LaRose/Celeste civility crusade faces huge odds

Civility in  politics.  That's the laudable  goal of  two men who have engaged the subject with earnest hopes of  ending  the toxic trash talk by some politicians  and their dobermans within hearing range.

State Sen. Frank LaRose, the Copley Twp. Republican ,  and Ted Celeste, a Democrat who once served in the Ohio legislature, recently delivered  their ongoing bipartisan message to Akron Roundtable to lay out their vision of a gentler political class.

While commending them, I think the idea has as much chance of working in the real world as Rush Limbaugh confessing that he's a closet socialist.

Having worked the trenches of  political combat for more years than I care to remember, I bring to the witness stand no evidence that political discourse is anywhere near  the Sunday pulpit.  I can also report that it's  even worse in the back rooms and there's not a damn (Sorry!) thing anybody can do about it.  The stakes are too high, the partisan grievances too aflame. And since a black man entered the White House,  the notion that all men are created equal is too besieged to survive pervasive racism in the souls of some combatants who can't contain their primitive biases. I should add from all of that there are too few profiles in courage from wannabe achievers .

Has it ever been different?  Not really.  Should we  remind ourselves that in May 1856 Sen. Charles Sumner, Massachusetts Republican who opposed slavery, was savagely  caned on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks,  a  South Carolina  Democrat.

A half-century earlier in 1804, Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel (wouldn't TV have loved that one today?) In Fiorello LaGuardia's day, it was not uncommon to see his enemies quoted in the press assailing him as a "little Wop".   And much later, didn't Rep. Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican, erupt with a
"You lie!" as President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress?

Or how about Rep. Steve King's  reference to  Latino children with calves as  big as cantaloupes swollen with smuggled drugs.  Or Limbaugh calling a young woman a "Slut" because he knew he could.  Damn right he did.

Even as the congressional denizens refer to each other as "the distinguished senator  from...."  they  are already in gear to consign the colleague to hell.

You could fill a book.  And fill another book with  the incivility of politics that has become more than empty lore.

Now, up in Michigan,  the Republican national committeeman, Dave Agema, a nasty  human being to put it kindly,   continues to stir up his GOP nest with repeated sliming   of gays and Muslims, accusing gays of being "filthy" and the critics of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson's anti-gay remarks "LBGT Gestapo speech police."

Michigan's GOP National Committeeman said that?  

If LaRose/Celeste really want to dig into the problem with a living  target,  do you think they should invite Agema to lunch?  A very long lunch.

Limbaugh playing for bigger stakes against 'Marxist Pope'

Some time ago we discovered that Rush Limbaugh was the GOP's  Great White Whale with a blowhole as big as Grand Canyon.  He once spouted insanely that Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown law student,  was a " slut"  after she was denied an appearance  before a Republican House committee hearing on contraception and religious liberty.

But he may have topped that reckless remark  by referring to Pope Francis as a Marxist.  Rush was not at all pleased that the Pope had called unregulated  capitalism a "new tyranny"  in raising concerns about the poor.

"Somebody has either written this for him or gotten to him. This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope," Rush declared.

Well, we've heard the same things said about Jesus, which is where the Papacy all began.

With Limbaugh, a multi-millionaire  and then some, it's all about money and his Munchkins called dittoheads. He says he's considered becoming a Catholic.  But that's no longer in his future. Now he is playing on a world stage with his assault on Francis. Maybe he is seeking a still bigger audience - not a pun - to fill in a few more listeners for his show.

But with his money, you'd think the time has come at least for hiring  a new writer.  After all, Pope Francis does have  far more listeners.

Jim Allen: the ex-county chairman won't be playing in Farmersville anymore

Just when you wanted to believe that with the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks and Michele Bachmanns still on the loose  in full voice, nobody could top them with dumber-than-dumb political trash talk.  Well, someone just did, and so much for the career of an Illinois  Republican county chairman named Jim Allen of the unheralded village of Farmersville, Ill. (pop. 723) in downstate Montgomery County. (If you've just pulled out your Rand McNally road atlas,  Farmersville isn't that far from Divernon, Ill.)

