Clay Davis Memorial POLITICS THREAD

by **Mountainphan** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:06:23

Limbaugh may be a blowhard (or not, depending on your views), but deeply racist? I'm not a listener, not that it matters one bit, but I've not heard/seen evidence of his racism. Considering his presence in this country, I don't think this kind of thing could be swept under the rug very easily.

Could this be another case of the Left crying "racist!"? Inquiring minds want to know...

by **pacino** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:09:13

Mountainphan wrote:Limbaugh may be a blowhard (or not, depending on your views), but deeply racist? I'm not a listener, not that it matters one bit, but I've not heard/seen evidence of his racism. Considering his presence in this country, I don't think this kind of thing could be swept under the rug very easily.

Could this be another case of the Left crying "racist!"? Inquiring minds want to know...

oh christ, you are blind. dajafi has far more patience than i

by **Mountainphan** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:10:26

drsmooth wrote:
Mountainphan wrote:But you can help your's, so why not start there. Seriously.

PS - I read just fine. You're not worth reading with any seriousness most of the time.

it's "yours" not "your's"

no charge - this time

were you the kid with the banjo, or the shotgun?

You've been reduced to trying to sound normal. Now if you could simply learn to capitalize, that would be something.

by **Mountainphan** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:13:22

pacino wrote:
Mountainphan wrote:Limbaugh may be a blowhard (or not, depending on your views), but deeply racist? I'm not a listener, not that it matters one bit, but I've not heard/seen evidence of his racism. Considering his presence in this country, I don't think this kind of thing could be swept under the rug very easily.

Could this be another case of the Left crying "racist!"? Inquiring minds want to know...

oh christ, you are blind. dajafi has far more patience than i

You poor little thing - how you must suffer.

by **phdave** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:36:27

jerseyhoya wrote:I said people from all across the political spectrum are capable of being inappropriately partisan. Since Rush Limbaugh is the leader of the Republican Party, as we all know, I would have needed to get Obama on the record saying something nasty and partisan about the earthquake to find someone on par with Rush to make the perfect comparison. With his job being running the country not getting ratings for his radio show, that was unlikely.

Are you being sarcastic?

jerseyhoya wrote:I had read the item from DailyKos earlier in the day. I thought it was phenomenally partisan and stupid. Aren't there only like a dozen people allowed to post on the front page of DailyKos? Of course this blogger doesn't carry the influence that Limbaugh does, but they are an opinion leader in the partisan left media.

I said I didn't understand the Rush thing, and it's pretty clear I'm never going to. I posted it in the politics thread rather than writing a rant in the Haiti thread because it was pissing me off.

I think anyone can start a diary on dailykos and sometimes they can get bumped to the front page if there is a lot of discussion. There are some more featured diarists but others can end up on the front page. For some reason I think it operates similarly to TheGoodPhight. Maybe not. I don't really know but that is how I thought things worked. Anyway, I just skimmed through the comments and there seems to be a lot of debate about how appropriate it is to get upset about this. So maybe that is how it got pushed to the front page.

The simplest way I can explain the Rush thing is that the left need to respond to things he says because of how many people pay attention to him. I don't think they responded to him that much in the '90s (relatively) and they saw what happened when he went unchallenged. No matter how outrageous he was, people tended to start repeating what he said until it was in the mainstream media discussion. With no response, people tended to assume things he says are true and the outrageous things don't seem as outrageous. Now, there are organizations and blogs that make sure what he says does not go without critique and this has developed into its own sort of echo chamber.

It does have this kind of win-win effect for Rush. Either he is able to say what he wants and goes unchallenged or he has other people repeating the things he says and that makes him appear even more interesting/influential. If the goal was to hurt Rush, this might not be the best thing to keep doing. I don't think that is the goal necessarily or at least if he benefits from the attention, that is an unfortunate side effect in their minds.

But I think it is obvious that if someone with such a media presence is constantly vilifying you, you would want to jump on everything he says that shows him in a bad light. Especially if he says something that is not true, it would be better to make an immediate big deal about it before his version of things gets cemented in people's minds.

Plus, for many of the things he has said, there would be a lot of attention no matter who said them. Other people would probably have been fired before for saying some of those things (just like he got canned from ESPN), so with the popularity of his radio program he is in a unique position to keep doing the same thing over and over that others in his position would not get away with.

So it does not surprise me that you see this pattern over and over. Rush isn't going to stop saying things like this because that is what he is paid to do. The left isn't going to stop responding because otherwise he dominates the discussion.

by **Bakestar** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 19:44:22

phdave wrote:I think anyone can start a diary on dailykos and sometimes they can get bumped to the front page if there is a lot of discussion. There are some more featured diarists but others can end up on the front page. For some reason I think it operates similarly to TheGoodPhight.

And... there's a reasonfor that.

by **TenuredVulture** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 20:32:06

The heart of the objection to Rush isn't its partisan nature, or even I don't think its inappropriateness. The disturbing thing about Rush (and his listeners who cheer this on) that Dajafi has pointed out before is its sadism. Rush shares this with Pat Robertson.

by **phdave** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 20:44:46

TenuredVulture wrote:The heart of the objection to Rush isn't its partisan nature, or even I don't think its inappropriateness. The disturbing thing about Rush (and his listeners who cheer this on) that Dajafi has pointed out before is its sadism. Rush shares this with Pat Robertson.

Same thing with Ann Coulter and others.

by **drsmooth** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 21:23:59

Mountainphan wrote:
You've been reduced to trying to sound normal.

