You can do better than that, Rush!

CAN WE AGREE on this entry as the funniest line of the week?....

I refer to Rush Limbaugh's windy assault on Social Security. Rushbo, a mega-millionaire, assured his dittoheads that he has done well despite the fact that he has never once received a Social Security check. But I thought these checks don't start arriving until age 65. He's still 5 years away from qualifying, Ha. Ha. You can't fool me.

Life on the slow-witted track...

WITH THE SNOW and cold at our front door, I've been spending a little more time trying to enlighten myself with the latest insights of our friends who are flapping their right(eous) wings. Below you will find some of their carefully considered thoughts:

RNC Chairman Michael Steele: "A million dollars is not a lot of money."

Former vice president Dan Quayle: A 51-49 vote in the Senate is "unconstitutional".

Rush Limbaugh: We should be "thankful we don't have Obamacare or the death panel might not have approved of Clinton's surgery."

Glenn Beck: "It is evil for Obama to turn our kids against their parents to get elected."

H.G. Wells (a timely golden oldie): 'Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe. "

Look both ways crossing the tracks

Just listen to the jingle, the rumble and the roar

As we glide across the woodlands,

Through the hills and by the shore. ---The Wabash Cannonball

WITH OUTRAGED REPUBLICANS, it's always something. Today it was the roaring matter of the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to President Obama, that came after the matter of the president's botched efforts in America's exclusion from the Olympics, that came after the matter of the death panels in Obama's projected health reform, that came after the matter of his certain birth in Labrador or wherever, that followed the matter that he shoots basketballs in his spare time, followed by the lack of grey matter by Michael Steele, Rush Limbaugh and other revelers of the anticipated day when Ronald Reagan will reappear in a World War II bomber to save the nation from extinction. At this moment, the raucous critics and the Taliban are on the same page.

That Obama promptly decided to give his $1.4 million prize to charity didn't cost the GOP a single stride because conservatives have long considered Nobel Prizes to be ill-gotten awards from an international leftist institution. So it didn't come as much of a surprise that Limbaugh, doing his frantic hula hoop movement at the mike, profoundly referred to Obama's honor as a "greater embarrassment" than the loss of the Olympics. But even that thought is a non-sequitur inasmuch as conferring conservatives gloated and cheered at the news that the event was going elsewhere. These, after all, are Rush's people, and having watched their reaction, it didn't seem to me that anybody in the hall was a tad embarrassed.

The leader of the drive-by assaults on the Obama award was, once again, the GOP national chairman, Michael Steele, who quickly popped off with the question: "What has President Obama actually accomplished?" and ranted on about fiscal responsibility and unemployment. Well, for one thing, he won the election handily and as they say, it's the victors who write the history. For heaven's sake, Mike, stop talking under the heads of your public. The history is already being written with Obama's towering approval ratings in Europe in the high 80s to low 90s. Why so high? Bush is gone. You bet.

There were warnings from all around, including the mainstream media, that Obama had been sucked into political swamp that may sink him, maybe 25 or 30 years from now. The reporter for the New York Times called our attention to the award as a "potential political liability" for the president, adding: "Already, Republicans are criticizing the president more for his star power than his actual achievement..."

Already??? Slamming Obama has been their schtick since his nomination. Why is it so much different now?

Time magazine was less than enthusiastic, reporting that the prize was the last thing Obama needed in his diplomatic efforts to restore a gleam of order in the international scene. Well, now that he is a tall figure in the European electorate, what's the next to last thing that he needs to gather support from other nations?

The last thing the national media and the howlers needed was to be blindsided by this blockbuster. They are just finding it hard to say so.

May Day! May Day!