Allen, beset by troubled reaction from GOP higher-ups, including National Chairman Reince Priebus, resigned in the wake of his comments that Erika Harold (shown here), a former Miss America running for congress in the Republican primary,  was a "street walker"  supported by her "pimps" among Democrats and moderate Republicans.

Limbaugh settled for "slut" in recklessly ill-defining Sandra Fluke's off-hours behavior.

But when guys like Priebus are so openly annoyed by  one of the party's official enablers that he called Allen's behavior "inexcusable'" and "not to be tolerated, you know that the ex-county chairman exceeded what's left of the levels of decency for the party's alleged brand. Allen recanted with an apology, but you know how those things go these days.

But Allen did earn a  citation from Grumpy Abe otherwise known as the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) Award. Somehow,  I still don't feel it fits the slanderous crime by this party operative.

Oh, Allen also accused Harold of being a notorious "RINO" - a Republican in Name Only.  But as they genuflect  to a Tea Party culture,  isn't it a bit of a stretch to refer to any of them as a Republican?

Cornyn revives the hostile French connection

To hear Sen John Cornyn, the Texas Republican,  tell  it, the French are back to haunt America's way of life, both in war and peace. He says he has informed by a "guy" that French-speaking people were among the illegal immigrants crossing the border into Texas.  (Some  of the others were heard "speaking Chinese or basically all of the languages in the world...") But specific mention of the French  took us back to a decade ago when the  offended patriots in the U.S.House of Representatives boldly changed the name of French fries to "Freedom fries" in  the House cafeterias in a blunt reprisal for France's  refusal to join us in invading Iraq. Not one of democracy's finer hours.

Two Republicans who led  the demolition of Gallic fries were Reps. Walter Jones of North Carolina and Bob Ney of Ohio , the latter moving on to still greater heights by pleading guilty to corruption charges and spending some time in prison for his inexcusable  bad judgment.

Sacre bleu! (Update: French fries have regained their original name and are again being served  in the cafeteria.)

P.S. For all of his partisan concern about lax border security, surely the senator must know that border crossings  are now down to where they were under President Nixon.

* * * * *

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative Great White Whale, has conducted his own probe of the same-sex marriage issue and identified the homosexual perps as the "Gay Mafia".  We're not sure where he would cast the blame for his own four marriages.

* * * * *

Proving once against that even crackpots can earn fortunes in America, Glenn Beck is now "reporting" that Rep. Michele Bachmann is being investigated by the Office of Congressional Ethics because it has been infiltrated by radical Muslims.   "We have been sold to radical Islam", he warned.  "It has been infiltrated and we have documented it."
Bachmann supposedly provoked the blowback last year by asserting that important aides in the Obama Administration were connected to the Muslim Brotherhood.  

I can't make this up, but Beck can - and often does.

GOP: Obama socialist, communist, Hitler,Stalin, or what?

There's nothing more effective in advancing the  Republicans toxic mental breakdown than a speech  by President Obama.  An occasion such as the annual  State of the Union address, first administered by Obama in 2009,  has been  the party's proven emetic ever since, although the response  seems to have gotten  even worse this week.  Struggling to find something imaginative to say, Fox News' iconic analysts even questioned the news value of a 102-year-old woman's efforts to vote in Florida.

You sense a pall of desperation over the GOP brood as they resort to their familiar assault weapons as a means of replacing serious policy with quackery.  Even before the speech, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina referred to Hillary Clinton as a murderer and threatened more nastiness on the Benghazi issue.  We should probably excuse this sorrowfully whining  guy because it is being widely reported that he could face a stiff challenge in the Republican primary  from a Ron Paul libertarian loyalist.

Some other expletives  from the Right:

"Dictators such as Hitler, Stalin and Obama" (Limbaugh).

