Rush Hearts Murderous Child Stealing Rape Cult

The Obama administration has soooo many issues and problems and screwups to its credit, that its an easy target for criticism.  You don't have to lie about this administration if you want to be critical of it.  So I really detest it when fellow conservatives tell an outrageous lie simply to score a political hit on Obama.

Thats exactly what Rush Limbaugh did following the announcement by the administration that they were sending 100 combat troops to Africa to target John Kony and the leadership of the Lord's Resistance Army.  Check the headline he runs with on his site.

 From the transcript, posted by Rush:

Lord's Resistance Army are Christians.  It means God.  I was only kidding.  Lord's Resistance Army are Christians.  They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan.  And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them.  That's what the lingo means, "to help regional forces remove from the battlefield," meaning capture or kill.  So that's a new war, a hundred troops to wipe out Christians in Sudan, Uganda, and -- (interruption) no, I'm not kidding.

Later on in the show, someone must have have informed him of the charges that the LRA are a bunch of murdering, raping scum.

Is that right? The Lord's Resistance Army is being accused of really bad stuff? Child kidnapping, torture, murder, that kind of stuff? Well, we just found out about this today. We're gonna do, of course, our due diligence research on it. But nevertheless we got a hundred troops being sent over there to fight these guys -- and they claim to be Christians.

He's gonna do his due diligence.  Oh, well, gee, maybe thats what you would do before you accuse the President of persecuting Christians to death somewhere.  Now you are gonna check the facts, gee thanks for that.

A survivor of the LRA's brutality sends a message to Rush.  No one in the GOP or conservative camp will say word boo to Rush about this.  Its a lie.  He won't retract it or modify it.  Hell, its still up on his website for pete's sake and by now, he should have the full brief on the LRA. When liberals do this kind of nonsense, conservatives trash them and rightly so.  When Rush does it though, he's not held to any standard.  If Rush will get behind a lie as huge and repugnant as this one, then what WON'T he say for the purpose of doing political damage to those on the left.

As I said at the beginning, there is plenty to jam Obama about.  But huge whopping repugnant lies like this one that smears Christians (like me) by equating us with child stealing, murderous rapist scum such as Kony and the LRA leaders (less so the abducted children they turned into killing monsters) just so you can criticize the president? Its repugnant that Rush does it and its contemptible that no one of influence in the conservative camp will check him on it. Want to stay up on the antics of those Rush endorsed good Christian soldiers of the LRA, you can follow their kidnapping, killing and raping career at the LRA incident tracker.

You can debate the wisdom of sending our 100 combat troops to hunt the LRA, or whether there is a national security interest to be served here.  For the record, whether or not we are pursuing other of the worlds's various and sundry butchers or not, the LRA is a predator group that we know is killing, maiming and raping innocent men, women and children and perpetrating horrific atrocities.  We have blown millions and sent our troops into harm's way for far less noble causes than saving the lives of innocent women and children. If 100 of our troops can help hunt down and exterminate Kony and end the LRA's massacres, I'm cool with it. If we're gonna be globo cop, lets terminate a bad guy now and then. To the troops being dispatched on this mission, I say good hunting.

UPDATE: Rush takes official notice that he is "misinformed" on the subject of the LRA, but that seems about all he has to say of his outrageous smearing of Christians and Obama with his reporting.  He won't walk any of  that back and its pretty pathetic.  Pandering to the lowest common demoninator. 

Related articles

• Rush Limbaugh, Defender of the Lord's Resistance Army (littlegreenfootballs.com)
• Rush Limbaugh Defends Terrorist Murderers The Lord's Reistance Army (lezgetreal.com)
• Obama's New Mini-War (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• How The U.S. Came To Fight The Lord's Resistance Army (alternet.org)
• Uganda president: US troops not sent in to fight (sfgate.com)
• Uganda + 100 VS. Kony and the LRA (sweetteaandsalsa.com)

Rush, the GOP Race Baiter in Chief

Race Baiting: implying that there is an underlying race-based motive in the actions of others towards the group baited, where none in fact exists.

GOP messaging fails just go on and on and on.  Rush, the GOP's race baiter in chief is at it again.  Rush is no longer bothering to slyly couch his race baiting.  Now, he just issues an overt rhetorical attack on the President and since 90% + blacks supported Obama, by extension, he's talking about the rest of us too.  He's most recent race baiting goodness from the July 2nd show:

Why aren't we growing jobs in this country like we used to?  Why aren't we?  It's not hard to do.  There's all kinds of textbook evidence, real-life historical evidence of how to do it.  We're not doing it; we're not doing it on purpose.  It's payback time.  All the people who are unemployed? It's time for you to find out what it's like to be an American all these 200 years.  "Yeah, greatest country on earth, superpower? Right.  Well, might have been for some people, but you're going to find out what it's been like for 200 years for some of us to be an American.  It's payback time."  That's what's going on here. 

