rush Limbaugh, because he has issued on his website a statement that he hopes will pass for an apology. But it's not a real apology. It's the standard GOP non-apology apology. Here's why I say that:

* An apology should not contain lies, but his does. He says Ms. Fluke (the person he defamed) was talking about "recreational activities". She was not! She was trying to explain how contraceptives were important medically for a friend of hers (in a context that had nothing to do with sexual or "recreational" activity).

* He once again tells the lie that he and other like him would be forced to pay for the sexual activities of others. Again, that is not true. The insurance companies will cover the costs of contraceptives. And they will do it because it is cheaper for them to do that than to pay for either a pregnancy or an abortion.

* He tries to claim he was just making an "absurd" analogy and made a bad choice of words. That's nonsense. Calling a woman a "slut" and "prostitute" on nationwide radio is not an attempt at humor. It is nothing less than a defamation of the young woman's character. I can assure you that I would not consider it humorous if he called any woman in my family those terms (and essentially, that is what he did). His attack on Ms. Fluke was an attack on all women.

* In his "apology", he compared providing contraceptives to all women with providing sneakers to all students. That comparison is nothing less than a new attack on women.

Limbaugh's repeated attacks over a period of several days was sick and perverted, and this feeble attempt at an apology is not nearly sufficient to make up for it. In my mind, he has still not apologized and I doubt he ever will.

And the reaction (or non-action) of leading Republicans just adds to the damage Limbaugh has done. Why won't they speak up and take him to task for his horrible comments? And Mitt Romney is one of the worst. His company Bain Capital (where he still owns a ton of stock and gets most of his income from) is the owner of Clear Channel Communications -- the company that puts Limbaugh on the air. He could demand a real apology if he wanted to, but he does nothing.

Here is Limbaugh's non-apology:

For over 20 years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week.  In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke.

I think it is absolutely absurd that during these very serious political times, we are discussing personal sexual recreational activities before members of Congress. I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities. What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?In my monologue, I posited that it is not our business whatsoever to know what is going on in anyone's bedroom nor do I think it is a topic that should reach a Presidential level.

My choice of words was not the best, and in the attempt to be humorous, I created a national stir. I sincerely apologize to Ms. Fluke for the insulting word choices.

Limbaugh Needs To Go

Rush Limbaugh has showed his perverse hatred of all that is good about America for quite a while now. But his latest repeated attacks on a Georgetown University student called to testify before Congress is way over the line of common decency. In fact, it is nothing less than an attack on all American women. And it must stop!

I won't reprint his sick comments on this blog. If you have a high tolerance for stupidity and hatred, you can go here, here, and here to read about them. Frankly, I think it is time to get this bloated fool off the radio. He has polluted the minds of too many Americans for too long -- and it is time for it to end.

There will be those who will remind me that the First Amendment gives him the right to say whatever he wants to say -- no matter how sick and perverse it may be. I agree with them. But he's not the only person with rights in this country. As Americans, we also have rights -- the right to raise our voices against him and to boycott any company that promotes Limbaugh by advertising on his show.

And many decent Americans have already started to do just that. A literal storm has been created on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, and Limbaugh's advertisers are starting to feel the heat. So far, five of those advertisers have withdrawn their ads from his show (Sleep Number, The Sleep Train, Heart and Body Extract, Oreck Vacuum Cleaners, and Quicken Loans). I urge you to join this action and write to the companies supporting Limbaugh -- and until they pull their ads from his show, boycott their products. Here are some of those advertisers:

LifeLock
1-800-LifeLock (543-3562)
60 East Rio Salado Parkway, Suite 400, Tempe, AZ 85281
For media inquiries, please contact Tami Nealy,
 Senior Director of Corporate Communications
 (call 1-480-457-2127 or email tami@lifelock.com).


Tax Resolution Services
Online Ad on Rush Site
1-866-IRSPROBLEMS


ProFlowers
Sales or Service: 1-800-580-2913
Phone: 800.580.2913 


eharmony
300 N. Lake Ave., Suite 1111
Pasadena, CA 91101
media@eharmony.com 626.795.4814
FAX 626.585.4040 


CARBONITE, Inc.
617-587-1100
177 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02115
Direct Dial Office: 617-587-1100 EXT:1115


Mid-West Life Insurance Company of Tennessee 
9151 Grapevine Hwy.North Richland Hills, TX 76180
Phone (800) 733-1110
(ads on rushlimbaugh.com)