"A Castro-like-speech" (Conservative author Mark Levin on Fox)

Obama's gun-control efforts a "disaster":  (Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe)

Obama nominee Chuck Hagel may be on  the payroll of overseas radicals (Texas Sen. Ted Cruz)

Obama is against free enterprise (read: dictator) obsessed with raising taxes (Florida Sen. Marco Rubio)

But none of this rises to a higher intellectual level than Fox News Psychiatrist (honest!) Dr. Keith Ablow,  who unpleasantly accused Obama of being "psychologically predictable".

"He does not surprise." Ablow   opined.  "Having been abandoned as a boy by his father and then his mother, only to then learn that his grandmother feared people of his race, he seems inherently to distrust initiative and intention and to place his trust only in the collective."

Sounds a lot like a reference to a socialist or communist to me.   I wonder how much they pay Ablow to give Fox News such a much-needed soaring sense of panache.  I also wonder whether they'll get around to having him do the 50-minute hour on the  couch for Limbaugh.

Lose or lose, the crocs go after (president) Hillary

Having been thwarted in their four-year mission to make Barack Obama a one-term president, Republicans have now embarked on a new mission: Make Hillary Rodham Clinton a no-term president.  If you checked in on Clinton's appearance before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, you may have gotten a whiff of Campaign 2016 even though not a soul has yet announced his or her candidacy to succeed Obama.

Given the chance of the Capitol Hill TV version of Project  Runway to get to the root of the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans, the GOP side pounced on her testimony with a story line that Hillary is an incompetent "Madam Secretary" and a phony at that.

Some in the anti-Hillary camp had  accused her  earlier of faking a concussion to avoid appearing before the virile committee that a mere woman could  not match.    And when she teared  up at the beginning of her testimony, that proved  she was following a script to win public sympathy.  At least, that's what Rush Limbaugh raged to his  own audience that nods like wilting sunflowers at his every word.  She did, however, have her strong moments  against the critics on the panel who, um,  were doing the will of the people.

A few of the Republican darts stood out:

Sen. Rand Paul, the airball from Kentucky,  told Clinton that if he had been president,  he would have  fired her.  (The good news: No danger of this guy ever being president.)

Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, in a blustery melt,  repeatedly declared that the American people are frustrated by the lack of  information about Benghazi. (Translation of this mouthful: Some of the  American people from his southern district.  Wasn't he the guy who once described undocumented immigrants as "vagrants and animals?" )

Tea Party Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin accused her of making excuses for not  taking a  hands-on role in the Sept. 11 attack.    She replied it wasn't an excuse but a fact that she didn't want  to interfere with the ongoing FBI's  investigative role.  When Johnson persisted , she angrily replied, her voice rising:

"Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference , at this point, does it make?"

With a 67 pct. approval rating, this special woman proved it would take more than the crocodiles from the other side to tarnish her profile with the American voters.  Of course, we're still four years away from the next election. So what's the point of the new GOP search and destroy initiative?  That's the McParty's problem. It doesn't have any points these days.

$10,000 thoughts about tomorrow night's DEBATE

As you diligently prepare to watch the GREAT DEBATE, at what point do you think Mitt will offer to bet the President $10,000 that Barack can't name the capital of the Cayman Islands? (Hint: Mitt's father's name is in it.)  And will Mitt take Donald Trump's advice to birther-ize the debate?  Finally,, don't you think the evening would be much more interesting if Stephen Colbert were the moderator?    Almost forgot:  Rush Limbaugh has already taped his show declaring Romney to be the overwhelming winner!