Getting down to your 'normal' level will take some practice. Probably some forgetting, even.

by **dajafi** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 23:10:02

Mountainphan wrote:Limbaugh may be a blowhard (or not, depending on your views), but deeply racist? I'm not a listener, not that it matters one bit, but I've not heard/seen evidence of his racism. Considering his presence in this country, I don't think this kind of thing could be swept under the rug very easily.

Could this be another case of the Left crying "racist!"? Inquiring minds want to know...

in that pointing out a decades-long pattern of racist statements and "jokes" is "crying racist," sure.

I doubt I can convince you, but the record is pretty well detailed. He's avoided using the "n-word," or making one comment like the dumb thing Imus said, but from insulting black callers to the McNabb thing (which did get him canned from ESPN) to the many remarks about Obama, this is clearly on his mind. I think it's why the NFL dissuaded him from the Rams ownership group, much as he wanted to make it yet another instance of leftist perfidy.

by **jerseyhoya** » Thu Jan 14, 2010 23:49:32

Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive with no relation to the famous family, gets 3 percent of the vote.

by **Monkeyboy** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 02:57:33

I also think there are plenty of high level dems who are only too happy to have Rush spouting off ridiculous comments that the center of the country finds offensive, while these same dems point out how influential he is with high-level republicans. It's a nice way to demonstrate how extreme the modern GOP has become. There seemed to be a big push to marry Rush and GOP leadership in the country's mind. While I personally wouldn't mind waking up to find out he offed himself by taking too many painkillers, I imagine top dems like him right where he is.

I think the real cycle probably goes: Rush says something most Americans would find offensive ---> Dems and liberal groups scream foul and point out how much influence Rush has with GOP bigwigs ---> Rush's ratings go up and the GOP becomes more marginalized ---> repeat.

by **traderdave** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:02:31

jerseyhoya wrote:
Although Brown’s 4-point lead over Democrat Martha Coakley is within the Suffolk University/7News survey’s margin of error, the underdog’s position at the top of the results stunned even pollster David Paleologos.

“It’s a Brown-out,” said Paleologos, director of Suffolk’s Political Research Center. “It’s a massive change in the political landscape.”

The poll shows Brown, a state senator from Wrentham, besting Coakley, the state’s attorney general, by 50 percent to 46 percent, the first major survey to show Brown in the lead. Unenrolled long-shot Joseph L. Kennedy, an information technology executive with no relation to the famous family, gets 3 percent of the vote.

This seems kinda out of nowhere. I just heard last night that she had an eight-point lead, on average. I guess it goes to show that the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day.

by **jerseyhoya** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 10:58:33

The six polls in the race (from oldest to newest) that have been taken since New Years are: Coakley +17, Coakley +9, Brown +1, Coakley +2, Coakley +8, Brown +4

Given the way this race has snapped, and from what everyone is saying, if the election was today, Brown would win. We're on day three of saying that. Something needs to change if Coakley wants to go into election day favored. I think Obama should probably go up there.

by **Mountainphan** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 11:33:01

dajafi wrote:If Obama were the lily-livered pansy that the Cheney right tries to paint him as, I don't think we'd have seen the much higher rate of drone strikes in Af-Pak or the commitment to raising the troop levels there. If you haven't read the recent Peter Baker piece in the NYT Sunday magazine, you might find it worthwhile: the basic premise is that with a few exceptions, there's been little non-cosmetic change from the anti-terror tactics of the Bush years. One of the things he has tried to change, of course, is shutting down Guantanamo. Given the demonstrated willingness to piss off the Democratic base by escalating the Afghan war, I think it's safe to conclude that the rationale for closing the base is that informed opinion believes it's doing a lot more harm than good in the wider struggle.

For this most part, I agree with Baker's premise. I believe the ongoing delay in shutting down Guantanamo is based on a more informed opinion as President than he had pre-2009 as candidate/Sen. Obama. Perhaps this is why he is polling higher in this area (terrorism/foreign relations) than domestic issues.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125033/Obama-Approval-Terrorism-Up-49.aspx

by **dajafi** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 11:55:58

I'm pretty sure the ongoing delay in shutting down Guantanamo is because it's hellishly complex: the legal and logistical dispensation of those detained there are problems that stretch back well before Obama took office. (As Baker points out, Bush voiced a wish to shut it down too. So did McCain during the campaign IIRC)

If the administration had answers to those questions, I have no doubt they'd close the facility today.

by **Mountainphan** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 12:24:54

I'm sure that's part of it. I'm not so sure that's the entire story, however.

by **dajafi** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 15:07:10

I hadn't heard about this disgraceful action of the Obama administration: quietly paying Jonathan Gruber, an MIT professor of health care economics, while using him as a spokesperson on behalf of the healthcare bill.

Whether the fault is Gruber's for not disclosing or the administration's for pointing journalists to this guy, at least on appearance grounds, this is fully as bad as some of the internal propaganda programs of the Bush administration.

by **jerseyhoya** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 15:30:19

And now Obama is going to Boston Sunday. Guess there's no Pats game for them to be distracted by.

by **drsmooth** » Fri Jan 15, 2010 17:34:49

not to derail discussion, but in the interest of getting a better handle on the tea deal, I've come across this:

Tea Party Patriots Mission Statement

is this confusing jumble of sentimental revisionist history and bizarro libertarianism really reflective of tea partiers' beliefs? Or is there really even any identifiable there there? I mean:

the increasing national debt is a grave threat to our national sovereignty and the personal and economic liberty of future generations....We believe that it is possible to know the original intent of the government our founders set forth, and stand in support of that intent.

like they know ""the" original intent of the government our founders set forth" as if such a phrase could genuinely mean anything.

:q:

Archived

Clay Davis Memorial POLITICS THREAD