AutoZone Inc.
901-495-7185; Fax: 901-495-8374
P.O. Box 2198, Memphis, TN 38101 

LegalZoom 
800-773-0888; Fax: 323-962-8300 

Citrix Online (GoToMyPC)
6500 Hollister Avenue, Goleta, CA 93117
Phone: 805-690-6400; Fax: 805-690-6471 
ALSO KNOWN AS GOTOMEETING.COM


American Forces Network
Contact Us: @MyAFN.net


Mission Pharmacal Company
10999 IH-10 West Suite 1000
P.O. Box 786099
San Antonio, TX 78278-6099
Telephone: (800) 531-3333


Life Quotes, Inc.
32045 Castle Court Evergreen, CO 80439
1-800-670-5433 

Contact: Michelle Matlock, Senior Managing Editor (800)556-9393, x.335

Lending Tree
(704) 541-5351 

NOTE: Now Bill O'Reilly has jumped on the hate bandwagon to support Limbaugh. He is repeating the disgusting things Limbaugh has said. I guess we should have expected the idiots at Fox News to do this.

Is Right-Wing Hate Radio Dying ?

Although right-wingers like to claim that the media is against them, that is simply not true. Not only do they have a television "news" network that spouts right-wing propaganda 24 hours a day (Fox News), but they haven't had any problem in getting their views on any of the other television news networks either. The mis-named "liberal media" have been very kind to right-wingers in recent years.

But the most reliable proponent of right-wing hate talk for quite a while now has been talk radio. Talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Mark Levin and others have for years spewed a daily diet of fringe right-wing hate talk (and their audience was large enough to make them all rich doing it). But there are signs now that the era of right-wing hate radio may be coming to an end.

Several months ago markets in places like Salt Lake City and Philadelphia dropped radio shows by Hannity and Beck (including the station in Philadelphia where Beck got his start). That was a clue that something was happening to right-wing talk radio. Now we learn that last Fall the number of listeners dropped precipitously (in spite of a campaign where the right was energized), and these hate-talkers have been unable to boost the numbers since then.

The ratings people are saying that Hannity and Levin have lost 28% of their listeners. It has been even worse for Rush Limbaugh -- a drop of about 33%. And Glenn Beck is down nearly 50%. Those are some huge losses, and it's starting to worry the station managers.

And to make matters even worse, the listener demographic is not the one that most advertisers want (the 18 to 54 age group). It seems that most of the listeners of right-wing talk radio are older people -- and as they die off they are not being replaced by younger listeners. In fact, the younger the listener, the less likely they are tuning in to right-wing talk radio.

But it's not just that these hate-talk jockeys can't replace their older viewers. It seems that many people have just tired of the same old hate-talk every day. As one industry insider pointed out, you can only say "Obama is a socialist" so many times and then people tire of hearing it (even many who believe it).

There are still enough listeners to keep hate talk radio going for a while, but the question now is how long? How long will it be before the advertisers decide their money is spent better in other venues? When that happens (and it looks like it coming) right-wing hate talk radio will die. And this country will be better for that.

Limbaugh Is Still A Big Fat Idiot

I normally don't post much about the stupid things Rush Limbaugh says on his radio program for a few reasons. First, I don't want to give him any more publicity than he already gets. Second, he has the right to say what he wants about elected officials no matter how stupid it is. These officials put themselves up for criticism when they chose to run for public office, and as adults, they are perfectly capable of defending themselves. Third, most people already know he's an idiot. But attacking poor children is so far beyond the pale that I feel I must say something.

Limbaugh, who has many millions of dollars, is now upset that the government might actually give poor children a nutritious meal during the summer while school is out. On his June 16th show he opposes the feeding of poor children (even though he obviously misses no meals himself) and suggests that if poor children want to eat they should go "dumpster diving". And he even has the audacity to suggest that he is being of benefit to these children by making this suggestion.

If you have a strong stomach and can control your anger enough not to throw objects at your computer screen, this is what he said:

"You know, one of the benefits of school being out, in addition to your kids losing weight because they're starving to death out there because there's no school meal being provided, one of the benefits of school being out, college campi being vacant this time of year, is that our audience levels go up. I think, you know what we're going to do here, we're going to start a feature on this program: "Where to find food." For young demographics, where to find food. Now that school is out, where to find food. We can have a daily feature on this. And this will take us all the way through the summer. Where to find food. And, of course, the first will be: "Try your house." It's a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there. There are also things in what's called the kitchen of your house called cupboards. And in those cupboards, most likely you're going to find Ding-Dongs, Twinkies, Lays ridgy potato chips, all kinds of dips and maybe a can of corn that you don't want, but it will be there. If that doesn't work, try a Happy Meal at McDonald's. You know where McDonald's is. There's the Dollar Menu at McDonald's and if they don't have Chicken McNuggets, dial 911 and ask for Obama.

