Hope-y, Change-y. Nope-y.

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While the silla one from Wasilla struts her crib notes and canned memes, the real war is building between the Big Rs...and I don't mean Rahm....

The silla from Wasilla gets a reality check from Daily News columnist Mike Lupica. And even a mocking today from Scarborough on Morning Joe. Out Fey-ing Tina? Sounds like a challenge for an SNL reprise to me.

This Monday diss after her yoga-esque contortions, as Lupica calls 'em, to say no, Rush really isn't crossing the line in using the R word, along with the intelligence-dimming inquality of her Saturday night TeaBagger speech.

Hope-y, change-y, Sarah? Really? When you play toady to Rush's bully? Pocketing the pricey coin as you gull the rubes back into the Gooper base fold?

So why are the supposed intelligent political reporting class--Andrea, Savannah, Chuck Todd...say it ain't so, Schuster--treating this woman seriously? Where is their reality check? Media acting like credulous reporters making Murrow, Cronkite, Jennings proud?

Nope. Dope-y.

In the battle of the right wing heavyweights, Sarah's caught in the middle between Limbaugh and Ailes. Used to be I thought Roger and Rush were a tagteam, but of late I'm thinking self-interest prevails. While Roger's fillin' Sarah's coffers and grooming her as his pet propaganda pusher, Rush is makin' sure his own pockets stay overflowing.

So far, the king of feminazi racist healthist insult has not met his match.
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Crossposted at firedoglake's Seminal

Question "R" Rush

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Is Rush Limbaugh deliberately taunting Sarah Palin? Daring her to call him out as she did Rahm Emanuel for his intemperate F***R****?

Is the battle of the rightwing grifter heavyweights building up steam?

Or is Sarah about to take her lipstick and retreat, licked, back to Wasilla?
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crossposted at firedoglake's The Seminal

Drunk in the Bleachers

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Today, the GOP's usual loudmouths mocked Chicago's loss of bid for the 2012 Olympics and attacked Obama for making the effort to help bring those Olympics to the USA.

Among the most egregious was Rush Limbaugh. Doubtless the video will be readily available on youtube and elsewhere, including the Ed Show on MSNBC.

And I realized what we're seeing from Rush Limbaugh. What we have been seeing ever since Barack Obama came on the political landscape. Limbaugh's McNabb tirade was merely prelude.

He's the racist drunk in the bleachers yellin' at the star athlete who shows up for every game, plays to the best of his professional ability, works with his team and is the hero of his hometown.

Rush can't stand it. Because for Limbaugh, every game, he's the loser. He may have a fat contract, but he's still and ever shall be a loser. And when the game ends, he goes home alone. Except for what he can buy.

Which just reinforces: Rush Limbaugh = Loser.
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Rush Bites Corporate Hand

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Maybe it's merely Rush Limbaugh's temper tantrum, but his current call for boycotting General Motors, seems to me, should give Comcast and all his advertisers serious pause.

Everyone knows about the Magic $400 million...Rush's contract. Clear Channel's* ditch.

But not content to thrash around attempting to discredit President Obama's economic policies or SCOTUS appointment or...hmmmm, has he turned on Bo yet?...Rush more and more is attacking his own.

He wants Obama to fail. But if Obama fails, the country fails.

He wants everybody to boycott GM. And if GM fails, jobs and small businesses by the thousands fail.

Rush didn't get his way in the last election. He's ranting and fuming and bouncing up and down, fat globules following. Wanting his enemies to fail, wanting his friends to fail, wanting everybody to fail. Joining him in his twisted, self-destructive little world that all the glittery dollars and Gulfstreams cannot put a polish on.

Maybe in the boardrooms and marketing depts of major corporations they're having a good laugh at the way Rush is stickin' it to the Dems and Obama.

Or maybe, finally, they're starting to say, hey, wait a minute...what if he started talking like that about...us?
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[h/t Niemoller]
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crossposted at firedoglake's Oxdown Gazette

*corrected by PS

Another in a Long Line

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Sometimes the pictures say it all....
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Race Baiter

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The Republican saga of race-baiting rightwing bigotry is ratcheting up these days.

John Ridley over at Huffington Post reminds us: there is no context for bigotry other than bigotry.

And there is no bigger propagandist for the Republican bigotry machine than their carefully cultivated rightwing radio talker, Rush Limbaugh.

And certainot, a commenter there, puts it succinctly:

yes... the party of lincoln is now the party of limbaugh. no one represents the morals and priciples of the modern GOP better.