Congressman begging forgiveness

ADD REP.  TODD TIAHRT of Kansas  to the growing list of enfeebled Republican supplicants at the knees of Rush Limbaugh.  Tiahrt foolishly crossed the line by suggesting that Rushbo,  the party's vengeful valedictorian, was nothing more than an entertainer and hardly the de facto leader of the Republican Party. You can imagine how that sat with  the forever swarming Dittoheads.   Within 24 hours, Tiahrt's office issued a self-flagellating statement insisting that no insults were intended and that the"congressman believes Rush is a great leader of the conservative movement in America...Nothing the congressman said diminished the role Rush has played and continues to play in the conservative movement." In a few apologetic words, Tiahrt elevated  Limbaugh from fictitious de facto leader to a great leader to have the congressman's name removed from Limbaugh's enemies list.

Do you see a pattern here?  By my count at least three soft-spined GOP congressmen and the party's silly national chairman, Michael Steele,  have abjectly recanted  their careless remarks about their father-confessor.  Do you find it odd that a political party that boasts of its supreme muscle against foreign enemies  cannot challenge a reckless propagandist who earns millions of dollars by tossing reality to the winds?  Think about that the next time one of these fake warriors proposes to blow up Iran or North Korea.   

The Great White Whale: The movie

SYNOPSIS OF MY LATEST MOVIE:

AHAB IRONS is seated in his new job as chairman of the National Reprisal Party full of charm and vigor.  He is the party's first high-ranking Reprisal minority leader since the days of Sen. Ed Brooke.  He is rightfully alarmed that the NRP was decisively beaten in the past presidential election and vows he will be in the vanguard of  leading lamentable Reprisers out of the wilderness with a firm commitment to returning it to the inalieanable truths from which the party has strayed. 

Overjoyed with his command post, Irons promises he will work to expand the party's base, lower taxes on such items as tea imports from China and, most of all, establish a safety net for falling moral values that have been sinfully neglected by the successful opposition party.  Can he accomplish this tall order?  "Yes, I can," he boasts with a cue from his opponents.  

He is invited to speak to the National Conference of Continental Conservatives - the fractional sector of the national electorate.  But he is virtually ignored by the national media as well as his own audience despite his avowed dedication to party ideals, ideas and incidental initiatives. He is further embarrassed  by the convention's rousing welcome to its keynote speaker, Rash Rouserbomb, the NRP's Great White Whale who is more familiarly known back on the plantation precincts as  "Big Moby D".  

Rouserbomb ambles to a shaky podium  and tidally lashes his inundated victims with a stunning oration orchestrated with much  bobbing and weaving on a custom-made titanium pogo stick that could support the launching of a battleship.  He flaps his arms fin-like in a way that energizes everyone in the hall with his unique profile as the party's powerful  Great White Whale even though he has recycled his words thousands of times in various venues. Throughout the hall, delirious disciples cry out, "Moby D.!  Moby D!!!" as he contains a satisfied smile.  He has made great waves for a party at sea.

Ahab returns to his office in a foul mood.  Facing a TV camera, he insists it is he, and not Rouserbomb, who is the party's chairman.  This whale,  he asserts acidly, is nothing more than a big fish in a small aquarium.   When the word gets to the Great White Whale he spouts as he never has before, demanding immediate satisfaction from Ahab.  Apologize, or else!  Realizing the massive political error of his ways, Ahab has no choice but to kneel abjectly before Moby D now that he has been reduced to party chairman emeritus. 

Exploiting his unprecedented  promotion as chairman without portfolio, his ego as high as his spout, the Great White Whale   decides to strike quickly with the most arrogent request in political history: He challenges a U.S. president to a one-on-one debate, a brash move that even Putin wouldn't dare suggest.   Other members of the NRP take a more discretionary course and blame the chairmanship controversy on the Democrats, who have been  keeping the popcorn industry in business as spectators to the show.  Some in Ahab Irons' party  take the spectacle a step further and warn Ahab to control his tongue or he will be out of work pronto. As one party official said: "Ahab Irons has been taught an important lesson.  If he wants to remain in the NRP, he'll never again be so uppity."