There's another place if none of these options work to find food; there's always the neighborhood dumpster. Now, you might find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos that have been produced to show you how to healthfully dine and how to dumpster dive and survive until school kicks back up in August. Can you imagine the benefit we would provide people?"

It is amazing to me that this porcine piece of crap can even bring himself to say such a mean-spirited thing out loud -- let alone on nationwide radio. He may think that's funny. I don't. How can he be fine with spending over a trillion dollars to fight two unnecessary wars and oppose the government spending a modest amount to make sure poor children get at least one nutritious meal a day? That makes no sense at all.

How can people listen to this idiot on the radio without throwing up?

Limbaugh: Brain-Dead, But Still Talking

Once again, right-wing radio commenter Rush Limbaugh has proven that brain activity is not a requirement for a person to keep talking. It can't be, because anyone with even a few functioning brain cells could plainly see the idiocy and hypocrisy of his latest pronouncements. He has to be either brain-dead or the biggest liar in the United States.

A couple of days ago, Limbaugh was ranting against the possibility of the Democrats actually passing their very limited version of health care reform. He railed against this "socialist" takeover of our broken health care system, and actually said if the reforms are passed by Congress that he would move to Costa Rica (which made millions of decent Americans very happy).

But then he realized what he had said, and evidently afraid that he might be forced to actually do what he said he'd do, he tried to pull his foot out of his mouth. Unfortunately for him, he only managed to plant the other foot there also. He told his audience that he didn't really mean he would move there -- only that he would go to Costa Rica for his medical care if the Democrats passed health care reform.

That statement is even stupider than his first one. Obviously he doesn't realize just what kind of healthcare system Costa Rica has. But then facts have never been very important when he is working his mouth. The truth is that the health care system is much more "socialist" in Costa Rica than anything the Democrats are proposing for this country. Consider the following facts about the Costa Rican health care system:

* Comprehensive universal health care coverage is provided for all citizens.

* Government owns several major public hospitals and operates small clinics in almost every community.

* Workers are required to contribute 15% of their salaries for health care coverage.

* The unemployed obtain public funding for all health services, including prescriptions.

* Most citizens obtain their health coverage through a public plan called CAJA, similar to Medicare in this country.

That sounds a lot more "socialist" than the timid reform being considered by Democrats. In fact, I wish to Democrats had the political courage to create a public option and provide universal health coverage to our citizens as the Costa Ricans have.

It simply makes no sense that Limbaugh would be willing to receive health care from a socialist system in Costa Rica, but would be unwilling to get care under the plan proposed by Democrats -- which leaves private insurance companies in charge of all health care and treatment decisions.

But then making sense has never been much of a concern for Limbaugh. He's filthy rich and can pay whatever is needed for his health care (and doesn't care at all that between 40 and 50 million Americans have no health coverage at all). He believes everything is fine as long as his rich buddies in private insurance companies can keep making their enormous profits.

(NOTE -- The World Health Organization ranks Costa Rica's health care system above the current system in the United States, and Costa Rica spends less per capita for their health care.)

Limbaugh Rushed To Hospital

Ultra right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh is spending the holidays in Hawaii at the Kahala Hotel and Resort. He has been seen on the golf course next to the resort in the last few days, but it now looks like his vacation has taken a turn for the worst.

Yesterday about 2:41pm, paramedics were called to the Kahala. They treated Limbaugh and then took him to Queen's Medical Center in what was described as "serious condition". Sources have said paramedics were called because Limbaugh was experiencing chest pains.

Has all the illegal drug use blown out his heart?

The Republican Civil War

After their devastating defeat in the 2008 election, I would have thought the Republicans would see that their party was in trouble and start to steer it back to the center. After all, they were not brought to power by just the right-wing, but by a coalition of right-wing Republicans, moderate Republicans, independents and even conservative Democrats -- the so-called "Reagan Coalition".

But that is not happening. If anything, the party seems to be going even further to the right. With far less than 30% of the American population identifying themselves as Republicans now, it would seem obvious that the party needs to appeal to moderates and centrist independents. There are some Republicans who see this, but not many.

Those who want to expand the party and reach out to those in the center are currently being led by Colin Powell. As a left-winger, Powell scares the hell out of me. He is a moderate who is well respected by a large part of the American populace. He is the kind of person who could lead the Republicans back to power in a short period of time.

