Rush Limbaugh is the archtypical conservative: more bluster than action, manipulative, hypocritical.

There isn't a USA war that Rush doesn't love. He thinks everyone should help fight for his cause. Everyone but Rush.

Although he was prime material for cannon fodder in the Vietnam years, Rush was unable to perform his patriotic duties. he was declared to be medically unfit for service. Heart malfunction? Head trauma? Cancer? Nope. He had a pimple. More precisely, a pimple on his fat, um..... gluteous maximus.

It's called a pilonidal cyst. No one ever died from a pilonidal cyst, aka fistula.

In fact, a late friend fought in WWI. He had a fistula. While a bit embarrassing, his fistula didn't keep him out of combat. When irritated - like ducking into trenches or running across battlegrounds - his cyst bled. The solution? Well, Uncle Sam didn't send him home. Instead, the Army issued him a supply of ..... you look it up.

So in WWI a fistula earned one a hygiene accessory. When possible, the treatment is antibiotic therapy (not available back then), hot compresses, lancing, and application of depilatory creams (if an ingrown hair is involved).

In the 60s, this owwie was grounds for rejection. Keep in mind: he could have had the cyst treated, insisted that the Army (or Marines - ha!) let him in, and then shipped out to fight in that noble war. He let an outpatient procedure get between him and his patriotic duty. He was, and still is, fully capable of attacking anyone who has the temerity to question the value and/or morality of a military action .... any military action, whether or not instigated by our government.

Of course, among 'hawks' - pro-war (any war) loudmouths - there are many hypocrites like Rush. Think of them as Chicken Hawks. Who served in the military (and who did not)?

Don't You Just Love Hypocrites?

Labels: chickenhawk, conservative, fistula, Hypocrite, pilonidal, Rush Limbaugh, viet nam, vietnam

"On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That's a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush's watch."
-- CBS News, 9/29/08

Don't fall for that Republican crap about how 'liberals' spend too much and tax you to pay for it. As we can see, 'conservatives' spend more, spend faster than 'liberals' do, and don't have a way to pay for it.

Mr. Bush's reckless fiscal policy (or lack of policy) passes the payment for today's spend-spend-spend onto tomorrow's taxpayers. Our children and our children's children will carry Bush's Burden - with compound interest piling on.

Which would you really prefer: a tax-and-spend government or a borrow-and-spend government?

Labels: borrow-and-spend, conservative, national debt, reckless spending

CNN
November 27, 2002

[ Who is responsible for the following? News media with a liberal bias, or news media with a conservative bias ]

Josh Cowan did a Lexus Nexus search [ far more thorough than Google, Yahoo. or MSN ], comparing the mainstream news media's coverage of Bush and Gore on a variety of issues during the 2000 presidential campaign.

Stories about Al Gore

• 704 stories in the campaign about this flap of Gore inventing the Internet. The fable has since been discredited - he never claimed such a thing, and no one could pin down actual, verifiable evidence that he did say so.
  
  
• Over 1,000 stories -- Nexus stopped at 1,000 -- about Gore and the Buddhist temple. This was a non-story that turned out to be wildly exaggerated and again, proven untrue. Besides, who really cares, anyway? It had no bearing on his integrity or his qualifications as a leader.
  
  
• 347 articles about Al Gore wearing earth tones. Somehow it became news-worthy to report on his clothing, as if that had, as above, bearing on his integrity or his qualifications as a leader.

News reports about Bush and Cheney

• 13 stories about Bush failing to show up for his National Guard duty for his last year of service. There were dozens of official documents and sworn witnesses who confirmed the story. The only chink in the armor was one document whose authenticity could be neither proven nor disproven. All of the other evidence was solid - George W. Bush did not take a required physical pilot's examination; subsequently he simply did not show up for duty.
  
  
• 12 articles about Bush being accused of insider trading at Harken Energy. No one in the "liberal news media" bothered to take the evidence and run with it.
  
  
• 10 stories about the fact that Dick Cheney did business with Iran and Iraq and Libya. And that's a fact, Jack! A vice-presidential candidate violated several laws regarding dealing with the enemy - countries he asserts are sponsors of terrorism - and the "liberal news media ignored the story."
  
  
• 0 - zip - nada - zed - no stories about either man's wardrobe.
  

In the case of those Bush and Cheney stories, they DID bear on integrity. In fact, at the heart of each were questions about whether or not those men had committed crimes.

The lies about Al Gore ALWAYS started with a misquote or something taken out of context. The "liberal news media picked up the story because it sounded juicy; rarely did any "reporter" actually investigate any of the allegations. Then the right-wing smear machine kept the false story alive, and the "so-called liberal" news media continued to repeat the lies.

If the news media actually had a "liberal" bias, all of the above stories about Gore would have been buried, and the stories about Bush and Cheney would have been highlighted constantly. The opposite happened. Clearly the news media's bias leans heavily to the right.

Labels: al gore, bias, buddhist temple, bush, cheney, conservative, discover love canal, harken, invent the internet, liberal media, national guard, news, right-wing, smear, wardrobe

The news media do not have a liberal bias. Conservatives even admit it, when they're being honest¹.

The Liberal Media

¹ "conservative" and "honest" in the same sentence? What was I thinking?

Labels: conservative, honest, liberal media.

Family values run stronger among folks in the Red States than in the liberal leftie leaners of those Blue States. Everyone knows that. In liberal-land one doesn't see billboards that remind us that "The family that prays together, stays together." Apparently more prayer leads to greater family values, and as we all know, liberals don't pray. Right?

Divorce rates are a measure of family values.

