It's time for us to acknowledge something, folks.
This thing is over.
There are mountains of evidence out there - McCain pulling out of Michigan, Palin pulling out of human interaction, every fucking poll. But we, being Democrats (and thus being possessed of an infinite ability to screw up an election), don't want to admit it. We look for things to worry about, instead of looking for signs that they're worried.
Well, I got a good one for you, courtesy of HuffPo.
Remember when Rush Limbaugh was an Honorary Member of Congress? In 1994, he was effectively a national precinct captain for the GOP, rallying listeners and driving up participation among those drawn to his bigoted, crude, lie-riddled brand of carnival. He could publish books, and people could publish entire other books to discredit and correct the lies in those books. He had a TV show. He was named the most powerful man in American politics by not a few respectable pundits.
And then, today, we get this desperate diatribe from the former Kingmaker who hated/rooted against McCain, loved/rooted for Hillary (for the sole reason that he thought she would be easier to beat) and despised/incites hatred against Obama.
For those of you who have never deigned to listen to Rush Limbaugh, let me first congratulate you on all those extra brain cells you saved from a fate worse than/exactly like death. Secondly, please take my word for it when I tell you that this is typical Limbaugh bullshit.
We know that technological advancement is going along at light speed. And yet during this period of time, whether it be the last 57 years or be it the last 20 years, it seems that a majority of the black population has remained angry, frustrated, and behind. They've been left behind. They are acting like they've been left behind, and of course we've heard that this is because of racism, natural systemic institutional racism in America, that we are unfair, that this country is just horrible and rotten.
You might say 'Gasp? He just attributed a negative attribute to the majority of a racial population, and didn't even acknowledge they might have SOMETHING resembling a legitimate beef with the past! That's, like, the literal definition of racism!'
Thing is, he does that kind of shit all the time. I wouldn't waste a whole diary on just that.
But when you're listening to Rush, you have to get a sense of when he's just about to go over the deep end. Normally, it happens in the middle of a good Democrat bashing rant - readers of Al Franken's Rush Limbaugh Is A Big Fat Idiot (And Other Observations) know this already (and the rest of you oughta pick up a copy) - but lately it's been different. He knows they're fucked.
You ever ask yourself how it is that people not even born here can come here and in a few short years begin prospering in school, their own business or what have you, yet people who are born in this country somehow have been raised to hate it, to think they're still back in the days of slavery. I actually think, after studying all this ACORN stuff and reading what Stanley Kurtz has written about this, I actually believe that what has taken place here in addition to liberal Democrat legislation, such as the Great Society and the war on poverty, which a lot of people will now acknowledge really busted up the black family by the government taking the place of the husband and father, free to roam around and bear no responsibility. The mother remained the mother, she got the financial assistance from this legislation, from the federal government. [Emphasis mine]
Again, shocking to the untrained eye. A mismash of the same tired 'every immigrant that works hard is a Republican' meme, taking a shit on Lyndon Baines Johnson (the most prolific legislative president in history) - with a sociological dissection of the plight of Black America for the last 40 years crammed into the last sentences. 20 million people nodding along.
The federal government became the father. The father didn't have to hang around in order for the kids to be okay, depending on how you define okay. But as you study more and more of this ACORN stuff, you find that it has been part of an entire movement that has been going on for two, maybe three decades, right under our noses.
Uh oh. When Rush thinks he's read the tea leaves just right, hold on to your hats.
We thought that it was just liberal welfare policies and all that that kept blacks from progressing while other minorities grew and prospered, but no, it is these wackos from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to other anti-American Afrocentric black liberation theologists with ACORN, and Barack Obama is smack dab in the middle of it, they have been training young black kids to hate, hate, hate this country, and they trained their parents before that to hate, hate, hate this country. It was a movement. It was a Bill Ayers, anti-capitalist, anti-American educational movement. ACORN is how it was implemented, right under our noses. They're doing far more, folks, than just cheating when it comes to elections and registration. They are in deep in this mortgage crisis. ACORN and Obama and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, the Democrat Party, have their fingerprints all over the subprime mortgage crisis. The whole concept of affordable housing was people that can't afford a mortgage are going to get one, because America is unfair. [Emphasis mine]
There you have it. We've gone from possible - POSSIBLE - voting registration irregularities to 'Afrocentric black liberation theology' and what I frankly see as the most racist idea currently tolerated in our political discourse: the notion that irresponsible black homeowners are to blame for the mortgage crisis. It fits the bash Bill Clinton meme, the fuck those lazy black welfare recipients meme, and the Obama is training children to kill you meme - the last one I was unaware of, but all three are clearly part of Rush's worldview.
But Al Franken taught me the only thing I needed to know about Rush Limbaugh, and movement conservatism in general (this is a sloppy paraphrase that I will update correctly when I get home).
Reaganonics is the jewel in Rush's crown of bullshit. If deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and the recession of the welfare state works, then Rush is a champion of the people, arguing against pointy-headed liberal professors that think they know everything.
If they don't, then Rush is a carnival barker, distracting the crowd at the fair from the mangled bodies left by a defective roller coaster by bitching about those goddamned liberal safety inspectors.
Reaganomics has failed. This financial crisis will go down in history as the moment that particular economic theory was once and for all scrapped. Eight years of single party rule - the enactment of every bit of legislation they wanted - and this is where we are. That is why we see this kind of reaching.
It has been a movement, it has been a religion, and Obama and Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers were all up to their big ears in it. [Emphasis mine]
On November 5th, I'm going to send Rush an Oxycontin. At least that way, while he's incredibly depressed about the historic ass-whupping we're on course to lay on the GOP, he won't send out a maid to risk a felony in order to grab those for him like the coward that he is.