Universal questions of the millennium

I have questions:

• As the Republican presidential campaigns shambles toward Election Day,  when will good soldier John Boehner crack and start sobbing on TV?
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• Who will convince  Mitt Romney that the  presidency is  not an  entitlement?
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• Who will respond to comedian Lewis Black's appeal for someone to make his bathroom as white as the GOP convention that he viewed?
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• When a Romney strategist asserted that Mitt would Etch-a-Sketch after the primaries, was he referring to the 2016 primaries?
• 
  
• Would it at least help the economy with job creation if  the government made silver  spoons for  the  47 pct. of Americans whom he says won't take responsibilitiy for themselves?
• 
  
• Would you join an office pool  to predict the day when Rep. Darrell Issa will say something intelligent?
• 
  
• Will Josh Mandel ,  the Republican candidate for the senate,  tell us whether he was really   stationed in the Green Zone in Iraq.
• 
  
• When will Paul Ryan stop referring to Romney as his "running mate"?
•       
• Why won't the media ask Paul Ryan about the time he saw the North Pole from his front porch?
• 
  
• Am I the only person who doesn't  think Comedian Dennis Miller is funny?
• 
  
• When will Rush Limbaugh refer to all women as sluts?
• 
  
• How many wives is Mitt Romney permitted to have? 
• 
  
• Finally, will Mitt add an elevator for his dancing horses to his palatial home?  
• 
  
• And finally again: Wouldn't Mitt's life be a lot less complicated if he let H&R  Block  do his taxes?    

•     

Another ill-wind from Rushbo

We can expect a lot of silly things to come out of the Tampa  convention, but who can top Crazy Rush Limbaugh's charge that President Obama was responsible for the first-day cancellation of the event?  He accused the president of tampering with weather forecasts to make it appear that the city  would be struck Monday by Hurricane Isaac.  He said although he wasn't a conspiracy theorist, "It's the government.  It's Obama!"   No, it's a radio-TV host whose fans believe that Rushbo, not Obama,  is God.  

Ryan now included in Limbaugh family

It was left to Rush Limbaugh to define Paul Ryan in the most succinct manner that matched Socrates' ''Know Thyself" for pithy brevity.  Exclaimed a delirious Rushbo of Ryan:

                                                        "HE'S US!"

...as in them and us?  The campaign has been headed in that direction for a long time. At least we now have the authoritative word from  Rush



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Rushbo: A Steel Pier special attraction

WHEN I SEE Rush Limbaugh  hysterically vibrating in a video clip on some news show it occurs to me that here is a man in the final  stages of dissipated human behavior.  A side show spectacle, really.  He screams. He bounces. He pounds his desk.  He slurs. He is fully out of control, which leads him to froth  that President Obama  has a world class ego for mentioning his own children in an expression of sympathy for the Aurora shooting vicitims.

 What the hell is that all about, Rushbo?

He would have been a perfect fit for the special bizarre attrractions at the old Steel Pier in
Atlantic City where one could be awed by a headless lady who appeared to be fully aware of questions by responding through tubes that curved  like a bunch of sink faucets plugged into the top of  her neck.
It was awesome to a youngster - and probably to the adults who believed it was all for real. (Modern Dittoheads in Rushspeak.)

Rushbo could have been a roly-poly man bouncing high on a trampoline with an apple lodged between his lips.

Is it fair to ask whether we have a deranged man in our media midst?  Yes, it is fair.

Sununu on how to become an American

 Former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, George HW  Bush's chief of staff and a Romney surrogate, says he wishes  President Obama would "learn how to be an American."

Nobody could pass on more helpful advice than Sununu who, as chief of staff,  flew around  the country in corporate jets, some owned  by military contractors,  to meet his schedule of personal appearances.  He was full of wisdom about how Obama ought to learn the ways of entrepreneurs.

  He also  picked up on addict Rush Limbaugh's deranged rant the night before that Obama was a doper in grade school.  According to Sununu,  nobody should be surprised  that "because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something,  spent...another set of years in Indonesia.

Sununu ought to learn how to complete a thought.

UPDATE:  Sununu  said he "misspoke" about Obama's American credentials and apologized.  Why don't these so-called political veterans get it right the first time?

On ex-altar boys, marriage, blah blah blah

QUOTABLES WORTH REPEATING:


From the Youngstown Vindicator, via the Plain Dealer:

"(I am) saddened that the work that I have done to feed the poor, clothe the naked, help cure the sick and to bring an end to the death penalty has fallen on deaf ears.  I guess being an altar boy for six years didn't qualify me for dispensation." - State Rep.  Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown),  after learning that his invitation to be the commencement speaker  at a Catholic  nursing school had been rescinded by Bishop  George V. Murry because Hagan supports abortion rights.


