Rightwingers behaving badly

If I didn't write a blog about pawning, I would not have known about this revealing rant by Rush Limbaugh. You should read the whole thing to get the true smarmy quality, but the summary is, a caller identifying himself as a pawnbroker called Limbaugh to know if his customers were accurately informing him about the state of the overall economy.

Yeah, go figure.

Anyhow, the pawnbroker mentioned that a client came in needing money to tide him over until he received his disability check. Limbaugh was offended that our nanny government pays disability to injured workers (although the workers fund the insurance):

RUSH:  Holy smokes! So somebody comes in, you say, "Why do you need the money?" and they respond, "My disability check won't come in 'til next week, that's why I'm selling you this Rolex" or whatever it is?

It was a lawnmower, and, yeah, pawnshops are in business to provide short-term, usually small loans to people who need a few bucks.

So, Mr. Sensitivity went on:

RUSH:  What are you actually trying to ascertain?
CALLER:  Just to see if, you know, these liberal friends of mine and, you know, them that are saying that the economy's doing so well, you know, but I see people every day that, you know, are not doing well.

Imagine finding people not doing well at a pawnshop. Have you tried the country club, Mr. Pawnbroker?

After some more incoherent exchanges, Limbaugh concludes:

RUSH:  Ask them what they think of swapping five prisoners for Bowe Bergdahl. Ask them what they think of concussions. Are they less inclined to go watch the NFL because they're killing the players?  You know, dress it up however you want.
CALLER:  Right.
RUSH:  Then ask how they're doing, why they need the money.
CALLER:  Right.
RUSH:  And then tell 'em it's not your job to provide it, and see what happens.

Actually, it is the pawnbroker's job to provide money.

The subtext of this exchange is as hateful as anything else you are likely to find in a conversation with rightwingers, and I flag it only because of the implication by Limbaugh that anyone on disability is some sort of welfare king buying Rolexes and crab legs with public funds.

Thomas Hobbes once described Man living in a state of nature -- that is, Small-Gummint Man -- as "solitary, mean, brutish, nasty and short." That's a good description of the friendless and often-divorced Limbaugh, don't you think?

Movin' on, what self-important singer's political opinions are you least interested in knowing about?

No, you cannot pick the hypocritical gas-hoarder John Denver. He left the gas at his mountain hideout instead of putting it in his airplane's tank and so he's dead. Howzabout Pat Boone, author of "A Miracle a Day Keeps the Devil Away" and the 1961 book of advice to teen-agers that sparked the Youth Rebellion, "Twixt Twelve and Twenty."

What has Boone done lately?

He has authored a racist rant about President Obama who is ruining the republic. Apparently the supply of miracles ran out.

Did you know that Pat Boone has been writing an "exclusive" weekly column at World Net Daily for nearly 10 years? I did not know that.

Pat Boone has been writing obsessively for over 50 years, and this week he had to fall back on that tired staple of the columnist who has run out of themes, the satirical dream:

In this dream, a "secret cabal of communist manipulators" selected a likely young "black/white" boy and groomed him for high electoral office, maybe even the highest. But first, they corrupted the elections at the Harvard Law Review to make the puppet "briefly" president of the Law Review, because, as we all know, American voters are terribly impressed by making the HLR.

Once again, you have to read the whole thing to enjoy the loopy weirdness of the rightwing loon in full flight.

So we have answered the question you forgot to ask, has Pat Boone done anything to offend public decency since fathering Debby Boone?

Yes, yes he has.

Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf

Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf

Maybe it was all a dream! How else, Pat Boone wonders in his WorldNetDaily column today, could America not see that “a secret cabal of Communist manipulators” had trained a “young black/white college student, originally school in Indonesia” to be a cunning politician after getting him "admitted to Columbia and then Harvard”? - See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/pat-boones-bad-dream-blackwhite-communist-becoming-president#sthash.2BRDcEym.dpuf

 

Promises

In a few days or weeks, these will be the sweetest, juiciest oranges ever.

Although this branch promises abundance, it looks like a small fruit set this year. The tree is a navel orange that I planted nearly 25 years ago.

D-Day anniversary: Thank you, Serbian nationalists

What with starting World War I and massacring Bosnian Muslims, Serbian nationalists don't get a lot of love, but on this anniversary of the invasion of France, let us pause and remember that it wouldn't have happened without the bravery and stupidity of Serbian nationalists.

Lots of other people contributed, too, of course, but had it not been for Serbian nationalist pride, the outcome of World War II might have been different.

Hitler planned to invade Russia in the early summer of 1941, and although there was some confusion about objectives, the plan was to occupy Moscow, the capital and transportation hub of eastern Russia. That almost happened but not quite for a couple of reasons:

First, by September the Russians had beaten the Germans, when they caused the millionth German casualty, one Germany could not replace. After that, all Russia had to do -- not an easy task -- was to hold and on grind out victory. Second, in November the seasonal rains began on schedule, slowing the German logistics train to less even than a crawl.

The Germans still got very close to Moscow, and with a few more days or weeks of dry weather, they might have captured it. The Soviets were evacuating, but it is not certain that the will of the people to keep resisting would have survived the capture of the capital, which was also a key center of munitions production.

Playing history-might-have-been is a mug's game, but in this case a few more days of good weather could only have been a big boost for Hitlerism.

And we all have the Serbs to thank for that.

In April, the nationalists deposed the pro-Nazi regent and installed the teenage King Peter on the throne. The Germans diverted a couple of corps of their Russia invasion force and overran Yugoslavia and also Albania and Greece in a few weeks.

