2/4/20: The “Ghost Trial” in the U.S. Senate continues. The Democrats present the evidence they have – and keep pointing out that they’d be happy to have more. The Trump administration, they point out, has blocked every subpoena filed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Republicans don’t deny the evidence the Democrats present. They insist the evidence isn’t good enough to impeach.
The Democrats in the House, they say, should have had more people to testify, even if the president told everyone, including the White House gardener, to ignore congressional subpoenas.
Catch-22.
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TUESDAY EVENING, President Trump stands before Congress and delivers the State of the Union Address.
He brags for over an hour about his successes and touts his orange greatness. He also goes out of his way to slam the “failed efforts” of the previous administration every time he can. His obsession with President Obama, who most Americans actually liked as a person, is on display from the start.
After brief, formal introductions, Trump sets to work trashing Obama in paragraphs two and three. Here we consult the official White House transcript, which includes the word “applause” as often as possible.
Trump sets the tone early:
Three years ago, we launched the great American comeback. Tonight, I stand before you to share the incredible results. Jobs are booming, incomes are soaring, poverty is plummeting, crime is falling, confidence is surging, and our country is thriving and highly respected again. (Applause.) America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise, and America’s future is blazing bright.
The years of economic decay are over. (Applause.) The days of our country being used, taken advantage of, and even scorned by other nations are long behind us. (Applause.) Gone too are the broken promises, jobless recoveries, tired platitudes, and constant excuses for the depletion of American wealth, power, and prestige.
In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline, and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We have totally rejected the downsizing. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never, ever going back. (Applause.)
There are some good moments in the Address, of course, as there always are. And we have a plethora of lies.
“Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act.”
One lie stands out. Trump claims to have always fought to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from discrimination by health insurers. He tells the American people he always will.
This is a stunning declaration, especially if you to check the website for Health and Human Services. HHS clearly explains what should be obvious even to Trump fans listening to the president talk. Under a section titled, “Can I get coverage if I have a pre-existing condition?” we find this:
Yes. Under the Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies can’t refuse to cover you or charge you more just because you have a “pre-existing condition”—that is, a health problem you had before the date that new health coverage starts. They also can’t charge women more than men.
If anyone is so obtuse as to not remember, the Affordable Care Act, which first created protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions, was signed into law on March 23, 2010.
Trump was not president at that time.
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THERE’S ALSO a stunning moment when Trump announces he is awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Rush Limbaugh.
The First Lady, seated on the radio talk show host’s left, rises, as does Limbaugh. He’s suffering from cancer and looks both feeble and close to tears as she drapes the medal round his neck.
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A Presidential Medal of Freedom for what?
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So, I’m going to ignore the rest of what the president said and the rest of his lies. You can read the transcript yourself.
The question many of us will ask is, why this guy? What has Rush Limbaugh done to rate any medal?
He never served in combat, never put on the uniform, having won two draft deferments when he was young and other Americans were dying in Vietnam. The first related to his status as a college student – the second, either for an old football injury or a “boil on the butt,” as one critic later put it.
So. No. He wasn’t a hero in any physical sense.
True, Rush has been a pillar of the wedding planning industry. He’s currently married to Wife #4.
Still, not much to go on, as far as a medal.
Um…getting hooked on oxycontin…do we give Presidential Medals of Freedom for that?
Ah! Rush has defended freedom with his lips! He has defended freedom by attacking, cumulatively, over half of all Americans. And here, let’s provide a partial list. (No doubt you can find other examples if you look, or tune in daily and find out who Limbaugh hates at present.)
We know, many years ago, that he got mad at a black listener who called in and told the man, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”
And you got another whiff of racism when Limbaugh had this to say back in the 80s: “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
Nor was Rush a fan of First Lady Michelle Obama. He was outraged when she pushed an initiative to get schools to provide healthier meals. She “doesn’t look like” she eats healthy, he grumbled during one show – and if you ever looked at Limbaugh in those days, you had to wonder how he had the nerve to imply that anyone else looked like they ate a lot of chips and dip.
In fact, Mrs. Obama was guilty of “uppity-ism,” he said. How dare she tell us what we should eat!
Most historians knew immediately what Limbaugh was hinting at, sanitizing an old term about “uppity n***ers,” which would include any African American who forgot his or her proper place. Such as “uppity n***ers” who wanted to sit at lunch counters, marry whomever they wanted, or vote in an election.