* * * * *


"We've arrived at a point where the president of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage" - Traditional marriage authority Rush Limbaugh, having been married four times himself.

* * * * *

"I'm sorry, I made a mistake and it won't happen again." - King Juan Carlos of Spain, recovering from a fractured hip suffered when he  fell off an elephant  while  hunting in Botswana.

* * * * *

"This is the first time that George Clooney has ever been photo-shopped out of a picture.  Never happened before, never happen again." - President Obama at a Hollywood fund-raiser with Clooney at his side, quipping that Clooney had been  taken out of the Hope poster used by the Obama campaign in 2008.

* * * * *


"If you live long enough, you  get old" - Grumpy Abe 

Obama foes shout fire in empty theater

April,  as T.S. Eliot once wrote, is the "cruellest month..." and nobody needs to remind President Obama of that sad tale. As everybody knows by now, he's the guy who lured those Secret Service agents into sexual encounters against their solemn will.  And as Joe the Plumber, nee Samuel Wurzelbacher, the Man from McCain and Republican congressioanal nominee against Ohio Rep. Marcy Kaptur, now convincingly  reports, the president's parents were Communists.  Let Obama deny that one!

Finally, for April at least,  it is now fairly certain through subsequent DNA tests that Obama ordered the Seals to waterboard Osama Bin Laden before forcing him to drink the Kool-Aid,  a hilarious voodoo stunt he learned as a community organizer for  the Muslim Mafia in Chicago's southside.


As if that isn't enough to convince you that we have a failed president, as Mitt Romney repeatedly assures us, there's the awful news about the thousands of dead fish in the waters of Cleveland Metroparks this week.  And who was cleverly campaigning around the country on Air Force One  when the mysterious fish-kill occurred? Right!  Some of Obama's critics would remind you that Al Capone was never on the scene when the worst was taking place in Chicagoland under  his remote control.

The great outpouring of these undeniable truths will guard the nation from doing anything foolish all the way to November.  It is reassuring to know that Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and their countless operatives  can continue to make a damn good living by shouting fire in an empty theater.



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Obama and Ahmadinejad: Santorum's one of a kind

IF YOU HAVE the slightest doubt about McRick Santorum's desperate (if hopeless) quest to win the GOP nomination, check his campaign's latest attack ad on President Obama. It should be easy enough to find on the Internet. The 65-second ad is titled "Obamaville" and pictorially cross-references Obama and Ahmadinejad with quickly alternating head shots. Although there is no mistake about the ad's projection of the president as the Iranian leader, Santorum's spokesman Hogan Gidley told NBC News that it would be "absurd" to conclude that the ad suggests Obama and Ahmadinejad are the same person.

The Democratic National Committee, of course, is outraged that the Republican would stoop this low and is responding with its own ad to denounce Santorum. If they need some humble advice, I would suggest a counter-ad alternating the photos of Santorum and Rush Limbaugh. I would have preferred Torquemada, the notorious Spanish Inquisition perpetrator, but who would remember him today?

Dittoheads, pinheads and scorned women

"The climax of all evils is when a man rooted in some false opinion grows fatally persuaded that his course is right." - Petrarch

How prescient of the great 14th Century Italian poet and humanist to define someone we all know today, say, Rush Limbaugh. Or Bill O'Reilly? Or Sean Hannity? Limbaugh is not inclined to rise for a moment from his spasmotic derangement. He's been at it again slamming two women journalists with glee for no other reason than to convince his dittoheads that he's da Man. It has reached the point of monstrous random slander, which is his only strong point that is apparent to me.

