Wow. The stuff Rush Limbaugh is telling his audience is something to behold. I normally only notice Limbaugh when he says something extremely provocative, so I don’t encounter his political “analysis” very often. Half his analysis is based on outright lies about statistics, and the rest is an admixture of “it’s working” and “I don’t even care if it isn’t working.”
I get why people like to listen to Limbaugh, but I don’t understand why his audience hasn’t long ago concluded that his predictive powers are worthless.
It’s not about being right. It’s about being believed. That’s where the power lies.
Has the crumbling of the Republican Party already started:
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On Thursday, the divisions were on display as conservative groups like the Heritage Action for America said they would not fight a short-term increase in the debt ceiling while Americans for Prosperity insisted just a few days ago that any increase be tied to cuts in social programs.
Their actions followed an unusual public statement on Wednesday by the Koch Companies, the conglomerate controlled by the billionaire conservative brothers Charles and David Koch, who sent a letter to the Senate stating that they did not support the effort led by Heritage Action to force the partial closing of federal government as a way to eliminate funding for the health care program.
___________________
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/11/us/kochs-and-other-conservatives-split-over-strategy-on-health-law
.html?ref=us
Another of the secretive funders of Heritage Action, which organized this shutdown/shakedown, has now been identified — “… tax disclosures reviewed by TheNation.com show that the Council for National Policy has provided a steady stream of funding for the organizing effort.”
http://www.thenation.com/blog/176538/meet-evangelical-cabal-orchestrating-shut-down#
What’s interesting about this is that CNP represents the Dominionist wing of the Christian Right, the same bunch that was so enthusiastic about choosing Sarah Palin as VP candidate in 2008.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/09/19/602757/-The-CNP-Dominionists-Who-Vetted-Sarah-Palin
One other funding funnel has recently been identified by the Center for Responsive Politics. In 2012, one donor ($271,000) was something called Free Enterprise America. FEA is a Koch Bros. front, and most of their donor organizations are other Koch fronts, except for the National Association of Manufacturers (which provided nearly half their funding), and Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, which also gave them a nice chunk of change.
http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/nonprof_contrib.php?id=274395336
I’m going to go out on a really flimsy limb in a high wind and suggest that most of Limbaugh’s audience don’t listen to him in order to get a clearer picture of what’s going on in the world.
Well, yes, this would be correct. Increasingly, the buffoon’s listeners want someone who will help them engage in full-on denial of what’s going on in the world.
The transcript’s “skewed polls” nonsense is amusing, but this gobsmacked me:
“We have a president not nearly as likable as Clinton was back in 1995…A majority of people never opposed Clinton on much.”
Mo-ther-f***er. That is some DefCon 29-level revisionist history. Rushbo’s running away from his representations during the Clinton Presidency as fast as the Koch Brothers are from their shutdown/debt ceiling disaster.
I’m thinking Harry Reid(and maybe Pelosi) is saving the Democrats bacon in this battle. After the House GOPers came up with their plan to put off the default date for 6 weeks without ending the shutdown, the White House started to wobble about negotiations. Reid got his ass over to the White House and came out stating that there would be no negotiations until the shutdown ended.
I DON’T TRUST OBAMA when it come to negotiating with Republicans. Turn it over to Reid.
Since this feeds entirely into my existing assumptions, I’m eager to read a link about this.
From the AP: “The White House appeared briefly to wobble on the issue of negotiations on Thursday, until Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged from a meeting with the president to reaffirm it emphatically.”
We can’t trust Obama, so hand it over to “tough negotiator” Reid?
We’re so screwed.
As someone who has written at least 50 emails to Harry Reid’s site, making fun of his presumed “give ’em hell” persona and accusing him of being spineless, impotent and afraid of his own shadow, I know how you feel, BUT … ever since he started calling Romney out about those tax returns, he’s been significantly stronger, and even the wussy 2009 Harry Reid was much tougher than Obama. Obama is a historic wuss. Every time I think about how passionately I cared about nominating him instead of Hillary I just want to vomit. Can you imagine her in any of these negotiation situations?
I’m fairly sure she would have been at least as conservative as Obama, but in terms of dealing with the GOP … no contest.
On the other hand, fed chief Mark Penn? Sec. of State Lanny Davis?
ay … what a mess
This is one of the funniest threads I’ve read on the Frog Pond.
It must be very strange to be President Obama. A man of extraordinary vision and brilliance approaching to genius, he can’t get anyone to notice. He is like a great painter or musician who is ahead of his time, and who unveils one masterpiece after another to a reception that, when not bored, is hostile.
Has Obama made income inequality better or worse? Has Obama made the 1% richer and the 99% poorer?
Obama is the funniest, smartest and most comfortable in his own skin president in memory. You can’t help but want to love him, but the bottom line is somewhere between him screwing us on purpose and him trying to protect us and failing miserable.
You can argue about it til you’re blue in the face, but the real financial wreckage of the middle class is not arguable.
Booman – can’t you get the new comment software that lets you edit your typos?
Absolutely. The post above was sarcasm. If you recall, Assrocket made that post about Bush. Also if you’ve read what I comment on here at all you know I am one of the Obama critics here.
Here are some links that support your assertions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/09/19/watch-the-growth-of-u-s-income-inequality
-with-this-animated-map/
http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/saez-UStopincomes-2012.pdf
Actually I can help not loving him rather easily. I read diaries he wrote on DKos and the discussion therein. From the Iowa caucuses I knew he saw me as part of the problem because I thought Republicans were the problem.