Fortunately for Democrats, the current powers-that-be in the Republican Party don't seem to be able to see that. In fact, they actually believe the Republicans need to move farther to the right and are actively trying to purge the party of all its moderates. They have already driven Arlen Specter our, and seem to be trying to do the same with Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

He may not be a politician, but the de facto leader of the Republican Party right now is Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh has a large radio audience, but that is all he has. And that radio audience is not nearly large enough to return the Republicans to power. In fact, he turns off the moderates, and drives independents away from the party.

But amazingly, it is Limbaugh that party leaders are lining up behind, including Michael Steele, Newt Gingrich, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. Many congressional Republicans have also chosen to back Limbaugh, or are too afraid to speak against him. This pretty much leaves Powell alone and swinging in the wind.

Although I think the current direction of the Republican Party is suicidal, I hope it continues. If they do remain the party of Limbaugh, it will mean many more good years for Democrats, and that's a good thing.

Those Mean-Spirited Conservatives

Once again, the conservative blogosphere and right-wing radio nuts prove just how mean-spirited they can be. Their newest target is the Global Poverty Act. The bill was introduced by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), and passed the House of Representatives last Fall.

Of course, the reason they are attacking the bill now is because the bill was sponsored in the Senate by Barack Obama. Obama is becoming more popular every day, and stands a very good chance of becoming the nation's next president. They're actually having trouble finding some way to attack Obama, so now they have latched on to this bill as a way of doing it.

Rush Limbaugh and many conservative bloggers are making all kinds of accusations. They say the bill will cost American taxpayers $845 billion years over the next 12 years. They say it will tie the U.S. to many United Nations programs and force our country to virtually become a slave to these programs, including the banning of small arms, the ratification of the Kyoto Treaty, the International Criminal Court Treaty, and the Convention of Biological Diversity among other things.

The truth is very different. The bill has no set amount of money enumerated in it. It also has nothing to do with the United Nations or any treaty or effort supported by the U.N. It is simply an effort to help the tragically poor of the world -- something a nation like ours should be doing.

The bill would require the president to develop a plan to help reduce extreme global poverty and halve the number of people who live on less than $1 a day by 2015. The bill is currently being considered by the Senate.

I find it incredible that these same right-wingers are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to fight an unwinnable war to steal Iraqi oil, but the thought of helping to eliminate extreme poverty sends them into a screaming paroxysm. They don't mind giving billions in handouts to corporations, but the thought of helping starving women and children is anathema to them.

Just how mean-spirited can they be? They might as well say "I've got mine -- screw everybody else."

Personally, I am proud of the House of Representatives for passing the bill and I hope the Senate follows suit. I'm also proud of Barack Obama for sponsoring the bill in the Senate.

It is the duty and responsibility of rich nations like ours to do something to help those who are less fortunate. It is simply the right thing to do.

Isn't it odd that these right-wing "christians" would think this is wrong? Have they never studied the teachings of their own religion?

Alaskan Teenager Outclasses Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh has once again shown us just what a classless and crass individual he is. Recently, he has attacked American soldiers for opposing the Iraq War, and a 12 year-old for having the audacity to need health insurance. Now he has aimed his venom at an 18 year-old Alaskan girl.

Yesterday, Charlee Lockwood spoke to Congress about how global warming is changing her home in Alaska. The 18 year-old Yupik Eskimo was a part of the 5,000 young people who descended on Washington to lobby Congress about energy and climate issues.

She told Congress, "Our traditional ways of life will die like the food we grew up eating, our hunters will have to travel farther to keep food in their homes. Our culture will die because everyone will have to move someplace and there will be no one to teach them to."

But Limbaugh doesn't see a passionate young person trying to save her home and culture. Instead, he wants to paint her as a mindless dupe being used by Democrats to force "big government" on our nation.

Limbaugh told his right-wing listeners that the teenager "makes me really want to puke. I just want to throw up. It's the Democrats exploiting a young child, ladies and gentlemen, for the exploitation of a political issue that will grow the size of government and increase their control over everyone."

It's funny how Bush trashing the Constitution is just fine with him, but a young person trying to save her home and culture is to him the epitomy of evil. The man truly has no shame.

But while Limbaugh is completely devoid of any trace of class or common decency, the young Alaskan has more than her share of both. When told of his attack, she said her upbringing included learning "about respect and treating people the way you want to be treated".

The teenager seems to be a lot more mature than the aging radio buffoon. It's hard to understand why he still has a radio audience.