Meanwhile the Republican leadership(?) and first-row candidates are still cowering in their bubble to escape any mention of Rushbo. On another front,however, they are baring their chests to annihilate Iran. Romney, Gingrich and Santorum all have been on the stump mindlessly huffing and puffling about Iran while characterizing President Obama as the weenie in the room. (Are we having any fun over their war games yet?)

Unsurprisingly, their hawkishness belies their own interest in military service. None has worn a uniform, thanks to various deferments in times of need. That takes us back to a previous administration when George Bush and Dick Cheney found a way to dodge the draft while serving as the biggest bullies in their playground. (In fairness, Bush did land on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit.) In fact, Romney explained four years ago why none of his five sons had been in the military: They were needed in his 2008 campaign. This fellow never gets it.

* * * *

Ohio State Rep. Nina Turner's remedy for vaginally fixated lawmakers has widely resonated with other women and could produce a growth industry in helping overreaching males in the controversy over birth control. In Illinois and Virginia women legislators are playfully hastening to help the guys subjected to medical or psychological assistance since their health might be at risk by taking sexual stimulants. One proposed law calls for rectal examinations; another mandate seeks treatment for "persistant erections". My opposite-sex spouse likes the idea of "sperm limits". It's never been truer about the fury ignited in scorned women than by the current Dark Age (Plutarch's term) male wannabe gynecologists.

Limbaugh's landfill is overflowing

WHAT A SPECTACLE! I refer, of course, to the ugly meltdown of Rush Limbaugh, who delights in his slanderous attacks on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke as a "slut" and "prostitute" while demanding that she provide videos for her alleged sexual encounters! It is the latest political porn from Limbaugh. This, from the guy who as early as 1994 was chosen by GOP congressional conservatives as an "honorary member" of their caucus. But by the looks of things, that, too, is hardly the worst of it. Rush is actually the heart and soul of the Republican Party, and their leaders would agree if they had an ounce of courage to confirm it as we head into the

Super Tuesday GOP primaries.

His intrusion into the campaigns' narrative has drawn the the two Abbot and Costello frontrunners - McMitt Romney and Mc.Rick Santorum - into offering silly, don't-

-bother-me responses. "It's not the language I would have used," shrugged Romney as though he was objecting to a distasteful dressing for his artichoke salad. If not that language, then what other one? He didn't say. Santorum said only that the choice of words was "absurd", but absurdity is not the same as outright slander. John Boehner's aide said the Speaker described Limbaugh's comment as"inappropriate," but added that was also true of the Democrats' trying to raise money from the viral controversy. The round-the-clock primal partisan, Boehner always try to draw blood from the other side.

Interesting how these guys who are forever accusing President Obama of being soft on our overseas enemies cannot solidify their spines to stand up to their honorary congressional member.

No one should be surprised that the Fox folks immediately circled the wagons around Rushbo by deflecting the issue away from birth control, while isolating the debate as solely a religious freedom matter. Echoing the maniacal Limbaugh, Bill O"Reilly accused Sandra Flute of wanting to have others pay for birth control with company-paid insurance. Huffed Dr. O'Reilly (father of two) that birth control was in no way related to health, while Viagra, which was OK with him, dealt with real male health problems. (He said what ?!?!?)

Well, some of Limbaugh's sposnors , including Dan Gilbert, the owner of Quicken Loans Inc. and the Cleveland Cavaliers, has now reversed himself as the kitchen got hotter and withdrawn his ads from Limbaugh's syndicated radio show. But we would be more impressed if Limbaugh's fearful minions in the GOP told him that enough is enough. Fat chance. It's tough to give up your pre-Jurassic notions.

But Rushbo's lunacy does measure up

The headline in the Burlington (VT.) Free Press told us:

From Waterbury to Wilmington, Vermonters shocked by Irene's Destruction

And the story began:

Vermonters will need weeks to recover from Tropical Storm Irene that killed at least three people and left a trail of devastation from St. Johnsbury to Bennington. That sentiment is reverberating across Vermont, echoed by everyone from Gov. Peter Shumlin to shell-shocked homeowners victimized by the torrent.

Got that?