Also remember how I was so crazy for suggesting Obama wanted to use the debt ceiling to get a grand bargain? Bloomberg comes through: we fucked up:
http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-10/obama-s-hardline-budget-stance-rooted-in-anger-over-2011
-impasse.html
I agree completely. Politics is an art, and many people enjoy the results but few appreciate how those results are obtained.
It’s frustrating to find so many people complaining, for instance, “Why isn’t he doing something about this?”, when he is doing something about it, but they don’t understand what it is. Then when the good results come, they don’t connect that with anything he did, because they don’t know what he did.
I’m not a terrific fan of some of Obama’s bipartisan rhetoric and past negotiations, but this is ridiculous:
“Can you imagine (Hillary) in any of these negotiation situations? I’m fairly sure she would have been at least as conservative as Obama, but in terms of dealing with the GOP … no contest.”
Yes, Hillary was great in her dealings with Republicans in 1993 when she was leading the fight for health care reform. And what a master she was during her term in the Senate- remember all those amazing negotiations she led?
Yes, Bill was fabulous in his negotiations with Republicans when he signed NAFTA, the Glass-Steagall repeal, and the evisceration of welfare programs.
C’mon, get real. Obama’s negotiation and policy successes leave the Clintons far behind.
Link: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-shutdown-debt-plan-no-agreement-yet-165932830–politics.html
However, AP might be mistaking Barack Obama for Bill O’Reilly. Same initials and everything. Not sure how far I’d trust them …
How times have changed for the public’s perception of Harry Reid.
I listen enough to know that sports talk radio hosts (local or national) can’t consistently beat the spread in predicting football games. Indeed, it seems typical that they’re below .500. They certainly couldn’t be GM or coach, nor could the callers. But that doesn’t matter because driving in the car listening to some people on the radio talk football, praise heroes, rant about mistakes or failures, blame this or that, etc. is satisfying and enjoyable. If anything, the shared experience makes the listener identify more with his or her team (say the Giants) despite their real-world failures.
The evolution of politics as a sport among the public and the pundit class is part and parcel of why I often feel the need to drink.
MikeinOhio: Then you’ll probably enjoy this.
Heh, I saw that earlier this week.
Heard they were getting something like 1000 calls a day.
And most sports talk radio hosts are RWNJ’s!! Who woulda thunk it!!
How was Olberman against the spread?
Limbaugh listeners remind me of a Law & Order victim who declares, ‘My dad isn’t an abuser, he only beats me on Tuesdays’
To internalize the lies Limbaugh has amply laid out and call him out as a quack is to them, similar to calling your mother a wh*re…it’s admitting to the world that you’re the offspring of a wh*re and that tears at your core understanding of life.
Not to mention that you’ve been hornswaggeled!
Yes. Also, the term hornswoggled is not used often enough, so thanks.
My theory is that his audience continues to have faith in his predictive powers because they’re brain-dead, hate-drunk savages.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
I can’t read more than a few paragraphs of that stuff. Then my eyes glaze over.
shoring up breaches in the bubble and protecting wingnut fee-fees is el bloviator’s number one job.
Well, for Limbaugh that wasn’t so bad. The first section is actually a reasonably cogent discussion of the fractures in the repub. Then he writes a little love note to Ted Cruz, his hero, and that’s fine, everyone should have a hero. The last part where he talks about the Obamacare “disaster” is really where he goes off the rails. But the repubs as a whole have always been completely delusional about Obamacare.
This is related.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/11/fox_news_and_talk_radio_brainwashed_my_dad_partner/
Fox News and talk radio brainwashed my dad: A filmmaker’s father came to believe the right-wing lies of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative pundits
Uhm…
“…why his audience hasn’t long ago concluded that his predictive powers are worthless?
Because the stupid, the ignorant, the scared, the hate-filled, the racist, the misogynistic, the xenophobic, the homophobic, the rubes, the suckers, the bobo’s, the marks, the fools, the stooges, the Jesus-grifter followers, the nit/half/dim/f*ck-wits, the morons, the imbeciles, the Authoritarian followers, the buttinsky’s, and the feckin’ eedjits in their district, look upon these sociopathic Authoritarian loons, and say, “Yup! ‘At one’s a REAL leader! ‘At’s the one I think’s smart ‘nough to ‘presest us’n and all y’all’n in Warshington, DC!!!”
AND, the Reich-Wing radio!!!
AND, FUX Noise!
Jayzoos, we ARE a “TEH STOOOOOOOOOOOOOPID” country!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Limbaugh’s audience doesn’t really care about political reality. They just want to hear, over and over again, that golden oldie
“Blackity -black, don’t talk back”
“Republicans familiar with the talks also say the meeting started poorly until House budget chairman Paul Ryan pleaded with Obama, telling him that he was missing a historic opportunity”
Ah, of course Ryan would play to Obama’s vanity. A historic opportunity to pass elements of the Ryan budget.
I’ve been pretty happy with how the President has handled things so far but he’s always been a little weak in the knees when it comes to negotiating. At least he knows everyone else knows it too.
1. Authoritarian Enablers like Limbaugh have one job: train an audience to listen to the hierarchy and not question them, no matter what.
Dittoheads, anyone?
2. Hatred is a very powerful emotion. Who cares if someone has been wrong in the past, if they hate the same people you hate, for similar reasons.
Period. End of story. Forever.
This is how Authoritarians come to power and hold it. Authoritarian Enablers like Limbaugh.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/12/us/republicans-get-a-pep-talk-from-rush-limbaugh.html
http://joeforamerica.com/2013/10/america-needs-white-republican-president/