As for her husband, Limbaugh said there was no way Barack Obama should have been president. During a show in April 2011, he came out as a full-fledged Birther. Rush insisted that the president, “he’s got a grandmother or aunt in Kenya who said she saw him born there.” Rush was so sure of his sources he repeated his claim: “One of Obama’s relatives, aunt or grandmother, swears that he was born in Kenya. She saw it. She was there at the birth.” You figure it’s a pretty sketchy source when you’re not sure if it’s an aunt or a grandmother.
What Rush really did was help guys like Trump push the Birther myth; and when Trump ran for office, a poll showed 59% of his supporters believed Obama was born somewhere other than the United States.
Sometimes Rush fired off attacks against President Obama that didn’t make any sense at all. He insisted that Obama was going to mandate circumcision. That people wouldn’t be able “to go fishing anymore because of Obama.” He claimed the Obama administration “planned the influx of illegal alien children at the border” in 2014 and failed to screen the children for measles. That was why, he howled in 2015, that the U.S. was seeing an increase in the incidence of measles – among Orthodox Jews in New York City, for instance, none of whom sneaked across any border.
All those claims and many more won Rush multiple “Pants on Fire” ratings from the fact-checking site, Politifact.
Having scared his audience into thinking Obama was born in Kenya, and that he was also a Muslim, Rush went for the trifecta in 2009. He warned that the president was a socialist or a communist.
Hell, maybe both:
What [Obama] is talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the U.S. government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care. I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.
Neither did Mr. Obama; and during his two terms in office he did not absorb:
1. The banking business.
2. The mortgage industry.
3. The automobile business.
4. Health care.
In other words, Rush has long been adept at slinging bullshit. Again: not a reason to give him a medal.
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“Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns.”
Rush Limbaugh, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
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Maybe the following comments will mark him as a hero in your mind. I’m going to tip my hand and say, I hope not.
First, Rush didn’t believe Native Americans had been nearly wiped out after 1492, or if they had, big deal. Their population had recovered. “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history,” he once insisted.
“Does this sound like a record of genocide?”
Even if he had his figures right (he didn’t), this would be roughly equivalent to saying, “There are more Jews in Israel today than at any other time in history. Does that sound like the Nazi’s had a record of genocide?”
History was never his strong suit. Limbaugh once said, “If any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians.”
Rush has always held himself up as a defender of the Second Amendment. He’s not as big a fan of other rights, such as the right to protest. In 2003, when people protested against the decision to go to war with Iraq, it caused him to explode. “It’s beyond me how anybody can look at these protestors and call them anything other than what they are: anti-American, anti-capitalist, pro-Marxist communists,” he fumed.
This is almost funny – considering President Trump has called the decision to invade Iraq, “The worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country.”
More recently, Limbaugh tried to slap down the kids who helped organize “The March for Life,” after another bloody school massacre in Parkland, Florida. In a show titled “Parkland-Age Kids Are Snorting Condoms!” he tried to prove, with the least amount of logic possible, that we shouldn’t listen to young people from Parkland High School, where the massacre occurred, or young people from anywhere else, if they talked about gun control.
Here’s the “proof” he offered:
Condom snorting has become the latest challenge taking place on social media. New York Post says: “Condoms might make for safer sex – but they’re at the center of the riskiest new social media challenge. The viral video craze – dubbed ‘The Condom Challenge’ – is striking fear into parents as teenagers record themselves dangerously snorting the rubbers and pulling them through their throats.
See! All the teenagers marching for sensible gun control (and there were hundreds of thousands) had to be idiots because a few teenage idiots tried to suck condoms up their noses.
By the same logic, we shouldn’t have been listening to old white conservatives because Rush was a thrice-divorced, former drug addict.
Speaking of which, Rush was for locking people up, when it wasn’t himself. In 1994 he had this to say: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales...The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.”
Liberals always seemed to get Limbaugh’s easily-gotten goat. He had a freedom-loving solution to end the liberal locust plague.
From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It’s just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.
As for women, you might say Rush couldn’t muster up a great deal of respect. “Feminism,” he once grumbled, “was established so that unattractive ugly broads could have easy access to the mainstream.”