But here's the expurgated version from Morbidologist Rush Limbaugh, whose secluded studio suffered nary a drop of floodwater:

"I'll guarantee you Obama was hoping this was going to be a disaster as another excuse for his failing economy. If he's out there blaming tsunamis, blaming earthquakes, this one [was] made to order, but it just didn't measure up."

And across the land a couple of million Dittoheads gleefully nodded in approval. .

Nevertheless, from me, via self-acclamation, he will get the non-coveted Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy (GALL) award - as always, with Rushbo derangement, uncontested.

UPDATE; Northern New Jersey has worst flooding in 108 years; hundreds of thousands without electricity; much of Passaic cut off. As a political commentator, you're doing a heckuva job, Rushbo.

FURTHER UPDATE (FROM WEDNESDAY NEW YORK TIMES): "Hurricane Irene will most likely prove to be one of the 10 costliest catastrophes in the nation's history, and much of the damage might not be covered by insurance because so much of it was caused not by winds but by flooding, which is excluded from many standard policies. Industry estimates put the cost of the storm at $7 billion to $10 billion..."

Limbaugh: Heat wave is government plot!

JUST AS I WAS beginning to feel a little more comf0rtable with the moderating July heat wave, my upbeat mood suffered a setback when I learned that all of the past scorching days were a government hoax to appease the global warming crowd. That late word comes from Rush Limbaugh, himself a hot-air savant whom I have been trying to ignore in recent weeks. Rush says the temperature is hardly as awful as what we think it is because the government has created a heat index to make your neighborhood seem to be hotter than it really is by a couple of points. We have long known Rush to be a denier of climate change because he denies anything that is anathema to the mindless right-wingers in his dittohead audience. For the extremes that have created an unabated record draught throughout the south, floods, tornadoes and other awful things, Rushbo says you must consider how phony the temperature index is (particularly in his air conditioned den) and the Feds are responsible for your discomfort for raising the index beyond the true reading. (Why they would go to this trouble to fool everybody, I'm not sure.) Well, being the curious sort, I checked the reported temperature on the computer's weather page and it registered 82.6 degrees. The index in dispute was a non-inflated 82! So I would have to rate his comment as they do on PolitiFact: pants on fire.

But will the rhetoric really tone down?

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S appeal for civility in politics drew praise from Democrats and Republicans alike in the aftershock of the Tucson shootings. As he is quite capable of doing, he superbly grasped the dark moment with a remarkable sense of clarity and humility in calling for a united front against the worst that political discourse has offered since his election. He could speak from experience. Much of the vitriol has been directed at him, from questions about his legitimacy to serve to calls for impeachment for unintelligible reasons.

I am a pessimist. Once everybody gets back to the pre-Tucson workaday world, I suspect it will be difficult for the assault force to tone down its rhetoric (despite appeals from even Fox News boss Roger Ailes to do exactly that!)

As Obama arrived in Tucson, Sarah Palin, in what appeared to be panicky damage control, was telling her choir that the brutal Democrats were out to get her. Watching her measured response, I had little doubt that in fact her presidential skyrocket had suffered a terrible blow from her "surveyor's symbol" and that she had to act quickly to regain her trajectory. It didn't work, unless you count the 30,000 Palinistas who rushed to her defense. That included her spiritual guide, Franklin Graham, who described her as a "kind, compassionate, God-loving woman."

Not as kind and compassionate, perhaps, was Rush Limbaugh's usual diatribe that Jared Loughner "has the full support of a major political party [Democrats] in this country."

What Rushbo hasn't learned as he turns age 60 is that in order for a honest debate to proceed on any issue, both sides have to be in touch with reality. No one should suggest that all debate must now end with calls to tone down. No one should be excluded from accountability for his or her words. But to the right-wingers who rely so heavily on the Constitution, I would suggest that they read the Federalist Papers and other historical documents in which both sides impressively argued their case with the skill that is so lacking in today's political arena.

The Tucson memoriam sent a strong message. But can it be sustained in the echo chamber?