For his massive audience, he ascribes to the President of the United States a racial revenge motive.  He basically argues that the black president and the black DOJ head have it in for white people.  Its naked racebaiting....and no one in the GOP will object to it.

Another Steele Fail

Lrey of the Conservative Brotherhood makes a mighty fine point with regard to RNC Chairman Michael Steele and Rush's comments on Haiti, one I had not even considered.  Steele has been happy to jump on the bandwagon regarding Harry Reid's insightful but stupidly permitted to be overhead comments on the Obama campaign, but has not had a word of opprobrium for Limbaugh's race baiting comments (in my opinion) on Haiti, to wit:

RUSH:  "This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate.  They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, "credibility" with the black community -- in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country.

Rush simply can't wait to make the Haiti relief response a race baiting political weapon against Obama, suggesting that this is how he curries favor with minorities.  Its pretty foul. The crassness of the thinking in this little jewel of a comment drew pushback from no less a republican than George Bush:

“We’ve got to deal with the desperation, and there ought to be no politicization of that.”  

Which brings us to Michael Steele.  Where is he? Lrey jumps right in big Mike's grill:

"When he should have stood-up to Limbaugh and held his ground as a person entitled to his intellectual opinion, and holding a formal political office, gained politically, he retreated from the ire of Massa Rush and subordinated himself to a man who holds him in the same regard he holds for black NFL quarterbacks – a necessary and politically correct evil....

Isn’t such retrogressive ignorance worthy of a rebuke by the man charged with making the GOP more inclusive? Steele (and other black “conservatives”) weren’t afraid to challenge Reid on his “negro dialect” comment. Either they stand-up to Limbaugh now or accept being “the negroes that bring him alcohol”, and always and forever be second class citizens in the GOP."

This latest ugly piece of race baiting political invective from Rush comes as little surprise as he likes to take opportunities to use racial subtext to inflame the passions of his audience and tweak the MSM as well. But its the larger point here that Lrey makes that is relevant to my mind, which is that for a party leader who talks the talk of making the party more inclusive, he needs to walk the walk.  Not happening, not gonna happen.

The Obamacare Logo: Wince

Its easy to see how Limbaugh could compare it with a Nazi swastika. If you are politically opposed to the Obama administration, this imagery is easily perceived as sinister and big brotherish. Its a little too much like a visual representation of the phrase "Hi, I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

Limbaugh's Race Baiting: GOP Funky Messaging to Blacks Continues

On some days, it is hard to find counter arguments to the idea that the GOP is destined to become a regional party largely the province of a core of white conservatives espousing a far right ideology. I've often made the point that the GOP's lousy relationship with blacks is due to the fact that the party has not made a decision that blacks are a political constituency necessary or essential to the GOP's aspirations for governance. In practice, this means they pay little to no attention to the affect of their messaging on blacks or indeed operate without regard to it. Why bother to be careful about how you communicate to this particular group since you are not interested in their votes?

The party's ideological commander in chief Rush Limbaugh, has once again brought home this point with stunning clarity with comments on his show earlier this week.

LIMBAUGH: As the economy performs worse than expected, the deficit for the 2010 budget year beginning in October will worsen by $87 billion to $1.3 trillion. The deterioration reflects lower tax revenues and higher costs for bank failures, unemployment benefits and food stamps. But in the Oval Office of the White House none of this is a problem. This is the objective. The objective is unemployment. The objective is more food stamp benefits. The objective is more unemployment benefits. The objective is an expanding welfare state. And the objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return to it to the nation’s quote, “rightful owners.” Think reparations. Think forced reparations here if you want to understand what actually is going on.

Its race baiting. Its intentional and deliberate pitting of a white political base against blacks to advance a political point. From the rank and file up to leadership, few will even bother to distance themselves from a comment like this. This kind of commentary is threatening both because its being put forward in political speech in this way and because its being eagerly lapped up by its audience. Will Michael Steele even have the guts to repudiate a comment like this? Just recently, he's gutsy enough to call Obama an affirmative action President, but is he willing to call out Rush on crap messaging like this to blacks, a political constituency he claims he wants the GOP to do a better job with? Probably not. The funky messaging continues.

On Wanda

Dennis Miller, a favorite commentator of mine had the following comments on the Factor which I thought were on entirely on point.


I don't think she was a pro that night. You know, a comedian's judged by somebody whether they're a pro or a non-pro. I don't know how funny or funny it wasn't. But I do know it wasn't pro, because at some point you get hired, and she didn't fill the requisite out for what they needed. They needed it to be edgy but to not make it feel weird.

The whining on the right has been silly on this subject. I never appreciate it very much when black folks like Wanda fail to moderate their commentary to be appropriate to a particular situation. It betrays a lack of home training to be so obtuse to one's environment or the occasion. That said, especially since she is indeed a professional comedian, its the most ridiculous bit of hyperbole to profess outrage about her jokes about Limbaugh, a guy who dishes out his own rhetorical tongue lashings for 3 hours on a daily basis and is handsomely compensated for it.