However, according to the Barna Group (consultants to evangelical Christian groups):

• 19 percent of Northeasterners (lefties, all) have divorced
• 27 percent of Southerners and Midwesterners (mostly family-oriented conservatives) have untied their knots at least once.
• 27 percent of self-described born-again Christians have been divorced
• 24 percent of other Christians - those less faithful than the born-agains - have renounced their vows.
  

Divorce rates, by denomination

• 34% non-denominational evangelical Christian congregations
• 29% Baptists
• 25% Mainline Protestants
• 24% Mormons
• 21% Catholics and Lutherans
  

Sanity check: 21% of atheists and agnostics have succumbed to the temptations and pleasures of divorce court.

Red State Values, Blue State Values

1. According to 2004 presidential voting election results, there are:
   
   • red states: 32
   • blue states:19 (includes District of Columbia)
   Drawing on data provided by the Centers for Disease Control, we can develop a red-state/blue-state morality chart for 2004. It reveals some interesting facts.

2. Divorce.

   The national average divorce rate(divorces per 1000 population) was 3.6.
   
   • 73.3% of blue states were below that average (26.7% were above)
     3/4 of blue states had divorce rates BELOW the national average.
     
     
   • 20.0% of red states were below that average (80.0% were above)
     4/5 of red states had divorce rates ABOVE the national average.
     
   note: 2 blue states and 3 red states did not report for that year
   http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/divorce90_04.pdf

3. Teenage (ages 15-19) pregnancies

   The states with the worst teen pregnancy rates were red states
   
   • 9 of the 10 worst states were red states
   • 20 of 32 red states had teen pregnancy rates significantly higher than US average (includes the 9 mentioned above)
   • 1 of the 19 blue states had teen pregnancy rate significantly higher than US average (actually not a state - it was the District of Columbia)
     
   
   The states with the best teen pregnancy rates were blue states
   
   • 9 of 10 best states were blue states
   • 18 of 19 blue states had teen pregnancy rates significantly lower than the US average (includes the 9 mentioned above)
   • 10 of 32 red had teen pregnancy rates significantly lower than the US average
   
   Some states had 'average' teen pregnancy rates
   
   • 0 blue states had rates not significantly different from US average
   • 2 red states had rates not significantly different from US average
   
   All of the above pregnancy statistics are clearly shown at the CDC website

4. It gets worse.

   The highest rates of divorce, murder, STD/HIV/AIDS, teen pregnancy, single parent homes, infant mortality, and obesity rates in the nation are in the Bible Belt. As a region, the Bible Belt has the poorest health care systems and the lowest rates of high school graduation. If you don't believe it, look it up for yourself.

Read an article discussing much of the above. While it has many citations and web links - the ones I checked proved to be reliable - that article was NOT my source for any of the above content.

Labels: bible belt, blue state, conservative, divorce, liberal, morality, ppregnancy, red state

We were told that we invaded Iraq to, in part, bring a better life to the people of Iraq. How have we done?

1. They no longer have to live under Saddam Hussein, with his torture and killing of Iraqi citizens.
2. There are no Weapons of Mass Destruction in their midst.
3. They had a national election a few years ago
4. There are no terrorists collaborating with Saddam.

Now the Iraqi people enjoy the best of the dreams of American conservatives. Here's a Top Ten (or so...) List of the coolest things about living in Iraq:

• No Gun Control.
• Only 1 legislative body to buy.
• A free market, restrained only by guns and bombs.
• No one watches Michael Moore's movies.
• A pure supply-and-demand system with low supply, high demand, and astronomical prices.
• People willing to stand in line and pay any price for gasoline.
• No trial lawyers.
• It's easy to keep the peasants happy: free air conditioning in every building.
• No Canadians next door.
• Gated communities rock!
• No credit card bills.
• Law according to a book of faith, written many centuries ago, as interpreted by whomever has the biggest, baddest arsenal to enforce the law.
• No illegal immigrants.
• An unregulated health care system where them that gots is them that gets; everyone else gets eaten up in the dog-eat-dog world of natural selection (that same 'natural selection' process which doesn't exist, according to many conservatives).
• No Pure Food and Drug inspectors.
• Huge demand for items containing lead and spent uranium (are you listening, China?)
• No liberal media.
• Don't have to waste money on infrastructure such as roads, bridges, sewage treatment, water treatment (clean water is for losers, anyway).
• No liberal professors in the colleges, corrupting the children.
• Everything is privatized - even the militias.
• Don't have to worry about having to sue businesses.... or neighbors."
• No Social Security.
• Can build noo-kew-ler power plants anywhere, any time.
• No minimum wage.
• Most minorities know their place and lay low or leave the country.
• No zoning laws.
• Education only for those who can afford it.
• No environmentalists.
• Tax collectors too afraid to venture out to collect.
• No pollution control laws.
• Might makes right.
• You don't have to get confused by saying 'reform' when you mean 'get rid of'.
• No damned 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments
• Cops don't have to bother with "you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney...
• Religious freedom, as long as you worship at the right place.
• No worries about having the right shoes or dress for the occasion.
• Women's health issues are not worth considering.
• A "Flat Tax" on income (really!).
• No saftey inspectors.
• Screw the U.N.
• No insurance premiums to pay.

and the number one cool thing about living in Iraq

No Democrats.

Dick Cheney: if you're reading this, try to not get any on the keyboard. It makes the keys all sticky.

Labels: christian, conservative, flat tax, free market, gun control, iraq, jewish, liberal media., liberal professors, minimum wage, religious freedom, social security, unregulated, Zoroastrian