These days, (R ) is a four-letter word.
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UPDATE: On the Sundance Channel, a powerful documentary—Ring of Fire, the Emile Griffith Story. Griffith was beaten within an inch of his life. Coincidence that this happened in the summer as the gay-bashing right was beating their drums during the 1992 campaign?

Bigotry has many targets—the "other"—the person of color, the gay, the Jew, the gypsy...and as Niemoller reminds us...and then they came for me and there was no one left to say anything.

Bush is a four-letter word. Rush is a four-letter word. Rove is a four-letter word.

And so is Evil.
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The Invisible Ones

This month we’ve learned, those of us who live in Prairie Country, that we are the Invisible Ones. Oh, we suspected as much, the year the map company left off North Dakota completely. Much laughter about that in Minnesota and Montana and South Dakota.

Now it’s “official”—the imprimateur of the media declared it so. First, National Geographic, with their January article on the vast, dying emptiness of the plains. And ABC Nightly News reinforced the vast emptiness with its Persons of the Week presentation Friday evening. Yep, we’re a kind-hearted bunch out here in Prairie Country, blonde, red-cheeked, hmmmm, but let’s keep that camera on the vast open spaces and an abandoned chicken coop or two or maybe a rancher on horseback herding cattle. What other stereotypes can we come up with?

Noticably, neither National Geographic nor Nightly News covered the significant Microsoft campus in Fargo, nor the other strong forces of our economy…oil, agribusiness, high-tech. They did do what the media does too often.

Comes up with a storyline and then fits reality around it.

Been a lot of that happening this political season. The storyline on the Democrats side is the two-person horserace-in-the-ring mano-a-mana Clinton Obama…. Oh wait, you say there are more than two persons in the race? And that’s not even counting the ones who’ve already dropped out? Who got more attention for quitting than they got during their campaigns?

Meanwhile on the Republican side, media’s covering the whole big circus, down to 5% Rudy. And so far, the talk is of the big mix-it-up anybody could get the nomination. No Invisible Ones there. But there’s harbingers on the horizon. Rush Limbaugh’s talking up his man Mitt, who just happens to own the Clear Channel radio network that, surprise, surprise, carries his show. Limbaugh’s “base” are Invisible Ones, people who feel disenfranchised, and he’s preyed on them for years. Maybe they’ll finally start to wake up to the reality that he’s just a hired gunslinger and his bullets are words. A lot of fancy-dancy spinning the guns before slippin’ ’em back in the holsters, but still, just a hired gunslinger. Who doesn’t shoot straight.

There are other hired gunslingers out there, too. Pundits, pollsters, opinionizers. And they don’t shoot straight, either. Bill O’Reilly spins a good yarn like he has lately about homeless veterans, and doesn’t let the facts get in his way. Have you ever noticed how much Billo resembles the town Sheriff in The Unforgiven? Oh, he’s got a man’s dreams…that nice house with the porch to watch the sunset. Makes you long for Jack Webb or Clint Eastwood to come along and straighten things out.

Politicians aren’t immune…watching the tag team of new lobbying partners and former Senators John Breaux and Trent Lott these days, one can imagine they’re busily thinking about their porches and how big they can make ’em…wonder if they do any thinking about The Invisible Ones back in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans?

Even the “journalists” who take themselves very seriously don’t give a whole lot of thought…or ink…or minutes…or bytes…to The Invisible Ones.

David Broder chides there’s not a CEO running on the Democratic side while touting all the CEO experience on the Republican side…totally blocking out that there’s a passle of CEOs running things right now…and look how they’ve run America into the ground.

Chris Matthews finally grudgingly had to apologize to Hillary Clinton for remarks on his show—hey, Chris, you need a list? You missed a few others. Invisible Ones. Maybe Tom Brokaw’s hectoring that reporters should get the facts before jumping to conclusions as was done in reporting the New Hampshire primary will take hold. We like to think Brokaw’s prairie roots are still nurturing his spirit.

There’s an invisible candidate right now, John Edwards. The deliberate blacking out of coverage of his campaign, his leadership on issues, would be laughable for its cartoon-like blatancy…if we weren’t all in such unfunny circumstances these days. Chris, you and the rest of the media owe us an apology for robbing us of the information to make intelligent voting decisions. Your one saving grace is you were man enough to tell us you get it. We hope it tempers your commentary in ways that make you stronger. We’ll be the better for it.

And we know we’ll never see that kind of stand-up manhood from the likes of the Faux News crowd, the ultimate example of making their own storyline…and making up their own facts.

Because there’s another Invisible One out there. The voter. And more and more the voter will show up, and be heard. We saw it in Iowa. We saw it in New Hampshire. Will we see it again today in Nevada and South Carolina? And further down the campaign trail? I think so.