By comparison, here a liberal might have said, “Feminism was established so women could have the right to fly combat jets, win college scholarships to play soccer, have bank accounts in their own names, run in marathons if they wanted, not get sexually harassed at work, and serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, if qualified.”
Those were all battles feminists had to win.
It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute.
You could listen to Rush almost any day, year-in, year-out, and come away disgusted with what you heard. When a young college student named Sandra Fluke had the nerve to testify before Congress and argue that contraceptives should be widely available and covered under Obamacare, Limbaugh went about as low as one American can go in attacking another.
From his perch on high, with a radio voice reaching the nation, he savaged the young woman:
What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We’re not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that’s right. Pimp’s not the right word. Okay, so she’s not a slut. She’s “round heeled.” I take it back.
Then, I guess you could say he “earned” his medal from Trump and the First Lady with this:
So, Ms. Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal: If we are going to pay for you to have sex, we want something for it, and I’ll tell you what it is – we want you to post the videos online so we can all watch [emphasis added].
Finally, in an era of Bill Cosby and Bill O’Reilly, Bill Clinton and Roger Ailes, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Steve Wynn, and, of course, Donald J. Trump, let’s not forget Rush’s respect for women, generally.
According to Limbaugh, liberal thinking was ruining the country. It was making it so you could hardly approach a woman without getting accused of sexual harassment.
Let’s just say it figures, a guy who said he could grab women by the pussy because he was famous, would give a guy like Rush, who said the following, a Presidential Medal of Freedom:
You know what the magic word, the only thing that matters in American sexual mores today is? One thing. You can do anything, the Left will promote and understand and tolerate anything, so long as there is one element. Do you know what it is? Consent. If there is consent on both or all three or all four, however many are involved in the sex act, it’s perfectly fine. Whatever it is. But if the left ever senses and smells that there’s no consent in part of the equation then here come the rape police. But consent is the magic key to the Left.
Yeah, Limbaugh got that one right, although he was too clueless to understand why. Adults having consensual sex? Yeah. The “Left” is okay with that. Rush having sex with four wives in succession – a Biblical “no, no” by the way. No problem. Gay men having sex. Fine. Not anyone else’s business. Trump banging a porn star while married to the current First Lady. Sleazy, but legal. But sex without consent? No. No pedophilia. No rape. No spiking a date’s drink and having sex.
No sex unless adults give consent.
See, how easy that was?
POSTSCRIPT: I’m not the only one to be horrified by Trump’s decision to award Rush a medal for anything.
Hans Johnson, a gay man, remembers his father listening to Limbaugh’s show, and absorbing lessons in “freedom” as presented by a purveyor of hate. Johnson had come out to his parents several years before.
One day, he asked his father about Issue 3, a proposal to amend the city charter of Cincinnati, Ohio, and forbid any law that granted “minority or protected status … or other preferential treatment” to gay men, lesbians or bisexuals.” He was curious. Would his father have voted for the issue? He didn’t directly answer the question, but channeling Rush, responded, “I don’t want a gay agenda forced on me.”
Johnson saw it this way:
Scathing criticism of “homosexuals” was Limbaugh’s consistent textual preference for on-air treatment of LGBT people. He mocked gay men who died of AIDS. He promoted the false narrative that gay men recruit children for sex, telling Playboy, “I do think that if you get hold of people young enough and attempt to sway them, that homosexuality can be steered into them.”
This is what my dad imbibed on a regular basis. Limbaugh’s attempt at reversal of victimhood — that it was heterosexual people, not gays, who were the subjects of repression because their authority to lash out at people they despised was limited by law — could be read in the language of the Cincinnati policy itself. Limbaugh repeated the false accusation used to win passage of the law: that by trying to stop discrimination, gay people sought privilege, or “special rights.”
As in the “special right” not to be beaten to death like Matthew Shepard in 1998. Sixteen years later, Rush felt the need to relitigate the details of Shepard’s murder, insisting that he had read a book, or seen a book, or imagined a book, that proved Shepard was not beaten badly, tied to a fence post in Wyoming, and left to die because he was gay. The story that Shepard had been killed because he was homosexual, Limbaugh insisted, “it’s now been proven didn’t happen, but [he was] reputed to have [been] beaten up by a bunch of anti-gay bigots.”