But it delayed the start of Operation Barbarossa until June 22, and weakened the German army and air force somewhat.

If the Germans had not had to keep almost all of their army in Russia, the western allies could never have found a spot weak enough to assault from the sea. There would have been no D-Day, Eisenhower would not have become president . . . .

The Serbians paid a terrible price in blood for their nationalism. We ought to remember that, too.

Vote fraud

Well, the rightwingers cannot provide any evidence, either to the courts or the public, that people are using fake IDs to vote for -- presumably -- liberals, so we are justified in thinking their drive for new voter ID laws are just racism, especially since their record on other race issues is so bad.

But just because liberals are not violating election laws en masse, that does not mean nobody is.

The day after the latest primary is ripe with smelly reports from GOPland. It is hard to decide which is weirder. I am inclined to go with this one:

A candidate who finished fourth in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota was charged on Wednesday with violating campaign election laws, prosecutors said.
Annette Bosworth, 42, a doctor from Sioux Falls, was charged with six counts each of perjury and filing false documents and accused of falsely claiming she was gathering nominating petition signatures in South Dakota when she was really in the Philippines, the South Dakota Attorney General’s Office said.

Details are lacking, so it is hard to guess 1) why she found that necessary; or 2) how she thought no one would notice.  But she appears to be, well, nuts:

Bosworth made national news during her unsuccessful campaign for a social media post comparing food stamp recipients to wild animals

But wait! There's more! Down in Mississippi:

there is NO REASON to think that the three people who got locked into the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson, Mississippi were doing anything nefarious. They just happened to accidentally get stuck in the closed courthouse after midnight on the night that ballots were being counted in the Thad Cochran / Chris McDaniel Senate primary that was too close to call. And one of them is a top campaign official for tea party candidate McDaniel.

 This is not, on its face, as funny as the Doctor Who Was in Two Places at Once, but the comments are hilarious.

One of the three was also part of what (so far) is the weirdest incident of the current campaigns, the break-in to video the ga-ga wife of Senator Cochran in her nursing home bed.


Those Tea Partiers, what a bunch of cutups!

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long -- Mississippi gains on SoDak:

The Hinds County Sheriff's Department is denying that it let three supporters of state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R-MS), including a top official for McDaniel's campaign, into the Hinds County Courthouse late Tuesday night -- refuting the campaign's version of events which said they were directed inside by "uniformed personnel."

"It's a fabrication that someone pointed them to a door," Hinds County Sheriff's Department spokesman Othor Cain told the Clarion-Ledger. "I think that's a total misrepresentation of fact. None of our guys let anybody in."

 

Creeping de-socialism

Today's laff riot from inside the Beltway is the outrage from plutocrats, Republicans and even a few Democrats over the Maoist/Trotskyist Kenyan usurper's plan to desocialize the coal and electrical generation businesses by making them pay for the garbage they make instead of dumping all the cost onto the public.

 “If these rules are allowed to go into effect, the administration for all intents and purposes is creating America’s next energy crisis,” said Mike Duncan, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “As we predicted, the administration chose political expediency over practical reality as it unveiled energy standards devoid of commonsense and flexibility.”

You would think they would welcome being responsible, market-driven economic actors, factoring all inputs vs. outputs to gain a true value for their activity. But no, they prefer socialism.

Actually, only some rightwing socialists deplored the Maoist/Trotskyist Kenyan usurper's move, which, after all is not asking them to pay for all the damage they do, only about 30%.

The owners of Peabody Coal, the world's biggest, were quite bucked up to learn that they will continue to be 70% socialist. Better to be pink as a boiled lobster than a Randian capitalist, I guess.

Koch brothers and legal advisor study Obama rules

Shares of Peabody Energy (BTU_), the world's largest coal producer, were up 1.2% in early trading at $16.35

Remember the 'surge'?

What was that all about, anyway?

BAGHDAD — Violence claimed the lives of 799 Iraqis in May, the highest monthly death toll so far this year, the United Nations said Sunday, underlining the daunting challenges the Iraqi government faces as it struggles to contain a surge in sectarian violence.

Just an excuse to let the beaten US Army bug out, like the Christmas bombing of Hanoi. Some things never change.

Book Review 326: The Watersmart Garden

THE WATERSMART GARDEN: 100 Great Plants for the Tropical Xeriscape, by Fred D. Rauch and Paul W. Weissich. 236 pages, illustrated. Hawaii paperback, $24.99

“TheWatersmart Garden” could be helpful in most hot, dry areas but Fred Rauch and Paul Weissach work in Hawaii and the book is targeted to the islands. Specifically, the rich part, as about half the selections are tagged as specially suitable “for the beach garden.”

“Xeriscape” was coined in 1982 in Denver. Most parts of America west of the 100th meridian are dry, sometimes very dry, but desert chic has not caught on very strongly in Hawaii. People want the leeward side to look as “tropical” as the windward, although the tropics are not naturally lush everywhere.

Perhaps tiered pricing will push owners toward xeriscape, but the market approach doesn’t work so well when the problem lies where the richest people live. About the time “xeriscape” was being first pushed on Maui I visited a homeowner in Maui Meadows -- naturally about like southern Arizona -- and commented on his jungly yard.

His reply, as I recall was, “Yeah, the house had a dry garden when I moved in, but I ripped it out. This is Hawaii.”

He could afford to think that way.

“The Watersmart Garden” is not merely Hawaii-centric but Oahu-centric. I bet not even half their recommendations are commonly available at Maui nurseries. Dwarf poinciana, for example. I cannot recall ever seeing that for sale, and seldom or never in Maui landscapes.

There are some notable absences, too, like smooth hala.