Will This Republican Cave Too?

Hat Tip Who Runs Gov

CNN’s Rick Sanchez asked Wamp whether he agreed with Rush or with Mitt Romney, who’s taken issue with Rush’s desire for Obama to fail. From Wamp’s reply, via Nexis:

“Frankly, we need to listen more to the people back home, and not so much just the voices out there. There’s not much difference between entertainment and journalism on some fronts.”

After a bit more back and forth, Wamp continued:

“Listen, I don’t want to get in the crossfire here. But the fact is entertainers sometimes say things. We really need serious-minded policy people to help chart this ship of state out of these rocky waters right now. And so we shouldn’t spend so much time caught in what others are saying.”

This is a totally rational point of view. If this guy apologizes for his comments, I'm going to laugh, then puke.

If You Have to Say You're the Leader of the Party, Then You're Not

Crossposted at Independent Blogger Alliance

If you're in charge, you don't have to say anything. You just behave like you're in charge. This political truism was clearly demonstrated by the Limbaugh smackdown of Steele.

This was Michael "Man of " Steele, so called leader of the Republican Party, on CNN's D.L Hughley show this past weekend:

Steele belittled Rush as an "entertainer" and called his rhetoric ugly and incendiary.

Here's an excerpt of Rush's response on his show on Monday 3/2/09. Note that Rush states in no uncertain terms that Steele is not the head of the Republican Party.

This was Michael Steele today, talking to the Politico in a phone interview.

“My intent was not to go after Rush – I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele said in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.”

“I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said. "It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently. What I was trying to say was a lot of people … want to make Rush the scapegoat, the bogeyman, and he’s not."

“I’m not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh,” Steele added. “No such thing is going to happen. … I wasn’t trying to slam him or anything.” “He brings a very important message to the American people to wake up and pay attention to what the administration is doing," Steele said. "Number two, there are those out there who want to look at what he’s saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That’s what I was trying to say. It didn’t come out that way. …

Asked if he planned to apologize, Steele said: “I wasn’t trying to offend anybody. So, yeah, if he’s offended, I’d say: Look, I’m not in the business of hurting people’s feelings here. … My job is to try to bring us all together.”

Steele has now been effectively demolished as a credible party leader as far as I'm concerned. This was not simply an apology, this statement goes further than that. This my friends is groveling. Read his quote again - “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” “I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren’t what I was thinking,” Steele said."It was one of those things where I thinking I was saying one thing, and it came out differently.
Are you kidding me? Steele calls himself inarticulate and essentially says that he didn't know what he was saying. This is a 64 year old, grown black man with a law degree from Georgetown. You cannot possibly expect me to take you seriously after you cave in such a cringing, spineless fashion. I thought Steele got off to a very poor rhetorical start from the jump with his Kool Mo Dee stylings when he won the post of RNC chair. My estimation of his rhetorical and party building skills dropped even further when he declared if we rap it, they will come. Now, he has written a check with his mouth that his behind can't cash on the bank of Rush that could endanger his post as RNC chair in just a few short weeks. Again, for the record, Rush told Steele "you are not the head of the republican party". Which begs the question, who is?

Steele's done himself some near irreparable damage with this, because its hard to respect a guy who will backpedal that fast and that hard. I would have respected him more if he had stuck to his guns and I suspect that so would a lot of other republicans who don't care to belong to the ditto head crowd. He'll have to be stellar going forward to regain a modicum of the regard I had for him. Like the One himself, his promise seems outmatched by his reality. Steele had recently promised to roll out a beyond cutting edge PR campaign. If that campaign is as ill advised and clumsy as these most recent gaffes, the GOP is going to have a real problem.

Then again, the GOP already has a problem that is pretty ginormous and of which Steele's humiliation (don't kid yourself, thats what it is) is merely a symptom. Simply put, the party is bankrupt, both in ideas and most sorely in leadership. Rush Limbaugh is indeed what Steele said. He is an entertainer. That is how he makes his living. His product is what John Derbyshire calls low brow conservatism. Here's why this sticks in my craw. For all his 2+ decades in radio and his audience of 20 million, Rush is not now nor has he ever been accountable to a single voter, has not held office nor run for any public position of responsibility. Yet, there does not appear to be a single republican in the House or the Senate who would dare disagree or be critical of him without walking those words back within 24 hours. Men and women elected by voters who do not dare to challenge anything Rush wants to say. Indeed, when Rush essentially calls republican lawmakers out as gutless, that comment appears to have some validity, because they won't say boo to Rush.

Of what possible use is such a party? When one man commands such fealty? When no elected official dares challenge his opinion or voice a strongly held criticism or opinion contrary to his? I find it pathetic.